Borrow and his wife and stepdaughter settled at Oulton Cottage before the spring of 1840 was over. This house, the property of Mrs. Borrow, was separated from Oulton Broad only by a slope of lawn, at the foot of which was a private boat. Away from the house, but equally near lawn and water stood Borrow's library--a little peaked octagonal summer house, with toplights and windows. The cottage is gone, but the summer house, now mantled with ivy, where he wrote "The Bible in Spain" and "Lavengro," is still to be seen. Here, too, he arranged and completed the book written "at considerable intervals during a period of nearly five years passed in Spain--in moments snatched from more important pursuits--chiefly in ventas and posadas (inns), whilst wandering through the country in the arduous and unthankful task of distributing the Gospel among its children,"--"The Zincali: or the Gypsies of Spain." It was published in April, 1841. This book is a description of Gypsies in Spain and wherever else he has met them, with some history, and, as Borrow says himself, with "more facts than theories." It abounds in quotations from out of the way Spanish books, but was by far "less the result of reading than of close observation." It is patched together from scattered notes with little order or proportion, and cannot be regarded as a whole either in intention or effect. Nor is this wholly due to the odd times and places in which it was written. Borrow had never before written a continuous original work of any length. He had formed no clear idea of himself, his public, or his purpose. Personality was strong in him and it had to be expressed. He was full also of extraordinary observation, and this he could not afford to conceal. It was not easy to satisfy the two needs in one coherent book; he hardly tried, and he certainly did not succeed. Ford described it well in his review of "The Bible in Spain": {148} "'The Gypsies of Spain' was a Spanish olla--a hotchpotch of the jockey tramper, philologist, and missionary. It was a thing of shreds and patches--a true book of Spain; the chapters, like her bundle of unamalgamating provinces, were just held together, and no more, by the common tie of religion; yet it was strange and richly flavoured with genuine _borracha_. It was the first work of a diffident, inexperienced man, who, mistrusting his own powers, hoped to conciliate critics by leaning on Spanish historians and Gypsy poets."