You can't learn Greek, so you must teach Irish!' Before Christmas, Murtagh was playing at cards with his brother Denis, and I could speak a considerable quantity of broken Irish.[33] With what distrust as we learn again and again in _Lavengro_ did Captain Borrow follow his son's inclination towards languages, and especially the Irish language, in his early years, although seeing that he was well grounded in Latin.

Little did the worthy Captain dream that this, and this alone, was to carry down his name through the ages: Ah, that Irish! How frequently do circumstances, at first sight the most trivial and unimportant, exercise a mighty and permanent influence on our habits and pursuits!--how frequently is a stream turned aside from its natural course by some little rock or knoll, causing it to make an abrupt turn! On a wild road in Ireland I had heard Irish spoken for the first time; and I was seized with a desire to learn Irish, the acquisition of which, in my case, became the stepping-stone to other languages.

I had previously learnt Latin, or rather Lilly; but neither Latin nor Lilly made me a philologist.
Borrow was never a philologist, but this first inclination was to lead him to Spanish, to Welsh, and above all to Romany, and to make of him the most beloved traveller and the strangest vagabond in all English literature.
FOOTNOTES: [23] This episode, rescued from the manuscript that came into Dr.
Knapp's possession, is only to be found in his _Life of Borrow_.

He does not include it in his edition of _Lavengro_.

That Borrow revisited East Dereham in later manhood we learn from Mr.S.H.Baldrey.