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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
The dirty mildewed paper , hunted out from old book-stalls , so as to get it with the water-mark of Shakspeare ' s time ; the wonderful fac-simile of the handwriting , written with a little ink mixed with tobacco-water , which in a few days had all the appearance of being hundreds of years old ; the antiquated phrase and construction , and mechanical imitation of the sentiments and characteristics
of the great poet ' s dialogue ,, &c . ; all these would not do with men who judged from internal evidence , and saw that the spirit Was wanting . But this boy made fools of the Grecians ; he proved to palpable demonstration that they had ' no learned spirit '—nay , he did worse , he made them prove it themselves , and in public .
Father Zodiac . That was good ; yet methinka their own writings might have proved it sufficiently . Mr . Albion . But the public , sir ; the public—that is the point ! No sooner did the young Pickle confess the trick he had played , than two parties arose : those who had assented to the authenticity
of the papers and knelt down to the hoax , and those few who had denied it ; the latter forming a most overwhelming majority , because they were instantly joined hy numbers who swore they had never believed it . This brought the public over to their side , and laud and universal was the ridicule that assailed the Bdswells ., Parrs , and other illuminati . Father Zodiac . Died it not away—as all things die ?
Mr . Albion . Not exactly . After a writhing strugg le on the part of the adepts in black-letter , autographs , &c , to prove the falsity of young Ireland ' s Confessions , they were obliged to sit down under the laughter of the illiterate as well as literate world . He then published some poems or ballads avowedly his own , and this rekindled the war . The Thebans denounced them as trash ,
and , comparing them with the superiority of the plays he had put forth as Shakspeare ' s , reverted in part to their first decision , that they were either by Shakspeare or one of the writers of his time . But everybody else found additional proof in these poor
mockancient ballads , of the forgery in the first instance , and denyingtheir wonderful superiority , came to the conclusion , that the only
occasion of such superiority as the former really possessed in isolated passages , was occasioned either by the imitation of his great model , or by plagiarising sentiments and paraphrasing images from Shakspeare ' s works . And this is really the case , though I do not recollect it among the Confessions .
Mrs . Albion . Then everybody agreed in denouncing young Ireland ' s poems ? Mr * Albion . Of course : there was nothing in them but mechanism . Harry of Newmarket . Supposing he had never made any confessions ? MO 8 K » . How much money he might have got ! Pity—pity Mm . Albion . Ah , then they wfrtild haVfc pa * w # d as beautiful
Untitled Article
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1835, page 382, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2646/page/18/
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