The ironic biographer of Jonathan Wild realised the difficulties of the undertaking. He saw that unless he adopted an attitude which would make it proper for him always to express approval of his hero, his readers would begin to cast this way and that, not knowing whether to sympathise or hate, as the genius of the author or the villainy of the hero were alternately prominent in their eyes. Accordingly, choosing the name of a real and famous gallows-bird who had been hung some twenty years before, Fielding took his tone from those little penny biographies that used to be hawked among the crowd who waited at Tyburn to see their hero swing. He ironically takes this tone; and sustains it without a false note for a couple of hundred pages. How admirably he uses it:-- 'The hero, though he loved the chaste Laetitia with excessive tenderness, was not of that low snivelling breed of mortals who, as is generally expressed, _tie themselves to a woman's apron-strings_; in a word, who are afflicted with that mean, base, low vice or virtue, as it is called, of constancy.' And again in the passage that sums up the book:-- 'He laid down several maxims, as the certain means of attaining greatness, to which, in his own pursuit of it, he constantly adhered. As-- 1. Never to do more mischief than was necessary to the effecting of his purpose; for that mischief was too precious a thing to be thrown away. 2. To know no distinction of men from affection; but to sacrifice all with equal readiness to his interest. 3. Never to communicate more of an affair than was necessary to the person who was to execute it. 4. Not to trust him who hath deceived you, nor who knows he has been deceived by you. 5. To forgive no enemy; but to be cautious and often dilatory in revenge. 6. To shun poverty and distress, and to ally himself as close as possible to power and riches. 7. To maintain a constant gravity in his countenance and behaviour, and to affect wisdom on all occasions. 8. To foment eternal jealousies in his gang, one of another. 9. Never to reward any one equal to his merit; but always to insinuate that the reward was above it. 10. That all men were knaves or fools, and much the greater number a composition of both. 11. That a good name, like money, must be parted with or at least greatly risked, in order to bring the owner any advantage. 12. That virtues, like precious stones, were easily counterfeited; that the counterfeits in both cases adorned the wearer equally; and that very few had knowledge or discernment sufficient to distinguish the counterfeit jewels from the real. 13. That many men were undone by not going deep enough in roguery; as in gaming any man may be a loser who doth not play the whole game.