liographical writers, Morhof, Schelhorn, etc.

Middleton is

charged by Dr. Parr and others, probably on just grounds, with the perpetration of numerous plagiarisms in other productions of his pen.

The secret history of the authorship of literary productions would strip many a name of the reputation it enjoys, and place laurels on the brow of many a man who

"In life's low vale remote has pined alone,

Then dropped into the grave, unpitied and unknown!"

Rank and wealth have obtained unmerited eminence in the literary world, at the expense of the time and abilities of gifted dependents. The famous book called Eikon Basilike, which passed as the production of Charles I., is now known not to have been written by that king. It is supposed, though perhaps not satisfactorily proved, to have been written by one Gauden. Cardinal Richelieu, the French minister, employed a poet of the name of Chapelain to compose productions for him, which he circulated as his own, and which served to procure him some little reputation as a fine writer. Of this reputation he is said to have been more jealous and more proud than of his statesmanship. Henry VIII. is supposed not to have been the author of the Latin work against Luther which passed under his name and procured him from Pope Leo X. the title of Defender of the Faith. Instances of this nature might be multiplied to a very great extent.

Besides the influence exerted by station and riches over obscurity and poverty, other circumstances have often led to incorrect ascriptions of the authorship of books. The work which passes under the name of Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty was written for Hogarth by Dr. Morrell, as some say, or according to others by Dr. Hoadly. Of the noted Bampton Lectures, those delivered in 1784 by Dr. White, and published as his in one of the volumes of the series, were almost wholly the work of Dr. Parr and a clergyman named Badcock. Dr. White made use of the good offices of both his friends, without informing either of the assistance given him by the other. Accident led Dr. Parr to the discovery of this course of double-dealing, and he immediately published a merciless disclosure of the facts. Raleigh's History of the World (so called) was in great part the production of a Dr. Robert Burrel, who was confined with Sir Walter in the Tower during its composition. To him

Raleigh owed most of the recondite learning displayed in his History. There were likewise other contributors; among them Ben Jonson.

The following curious account respecting a literary debtor to others is given by D'Israeli. "Sir John Hill owned to a friend once when he fell sick, that he had over-fatigued himself with writing seven works at once, one of which was on architecture and another on cookery! This hero once contracted to translate Swammerdam's work on insects for fifty guineas. After the agreement with the bookseller he perfectly recollected that he did not understand a single word of the Dutch language; nor did there exist a French translation. The work, however, was not the less done for this small obstacle. Sir John bargained with another translator for twenty-five guineas. The second translator was precisely in the same situation as the first; as ignorant, though not so well paid, as the knight. He bargained with a third, who perfectly understood his original, for twelve guineas! So that the translators who could not translate," says D'Israeli, "feasted on venison, and turtle, while the modest drudge, whose name never appeared to the world, broke in patience his daily bread? The craft of authorship," he adds, "has many mysteries."

The second class of literary impostors consists of forgers. To this class belong the authors of those impostures which may be denominated religio-literary forgeries. Such are the religious books of all pagan nations; the Sibylline books of the Romans, the Koran of the Mohammedans, the Vedas of India, the ZendAvesta, or living word, of the Persians and Medians, our own apocryphal books, etc. Each of these religio-literary impostures would singly afford ample materials for an entire article. We shall content ourselves with this cursory mention of them and sweep them aside en masse.

Turn we now to forgeries unconnected thus with religion. The number, unblushing impudence, and intricate ingenuity of such frauds task the power of belief. They are to be found in every department of literature.

