A Book of Scoundrels | Page 8

was as glorious as their intrepidity?
One and all they have climbed the ascent of Tyburn.
One and all, they have leaped resplendent from the cart. The world,
which was the joyous playground of highwaymen and pickpockets, is
now the Arcadia of swindlers. The man who once went forth to meet
his equal on the road, now plunders the defenceless widow or the
foolish clergyman from the security of an office. He has changed Black
Bess for a brougham, his pistol for a cigar; a sleek chimney-pot sits
upon the head, which once carried a jaunty hat, three-cornered; spats
have replaced the tops of ancient times; and a heavy fur coat advertises
at once the wealth and inaction of the modern brigand. No longer does
he roam the heaths of Hounslow or Bagshot; no longer does he track
the grazier to a country fair. Fearful of an encounter, he chooses for the
fields of his enterprise the byways of the City, and the advertisement
columns of the smugly Christian Press. He steals without risking his
skin or losing his respectability. The suburb, wherein he brings up a
blameless, flat-footed family, regards him as its most renowned
benefactor. He is generally a pillar (or a buttress) of the Church, and
oftentimes a mayor; with his ill-gotten wealth he promotes charities,
and endows schools; his portrait is painted by a second-rate
Academician, and hangs, until disaster overtakes him, in the town-hall
of his adopted borough.
How much worse is he than the High-toby-cracks 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
centre-bit. 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 half-crown. 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 Abb Bruneau caught a
whiff of style and invention from the past. That other Abb--Rosslot
was his name--shone 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 middle-class.
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 lecture-room; 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
light-brained, light-limbed, light-fingered. A courage which shall face
an enemy under the starlight, or beneath the shadow of a wall, which
shall track its prey to a well-defended lair, is far rarer than a
law-abiding 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 coach- door or within

the pocket of a buttoned coat. If Cartouche was a master of strategy,
Barrington was unmatched in another