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
accepted at Christmas time in 1853. He stayed for a fortnight with a
cousin's married daughter, Mrs. Anne Taylor, at Penquite Farm, near
Liskeard, and then several days again after a fortnight spent on a walk