marrow of lions. But their talismans, provided they were genuine, seem to have been wonderfully operative; and had we the same confidence, and melted down the guineas we give physicians, engraving on them talismanic figures, I would answer for the good effects of the experiment. Naudé, indeed, has utterly ridiculed the occult virtues of talismans, in his defence of Virgil, accused of being a magician: the poet, it seems, cast into a well a talisman of a horse-leech, graven on a plate of gold, to drive away the great number of horse-leeches which infested Napies. Naudé positively denies that talismans ever possessed any such occult virtues: Gaffarel regrets that so judicious a man as Naudé should have gone this length, giving the lie to so many authentic authors; and Naudé's paradox is indeed, as strange as his denial; he suspects the thing is not true because it is so generally told! It leads one to suspect,' says he, as animals are said to have been driven away from so many places by these talismans, whether they were ever driven from any one place." Gaffarel, suppressing by his good temper bis indignant feelings at such reasoning, turns the paradox on its maker: As if, because of the great number of battles that Hannibal is reported to have fought with the Romans, we might not, by the same reason, doubt whether he fought any one with them. The reader must be aware that the strength of the argument lies entirely with the firm believer in talismans. Gaffarel, indeed, who passed his days in collecting Curiosités inote,' is a most authenie historian of unparalleled events, even in his own times! Such as that heavy rain in Poitou, which showered down petites bestioles,' little creatures like bishops with their mitres, and monks with their capuchins over their heads; it is true, afterwards they all turned into butterflies! The museums, the cabinets, and the inventions of our early virtuosi were the baby-house of philosophers. Baptista Porta, Bishop Wilkins, and old Ashmole, were they now living, had been enrolled among the quiet members of The Society of Arts,' instead of flying in the air, collecting A wing of the phoenix, as tradition goes; or catching the disjointed syllables of an old doting astrologer. But these early dilettanti had not derived the same pleasure from the useful inventions of the aforesaid Society of Arts,' as they received from what Cornelius Agrippa, in a fit of spleen, calls things vain and superfluous, invented to no other end but for pomp and idle pleasure.' Baptista Porta was more skilful in the mysteries of art and nature than any man in his day. Having founded the Academia degli Oziosi, he held an inferior association in his own house, called di Secreti, where none was admitted but those elect who had communicated some secret; for, in the early period of modern art and science, the slightest novelty became a secret, not to be confided to the uninitiated. Poria was unquestionably a fine genius, as his works still show; but it was his misfortune that he attributed his own penetrating sagacity to his skill in the art of divination. He considered himself a prognosticator; and, what was more unfortunate, some eminent persons really thought he was. Predictions and secrets are harmless, provided they are not believed; but his Holiness finding Porta's were, warned him that magical sciences were great hinderances to the study of the Bible, and paid him the compliment to forbid his prophesying, Porta's genius was now limited, to astonish, and sometimes to terrify, the more ingenious part of I Secreti. On entering his cabinet, some phantom of an attendant was sure to be hovering in the air, moving as he who entered moved; or he observed in some mirror that his face was twisted on the wrong side of his shoulders, and did not quite think that all was right when he clapped his hand on it; or passing through a darkened apartment a magical landscape burst on him, with human beings in motion, the boughs of trees bending, and the very clouds passing over the sun; or sometimes banquets, batiles, and hunting-parties, were in the same apartment. 'All these spectacles my friends have witnessed! exclaims the selfdelighted Baptista Porta. When his friends drank wine out of the same cup which he had used they were mortified with wonder: for he drank wine, and they only water! or on a summer's day, when all complained of the sirocco, he would freeze his guests with cold air in the room; or on a sudden, let off a flying dragon to sail along with a cracker in its tail, and a cat tied on its back; shrill was the sound, and awful was the concussion; so that it required strong nerves, in an age of apparitions and devils, to meet this great philosopher when in his best humour. Alber tus Magnus entertained the Earl of Holland, as that earl passed through Cologne, in a severe winter, with a warm summer scene, luxuriant in fruits and flowers. The fact is related by Trithemius-and this magical scene connected with his vocal head, and his books de Secretis Mulierum, and De Mirabilibus, confirmed the accusations they raised against the great Albert, for being a magician. His apologist, Theophilus Raynaud, is driven so hard to defend Albertus, that he at once asserts, the winter changed to summer, and the speaking head, to be two infamous flams! He will not believe these authenticated facts, although he credits a miracle which proves the sancity of Albertus,after three centuries, the body of Albert the great remained as sweet as ever! Whether such enchauntments,' as old Mandeville cautiously observeth, two centuries