Borrow's Spanish portrait of himself was worthy of its background. Much was required of him in a world where a high fantastical acrobatic mountebankery was almost a matter of ceremony, where riders stand on their heads in passing their rivals and cooks punt a casserole over their heads to the wall behind by way of giving notice: much was required of him and he proved worthy. He saw himself, I suppose, as a great imaginative master of fiction sees a hero. His attitude cannot be called vanity: it is too consistent and continuous and its effect by far too powerful. He puts his own name into the speeches of other men in a manner that is very rare: he does not start at the sound of _Don Jorge_. He said to the silent archbishop: "I suppose your lordship knows who I am? . . . I am he whom the _Manolos_ of Madrid call _Don Jorgito el Ingles_; I am just come out of prison, whither I was sent for circulating my Lord's Gospel in this Kingdom of Spain." He allows the archbishop to put this celebrity on horseback: "_Vaya_! how you ride! It is dangerous to be in your way." His horses are magnificent: "What," he asks, "what is a missionary in the heart of Spain without a horse? Which consideration induced me now to purchase an Arabian of high caste, which had been brought from Algiers by an officer of the French legion. The name of this steed, the best I believe that ever issued from the desert, was Sidi Habismilk." Who can forget Quesada and his two friends lording it on horseback over the crowd, and Borrow shouting "_Viva_ _Quesada_," or forget the old Moor of Tangier talking of horses?--