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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: There is only one criminal who vies with Charley Peace in
that genial popular regard which makes Charles "Charley" and John
"Jack," and that is Jack Sheppard. What Jack was to the
eighteenth century, that Charley was to the nineteenth. And each
one is in a sense typical of his period. Lecky has said that the
eighteenth century is richer than any other in the romance of
crime. I think it may fairly be said that in the nineteenth
century the romance of crime ceased to be. In the eighteenth
century the scenery and dresses, all the stage setting of crime
make for romance; its literature is quaint and picturesque; there
is something gay and debonair about the whole business.
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
