was duly delivered, and the
circumstance was forgotten until, after a lapse of a few weeks, the young
friend, no less to his surprise than to his delight, received a large
parcel, sent to him, as he was informed, at Joseph John Gurney's request,
consisting of thirty volumes, comprising the Lexicons of Simonis and
Schleusner, and the Scholia of the Rosenmullers (the father and son) on
the Old and New Testaments: a great prize indeed to a youthful student.
Many were the instances in which he thus encouraged, amongst his young
friends, a taste for reading, more especially in those pursuits in which
he himself delighted."

[Picture: Earlham Bridge. From Photograph. Lent by Mr. E. Peake]

Who can wonder at Mr. Clement Shorter's indignation when, in his address
in Norwich on the Borrow Centenary in 1903, after enumerating many great
Norwich people, he endeavoured to show "that Borrow, the very least of
those men and women in public estimation for a good portion of his life,
and perhaps the least in popular judgment ever since his death, was
really the greatest, was really the man of all others, to whom this
beautiful city should do honour if it asks for a name out of its
nineteenth-century history to crown with local recognition."

In his Tombland Fair chapter is this vivid patch of local colour:

"I was standing on the castle hill in the midst of a fair of horses.
I have already had occasion to mention this castle. It is the
remains of what was once a Norman stronghold, and is perched upon a
round mound or monicle, in the midst of the old city. Steep is this
mound and scarped, evidently by the hand of man; a deep gorge, over
which is flung a bridge, separates it, on the south, from a broad
swell of open ground called "the hill"; of old the scene of many a
tournament and feat of Norman chivalry, but now much used as a show
place for cattle, where those who buy and sell beeves and other
beasts resort at stated periods."

Perhaps Borrow inherited from his father--the conqueror of Big Ben Brain,
"whose skin was brown and dusky as that of a toad"--the love of
fisticuffs which was so prominently marked in his career. It was this
which led him to become the pupil in boxing of "the terrible Thurtell,"
executed for the murder of Weare, January 9th, 1824 (his father, Thomas
Thurtell, was Sheriff of Norwich in 1815, Mayor in 1828, and died April
8th, 1846, at the good old age of eig