We shall only add a few names and dates to the framework, supplied with a fidelity that is rare in much more formal works of autobiography, in the pages of _Lavengro_.

From the same pages we may detach just a few of the earlier influences which went to make up the rare and complex individuality of the writer.

Borrow's father, a fine old soldier, in revealing his son's youthful idiosyncrasy, projects a clear mental image of his own habit of mind.

"The boy had the impertinence to say the classics were much over-valued, and amongst other things that some horrid fellow or other, some Welshman, I think (thank God it was not an Irishman), was a better poet than Ovid.

{2} That a boy of his years should entertain an opinion of his own, I mean one which militates against all established authority, is astonishing.