It is a poor book, and now has descendants lower in the social scale. It pretends to give "a most awful but useful lesson to the rising generation" by an account of the criminal whose appearance as a boy "was so superior to other boys of his class in life as to have the look of a gentleman's child." He naturally became a waiter, and "though the situation did not exactly accord with his ambition, it answered his purpose, because it afforded him an opportunity of studying _character_, and being in the company of gentlemen." He was "a generous high-minded fellow towards the ladies," and became the fancy man of someone else's mistress, living "in the style of a gentleman _solely_ at the expense of the beautiful Miss ---." His "unembarrassed and gentlemanly" behaviour survived even while he was being searched, and he entered the chapel before execution "with a firm step, accompanied with the most gentlemanly deportment." The end came nevertheless: "Bowing to the sheriffs and the few persons around him with all the manners of an accomplished gentleman, he ascended the drop with a firmness that astonished everyone present; and resigned his eventful life without scarce a struggle." The moral was the obvious one. "His talents were his misfortunes." The biographer pretends to believe that, though the fellow lived in luxury, he must always have had a harassed mind; the truth being that he himself would have had a harassed mind if he had played so distinguished a part. "The chequered life of that young man," he says, "abounding with incidents and facts almost incredible, and scarcely ever before practised with so much art and delusion in so short a period, impressively points out the danger arising from the possession of _great talents_ when perverted or _misapplied_." He points out, furthermore, how vice sinks before virtue. "For instance, view the countenances of thieves, who are regaling themselves on the most expensive liquors, laughing and singing, how they are changed in an instant by the appearance of police officers entering a room in search of them. . . ." Finally, "let the youth of London bear in mind that honesty is the best policy. . . . "In this happy country, where every individual has an opportunity of raising himself to the highest office in the State, what might the abilities of the unfortunate Hayward have accomplished for him if he had not deviated from the paths of virtue? There is no place like London in the world where a man of talents meets with so much encouragement and liberality; his society is courted, and his presence gives a weight to any company in which he appears; if supported by a good character." But the crime was the thing. Of a different class was John Hamilton Reynolds' "The Fancy." This book, published in 1820, would have wholly delighted Borrow. I will quote the footnote to the "Lines to Philip Samson, the Brummagem Youth":