FEW men have a quicker conception than he has; or more readily lay hold of the prominent parts, or represent them with greater humour or greater power of mimicry. His talents for music are of the most agreeable kind: he composes, and plays on the violin and guitar, the most beautiful, little lively airs, with an elegance and facility, that are both rare and astonishing. He dances with all the lightness and ease of an opera performer, and hardly ever tires.* His temper is the most agreeable and placid; his feelings lively and correct, and his principles are those of honour, integrity, and gratitude.* He never forgets a kindness, nor ever remembers an injury. His head and his heart are equally estimable; and, in short, I cannot name a man for whose amiable amenity and estimable qualities I have a greater regard.
abridged
* See A Debt to a Hero, in which Boruwlaski relates a touching act of kindness.
* Burdon wrote this in May 1818, when Boruwlaski was a few months shy of seventy-nine, so we gather that he kept up his tireless dancing rather longer than he once had feared likely. “I have but a weak constitution,” Boruwlaski had written back in 1788, “the weight of years grows every day more pressing.” His anxiety proved unfounded, for he died in 1837, a few weeks short of his ninety-eighth birthday; but the anxiety was never for himself. “Should I be snatched away from my family, what will become of them? whose assistance can they claim? ... These are the pains and inquietudes which assail my heart, and dash with bitterness the moments of joy that I derive from my family.” Those moments were all too few: his wife Isalina was a poor traveller and Joseph’s life on the road was no place for his two children.