Genius has a right to a penurious, and even to a sordid, boyhood.

But genius has no right to a sordid manhood, and here was George 'Olaus' Borrow, who was able to claim the friendship of William Taylor, the German scholar; who was able to boast of his association with sound scholastic foundations, with the High School at Edinburgh and the Grammar School at Norwich; who was a great linguist and had made rare translations from the poetry of many nations, starving in the byways of England and of France.

What a fate for such a man that he should have been so unhappy for eight years; should have led the most penurious of roving lives, and almost certainly have been in prison as a common tramp.[80] It was all very well to romance about a poverty-stricken youth.

But when youth had fled there ceased to be romance, and only sordidness was forthcoming.

From his twenty-third to his thirty-first year George Borrow was engaged in a hopeless quest for the means of making a living.