it acquired the popular title of "Le Mag- authorship. He claims to have shown that nanime Mensonge." Zeal for the shrine of St. James of Compostella inspired another forgery in the fifteenth century, when 66 a Revelation," purporting to be written by the apostle's own hand, was suddenly discovered there after fourteen centuries of interment. From Bentley's account of the matter, it would seem that even in Spain certain sceptics raised the objection that this document "had some parts of it in modern Spanish, which was not in being in the time of the apostle." This circumstance, indeed, proved no stumbling-block to its devout Catholic advocates, one of whom, "the learned Aldrete, endeavors to account for the modern Spanish in the apostle's writing from the gift of prophecy that he was inspired with, by which he foreknew when his buried writings would be dug up, and therefore used the language that would then be in fashion."* might surely have devised a more plausible explanation, by attributing the apostle's linguistic skill to his share of the "miraculous gift of tongues." the writer's account of his travels was substantially made up from numerous earlier sources, including the "Golden Legend" and the narratives of Odoric de Pordenone, Jacques de Vitry, and other genuine voyagers to the East. There seems little doubt, indeed, that the author was a stay-at-home traveller. Good rea sons are assigned by Mr. Warner for identifying him with a physician named Jean de Bourgogne, who, according to the statement of his executor, Jean d'Outremeuse, assumed in his last will the name of Sir John Maundeville, with the rank of Earl of Montfort in the English peerage, alleging that he had left his native land and sought refuge in travel to escape the consequences of an accidental homicide. No such dignities as those claimed by the testator appear to be known to our heralds. There are grounds for suspecting He D'Outremeuse, who is known as a chronicler of Liège, to have been an accomplice in Bourgogne's fraud. His "Myreur des Histors not only embodies much of Maundeville and of the writers from whom he had borrowed, but refers to a description of Tartary as his own which is nowhere to be found except in the "Voyages and Travels."* Although monastic forgers rang the changes of imposture with some artistic variation, the sameness of motive tinges all their attempts with a sordid monotony. There is more novelty in the forms of lit- In 1649 England was the scene of a erary fraud prompted by inordinate vanity remarkable literary imposture, in whose and thirst for notoriety. A notable example composition personal and partisan motives of this class is the "Voyages and Travels were apparently blended, which not only of Sir John Maundeville," which appeared equalled its forerunners in attaining imin the latter part of the fourteenth century. mediate success, but, when eventually Its quaint and quasi-ingenuous narrative exposed and confessed, won for its author of an adventurous English knight's wan- a meed of glory instead of shame. Within derings in the East quickly won it a popu- a few days after the execution of Charles larity which was not a whit diminished by the First appeared the Εἰκὼν Βασιλικὴ, the monstrous extravagance of its fictions. ostensibly written by the king's hand, Modern criticism long since established affecting to be his own defence of the the fact that the book was partly compiled policy he had adopted, and to portray the from the accounts of other travellers, and attitude of devout faith in which he had that the writer's statement that he com- borne his sufferings and martyrdom. The posed it first in Latin, then put it into sympathy which the work excited was French, and lastly translated it into En- widespread. "At home and abroad ninety glish, could not be true. The frequent thousand copies were circulated in a mistranslations apparent upon a compari- twelvemonth." Charles the Second is son of the two extant versions made it impossible to believe that, if he was an Englishman, "Maundeville had been his own interpreter." It was reserved for the latest editor of the book, Mr. G. F. Warner, following in the track of earlier scholars, fully to expose its fictitious character and furnish a probable clue to its Phalaris, pp. 522-3, citing B. Aldrete, Varias An- said to have declared that "if it had come out a week sooner it would have saved his father's life." So powerful was the impression it made in England that the Council of State desired their Latin secretary, Milton, to answer it-a commission fulfilled in his Eikovokλaors. Without disputing whether "the late king, as is vulgarly believed, or any secret coadjutor," was the real author, Milton accepted the presumption that the book was from the • Publications of the Roxburghe Club, 1890. hand of Charles, while he saw through the expansion of the narrative of adventures "drift of a factious and defeated