A letter of acknowledgment to Lord Southampton for an act of bounty runs in this strain :

Gratitude is alle I have toe offer, and that is tooe great and tooe sublyme a feeling for poore mortals toe expresse. O my Lorde, itte is a budde which blossommes, blooms, butte never dyes; itte cherishes sweet Nature, and lulls the

calme breaste toe softe, softe repose.

The Profession of Faith, which impressed Dr. Wharton by its superiority to the English Church Service, concludes thus

O God! manne as I am, frayle bye nature, fulle offe synne, yette greate God receyve me toe thye bosomme, where all is sweete contente and happynesse, alle is blysse where discontente is neverre hearde, butte where onne bond of freyndeshippe unytes alle menne. Forgive O Lorde alle our synnes, and withe thye grete goodnesse take usse alle toe thye breaste ! O cherishe usse like the sweete chickenne thatte under the coverte offe herre spreadynge wings receyves herre lyttle broode and hoverynge overe themme, keepes themme harmlesse and in safetye.

Wm. Shakespeare.

Shakesperian students of our own day will require no further evidence to determine their judgment upon the question of authenticity, and may have a difficulty in believing that anyone of the smallest critical sagacity or training can have been for an instant deceived. Yet such mawkish stuff as this, unworthy of a "Laura Matilda's" brewing, was potent enough to inspire conviction, not only in experts so learned as Parr and Chalmers, but in a wit and dramatist so brilliant as Sheridan. He was eager to secure the unpublished play of Vortigern for Drury Lane, of which he was then lessee, and his interest prevailed over that of Harris, the manager of Covent Garden, who offered a carte blanche for the privilege of representation. Upon

payment of 300l., and an undertaking to divide the profits for sixty nights, the play was made over to him. Linley having composed music for the play, and prologues being written by the Laureate and Sir James Bland Burgess, it was announced for performance in the spring of 1796, with John and Charles Kemble and Mrs. Jordan in the leading parts. On the appearance of the advertisements, Edmund Malone, the first Shakespearian critic of the day, who had already detected the spuriousness of the published manuscripts, and

In

was engaged upon an elaborate analysis of them, warned the public by handbills to put no faith in Vortigern. As counter-bills were immediately issued by the Irelands, this only had the effect of stimulating curiosity upon the subject. John Kemble, however, who was equally persuaded of the imposture, though bound by his engagement with Sheridan all his influence as stage manager to to take the part assigned to him, used make the performance ridiculous. the attempt to fix it for April Fool's Day he was overruled, but succeeded in selecting the farce of My Grandmother as an after-piece. To secure an adverse verdict from the public, he is said to have instructed a band of claqueurs to hiss at a given signal, but the charge of his having resorted to such unworthy tactics rests upon very doubtful authority.* The house was crowded, and the piece received a quiet hearing until the fifth act was reached, in the second scene of which a speech of Vortigern's contained the ominous line

And when this solemn mockery is o'er. This Kemble delivered with marked emphasis, and the clamor which followed showed that his shot had told. Having paused for a moment, he repeated the line in a tone of such sardonic scorn that no one in the house could mistake his meaning, and the rest of the piece was inaudible.

Though the author must be allowed some imitative ingenuity in modelling a few declamatory passages upon the diction of the Elizabethan dramatists, the impudence of his attempt to father his bantling on Shakespeare may be sufficiently estimated by an extract from one of the songs :

She sang, while from her eye ran down The silv'ry drop of sorrow; From grief she stole away the crown, Sweet patience too did borrow; Pensive she sat while fortune frown'd And smiling, woo'd sad melancholy. Soon after the fiasco of Vortigern, Malone published his Enquiry into the Authenticity" of the manuscripts. His exposure of their factitious archaism was fairly complete. Apart from the suspicion attaching to the unsupported

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W. H. Ireland's Preface to Vortigern, 1832.

