He
is generally a pillar (or a buttress)of the Church,and oftentimes a mayor;with
his illgotten wealth he promotes charities,and endows schools;his portrait is
painted by a secondrate Academician,and hangs,until disaster overtakes him,in
the townhall of his adopted borough.
How much worse is he than the
Hightobycracks of old!They were as brave as lions;he is a very louse for
timidity.His conduct is meaner than the conduct of the most ruffianly burglar
that ever worked a centrebit.Of art he has not the remotest inkling:though his
greed is bounded by the Bank of England,he understands not the elegancies of
life;he cares not how he plumps his purse,so long as it be full;and if he were
capable of conceiving a grand effect,he would willingly surrender it for a
pocketed halfcrown.This side the Channel,in brief,romance and the picturesque
are dead;and in France,the last refuge of crime,there are already signs of
decay.The AbbBruneau caught a whiff of style and invention from the past.That
other AbbRosslot was his nameshone forth a pure creator:he owed his prowess to
the example of none.But in Paris crime is too often passionel,and a crime
passionel is a crime with a purpose,which,like the novel with a purpose,is
conceived by a dullard,and carried out for the gratification of the
middleclass.
To
whitewash the scoundrel is to put upon him the heaviest dishonour:a dishonour
comparable only to the monstrously illogical treatment of the condemned.When
once a hero has forfeited his right to comfort and freedom,when he is deemed no
longer fit to live upon earth,the Prison Chaplain,encouraging him to a final
act of hypocrisy,gives him a free pass (so to say)into another and more exclusive
world.So,too,the moralist would test the thief by his own narrow
standard,forgetting that all professions are not restrained by the same
code.The road has its ordinances as well as the lectureroom;and if the thief is
commonly a bad moralist,it is certain that no moralist was ever a great
thief.Why then detract from a man's legitimate glory?Is it not wiser to respect
`that deep intuition of oneness,'which Coleridge says is `at the bottom of our
faults as well as our virtues?'To recognise that a fault in an honest man is a
virtue in a scoundrel?After all,he is eminent who,in obedience to his
talent,does prodigies of valour unrivalled by his fellows.And none has so many
opportunities of various eminence as the scoundrel.
The
qualities which may profitably be applied to a cross life are uncommon and
innumerable.It is not given to all men to be
lightbrained,lightlimbed,lightfingered.A courage which shall face an enemy
under the starlight,or beneath the shadow of a wall,which shall track its prey
to a welldefended lair,is far rarer than a lawabiding cowardice.The
recklessness that risks all for a present advantage is called genius,if a
victorious general urge it to success;nor can you deny to the intrepid
Highwayman,whose sudden resolution triumphs at an instant of peril,the
possession of an admirable gift.But all heroes have not proved themselves
excellent at all points.This one has been distinguished for the courtly manner
of his attack,that other for a prescience which discovers booty behind a coachdoor
or within the pocket of a buttoned coat.If Cartouche was a master of
strategy,Barrington was unmatched in another branch;and each may claim the
credit due to a peculiar eminence.It is only thus that you may measure
conflicting talents:as it were unfair to judge a poet by a brief experiment in
prose,so it would be monstrous to cheapen the accomplishments of a
pickpocket,because he bungled at the concealment of his gains.
A
stern test of artistry is the gallows.Perfect behaviour at an enforced and
public scrutiny may properly be esteemed an effect of talentan effect which has
not too often been rehearsed.
There
is no reason why the Scoundrel,fairly beaten at the last point in the
game,should not go to his death without swagger and without remorse.At least he
might comfort himself with such phrases as `a dance without the music,'and he
has not often been lacking in courage.What he has missed is dignity:his
pitfalls have been unctuosity,on the one side,bravado on the other.It was the
Prison Ordinary,who first misled him into the assumption of a piety which
neither preacher nor disciple understood.It was the Prison Ordinary,who
persuaded him to sign his name to a lying confession of guilt,drawn up in
accordance with a foolish and inexorable tradition,and to deliver such a last
dying speech as would not disappoint the mob.
The
set phrases,the vain prayer offered for other sinners,the hypocritical
profession of a superior righteousness,were neither noble nor sincere.When Tom
Jones (for instance)was hanged,in 1702,after a prosperous career on Hounslow
Heath,his biographer declared that he behaved with more than usual `modesty and
decency,'because he `delivered a pretty deal of good advice to the young men
present,exhorting them to be industrious in their several callings.'Whereas his
biographer should have discovered that it is not thus that your true hero bids
farewell to frolic and adventure.
As
little in accordance with good taste was the last appearance of the infamous
Jocelin Harwood,who was swung from the cart in 1692for murder and robbery.He
arrived at Tyburn insolently drunk.He blustered and ranted,until the spectators
hissed their disapproval,and he died vehemently shouting that he would act the
same murder again in the same case.Unworthy,also,was the last dying repartee of
Samuel Shotland,a notorious bully of the Eighteenth Century.Taking off his
shoes,he hurled them into the crowd,with a smirk of delight.`My father and
mother often told me,'he cried,`that I should die with my shoes on;but you may
all see that I have made them both liars.'A great man dies not with so mean a
jest,and Tyburn was untouched to mirth by Shotland's facile humour.
