'Individual' pursues one through all his pages, where too are 'equine species,' 'finny tribe'; but finding them where we do even these vile phrases, and others nearly as bad, have a certain humour.
This chance remark brings me to the real point.

Borrow's charm is that he has behind his books a character of his own, which belongs to his books as much as to himself; something which bears you up and along as does the mystery of the salt sea the swimmer.

And this something lives and stirs in almost every page of Borrow, whose restless, puzzling, teasing personality pervades and animates the whole.
He is the true adventurer who leads his life, not on the Stock Exchange amidst the bulls and bears, or in the House of Commons waiting to clutch the golden keys, or in South Africa with the pioneers and promoters, but with himself and his own vagrant moods and fancies.

There was no need for Borrow to travel far afield in search of adventures.

Mumpers' Dell was for him as good an environment as Mexico; a village in Spain or Portugal served his turn as well as both the Indies; he was as likely to meet adventures in Pall Mall as in the far Soudan.