He early acquired a taste for the study of languages, and learnt French from a refugee priest precisely in the way in which Borrow had done.

He also acquired Italian, Spanish, German and Dutch, continuing with a great variety of other languages.

Indeed, only the very year after Borrow had published _Faustus_, he published his _Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain_, and the year after Borrow's _Romantic Ballads_ came Bowring's _Servian Popular Poetry_.

With such interest in common it was natural that the two men should be brought together, but Bowring had the qualities which enabled him to make a career for himself and Borrow had not.

In 1811, as a clerk in a London mercantile house, he was sent to Spain, and after this his travels were varied.