Now and again, maybe, he would muse on the
stirring deeds of his youth, and more often he would put away the memory
of action to delight in the masterpiece which made him immortal. He
would recall with pleasure, no doubt, the ready praise of Richard
Steele, his most appreciative critic, and smile contemptuously at the
baseness of his friend and successor, Captain Charles Johnson. Now, this
ingenious writer was wont to boast, when the ale of Fleet Street had
empurpled his nose, that he was the most intrepid highwayman of them
all. 'Once upon a time,' he would shout, with an arrogant gesture, 'I
was known from Blackheath to Hounslow, from Ware to Shooter's Hill.'
And the truth is, the only 'crime' he ever committed was plagiarism.
The self-assumed title of Captain should have deceived nobody, for the
braggart never stole anything more difficult of acquisition than another
man's words. He picked brains, not pockets; he committed the greater
sin and ran no risk. He helped himself to the admirable inventions
of Captain Smith without apology or acknowledgment, and, as though to
lighten the dead-weight of his sin, he never skipped an opportunity of
maligning his victim. Again and again in the very act to steal he will
declare vaingloriously that Captain Smith's stories are 'barefaced
inventions.' But doubt was no check to the habit of plunder, and you
knew that at every reproach, expressed (so to say) in self-defence, he
plied the scissors with the greater energy.
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