preceding the days of Porta, were by craft or by nygromancye, I wot nere.' But that they were not unknown to Chaucer, appears in his Frankelein's Tale,' where, minutely describing them, he communicates the same pleasure he must himself have received from the ocular illusions of the Tregetoure,' or 'Jogelour.' Chaucer ascribes the miracle to a 'naturall magique in which, however, it was as unsettled, whether the Prince of Darkness' was a party concerned. For I am siker that there be sciences By which men maken divers apparences Swiche as thise subtil tregetoures play. For oft at festes have I wel herd say That tregetoures, within an halle large, Have made come in a water and a barge, And in the haile rowen up and doun. Sometime hath semed cone a grim leoun, And sometime floures spring as in a mede, Sometime a vine and grapes white and rede; Sometime a castel al of lime and sion, And whan hem liketh voideth it anon: Thus semeth it to every mannes sight.' Bishop Wilkins's museum was visited by Evelyn, who describes the sort of curiosities which occupied and amused the children of science. Here, too, there was a hollow statue, which gave a voice, and uttered words by a long concealed pipe that went to its mouth, whilst one speaks through it at a good distance: a circumstance, which, perhaps, they were not then aware revealed the whole mystery of the ancient oracles, which they attributed to demons, rather than to tubes, pulleys, and wheels. The learned Charies Patin, in his scientific travels, records, among other valuable productions of art, a cherry-stone, on which were engraven about a dozen and a half of portraits! Even the greatest of human geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci, to attract the royal patronage, created a lion which ran before the French monarch, dropping fleurs de lis from its shaggy breast. And another philosopher who had a spinnet which played and stopped at command, might have made a revolution in the arts and sciences, had the half-stifled child that was concealed in it not been forced, unluckily, to crawl into day-light, and thus it was proved that a philosopher might be an impostor! The arts, as well as the sciences, at the first institution of the Royal Society, were of the most amusing class. The famous Sir Samuel Moreland had turned his house into an enchanted palace. Every thing was full of devices, which showed art and mechanism in perfecuon: his coach carried a travelling kitchen; for it had a fire-place and grate, with which he could make a soup, broil cuilets, and roast an egg; and he dressed his meat by clock-work. Another of these virtuosi, who is described as a gentleman of superior order, and whose house was a knickknackatory,' valued himself on his multifarious inventions, but most in sowing salads in the morning, to be cut for dinner.' The house of Winstanley, who afterwards raised the first Eddystone light-house, must have been the wonder of the age. If you kicked aside an old slipper, purposely lying in your way, up started a ghost before you; or if you sat down in a certain chair, a couple of gigantic arms would immediately clasp you in. There was an arbour in the garden, by the side of a canal; you had scarcely seated yourself, when you were sent out afloat to the middle of the canal-from whence you could not escape till this man of art and science wourd you up to the ar bour. What was passing at the Roval Society' was also occurring at the Academie des Sciences' at Paris. A great and gonty member of that philosophical body, on the departure of a stranger, would point to his legs, to show the impossibility of conducting him to the door; yet the astonished visiter never failed finding the virtuoso waiting for him on the outside, to make his final bow! While the visiter was going down stairs, this inventive genius was descending with great velocity in a machine from the window: so that he proved, that if a man of science cannot force nature to walk down stairs, he may drive her out at the window! 6 If they travelled at home, they set off to note down prodigies. Dr Plott, in a magnificent project of journeying through England, for the advantage of Learning and Trade,' and the discovery of Antiquities and other Curiosities,' for which he solicited the royal aid which Leland enjoyed, among other notable designs, discriminates a class thus: 'Next I shall inquire of animals; and first of strange people.'-'Strange accidents that attend corporations of families, as that the deans of Rochester ever since the foundation by turns have died deans and bishops; the bird with a white breast that haunts the family of Oxenham near Exeter just before the death of any of that family; the bodies of trees that are seen to swim in a pool near Brereton in Cheshire, a certain warning to the heir of that honourable family to prepare for the next world.' And such remarkables as Number of children, such as the Lady Temple, who before she died saw seven hundred descended from her.' This fellow of the Royal Society, who lived nearly to 1700, was requested to give an edition of Pliny: we have lost the benefit of a most copious commentary! Bishop Hall went to the Spa.' The wood about that place was haunted not only by freebooters, but by wolves and witches; although these last are ofttimes but one.' They were called loups gurouz: and the Greeks, it seems, knew them by the name of AvxayOporo, men wolves; witches that have put on the shapes of those cruel beasts. 