“O England! long, long may it be ere the sun of thy glory sink beneath the wave of darkness!  Though gloomy and portentous clouds are now gathering rapidly around thee, still, still may it please the Almighty to disperse them, and to grant thee a futurity longer in duration and still brighter in renown than thy past!  Or, if thy doom be at hand, may that doom be a noble one, and worthy of her who has been styled the Old Queen of the waters!  May thou sink, if thou dost sink, amidst blood and flame, with a mighty noise, causing more than one nation to participate in thy downfall!  Of all fates, may it please the Lord to preserve thee from a disgraceful and a slow decay; becoming, ere extinct, a scorn and a mockery for those self-same foes who now, though they envy and abhor thee, still fear thee, nay even against their will, honour and respect thee....  Remove from thee the false prophets, who have seen vanity and divined lies; who have daubed thy wall with untempered mortar, that it may fall; who see visions of peace where there is no peace; who have strengthened the hands of the wicked, and made the heart of the righteous sad.  Oh, do this, and fear not the result, for either shall thy end be a majestic and an enviable one; or God shall perpetuate thy reign upon the waters, thou Old Queen!”

Or take the fight with the Flaming Tinman.  It’s too long for quotation—­but read it, read every word of it.  Where in the language can you find a stronger, more condensed and more restrained narrative?  I have seen with my own eyes many a noble fight, more than one international battle, where the best of two great countries have been pitted against each other—­yet the second-hand impression of Borrow’s description leaves a more vivid remembrance upon my mind than any of them.  This is the real witchcraft of letters.

He was a great fighter himself.  He has left a secure reputation in other than literary circles—­circles which would have been amazed to learn that he was a writer of books.  With his natural advantages, his six foot three of height and his staglike agility, he could hardly fail to be formidable.  But he was a scientific sparrer as well, though he had, I have been told, a curious sprawling fashion of his own.  And how his heart was in it—­how he loved the fighting men!  You remember his thumb-nail sketches of his heroes.  If you don’t I must quote one, and if you do you will be glad to read it again—­

“There’s Cribb, the Champion of England, and perhaps the best man in England; there he is, with his huge, massive figure, and face wonderfully like that of a lion.  There is Belcher, the younger, not the mighty one, who is gone to his place, but the Teucer Belcher, the most scientific pugilist that ever entered a ring, only wanting strength to be I won’t say what.  He appears to walk before me now, as he did that evening, with his white hat, white great coat, thin genteel figure, springy step, and keen determined eye.