e philosopher speaks. 'If the coat is buttoned it must be
opened by slipping past. Then bring the lil down between the flap of the
coat and the body, keeping your spare arm across your man's breast, and
so slip it to a comrade; then abuse the fellow for jostling you.'

Not only did he master the tradition of thievery; he vaunted his
originality with the familiar complacence of the scoundrel. Forgetting
that it was by burglary that he was undone, he explains for his public
glorification that he was wont to enter the houses of Leith by forcing
the small window above the outer door. This artifice, his vanity
grumbles, is now common; but he would have all the world understand
that it was his own invention, and he murmurs with the pedantry of the
convicted criminal that it is now set forth for the better protection
of honest citizens. No less admirable in his own eyes was that other
artifice which induced him to conceal such notes as he managed to filch
in the collar of his coat. Thus he eluded the vigilance of the police,
which searched its prey in those days with a sorry lack of cunning.
In truth, Haggart's wits were as nimble as his fingers, and he seldom
failed to render a profitable account of his talents. He beguiled one
of his sojourns in gaol by manufacturing tinder wherewith to light
the prisoners' pipes, and it is not astonishing that he won a general
popularity. In Ireland, when the constables would take him for a Scot,
he answered in high Tipperary, and saved his skin for a while by a
brogue which would not have shamed a modern patriot. But quick as were
his wits, his vanity always outstripped them, and no hero ever bragged
of his achievements with a louder effrontery.

Now all you ramblers in mourning go,
For the prince of ramblers is lying low,
And all you maidens that love the game,
Put on your mourning veils again.

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 F