ould a man?'

"'Oh, we know very well that a man has a soul.'

"'How do you know it?'

"'We know very well.'

"'Would you take your oath of it, brother--your bodily oath?'

"'Why, I think I might, Jasper!'"

There is no doubt that Borrow liked a strong or an extraordinary man none
the less for being a scoundrel. There is equally little doubt that he
never demeaned himself with the lower orders. He never pretended, and
was seldom taken, to be one of themselves. His attitude differed in
degree, but not in kind, from that of a frank, free squire or parson
towards keepers, fishermen or labourers. And if he did not drink and
swear on an equality with them, neither did he crankily worship them as
Fitzgerald did "Posh," the fisherman. They respected him--at least so he
tells us--and he never gives himself away to any other effect--because he
was honest, courageous and fair. Thus he never gave cause for suspicion
as a man does who throws off the cloak of class, and he was probably as
interesting to them as they to him. Nor did his refusal to adopt their
ways and manners out and out prevent a very genuine kind of equality from
existing between him and some of them. A man or woman of equal character
and force became his equal, as Jasper did, as Isopel and David Haggart
did, and he accepted this equality without a trace of snobbishness.

He says himself that he has "no abstract love for what is low, or what
the world calls low." Certainly there is nothing low in his familiars,
as he presents them, at least nothing sordid. It may be the result of
unconscious idealisation, but his Gypsies have nothing more sordid about
them than wild birds have. Mrs. Herne is diabolical, but in a manner
that would not be unbecoming to a duchess. Leonora is treacherous, but
as an elf is permitted to be. As for Jasper and Mrs. Petulengro, they
are as radiant as Mercutio and Rosalind. They have all the sweetness of
unimprisoned air: they would prefer, like Borrow, "the sound of the
leaves and the tinkling of the waters" to the parson and the church; and
the smell of the stable, which is strong in "Lavengro" and "The Romany
Rye," to the smell of the congregation and the tombs.

CHAPTER XXVIII--WALKING TOURS

When Borrow had almost finished "The Romany Rye" he went on a visit to
his cousins in Cornwall. The story of his saving a man's life in a
stormy sea had reached them, and they sent him an invitation, which he
accepte