CAPTAIN BORROW OF THE WEST NORFOLK MILITIA George Henry Borrow was born at Dumpling Green near East Dereham, Norfolk, on the 5th of July 1803.

It pleased him to state on many an occasion that he was born at East Dereham.
On an evening of July, in the year 18--, at East D----, a beautiful little town in a certain district of East Anglia, I first saw the light, he writes in the opening lines of _Lavengro_, using almost the identical phraseology that we find in the opening lines of Goethe's _Wahrheit und Dichtung_.

Here is a later memory of Dereham from _Lavengro_: What it is at present I know not, for thirty years and more have elapsed since I last trod its streets.

It will scarcely have improved, for how could it be better than it was?
I love to think on thee, pretty, quiet D----, thou pattern of an English country town, with thy clean but narrow streets branching out from thy modest market-place, with their old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof of venerable thatch, with thy one half-aristocratic mansion, where resided the Lady Bountiful--she, the generous and kind, who loved to visit the sick, leaning on her golden-headed cane, while the sleek old footman walked at a respectful distance behind.
Pretty, quiet D----, with thy venerable church, in which moulder the mortal remains of England's sweetest and most pious bard.
Then follows an exquisite eulogy of the poet Cowper, which readers of _Lavengro_ know full well.

Three years before Borrow was born William Cowper died in this very town, leaving behind him so rich a legacy of poetry and of prose, and moreover so fragrant a memory of a life in which humour and pathos played an equal part.