'We saw a boy there, whose half-face was devoured by one of them near the village; yet so, as that the eare was rather cut than bitten off." Rumour had spread that the boy had had half his face devoured; when it was examined, it turned out that his ear had only been scratched! However, there can be no doubt of the existence of witch wolves;' for Hall saw at Limburgh ' one of those miscreants executed, who confessed on the wheel to have devoured two and forty children in that form.' They would probably have found it difficult to have summoned the mothers who had lost the children. But observe our philosopher's reasoning: It would aske a large volume to sean his problem of lycanthropy.' He had laboriously collected all the evidence, and had added his arguments: the result offers a curious instance of acute reasoning on a wrong principle.* Men of science and art then, passed their days in a bustle of the marvellous. I will furnish a specimen of philosophical correspondence in a letter to old John Aubrey. The writer betrays the versatility of his curiosity by very opposite discoveries. My hands are so full of work that I have no time to transcribe for Dr Henry More an account of the Barnstable apparition-Lord Keeper North would take it kindly from you-give a sight of this letter from Barnstable, to Dr Whitchcot.' He had lately heard of a Scotchman who had been carried by fairies into France; but the purpose of his present letter is to communicate other sort of apparitions than the ghost of Barnstable. He had gone to Glastonbury, to pick up a few berries from the holy thorn which flowered every Christmas day.' The original thorn had been cut down by a military saint in the civil wars; but the trade of the place was not damaged, for they had contrived not to have a single holy thorn, but several, by grafting and inoculation.' He promises to send these 'berries; but requests Aubrey to inform that person of quality who had rather have a bush, that it was impossible to get one for him. I am told,' he adds, 'that there is a person about Glaston Hall's postulate is that God's work could not admit of any substantial change, which is above the reach of all infernal powers; but Herein the divell plays the double sophist er; the sorcerer with sorcerers. Hee both deludes the witch's conceit and the beholder's eyes. In a word, Hall believes, in what he cannot understand! Yet Hall will not believe one of the Catholic miracles of the Virgin of Louvain,' though Lipsius had written a book to commemorate the goddess,' as Hall sarcastically calls her; Hall was told, with great indig. nation, in the shop of the bookseller of Lipsius, that when James the First had just looked over this work, he flung it down, vociferating 'Damnation to him that made it, and to him she believes it !! bury who hath a nursery of them, which he sells bra crown a piece,' but they are supposed not to be of the right kind.' The main object of this letter is the writer's suspicion of gold in this country;' for which he offers three reasons. Tacitus says there was gold in England, and that Agrippa came to a spot where he had a prospect of Ireland-from which place he writes; secondly, that an honest man had in this spot found stones from which he had extracted good gold, and that he himself had seen in the broken stones a clear appearance of gold;' and thirdly, there is a story which goes by tradition in that part of the coun try, that in the hill alluded to there was a door into a hole, that when any wanted money, they used to go and knock there, that a woman used to appear, and give to such as At a time one by greediness or otherwise gave her offence, she flung to the door, and delivered this old saying, still remembered in the country: came. "When all THE DAWs be gone and dead, My fancy is, that this relates to an ancient family of this This promised Idea of Aubrey may be found in his MSS' under the title of The Idea of Universal Education.' However whimsical, one would like to see it. Aubrey's life might furnish a volume of these Philosophical dreams; he was a person who from his incessant bustle and insatjable curiosity, was called The Carrier of Conceptions of the Royal Society.' Many pleasant nights were pri vately' enjoyed by Aubrey and his correspondent about the Mine in the Hill;' Ashmole's manuscripts at Oxford, contain a collection of many secrets of the Rosicrucians; one of the completest inventions is a Recipe how to walk invisible.' Such were the fancies which rocked the children of science in their cradles! and so feeble were the steps of our curious infancy! But I start in my dreams! dreading the reader may also have fallen asleep! 'Measure is most excellent,' says one of the oracles; 'to which also we being in like manner persuaded, O most friendly and pious Asclepiades, here finish'-the dreams at the dawn of philosophy! ON PUCK THE COMMENTATOR. but Literary forgeries recently have been frequently indulged in, and it is urged that they are of an innocent nature; impostures more easily practised than detected leave their mischief behind, to take effect at a distant period; and as I shall show, may entrap even the judicious! It may require no high exertion of genius, to draw up a grave sccount of an ancient play-wright whose name has never reached us, or to give an extract from a volume inaccessi ble to our inquiries; and as dulness is no proof of spuriousness, forgeries, in time, mix with authentic documents. We have ourselves witnessed versions of Spanish and Portuguese poets, which are passed on their unsuspicious readers without difficulty, but in which no parts of the pretended originals can be traced; and to the present bour, whatever antiquaries