and 'The Tower of London.' In 1842 his connection with 'Bentley's' terminated, and in a magazine of his own he produced successively 'The Miser's Daughter,' 'Windsor Castle,' and 'St. James's.' In the above list the best of the author's novels are contained, but it by no means exhausts the catalogue of his works. It is as the biographer of such gentlemen as Mr. Jack Sheppard, of bad fame, that our author must lay claim to immortality; and it is in this field of labour that he is most at home. He has himself placed on record the state of his feelings after he had disposed of Mr. Turpin's apocryphal steed 'Black Bess.' 'Well do I remember,' says the author, 'the fever into which I was thrown during the time of composition. My pen literally scoured over the pages. So thoroughly did I identify myself with the flying highwayman that, once started, I found it impossible to halt. … In his (Turpin's) company I mounted the hillside, dashed through the bustling village, swept over the desolate heath, threaded the silent street, plunged into the eddying stream. … With him I shouted, sang, laughed, exulted, wept; nor did I retire to rest till in imagination I heard the bell of York Minster toll forth the knell of poor Black Bess.'
This is poetic frenzy with a vengeance; and nobody will be disposed to deny that, whatever else the novelist lacked, it certainly was not sympathy with his creations.
The moral tendency of his writings, and the effect they were likely to produce on the youthful or untrained mind, have often been the subject of criticism. Of these, we think there can be no doubt the effect must be bad. While we wish Mr. Ainsworth no harm, we wish the cause of morality in fiction well; and we cannot help thinking that, if the 'fever into which he was thrown,' by the recital of the lawless adventures of a highwayman, had carried off his passion for writing novels, English literature would have been the gainer.
