a
letter to you from Mr. So-and-so, an old friend and
correspondent of yours.'

The countenance of the big man instantly lost the suspicious
and lowering expression which it had hitherto exhibited; he
strode forward and, seizing me by the hand, gave me a violent
squeeze.

'My dear sir,' said he, 'I am rejoiced to see you in London. I
have been long anxious for the pleasure--we are old friends,
though we have never before met. Taggart,' said he to the man
who sat at the desk, 'this is our excellent correspondent, the
friend and pupil of our excellent correspondent.'

[Illustration: SIR JOHN BOWRING in 1826

From a portrait by John King now in the National Portrait Gallery.]

[Illustration: JOHN P. HASFELD IN 1835

From a portrait by an Unknown Artist formerly belonging to George
Borrow]

[Illustration: WILLIAM TAYLOR

From a portrait by J. Thomson, printed in the year 1821, and engraved in
Robberds's _Life of Taylor_.]

[Illustration: SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS

From a portrait by James Saxon, painted in 1828, now in the National
Portrait Gallery.]

[Illustration: FRIENDS OF BORROW'S EARLY YEARS] [Transcriber's Note:
This is the caption for the page of four portraits, each portrait's
caption is shown above.]

Phillips explains that he has given up publishing, except 'under the
rose,' had only _The Monthly Magazine_, here[56] called _The Magazine_,
but contemplated yet another monthly, _The Universal Review_, here
called _The Oxford_. He gave Borrow much the same sound advice that a
publisher would have given him to-day--that poetry is not a marketable
commodity, and that if you want to succeed in prose you must, as a rule,
write trash--the most acceptable trash of that day being _The Dairyman's
Daughter_,[57] which has sold in hundreds of thousands, and is still
much prized by the Evangelical folk who buy the publications of the
Religious Tract Society. Phillips, moreover, asked him to dine to meet
his wife, his son, and his son's wife,[58] and we know what an amusing
account of that dinner Borrow gives in _Lavengro_. Moreover, he set
Borrow upon his first piece of hack-work, the _Celebrated Trials_, and
gave him something to do upon _The Universal Review_ and also upon _The
Monthly_. _The Universal_ lasted only for six numbers, dying in January
1825. In that year appeared the six volumes of the _Celebrated Trials_,
of which we have something to say in ou