may affirm, the poems of Chatterton and Ossian are veiled in mystery! If we possessed the secret history of the literary life of George Steevens, it would display an unparalleled series of arch deception, and malicious ingenuity. He has been happily characterized by Mr Gifford, as the Puck of Commentators! Steevens is a creature so spotted over with literary forgeries and adulterations, that any remarkable one about the time he flourished may be attributed to him. They were the habits of a depraved mind, and there was a darkness in his character many shades deeper than belonged to Puck; even in the playfulness of his invention, there was usually a turn of personal malignity, and the real object was not so much to raise a laugh, as to 'grin horribly a ghastly smile,' on the individual. It is more than rumoured, that he carried his ingenious malignity into the privacies of domestic life; and it is to be regretted, that Mr Nichols, who might have furnished much secret history of this extraordinary literary forgerer, has, from delicacy, mutilated his collective vigour. George Steevens usually commenced his operations by opening some pretended discovery in the evening papers, which were then of a more literary cast; the St James's Chronicle, the General Evening Post, or the Whitehall, were they not dead in body and in spirit, would now bear witness to his successful efforts. The late Mr Boswell told me, that Steevens frequently wrote notes on Shakspeare, purposely to mislead or entrap Malone, and obtain for himself an easy triumph in the next edition! Steevens loved to assist the credulous in getting up for them some strange new thing, dancing them about with a Will o' the wisp-now alarming them by a shriek of laughter; and now like a grinning Pigwiggin sinking them chin-deep into a quagmire! Once he presented them with a fictitious portrait of Shakspeare, and when the brotherhood were sufficiently divided in their opinions, he pounced upon them with a demonstration, that every portrait of Shakspeare partook of the same doubtful authority! Steevens usually assumed the nom de guerre of Collins, a pseudocommentator, and sometimes of Amner, who was discovered to be an obscure puritanic minister who never read text or notes of a play-wright, whenever he explored into a thousand notable secrets' with which he has polluted the pages of Shakspeare! The marvellous narrative of the upas-tree of Java, which Darwin adopted in his plan of enlisting imagination under the banner of science,' appears to have been another forgery which amused our 'Puck. It was first given in the London Magazine, as an extract from a Dutch traveller, but the extract was never discovered in the original author, and 'the effluvia of this noxious tree, which through a district of twelve or fourteen miles bad killed all vegetation, and had spread the skeletons of men and animals, affording a scene of melan choly beyond what poets have described, or painters delineated,' is perfectly chimerical. A splendid flim-flam! When Dr Berkenhout was busied in writing, without much knowledge or skill, a history of our English authors, Steevens allowed the good man to insert a choice letter by George Peele, giving an account of a merry meeting at the Globe,' wherein Shakspeare and Ben Jonson and Ned Alleyne are admirably made to perform their respective parts. As the nature of the Biographia Literaria' required authorities, Steevens ingeniously added, 'Whence I copied this letter I do not recollect.' However he well knew it came from the Theatrical Mirror,' where he had first deposited the precious original, to which he had unguardedly ventured to affix the date of 1600; unluckily, Peele was discovered to have died two years before he wrote his own letter! The date is adroitly dropped in Berkenhout! Steevens did not wish to refer to his original, which I have often seen quoted as authority. One of these numerous forgeries of our Puck, appears in an article in Isaac Reed's catalogue, art. 8708. The Boke of the Soldan, conteyninge strange matters touchynge his lyfe and deathe, and the ways of his course, in two partes, 12mo,' with this marginal note by Reed. The foregoing was written by George Steevens, Esq, from whom I received it. It was composed merely to impose on "a literary friend," and had its effect; for he was so far deceived as to its authenticity that he gave implicit credit to it, and put down the person's name in whose possession the original books were supposed to be.' One of the sort of iventions which I attribute to Steevens has been got up with a deal of romantic effect, to embellish the poetical life of Milton; and unquestionably must have sadly perplexed his last matter-of-fact editor, who is not a man to comprehend a flim-flam!