to a friend that they were "a parcel of forgeries, studiously and ably calculated to deceive the public." He judged them to be the work of "some person of genius and talents"--not one of the Irelands, certainly--who "ought to have been better employed." But he kept this verdict private; after all, a scholar or antiquary risked lifelong infamy if he denounced as fraudulent a poem or a play that was later proved to be Shakespeare's. So doubts about the papers' authenticity took the form of rumors.from Smithsonian Magazine: The Greatest Shakespeare Hoax
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