diverted by the Chatterton and Macpherson frauds, witnessed also the
great and famous Shakespearian forgeries. We shall never know the
exact truth about the fabrication of the Shakespearian documents,
and 'Vortigern' and the other plays. We have, indeed, the
confession of the culprit: habemus confitentem reum, but Mr. W. H.
Ireland was a liar and a solicitor's clerk, so versatile and
accomplished that we cannot always trust him, even when he is
narrating the tale of his own iniquities. The temporary but wide
and turbulent success of the Ireland forgeries suggests the
disagreeable reflection that criticism and learning are (or a
hundred years ago were) worth very little as literary touchstones.
A polished and learned society, a society devoted to Shakespeare and
to the stage, was taken in by a boy of eighteen. Young Ireland not
only palmed off his sham prose documents, most makeshift imitations
of the antique, but even his ridiculous verses on the experts.
James Boswell went down on his knees and thanked Heaven for the
sight of them, and, feeling thirsty after these devotions, drank hot
brandy and water. Dr. Parr was not less readily gulled, and
probably the experts, like Malone, who held aloof, were as much
influenced by jealousy as by science. The whole story of young
Ireland's forgeries is not only too long to be told here, but forms
the topic of a novel ('The Talk of the Town') by Mr. James Payn.
The frauds in his hands lose neither their humour nor their
complicated interest of plot. To be brief, then, Mr. Samuel Ireland
was a gentleman extremely fond of old literature and old books. If
we may trust the 'Confessions' (1805) of his candid son, Mr. W. H.
Ireland, a more harmless and confiding old person than Samuel never
collected early English tracts. Living in his learned society, his
son, Mr. W. H. Ireland, acquired not only a passion for black
letters, but a desire to emulate Chatterton. His first step in