-for he has sanctioned the whole fiction, by preserving it in his biographical narrative! The first impulse of Milton to travel in Italy is ascribed to the circumstance of his having been found asleep at the foot of a tree in the vicinity of Cambridge, when two foreign ladies, attracted by the loveliness of the youthful poet, alighted from their carriage, and having admired him for some time as they imagined unperceived, the youngest, who was very beautiful, drew a pencil from her pocket, and having written some lines, put the paper with her trembling hand into his own! But it seems, for something was to account how the sleeping youth could have been aware of these minute particulars, unless he had been dreaming them,-that the ladies had been observed at a distance by some friends of Milton, and they explained to him the whole silent adventure. Milton, on opening the paper, read four verses from Guarini, addressed to those human stars' his own eyes! On this romantic adventure, Milton set off for Italy, to discover the fair incognita,' to which undiscovered lady we are told we stand indebted for the most impassioned touches in the Paradise Lost! We know how Milton passed his time in Italy, with Dati, and Gaddi, and Frescobaldi, and other literary friends, amidst its academies, and often busied in book-collecting. Had Milton's tour in Italy been an adventure of knight-errantry, to discover a lady whom he had never seen, at least he had not the merit of going out of the direct road to Florence and Rome, nor of having once alluded to this Dame de ses pensées, in his letters or inquiries among his friends, who would have thought themselves fortunate to have introduced so poetical an adventure in the numerous canzoni they showered on our youthful poet. This historiette, scarcely fitted for a novel, first appeared where generally Steeven's literary amusements were carried on, in the General Evening Post, or the St James's Chronicle: and Mr Todd, in the improved edition of Milton's Life, obtained this spurious original, where the reader may find it; but the more curious part of the story remains to be told. Mr Todd proceeds, The preceding highly-coloured relation, however, is not singular; my friend, Mr Walker, points out to me a counter-part in the extract from the preface to Poesies de Marguerite-Eleanore Clotilde, depuis Madame de Surville, Poete Francois du XV Siécle. Paris, 1803.' And true enough we find among the family traditions' of this same Clotilde, that Justine de Levis, great-grandmother of this unknown poetess of the fifteenth century, walking in a forest, witnessed the same beautiful spectacle which the Italian Unknown had at Cambridge; never was such an impression to be effaced, and she could not avoid leaving her tablets by the side of the beautiful sleeper, declaring her passion in her tablets to four Italian verses! The very number our Milton had melted to him! Oh! these four verses! they are as fatal in their number as the date of Peel's letter proved to George Steevens! Something still escapes in the most ingemous fabrication which serves to decompose the materials. It is well our veracious historian dropped all mention of Guarini-else that would have given that coup de grace-a fatal anachronism! However his invention supplied him with more originality than the adoption of this story and the four verses would lead us to infer. He tells us how Petrarch was jealous of the genius of his Clotilde's grandmother, and has even pointed out a sonnet which, among the traditions of the family,' was addressed to her! He narrates, that the gentleman, when he fairly awoke, and had read the four verses,' set off for Italy, which he run over till he found Justine, and Justine found him at a tournament at Modena ! This parallel adventure disconcerted our two grave English critics-they find a tale which they wisely judge improbable, and because they discover the tale copied, they conclude that it is not singular! This knot of perplexity is, however, easily cut through, if we substitute, which we are fully justified in, for Poete du XV Siecle' du XIX Siecle! The 'Poesies' of Clotilde are as genuine a fabrication as Chatterton's; subject to the same objections, having many ideas and expressions which were unknown in the language at the time they are pretended to have been composed, and exhibiting many imitations of Voltaire and other poets. The present story of the four Italian verses, and the beautiful Sleeper, would be quite sufficient evidence of the authenticity of the family traditions' of Clotilde, depuis Madame de Surville, and also Monsieur De Surville himself; a pretended editor, who is said to have found by mere accident the precious manuscript, and while he was copying for the press, in 1793, these pretty poems, for such they are, of his grande tante, was shot in the reign of terror, and so completely expired, that no one could ever trace his existence! The real editor, who we must presume to be the poet, published them in 1803. LITERARY FORGERIES. The preceding article has reminded me of a subject by no means incurious to the lovers of literature. A large volume might be composed on literary impostors; their modes of deception, however, were frequently repetitions; particularly those at the restoration of letters, when there prevailed a mania for burying spurious antiquities, that they might afterwards be brought to light to confound their contemporaries. They even perplex us at the present Scotchmen, of whom Archibauld Bower, Lauder, and day. More sinister forgeries have been performed by Macpherson, are well known. Even harmless impostures by some unexpected acci dent have driven an unwary inquirer out of the course. George Steevens must again make his appearance for a memorable trick played on the antiquary Gough. This was the famous tombstone on which was engraved the drinking-horn of Hardyknute to indicate his last fatal ca rouse; for this royal Dane died drunk! To prevent any doubt, the name, in Saxon characters, was sufficiently le Such then, is the history of a literary forgery! A Puck composes a short romantic adventure, which is quietly thrown out to the world in a newspaper or a magazine some collector, such as the late Mr Bindley, who procured for Mr Todd his original, as idie, at least, as he is curious, houses the forlorn fiction--and it enters into literary history! A French Chatterton