He had a wonderful facility for learning languages, which, however, he never appears to have turned to account.
James Martineau, afterwards a popular preacher and a distinguished theologian of the Unitarian creed, here comes into the story.

He was a contemporary with Borrow at the Norwich Grammar School as already stated, but the two boys had little in common.

There was nothing of the vagabond about James Martineau, and concerning Borrow--if on no other subject--he would probably have agreed with his sister Harriet, whose views we shall quote in a later chapter.

In Martineau's _Memoirs_, voluminous and dull, there is only one reference to Borrow;[41] but a correspondent once ventured to approach the eminent divine concerning the rumour as to Martineau's part in the birching of the author of _The Bible in Spain_, and received the following letter: 35 GORDON SQUARE, LONDON, W.C., _December 6, 1895._ DEAR SIR,--Two or three years ago Mr.Egmont Hake (author, I think, of a life of Gordon) sought an interview with me, as reputed to be Borrow's sole surviving schoolfellow, in order to gather information or test traditions about his schooldays.
This was with a view to a memoir which he was compiling, he said, out of the literary remains which had been committed to him by his executors.

I communicated to him such recollections as I could clearly depend upon and leave at his disposal for publication or for suppression as he might think fit.