BORROW, GEORGE, an English author, b. at Norfolk in 1833. He displayed from his earliest years an extraordinary talent for languages, and a strong inclination for adventure. In his youth he lived for some time among gypsies, by this means acquiring an exact knowledge of their languag,e, manners, and customs. His travels. as agent for the British and foreign Bible society, through almost all countries of Europe and a part of Africa, made him familiar with many modern languages. even to their dialectic peculiarities. Whatever was little known had peculiar charms for him, and he shrunk neither from toil nor danger. True to his youthful predilection, lie made the gypsies scattered over every part of Europe one of the principal subjects of his study. Ills first work, The Zineali, or an Account of the Gypsies in, Spain (2 vols., Load. 1841). made a favorable impression by its lively and dramatic style. It was followed by The Bible in Spain (2 vols., Lond. 1843), a book to which its author is chiefly indebted for his celeb rity, and which consists of a narrative of personal adventures as various as it is interesting.
The graphic power of the style amply compensates for the rather unmethodical arrange ment of the book. After a long interval, 13. published a work long, before announced, Larengro, the Scholar, the Gypsy, and the Priest (3 vols.. Lond. 1851), which was gener ally regarded as an autobiography, with a spice of fancy mingling with fact. The principal character is depicted with extravagant exaggeration; and the somewhat bizarre originality which gate a petuliat zest to the author's earlier works here appears as man nerism. The book left the heroin the midst of his adventures, which were not continued until 1857, when B. published The Romany Rye, a sequel to Larengro, which was a more unsatisfactory work than any of its predecessors. He published KW TITuies in 1862, and Romano La in 1874.