picks up the obscure tale, and behold, astonishes the literary inquirers of the very country whence the imposture sprung! But the four Italian verses, and the Sleeping Youth! Oh! Monsieur Vanderbourg! for that gentleman is the ostensible editor of Cloulde's poesies of the fifteenth century, some inge-gible. Steeped in pickle to hasten a precocious antiquity, nious persons are unlucky in this world! Perhaps one day we may yet discover that this romantic adventure' of Milton and Justine de Levis is not so original as it seems-it may lie hid in the Astrée of D'Urfé, or some of the long romances of the Scuderies, whence the English and the French Chattertons may have drawn it. To such literary inventors we say with Swift: Such are your tricks; But since you hatch, pray your own chicks! Will it be credited that for the enjoyment of a temporary piece of malice, Steevens would even risk his own reputation as a poetical critic? Yet this he ventured, by throwing out of his edition the poems of Shakspeare, with a remarkable hyper-criticism, that the strongest act of parliament that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their service.' Not only he denounced the sonnets of Shakspeare, but the sonnet itself, with an absurd question, What has truth or nature to do with Sonnets? The secret history of this unwarrantable mutilation of a great author by his editor was, as I was informed by the late Mr Boswell, merely done to spite his rival commentator Malone, who had taken extraordinary pains in their elucidation. Steevens himself had formerly reprinted them, but when Malone from these sonnets claimed for himself one ivy leaf of a commentator's pride, behold, Steevens in a rage would annihilate even Shakspeare himself, that he might gain a triumph over Malone! In the same spirit, but with more caustic pleasantry, he opened a controversy with Malone respecting Shakspeare's wife! It seems that the poet had forgotten to mention his wife in his copious will; and his recollection of Mrs Shakspeare seems to mark the slightness of his regard, for he only introduced by an interlineation, a legacy to her of his 'second best bed with the furniture'-and nothing more! Malone naturally inferred that the poet had forgot her, and so recollected her as more strongly to mark how little he esteemed her. He had already, as it is vulgarly expressed, cut her off, not indeed with a shilling, but with an old bed!' All this seems judicious, till Steevens asserts the conjugal affection of the bard, tells us, that the poet having, when in health, provided for her by settlement, or knowing that her father had already done so (circumstances entirely conjectural,) he bequeathed to her at his death, not merely an old piece of furniture, but, perhaps, as a mark of peculiar tenderness, The very bed that on his bridal night Received him to the arms of Belvidera! Steevens's severity of satire marked the deep malevolence of his heart; and Murphy has strongly portrayed him in his address to the Malevoli. Such another Puck was Horace Walpole! The King of Prussia's Letter' to Rousseau, and The Memorial' pretended to have been signed by noblemen and gentlemen, were fabrications, as he confesses, only to make mischief. It well became him, whose happier invention, the Castle of Otranto, was brought forward in the guise of forgery, so unfeelingly to have reprobated the innocent inventions of a Chatterton. We have Pucks busied among our contemporaries : whoever shall discover their history will find it copious though intricate; the malignity at least will exceed, tenfold, the merriment. it was then consigned to the corner of a broker's shop, where the antiquarian eye of Gough often pored on the venerable odds and ends; it perfecily succeeded on the the relic for a trifle, and dissertations of a due size were 'Director of the Antiquarian Society.' He purchased preparing for the Archaelogia !* Gough never forgave himself nor Steevens, for this flagrant act of meptitude. On every occasion in the Gentleman's Magazine when compelled to notice this illustrious imposition, he always struck out his own name, and muffled himself up under his titular office of The Director! Gough never knew that this modern antique' was only a piece of retaliation. In reviewing Masters's Life of Baker he found two heads, one scratched down from painted glass by George Steevens who would have passed it off for a portrait of one of our kings. Gough, on the watch to have a fling at George Steevens, attacked his graphic performance, and reprobated a portrait which had nothing human in it! Steevens vowed, that wretched as Gough deemed his pencil to be, it should make The Director' ashamed of his own eyes, and be fairly taken in by something scratched much worse. Such was the origin of his adoption of this fragment of a clum ney-slab, which I have seen, and with a better judge wondered at the injudicious antiquary, who could have been duped by the slight and ill-formed scratches, and even with a false spelling of the name, which however succeed. ed in being passed off as a genuine Saxon inscription: but he had counted on his man! The trick is not so original as it seems. One De Grassis bad engraved on marble the epitaph of a mule, which he buried in his vineyard: sometime after, having ordered a new plantation on the spot, the diggers could not fail of disinterring what lay ready for them. The inscription imported that one Publius Grassus had raised this monument to his mule! De Grassis gave it out as an odd coincidence of names, and a prophecy about his own mule! It was a simple