Note {27b} — INTRODUCTION.

As a matter of fact there was nothing in the least degree squalid about Borrow’s subjects or treatment. His tramps and vagabonds have nothing about them that is repulsive. Borrow, it is true, was ready enough to condone the offences of those who sought dupes among the well-to-do public; but he preferred the honester members of the vagrant class; and it is plain that they reciprocated the preference, for they regarded the Romany Rye with an almost superstitious reverence on account of his truth, honour bright and fair speech. Borrow had a passion for depicting the class that Hurtado de Mendoza had first caught for literature in his Lazarillo (1553)—that, namely, of the old tricksters of the highway who still retained many traits, noble and ignoble, from the primeval savage. For the characteristically mean and squalid one must go up higher in the scale of civilisation.