His occasional references to Vidocq are probably due to the fact that he had read this little book.
I have before me one very lengthy manuscript of Borrow's of this period.
It is dated December 1829, and is addressed, 'To the Committee of the Honourable and Praiseworthy Association, known by the name of the Highland Society.'[83] It is a proposal that they should publish in two thick octavo volumes a series of translations of the best and most approved poetry of the ancient and modern Scots-Gaelic bards.

Borrow was willing to give two years to the project, for which he pleads 'with no sordid motive.' It is a dignified letter, which will be found in one of Dr.Knapp's appendices--so presumably Borrow made two copies of it.

The offer was in any case declined, and so Borrow passed from disappointment to disappointment during these eight years, which no wonder he desired, in the coming years of fame and prosperity, to veil as much as possible.
The lean years in the lives of any of us are not those upon which we delight to dwell, or upon which we most cheerfully look back.[84] FOOTNOTES: [80] Only thus can we explain Borrow's later declaration that he had _four_ times been in prison.
[81] I quote this letter in another chapter.

Mr.Herbert Jenkins thinks (_Life_, ch.v.p.

88) that Borrow was in Paris during the revolution of 1830, because of a picturesque reference to the war correspondents there in _The Bible in Spain_.