Ireland

Ireland, SAMUEL WILLIAM HENRY, the author of the notorious Shakespeare forgeries, was born in London in 1777, the son of Samuel Ireland, a dull and credulous, but honest dealer in old books and prints, and author of a few books of travel illustrated by himself. After some years' schooling in France, the boy was apprenticed at seventeen to a London conveyancer, and ere long was tempted by his father's unintelligent enthusiasm for Shakespeare to forge an autograph of the poet on a carefully-copied old lease. His audacity grew with the growing credulity of his dupes, and ere long locks of hair, private letters, annotated books, &c. were plentifully produced, and all inquirers into the how and the where fubbed off with lying explanations. Boswell, Wharton, Dr Parr, and hundreds more came, saw, and believed; but those, like Malone, really qualified to judge denounced the imposture almost from the first. Ireland's audacity now reached the folly of producing a deed of Shakespeare's bequeathing his books and papers to a William-Henrye Irelaunde, an assumed ancestor. Next a new historical play entitled Vortigern was announced, and carefully concealed until its production by Sheridan at Drury Lane. It was rapid, worthless, and un-Shakespearean, and was hopelessly damned at once, and this fate nipped in the bud the growth of a projected series of historical plays, of which indeed that on Henry II. had already been written. The uneasiness of the impudent young scoundrel's father at length getting the better of his credulity, he demanded from his son a satis- factory explanation of the source of the papers, and the young man was forced to confess his villany. He published his confession in a tract in 1796, and more fully in his Confessions in 1805. The father's death in 1800 was supposed to have been hastened by his shame, and the son soon sank into obscure poverty, eking out a miserable living as a book-seller's hack, till his death on 17th April 1835.