he not ascribe a command of tongues to the man who is perhaps the most
consummate idiot in the whole range of Shakespearean portraiture?

MARIA. That quaffing and drinking will undo you: I heard my lady talk
of it yesterday, and of a foolish knight that you brought in here to
be her wooer.

SIR TOBY BELCH. Who? Sir Andrew Ague-cheek?

MARIA. Ay, he.

SIR TOBY. He's as tall a man as any in Illyria.

MARIA. What's that to the purpose?

SIR TOBY. Why, he has three thousand ducats a year.

MARIA. Ay, but he'll have but a year in all these ducats: he's a very
fool and a prodigal.

SIR TOBY. Fie that you'll say so! He plays o' the viol de gamboys,
and speaks three or four languages word for word, without book.

The extraordinary linguistic gifts of a Mezzofanti were not, it is true,
concentrated in Borrow (whose powers in this direction have been
magnified), but they were sufficiently prominent in him to have a
determining effect upon his mind. Thus he was distinguished less for
broad views than for an extraordinary faculty for detail; when he
attempts to generalise we are likelier to get a flood of inconsequent
prejudices than a steady flow of reasoned opinions.