Page:Poet Lore, volume 1, 1889.djvu/604

592 development in the native growths of the present. It becomes the public to be a little jealous of another accession to the flood of forced posthumous work.

Tis an ill wind blows nobody any good" is exemplified in the publishing of the forged letters of Shelley by Edward Moxon in 1852, since they were the occasion of the much-cherished introduction by Browning, and the bibliophile thinks himself fortunate if he can get hold of a copy of this now rare and valuable book, the publication of which was suppressed as soon as it was discovered that they were bogus The history of these forgeries is a curious one. A recent number of the Book-lover recounts it as follows:

"The discovery of the forgeries was made accidentally by Mr. Francis Turner Palgrave, who happened, while glancing through the volume published by Mr. Moxon, to detect in a letter supposed to be written by Shelley, a portion of an article on Florence written for the Quarterly Review in 1840 by his father, Sir Francis Palgrave. This was sufficient to put Mr. Moxon upon the scent. At the general Post-Office the letters were declared to be genuine 'to the best of the belief' of the clerks. The postmarks were then compared with the postmarks of Byron's genuine letters to Mr. Murray, posted from the same cities in the same month and year and addressed to the same place, London. Here they failed. Where 'Ravenna' on a genuine letter was in a small, sharp type, in the Shelley letter it was a large, uncertain type; and in the letters from Venice the postmark was stamped in an italic, and not, as in the Shelley specimens, in a Roman letter.

"In other respects—seals, handwriting, manner, and even matter—everything seemed undoubtedly genuine. The onus of the matter then rested with Mr. White, the publisher, from whom the letters had been purchased.

"Mr. White published a long account of the manner in which he had purchased them from 'a well-dressed, lady-like young person,' who called upon him at different periods, giving very little account of herself, and still less of the manner in which the letters came into her possession.

"He was introduced subsequently, however, to a person who stated himself to be a son of Byron, and the husband of the lady; and from him Mr. White completed his purchases."