There has been much nonsense written concerning what has been called the “veiled period” of George Borrow’s life.  This has arisen from a letter which Richard Ford¹ of the Handbook for Travellers in Spain wrote to Borrow after a visit to him at Oulton in 1844.  Borrow was full of his projected Lavengro, the idea of which he outlined to his friends.  He was a genial² man in those days, on the wave of a popular success.  Was not The Bible in Spain passing merrily from edition to edition!  Borrow, it is clear, told Ford that he was writing his “Autobiography”—he had no misgiving³ then as to what he should call it—and he evidently proposed to end it in 1825 and not in 1833, when the Bible Society gave him his real chance in life.  His friend Ford indeed begged him not to “drop a curtain” over the eight years succeeding 1825.  “No doubt,” says Ford, “it will excite a mysterious interest,” but then he adds in effect it will lead to a wrong construction being put upon the omission⁴.  Well, there can be but one interpretation⁵, and that not an unnatural⁶ one.  Borrow had a very rough time during these years.  His vanity was hurt, and no wonder.  It seems a strange matter to us now that Charles Dickens should have been ashamed of the blacking-bottle episode of his boyhood.  Genius has a right to a poverty-stricken—even to a sordid⁷, boyhood.  But genius has no right to a sordid manhood, and here was George “Olaus” Borrow, who was able to claim the friendship of William Taylor, the German scholar; who was able to boast of his association with sound scholastic⁸ foundations, with the High School at Edinburgh and the Grammar School at Norwich; who was a great

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