trial-books, now running under the road.

[74] One of them was Mr. Justice Best, of whom it is recorded that a
certain index had the reference line, 'Mr. Justice Best: his Great
Mind,' which seemed to have no justification in the mental qualities of
that worthy, but was explained when one referred to the context and saw
that 'Mr. Justice Best said that he had a great mind to commit the
witness for contempt.'

[75] See an introduction by Thomas Seccombe to _Lavengro_ in 'Everyman's
Library.'

CHAPTER XII

BORROW AND THE FANCY

George Borrow had no sympathy with Thurtell the gambler. I can find no
evidence in his career of any taste for games of hazard or indeed for
games of any kind, although we recall that as a mere child he was able
to barter a pack of cards for the Irish language. But he had certainly
very considerable sympathy with the notorious criminal as a friend and
patron of prize-fighting. This now discredited pastime Borrow ever
counted a virtue. Was not his God-fearing father a champion in his way,
or, at least, had he not in open fight beaten the champion of the
moment, Big Ben Brain? Moreover, who was there in those days with blood
in his veins who did not count the cultivation of the Fancy as the
noblest and most manly of pursuits! Why, William Hazlitt, a prince among
English essayists, whose writings are a beloved classic in our day,
wrote in _The New Monthly Magazine_ in these very years[76] his own
eloquent impression, and even introduces John Thurtell more than once as
'Tom Turtle,' little thinking then of the fate that was so soon to
overtake him. What could be more lyrical than this:

Reader, have you ever seen a fight? If not, you have a pleasure
to come, at least if it is a fight like that between the
Gas-man and Bill Neate.

And then the best historian of prize-fighting, Henry Downes Miles, the
author of _Pugilistica_, has his own statement of the case. You will
find it in his monograph on John Jackson, the pugilist who taught Lord
Byron to box, and received the immortality of an eulogistic footnote in
_Don Juan_. Here is Miles's defence:

No small portion of the public has taken it for granted that
pugilism and blackguardism are synonymous. It is as an antidote
to these slanderers that we pen a candid history of the boxers;
and taking the general habits of men of humble origin (elevated
by their courage and bodily gifts to be the associate