This valiant collector, whom posterity has robbed for Turpin’s embellishment, lived at the highest moment of his art.  He knew by rote the lessons taught by Hind and Duval; he was a fearless rider and a courteous thief.  Now, one morning at five of the clock, he robbed a gentleman near Barnet of L560, and riding straight for York, he appeared on the Bowling Green at six in the evening.  Being presently recognised by his victim, he was apprehended, and at the trial which followed he pleaded a triumphant alibi.  But vanity was too strong for discretion, and no sooner was Swiftnicks out of danger, than he boasted, as well he might, of his splendid courage.  Forthwith he appeared a popular hero, obtained a commission in Lord Moncastle’s regiment, and married a fortune.  And then came Turpin to filch his glory!  Nor need Turpin have stooped to a vicarious notoriety, for he possessed a certain rough, half conscious humour, which was not despicable.  He purchased a new fustian coat and a pair of pumps, in which to be hanged, and he hired five poor men at ten shillings the day, that his death might not go unmourned.  Above all, he was distinguished in prison.  A crowd thronged his cell to identify him, and one there was who offered to bet the keeper half a guinea that the prisoner was not Turpin; whereupon Turpin whispered the keeper, ‘Lay him the wager, you fool, and I will go you halves.’  Surely this impudent indifference might have kept green the memory of the man who never rode to York!

If the Scoundrel may claim distinction on many grounds, his character is singularly uniform.  To the anthropologist he might well appear the survival of a savage race, and savage also are his manifold superstitions.  He is a creature of times and seasons.  He chooses the occasion of his deeds with as scrupulous a care as he examines his formidable crowbars and jemmies.  At certain hours he would refrain from action, though every circumstance favoured his success:  he would rather obey the restraining voice of a wise, unreasoning wizardry, than fill his pockets with the gold for which his human soul is ever hungry.  There is no law of man he dares not break but he shrinks in horror from the infringement of the unwritten rules of savagery.  Though he might cut a throat in self-defence, he would never walk under a ladder; and if the 13th fell on a Friday, he would starve that day rather than obtain a loaf by the method he best understands.  He consults the omens with as patient a divination as the augurs of old; and so long as he carries an amulet in his pocket, though it be but a pebble or a polished nut, he is filled with an irresistible courage.  For him the worst terror of all is the evil eye, and he would rather be hanged by an unsuspected judge than receive an easy stretch from one whose glance he dared not face.  And while the anthropologist claims him for a savage, whose civilisation has been arrested at brotherhood with the Solomon Islanders, the politician might pronounce him a true communist, in that he has preserved a wholesome contempt of property and civic life.  The pedant, again, would feel his bumps, prescribe a gentle course of bromide, and hope to cure all the sins of the world by a municipal Turkish bath.  The wise man, respecting his superstitions, is content to take him as he finds him, and to deduce his character from his very candid history, which is unaffected by pedant or politician.