I did not like reviewing.
Of all my occupations at this period I am free to confess I liked that of compiling the _Newgate Lives and Trials_ the best; that is, after I had surmounted a kind of prejudice which I originally entertained.

The trials were entertaining enough; but the lives--how full were they of wild and racy adventures, and in what racy, genuine language were they told! What struck me most with respect to these lives was the art which the writers, whoever they were, possessed of telling a plain story.

It is no easy thing to tell a story plainly and distinctly by mouth; but to tell one on paper is difficult indeed, so many snares lie in the way.
People are afraid to put down what is common on paper, they seek to embellish their narratives, as they think, by philosophic speculations and reflections; they are anxious to shine, and people who are anxious to shine can never tell a plain story.

'So I went with them to a music booth, where they made me almost drunk with gin, and began to talk their flash language, which I did not understand,' says, or is made to say, Henry Simms, executed at Tyburn some seventy years before the time of which I am speaking.

I have always looked upon this sentence as a masterpiece of the narrative style, it is so concise and yet so very clear.