As the reader will probably have deduced from the foregoing pages, the trouble was mainly due to the following causes.
First, baffled curiosity.

Secondly, a dislike for Borrow's prejudices.
Thirdly, a disgust at his philistinism in refusing to bow down and worship the regnant idols of 'taste.' Fourthly, the total absence in Borrow of the sentimentality for which the soul of the normal Englishman yearns.

Fifthly, disappointment at not finding the critic's due from an accepted author in quotable passages of picturesque prose.
These views are appropriately summed up through the medium of the pure and scentless taste of the _Athenaeum_.

The varied contents of _Lavengro_ are here easily reduced to one denomination--'balderdash,' for the emission of which the _Athenaeum_ critic proceeds (in the interests, of course, of the highest gentility), to give George Borrow a good scolding.
How sadly removed was such procedure from Borrow's own ideal of reviewing, as set forth in the very volume under consideration! Such operations should always, he held, be conducted in a spirit worthy of an editor of Quintilian, in a gentlemanly, Oxford-like manner.

No vituperation! No insinuations! Occasionally a word of admonition, but gently expressed as an Oxford M.A.might have expressed it.