Borrow, GEORGE HENRY, was born at East Dereham, Norfolk, 5th July 1803. His father, a captain of militia, during the war moved about with his regiment to Scotland, Ireland, and many parts of England, then settled at Norwich, where young Borrow attended the grammar-school (1816-18), and for the next five years was articled to a firm of solicitors. Already he deserved his Gypsy title Lavengro ('word-master'), having picked up a knowledge of Irish, French, German and Danish (these two under 'Taylor of Norwich'), Welsh, Latin, Greek, even of Romany, the language of that strange Gypsy race of which he was almost an adopted member. On his father's death in 1824 he came up to London to seek his fortune, and fared ill as hack-writer to Sir Richard Phillips the publisher. Anon he wandered Gypsy-wise through England, and, on his wanderings, was all but poisoned by a Romany beldame, fought and vanquished the Flaming Tinman, with Isopel Berners tented in Mumper's Dingle, and met with other moving accidents (are they not chronicled in his own book, Lavengro?). Next—and here facts and dates are again realities, without any suspicion of fancy—as agent of the Bible Society he visited St Petersburg (1833-35), and Portugal, Spain, Morocco (1835-39). In 1840 he married a well-to-do widow, and settled down on a small estate of hers at Oulton, near Lowestoft, where, after travels in South-eastern Europe (1844), a tour in Wales (1854), and a residence of some years in London, he ended his days, 26th July 1881. The chief of his fourteen published works are: The Zincedi, or Gypsies of Spain (1840); The Bible in Spain (1843); Lavengro (1851); its sequel The Romany Rye (1857); Wild Wales (1862); and Romano Lavo-Lil, or Word-book of the English-Gypsy Language (1874)—six works, of which the first three increased, as the last three fell off, in vigour and interest. All but the first and last are autobiographical; and even the Zincedi and Lavo-Lil are full of the author's strong individuality. He has been likened to Cervantes, Defoe, Lesage; 'a Lesage in water-colours' is how he described himself. In truth, all three were in some ways his literary progenitors; none the less he is always original, always George Borrow, with his love of horseflesh, boxing, strong ale, and open-air life, his hatred of gentility, priestcraft, cant of any kind. His rare mastery of good strong English, his rarer power of depicting mankind and nature, are often marred by studied mannerisms, transparent mystifications, unreasoning crotchets, Manfred-like posings. Not that here lay his chief offending. He was too English for the squeamish age that preceded the gospel of 'Muscular Christianity'; and no writer so well worth reading is even nowadays so little read. In Mr Watts-Dunton's 'Reminiscences of George Borrow' (Athenæum, September 3, 10, 1881) we get a splendid picture of the man—his mighty figure, frank and childlike gaze, his fine East Anglian accent, his love of nature and love of adventure, his reverence and unswerving belief in God's beneficence, his talk—fresh, racy, whimsical—of all the wondrous things he had seen and heard in his wondrous life. 'No man's writing can take you into the country as Borrow's can; it makes you feel the sunshine, see the meadows, smell the flowers, hear the skylark sing and the grasshopper chirp. Who else can do it? I know of none.'
See also Watts-Dunton's introduction to Lavengro (1893), Dutt's Borrow in East Anglia (1896), and the Life by Prof. Knapp (2 vols. 1899).