He was a mean sneaking wretch who supported a miserable existence on the
fruits of other people's industry, and he closed his list of crimes by
brutally stabbing an unhappy woman who had never harmed him. The fellow
had genuine literary skill and a good deal of culture; his confession is
very different from any of those contained in the _Newgate
Calendar_--infinitely different from the crude horror of the statement
which George Borrow quotes as a masterpiece of simple and direct
writing. Here is Borrow's specimen, by-the-way--"So I went with them to
a music-booth, where they made me almost drunk with gin and began to
talk their flash language, which I did not understand"--and so on. But
this dry simplicity is not in Fury's line. He has studied philosophy; he
has reasoned keenly; and, as one goes on through his terrible narrative,
one finds that he has mental capacity of a high order. He was as mean a
rascal as Noah Claypole: and yet he had a fine clear-seeing intellect.
Now what does this gallows-bird tell us? Why, his whole argument is
intended to prove that he was an ill-used victim of society! Such a
perversion has probably never been quite equalled; but it remains there
to show us how firmly my theory stands--that the real scoundrel never
knows himself to be a scoundrel. Had Fury settled down in a back street
and employed his genius in writing stories, he could have earned a
livelihood, for people would have eagerly read his experiences; but he
preferred thieving--and then he turned round and blamed other people for
hounding him on to theft.

There are wrong-doers and wrong-doers; there are men who do ill in the
world because they are entirely harmful by nature, and they seek to hurt
their fellows--there are others who err only from weakness of will. I
make no excuse for the weaklings; a man or woman who is weak may do more
harm than the vilest criminal, and, when I hear any one talk about that
nice man who is nobody's enemy but his own, I am instantly forced to