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The Works of William Mason

... In Four Volumes

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INSCRIPTION X. UNDER A PICTURE OF THE EDITOR OF SHAKSPEARE'S MANUSCRIPTS, 1796.
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146

INSCRIPTION X. UNDER A PICTURE OF THE EDITOR OF SHAKSPEARE'S MANUSCRIPTS, 1796.

PARODY.

Four Forgers, born in one prolific age,
Much critical acumen did engage.
The first was soon by doughty Douglas scar'd,
Though Johnson would have screen'd him, had he dar'd;
The next had all the cunning of a Scot
The third invention, genius—nay, what not?
Fraud, now exhausted, only could dispense
To her fourth son, their three-fold impudence.
 

When Lauder first produced his forgery respecting Milton, Dr. Johnson ushered it into the world by a preface, and afterwards writ Lauder's recantation. Some of his numerous biographers have endeavoured to prove the Doctor no party concerned; however this be, the virulence he afterwards shewed to Milton in the Life which he writ of him for the booksellers, leads fairly to support my assertion, that he would have defended Lauder, had he been in any sort defensible.

The translator of Fingal, Temora, &c.

The discoverer and transcriber of Rowley's Poems.