“‘Sir,’ said the publisher, ‘I believe you to be extravagant; yes, sir, extravagant!’
“‘On what grounds do you suppose me to be so?’
“‘Sir,’ said the publisher, ‘you eat meat.’
“‘Yes,’ said I, ‘I eat meat sometimes; what should I eat?’
“‘Bread, sir,’ said the publisher; ‘bread and cheese.’
“‘So I do, sir, when I am disposed to indulge; but I cannot often afford it—it is very expensive to dine on bread and cheese, especially when one is fond of cheese, as I am. My last bread and cheese dinner cost me fourteen pence. There is drink, sir; with bread and cheese one must drink porter, sir.’
“‘Then, sir, eat bread—bread alone. As good men as yourself have eaten bread alone; they have been glad to
get it, sir. If with bread and cheese you must drink porter, sir, with bread alone you can, perhaps, drink water, sir.’
“However, I got paid at last for my writings in the review, not, it is true, in the current coin of the realm, but in certain bills; there were two of them, one payable at twelve, and the other at eighteen months after date.”
The incident serves to diversify the narrative, and may be taken from his own London experiences, while the particular merriment of the rhyme is Borrow’s; but it is not of the essence of the book, and fits only indifferently into the mysterious “Arabian Nights” London, the city of the gallant Ardry and the old apple-woman who called him “dear” and called Moll Flanders “blessed Mary Flanders.” Sir Richard will not mysteriously re-appear, nor will Captain and Mrs. Borrow. I should say, in fact, that characters of this class have scarcely at all the power of motion. What is more, they take us not only a little way out of Borrow’s world sometimes, but away from Borrow himself.