That of Thomas Griffith Wainwright is probably the most remarkable. Wainwright was a person of amazing vanity and considerable good looks, who affected the military style of dress which was the last word of male fashion in the days when he lived. You may read a description of the man in Bulwer Lytton’s novel “Lucretia,” where Wainwright postures as Gabriel Verney. Postures is the word, for though Wainwright was not without talents and high abilities, to posture was the enjoyment and ambition of his life. He contributed articles to the “London Magazine” at a time when Lamb, Barry Cornwall, Haslitt and Alan Cunningham were the chief contributors. Under the name of “Janus Weathercock” he wrote on Art, the Ballet and the Opera. He wrote in a fashion which has become much more common to-day than it was then: the fashion, I mean, of creating first of all a personality, through the eyes of which the subjects to be reviewed are seen. The “Eye Witness” whom Wainwright described to the readers of the “London Magazine” was, needless to say, himself, and he drew the picture of himself with so loving a pen, such luxuriant details of his elegant dress, his fine appearance and his exquisite manners, as would make the very effigy of a coxcomb. That one might not misunderstand his writings, he enforced them with his pencil--he was an artist of no small ability--and drew types of female beauty in which “the voluptuous trembled on the borders of the indelicate”--we quote his own luscious phrase. As you can imagine, he had no high opinion of the artistic capabilities of other men, and like all persons endowed with so triumphant a vanity, he impressed those more modest craftsmen who were conscious of their imperfections. He fairly took in Charles Lamb, for instance, who spoke of him as kind and light-hearted. Never were two epithets so misapplied by a man with a genius for insight, for “Janus Weathercock” was a forger and had even then murder in his mind. He ceased to write. He went with his wife on a visit to his uncle. After a short illness the uncle died, and Wainwright inherited the property. It was not nearly enough to satisfy this high-flown gentleman’s needs. Moreover, it was held by trustees, so that only the interest reached his hands. He forged the names of his trustees to a Power of Attorney apparently with so much success, that for a long while no suspicion was aroused. He apparently forged five such documents, but, even so, poverty was always at his door.