During the first quarter of the present century pugilism was rampant in the Eastern Counties of England. A pugilistic encounter was then looked upon as an affair of national interest, and people came in their thousands from far and near to witness it. The Norwich neighbourhood was noted for its prize-fights, and Borrow had the names of all the champions at his tongue’s end. Cobbett, Cribb, Belcher, Tom Spring of Bedford, Black Richmond, Irish Randall—he was acquainted with the records of them all, as well as with those of the leading fighting-men amongst the gipsies. They were to him the leaders of the old spirit of English aggressiveness, and as such he revered them. His pen was always ready to defend a straightforward bruiser, with whom, he contended, the Roman gladiator and the Spanish bull-fighter were not to be compared. He, himself, was no mean student of the art of self-defence, and there is some ground for believing that the scene between Lavengro and the Flaming Tinman, in which the burly tinker succumbs to the former’s prowess after a warm encounter in the Mumpers’ Dingle, is founded upon an event which occurred during Borrow’s wayward progress through rural England. On the publication of “Lavengro,” Borrow’s evident partiality for the pugilists of his day brought down upon him a torrent of criticism and condemnation. Who, it was asked, but a man of coarse instincts could have found pleasure in mingling with brutal fighting-men and describing their desperate exploits? The writer of a work who went out of his way to drag in such characters and scenes as these could be little better than a barbarian! Borrow was not a man to sit down quietly under such attacks as these; he waited his opportunity, and then had his fling. At the end of “The Romany Rye,” there appeared an Appendix, in which the author set himself the task of smashing his critics. This same Appendix is an amazing piece of writing; in it Borrow slashes right and left as might a gallant swordsman who found himself alone in the midst of a mob bent on his destruction. Mr. Augustine Birrell regrets that it was ever printed; but there are few who will agree with him; it contains too many good things that Borrovians would be loth to lose.