Barnett lecture - In My Library

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New York collector Edward Cheney. Of these I may incidentally say that - C. Nodier was a leader in the romanticist school, a member of the French Academy, warm of heart rather than elevated in character, an author of genuine humour, fertile fancy, of facile and delightful pen, a keen loner and collector of old books.

Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le Duc of Paris was the most distinguished champion and leading exponent of french gothic, and his works joined to his clear & picturesque writings, have I believe exercised greater influence on english architects and archeologists than any contemporary foreign writer of Cheney I know little expect that he was a brother crank in bookloving

A comparison of texts makes it quite clear that the source of shakespears greek & roman plays is Sir Thomas North's translation

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of Plutarch's Lives, and here we have in a massive volume the edition of 1631. Shakespeare has "gone over to the majority" before this book leaves the press, yet, as the first fine folio issues are the same - page for page, line for line, word for word, letter for letter - except that with each succeeding issue additional lives are tacked on at the end of the vol - we have the satisfaction of looking on the page exactly as Shakespere looked at it on his table, while he was converting whole paragraphs of the strong nervous prose of North, into the magic poetry of his own blank verse, converting it for with surprisingly few verbal alterations.

The Shkr. collection includes reprints of many of the sources from which the plots of the dramas may have been drawn, and of the jest books he quotes, but

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they have not for me the charm of these two early books

Those who have read J Payn's novel "The Talk of the Town", will remember the interesting use he makes in it of the incident - known as the "Ireland Shakespere forgeries" - occuring at the close of the 18th century. To Saml. Ireland, the well known engraver antiquarian, and dramatic student, his adopted son - Wm. Henry - brought several letters and documents, in the professed handwriting of Queen Elizabeth - Jno Hemgnye -, The Earl of Southampton and shakespere, followed by a version of Kynge Leare, and an hitherto unknown play - apparently in the autograph of the poet - titled "Vortigern". He explained his possession of these rarieties by saying an old Worcestershire friend

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of ancient family had found them in the lumber closet among the old [???iments] and given them to him. The elder Ireland examined them, as did other experts, men of note and name - and - I think honestly, convinced of their genuineness, exhibited them: - also, securing subscribers, printed the text, with facsimiles of some of the documents, including the pen and ink portrait of Shk. I have only the 800 issue of this book. Toronto Univ. Library had a 4th copy, which - with the Audubon's Birds - were the two last of its treasures that I consulted a few days before their total destruction by fire 14 Feb 1890. I sometimes wish I had taken them away - The matter made some noise, & The english literary world of that day were divided in opinion as to the honesty of the whole production, and Edmond Malone, an Irish barrister of titled family and good means, living in London, led the sceptics. He eventually

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published an exposure of what he thought was an elaborate and deliberate fraud. A copy of this "Inquiry into the Authenticity &c," was purchased by S. Ireland, and now forms the chief item of a most curious section in this collection of Shakesperiana; The book is thickly covered with his autographic notes in ink, and they show a warmth of vigorous protest, and a love of fight, which make them quite cheerful reading, in the cold of a Canadian winter.

With this unique and personal work is bound up (in crushed green morrocco) the "reply" he printed, title. "Mr Ireland's vindication of his conduct"; - and the book (in this shape) has been in the libraries of those zealous Shakesperians Dawson Turner, and Col. Alexander Nicholson of Melton.

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