orge Borrow, who was, he said, a very wild
and eccentric youth. One night, when skylarking about London, Borrow was
pursued by the police, as he wished to be, even as Panurge so planned as
to be chased by the night-watch. He was very tall and strong in those
days, a trained shoulder-hitter, and could run like a deer. He was
hunted to the Thames, "and there they thought they had him." But the
Romany rye made for the edge, and, leaping into the wan water, like the
Squyre in the old ballad, swam to the other side, and escaped.

I have conversed with Mr. Borrow on many subjects,--horses, gypsies, and
Old Irish. Anent which latter subject I have heard him declare that he
doubted whether there was any man living who could really read an old
Irish manuscript. I have seen the same statement made by another writer.
My personal impressions of Mr. Borrow were very agreeable, and I was
pleased to learn afterwards from Mrs. Lewis that he had expressed himself
warmly as regarded myself. As he was not invariably disposed to like
those whom be met, it is a source of great pleasure to me to reflect that
I have nothing but pleasant memories of the good old Romany rye, the
Nestor of gypsy gentlemen. It is commonly reported among gypsies that
Mr. Borrow was one by blood, and that his real name was Boro, or great.
This is not true. He was of pure English extraction.

When I first met "George Eliot" and G. H. Lewes, at their house in North
Bank, the lady turned the conversation almost at once to gypsies. They
spoke of having visited the Zincali in Spain, and of several very curious
meetings with the _Chabos_. Mr. Lewes, in fact, seldom met me--and we
met very often about town, and at many places, especially at the
Trubners'--without conversing on the Romanys. The subject evidently had
for him a special fascination. I believe that I have elsewhere mentioned
that after I returned from Russia, and had given him, by particular
request, an account of my visits to the gypsies of St. Petersburg and
Moscow, he was much struck by the fact that I had chiromanced to the
Romany clan of the latter city. To tell the fortunes of gypsy girls was,
he thought, the refinement of presumption. "There was in this world
nothing so impudent as a gypsy when determined to tell a fortune; and the
idea of not one, but many gypsy girls believing earnestly in my palmistry
was like a righteous retribution."

The late Tom Taylor had, while a student at Camb