_ I cordially agree, and if you were
disappointed in the long promised work, what must I have been? A
schoolfellow of Borrow, who, in the autobiography, expected to find much
interesting matter, not only relating to himself, but also to
schoolfellows and friends--the associates of his youth, who, in
after-life, gained no slight notoriety--amongst them may be named Sir
James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak; poor Stoddard, who was murdered at
Bokhara, and who, as a boy, displayed that noble bearing and high
sensitiveness of honour which partly induced that fatal result; and
Thomas King, one of Borrow's early friends, who, the son of a carpenter
at Norwich, the landlord of Lavengro's father, after working in his
father's shop till nearly sixteen, went to Paris, entered himself as a
student at one of the hospitals, and through his energy and intellect
became internal surgeon of L'Hotel Dieu and private physician to Prince
Talleyrand.' Thomas Borrow Burcham was Magistrate of Southwark Police
Court from 1856 till his death in 1869. He was the son of Maria
Perfrement, Borrow's aunt.

CHAPTER III

JOHN THOMAS BORROW

John Thomas Borrow was born two years before his younger brother, that
is, on the 15th April 1801. His father, then Serjeant Borrow, was
wandering from town to town, and it is not known where his elder son
first saw the light. John Borrow's nature was cast in a somewhat
different mould from that of his brother. He was his father's pride.
Serjeant Borrow could not understand George with his extraordinary taste
for the society of queer people--the wild Irish and the ragged Romanies.
John had far more of the normal in his being. Borrow gives us in
_Lavengro_ our earliest glimpse of his brother:

He was a beautiful child; one of those occasionally seen in
England, and in England alone; a rosy, angelic face, blue eyes,
and light chestnut hair; it was not exactly an Anglo-Saxon
countenance, in which, by the by, there is generally a cast of
loutishness and stupidity; it partook, to a certain extent, of
the Celtic character, particularly in the fire and vivacity
which illumined it; his face was the mirror of his mind;
perhaps no disposition more amiable was ever found amongst the
children of Adam, united, however, with no inconsiderable
portion of high and dauntless spirit. So great was his beauty
in infancy, that people, especially those of the poorer
clas