The Project Gutenberg eBook, Lavengro, by George Borrow, Edited by
Theodore Watts

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Title: Lavengro
the Scholar - the Gypsy - the Priest

Author: George Borrow

Editor: Theodore Watts

Release Date: January 13, 2010 [eBook #20198]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAVENGRO***

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.

[Picture: Borrow's home at Oulton (now pulled down), showing the summer
house where much of his work was written. (From a Photograph kindly lent
by Mr. Welchman, of Lowestoft, and taken by Mr. F. G. Mayhew, of the same
place.)]

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?

There are passages in "Lavengro" which are unsurpassed in the prose
literature of England--unsurpassed, I mean, for mere perfection of
style--for blending of strength and graphic power with limpidity and
mu