narrative of their discovery and ownership, and any doubt as to the resemblance of the handwriting to Shakespeare's, the evidence of error in minute particulars of language, spelling, and date was so cumulative as to determine the question in the minds of all impartial judges. Many of the experts who had compromised their reputation were now satisfied that they had been duped, but a few still clung to their belief, especially George Chalmers, who, in two bulky volumes of "Apology,' marked by considerable research, attempted to refute Malone's arguments. Samuel Ireland also put forth an immediate reply to them, but rather by way of vindicating his character from the imputation of fraud, than of sustaining the credit of the papers. Any chance of his doing so with success was rendered hopeless by the simultaneous appearance of a pamphlet written by his son, William Henry Ireland, a young law-student, who avowed himself the sole author of the imposture. Induced in the first instance, according to his own account, by the sole motive of gratifying his father's ardent wish for Shakespearian relics, he had commenced by the forgery of a single autograph, and finding this succeed, was prompted partly by a mischievous desire to see how far credu lity would go in the search for antiquities," and partly by flattered vanity, to carry the deception further. When pressed by his father to disclose the source whence he obtained the manuscripts, he concocted a story that they belonged to a descendant of the actor Heminge, who had been a comrade of Shakespeare's, and acquired them as his trustee of certain bequests to an imaginary W. H. Ireland, which had never been fulfilled. The owner's readiness to part with his treasures to a namesake and presumed representative of the man whom his ancestor had defrauded, and his reluctance to let his own name be known, were thus plausibly explained.

This curious confession, in which the writer particularises the gradual process of his forgery, the places where the materials were procured, and the persons whom he entrusted with the secret, exculpates his father from any complicity in it, and pleads on the score of his youth for a lenient verdict from those

whom he had duped. Notwithstanding this avowal, the elder Ireland remained, or affected to remain, incredulous of the forgery, and for two or three years afterwards kept up a paper warfare in its defence; vindicating his own honor at the same time by discarding his son. The latter, thrown upon his wits for a livelihood, and bitterly complaining of the persecution which he underwent for an act of youthful folly, maintained himself more or less creditably by literature, until his death in 1835. He repeated his former narrative with some further details in a volume of Confessions published in 1805, and adhered to it in the preface to a reprint of Vortigern, in 1832; but is said to have made a last confession shortly before his death, in which he recanted all that he had said before as "a tissue of lies," invented for the sole purpose of gaining money.

If this final version may be trusted, it was his father who originated the forgery, and systematically employed him and his sisters in elaborating it. Other evidence has been adduced to show that the elder Ireland was not wholly incapable of the part imputed to him, but how much credit can be given to the testimony of a thrice-convicted liar against a deceased accomplice, and what may be their respective shares of criminality, it would scarcely be profitable to enquire.*

It will be more instructive to consider how a fact so unique in the annals of literature as the duping of several eminent experts at once, and under circumstances singularly favorable to the detection of fraud, may be reasonably explained. We shall hardly err in ascribing the forger's success, in great measure, to the opportuneness of the occasion which he selected. The indifference with which Shakespeare's genius had been regarded by his greatest countrymen since the

*See Willis's Current Notes, Dec. 1855, and Dr. Ingleby's Shakespeare Fabrications, app. i. 1859. Those who are curious on the subject may consult a paper recently (March 27th, 1878) read before the Royal Society of Literature, by Dr. Ingleby, in which, after reviewing by the light of fresh evidence the conclusion

to which he had formerly come, that the imposture was concocted between the father and son, he reverts to the generally accepted view that the latter was alone responsible for it.

death of Milton, was exchanged during the eighteenth century for a suddenly awakened interest which grew with the study of his works, and quickly ripened into reverence. Warburton, Johnson, Farmer, Steevens, and Malone founded a school of careful Shakespearian criticism, and the vigorous, impassioned interpretation of the poet's great characters by the acting of Garrick and the Kembles inspired a widely-diffused appreciation of his dramatic art, which in the present condition of the stage it is difficult for us to realise. Veneration for his master was carried by Garrick himself to the point of idolatry. At his villa by the Thames at Hampton, he erected a memorial temple, in which he enshrined the poet's statue by Roubiliac, and to do him public honor organised the famous Birthday Festival, which was celebrated at Stratford in 1769, and raised subscriptions for the monumental effigy now in Westminster Abbey. The success which attended these efforts testified to the spread of Shakespearian enthusiasm among a large class. Towards the close of the century this reached its height. One or two of its effects were admirable, such as the design, on which Alderman Boydell spent a fortune, of illustrating the poet's finest creations by the best contemporary art; and the impulse which the study of Elizabethan literature gave to the dramatic genius of Coleridge, Landor, and Procter, and to the critical insight of Lamb and Hazlitt. But, like all such movements, when carried beyond the bounds of moderation, it became ridiculous. The quiet little Warwickshire town in which the poet was born and died became the goal of as many pilgrimages as a mediæval martyr's tomb, and the mulberry tree that had grown in his garden was manufactured into as many relics as "the true Cross." Picture galleries were diligently hunted over for any old portrait that might bear the faintest resemblance to his. Antiquaries made it the business of their lives to collect with scrupulous care every scrap of fact connected with his pedigree and family history. Literature of the poorest quality was ransacked for contemporary verdicts upon his works, or allusions, however remote, to his theatrical career and the biographies of his fellow-actors. On the chance of dis

