his habits of intemperance kept him out of the sight of ladies, and
he got round him a set of ignorant and conceited young men, who
thought they could set the whole world right by their destructive
propensities. One of his chief favourites was George Borrow." {35b}
Borrow has given the following convincing picture of Taylor:


"Methought I was in a small, comfortable room wainscotted with oak; I
was seated on one side of a fireplace, close by a table on which were
wine and fruit; on the other side of the fire sat a man in a plain
suit of brown, with the hair combed back from the somewhat high
forehead; he had a pipe in his mouth, which for some time he smoked
gravely and placidly, without saying a word; at length, after drawing
at the pipe for some time rather vigorously, he removed it from his
mouth, and emitting an accumulated cloud of smoke, he exclaimed in a
slow and measured tone: 'As I was telling you just now, my good
chap, I have always been an enemy of humbug.'" {35c}


William Taylor appears to have flattered "the harum-scarum young men"
with whom he surrounded himself by talking to them as if they were
his intellectual equals. He encouraged them to form their own
opinions, in itself a thing scarcely likely to make him popular with
either parents or guardians, least of all with discipline-loving
Captain Borrow, who declined even to return the salute of his son's
friend on the public highway.

Borrow now began to look to the future and speculate as to what his
present life would lead to. His cogitations seem to have ended,
almost invariably, in a gloomy mist of pessimism and despair--in