There must have been something about the old prize-ring which we have lost to-day, or it would never have inspired such good literature or attracted such brilliant men in its support. Byron’s screen in Mr. John Murray’s drawing-room is far from the only testimony to that dazzling poet’s love of fighting. Hazlitt was almost equally attracted. Perhaps the most grisly passage even in the pages of De Quincy is that episode in the first part of “Murder as One of the Fine Arts,” where the fight between the amateur and the baker of Mannheim (with its result) is vividly described. The best pages of Borrow, too, gain their best inspiration from the same source. I often seem to recall that pair of dark eyes flashing in a fair face shaded by hair that was prematurely touched with grey; lips full and mobile, as quick with Castilian phrases to a Spanish landlord as with Romany to Jasper Petulengro, or with English to the fruit-woman on London Bridge; the queer, fascinating, mystical, honest mixture of a man, with something of the Wandering Jew, a good deal of Don Quixote, a touch of Melmoth, a sound flavouring of Cribb and Belcher, who was George Borrow. Under his magic guidance you step into the air which fanned the elf-locks of the Flaming Tinman. He loved the heroes of the Ring like brothers. “He strikes his foe on the forehead, and the report of the blow is like the sound of a hammer against a rock.” The sentence stands unmatched in all the annals of pugilism. The battle of his father with Big Ben Brain in Hyde Park was an abiding memory to him; and, apart from the famous encounter in the Dingle, the son did almost as well; and all his life nothing moved him to such instant eloquence as boxing, except horses.