Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/331

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PAUL CLIFFORD.
323

gularly resembling the sage, was afterwards seen at Carlisle, where he discharged the useful and praiseworthy duties of Jack Ketch. But whether or not this respectable functionary was our identical Simon Pure, our ex-Editor of the Asinæum, we will not take it upon ourselves to assert. For ourself, we imagined lately that we discovered his fine Roman hand, though a little palsied by age, in an excellent article in Blackwood's Magazine, written to panegyrize that charming romance in every one's hands, called "The Five Nights of St. Alban's."

Lord Mauleverer, finally resolving on a single life, passed the remainder of his years in indolent tranquillity. When he died, the newspapers asserted that his Majesty was deeply affected by the loss of so old and valued a friend. His furniture and wines sold remarkably high: and a Great Man, his particular intimate, who purchased his books, startled to find, by pencil marks, that the noble deceased had read some of them, exclaimed, not altogether without truth,— "Ah! Mauleverer might have been a deuced clever fellow,——if he had liked it!"