party" which he had told in detail to scores of to use it, "not so much in defence of his fashionable audiences. Ushered into Lonformer actions as the promoting of their don society under the auspices of the ówn future designs." He detected, too, bishop, Dr. Compton, and accredited to one of the most suspicious features of the him by the Rev. Mr. Innes, the chaplain book, viz. that the prayer which the king of a Scotch regiment abroad, the young was stated to have placed in the hand of man quickly became the lion of the town. Bishop Juxon upon the scaffold, "as a He gave out that he was the son of a special relic of his saintly exercises," was nobleman in Formosa, who entrusted his "stolen word for word" from Sidney's education to a learned stranger on a visit Arcadia," where it is put into the mouth to the island, by whom he was instructed of Pamela. Upon this feature, however, not only in the language and literature of Milton only passes the characteristic com- his native country, but in Latin. His ment that a love-story which represents tutor, who passed for a travelled Japanese, "a heathen woman praying to a heathen having inflamed his curiosity with accounts god" was unfit "in time of trouble and of Europe, suddenly announced that he affliction to be a Christian's prayer-book." was about to revisit it, whereupon the There is no reason to suppose that he youth begged leave to go with him. By penetrated the secret of the fabrication, way of Goa and Gibraltar they reached which was confined to the possession of a Avignon, where, at the Jesuits' College, few royalists and too well kept to be the tutor revealed that he was a missiondivulged until the Restoration, when Dr. ary of the order, and had disguised himJohn Gauden avowed the authorship and self that he might convert his pagan pupil. claimed his reward. It appears that the Thanks to the training which Psalmanabook (after its design had been approved zaar's mind had undergone, he was able to by Duppa, Bishop of Salisbury, who con- rebut the sophistry of Father de Rodes tributed one or two sections) was finished and his brethren, but, alarmed at their during the king's imprisonment at Caris- threats of the Inquisition, made his escape brooke, where a copy was sent to him for and entered the service of the elector of correction. He is said to have wished Cologne. Two attempts to convert him that it should be issued in the name of -one by a Lutheran, the other by a Calanother, but when urged that it would be vinist minister of Sluys - were also unmore effective in his own, "took time to successful. The arguments, however, consider of it." His execution intervening which Mr. Innes, the chaplain of Brigadier before consent was given, the publication Lauder, governor of the town, urged on took place without it. Gauden, having behalf of the Anglican faith, effectually made good his claim to Charles the Sec- convinced his reason, and he willingly emond, was created Bishop of Exeter in braced "a religion not embarrassed with 1660, and soon translated to the See of any of those absurdities which are mainWorcester.* Notwithstanding this recog-tained by the various sects in Christennition of his service, more than a generation passed before the truth was made generally known. Even then the bulk of the ultra-loyal Tories refused to part with their cherished illusion, and half a century afterwards a preacher before the House of Commons boldly contended that the Eikov was authentically the work of King Charles the First. In the composition of the memorable imposture which "George Psalmanazaar" palmed upon the English public in 1704, the literary element was comparatively subsidiary; the "Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa that he was induced to publish being only an * See Prof. H. Morley's First Sketch of English Literature, pp. 585-6, where the story of the fabrication is concisely told. For the detailed evidence which estab ished Gauden's authorship, see Toland's Life of Milton, ed. of 1698, pp. 27-29. dom." This plausible story might perhaps have retained longer hold of public belief if the author had not unwarily committed himself to print at the solicitation of an enterprising publisher. The work in which he undertook to narrate the history of his native island is an elaborate tissue of absurdities. Commencing with a gratuitous attack upon the "ignorance" of the Dutch and other historians who had affirmed Formosa to belong to China, whereas it was really a dependency of Japan, he proceeded to give a minute account of its conquest, its civil government, and established creed, with particulars of the religious rites, language, and customs of the natives, illustrated by engravings of their public buildings, modes of dress, and character of writing. The illustrations showed their architecture to be a medley of classical and Chinese styles. Tiger, ties of Literature," and the " Dictionary of