erly forgotten; as it is,
he lives for ever in the pages of _Lavengro_, a hissing and a reproach.
Authors have an ugly trick of getting the better of their publishers in
the long run. After leaving London Borrow began the wanderings described
in _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_. Those concluded, probably in 1829 or
1830, he crossed the British Channel, and like another Goldsmith,
wandered on foot over the Continent of Europe, visiting France, Italy,
Austria, and Russia. Of his adventures in these countries there is
unhappily no record. In St. Petersburg he must have made a long stay,
for there he superintended the translation of the Bible into Mandschu-
Tartar, and published in 1835 his _Targum_; _or Metrical Translations
from Thirty Languages and Dialects_. In 1835 Borrow returned to London,
and being already known to the Bible Society for his biblical labours in
Russia, was offered, and accepted, the task of circulating the Scriptures
in the Spanish Peninsula. As for his labours in this field, which
occupied him so agreeably for four or five years, are they not narrated
in _The Bible in Spain_, a book first published by 'Glorious John Murray'
in three volumes in 1843? This is the book which made Borrow famous,
though his earlier work, _The Zincali_; _or an Account of the Gypsies of
Spain_ (two vols. 1841), had attracted a good deal of notice. But _The
Bible in Spain_ took readers by storm, and no wonder! Sir Robert Peel
named it in the House of Commons; its perusal imparted a new sensation,
the sensation of literature, to many a pious subscriber to the Bible
Society. The book, wherever it went,--and it went where such like books
do not often go,--carried joy and rapture with it. Young people hailed
it tumultuously and cherished it tenderly. There were four editions in
three volumes in the year of publication. What was thought of the book
by the Bible Society I do not know. Perhaps 'he of the countenance of a
lion,' of whom we read in the forty-fifth chapter of _Lavengro_, scarcely
knew what to say about it; but the precise-looking man with the
ill-natured countenance, no doubt, forbade his family to read _The Bible
in Spain_.

In 1840 Borrow married the widow of a naval officer and settled in
Norfolk, where his aged mother was still living. His house was in Oulton
Broad; and here he became a notable, the hero of many stories, and the
friend of man, provided he was neither literary nor genteel. Here also