THE GRAND SOLEMNITY OF THE TAYLOR’S FUNERAL.
[The edition here followed was published in the year 1816, without any mention of the place of issue. It contains also the two parts of Leper the Taylor. The full title is:—‘Fun upon Fun, or, the Comical Merry Tricks of Leper the Taylor. In two Parts. To which are added, The Grand Solemnity of the Taylor’s Funeral, who lay Nine Nights on his own Shop-Board, together with his Last Will.’ It has been collated with an edition published in 1820, and with another, apparently of English origin, without date. This chap-book, as has been explained in the Introduction, Vol. I., p. 48, is believed to be the third part of Leper the Taylor; and M‘Vean has given his sanction to the conjecture by entering it in his list of Opera Dugaldi. Upon a close study of the work, however, and after a careful comparison of it with the two parts of Leper the Taylor, the editor cannot avoid the suspicion that what appears in the following pages is not the bona-fide work of Dugald Graham. That suspicion is founded not only upon the almost entire absence of Scotticisms, but also upon the mention of some customs which were certainly not common in Scotland, such, for instance, as the presentation of a sprig of rosemary to each person at a funeral, and the corpse arrest. These were more prevalent in England. While that is so, the fact that the work forms a quite consistent conclusion to the other two parts, and that Dugald did not always run in the same groove, prevents the editor from pressing this suspicion to an extreme; and he contents himself with marking the authorship as doubtful.]