Page:An Inquiry into the Authenticity of certain Papers and Instruments attributed to Shakspeare.djvu/39

Rh preliminary remarks. Your lordship will at once perceive, that it has not been dipped in that stream in which Achilles is said to have been plunged by his mother. It is indeed so far from being vulnerable only in one place, that there is scarcely a single spot in this and all the other papers, in which they are not assailable. The badges of fiction are so numerous, that the only apprehension I entertain is, that you may be fatigued before I have done, for I can with perfect truth say with the Orator,—“non mibi tàm copia quàm modus in dicendo quærendus est;” and the topicks of detection are so obvious that they must immediately strike every reader who has been at all conversant with these studies; consequently many of the observations I shall make, before these papers shall have passed through the press, may be anticipated by others. However, I shall proceed in my own way; and if any such coincidence should be found, it will only serve to corroborate my arguments.

next observation I beg leave to make is, that this and some other of these papers have, each of them, an archetype, after which it has been formed; a model, either