Southey's Ladurlad, and almost in as forlorn a state. Before she arrived, night had closed, and it became dark. She had reckoned rightly upon her dog's fidelity, but counted too much upon his sagacious instinct. He did not recognise his mistress at that unusual hour, and in a curtailed dress wherein he had never seen her before, and instead of wagging his tail, and fawning, and whining, to bid her welcome as she had hoped, he began to bark angrily, with faithful but unfortunate vigilance, mistaking her for a stranger who could have no good reason for coming about the premises at that time of night. And the Lay concludes with the Little Woman's miserable conclusion that as the dog disowned her she was not the dog's Mistress, not the person who dwelt in that house, and whom she had supposed herself to be, in fact not herself, but somebody else, she did not know who. INTERCHAPTER XVIII. APPLICATION OF THE LAY. CALEB D'ANVERS. IRISH LAW. ICON BASILIKE. JUNIUS. THOMAS À KEMPIS. FELIX HEMMERLEN. A NEEDLE LARGER THAN GAMMER GURTON'S AND A MUCH COARSER THREAD. THOMAS WARTON AND BISHOP STILL. THE JOHN WEBSTERS, THE ALEXANDER CUNNINGHAMS, THE CURINAS AND THE STEPHENS. _Lo que soy, razona poco Porque de sombra a mi va nada, o poco._ FUENTE DESEADA. The sagacious reader will already have applied the Lay of the Little Woman to the case of Dr. Dove's disciple and memorialist, and mentally apostrophizing him may have said,— _de te Fabula narratur._ Even so, dear reader, the Little Woman was a type of me, and yet but an imperfect one, for my case is far more complicated than hers. The simple doubt which distressed her, (and a most distressing one it must be admitted that it was) was whether she were herself or not; but the compound question which has been mooted concerning me is whether I am myself or somebody else, and whether somebody else is himself or me. When various conjectures were formed and assertions hazarded concerning the Author or Editor of the Craftsman, some representing Caleb D'Anvers as an imaginary person, a mere fictitious character made use of to screen the performances of men in the dark, that formidable opponent of Sir Robert Walpole's administration said, “I hope it will not be expected that I should stand still and see myself reasoned out of my existence.” Every one knows that it is possible to be reasoned out of our rights and despoiled in consequence of our property in a court of law; but every one may not know that it is possible to be reasoned out of our existence there: I do not mean condemned to death, and executed accordingly upon the testimony of false witnesses, as those who suffered for the Popish plot were; or upon circumstantial evidence, honestly produced, and disproved when it was too late; but that an individual may be judicially declared to be not in existence, when actually present in the Court to give the Lawyers and the Law the lie.