covering his signature to a deed or some reference to his property that had been hitherto overlooked, all available repositories of family papers, wills, and legal proceedings were unearthed and researched. The little world of collectors, in short, had gone mad in the pursuit of Shakespeariana. When the supply is limited of a genuine commodity, for which the demand is large, it is notorious that there is always a manufacture of spurious articles to meet it. W. H. Ireland was one of the first to seize the opportunity which thus presented itself, and made use for the purpose of his father's real or assumed enthusiasm as a Shakespearian collector. His imitations of sixteenth-century handwriting were undoubtedly skilful, and the precautions which he took to procure genuine paper of the period, and produce by artificial means the effect of age upon the ink and wax employed, were sufficient to disarm suspicion. The unsettled state of Elizabethan spelling was an advantage of which he availed himself to the full. He exaggerated its archaism, indeed, to the utmost limits of possibility, but kept so far within them as not to transcend the experience of men possessed, like Chalmers, of more learning than logic, who, if they could find a single instance wherein a contemporary of Shakespeare had spelt for forre" and as asse, saw no objection to the genuineness of a manuscript in which such exceptional redundancy was the invariable rule. Once having persuaded themselves that they were dealing with an authentic work of Shakespeare, the experts were blinded by their reverence to all evidence of its intrinsic worthlessness. Their faith paralysed their reason, and made a fool of their imagination. In the tumid bombast and insipid sentiment of the Profession and the letters, they discerned only the poet's glowing fancy and devout feeling. The tawdry rhetoric by which the forger thought to improve the language of Lear, and the discords which he introduced into its music, appeared to them characteristic marks of the master's daring licence; and the palpable crudeness and extravagance of Vortigern were triumphantly explained by assuming it to be" a production of his youthful genius." It required that a

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SEVERAL of the thrones of Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century were occupied by men of unusual force, freshness, and uniqueness of character. Charles XII., Frederick William, and Peter the Great were every inch of them real and not merely titular kings, and announced the existence of their several empires to the older sovereignties, who hitherto had treated them with a contemptuous and condescending toleration, with an emphasis that compelled attention. If there was little of the trappings of a king about them, there was in them abundance of that fire and force which goes to the building up and consolidation of empires, and without which the tinsel and spangle, the gold lace, the pompous ceremonial, the mock dignity, are rather ludicrous than solemnising. They were kings though they could not play at kings. Their royal progresses were not empty melodramatic or scenic posturings before the people; a practical purpose ever lay at the root of them. They did not disdain to visit the courts of justice, hear complaints, witness the administration of righteousness by their representatives and deputies, and inquire carefully into the habits and industries of the districts through which they passed. I do not suppose that these monarchs ever wasted a moment in devising methods and means to foster the sentiment of loyalty; and certainly they gave more care to the sacred duty of furthering and planning the development of their country, and the happiness and prosperity of their subjects, than the consolidation of their thrones and the establishment of their dynasties. They must have seemed wild sports and freaks of nature, grotesque enigmas and phenomena, in the eyes of their crowned brethren whose ideal of the life-work of a king was to be and look solemn, pompous, self-conscious and vacant on occasions of public pageantry; and to be considerate of personal amusement and gratification when the solemn hour was pasta mere ornamental figure-head

held up above the crowd to be cheered at, and having no other function in society to fill; or if any kind of activity is desirable in such exalted beings, rather that which goes to make them Founders of a Family than Fathers of a People.

