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therefore every claim to that information which I have shewn would be required in the ecclesiastical and common-law Courts, and which in the present case the Literary World has an equal right to demand; and judging of these papers merely as they appear in the printed copy and in the fac-similes, which I make no doubt faithfully represent their originals,[1] I undertake
- ↑ You may perhaps wonder that curiosity did not lead me to view and examine these pretended originals. I very early resolved not to inspect them at the house of the possessor, and I was glad to find that my friend Dr. Farmer, and Mr. Steevens, had made the same determination; from an apprehension that the names of persons who might be supposed more than ordinarily conversant with the subject of these MSS. might give a countenance to them, to which, from the secrecy that was observed relative to their discovery, they were not entitled. I had, however, no objection to view them elsewhere; and therefore very early after their first production, when a gentleman invited me to see these inestimable treasures, as he considered them, at his house, where, as I understood him, he frequently had them in his hands, (in which I afterwards found I had misapprehended him,) I readily accepted the invitation, and waited on him on a subsequent day by his appointment: but these rarities were not then visible. A few days afterwards, having obtained a fac-simile of the hand-writing of the earl of Southampton, I informed him by a line, that if he could procure the letter said to be written by that nobleman to Shakspeare, I could furnish a fac-simile of his un-
