WALTER TYNDALE was fortunate in being born in Bruges—"Bruges la Morte," as Fogazzaro calls it in his romance, Il Santo. Descended from that noble martyr of Tyne-dale, the translator of the Bible, the young Anglo-Fleming was brought up in a babel of strange tongues that found an easy entrance to ears attuned by heredity to the analysis of sounds—many sounds but with one meaning.
In addition to his mother-tongue, he soon babbled in French, Flemish, Walloon, Dutch, German, and the many patois of the districts around his native place, and in after years easily acquired, by a little study and much travel, a knowledge of most of the languages of Europe and some of those of the Orient.
I met him first in Antwerp, at the Royal Academy of Arts. A slender, handsome youth, with very dark hair and eyes, and a complexion that suggested Italian rather than northern origin. Here, under the tuition of De Keyser, Van Lerius, a pupil of Baron Leys, and Buffeau, we worked together with several other English students in the life class, and in idle hours made excursions to the meadows and fields around the Scheldt, or drank lervers and ate smearbrod in the estaminets of the environs of the city. Or, going farther afield, we wandered as far—and the distances are short in the Low Countries—as Malines
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