National Biography." he leopard, and bear skins, it would seem, were the appropriate materials for the clothes of these tropic islanders; yet, to A more ingenious as well as successful account for his strangely fair complexion, fraud was the attempt of James Macthe writer mentioned that the upper pherson to conceal his personality behind classes (to which he belonged) habitually the mask of Oisin, or Ossian, a Highland spent the hot season in underground poet of the third century, whose epical caverns, dense groves, or tents kept cool poems of "Fingal and "Temora with water. The language evidently con- professed to have discovered and transtained a number of Greek radicals, which lated from the Erse in 1762-3. Though was not made less surprising by the state- their genuineness was at once disputed ment that Greek was taught in the native by Johnson, who challenged "the transschools. Raw meat and roots formed the lator" to produce his MSS., and was usual diet of this remarkable people, with doubted by Hume, Gibbon, and other vipers' blood as a condiment. An annual critics, the bulk of Macpherson's fellowsacrifice of eighteen thousand boys' hearts countrymen, headed by Blair and Lord to their gods had had no apparent effect Kames, warmly defended his good faith, in reducing the population. and extolled the merits of Ossian as a second Homer. In answer to Johnson's challenge, which was repeated by other sceptics, Macpherson produced no orig. inal MSS., but satisfied his partisans by publishing what he affirmed to be transcripts from the Erse. The friends he made were influential enough to advance his fortune, and, after a prosperous career as a placeman, he died rich and honored in 1796, having kept his secret to the last. The fervor of national enthusiasm, which he adroitly turned to account in 1762, had by this time cooled, and the exposure of his fabrication, which soon followed his death, was effected in his own country. A committee of inquiry appointed by the Highland Society in 1797, who completed their labors in 1805, reported that, after a diligent search among traditional and written sources, they had been unable to find one poem identical "in title and tenor with the poems of Ossian." In a critical essay on the subject by Malcolm Laing, the historian of Scotland, published in 1800, and the notes appended to his edition of Macpherson's works, he minutely examined the materials extant respecting the legendary Gaelic heroes, in order to show the spurious character of the epics into which their names had been introduced. Its picturesque descriptions of The eighteenth century has earned an Highland scenery, rhetorical flow of sentiunenviable celebrity for the number and ment, and command of rhythmical lanaudacity of its literary impostors. For guage, account for the attraction which particulars respecting the felonious ex- "Ossian" exercised at the time of its ploits of two rogues, William Lauder and appearance, and may still to some extent Archibald Bower, who were both tracked retain. The presence of these characterby the same critical detective, Dr. Doug-istics of refinement and the absence of las, the reader may consult Boswell's any of those indicia common to the "Life of Johnson," D'Israeli's "Curiosi- of a ruder age, have long been accepted as substantial proof of its being a production of the eighteenth, not of the third century.* See Knight's Cyclopædia, arts. "Macpherson" and Ossian." In spite of these enormous demands on the credulity of its readers, the book reached a second edition, and the author was sent by his patrons to Oxford, in order to prepare himself for returning to Formosa as a missionary. Here he had the ill-fortune to encounter Halley, then Savilian professor, and two other savants. Some searching questions which they put to him respecting the sun's position at noon and the duration of twilight in the island he was utterly unable to answer, and their published account of the interview sealed the fate of his imposture. After exhausting the patience of his remaining dupes, he relinquished the profession of roguery and settled down to a creditable literary career. In a posthumous work he made a candid confession of his fraud, in which he charged Innes with having been his accomplice. Its main design was ingeniously framed to tempt the gobe-mouche appetite of a frivolous and marvel-loving society. The means taken to introduce it under clerical and episcopal sanction were not less skilfully adapted to a time when Anglicanism was vaunted as the golden mean between Jesuitism and Dissent, and the Church was exhibiting the first symptoms of a missionary spirit.