Valiant also was the conduct of Roderick Audrey, who after a brief but
brilliant career paid his last debt to the law in 1714.

He was but sixteen, and, says his biographer, 'he went very decent to
the gallows, being in a white waistcoat, clean napkin, white gloves, and
an orange in one hand.' So well did he play his part, that one wonders
Jack Ketch did not shrink from the performance of his. But throughout
his short life, Roderick Audrey--the very name is an echo of
romance!--displayed a contempt for whatever was common or ugly. Not only
was his appearance at Tyburn a lesson in elegance, but he thieved,
as none ever thieved before or since, with no other accomplice than a
singing-bird. Thus he would play outside a house, wherein he espied a
sideboard of plate, and at last, bidding his playmate flutter through
an open window into the parlour, he would follow upon the excuse of
recovery, and, once admitted, would carry off as much silver as he could
conceal. None other ever attempted so graceful an artifice, and yet
Audrey's journey to Tyburn is even more memorable than the story of his
gay accomplice.

But it is not only the truly great who have won for themselves an
enduring reputation. There are men, not a few, esteemed, like the
popular novelist, not for their art but for some foolish gift, some
facile trick of notoriety, whose actions have tickled the fancy, not the
understanding of the world. The coward and the impostor have been set
upon a pedestal of glory either by accident or by the whim of posterity.
For more than a century Dick Turpin has appeared not so much the
greatest of highwaymen, as the Highwaymen Incarnate. His prowess has
been extolled in novels and upon the stage; his ride to York is still
bepraised for a feat of miraculous courage and endurance; the death of