It was necessary to relate these facts, not only as they belonged to the subject, but lest, from the reports and papers above mentioned, I might, otherwise, seem to have given either an unfaithful or a partial statement of the evidences before me; whereas now it will clearly be seen what facts appeared on the first disinterment, which preceded, and what are to be attributed to the second, which succeeded the date of the narrative. I have now added every circumstance which has hitherto come to my knowledge relative to this extraordinary transaction, and conclude with this declaration, that I should be very glad if any person would, from facts, give me reason to believe that the corpse in question is rather that of _Elizabeth Smith_, whose name I know only from her monument, than that of _John Milton_. P. N.’ ‘8th of September, 1790.’ THE TRUE STORY OF EUGENE ARAM. The only knowledge which very many people possess of the life and crime of Eugene Aram has been derived from the popular romance bearing his name, written by the late Lord Lytton. And this nobleman, influenced by his individual bias, has so woven fiction with a small modicum of fact, as to render the story, as a history of a celebrated crime, totally unreliable. Stripped of the gloss Lord Lytton has given it, and revealed in its bare nakedness, it shows Eugene Aram in a very different light from the solitary scholar, surrounded by books, with high, romantic aspirations and noble thoughts, winning the love of a pure and lovely girl; it shows us instead a poor country school-master, clever, but self-taught, married to a common woman, whose very faith he doubted, struggling with poverty, and heavily weighed down with several children; it paints him as a man whose companions were sordid and dishonest, whilst he himself was a liar, a thief, and a murderer, a selfish man who scrupled not to leave wife and children to shift for themselves, a man untrustworthy in his relations of life. Eugenius, or Eugene Aram was born in the year 1704,[23] at Ramsgill, a little village in Netherdale, Yorkshire, and his father was a gardener, as he says, of great abilities in botany, and an excellent draughtsman, who served Dr. Compton, Bishop of London, and, afterwards, Sir Edward Blackett, of Newby, and Sir John Ingilby, of Ripley. When he was five or six years of age, the family removed to Bondgate, near Ripon, his father having purchased a little property there. Here he was sent to school, and was taught in a purely elementary manner to be capable of reading the New Testament, and this was all the education his parents gave him, with the exception of about a month’s schooling some long time afterwards with the Rev. Mr. Alcock of Burnsal.