Perhaps before
his death an estrangement divided Hind and Moll. Was it that the Roaring
Girl was too anxious to take the credit of Hind's success? Or did he
harbour the unjust suspicion that when the last descent was made upon
him at the barber's, Moll might have given a friendly warning?
Of this he made no confession, but the honest thief was ever a liberal
hater of spies and attorneys, and Hind's prudence is unquestioned.
A miracle of intelligence, a master of style, he excelled all his
contemporaries and set up for posterity an unattainable standard. The
eighteenth century flattered him by its imitation; but cowardice and
swagger compelled it to limp many a dishonourable league behind. Despite
the single inspiration of dancing a corant upon the green, Claude Duval,
compared to Hind, was an empty braggart. Captain Stafford spoiled the
best of his effects with a more than brutal vice. Neither Mull-Sack nor
the Golden Farmer, for all their long life and handsome plunder, are
comparable for an instant to the robber of Peters and Bradshaw. They
kept their fist fiercely upon the gold of others, and cared not by
what artifice it was extorted. Hind never took a sovereign meanly;
he approached no enterprise which he did not adorn. Living in a true
Augustan age, he was a classic among highwaymen, the very Virgil of the
Pad.
MOLL CUTPURSE AND JONATHAN WILD
I--MOLL CUTPURSE
THE most illustrious woman of an illustrious age, Moll Cutpurse has
never lacked the recognition due to her genius.
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