nt; I felt stupefied, but I
still contrived to support my dying father. There was a pause;
again my father spoke: I heard him speak of Minden, and of
Meredith, the old Minden Serjeant, and then he uttered another
name, which at one period of his life was much on his lips, the
name of ----; but this is a solemn moment! There was a deep
gasp: I shook, and thought all was over; but I was mistaken--my
father moved, and revived for a moment; he supported himself in
bed without my assistance. I make no doubt that for a moment he
was perfectly sensible, and it was then that, clasping his
hands, he uttered another name clearly, distinctly--it was the
name of Christ. With that name upon his lips the brave old
soldier sank back upon my bosom, and, with his hands still
clasped, yielded up his soul.

Did Borrow's father ever really fight Big Ben Brain or Bryan in Hyde
Park, or is it all a fantasy of the artist's imagining? We shall never
know. Borrow called his _Lavengro_ 'An Autobiography' at one stage of
its inception, although he wished to repudiate the autobiographical
nature of his story at another. Dr. Knapp in his anxiety to prove that
Borrow wrote his own memoirs in _Lavengro_ and _Romany Rye_ tells us
that he had no creative faculty--an absurd proposition. But I think we
may accept the contest between Ben Brain and Thomas Borrow, and what a
revelation of heredity that impressive death-bed scene may be counted.
Borrow on one occasion in later life declared that his favourite hooks
were the Bible and the Newgate Calendar. We know that he specialised on
the Bible and Prize-Fighting in no ordinary fashion--and here we see his
father on his death-bed struggling between the religious sentiments of
his maturity and the one great worldly escapade of his early manhood.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] In the year 1870 Borrow was asked for material for a biography by
the editor of _Men of the Time_, a publication which many years later
was incorporated in the present _Who's Who_. He drew up two drafts in
his own handwriting, which are so interesting, and yet vary so much in
certain particulars, that we are tempted to print both here, or at least
that part of the second draft that differs from the first. The
concluding passages of both drafts are alike. The biography as it stands
in the 1871 edition of _Men of the Time_ appears to have been compiled
from the earlier of these draft