To a natural habit of depredation, which, being a man
of letters, he was wont to justify, he added a sureness of hand,
a fertility of resource, a recklessness of courage which drove his
contemporaries to an amazed respect, and from which none but the
Philistine will withhold his admiration. An accident discovered his
taste and talent. At school he attempted to kill a companion--the one
act of violence which sullies a strangely gentle career; and outraged
at the affront of a flogging, he fled with twelve guineas and a gold
repeater watch. A vulgar theft this, and no presage of future greatness;
yet it proves the fearless greed, the contempt of private property,
which mark as with a stigma the temperament of the prig. His faculty did
not rust long for lack of use, and at Drogheda, when he was but sixteen,
he encountered one Price, half barnstormer, half thief. Forthwith he
embraced the twin professions, and in the interlude of more serious
pursuits is reported to have made a respectable appearance as Jaffier in
Venice Preserved. For a while he dreamed of Drury Lane and glory; but an
attachment for Miss Egerton, the Belvidera to his own Jaffier, was more
costly than the barns of Londonderry warranted, and, with Price for a
colleague, he set forth on a tour of robbery, merely interrupted through
twenty years by a few periods of enforced leisure.
His youth, indeed, was his golden age. For four years he practised his
art, chilled by no shadow of suspicion, and his immunity was due as
well to his excellent bearing as to his sleight of hand.
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