The word-master has in the course of his travels heard a good deal about this man, and he is able to identify him almost at once by his predilection for gin and water, cold, with a lump of sugar in it.

He hears of him first from his London friend, Francis Ardry, then from an Armenian merchant whom he met in London, and then again from a brother-author, who describes a silly and intrusive Anglican parson, called Platitude, as a puppet in the hands of "the man in black." The latter he characterises as a sharking priest, who has come over from Italy to proselytize and plunder; he has "some powers of conversation and some learning, but he carries the countenance of an arch-villain; Platitude is evidently his tool." {107} When Borrow (Lavengro, that is), was in London, his friend Francis Ardry warned him against a certain papistical propagandist: "A strange fellow--a half Italian, half English priest.

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he is fond of a glass of gin and water--and over a glass of gin and water cold, with a lump of sugar in it, he has been more communicative, perhaps, than was altogether prudent.