BORROW AND THE FANCY George Borrow had no sympathy with Thurtell the gambler.

I can find no evidence in his career of any taste for games of hazard or indeed for games of any kind, although we recall that as a mere child he was able to barter a pack of cards for the Irish language.

But he had certainly very considerable sympathy with the notorious criminal as a friend and patron of prize-fighting.

This now discredited pastime Borrow ever counted a virtue.

Was not his God-fearing father a champion in his way, or, at least, had he not in open fight beaten the champion of the moment, Big Ben Brain?
Moreover, who was there in those days with blood in his veins who did not count the cultivation of the Fancy as the noblest and most manly of pursuits! Why, William Hazlitt, a prince among English essayists, whose writings are a beloved classic in our day, wrote in _The New Monthly Magazine_ in these very years[76] his own eloquent impression, and even introduces John Thurtell more than once as 'Tom Turtle,' little thinking then of the fate that was so soon to overtake him.