His dialogue can hardly be over-praised. It is life-like in its effect, though not in its actual phrases, and it breaks up the narrative and description over and over again at the right time. What he puts into the mouth of shepherds with whom he sits round the fire is more than twice as potent as if it were in his own narrative; he varies the point of view, and yet always without allowing himself to
disappear from the scene—he, the señor traveller. These spoken words are, it is true, in Borrow’s own style, with little or no colloquialism, but they are simpler. They also, in their turn, are broken up by words or phrases from the language of the speaker. The effect of this must vary with the reader. The learned will not pause, some of the unlearned will be impatient. But as a glossary was afterwards granted at Ford’s suggestion, and is now to be had in the cheapest editions of “The Bible in Spain,” these few hundred Spanish or Gypsy words are at least no serious stumbling block. I find them a very distinct additional flavour in the style. A good writer can afford these mysteries. Children do not boggle at the unpronounceable names of a good book like “The Arabian Nights,” but rather use them as charms, like Izaak Walton’s marrow of the thighbone of a heron or a piece of mummy. The bullfighter speaks:
“‘Cavaliers and strong men, this cavalier is the friend of a friend of mine. Es mucho hombre. There is none like him in Spain. He speaks the crabbed Gitano, though he is an Inglesito.’
“‘We do not believe it,’ replied several grave voices. ‘It is not possible.’
“‘It is not possible, say you? I tell you it is.—Come forward, Balseiro, you who have been in prison all your life, and are always boasting that you can speak the crabbed Gitano, though I say you know nothing of it—come forward and speak to his worship in the crabbed Gitano.’
“A low, slight, but active figure stepped forward. He was in his shirt sleeves, and wore a montero cap; his features were handsome, but they were those of a demon.
“He spoke a few words in the broken Gypsy slang of the prison, inquiring of me whether I had ever been in
the condemned cell, and whether I knew what a gitana was.
“‘Vamos Inglesito,’ shouted Sevilla, in a voice of thunder, ‘answer the monro in the crabbed Gitano.’
“I answered the robber, for such he was, and one, too, whose name will live for many years in the ruffian histories of Madrid—I answered him in a speech of some length, in the dialect of the Estremenian Gypsies.