Now Dr. Blick has conclusively shown in his critical edition of the mass of ancient literature, commonly known as The Statute Book, that the use of italics is common to distinguish later interpolation.
This discovery is here of the first importance. Not only does it destroy the case for the phrase, "Deleted by the Censor," as a proof of an Inferior Limit, 2208, but in this particular instance it is conclusive evidence that we have interpolation here, for it is obvious that after the establishment of a Censorship the right would exist to delete a name in the text, and a contemporary Editor would warn the reader in the fashion which he has, as a fact, employed.
So much for the negative argument. We can be certain after Dr. Blick's epoch-making discovery that even the year 2208 is not our Inferior Limit for A, but we have what is much better, conclusive evidence of a much earlier Superior Limit, to which I must claim the modest title of discoverer.
There is a passage in A (pp. 170-171) notoriously corrupt, in which a dramatic dialogue between three characters, the Duchess, Major Charles and Clara, is no longer readable. All attempts to reconstitute it have failed, and on that account scholars have too much tended to neglect it.
Now I submit that though the passage is hopelessly corrupt its very corruption affords us a valuable indication.
The Duchess, in a stage indication, is made to address "Major Charles." It is notorious that the term "Major" applied to a certain functionary in a religious body probably affiliated to the Jesuits, known to modern scholars under a title drawn from the only contemporary fragment concerning it, as "Old Booth's Ramp." This society was suppressed in America in the year 2012, and the United States were the last country in which it survived.
No matter how correct, therefore, the text is in this passage, we may be certain that even the careless scribe took the contemporary existence of a "major" for granted. And we may be equally certain that even our existing version of A incorporated in the only text we possess, was not written later than the first years of the twenty-first century. We have here, therefore, a new superior limit of capital importance, but, what is even more important, we can fix with fair accuracy a new inferior limit as well.
In the Preface (whose original attachment to A is undoubted) we have the title "Captain Monologue," p. XII (note again the word "Captain," an allusion to "Booth's Ramp,") and in an anonymous fragment (B.M. m.s.s., 336 N., (60)), bearing the title, "Club Gossip," I have found the following conclusive sentence: "He used to bore us stiff, and old Burton invented a brand new title for him, 'Captain Monologue,' about a year before he died, which the old chap did an hour or two after dinner on Derby Day."
Now this phrase is decisive. We have several allusions to "dinner" (in all, eight, and a doubtful ninth, tabulated by Ziethen in his Corpus. Ins. Am.). They all refer to some great public function the exact nature of which is lost, but which undoubtedly held a great place in political life. At what intervals this function occurred we cannot tell, but the coincident allusion to Derby Day settles it.
The only Lord Derby canonized by the Church died in 1960 and the promulgation of Beatification (the earliest date that would permit the use of the word "day" for this Saint) was issued by Pope Urban XV in May, 2003. It is, therefore, absolutely certain that A was written at some time between the years 2003 to 2012. Nearer than that I do not profess to fix it; but I confess that the allusion (p. 226) to drinking coffee coupled with the corresponding allusion to drinking coffee in a license issued for a Lockhart's Restaurant in 2006 inclines me to that precise year as the year in which A appeared, or at any rate was written.