He carried this scheme into execution to the general satisfaction, and he returns to London in 1837; then to the south of Europe, whence he reappears, larger than life and twice as natural, in his masterly autobiographical romance of _The Bible in Spain_, the work which made his name, which was sold by thousands, which was eagerly acclaimed as an invaluable addition to "Sunday" literature, and pirated in a generous spirit of emulation by American publishers.
We are now come to the circumstance of the composition of _Lavengro_.
_The Bible in Spain_, when it appeared in 1843, implied a wonderful background to the Author's experience, a career diversified by all kinds of wild adventures, "sorcery, Jews, Gentiles, rambles," gipsies, prisons,--what you will.

{12} The personal element in the book--so suggestive of mystery and romance--excited the strongest curiosity.

Apart from this, however, the reading public of 1843 were not unnaturally startled by a book which seemed to profess to be a good, serious, missionary work, but for which it was manifest that _Gil Blas_ and not Bishop Heber had been taken as a model.

Not that any single comparison of the kind can convey the least idea of the complex idiosyncrasy of such a work.

There is a substratum of _Guide Book_ and _Gil Blas_, no doubt, but there are unmistakable streaks of Defoe, of Dumas, and of Dickens, with all his native prejudices and insular predilections strong upon him.