JOHN THOMAS BORROW John Thomas Borrow was born two years before his younger brother, that is, on the 15th April 1801.

His father, then Serjeant Borrow, was wandering from town to town, and it is not known where his elder son first saw the light.

John Borrow's nature was cast in a somewhat different mould from that of his brother.

He was his father's pride.
Serjeant Borrow could not understand George with his extraordinary taste for the society of queer people--the wild Irish and the ragged Romanies.
John had far more of the normal in his being.

Borrow gives us in _Lavengro_ our earliest glimpse of his brother: He was a beautiful child; one of those occasionally seen in England, and in England alone; a rosy, angelic face, blue eyes, and light chestnut hair; it was not exactly an Anglo-Saxon countenance, in which, by the by, there is generally a cast of loutishness and stupidity; it partook, to a certain extent, of the Celtic character, particularly in the fire and vivacity which illumined it; his face was the mirror of his mind; perhaps no disposition more amiable was ever found amongst the children of Adam, united, however, with no inconsiderable portion of high and dauntless spirit.