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 natural vanity lifts each of them out of the pit of commonplace on to the tableland of the heroic.  They set forth their depredation, as a victorious general might record his triumphs, and they excel the nimblest Ordinary that ever penned a dying speech in all the gifts of the historian.

But when you leave the study for the field, the Switcher instantly declares his superiority.  He had the happiness to practise his craft in its heyday, while Simms knew but the fag-end of a noble tradition.  Haggart, moreover, was an expert, pursuing a difficult art, while Simms was a bully, plundering his betters by bluff.  Simms boasted no quality which might be set off against the accurate delicacy of Haggart’s hand.  The Englishman grew rich upon a rolling eye and a rusty pistol.  He put on his ‘fiercest manner,’ and believed that the world would deny him nothing.  The Scot, rejoicing in his exquisite skill, went to work without fuss or bluster, and added the joy of artistic pride to his delight in plunder.  Though Simm’s manner seems the more chivalrous, it required not one tithe of the courage which was Haggart’s necessity.  On horseback, with the semblance of a fire-arm, a man may easily challenge a coachful of women.  It needs a cool brain and a sound courage to empty a pocket in the watchful presence of spies and policemen.  While Gentleman Harry chose a lonely road, or the cover of night for his exploits, the Switcher always worked by day, hustled by a crowd of witnesses.