INTERCHAPTER XVIII.

APPLICATION OF THE LAY. CALEB D'ANVERS.

IRISH

LAW. ICON BASILIKE. JUNIUS. THOMAS A KEMPIS.

FELIX HEMMERLEN.

A NEEDLE LARGER THAN

GAMMER GURTON'S AND A MUCH COARSER THREAD.

THOMAS WARTON AND BISHOP STILL. THE JOHN

WEBSTERS, THE ALEXANDER CUNNINGHAMS, THE CURINAS AND THE STEPHENS.

Lo que soy, razona poco

Porque de sombra a mi va nada, o poco.

FUENTE DESEADA.

THE sagacious reader will already have applied the Lay of the Little Woman to the case of Dr. Dove's disciple and memorialist, and mentally apostrophizing him may have said,—

de te

Fabula narratur.

Even so, dear reader, the Little Woman was a type of me, and yet but an imperfect one, for my case is far more complicated than hers. The simple doubt which distressed her, (and a most distressing one it must be admitted that it was) was whether she were herself or not; but the compound question which has been mooted concerning me is whether I am myself or somebody else, and whether somebody else is himself or me.

When various conjectures were formed and assertions hazarded concerning the Author or Editor of the Craftsman, some representing Caleb D'Anvers as an imaginary person, a mere fictitious character made use of to screen the performances of men in the dark, that formidable opponent of Sir Robert Walpole's administration said, "I hope it will not be expected that I should stand still and see myself reasoned out of my existence."

Every one knows that it is possible to be reasoned out of our rights and despoiled in consequence of our property in a court of law; but every one may not know that it is possible to

be reasoned out of our existence there: I do not mean condemned to death, and executed accordingly upon the testimony of false witnesses, as those who suffered for the Popish plot were; or upon circumstantial evidence, honestly produced, and disproved when it was too late; but that an individual may be judicially declared to be not in existence, when actually present in the Court to give the Lawyers and the Law the lie.

On the 2d of March, 1784, the Irish Attorney General was heard before the Irish House of Lords in the case of Hume and Loftus. In the course of his argument he contended that judgements were of the most sacred nature, and that to reverse one was in effect to overturn the law and the constitution; the record was binding, and a bar to all other evidence being produced to the Court. "He instanced a case wherein a judgement had been given on the presumed death of a man's wife, who as afterwards appeared was not dead, but was produced in person to the Court and was properly identified, and it was prayed to the Court to

reverse the judgement given on supposition of her death which had been pronounced by the same Court, as in the pleading stated. Nevertheless the Court with the Woman before their eyes, pronounced her dead, and confirmed the judgement, saying, that the verdict was not that which was binding, but the judgement in consequence of the verdict having become a record, could not be reversed."

This woman upon hearing such a decision concerning herself pronounced, might well have called in question not her identity but the evidence of her senses, and have supposed that she was dreaming, or out of her wits rather than that justice could be so outraged, and common sense so grossly insulted in a Court of Law.

Happily my case is in no worse court than a Court of Criticism, a Court in which I can neither be compelled to plead nor to appear.

Dr. Wordsworth rendered good service to English History when he asked who wrote Εικων Βασιλικη, for it is a question of great historical importance, and he has shown, by a

careful investigation of all the evidence which it has been possible to collect, that it is the work of Charles himself, confirming thus that internal evidence which is of the most conclusive kind.

Who was Junius is a question which is not likely ever to be determined by discussion after so many fruitless attempts; but whenever the secret shall by any chance be discovered, considerable light will be thrown upon the political intrigues of the earlier part of a most important reign.

But who or what I am can be of no importance to any but myself.

More than one hundred and fifty treatises are said to have been published upon the question whether Thomas a Kempis was the Author of the well known book de Imitatione Christi. That question affects the Augustinians; for if it were proved that this native of Kemp near Cologne, Thomas Hammerlein by name, were the transcriber only and not the writer of that famous treatise, they would lose the brightest ornament of their order. This Hammerlein