It has been my privilege to go about with him not only in London, but also in Rome, in Paris, in Venice, in Florence, Pisa, &c.; and no matter what might be the quality of the society with which he was brought into contact, it always seemed to me that he was distinguished by his very lack of that accentuated movement which the _littérateur_ generally displays. I merely dwell upon this to show how inscrutable are the mental processes in the crowning puzzle of the great humourist Nature, the writing man. Just as the most angular and _gauche_ man in a literary gathering may possibly turn out to be the poet whose lyrics have been compared to Shelley, or the prose writer whose mellifluous periods have been compared to those of Plato, so the most dignified man in the room may turn out to be the writer of a book whose defect is a noticeable lack of dignified style. It was hard, indeed, for those who knew Hake in the flesh to believe that the ‘Memoirs of Eighty Years’ was written by him. I suppose I shall be expected to say a word about the famous intimacy between Hake and Borrow. After Hake went to live in Germany, Borrow told me a good deal about this intimacy and also about his own early life; for reticent as he naturally was, he and I got to be confidential and intimate. His friendship with Hake began when Hake was practising as a physician in Norfolk. It lasted during the greater part of Borrow’s later life. When Borrow was living in London, his great delight was to walk over on Sundays from Hereford Square to Coombe End, call upon Hake, and take a stroll with him over Richmond Park. They both had a passion for herons and for deer. At that time Hake was a very intimate friend of my own, and having had the good fortune to be introduced by him to Borrow, I used to join the two in their walks. Afterwards, when Hake went to live in Germany, I used to take these walks with Borrow alone. Two more interesting men it would be impossible to meet. The remarkable thing was that there was between them no sort of intellectual sympathy. In style, in education, in experience, whatever Hake was Borrow was not. Borrow knew almost nothing of Hake’s writings, either in prose or in verse. His ideal poet was Pope, and when he read, or rather looked into, Hake’s ‘World’s Epitaph,’ he thought he did Hake the greatest honour by saying, “There are lines here and there that are nigh as good as Pope’s.” On the other hand, Hake’s acquaintance with Borrow’s works was far behind that of some Borrovians who did not know Lavengro in the flesh, such as Mr. Saintsbury and Mr. Birrell.