"VORTIGERN"

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22509, 17 September 1938, Page 20

"VORTIGERN"

Gulling the Age of Reason

The Fourth' Forger. By John Mair. ■net.

Cobden-Sanderson. 244 pp. (8/6

The "Fourth Forger", was William Ireland; forge* at the age of 19 of deeds, letters, a version of "Lear," and a play called "Vortigern," all purporting to have been written by Shakespeare., j His three predecessors were I Lauder, Macpherson, - and. { Chatterton. The alleged age i of reason, the eighteenth } century, was singularly l' credulous of literary and other impostures. In .addi- ■ j tion to the four pieces. of I literary forgery, "scientists and scholars accepted Fsalmanazar, Mary- Tofts (who gave birth to rabbits), J the. Upas Tree, and crude practical jokes such as.,that j of the Shakespearean edi? j tor, Steevens, who scratched . I on chimney-slabs, in J pseudo-runic characters, the j device, "Here King Hard- ( cnut drank a wine-horn J 1 dry, 1 * stared about him, and \ diecL" • . „ _, William Ireland's exploits > and ./misadventures - - are in-

greater care could hav.e -postponed disgrace for some years. His work deceived Boswell, Pye, Pitt, Warton, and the Prince of Wales, but not

teresting and amusing reading. He -. was--'impelled -to his deceptions'lby " his • own > neurotic.*. craving ,- for :• ex- ~ ~ citement, ~by his • father's-'. . Malone, whose critical and lega obsession - -with- Shakespeare,- and skill blew Ireland's work to pieces, by the of Chatterton. All these transactions, especially,the (His worst were Ghatter- sensational production for a night ton's: ignorant, foolish orthography of "Vortigern," are pleasantly and and-dating.) The youth-shad ability, sharply described by Mr Mair. Hxs as ''Vortigern" shows. His zeal* and book is a clear account of literary industry were commendable. But and dramatic England at the end exposure was inevitable, though of the eighteenth century.