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This telling of curious story is not yet complete. A few years later Wm. H. Ireland confessed that the whole mass of these varied documents were his forgeries done before he was 20 years of age, and he now published his disgrace to exonerate and show how completely he had imposed upon the man who adopted & educated him.
Payne's Novel ("The Talk of the Town") very properly weaves in a love story, giving as the motive of the imposition, the adopted son's endeavour, by gifts the old gentleman would value, to win over his sanction to a marriage with his daughter.
A copy of "The Confession" is one of a series of books - not being in the Memorial
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Library at Stratford on Avon England - that has been sent there from Stratford Ont. The book is interesting reading; - and to cap this strange take Dr. Ingleby says the confession is as much an invention and forgery as much an ethical & mental curiosity as any other part of the production of one, who through a fairly long life, and with exceptional natural abilities made a signal failure of it, by trying to do what Prest. Lincoln said could not be done - "fool all the public all the time." I possess many of his other works - acknowledged and unacknowledged - also autographs by himself or his wife.
New England liberal letters has a germinal life at Concord Mass. 50 years ago, and no section of American mental activity so much interests me. The books - its outcome - that I wish to call your attention to - are the
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four years issues (not quite complete) of "the Dial" - the quarterly organ of the Brookfarm fraternity, which I secured simply by steady high bidding at auction against the venerable Dr Cordiner (of the "Church of the Messiah", Montreal), more than 20 years ago. I remember the brokers and ordinary bidders soon left us alone, mildly wondering what was the attraction in the old numbers of a semireligious, shortlived review. Then there are Emersons and Thoreaus works and lives. M Fuller's (Countess de Ossoli's "Memoris" the joint production of Channing Clarke and Emerson - also some of her essays - Many of Theo. Parkers works - G W Curtis - the Alcotts father and daughter - Ripley -
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Hawthorne, and odd books from the smaller stars that go to make up that brilliant and isolated galaxy which has added so much to the fame of what to me one fine autumn day looked little more than a charming well to do and restful village.
A full shelf of Charles Dickens, made additionally interesting by either first or very early impressions of the quaint pictures by Phiz, Leech and Cruickshank, stands opposite a shelf of "Emblems", those silent graphic Parables with their unrestricted wealth of imagery writing the art symbols - and the moral proverbs - of all past time and peoples. They are attractive to the student of ethics, and emphasize the fact that our smart age - whatever else it discovers - makes no discoveries in pure morals: - and they are attractive to the art student because of the different qualities of the
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of the engraving, and the varied ornament used. Having once (last season) occasion to talk about early games - more especially childrens games - I found (to my satisfaction) that the Emblems, - especially the Dutch of the 17th Century - one of the best sources from which to quote in illustration.
Some three dozen vols. and many pamphlets devoted to Faust - starting with the German Puppet play and Marlows impressive blank verse drama, and concluding with numerous versions of Goethe's highly finished fifty year poem, and the modern realistic Faust and Faustine novels, gives a fairly representative picture of an episode in mans development that - it seems to me - must
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