He would, we may be sure, have rejoiced to know that many more have visited the tomb of Tom Sayers in Highgate Cemetery than have visited the tomb of George Eliot in the same burial-ground.

A curious moral obliquity this, you may say.

But to recognise it is to understand one side of Borrow, and an interesting side withal.
FOOTNOTES: [76] _The New Monthly Magazine_, February 1822, 'The Fight.' Reprinted among William Hazlitt's _Fugitive Writings_ in vol.xii.of his Collected Works (Dent, 1904).
[77] _Lavengro_ ch.xxvi.

'It is as good as Homer,' says Mr.Augustine Birrell, quoting the whole passage in his _Res Judicatae_.

Mr.Birrell tells a delightful story of an old Quaker lady who was heard to say at a dinner-table, when the subject of momentary conversation was a late prize-fight: 'Oh, pity it was that ever corruption should have crept in amongst them'-- she had just been reading _Lavengro_.
[78] _Pugilistica_, vol.i.