The newspapers have, from time
to time, translated a few extracts, when their Old Bailey news was at a
stand, so that the name of Vidocq must be somewhat familiar to many of
our readers.[11]
[11] The present portion is only the first volume. The Memoirs are
to be completed in four volumes, to form part of the series of
_Autobiographical Memoirs_, published by Messrs. Hunt and Clarke,
and decidedly one of the most attractive works that that has
lately issued from the press. As we intend to notice this
collection at some future time, we can only, for the present,
spare room for this direction of the reader's attention--for
the design deserves well of the public; and if the success be
proportioned fro its merits, it will be great indeed.
Eugene Francois Vidocq is a native of Arras, where his father was
a baker; and from early associations he fell into courses of excess
which led to the necessity of his flying from the parental roof. After
various, rapid, and unexampled events in the romance of real life, in
which he was everything by turns and nothing long, he was liberated from
prison, and became the principal and most active agent of police. He was
made Chief of the Police de Surete under Messrs. Delavau and Franchet,
and continued in that capacity from the year 1810 till 1827, during
which period he extirpated the most formidable of those ruffians and
villains to whom the excesses of the revolution and subsequent events
had given full scope for the perpetration of the most daring robberies
and inquitous excesses.
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