When George Borrow first entered Norwich after the long journey from Edinburgh, Joseph John Gurney, born 1788, was twenty-six years of age, and William Taylor, born 1765, was forty-nine.  Borrow was eleven years of age.  Captain Borrow took temporary lodgings¹ at the Crown and Angel Inn in St. Stephen’s Street, George was sent to the Grammar School, and his elder brother started to learn drawing and painting with John Crome (“Old Crome”) of many a fine landscape.  But the wanderings of the family were not yet over.  Napoleon escaped from Elba, and the West Norfolk Militia² were again put on the march.  This time it was Ireland to which they were destined³, and we have already shadowed forth⁴, with the help of Lavengro, that momentous⁵ episode.  The victory of Waterloo gave Europe peace, and in 1816 the Borrow family returned to Norwich, there to pass many quiet years.  In 1819 Captain Borrow was pensioned—eight shillings a day.  From 1816 till his father’s death in 1824 Borrow lived in Norwich with his family.  Their home was in King’s Court, Willow⁶ Lane, a modest one-storey house in a cul-de-sac, which we have already described.  In King’s Court, Willow Lane, Borrow lived at intervals⁷ until his marriage in 1840, and his mother continued to live in the house until, in 1849, she agreed to join her son and daughter-in-law at Oulton.  Yet the house comes little into the story of Borrow’s life, as do the early houses of many great men of letters, nor do subsequent houses come into his story; the house at Oulton and the house at Hereford Square are equally barren of association; the broad highway and the windy heath were Borrow’s natural home.  He was never a “civilised” being; he never shone in drawing-rooms.  Let us, however, return to Borrow’s school-days, of which the records are all too

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