Lavengro

Lavengro, by George Borrow,
Edited by

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Title: Lavengro the Scholar - the Gypsy - the Priest
Author: George Borrow
Editor: Theodore Watts
Release Date: December 27, 2006 [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 [email protected]

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.
{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.): p0.jpg}

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

music of flow. Is "Lavengro" the work of a literary amateur who,
yielding at will to every kind of authorial self-indulgence, fails to find
artistic expression for the life moving within him--fails to project an
individuality that his friends knew to have been unique? Of other
writers of genius, admirable criticism may be made by those who have
never known them in the flesh. Is this because each of those others,
having passed from the stage of the literary amateur to that of the
literary artist, is able to pour the stream of his personality into the
literary mould and give to the world a true image of himself? It has
been my chance of life to be brought into personal relations with many
men of genius, but I feel that there are others who could write about
them more adequately than I. Does Borrow stand alone? The admirers
of his writings seem generally to think he does, for ever since I wrote
my brief and hasty obituary notice of him in 1881, I have been urged to
enlarge my reminiscences of him--urged not only by philologers and
gypsologists, but by many others in England, America, and Germany.
But I on my part have been for years urging upon the friend who
introduced me to him, and who knew him years ago,--knew him when
he was the comparatively young literary lion of East Anglia,--Dr.
Gordon Hake, to do what others are urging me to do. Not only has the
author of "Parables and Tales" more knowledge of the subject than any
one else, but having a greater reputation than I, he can speak with more
authority, and having a more brilliant pen than I, he can give a more
vital picture than I can hope to give of our common friend. If he is, as
he seems to be, fully determined not to depict Borrow in prose, let me
urge him to continue in verse that admirable description of him
contained in one of the well-known sonnets addressed to myself in
"The New Day":--
"And he, the walking lord of gipsy lore! How often 'mid the deer that
grazed the Park, Or in the fields and heath and windy moor, Made
musical with many a soaring lark, Have we not held brisk commune
with him there, While Lavengro, then towering by your side, With rose
complexion and bright silvery hair, Would stop amid his swift and
lounging stride To tell the legends of the fading race-- As at the
summons of his piercing glance, Its story peopling his brown eyes and
face, While you called up that pendant of romance To Petulengro with

his boxing glory, Your Amazonian Sinfi's noble story!"

II. IS THERE A KEY TO "LAVENGRO"?
Dr. Hake, however, and those others among Borrow's friends who are
apt to smile at the way in