the will of the chap-book. Thus there grew up a folk-lore of thievery:
the very insistence upon the same motive suggests the fairytale, and, as
in the legends of every country, there is an identical element which the
anthropologists call 'human'; so in the annals of adventure there is
a set of invariable incidents, which are the essence of thievery. The
industrious hacks, to whom we owe the entertainment of the chap-books,
being seedy parsons or lawyers' clerks, were conscious of their literary
deficiencies: they preferred to obey tradition rather than to invent
ineptitudes. So you may trace the same jest, the same intrigue through
the unnumbered lives of three centuries. And if, being a philosopher,
you neglect the obvious plagiarism, you may induce from these
similarities a cunning theory concerning the uniformity of the human
brain. But the easier explanation is, as always, the more satisfactory;
and there is little doubt that in versatility the thief surpassed his
historian.

Had the chap-books still been scattered in disregarded corners, they
would have been unknown or misunderstood. Happily, a man of genius
came in the nick to convert them into as vivid and sparkling a piece
of literature as the time could show. This was Captain Alexander Smith,
whose Lives of the Highwaymen, published in 1719, was properly described
by its author as 'the first impartial piece of this nature which ever
appeared in English.' Now, Captain Smith inherited from a nameless
father no other patrimony than a fierce loyalty to the Stuarts, and the
sanguine temperament which views in horror a well-ordered life. Though
a mere foundling, he managed to acquire the rudiments, and he was not
wholly unlettered when at eighteen he took to the road. His courage,
fortified by an intimate knowledge of the great tradition, was rewarded
by an immediate success, and he rapidly became the master of so
much leisure as enabled him to pursue his studies with pleasure and