Lavengro: the Scholar - the Gypsy - the Priest

by George Borrow

Transcribed from the 1893 Ward, Lock, Bowden, and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

LAVENGRO:
THE SCHOLAR—THE GYPSY—THE PRIEST.

by
GEORGE BORROW,
author of
“THE BIBLE IN SPAIN,” etc.

with an introduction
by
THEODORE WATTS.

WARD, LOCK, BOWDEN, AND CO.
london: warwick house, salisbury square, e.c.
new york: east 12th street.
melbourne: st. james’s street. sydney: york street.

1893.

NOTES UPON GEORGE BORROW.

I. Borrow as a Splendid Literary Amateur.

There are some writers who cannot be adequately criticised—who cannot, indeed, be adequately written about at all—save by those to whom they are personally known. I allude to those writers of genius who, having only partially mastered the art of importing their own individual characteristics into literary forms, end their life-work as they began it, remaining to the last amateurs in literary art. Of this class of writers George Borrow is generally taken to be the very type. Was he really so?