Abroad a craftsman, he carried into the closet the skill and energy which distinguished him when the moon was on the heath.  Though not born to the arts of peace, he was determined to prove his respect for letters, and his masterpiece is no less pompous in manner than it is estimable in tone and sound in reflection.  He handled slang as one who knew its limits and possibilities, employing it not for the sake of eccentricity, but to give the proper colour and sparkle to his page; indeed, his intimate acquaintance with the vagabonds of speech enabled him to compile a dictionary of Pedlar’s French, which has been pilfered by a whole battalion of imitators.  Moreover, there was none of the proverbs of the pavement, those first cousins of slang, that escaped him; and he assumed all the licence of the gentleman-collector in the treatment of his love-passages.

Captain Smith took the justest view of his subject.  For him robbery, in the street as on the highway, was the finest of the arts, and he always revered it for its own sake rather than for vulgar profit.  Though, to deceive the public, he abhorred villainy in word, he never concealed his admiration in deed of a ‘highwayman who robs like a gentleman.’  ’There is a beauty in all the works of nature,’ he observes in one of his wittiest exordia, ’which we are unable to define, though all the world is convinced of its existence:  so in every action and station of life there is a grace to be attained, which will make a man pleasing to all about him and serene in his own mind.’  Some there are, he continues, who have placed ’this beauty in vice itself; otherwise it is hardly probable that they could commit so many irregularities with a strong gust and an appearance of satisfaction.’  Notwithstanding that the word ‘vice’ is used in its conventional sense, we have here the key to Captain Smith’s position.  He judged his heroes’ achievements with the intelligent impartiality of a connoisseur, and he permitted no other prejudice than an unfailing loyalty to interrupt his opinion.

Though he loved good English as he loved good wine, he was never so happy as when (in imagination) he was tying the legs of a Regicide under the belly of an ass.  And when in the manner of a bookseller’s hack he compiled a Comical and Tragical History of the Lives and Adventures of the most noted Bayliffs, adoration of the Royalists persuaded him to miss his chance.  So brave a spirit as himself should not have looked complacently upon the officers of the law, but he saw in the glorification of the bayliff another chance of castigating the Roundheads, and thus he set an honorific crown upon the brow of man’s natural enemy.  ‘These unsanctified rascals,’ wrote he, ’would run into any man’s debt without paying him, and if their creditors were Cavaliers they thought they had as much right to cheat ’em, as the Israelites had to spoil the Egyptians of their ear-rings and jewels.’  Alas! the boot was ever on the other leg; and yet you cannot but admire the Captain’s valiant determination to sacrifice probability to his legitimate hate.