61 
We next catch a glimpse of Borrow at Norman Cross, a little 
village which was then a penal settlement for French prisoners 
of war. Here he learnt to tame vipers, and here too, he first 
made acquaintance with the mysterious race which was to interest 
him so strangely ever afterwards--the Gipsies. The manner of 
it is described in chapter V. of ‘‘ Lavengro.”” Some three years 
after this encounter, the family settled for a time at Edinburgh, 
and John and George became pupils at the famous High School 
of that town. John was now an industrious, and even brilliant 
scholar, but George’s tastes were still unorthodox. After a couple 
of years at Edinburgh, and a year of which we hear nothing, 
Borrow’s father was ordered to Clonmel, in Ireland. The family 
returned to England a few years later, and settled in Norwich. 
«Tt was for want of something to do,’ Borrow says, that he 
applied himself to the study of languages. He speedily became 
acquainted with Italian, French, German, and even Armenian. 
Also he roamed the country-side, shooting and fishing. On one 
occasion he paid a visit to the horse-fair at Norwich, and renewed 
his old acquaintance with Jasper Petulengro, the gipsy boy of 
Norman Cross, who had now risen to be “ Pharaoh”’ of all the 
gipsies. Jasper introduced him to the gipsy camp, and he soon 
became familiar with the tribe, and even learnt their language. 
Meanwhile a material change had come over the young man’s 
prospects, upon the death, in 1824, of his father. On the expira- 
tion of his articles he decided to abandon his studies in the law, 
and go up to London in the hope of making a living by literary 
work. Armed with a letter of introduction to Sir Richard 
Phillips, a well-known publisher of the day, he made his way to 
the great city in 1826, expecting to find a welcome for his Welsh 
and Danish translations ‘‘ with notes, critical, historical, and 
philological.”” Alas! bitter disappointment and failure were his 
portion, and he struggled on for several years in melancholy 
fashion, picking up a precarious livelihood by hard and sorely 
underpaid hack-work. 
A successful tale of adventure at length put him in possession 
of a small sum of money. To recruit his impaired health, he 
decided upon a gipsy ramble throngh the English country lanes, 
and with this purpose in view, he acquired the good-will and 
stock-in-trade (including pony and cart) of a travelling tinker. 
But his lack of success in the world chafed his independent 
spirit sorely, and it was with almost pathetic eagerness that he 
accepted the offer, in 1833, of a post under the British and 
Foreign Bible Society, which his knowledge of languages 
procured for him. He was sent at once to Russia, and the task 
