only he rides
with stirrup leathers too short.--_Inglesito_, if you have need of money,
I will lend you my purse. All I have is at your service, and that is not
a little; I have just gained four thousand _chules_ by the lottery.
Courage, Englishman! Another cup. I will pay all--I, Sevilla!'

"And he clapped his hand repeatedly on his breast, reiterating, 'I,
Sevilla! I--'"

Borrow breaks up his own style in the same way with foreign words. As
Ford said in his "Edinburgh Review" criticism:

"To use a Gypsy term for a linguist, 'he knows the seven jargons'; his
conversations and his writings resemble an intricate mosiac, of which we
see the rich effect, without comprehending the design. . . . Mr. Borrow,
in whose mouth are the tongues of Babel, selects, as he dashes along
_currente calamo_, the exact word for any idiom which best expresses the
precise idea which sparkles in his mind."

This habit of Borrow's should be compared with Lamb's archaisms, but,
better still, with Robert Burton's interlardation of English and Latin in
"The Anatomy of Melancholy."

Here again what I may call his spotted dog style is only a part of the
whole, and as the whole is effective, we solemnly conclude that this is
due in part to the spotted dog. My last word is that here, as always in
a good writer, the whole is greater than the mere sum of the parts, just
as with a bad writer the part is always greater than the whole. Or a
truer way of saying this is that many elements elude discovery, and
therefore the whole exceeds the discoverable parts. Nor is this the
whole truth, for the mixing is much if not all, and neither Borrow nor
any critic knows anything about the mixing, save that the drink is good
that comes of it.

CHAPTER XXIII--BETWEEN THE ACTS

Six three-volume editions of "The Bible in Spain" were issued within the
first twelve months: ten thousand copies of a cheap edition were sold in
four months. In America it was sold rapidly without benefit to Borrow.
It was translated into German in 1844 and French in 1845. Borrow came up
to town and did not refuse to meet princes, bishops, ambassadors, and
members of Parliament. He was pleased and flattered by the sales and the
reviews, and declared that he had known it would succeed. He did not
quite know what to say to an invitation from the Royal Institution, but
as to the Royal Academy, it would "just suit him," because he was a safe
man, he said, fitted by natur