(42)
Chapter fifth.
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE MOTHER SHIPTON LITERATURE—MODERN AND ANCIENT FABRICATIONS—THE CAREER AND WORKS OF RICHARD HEAD, "GENTLEMAN"—A CURIOUS EXPERIMENT IN DISTILLATION—THE PLAGIARISMS OF THOMPSON THE PLAYWRIGHT—A POSSIBLE ORIGIN OF THE FIRST RECORD—GENERAL AGREEMENT IN THE OLDEST VERSIONS OF MOTHER SHIPTON'S PROPHECIES—HAD MOTHER SHIPTON AN ACTUAL EXISTENCE?—THE BALANCE OF PROBABILITIES.
Sufficient materials have been brought together in the preceding pages, to give some scope now for critical examination.
The three earliest records in the British Museum Library, in relation to Mother Shipton, agree closely with each other, and none of them contain the lines printed on page 13, in my first Chapter, ending with the too celebrated couplet:—
"The world to an end shall come,
In eighteen hundred and eighty one."
The lines in question, and the notorious prophecy about the end of the world, were fabricated about twenty years ago, by Mr.
