Iscariot Hackney's confession

"And Richard Savage,  in his witty pamphlet called 'An Author to Be Let,' betrays that the abuse is not only of our day.  Iscariot Hackney of that book confesses that:
      'Many a time I wrote obscenity and profaneness, under the names of Pope or Swift.  Sometimes
 I was Mr Joseph Gay, at others Theory Burnet, or Addison. I abridged histories and travels, translated from the French what they never wrote, and was expert at finding out new titles for old books.  When a notorious thief was hanged,  I was the Plutarch to preserve his memory; and when a great man died, mine were his Remains, and mine the account of his last will and testament.'  
That is the whole trade put in a paragraph."

Bohemia in London  Arthur Ransome