* A fuller account of this imposture, with further evidence in elucidation of the motives which prompted it, was given by the present writer in the Cornhill Magazine for May, 1879. poetry The particulars of Chatterton's fabrica- tiquaries, Sir Isaac Heard and Francis tion, in 1768-9, of the poems which he Townshend, professional heralds, and attributed to Thomas Rowley, a priest of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, James Bos the fifteenth century, are too familiarly well, and H. J. Pye, poet-laureate, represenknown to justify repetition. To a critical tative men of letters, were eager to avow reader of our own day, modernness of their faith in the MSS. as indubitable autothought and style will appear so plainly graphs of Shakespeare, and bearing the unstamped upon the face of them, that he mistakable stamp of his genius. Granting may consider Professor Skeat's ample that the antique aspect of sixteenth-cendemonstration of their sham archaisms to tury handwriting, parchment, ink, and seals be almost superfluous.* It is well, how- was so skilfully imitated as to deceive the ever, to recall the fact that though Chat- palæographers who examined the MSS., terton's imitations, touched as they were it remains inexplicable that a student so by vivid flashes of genius, failed to baffle conversant with Elizabethan English as the acumen of Tyrwhitt, Warton, Gray, Chalmers could have been blind to the and Johnson, they successfully imposed grotesque exaggerations of spelling which upon many erudite antiquaries and schol- abound in every line of the text. Still ars, including Dr. Milles, Dean of Exeter more amazing appears the blindness which and president of the Antiquarian Society led Sheridan to accept the crude and tu(who published a sumptuous edition of the mid “ Vortigern as even a "youthful poems, and learnedly expatiated upon their production" of the author of "Hamlet," Homeric and Chaucerian affinities), Jacob and to give Ireland 300l. for the privilege Bryant, Lord Lyttelton, and Dr. Fry, of producing it at Drury Lane, besides president of St. John's, Oxford. It can half the profits of its representation for scarcely be doubted that Chatterton baited sixty nights. How John Kemble, who was his line to catch that "doctoral ignorance,' ,"forced to play the leading part, avenged as Montaigne calls it, which "knowledge the insult thus offered to the genius whose so often begets." Vanity may be pre- fame was linked with his own, need not sumed to have prompted his mystifications be told afresh. In an "Inquiry into the in the first instance, and pride to have in- Authenticity "of the MSS. which Malone, duced him to persist in his original story; the most competent Shakespearian critic but he may fairly be acquitted of sordid of the day, published soon after the colIt is pathetic to reflect that if lapse of Vortigern," he effectually estabhis boyish peccadillo had been treated lished their spurious character by a minute with a little less harshness, the tragedy of collation of their language and spelling his fate might have been averted and a with those commonly employed in Elizafresh voice added to the choir of English bethan_literature. The labored attempt poets. of Chalmers to adduce rebutting evidence was rendered futile by the prompt appearance of a pamphlet in which the forger, a young law student, made an explicit confession of his fraud. Filial desire to gratify the taste of his father, an enthusiastic Shakespeare-worshipper, curiosity to see "how far credulity would go in the search for antiquities," and vanity, intoxicated by the success of his first deception, were the incentives which avowedly actuated him. In another confession, made shortly before his death in 1835, he recanted his former statement, and represented his father as having been the chief concocter of the forgery. Whoever was concerned in it evidently saw that the Shakespeare idolatry which then prevailed in antiquarian and literary circles had reached the point of infatuation, and embraced the opportunity of turning it to profit.* motives. The forgery of Shakespearian MSS., by which William Henry Ireland (whether as principal or agent) succeeded in duping a distinguished circle of scholars and men of letters in 1795-6, is another noteworthy instance of the type exemplified by Macpherson and Chatterton. It differed, indeed, from their fabrications in two respects, viz., that the MSS. themselves, not mere transcripts of them, were submitted to ocular inspection, and that in the judgment of unbelieving critics, not less distinguished than the believers, the literary value of whatever was new or "original" in the collection was absolutely worthless. These circumstances only serve to heighten the wonder of the forger's success. Drs. Parr, Valpy, and Joseph Warton among scholars, George Chalmers and John Pinkerton among an Had Chatterton's MSS., now at the British Museum, been submitted to examination during his life time, it is impossible that any expert in the handwriting of the fifteenth century could have been for an instant deceived by them. * Particulars of the extravagant lengths to which this idolatry was carried, and further details of Ireland's