And Sheppard, Thornhill, lives in thine!”
This was a very equivocal sort of compliment, and might have meant, that if Apelles were worthy to paint a monarch, Thornhill was worthy to paint a thief. But the artist did not view it in that light, nor did the public; for they considered the verses to be very neat, pointed, and flattering. So high was Jack’s fame, that he was thought a very fit subject for the stage; and a pantomime entertainment, called “Harlequin Jack Sheppard,” was devised by one Thurmond, and brought out with considerable success at Drury Lane Theatre. All the scenes were painted from nature, including the public-house that the robber frequented in Clare Market, and the condemned cell from which he had made his escape in Newgate.[47]
The Rev. Mr. Villette, the editor of the Annals of Newgate, published in 1754, relates a curious sermon, which he says a friend of his heard delivered by a street-preacher about the time of Jack’s execution. The orator, after animadverting on the great care men took of their bodies, and the little care they bestowed upon their souls, continued as follows, by way of exemplifying the position:—“We have a remarkable instance of this in a notorious malefactor, well known by the name of Jack Sheppard. What amazing difficulties has he overcome! what astonishing things has he performed! and all for the sake of a stinking, miserable carcass, hardly worth the hanging! How dexterously did he pick the chain of his padlock with a crooked nail! how manfully he burst his fetters asunder, climb up the chimney, wrench out an iron bar, break his way through a stone wall, make the strong door of a dark entry fly before him, till he got upon the leads of the prison, then, fixing a blanket to the wall with a spike, he stole out of the chapel! How intrepidly did he descend to the top of the turner’s house! how cautiously pass down the stair, and make his escape to the street-door!
“Oh, that ye were all like Jack Sheppard! Mistake me not, my brethren—I don’t mean in a carnal, but in a spiritual sense; for I propose to spiritualise these things. What a shame it would be if we should not think it worth our while to take as much pains, and employ as many deep thoughts to save our souls as he has done to preserve his body!
“Let me exhort ye, then, to open the locks of your hearts with the nail of repentance! Burst asunder the fetters of your beloved lusts, mount the chimney of hope, take from thence the bar of good resolution, break through the stone wall of despair, and all the strongholds in the dark entry of the valley of the shadow of death! Raise yourselves to the leads of divine meditation, fix the blanket of faith with the spike of the Church, let yourselves down to the turner’s house of resignation, and descend the stairs of humility! So shall you come to the door of deliverance from the prison of iniquity, and escape the clutches of that old executioner the devil!”
Jonathan Wild, whose name has been immortalised by Fielding, was no favourite with the people. He had none of the virtues which, combined with crimes, make up the character of the great thief. He was a pitiful fellow, who informed against his comrades, and was afraid of death. This meanness was not to be forgiven by the crowd; and they pelted him with dirt and stones on his way to Tyburn, and expressed their contempt by every possible means. How different was their conduct to Turpin and Jack Sheppard, who died in their neatest attire, with nosegays in their button-holes, and with the courage that a crowd expects. It was anticipated that the body of Turpin would have been delivered up to the surgeons for dissection; and the people seeing some men very busily employed in removing it, suddenly set upon them, rescued the body, bore it about the town in triumph, and then buried it in a very deep grave, filled with quicklime, to hasten the progress of decomposition. They would not suffer the corpse of their hero—of the man who had ridden from London to York in four-and-twenty hours—to be mangled by the rude hands of unmannerly surgeons.
The death of Claude Duval would appear to have been no less triumphant. Claude was a gentlemanly thief. According to Butler, in the famous ode to his memory, he
“Taught the wild Arabs of the road
To rob in a more gentle mode;
Take prizes more obligingly than those
Who never had been bred filous;