them to some other publisher."

Taggart took a double quantity of snuff.

Equally Sterne-like is the conclusion to a chapter: "Italy--what was I
going to say about Italy?"

Less superficial is the influence of Cervantes and his successors of the
Picaresque school, down to the last and most representative of them in
England, namely Defoe and Smollett. Profoundest of all, perhaps, is the
influence of Defoe, of whose powers of intense realisation, exhibited in
the best parts of _Robinson Crusoe_, we get a fine counterpart amid the
outcasts in Mumper's Lane. Bound up with the truthfulness and
originality of the Author is that strange absence of sycophancy, which we
may flatter ourselves is no exceptional thing, but which is in reality a
very rare phenomenon in literature.

Apart from this independence of character which he so justly prized, and
a monomania or two, such as his devotion to philology or detestation of
popery, Borrow's mental peculiarities are not by any means so extravagant
as has been supposed. His tastes were for the most part not unusual,
though they might be assorted in a somewhat uncommon manner. He was a
thorough sportsman in the best sense, but he combined with his sporting
zeal an instinctive hatred of gambling, of bad language, and of tyranny
or cruelty in any form. He entertained a love for the horse in the
stable without bowing down to worship the stage-coachmen, the jockeys,
and other ignoble heroes of "horsey" life. He loved his country and "the
quiet, unpretending Church of England." He was ready to exalt the
obsolescent fisticuffs and the "strong ale of Old England," but he was
not blind either to the drunkenness or to the overbearing brutality which