red the glory of Jack Rann, and that she did not desert
her hero, even in his punishment.

III--A PARALLEL

(GILDEROY AND SIXTEEN-STRING JACK)

THEIR closest parallel is the notoriety which dogged them from the very
day of their death. Each, for his own exploits, was the most famous
man of his time, the favourite of broadsides, the prime hero of the
ballad-mongers. And each owed his fame as much to good fortune as to
merit, since both were excelled in their generation by more skilful
scoundrels. If Gilderoy was unsurpassed in brutality, he fell
immeasurably below Hind in artistry and wit, nor may he be compared
to such accomplished highwaymen as Mull Sack or the Golden Farmer. His
method was not elevated by a touch of the grand style. He stamped all
the rules of the road beneath his contemptuous foot, and cared not what
enormity he committed in his quest for gold. Yet, though he lived in
the true Augustan age, he yielded to no one of his rivals in glorious
recognition. So, too, Jack Rann, of the Sixteen Strings, was a near
contemporary of George Barrington. While that nimble-fingered prig was
making a brilliant appearance at Vauxhall, and emptying the pockets of
his intimates, Rann was riding over Hounslow Heath, and flashing his
pistol in the eye of the wayfarer. The very year in which Jack danced
his last jig at Tyburn, Barrington had astonished London by a fruitless
attempt to steal Prince Orloff's miraculous snuff-box. And not
even Ellen Roach herself would have dared to assert that Rann was
Barrington's equal in sleight of hand. But Rann holds his own against
the best of his craft, with an imperishable name, while a host of more
distinguished cracksmen are excluded even from the Newgate Calendar.

In truth, there is one quality which has naught to do with artistic
supremacy; and in this quality both Rann and Gilderoy were rich beyond
their fellows. They knew (none better) how to impose upon the world. Had
their deserts been even less than they were, they would still have
been bravely notorious. It is a common superstition that the talent for
advertisement has but a transitory effect, that time sets all men in
their proper places.

Nothing can be more false; for he who has once declared himself among
the great ones of the earth, not only holds his position while he lives,
but forces an unreasoning admiration upon the future. Though he declines
from the lofty throne, whereon his own vanity and love of pr