,
mon cher."'

Borrow's biographers have dwelt at length upon one episode of his
schooldays--the flogging he received from Valpy for playing truant with
three other boys. One, by name John Dalrymple, faltered on the way, the
two faithful followers of George in his escapade being two brothers
named Theodosius and Francis Purland, whose father kept a chemist's shop
in Norwich. The three boys wandered away as far as Acle, eleven miles
from Norwich, whence they were ignomimously brought back and birched.
John Dalrymple's brother Arthur, son of a distinguished Norwich surgeon,
who became Clerk of the Peace at Norwich in 1854, and died in 1868, has
left a memorandum concerning Borrow, from which I take the following
extract[40]:

'I was at school with Borrow at the Free School, Norwich, under
the Rev. E. Valpy. He was an odd, wild boy, and always wanting
to turn Robinson Crusoe or Buccaneer. My brother John was about
Borrow's age, and on one occasion Borrow, John, and another,
whose name I forget, determined to run away and turn pirates.
John carried an old horse pistol and some potatoes as his
contribution to the general stock, but his zeal was soon
exhausted, he turned back at Thorpe Lunatic Asylum; but Borrow
went off to Yarmouth, and lived on the Caister Denes for a few
days. I don't remember hearing of any exploits. He had a
wonderful facility for learning languages, which, however, he
never appears to have turned to account.

James Martineau, afterwards a popular preacher and a distinguished
theologian of the Unitarian creed, here comes into the story. He was a
contemporary with Borrow at the Norwich Grammar School as already
stated, but the two boys had little in common. There was nothing of the
vagabond about James Martineau, and concerning Borrow--if on no other
subject--he would probably have agreed with his sister Harriet, whose
views we shall quote in a later chapter. In Martineau's _Memoirs_,
voluminous and dull, there is only one reference to Borrow;[41] but a
correspondent once ventured to approach the eminent divine concerning
the rumour as to Martineau's part in the birching of the author of _The
Bible in Spain_, and received the following letter:

35 GORDON SQUARE, LONDON, W.C., _December 6, 1895._

DEAR SIR,--Two or three years ago Mr. Egmont Hake (author, I
think, of a life of Gordon) sought an interview with me, as