of all her
jewels.

Moreover, he had so small a regard for his craft, that he would spoil
his effects by drink or debauchery; and, though a highwayman, he cared
so little for style, that he would as lief trick a drunken gamester as
face his man on Bagshot Heath or beneath the shade of Epping Forest.
You admire not his success, because, like the success of the popular
politician, it depended rather upon his dupes than upon his merit. You
approve not his raffish exploits in the hells of Covent Garden or Drury
Lane. But you cannot withhold respect from his consistent dandyism, and
you are grateful for the record that, engaged in a mean enterprise, he
was dressed 'in a green velvet frock and a short lac'd waistcoat.' Above
all, his picturesque capture at Hockcliffe atones for much stupidity.
The resolution, wavering at the wine glass, the last drunken ride from
St. Albans--these are inventions in experience, which should make Simms
immortal. And when he sits 'by the fireside a good deal chagrined,'
he recalls the arrest of a far greater man--even of Cartouche, who
was surprised by the soldiers at his bedside stitching a torn pair of
breeches. His autobiography, wherein 'he relates the truth as a dying
man,' seemed excellent in the eyes of Borrow, who loved it so well that
he imagined a sentence, ascribed it falsely to Simms, and then rewarded
it with extravagant applause.

But Gentleman Harry knew how to tell a simple story, and the book, 'all
wrote by myself while under sentence of death,' is his best performance.
In action he had many faults, for, if he was a highwayman among rakes,
he was but a rake among highwaymen.

A PARALLEL

(THE SWITCHER AND GENTLEMAN HARRY)

HAGGART and Simms are united in the praise of Borrow, and in the
generous applause of posterity. Each resumes for his own generation the
prowess of his kind. Each has assured his immortality by an experiment
in literature; and if epic simplicity and rapid narrative are the
virtues of biography, it is difficult to award the prize. The Switcher
preferred to write in the rough lingo, wherein he best expressed
himself. He packs his pages with ill-spelt slang, telling his story of
thievery in the true language of thieves. Gentleman Harry, as became a
person of quality, mimicked the dialect wherewith he was familiar in the
more fashionable gambling-dens of Covent Garden. Both write with out the
smallest suggestion of false shame or idle regret, and a na