For all his artistry, he lacks balance as flagrantly as a
popular politician or an advanced journalist. Therefore it is the more
remarkable that in one point he displays a certain caution: he boggles
at a superfluous murder. For all his contempt of property, he still
preserves a respect for life, and the least suspicion of unnecessary
brutality sets not only the law but his own fellows against him. Like
all men whose god is Opportunity, he is a reckless gambler; and, like
all gamblers, he is monstrously extravagant. In brief, he is a tangle of
picturesque qualities, which, until our own generation, was incapable of
nothing save dulness.
The Bible and the Newgate Calendar--these twain were George Borrow's
favourite reading, and all save the psychologist and the pedant will
applaud the preference. For the annals of the 'family' are distinguished
by an epic severity, a fearless directness of speech, which you will
hardly match outside the Iliad or the Chronicles of the Kings. But the
Newgate Calendar did not spring ready-made into being: it is the result
of a curious and gradual development. The chap-books came first, with
their bold type, their coarse paper, and their clumsy, characteristic
woodcuts--the chap-books, which none can contemplate without an
enchanted sentiment. Here at last you come upon a literature, which has
been read to pieces. The very rarity of the slim, rough volumes, proves
that they have been handed from one greedy reader to another, until the
great libraries alone are rich enough to harbour them.
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