EIGHT YEARS OF VAGABONDAGE There has been much nonsense written concerning what has been called the 'veiled period' of George Borrow's life.

This has arisen from a letter which Richard Ford of the _Handbook for Travellers in Spain_ wrote to Borrow after a visit to him at Oulton in 1844.

Borrow was full of his projected _Lavengro_, the idea of which he outlined to his friends.

He was a genial man in those days, on the wave of a popular success.
Was not _The Bible in Spain_ passing merrily from edition to edition! Borrow, it is clear, told Ford that he was writing his 'Autobiography'-- he had no misgiving then as to what he should call it--and he evidently proposed to end it in 1825 and not in 1833, when the Bible Society gave him his real chance in life.

Ford begged him, in letters that came into Dr.Knapp's possession, and from which he quotes all too meagrely, not to 'drop a curtain' over the eight years succeeding 1825.