all men whose god is Opportunity, he is a reckless gambler; and, like
all gamblers, he is monstrously extravagant. In brief, he is a tangle of
picturesque qualities, which, until our own generation, was incapable of
nothing save dulness.

The Bible and the Newgate Calendar--these twain were George Borrow's
favourite reading, and all save the psychologist and the pedant will
applaud the preference. For the annals of the 'family' are distinguished
by an epic severity, a fearless directness of speech, which you will
hardly match outside the Iliad or the Chronicles of the Kings. But the
Newgate Calendar did not spring ready-made into being: it is the result
of a curious and gradual development. The chap-books came first, with
their bold type, their coarse paper, and their clumsy, characteristic
woodcuts--the chap-books, which none can contemplate without an
enchanted sentiment. Here at last you come upon a literature, which has
been read to pieces. The very rarity of the slim, rough volumes, proves
that they have been handed from one greedy reader to another, until the
great libraries alone are rich enough to harbour them. They do not
boast the careful elegance of a famous press: many of them came from the
printing-office of a country town: yet the least has a simplicity and
concision, which are unknown in this age of popular fiction. Even their
lack of invention is admirable: as the same woodcut might be used to
represent Guy, Earl of Warwick, or the last highwayman who suffered
at Tyburn, so the same enterprise is ascribed with a delightful
ingenuousness to all the heroes who rode abroad under the stars to fill
their pockets.

The Life and Death of Gamaliel Ratsey delighted England in 1605, and
was the example of after ages. The anecdote of the road was already
crystallised, and henceforth the robber was unable to act contrary to