olive complexion, and Grecian forehead, sitting in the dusky parlour in
the solitary house at the end of the retired court shaded by lofty
poplars? I pity 'the individual' whose task it should be to travel along
the enchanted wake either of Lavengro in England or Don Jorge in Spain.
Poor would be his part; no better than that of Arthur in 'The Bothie':--

And it was told, the Piper narrating and Arthur correcting,
Colouring he, dilating, magniloquent, glorying in picture,
He to a matter-of-fact still softening, paring, abating,
He to the great might-have-been upsoaring, sublime and ideal,
He to the merest it-was restricting, diminishing, dwarfing,
River to streamlet reducing, and fall to slope subduing:
So it was told, the Piper narrating, corrected of Arthur.

George Borrow, like many another great man, was born in Norfolk, at East
Dereham, in 1803, and at an early age began those rambles he has made
famous, being carried about by his father, Captain Borrow, who was
chiefly employed as a recruiting officer. The reader of _Lavengro_ may
safely be left to make out his own itinerary. Whilst in Edinburgh Borrow
attended the High School, and acquired the Scottish accent. It is not
too much to say that he has managed to make even Edinburgh more romantic
simply by abiding there for a season. From Scotland he went to Ireland,
and learnt to ride, as well as to talk the Irish tongue, and to seek
etymologies wherever they were or were not to be found. But for a famous
Irish cob, whose hoofs still sound in our ears, Borrow, so he says, might
have become a mere philologist. From Ireland he returned with his
parents to Norwich, and resumed studies, which must have been, from a
schoolmaster's point of view, grievously interrupted, under the Rev.
Edward Valpy at King Edward's School. Here he seems to have been for two
or three years. Dr. Jessopp has told us the story of Borrow's dyeing his