joke! The marble was thrown by, and no more thought of. Several years after it rose into celebrity, for with the erudite it then passed for an ancient inscription, and the antiquary Porcacchi inserted the epitaph in his work on Burials? Thus De Grassis and his mule, equally respectable, would have come down to posterity, had not the story by some means got wind! An incident of this nature is recorded in Portuguese history, contrived with the intention to keep I have since been informed that this famous invention was originally a flim-flam of a Mr Thomas White, a noted collect. or and dealer in antiquities. But it was Steevens, who placed it in the broker's shop, where he was certain of catching the antiquary. When the late Mr Pegge, a profound brother, was preparing to write a dissertation on it, the first inventor of the flam stepped forward to save any further tragical termina. tion: the wicked wit had already succeeded too well! The stone may be found in the British Museum, HARDENVT is the reading on the Harthacnnt stone; but the true orthography of the name is HARDALNVT. Sylvanus Urban, my excellent and old friend, seems a trife uncourteous on this grave occasion-He tells us, however, that The history of this wanton trick, with a facsimile of Schnebbelie's drawing may be seen in his volume LX. p. 217. He says that this wicked contrivance of George Strevens was to entrap this famous draftsman! Does Sylvanus then deny that the Director' was not also entrapped? And that he always struck out his own name in the proof-sheets of the Magazine substituting his official designation, by which the whole society itself seemed to screen the Director!> up the national spirit, and diffuse hopes of the new enterprise of Vasco de Gama, who had just sailed on a voyage of discovery to the Indies. Three stones were discovered near Cintra, bearing in ancient characters, a Latin inscription: a sibylline oracle addressed prophetically To the inhabitants of the West! stating that when these three stones shall be found, the Ganges, the Indus, and the Tagus should exchange their commodities! This was the pious fraud of a Portuguese poet, sanctioned by the approbation of the king. When the stones had lain a sufficient time in the damp earth, so as to become apparently anique, our poet invited a numerons party to dinner at his country-house; in the midst of the entertainment a peasant rushed in, announcing the sudden discovery of this treasure! The inscription was placed among the royal collections as a sacred curiosny! The prophecy was accomp ished, and the oracle was long considered genuine! In such cases no mischief resulted; the annals of mankind were not confused by spurious dynasties and fabulous chronologies; but when literary forgeries are published by those whose character hardly admits of a suspicion that they are themselves the impostors, the difficulty of assigning a motive only increases that of forming a decision; to adopt or to reject them may be equally dangerous. In this class we must place Annius of Viterbo, who published a pretended collection of historians of the remotest antiquity, some of whose names had descended to us in the works of ancient writers, while their works themselves had been lost. Afterwards he subjoined commentaries to confirm their authority, by passages from unknown authors. These at first were eagerly accepted by the learned; the blunders of the presumed editor, one of which was his mistaking the right name of the historian he forged, were gradually detected till at length the imposture was apparent! The pretended originals were more remarkable for their number than their volume; for the whole collection does not exceed 171 pages, which lessened the difficulty of the forgery; while the commentaries, which were afterwards published, must have been manufactured at the same time as the text. In favour of Annius, the high rank be occupied at the Roman court, his irreproachable condoet, and his declaration that he had recovered some of these fragments at Mantua, and that others had come from Armensa, induced many to credit these pseudo-historians. A literary war soon kindled; Niceron has discriminated between four parties engaged in this conflict. One party decried the whole of the collection as gross forgeries; another obstinately supported their authenticity; a third decided that they were forgeries before Annius possessed them, who was only credulous; while a fourth party considered them as partly authentic, and described their blunders to the interpolations of the editor, to increase their importance. Such as they were, they scattered confusion over the whole face of history. The false Berosius opens his history before the deluge, when, according to him, the Chaldeans through preceding ages had faithfully preserved their historical evidences! Annius hints, in his Commentary, at the archives and public libraries of the Babylonians: the days of Noah comparatively seemed modern history with this dreaming editor. Some of the fanciful writers of Italy were duped: Sansovino, to delight the Florentine nobility, accommodated them with a new title of antiquity in their ancestor Noah, Imperatore e monarcha della genti, visse e mori in quelle parti. The Spaniards complained that in forging these fabulous origins of different nations, a new series of kings from the ark of Noah had been introduced by some of their rhodomonta le historians to pollute the sources of their history. Bodin's otherwise valuable works are considerably injured by Annius's supposititions discoveries. One historian died of