The incongruity is heightened by familiarity with Borrow's tall, blonde, Scandinavian figure, and the reader is reminded of those roving Northmen of the days of simple mediaeval devotion, who were wont to signalise their conversion from heathen darkness by a Mediterranean venture, combining the characters of a piratical cruise and a pious pilgrimage.
That Curiosity exaggerated and was a marvel-monger we shall attempt to demonstrate.

But, in the meantime, it was there, and it was very strong.
As for Borrow, he was prepared to derive stimulus from it just as long as it maintained the unquestioning attitude of Jasper Petulengro when he expressed the sentiments of gipsydom in the well-worn "Lor', brother, how learned you are!" In February 1843 Borrow wrote to Murray that he had begun his _Life_--a "kind of biography in the Robinson Crusoe style,"-- and was determined that it should surpass anything that he had already written.

It had been contemplated, he added, for some months already, as a possible sequel to the _Bible in Spain_ if that proved successful.

Hitherto, he wrote, the public had said "Good" (to his _Gypsies of Spain_, 1841), "Better" (to the _Bible in Spain_), and he wanted it, when No.

3 appeared, to say "Best." Five years rapidly passed away, until, in the summer of 1848, the book was announced as about to appear shortly, under the title of _Lavengro: An Autobiography_, which was soon changed to _Life: a Drama_.
The difficulty of writing a book which should have "no humbug in it," proved, as may well be supposed, immense, and would in any case be quite sufficient to account for the long period of gestation.