To whatever cause the disappointment may be attributed, it was certainly not due to any lack of pains on the part of Don Jorge. The labour which he bestowed upon his Life was immense, quite disproportionate to his previous efforts. “The Gypsies in Spain,” for instance, was built up upon already existing jottings, extracts, and notes, very loosely thrown together; while “The Bible in Spain” itself was, in regard to its composition, nothing more than an _olla podrida_ of journalized letters. But he wrote “Lavengro,” as it were, with his life’s blood. It cost him the same agony that parts of “David Copperfield” cost Dickens, while he had none of Dickens’s trained fluency or descriptive power. His lack of ease in writing often gives a wrong impression of insincerity or artificiality. Most of his apostrophes, even the most strained, are expressions of genuine feeling, which he was simply incapable of assimilating to the prevailing tone of the book, that of a _novéla picaresca_. His determination to be original and to tell the truth, to avoid all padding and second-hand ideas, kept him on the rack; yet he persevered, working hard at the Life with intervals of discouragement for no less than six years. “Lavengro” eventually appeared, in three volumes, in February, 1851, and was received not merely with coldness and unconcern, but with hostile carping and even derision. The critics and Borrow pronounced themselves mutually disillusioned. It was natural that a man like Borrow should magnify and should misinterpret this unexpected blow.