terior. The home of the
Borrows had been removed in the meantime, in accordance with the roving
traditions of the family, from Norman Cross to Edinburgh and from
Edinburgh to Clonmel.

And to the school I went [at Clonmel], where I read the Latin tongue
and the Greek letters with a nice old clergyman who sat behind a black
oaken desk with a huge Elzevir Flaccus before him, in a long gloomy
kind of hall with a broken stone floor, the roof festooned with
cobwebs, the walls considerably dilapidated and covered over with
stray figures in hieroglyphics evidently produced by the application
of a burnt stick.

In Ireland, too, he made the acquaintance of the gossoon Murtagh, who
taught him Irish in return for a pack of cards. In the course of his
wanderings with his father's regiment he develops into a well-grown and
well-favoured lad, a shrewd walker and a bold rider. "People may talk of
first love--it is a very agreeable event, I dare say--but give me the
flush, the triumph, and glorious sweat of a first ride." {5}

At Norwich he learns modern languages from an old _emigre_, a true
disciple of the _ancien cour_, who sets Boileau high above Dante; and
some misty German metaphysics from the Norwich philosopher, who
consistently seeks a solace in smoke from the troubles of life. His
father had already noted his tendency to fly off at a tangent which was
strikingly exhibited in the lawyer's office, where "within the womb of a
lofty deal desk," when he should have been imbibing Blackstone and
transcribing legal documents, he was studying Monsieur Vidocq and
translating the Welsh bard Ab Gwilym; he was consigning his legal career
to an early grave when he wrote this elegy on the worthy attorney his
master.

He has long since sunk to his place in a respectable vault, in the
aisle of a very respectable church, whilst an exceedingly respectable
marble slab against the neighbouring wall tells on a Sunday some eye
wandering from its prayer-book that his dust lies below. To secure
such respectabilities in death he passed a most respectable life, a
more respectable-looking individual never was seen.

In the meantime as a sequel to his questionings on the subjects of
reality and truth, the Author was asking himself "What is death?" and the
query serves as a prelude to the first of the many breezy dialogues with
that gipsy cousin-german to Autolycus, Jasper Petulengro.

"What is your op