As a substitute for the usual padding of
humbug, sycophancy and second-hand ideas, he bethought himself of
philology, and he set himself to spring fragments of philological
instruction (often far from sound) upon his reader in the most unexpected
places, that his ingenuity could devise. He then began to base hopes
upon the book in proportion to its originality. At the last moment,
however, the Author grew querulous about his work, distrustful of the
reception that would be given to it, and even as to the advisability of
producing it at all. Much yet remained to be done, but for a long time
he refused, not only to forward new copy to Albemarle Street, but even to
revise the proofs of that which he had already written, and it required
all the dunning that Murray and the printer Woodfall dare apply before
_Lavengro_ with its altered sub-title (for at the last moment Borrow grew
afraid of openly avowing his identity with the speaking likeness which he
had created) could be announced as "just ready" in the _Athenaeum_ of
Dec. 14th, 1850.

_Lavengro; the Scholar_, _the Gypsy_, _the Priest_, eventually appeared
in three volumes on Feb. 7th, 1851. The autobiographical _Lavengro_
stopped short in July 1825, at the conclusion of the hundredth chapter,
with an abruptness worthy of the _Sentimental Journey_. The Author had
succeeded in extending the area of mystery, but not in satisfying the
public. Borrow's confidences were so very different in complexion from
those which the critics seemed to have expected, that they were taken
aback and declared to the public almost with one accord that the writer's
eccentricities had developed into mannerisms, that his theories of life
were political manifestoes, that his dialects were gibberish, and his
defiance of the orthodox canons of autobiography scarcely less than an
outrage upon the public taste.

From the general public came a fusillade of requests to solve the
prevailing mystery of the book. Was it fact or fiction?--or, if fact and
fiction were blended, in what proportions? Borrow ought to have been
prepared for a question so natural in the mouths of literary busy-bodies
at any time, and especially at a time when partisan spirit was rampant,
and the vitality of the lampoon as a factor in politics so far from
extinct. To show his contempt alike for the critical verdict and the
popular curiosity, after a quarrel, or at least a sharp coolness with
John Murray, he published in