We have Walpole's own authority for the otherwise almost incredible statement that three thousand people went to see Maclaine in his cell, the first Sunday after he was condemned. He fainted away twice with the heat of the cell. "You can't conceive the going there is to Newgate, and the prints that are published of the malefactors and the memoirs of their lives and deaths, set forth with as much parade as Marshal Turenne's."
The fatal October 3rd came at last, when he was to die. A curious etched print published at the time, at the small price of threepence, entitled "Newgate's Lamentation, or the Ladies' Last Farewell of Maclaine," shows the parting, and bears the following verses:
Farewell, my friends, let not your hearts be fill'd,
My time is near, and I'll with calmness yield.
Fair ladies now, your grief, I pray, forbear,
Nor wound me with each tender-hearted tear.
Mourn not my fate; your friendships have been kind,
Which I in tears shall own, till breath's resign'd.
Oh! may the indulgence of such friendly love,