th and half consenting; and
in that sense I own I am a coward indeed.'

The disingenuousness of this proclamation is as remarkable as its
hypocrisy. Well might he brag of his courage in an honourable cause,
when he knew that he could never be put to the test. But what palliation
shall you find for a rogue with so little pride in his art, that he
exercised it 'half loth, half consenting'? It is not in this recreant
spirit that masterpieces are achieved, and Maclaine had better have
stayed in the far Highland parish, which bred him, than have attempted
to cut a figure in the larger world of London. His famous encounter with
Walpole should have covered him with disgrace, for it was ignoble at
every point; and the art was so little understood, that it merely added
a leaf to his crown of glory. Now, though Walpole was far too well-bred
to oppose the demand of an armed stranger, Maclaine, in defiance of
his craft, discharged his pistol at an innocent head. True, he wrote
a letter of apology, and insisted that, had the one pistol-shot proved
fatal, he had another in reserve for himself. But not even Walpole would
have believed him, had not an amiable faith given him an opportunity for
the answering quip: 'Can I do less than say I will be hanged if he is?'

As Maclaine was a coward and no thief, so also he was a snob and no
gentleman. His boasted elegance was not more respectable than his art.
Fine clothes are the embellishment of a true adventurer; they hang ill
on the sloping shoulders of a poltroon.

And Maclaine, with all the ostensible weaknesses of his kind, would
claim regard for the strength that he knew not. He occupied a costly
apartment in St. James's Street; his morning dress was a crimson damask
banjam, a silk shag waistcoat, trimmed with lace, black velvet breeches,
white silk stockings, and yellow morocco slippers; but since his
magnificence added no jot to his courage, it was rather mean than
admirable. Indeed, his whole career was marred by the provincialism of
his native manse.

And he was the adored of an intelligent age; he basked a few brief weeks
in the noonday sun of fashion.

If distinction was not the heritage of the Eighteenth Century, its glory
is that now and again a giant raised his head above the stature of a
prevailing rectitude. The art of verse was lost in rhetoric; the noble
prose, invented by the Elizabethans, and refined under the Stuarts, was
whittled away to common sense by the admirer