to prove, from 1. the Orthography, 2. the Phraseology, 3. the Dates given or deducible by inference, and 4. the Dissimilitude of the Hand-writing, that not a single paper or deed in this extraordinary volume was written or executed by the person to whom it is ascribed.
That your lordship may see at one view the extent and quantity of these inventions, I shall, in the first place, lay before you a List of them. In the newly published volume they appear in the following order:
doubted hand-writing, which would at once ascertain the truth or falsehood of the supposed original: I added, that I wished my name not to be mentioned; and my reason for doing so was, that I was unwilling it should directly or indirectly give the smallest sanction to these papers. He did not, however, procure the Letter in question, and I gave myself no further trouble about the matter. This transaction, as I have been informed by several of my friends, having been related, devested of the circumstances which led to it, and decorated, as is often the case where tales are transmitted from ear to ear, with circumstances that did not belong to it, I have thought it proper to state the plain and simple fact.—If there was any breach of the strictest propriety and decorum in accepting the invitation thus made, or afterwards, in consequence of that invitation, in proposing to the inviter a test from which no genuine paper ever shrunk, I confess I am not clear-sighted enough to discover it.
