Page:An Inquiry into the Authenticity of certain Papers and Instruments attributed to Shakspeare.djvu/18

Rh the course of their investigation, who, though they may fall within this description, may not be endowed with your lordship’s sagacity, or may not have devoted so many years as you have done to the most curious literary researches, as well as to all the liberal arts, is the object of the present inquiry; which, with your permission, I mean to lay before that tribunal by which the adjudication on one of the most important questions that has for many years been agitated in the literary world must now be given.

his Preface the Editor informs us, that all the scholars, all the men of taste, antiquaries, and heralds, who viewed them previous to their publication, have ‘‘unanimously testified in favour of their authenticity; and declared, that where there was such a mass of evidence internal and external, it was impossible, amidst such various sources of detection, for to have hazarded so much without betraying itself, and consequently, that these papers can be no other than the production of Shakspeare himself.”

is meant here by external evi-