Thus he celebrated his downfall in a ballad that has the true Newgate
ring, and verily in his own eyes he was a hero who carried to the
scaffold a dauntless spirit unstained by treachery.
He believed himself an adept in all the arts; as a squire of dames he
held himself peerless, and he assured the ineffable Combe, who recorded
his flippant utterance with a credulous respect, that he had sacrificed
hecatombs of innocent virgins to his importunate lust. Prose and verse
trickled with equal facility from his pen, and his biography is a
masterpiece. Written in the pedlar's French as it was misspoken in
the hells of Edinburgh, it is a narrative of uncommon simplicity and
directness, marred now and again by such superfluous reflections as are
the natural result of thievish sentimentality. He tells his tale without
paraphrase or adornment, and the worthy Writer to the Signet, who
prepared the work for the Press, would have asked three times the space
to record one-half the adventures. 'I sunk upon it with my forks
and brought it with me'; 'We obtained thirty-three pounds by this
affair'--is there not the stalwart flavour of the epic in these plain,
unvarnished sentences?
His other accomplishments are pallid in the light of his brilliant left
hand. Once, at Derry--he attended a cock-fight, and beguiled an interval
by emptying the pockets of a lucky bookmaker. An expert, who watched
the exploit in admiration, could not withhold a compliment. 'You are the
Switcher,' he exclaimed; 'some take all, but you leave nothing.
Pages:
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173