Hope, faith, the Christian world, inform me how
With resignation to embrace the blow.
But ah, Eternity! tremendous word!
There, there, I sink, I tremble! Help me Lord!
Smith had in an advertisement “entreated contributions for his decent interment, and that his poor body might not fall unto the surgeons, and perpetuate the disgrace of his family.” According to a newspaper of the time the surgeons got possession of one body only (not Smith’s): the rest were delivered to the friends. Smith edited several volumes of “Classicks.” The publisher seized the opportunity to advertise them.
We have a full account of James Maclean, “The Gentleman Highwayman,” given by Horace Walpole, who was robbed by him (Letters, ed. 1857, i. lxvi. to lxvii., ii. pp. 218-9, 224, and in the World, No. 103, December 19, 1754). This is the account in the World:
An acquaintance of mine was robbed a few years ago, and very near shot through the head by the going off of the pistol of the accomplished Mr. Maclean: yet the whole affair was conducted with the greatest good breeding on both sides. The robber, who had only taken a purse this way, because he had that morning been disappointed of marrying a great fortune, no sooner returned to his lodgings than he sent the gentleman two letters of excuses, which, with less wit than the epistles of Voiture, had ten times more natural and easy politeness in the turn of their expression. In the postscript, he appointed a meeting at Tyburn at twelve at night, where the gentleman might purchase again any trifle he had lost, and my friend has been blamed for not accepting the rendezvous, as it seemed liable to be construed by ill-natured people into a doubt of the honour of a man who had given him all the satisfaction in his power, for having unluckily been near shooting him through the head.
The first Sunday after his condemnation three thousand people went to see him. He fainted away twice with the heat of his cell. He was only twenty-six when executed.
A long account of his behaviour in prison was given in a pamphlet by the Rev. Dr. Allen. The rev. gentleman was greatly concerned to know whether Maclean, by his association with “licentious young People of Figure and Fortune,” who affected to despise “all the principles of Natural and Revealed Religion, under the polite Name of Free-thinking,” had not “fallen into the fashionable way of thinking and talking on these Subjects.” Maclean was able to give his reverend monitor satisfactory assurances on this point. Maclean’s brother was the minister of the English church at The Hague. Maclean lived in fashionable lodgings in St. James’s Street, and frequented masquerades, where he at times won or lost considerable sums. The skeleton of Maclean appears in the fourth plate of Hogarth’s “Stages of Cruelty,” showing the interior of Surgeons’ Hall.