ere were any Dissenters nor permit
any to exist; Peter Williams, the man who committed the unpardonable sin
against the Holy Ghost, and Winifred, his patient, constant wife; the
student of Chinese, who learnt the language of the land of the Celestials
from the figures on the teapots; the Hungarian, who related so many
legends and traditions of the Magyars; and Murtagh, with his wonderful
stories of the Pope. These were the friends with whom he spent the real
life of his latter days, and it is hardly surprising that under the
influence of their companionship he should have become somewhat of a
recluse, and lost touch with living friends and acquaintances.

Dr. Gordon Hake, whose residence at Bury St. Edmunds was contemporary
with Borrow's settling down at Oulton, writes in his Memoirs: "George
Borrow was one of those whose mental powers are strong, and whose bodily
frame is yet stronger--a conjunction of forces often detrimental to a
literary career in an age of intellectual predominance. His temper was
good and bad; his pride was humility; his humility was pride; his vanity,
in being negative, was of the most positive kind. He was reticent and
candid, measured in speech, with an emphasis that makes trifles
significant. Borrow was essentially hypochondriacal. Society he loved
and hated alike; he loved it that he might be pointed out and talked of;
he hated it because he was not the prince that he felt himself in its
midst. His figure was tall, and his bearing noble; he had a finely
moulded head and thick white hair--white from his youth; his brown eyes
were soft, yet piercing; his nose somewhat of the Semitic type, which
gave his face the cast of the young Memnon; his mouth had a generous
curve, and his features, for beauty and true power, were such as can have
no parallel in our portrait gallery, where it is to be hoped the likeness
of him, in Mr. Murray's possession, may one day find a place. Borrow and
his family used to stay with me at Bury; I visited him, less often, at
his cottage on the lake at Oulton, a fine sheet of water that flows into
the sea at Lowestoft. He was much courted there by his neighbours and by
visitors to the seaside. I there met Baron Alderson and his daughters,
who had ridden from Lowestoft to see him."

Borrow had many good qualities, but it must be admitted that his temper
was queer and uncertain. At times he was passionate and overbearing, and
he never had the necessary patience to