are never such in "The Bible
in Spain," though they are in "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye." The Gypsy
hag of Badajoz, who proposed to poison all the _Busne_ in Madrid, and
then away with the London Caloro to the land of the Moor--his Greek
servant Antonio, even though he begins with "Je vais vous raconter mon
histoire du commencement jusqu'ici."--the Italian whom he had met as a
boy and who now regretted leaving England, the toasted cheese and bread,
the Suffolk ale, the roaring song and merry jests of the labourers,--and
Antonio again, telling him "the history of the young man of the
inn,"--these story-tellers are not merely consummate variations upon
those of the "Decameron" and "Gil Blas." The book never ceases to be a
book of travel by an agent of the Bible Society. It is to its very great
advantage that it was not written all of a piece with one conscious aim.
The roughness, the merely accurate irrelevant detail here and there, the
mention of his journal, and the references to well-known and substantial
people, win from us an openness and simplicity of reception which ensure
a success for it beyond that of most fictions. I cannot refuse complete
belief in the gigantic Jew, Abarbanel, for example, when Borrow has said:
"I had now a full view of his face and figure, and those huge featured
and Herculean form still occasionally revisit me in my dreams. I see him
standing in the moonshine, staring me in the face with his deep calm
eyes." I do not feel bound to believe that he had met the Italian of
Corunna twenty years before at Norwich, though to a man with his memory
for faces such re-appearances are likely to happen many times as often as
to an ordinary man. But I feel no doubt about Judah Lib, who spoke to
him at Gibraltar: he was "about to exclaim, 'I know you not,' when one or
two lineaments struck him, and he cried, though somewhat hesitatingly,
'surely this is Judah Lib.'" He continues: "It was in a steamer in the
Baltic in the year '34, if I mistake not." That he had this strong
memory is certain; but that he knew it, and was proud of it, and likely
to exaggerate it, is almost equally certain.

It was natural that such a knight should have squires of high degree, as
Francisco the Basque and the two Antonios, Gypsy and Greek. Antonio the
Greek left Borrow to serve a count as cook, but the count attacked him
with a rapier, whereupon he gave notice in the following manner:

"Suddenly I took a large cas