They would give their pamphlet to the world as her work, edited by an admiring nephew.

The printer appreciated the joke no less than the authors of it.

He provided splendid paper and magnificent type; and before long the book of nonsense was in the hands of Oxford readers.

It sold for the high price of half-a-crown a copy; and, what is hardly credible, the gownsmen received it as a genuine production.

"It was indeed a kind of fashion to be seen reading it in public, as a mark of nice discernment, of a delicate and fastidious taste in poetry, and the best criterion of a choice spirit." Such was the genesis of "Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson", edited by John Fitz Victor.