“And, pray, who was William Milligan?” I asked in my hasty ignorance.
“Never heard o’ William Milligan? Stop my vitals, is this England?”
And then he turned to Emblem.
“Now then, Mary Jane, pipe up, just for to tell the lady who was William Milligan!”
The luckless Mrs. Polly shook her head, turned pale, and clutched a chair.
“What, never heard o’ William Milligan?” says he. “Come, now, I call that good. Strike me purple, you’ll tell me next that you’ve never heard o’ Peter Pearce and Johnny Margitts, and Joe the Tinker, and Ridin’ Phipps o’ Finsbury. Every mother’s son on ’em in ‘Newgate Calendar,’ wi’ their picters draw’d from the life fair, speakin’ natural and all their pedigrees beneath. And you never to ’a’ heard of William Milligan? What, never heard o’ Bagshot Bill—old Bully William—wot in his prime would stop a beautiful fat bishop on the Heath and strip him of his duds. Why, Snark, you’re learnin’.”
“Oh, a highwayman, was he?” said I, most inadvisedly.
“Well, Miss,” says he, “I should rather think he were. He was a reg’lar poet at it, William was. Not a very big man, Miss, William wasn’t, mind you, but by crumbs! see him on his mare wi’ the moon arisin’ and a coach a-comin’ down the hill. They can talk about their hartisses, and their Shakespeares, and their Drydens too, but, Miss, that’s what I calls a poet and a man. And William were that modest too. Not a smell o’ pride about him. ’Ud take his pot and have his jest wi’ me and you just as if he were a common person.”
“Oh, no; surely not?” says I, in an earnest accent.
“Lord, he would, Miss! That’s what’s so grand about true greatness. All the real Number One men are as mild and silken as a clergyman. Perky Niblick treated me to a pot o’ porter the day afore he so gloriously died. And Jackson, too; look at Jackson, the very height of the perfession, but as meek in private as a child. Used to bring lollipops for my younkers every time he come to sup. But to return to Snark. It was that benevolent individual wot delivered William Milligan when they was a-cartin’ him to Tyburn Tree. An’ he did it out o’ love alone, did excellent old Snark; never took a penny for the delivery o’ William, for it’s wonderful what tenderness one true hartiss has towards a brother.”