attitude, save in the insignificant particular that he applied the
same rule to himself only in theory.

He was shrewd and a good judge of character, provided it were
Protestant character, and could hold his own with a Jew or a Gypsy.
He was fully justified in his boast of being able to take "precious
good care of" himself, and "drive a precious hard bargain"; yet these
qualities were not to find a market until he was thirty years of age.

Sometime during the autumn (1825) Borrow returned to Norwich, where
he busied himself with literary affairs, among other things writing
to the publishers of Faustus about the bill that was shortly to fall
due. The fact of the book having been destroyed at both the Norwich
libraries, gave him the idea that he might make some profit by
selling copies of the suppressed volume. Hence his offer to Simpkin
& Marshall to take copies in lieu of money.



CHAPTER V: SEPTEMBER 1825-DECEMBER 1832



From the autumn of 1825 until the winter of 1832, when he obtained an
introduction to the British & Foreign Bible Society, only fragmentary
details of Borrow's life exist. He decided to keep sacred to himself
the "Veiled Period," as it came to be called. In all probability it
was a time of great hardship and mortification, and he wished it to
be thought that the whole period was devoted to "a grand philological
expedition," or expeditions. There is no doubt that some portion of