t it reminded
them of Defoe rather than of any contemporary author; they called the
books a "strange cross between a novel and an autobiography." In 1857
also, Emile Montegut wrote a study of "The Gypsy Gentleman," which he
published in his "Ecrivains Modernes de l'Angleterre." He said that
Borrow had revived a neglected literary form, not artificially, but as
being the natural frame for the scenes of his wandering life: he even
went so far as to say that the form and manner of the picaresque or rogue
novel, like "Gil Blas," is the inevitable one for pictures of the low and
vagabond life. This form, said he, Borrow adopted not deliberately but
intuitively, because he had a certain attitude to express: he
rediscovered it, as Cervantes and Mendoza invented it, because it was the
most appropriate clothing for his conceptions. Borrow had, without any
such ambition, become the Quevedo and the Mendoza of modern England.

The autobiography resembles the rogue novel in that it is well peppered
with various isolated narratives strung upon the thread of the hero's
experience. It differs chiefly in that the study of the hero is serious
and without roguery. The conscious attempt to make it as good as a rogue
novel on its own ground caused some of the chief faults of the book, the
excess of recognitions and re-appearances, the postillion's story, and
the visits of the Man in Black.

When Borrow came to answer his critics in the Appendix to "The Romany
Rye," he assumed that they thought him vulgar for dealing in Gypsies and
the like. He retorted:

"Rank, wealth, fine clothes and dignified employments, are no doubt very
fine things, but they are merely externals, they do not make a gentleman,
they add external grace and dignity to the gentleman and scholar, but
they make neither; and is it not better to be a gentleman without them
than not a gentleman with them? Is not Lavengro, when he leaves London
on foot with twenty pounds in his pocket, entitled to more respect than
Mr. Flamson flaming in his coach with a million? And is not even the
honest jockey at Horncastle, who offers a fair price to Lavengro for his
horse, entitled to more than the scroundrel lord, who attempts to cheat
him of one-fourth of its value. . . ."

He might have said the books were a long tract to prove that many waters
cannot quench gentlemanliness, or "once a gentleman always a gentleman."
As a rule, when Borrow gets away from life and begins to thi