imposture, are given in the paper already referred to (Two Impostors of the Eighteenth Century), in the Cornhill Magazine for May, 1879. In the present century, though the lit- fraudulent apocrypha down to our own erary forger has been far from inactive, time. His chief successes are believed to his successes, owing to the general spread have been gained in duping the authoriof culture and the special development of ties of great national libraries by the sale critical discernment, have happily been of sham antique MSS., but for obvious few and short-lived. In 1803, a M. Van- reasons the particulars of these cases have derbourg, ostensibly on behalf of a de- not been generally disclosed, and the ceased friend, M. de Surville, published a statements on the subject which have apvolume of lyrics which revealed the exist-peared in the public journals must be ence of an ancient poetess hitherto un- accepted with some reserve. The eminent recorded, named Marguerite Eleanore scholar Dindorf is said to have been one Clotilde, depuis Madame de Surville. of his victims in Germany. It has been Her career covered the greater part of the stated that the trustees of the British Mufifteenth century—one of her themes be-seum were deceived into buying from him ing the relief of Orleans by Joan of Arc a false memorandum addressed by Beliin 1429, and another the victory of For- sarius to Justinian, but the statement has novo by Charles the Eighth in 1495. She been since denied. That he sold to Iswas also fortunate enough to be able to mail Pasha a forged MS. of Aristotle, render an ode of Sappho into French verse and to a wealthy English peer two spurimany years before any one else in France ous letters of Alcibiades to Pericles, for could have seen it." Though promoted to which he obtained high prices is an assera place in Auguis's "Recueil des Anciens tion more credible, and as yet uncontraPoëtes," these lyrics did not impose upon dicted. the trained judgment of Sismondi, who observed that it was only necessary "to compare Clotilde with the Duke of Orleans or Villon " to ascertain her real date. Another critic discovered in them "many ideas and expressions which were unknown in the language at the time of their pretended composition," and many imitations of "Voltaire and other poets." There can be little hesitation in crediting their authorship to M. Vanderbourg him 66 self. A brief notice will suffice for one or two minor forgeries which must be fresh in the memory of many living persons. About thirty years since a well-known publisher bought a collection of letters alleged to be in the handwriting of Shelley, one of whose oldest surviving friends testified to belief in their authenticity. They were ushered into the world by a preface from the pen of Robert Browning, but withdrawn a few days after publication upon the discovery that they were made up from articles by Sir Francis Palgrave in the Quarterly Review. A year or two later, a volume of letters by Schiller was announced as forthcoming, a preliminary certificate of their genuineness having been obtained from his last surviving daughter. Before they left the press they were clearly shown to be spurious. A notice of the impostures of M. Simonides, whose career has but recently terminated, will bring these examples of Hallam's Literature of Europe, i. 170. ↑ Hist. des Français, xiii. 593. His most remarkable failure seems to have been at Athens, where he tried to persuade a committee of twelve scholars that a MS. of Homer, written on lotus-leaves, was a genuine codex of very early date. Eleven of the number are said to have been satisfied, "but the twelfth discovered that it was a faithful copy of the text of Homer as published by the German critic Wolff, and that the MS. reproduced the whole of the printer's errors in that edition."* The literary fabrications which come within the second group I have selected, viz., such as are devoid of evil intention and due to the indulgence of satirical, mischievous, or playful humor, are not prominent at an earlier period than the seventeenth century. Among the first that I am acquainted with was a tract published in 1649, just after the suppression of theatres by the Parliamentary authorities, which purported to be "Mr. William Prynne, his Defence of Stage Playes, or a Retractation of a former Book of his called Histriomastix." In this jeu d'esprit of some mocking Cavalier, the grim old Puritan is made to blame the barbarous conduct of the Parliamentary army in taking 66 away the poor players from their houses, being met there to discharge the duty of their callings," and to vindicate himself from being supposed to countenance such cruelty because he had once denounced the stage "when I had not so clear a light as now I have." Prynne's vain protest against this practical joke, which he circulated by means of handbills, must • Obituary notice in the Times, October, 1890. |