There has been much speculation as to the birthplace of Borel; (in this respect he somewhat resembled Homer) but if I have been correctly informed it was in one of the New England States. Further than this I cannot particularize. When he came to Essex he managed to procure a situation in a counting-house, which afforded him the means of support as well as leisure for study. He did not overlook these advantages, and gradually rose in public estimation until he became the editor of the Literary Herald. This gentleman was deeply read in the classics, and had also perused every novel and volume of poetry from the earliest period of English literature down to the present. Such had been his indefatigable research, that there was not a remarkable passage in the whole range of the Waverley fictions, or indeed any other fictions, to which he could not instantly turn. As to poetry, he was an oracle. He could repeat the whole of Shelley, Moore, and Wordsworth, _verbatim_. He was a very Sidrophel in his acquirements. He could tell "How many scores a flea would jump;" he could prove, also, "that the man in the moon's a sea Mediterranean," and "In lyric numbers write an ode on His mistress eating a black pudding." He composed acrostics extempore by the dozen; we say _extempore_, though it was once remarked that he was months in bringing them to maturity. He was inimitable, moreover, in his pictures of natural scenery. When a river, or a mountain, or a waterfall was to be sketched, Borel Bunting, of all others, was the man to guide the pencil. He had the rare faculty of bringing every thing distinctly before the mind of the reader--a compliment to which a majority of his brother scribes are not entitled. Borel Bunting possessed also a considerable degree {175} of critical acumen. Southey was a mere doggerelist; Cooper and Irving were not men of genius: so said Borel. Pope, he declared, was the first of poets, because Lord Byron said so before him. Tom Jones, he contended, was the most perfect specimen of a novel extant. He was also willing to admit that Goldsmith had shown some talent in his Vicar of Wakefield. In a word, Borel's wonderful acquirements secured him the favorable attention of many distinguished men; and at length (as a reward of his industry and merit) he was regularly installed in the chair editorial of the "_Literary Herald_," an important weekly periodical, fifteen inches in diameter. His salary, it is supposed, was something less than that received by the President of the United States.