GEORGE BORROW


Lavengro

George Henry Borrow was born at East Dereham, Norfolk,
England, July 5, 1803. His father was an army captain, and
Borrow's boyhood was spent at military stations in various
parts of the kingdom. From his earliest youth he had a taste
for roving and fraternising with gipsies and other vagrants.
In 1819 he entered a solicitor's office at Norwich. After a
long spell of drudgery and literary effort, he went to London
in 1824, but left a year later, and for some time afterwards
his movements were obscure. For a period of about five years,
beginning 1835, he acted as the Bible Society's agent, selling
and distributing Bibles in Spain, and in 1842 he published
"The Bible in Spain." which appears in another volume of THE
WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS. (See TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE.)
"Lavengro," written in 1851, enhanced the fame which Borrow
had already secured by his earlier works. The book teems with
character sketches drawn from real life in quarters which few
could penetrate, and although they are often extremely
eccentric, they are never grotesque, and never strike the mind
with a sense of merely invented unreality. Here and there
occur illuminating outbursts of reflection in philosophic
accent which reveal in startling style the working of Borrow's
mind. The linguistic lore is phenomenal, as in all his books.
But though the wild, passionate scenes make the whole
narrative an indescribable phantasmagoria, the diction is
always free from turgidity, and from involved periods. Borrow