Page:An Inquiry into the Authenticity of certain Papers and Instruments attributed to Shakspeare.djvu/45

Rh incontrovertible proofs of that forgery, they were all given ex abundanti, and the cause, in my apprehension, might have been rested on those specimens alone. In like manner, in the present case, it might be sufficient merely to contrast the orthography of this and the other papers with that of Elizabeth herself, or any of the writers of her age.

In the controversy above-mentioned, it was justly observed that the orthography and language of the poems called Rowley’s, were not the language or orthography of any particular period, but of various and different ages. In the papers before us, the orthography is infinitely more objectionable; for I will venture to assert, without the smallest apprehension of being refuted, that the spelling in this letter, as well as in all the other papers, is not only not the orthography of Elizabeth, or of her time, but is for the most part the orthography of no age whatsoever. From the time of Henry the Fourth, I have perused, I will not say several hundred, but some thousand deeds and other MSS., and I never once found the copulative and spelt as it is here, with a final e. The same observation may be made on the