Peel of friend Will's theft of the speech in
_Hamlet_ concerning an actor's excellencye."
From top to toe the imposture is obvious. But the general reader of
the eighteenth century was confiding, unsuspicious, greedy of novel
information. The description of the source of the document seemed to
him precise enough to silence doubt.
III
The _Theatrical Review_ of 1763 succeeded in launching the fraud on a
quite triumphal progress. Again and again, as the century advanced,
was G. Peel's declaration to "friende Marle" paraded, without hint of
its falsity, before snappers-up of Shakespearean trifles. Seven years
after its first publication, the epistle found admission in a slightly
altered setting to so reputable a periodical as the _Annual Register_.
Burke was still directing that useful publication, and whatever
information the _Register_ shielded, was reckoned to be of veracity.
"G. Peel" and "friende Marle" were there, in the year 1770, suffered
to exchange their confidences in the most honourable environment.
Another seven years passed, and in 1777 there appeared an ambitious
work of reference, entitled _Biographia Literaria, or a Biographical
History of Literature_, which gave its author, John Berkenhout, a
free-thinking physician, his chief claim to remembrance.
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