s attention to my music, have gone away shaking
their heads, and crying it was a shame such vagabonds were suffered to stay in
the city.
    »To say the truth, I am confident the fiddle would not have kept us alive
had we entirely depended on the generosity of my hearers. My mother therefore
was forced to use her own industry; and while I was soothing the ears of the
croud, she applied to their pockets, and that generally with such good success
that we now began to enjoy a very comfortable subsistence; and indeed, had we
had the least prudence or forecast, might have soon acquired enough to enable us
to quit this dangerous and dishonourable way of life: but I know not what is the
reason that money got with labour and safety is constantly preserved, while the
produce of danger and ease is commonly spent as easily, and often as wickedly,
as acquired. Thus we proportioned our expenses rather by what we had than what
we wanted or even desired; and on obtaining a considerable booty we have even
forced nature into the most profligate extravagance, and have been wicked
without inclination.«
    »We carried on this method of thievery for a long time without detection:
but, as Fortune generally leaves persons of extraordinary ingenuity in the lurch
at last, so did she us; for my poor mother was taken in the fact, and, together
with myself, as her accomplice, hurried before a magistrate.«
    »Luckily for us, the person who was to be our judge was the greatest lover
of music in the whole city, and had often sent for me to play to him, for which,
as he had given me very small rewards, perhaps his gratitude now moved him: but,
whatever was his motive, he browbeat the informers against us, and treated their
evidence with so little favour, that their mouths were soon stopped, and we
dismissed with honour; acquitted, I should rather have said, for we were not
suffered to depart till I had given the judge several tunes on the fiddle.«
    »We escaped the better on this occasion because the person robbed happened
to be a poet; which gave the judge, who was a facetious person, many
opportunities of jesting. He said poets and musicians should agree together,
seeing they had married sisters; which he afterwards explained to be the sister
arts. And when the piece of gold was produced he burst into a loud laugh, and
said it must be the golden age, when poets had gold in their pockets, and in
that age there could be no robbers. He made many
