Rode stately through Holborn to die in his calling;
He stopped at the George for a bottle of sack,
And promised to pay for it—when he came back.
His waistcoat and stockings and breeches were white.
His cap had a new cherry-ribbon to tie’t;
And the maids to the doors and the balconies ran,
And cried “Lack-a-day! he’s a proper young man!”
But how to summarise the infinite variety of detail? To tell how, when Claude Duval swung (January 21, 1670) Ladies of Quality looked on in tears and masks; how he lay in more than royal state in Tangier Tavern, St. Giles’s; and how they carved on his stone “in the centre aisle of Covent Garden Church,” the pattern of a highwayman’s epitaph:
Here lies Du Vall: reader, if male thou art,
Look to thy purse; if female, to thy heart.