I must confess to some mirth when I read
that title-page:
HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK
A Tragedy
By
THOMAS BRAGDON, ESQUIRE
The conceit was well worthy of my late friend in one of his most fanciful
moods. In other volumes the same substitution had been made, so that to
one not versed in literature it would have seemed as though "Thomas
Bragdon, Esquire," had been the author not only of _Hamlet_, but also of
_Vanity Fair_, _David Copperfield_, _Rienzi_, and many other famous works,
and I am not sure but that the great problem concerning the "Junius Letters"
was here solved to the satisfaction of Bragdon, if not to my own. There
were but two exceptions in the box to the rule of substituting the name of
Bragdon for that of the actual author; one of these was an Old Testament,
on the fly-leaf of which Bragdon had written, "To my dear friend Bragdon,"
and signed "The Author." I think I should have laughed for hours over this
delightful reminder of my late friend's power of imagination had not the
second exception come almost immediately to hand--a copy of Milton, which
I recognized at once as one I had sent Tom at Christmas two years before
his death, and on the fly-leaf of which I had written, "To Thomas Bragdon,
with the love of, his faithfully, Philip Marsden.
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