A narrative so wide awake amidst a vagrant population of questionable morals and alien race suggests an affinity with _Hajji Baba_ (a close kinsman, we conceive, of the Borrovian picaro).

But, above all, as one follows the author through the mazes of his book, one is conscious of two strangely assorted figures, never far from the itinerant's side, and always ready to improve the occasion if a shadow of an opportunity be afforded.

One, who is prolific of philological chippings, might be compared to a semblance of Max Muller; while the other, alternately denouncing the wickedness and deriding the toothlessness of a grim Giant Pope, may be likened, at a distance, to John Bunyan.

About the whole--to conclude--is an atmosphere, not too pronounced, of the _Newgate Calendar_, and a few patches of sawdust from the Prize Ring.

May not people well have wondered (the good pious English folk to whom _Luck_ is a scandal, as the Bible Society's secretary wrote to Borrow),--what manner of man is this, this muleteer-missionary, this natural man with a pen in the hand of a prize-fighter, but of a prize-fighter who is afflicted with the fads of a philologer--and a pedant at that?
The surprise may be compared to what that of a previous generation would have been, had it seen Johnson and Boswell and Baretti all fused into one man.