United States or Serbia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"One evening I was sitting alone it was about nine o'clock in the middle of summer there came a gentle tap at the door. I opened the door myself, and a gentleman said with great modesty, 'Mr Tate, I am Mr Surtees of Mainsforth.
Gurney. Nor would such a hoax argue any unusual moral obliquity. Surtees of Mainsforth, in other respects an honourable man, took in Sir Walter Scott with forged ballads, and never undeceived his friend. Southey played off a hoax with his book The Doctor.
It is, of course, entirely at your service, if you think it worthy of a place in a new edition of the "Minstrelsy." I have no room to inflict more ballads or legends on you; and remain, most faithfully yours, LETTER: From Jonathan Oldbuck, Esq., of Monkbarns, to Robert Surtees, Esq., Mainsforth. Monkbarns, June 1.
No literary forgeries were ever much better done than the sham ballads which Surtees of Mainsforth imposed on Sir Walter Scott. The poems were spirited and good of their kind; and though we wonder now that some of them could take in an expert, it is by no means assured that we are even to-day acquainted with the whole of Surtees' frauds.
LETTER: From Robert Surtees, Esq., of Mainsforth, to Jonathan Oldbuck, Esq., of Monkbarns. It is well known that Mr. In the following letter this ingenious antiquary plays the same game with Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck, of Monkbarns, the celebrated antiquary. Mainsforth, May 9, 1815.
Nay, excuse the covetousness of an Antiquary, my dear sir; I well know that nothing I could offer were worth a tithe of your priceless discovery, the oldest printed Scots Ballad extant. It shall suffice for me to look on it, under the roof of Mainsforth, when next I make a raid across the Border. I have conquered my passions, and can obey the last of the Commandments.
Word Of The Day