brief experiment in prose, so it would be monstrous to cheapen the
accomplishments of a pickpocket, because he bungled at the concealment
of his gains.

A stern test of artistry is the gallows. Perfect behaviour at an
enforced and public scrutiny may properly be esteemed an effect of
talent--an effect which has not too often been rehearsed. There is no
reason why the Scoundrel, fairly beaten at the last point in the game,
should not go to his death without swagger and without remorse. At
least he might comfort himself with such phrases as 'a dance without the
music,' and he has not often been lacking in courage. What he has missed
is dignity: his pitfalls have been unctuosity, on the one side, bravado
on the other. It was the Prison Ordinary, who first misled him into the
assumption of a piety which neither preacher nor disciple understood. It
was the Prison Ordinary, who persuaded him to sign his name to a
lying confession of guilt, drawn up in accordance with a foolish and
inexorable tradition, and to deliver such a last dying speech as would
not disappoint the mob.

The set phrases, the vain prayer offered for other sinners, the
hypocritical profession of a superior righteousness, were neither noble
nor sincere. When Tom Jones (for instance) was hanged, in 1702, after
a prosperous career on Hounslow Heath, his biographer declared that
he behaved with more than usual 'modesty and decency,' because he
'delivered a pretty deal of good advice to the young men present,
exhorting them to be industrious in their several callings.' Whereas
his biographer should have discovered that it is not thus that your true
hero bids farewell to frolic and adventure.

As little in accordance with good taste was the last appearance of the