inclination towards languages, and especially
the Irish language, in his early years, although seeing that he was well
grounded in Latin. Little did the worthy Captain dream that this, and
this alone, was to carry down his name through the ages:

Ah, that Irish! How frequently do circumstances, at first sight
the most trivial and unimportant, exercise a mighty and
permanent influence on our habits and pursuits!--how frequently
is a stream turned aside from its natural course by some little
rock or knoll, causing it to make an abrupt turn! On a wild
road in Ireland I had heard Irish spoken for the first time;
and I was seized with a desire to learn Irish, the acquisition
of which, in my case, became the stepping-stone to other
languages. I had previously learnt Latin, or rather Lilly; but
neither Latin nor Lilly made me a philologist.

Borrow was never a philologist, but this first inclination was to lead
him to Spanish, to Welsh, and above all to Romany, and to make of him
the most beloved traveller and the strangest vagabond in all English
literature.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] This episode, rescued from the manuscript that came into Dr.
Knapp's possession, is only to be found in his _Life of Borrow_. He does
not include it in his edition of _Lavengro_. That Borrow revisited East
Dereham in later manhood we learn from Mr. S. H. Baldrey. See p. 420.

[24] _The French Prisoners of Norman Cross: A Tale_, by the Rev. Arthur
Brown, Rector of Catfield, Norfolk. London: Hodder Brothers, 18 New
Bridge Street, E.C., 1895. Mr. Brown remarks that there were sixteen
casernes, whereas Borrow says in _Lavengro_ that there were five or six.
'They looked,' he says, 'from outside exactly like a vast congeries of
large, high carpenter's shops, with roofs of glaring red tiles, and
surrounded by wooden palisades, very lofty and of prodigious strength.'

[25] The _Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society_ teaches me that the name
should be spelt Petulengro.

[26] See _In Gipsy Tents_ by Francis Hindes Groome, p. 17. The late
Queen herself writes (_More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the
Highlands_, Smith, Elder and Co., 1884, p. 370), under the date Monday,
August 26th: 'At half-past three started with Beatrice, Leopold, and the
Duchess in the landau and four, the Duke, Lady Ely, General Ponsonby,
and Mr. Yorke going in the second carriage, and Lord Haddington riding
the whole way. We drove t