of crime of the more
ordinary type, and this sordid note continues through the three final
volumes. I have said that _Faustus_ is an allegory of 'man's inhumanity
to man.' That is emphatically, in more realistic form, the
distinguishing feature of _Celebrated Trials_. Amid these records of
savagery, it is a positive relief to come across such a trial as that of
poor Joseph Baretti. Baretti, it will be remembered, was brought to
trial because, when some roughs set upon him in the street, he drew a
dagger, which he usually carried 'to carve fruit and sweetmeats,' and
killed his assailant. In that age, when our law courts were a veritable
shambles, how cheerful it is to find that the jury returned a verdict of
'self-defence.' But then Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Dr. Johnson,
and David Garrick gave evidence to character, representing Baretti as 'a
man of benevolence, sobriety, modesty, and learning.' This trial is an
oasis of mercy in a desert of drastic punishment. Borrow carries on his
'trials' to the very year before the date of publication, and the last
trial in the book is that of 'Henry Fauntleroy, Esquire,' for forgery.
Fauntleroy was a quite respectable banker of unimpeachable character, to
whom had fallen at a very early age the charge of a banking business
that was fundamentally unsound. It is clear that he had honestly
endeavoured to put things on a better footing, that he lived simply, and
had no gambling or other vices. At a crisis, however, he forged a
document, in other words signed a transfer of stock which he had no
right to do, the 'subscribing witness' to his power of attorney being
Robert Browning, a clerk in the Bank of England, and father of the
distinguished poet.[69] Well, Fauntleroy was sentenced to be hanged--and
he was duly hanged at Newgate on 30th October 1824, only thirteen years
before Queen Victoria came to the throne!

Borrow has affirmed that from a study of the _Newgate Calendar_ and the
compilation of his _Celebrated Trials_ he first learned to write genuine
English, and it is a fact that there are some remarkably dramatic
effects in these volumes, although one here withholds from Borrow the
title of 'author' because so much is 'scissors and paste,' and the
purple passages are only occasional. All the same I am astonished that
no one has thought it worth while to make a volume of these dramatic
episodes, which are clearly the work of Borrow, and owe nothing to the
innumerable pamp