17, etc., etc.
Now which is the right one? Is either the right one? I inspect mine
distrustfully. It is soiled, and has evidently been folded; it is
scribbled with calculations; it has all the aspect of a _venerable
vetuste_. That it came from the Standly collection, I am convinced. But
that other pretender in the (now dispersed) "--Collection"? And was
not Samuel Ireland (_nomen invisum_!) the, if not fraudulent, at least
too-credulous father of one William Henry Ireland, who, at eighteen,
wrote _Vortigern and Rowena_, and palmed it off as genuine Shakespeare?
I fear me--I much fear me--that, in the words of the American showman,
I have been "weeping over the wrong grave."
To prolong these vagrant adversaria would not be difficult. Here, for
example, dated 1779, are the _Coplas_ of the poet Don Jorge Manrique,
which, having no Spanish, I am constrained to study in the renderings of
Longfellow. Don Jorge was a Spaniard of the Spaniards, Commendador of
Montizon, Knight of the Order of Santiago, Captain of a company in the
Guards of Castile, and withal a valiant _soldado_, who died of a wound
received in battle. But the attraction of my volume is, that, at the
foot of the title-page, in beautiful neat script, appear the words,
"Robert Southey. Paris.
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