‘The taste of the time was somewhat coarse,’ observed Mr. Erin. It was almost incredible even to himself, but he felt that his tone was deprecatory; he was actually making apologies for the Bard of Avon to this young gentleman of seventeen.
‘Nevertheless I cannot believe that Shakespeare pandered to it,’ observed William Henry gravel. ‘These things are in my opinion introduced by the players of the period, and afterwards inserted in the stage copies of the plays from which they were literally printed; and thus the ear of England has been abused. If the discovery of this manuscript should clear Shakespeare’s memory from these ignoble stains, it will be a subject of national congratulation.’
‘Very true,’ assented Mr. Erin. He felt that the remark was insufficient, wanting in enthusiasm, and altogether upon a lower level than the other’s arguments; but the fact was his mind was dwelling upon more personal considerations. He was reflecting upon his own high position as the proprietor of this unique treasure and on what Malone would say now.
These reflections, while they filled him with self-complacency, made him set a higher value upon William Henry than ever; for, like the magician in the Arabian story, he could do nothing without his Aladdheen to help him.
CHAPTER XX.
A TRUE LOVER.
If Mr. Erin imagined that ‘what Malone would say now’—i.e. after the discovery of the ‘Lear’ manuscript—must needs be in the way of apology and penitence, he was doomed to disappointment. So far from the circumstance carrying conviction to the soul of that commentator, and making him remorseful for his past transgressions, it seemed to incite him to the greater insolence, just as (so Mr. Erin expressed it) the discovery of a new Scripture might have incited the Devil not only against it, but against the old ones. He reiterated all his old objections and fortified them with new ones; he refused to accept the testimony of the Hemynge note of hand, which had satisfied his friend and ally Mr. Wallis; he repeated his horrid suggestions that the Shakespeare lock was a girl’s ringlet, and, in a word, ‘raged’ like the heathen. Having declined to look at the ‘Lear’ upon the ground of ‘life being too short for the examination of such trash,’ he pronounced it to be ‘plain and palpable forgery.’ ‘Three words,’ he said, ‘would suffice for the matter,’ and published ‘An Inquiry into Certain Papers Attributed to Shakespeare,’ extending to four hundred pages quarto.
Whereto Mr. Erin responded at equal length, with ‘a studious avoidance of the personality which Mr. Malone had imported into the controversy,’ but at the same time taking the liberty to observe that in acting his various parts on the stage of life, Fortune had denied that gentleman every quality essential to each, inasmuch as he was a critic without taste, a poet without imagination, a scholar without learning, a wit without humour, an antiquary without the least knowledge of antiquity, and a man of gallantry, in his dotage. This was a very pretty quarrel as it stood; but, far from being confined to two antagonists, it was taken up by scores on each side: it was no longer ‘a gentle passage of arms,’ as the combat à outrance used to be euphoniously called, but a mêlée. Only the ancient rules of a fair fight were utterly disregarded; both parties went at it hammer and tongs, and hit one another anywhere and with anything. One would have almost imagined that instead of a disagreement among scholars it had been a theological controversy.