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    Vortigern ; afafflstorical Play , with an Original Preface . By W . Hr ; Ireland . Represented at the Theatre Royal , Drory Lane , April 2 , 1796 , as a supposed newly-discovered drama of Shakspeare . London . Thomas . 1832 .

    The * Shakspeare Forgeries' made some noise in their day , and it seems they have never been wholly forgotten , for repeated applications for the dramas of Vortigern and Rowena , and of Henry the Second , have led Mr . Ireland to their republication . Of the former , which is now before us , we can only say that it is very well for a boy of seventeen , but has nothing in it of the soul of Chatterton . The only interest which it excites is that arising from the temporary success of the forgery , from its having imposed on such men as Chalmers , Dr . Warton , and Dr . Parr . So much for the influence of classical

    scholarship upon poetical taste and judgment . It was not so easy to hoax the old pittites of Drury—they had an instinct such as the wordmongery which has passed for learning never generated . The discovery of the forgery was an humiliation to many persons which they seem never to have forgotten or forgiven . Mr . Ireland thinks that it is time for his juvenile offence to be pardoned . He made full confession , in an octavo volume , a few years afterwards , chiefly for the purpose of vindicating his father , whose utter unconsciousness of the fraud he again solemnly affirms ; and he now offers some remarks , not so much to vindicate himself , as in palliation . The history is curious . * My father ( Mr . Samuel Ireland ) , a gentleman gifted with the most open heart and liberal sentiments , chanced , like many others , to he enamoured of the fine arts and vertu ; his assortment of pictures , prints , and drawings , was universally extolled ; his library well selected ; and , above all , his collection of Hogarth ' s works ( not even

    excepting that of his noble competitor for mastery , the late Earl of Exeter ) , was not to be surpassed . Among the strongest of his predilections , my father entertained an unbounded enthusiasm for the writings of Shakspeare : four days , at least , out of the seven , the beauties of our divine dramatist became his theme of conversation

    after dinner ; while , in the evening , still further to impress the subject upon the minds of myself and sisters , certain plays were selected , and a part allotted to each , in order that we might read aloud , and thereby acquire a knowledge of the delivery of blank verse articulately , and with proper emphasis . The comments to which these rehearsals ( if I may be permitted so to call them ) gave rise , were of a nature to elicit , in all its bearings , the enthusiasm entertained by my father for the bard of Avon—with him Shakspeare was no mortal ,

    but a divinity ; and frequently , while expatiating upon this subject , impregnated with all the fervour of Garrick , with whom he had been on intimate terms , my fatheF would declare that , to possess a single vestige of the poet ' s hand-writing would be esteemed a gem beyond all price , and far dearer to him than his whole collection . At these conversations I was uniformly present , swallowing with avidity the honied poison ; when , by way of completing this * infatuation , my father , who had already produced Picturesque Tours of some of the British rivers , determined on commencing that of lhe Avon ; and I was selected

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    714 Critical Notices , - * -Vortigern .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1832, page 714, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1822/page/64/