the house of Mr Simpson, and before the assembled guests, he told an
archdeacon, worth 7000 pounds a year, that the classics were much
overvalued, and compared Ab Gwilym with Ovid, to the detriment of the
Roman. To Captain Borrow the possession of ideas upon any subject by
one so young was in itself a thing to be deplored; but to venture an
opinion contrary to that commonly held by men of weight and substance
was an unforgivable act of insubordination.

The boy had been sent to Tuck's Court to learn law, and instead he
persisted in acquiring languages, and such languages! Welsh, Danish,
Arabic, Armenian, Saxon; for these were the tongues with which he
occupied himself. None but a perfect mother such as Mrs Borrow could
have found excuses for a son who pursued such studies, and her
husband pointed out to her, it is "in the nature of women invariably
to take the part of the second born."

In one of those curiously self-revelatory passages with which his
writings abound, Borrow tells how he continued to act as door-keeper
long after it had ceased to be part of his duty. As a student of men
and a collector of strange characters, it was in keeping with his
genius to do so, although he himself was unable to explain why he
took pleasure in the task. No one was admitted to the presence of
the senior partner who did not first pass the searching scrutiny of
his articled clerk. Those who pleased him were admitted to Mr
Simpson's private room; to those who did not he proved himself an
almost insuperable obstacle. Unfortunately Borrow's standards were
those of the physiognomist rather than the lawyer; he inverted the
whole fabric of professional desirability by admitting the goats and
refusing the sheep. He turned away a knight, or a baronet, and
admitted a poet, until at last the distressed old gentleman in black,