Especially is this true of Frederick William and Peter, and of Peter, perhaps, more than of his brother of Prussia. The force that was in the Swedish hero showed itself in the line of the soldier, and not in that of the reformer and statesman; but the genius of true kingship was in him, and, had circumstances been more propitious, would have made for itself an outlet in the nobler direction. A man's development is determined by the element around him. It is not our purpose to draw any contrast between the relative worth of the lifework of these three heroes, but rather to try to realise to ourselves a picture of one of them, to walk round and round him, and learn what manner of man he was, and stamp on our imagination a conception of his modes of living, of thinking, and of looking at things; his manners, habits, tastes, and ambitions; his bearing in, and influence on, that strange Russian society into which he had been born. Not being historians, either philosophical or matter-of-fact; nor yet Russian subjects, anxious about the origin and continuance of Russian greatness, Peter the man is far more profoundly interesting to us than Peter the King, the Captain, and Reformer. There is a deep universal human interest about him as there is in every man who lives and shapes his life by the spirit within him, not wholly by the conventionalities and approved routines and views of the society in which Fate has placed him; and, as long as it holds true that the proper study of mankind is man, so long will character in its wider, and not in its local and special aspects-in its human, not in its national or sectarian developments, have a peculiar fascination for men, and enable us to grasp and hold the sublime doctrine of the in

destructible brotherhood of man in spite of the sects, breeds, and creeds into which the race has been split.

Well, then, when we stand a little back from our hero and take a glance at him, the thing that will chiefly strike us is the heterogeneousness of the elements of which he was mixed, the contradictoriness of the qualities of which the tissue of his being was woven. He was a bundle of contradictions; in nearly equal parts hero and churl, social regenerator and sot; lawless tyrant and beneficent legislator. He was born, bred, and died a barbarian; yet he was a powerful civilising energy in Russian life. He used sadly and self-reproachingly to complain that though he could reform his people he could not reform himself. He was fierce, explosive, even blood-thirsty; yet there was a good body of solid and even loveable manhood in him; a cruel tyrant, yet a scent of justice can always be suspected in his wildest outbreaks of vengeance; and there were tears in him for the sorrow-stricken, and sympathy and ready help for the widow and the orphan. It is doubtful if he ever read a book, yet he founded the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg, and even attempted to introduce the Italian Opera. His temper was cruel and irascible, yet a meek and patient defiance of it, based on reason and right, becalmed it in a moment and brought it under the control of his better mind. He had from his birth, and far on into his riper years, a nervous dread of water, yet he made himself a great sea-captain and Russia a great maritime power; and, in spite of his reckless, perverse, impatient spirit, schooled himself to learn the art of war in the bitter school of defeat and disaster, and taught it at last to his tutors and conquerors.

I cannot introduce the story of Peter's birth better than by giving an account of the manner in which Russian kings and nobles selected their brides, a custom which Peter afterwards abolished, and which looks like a survival from the times of Ahasuerus and Esther; it probably was so, for the Russians were of Oriental or Tartar descent-' Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar 'and Czar' is a title borrowed from that held by the petty chiefs descended from

Genghis Khan. A marriage-market of all the young ladies willing to become candidates for the vacancy was held in a room set apart or hired for the purpose. The aspirant to matrimony made his round, winding and interwinding among the applicants, who spared no thought, expense, or toil, in spreading out their charms to the best advantage; and after careful inspection and balancing of the rival claims, he selected the lady whose grace and beauty most fascinated his heart, and eye, and fancy. Natalia Nariskin, Peter's mother, was chosen to be the second wife of the Czar Alexis in this manner out of some fifty or sixty young ladies of breeding and beauty who all competed for the Czar's vacant heart and throne. In her case, however, the impromptu character of the selection was a farce got up to pacify and deceive the higher nobility, in whose ranks the parents of the young lady were not enrolled. The Czar had met Natalia at the house of one of his ministers, and his heart had been taken captive on the spot. A few days afterwards he returned and asked her hand in marriage, to the great alarm of his minister, who saw at once that the powerful nobles would regard the marriage as the result of an intrigue. By the minister's advice the Czar resolved to follow the popular custom, and ordered the daughters of the nobility to present themselves befora him. It was arranged that Natalie should appear among them, and that the Czar's choice of her should have a quite impromptu look. The fruit of this marriage, celebrated in Moscow in 1670, was one son and one daughter. On his return from his wanderings through Europe to learn civilisation Peter abolished this curious custom. Indeed, his achievements as a social reformer are not his least claims to greatness, accomplished as they were in the face of great opposition on the part of the whole nation, both priests and peasants, nobles and serfs, anyone of these classes being quite as ignorant, prejudiced, and barbarous as the others. He set himself to provide opportunities and occasions on which the youth of both sexes should mix freely and openly on terms of social equality. Not only did he throw his own palaces open to all married and unmarried persons who were willing to come and see