ses, would follow the nurse who carried him about in order
to look at and bless his lovely face. At the age of three
months an attempt was made to snatch him from his mother's arms
in the streets of London, at the moment she was about to enter
a coach; indeed, his appearance seemed to operate so powerfully
upon every person who beheld him, that my parents were under
continual apprehension of losing him; his beauty, however, was
perhaps surpassed by the quickness of his parts. He mastered
his letters in a few hours, and in a day or two could decipher
the names of people on the doors of houses and over the
shop-windows.

John received his early education at the Norwich Grammar School, while
the younger brother was kept under the paternal wing. Father and mother,
with their younger boy George, were always on the move, passing from
county to county and from country to country, as Serjeant Borrow, soon
to be Captain, attended to his duties of drilling and recruiting, now in
England, now in Scotland, now in Ireland. We are given a fascinating
glimpse of John Borrow in _Lavengro_ by way of a conversation between
Mr. and Mrs. Borrow over the education of their children. It was agreed
that while the family were in Edinburgh the boys should be sent to the
High School, and so at the historic school that Sir Walter Scott had
attended a generation before the two boys were placed, John being
removed from the Norwich Grammar School for the purpose. Among his many
prejudices of after years Borrow's dislike of Scott was perhaps the most
regrettable, otherwise he would have gloried in the fact that their
childhood had had one remarkable point in common. Each boy took part in
the feuds between the Old Town and the New Town. Exactly as Scott
records his prowess at 'the manning of the Cowgate Port,' and the
combats maintained with great vigour, 'with stones, and sticks, and
fisticuffs,' as set forth in the first volume of Lockhart, so we have
not dissimilar feats set down in _Lavengro_. Side by side also with the
story of 'Green-Breeks,' which stands out in Scott's narrative of his
school combats, we have the more lurid account by Borrow of David
Haggart. Literary biography is made more interesting by such episodes of
likeness and of contrast.

We next find John Borrow in Ireland with his father, mother, and
brother. George is still a child, but he is precocious enough to be
learning the l