grief, for having raised his elaborate speculations on these fabulous originals; and their credit was at length so much reduced, that Pignoria and Maffei both announced to their readers that they had not referred in their works to the pretended writers of Annius! Yet, to the present hour, these presumed forgeries are not always given up. The problem remains unsolved-and the silence of the respectable Annius, in regard to the forgery, as well as what he affirmed when alive, leave us in doubt whether he really intended to laugh at the world by these fairy tales of the giants of antiquity, Sanchoniathon, as preserved by Eusebius, may be classed among these ancient writings, or forgeries, and has been equally rejected and defended. Another literary forgery supposed to have been grafted on those of Annius, involved the Inghirami family. It was by digging in their grounds that they discovered a number of Etruscan antiquities, consisting of inscriptions, and also fragments of a chronicle, pretended to have been composed sixty years before the vulgar era. The characters on the marbles were the ancient Etruscan, and the historical work tended to confirm the pretended discoveries of Annius. They were collected and enshrined in a magnificent folio by Curtius Inghirami, who, a few years after, published a quarto volume exceeding one thousand pages to support their authenticity. Notwithstanding the erudition of the forger, these monuments of antiquity betrayed their modern condiment. There were uncial letters which no one knew; but these were said to be undiscovered ancient Etruscan characters; it was more difficult to defend the small italic letters, for they were not used in the age assigned to them; besides that there were dois on the letter i, a custom not practised till the eleventh century. The style was copied from the Latin of the Psalms and the Breviary; but inghirami discovered that there had been an intercourse between the Etruscans and the Hebrews, and that David had imitated the writings of Noah and his descendants! Of Noah the chronicle details speeches and anecdotes! The Romans, who have preserved so much of the Etruscans, had not, however, noticed a single fact recorded in these Etruscan antiquities. Inghirami replied, that the manuscript was the work of the secretary of the college of the Etrurian augurs, who alone was premitted to draw his materials from the archives, and who, it would seem, was the only scribe who has favoured posterity with so much secret history. It was urged in favour of the authenticity of these Etruscan monuments, that Inghirami was so young an antiquary at the time of the discovery, that he could not even explain them; and that when fresh researches were made on the spot, other similar monuments were also disinterred, where evidently they had long lain ; the whole affair, however contrived, was confined to the Inghirami family. One of them, half a century before, had been the librarian of the Vatican, and to him is ascribed the honour of the forgeries which he buried where he was sure they would be found. This, however, is a mere conjecture! Inghirami, who published and defended their authenticity, was not concerned in their fabrication; the design was probably merely to raise the antiquity of Volaterra, the family estate of the Inghirami; and for this pose one of its learned branches had bequeathed his posterity a collection of spurious historical monuments, which tended to overturn all received ideas on the first ages of history.* pur It was probably such impostures, and those of the false decretals of Isidore, which were forged for the maintenance of the papal supremacy, and for eight hundred years formed the fundamental basis, of the canon law, the discipline of the church, and even the faith of Christianity, which led to the monstrous pyrrhonistn of father Hardouin, who, with immense erudition, had persuaded himself, that, excepting the Bible and Homer, Herodotus, Plautus, Pliny the elder, with fragments of Cicero, Virgil, and Horace, all with remains of classical literature were forgeries of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries! In two dissertations he imagined that he had proved that the Eneid was not written by Virgil, nor the Odes of Horace by that poet. Hordouin was one of those wrong-headed men, who once having fallen into a delusion, whatever afterwards occurs to them on their favourite subject only tends to strengthen it. He died in his own faith! He seems not to have been aware, that by ascribing such prodigal inventions as Plutarch, Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus, and other historians, to the men he did, he was raising up an unparalleled age of learning and genius when monks could only write meagre chronicles, while learning and genius themselves lay in an enchanted slumber with a suspension of all their vital powers. There are numerous instances of the forgeries of smaller documents. The Prayer-Book of Columbus presented to him by the Pope, which the great discoverer of a new world bequeathed to the Genoese republic, has a codicil in his own writing as one of the leaves testifies, but as volumes composed against its authenticity deny. The famous description in Petrarch's Virgil, so often quoted, of his first rencontre with Laura in the church of St Clair on a Good The volume of these pretended Antiquities is entitled Etruscarum Antiquitatem fragmenta. fo. Franc. 1637. That which Inghirami published to defend their authenticity is in Italian. Discorso sopra opposizioni fatte all' Antichita Toscane 4to. Firenze, 1645. |