Though he did not elaborate, or strive to attain to the cultism or polite style of contemporary genius, Borrow seems to have written with some difficulty (or at any rate a lack of facility), and, impervious as he was to criticism, he retained in his prose a number of small faults that he might easily have got rid of.  His manner of introducing his generalities and conclusions is often either superfluous, or lame and clumsy.  Despite his natural eloquence, his fondness for the apostrophe is excessive; he preserved an irritating habit of parading such words as eclat, penchant and monticle, and persisted in saying “of a verity,” and using the word “individual” in the sense of person.  Such blemishes are microscopic enough.  It was not such trifles as these that proved stumbling-blocks to the “men of blood and foam,” as he called his critics.

Of the generality of the critics of that day it would probably be well within the mark to aver that their equipment was more solid, and their competence more assured than that of their successors; {30} it would be safe to assert that their self-sufficiency was also decidedly more pronounced.  Now for reasons which we have endeavoured to explain, the equanimity of the critical reviewers was considerably ruffled by Lavengro.  Perplexed by its calling itself an autobiography, they were at the same time discontented both with its subject-matter and its style.  To a not altogether misplaced curiosity on the part of the public as to Borrow’s antecedents, the author of the Bible in Spain had responded by Lavengro, which he fully meant to be (what it indeed was) a masterpiece.  Yet public and critics were agreed in failing to see the matter in this light.  As the reader will probably have deduced from the foregoing pages, the trouble was mainly due to the following causes.  First, baffled curiosity.  Secondly, a dislike for Borrow’s prejudices.  Thirdly, a disgust at his philistinism in refusing to bow down and worship the regnant idols of ‘taste.’  Fourthly, the total absence in Borrow of the sentimentality for which the soul of the normal Englishman yearns.  Fifthly, disappointment at not finding the critic’s due from an accepted author in quotable passages of picturesque prose.

These views are appropriately summed up through the medium of the pure and scentless taste of the Athenaeum.  The varied contents of Lavengro are here easily reduced to one denomination—­’balderdash,’ for the emission of which the Athenaeum critic proceeds (in the interests, of course, of the highest gentility), to give George Borrow a good scolding.