“We will, at least, listen to you,” said Robinson.

“Let us suppose, then, some learned Theban stumbling upon this brief record of an obscure event, and, as usual, making (if only because he had discovered what nobody in the world either knew or cared about) a huge commentary upon it; concluding from the internal evidence, the simplicity of the style, the absence of all imaginable motives for misrepresentation, and some external corroborative fragments painfully gleaned from the history of the period, that these sentences formed a genuine, literal, historic account of certain events which transpired in England in the year 1850.  This, of course, would of itself be sufficient to make ten Dr. Dickkopfs turn to and prove the contrary; and any one of them, I imagine, might, and probably would, thus reply.  Excuse his clumsy style.  He would say:—­

“’That there may have been, and very probably was, some nucleus of fact which may have served as a groundwork for these pseudo-historical memorials, is not denied:  but to regard that document of which it is professedly a condensation as a genuine record of the period in question, can only, we conceive, be the infelicity of an essentially uncritical mind.  Most evidently, whether we regard the known events and relations of that age (as far as they have come down to us) or the internal characteristics of the document itself, we discover unequivocal traces of an unhistoric origin.  Let us look at both these sources of evidence in order.  If we mistake not, the document, even as it now stands, bears on its very front, that the original document, so far from being a literal description of the events of the time to which it professedly related, was allegorical, or at most historico-allegorical, and most likely designed broadly to caricature and satirize some perceived tendencies or conditions of the English religious development in certain parties of that age.  But whether it be, or be not, reducible to the class of allegorieo-ecclesiastico-political satire, certainly no person of critical discernment can for a moment allow it to be a literal statement of historic events.  And first to look at the internal evidence.

“’Is it possible to overlook the singular character of the names which everywhere meet us?  They, in fact, tell their own tale, and almost, as it were, proclaim of themselves that they are allegorical.  Wiseman, Newman (two of them, be it observed), Masterman, Philpotts, Wilde.  Who, that has been gifted with even a moderate share of critical acumen, can fail to see that these are all fictitious names, invented by the allegorist either to set forth certain qualities or attributes of certain persons whose true names are concealed, or, as I rather think, to embody certain tendencies of the times, or represent certain party characteristics.  Thus the name “Wiseman” is evidently chosen to represent the proverbial craft which was attributed to the Church of Rome; and Nicholas