The opening of Introduction
The author of Lavengro, the Scholar, the Gypsy, and the Priest has after his fitful hour come into his own, and there abides securely. Borrow's books,--carelessly written, impatient, petulant, in parts repellant,--have been found so full of the elixir of life, of the charm of existence, of the glory of motion, so instinct with character, and mood, and wayward fancy, that their very names are sounds of enchantment, whilst the fleeting scenes they depict and the deeds they describe have become the properties and the pastimes for all the years that are still to be of a considerable fraction of the English-speaking race.
And yet I suppose it would be considered ridiculous in these fine days to call Borrow a great artist. His fascination, his hold upon his reader, is not the fascination or the hold of the lords of human smiles and tears. They enthrall us; Borrow only bewitches. Isopel Berners, hastily limned though she be, need fear comparison with no damsel that ever lent sweetness to the stage, relish to rhyme, or life to novel.