It was strenuously maintained by Father Hardouin, a French Jesuit of great learning, that nearly all the works ascribed to ancient authors in Greece and Rome were forged in the thirteenth century. He excepted from this singular imputation only the works of Cicero and Pliny the Elder, together with some of those which bear the repute of having been written

by Horace and Virgil. The idea was an extravagant one, and cannot for a moment be regarded with favor by any reflecting and well-regulated mind. It is not to be denied, however, that very many of the works which have come down to us as genuine productions of the ancient authors whose names they bear are most probably altogether spurious; and that a far larger number of them have undergone interpolation to a greater or less extent. There is little reason to suppose that, of the deceptions practised by the monks of the middle ages in relation to the works of the ancients, those which have as yet eluded the sagacity and research of the learned will ever be detected. The probability of exposure is at least as much diminished by the lapse of time since the perpetration of the frauds and by the influence of prescription, as increased by the additional number of minds engaged in the examination of the Greek and Roman writers (so called) or by the new facilities offered to investigation. Considering the character of the middle ages in regard to literature, we can hardly hope for any means of detecting frauds of this nature except internal evidence in the productions themselves; and, in most cases, this has long been estimated as correctly as possible, and a verdict given accordingly. The dim light with which the doings of those days are and ever must be wrapt, revealing to view scarce anything but the more prominent political convulsions, though affording some casual glimpses of literary and social phenomena, will scarce suffice to direct our scrutiny into the lurking-places of those facts with which we might oppose and defeat the influence of prescription as to the genuineness of many works which are referred to the classic periods of Greek or Roman literature.

Of the known forgeries since the Christian era and before the dawn of letters, we will make special mention of two or three. Philostratus, the philosopher, who flourished in the third century, composed a life of the celebrated impostor Apollonius Tyaneus from records purporting to have been made by Damis, who was not only a contemporary of Apollonius, but his friend and constant companion in travelling. That these records were spurious there is clear internal evidence. Among other things, the hero Apollonius appears in Babylon, and thereupon a description is given of that celebrated city, not a word of which is applicable to the period, as at that time Babylon was almost utterly desolate, its splendor having been long since absorbed by Seleucia.

There is a history of the Jewish War, which passes under the name of Hegesippus, the Jew. He lived in the reigns of Antoninus and Commodus, i. e. in the latter half of the second century; and yet mention is made in this work of Constantinople, Scotland, and Saxony !

Annius of Viterbo, or John Nanni, a Dominican friar of the fifteenth century, who was made master of the sacred palace by Pope Alexander VI., employed his leisure in the composition of fragments which he endeavored to palm upon the world as newly discovered remains of ancient writers. They were comprised in seventeen books of Antiquities, as he styled his forgeries, and bore the names of Sanchoniathon, Berosus and others. He subsequently added commentaries, composed mainly of forged passages ascribed to unknown authors. These fragments and commentaries were for a while extremely wellreceived by many of the learned throughout Europe. The blunders which they contained finally led to the detection of their author. He died, however, without confessing the fabrication, and from his respectability and pertinacity the Antiquities have still been supposed by some to be genuine writings of the authors to whom he ascribed them, or at least to have been thus regarded by Annius. The Dominicans, that the stain of such a forgery might not attach to their order, asserted that Annius derived his publications from a MS. belonging to the Colbertine library; but the existence of such a MS. was never satisfactorily proved. The success of the forgery is somewhat remarkable, though its magnitude was not very great, the whole collection of fragments amounting to less than 200 pages. At their first appearance they excited deep interest. Four parties were speedily formed, one pronouncing them forgeries by Annius, a second declaring that they were forged before the editor's time, a third regarding them as partly genuine and partly interpolated by the editor, and a fourth sustaining their entire genuineness.

The papal supremacy over the countries denominated the States of the Church originated in pretended grants made to the popes by Pepin and Charlemagne. There is no other proof of these grants than that contained in certain charters alleged to have been bestowed by Louis le Débonnaire, Otho I. and Henry I. Notwithstanding the strenuous efforts which have been made by some Catholic writers to sustain the authenticity of these charters, they are pretty generally regarded as having

been forged to give color to the papal appropriation of the territories referred to. In like manner, deeds and inscriptions, designed to sustain the pretensions of the papal church in a momentous law-suit, were forged by the Spanish antiquary Medina Conde, and buried in the earth where he knew they would soon be discovered. The decretals called the decretals of Isidore, which formed the fundamental ground of the canon-law for eight centuries, were forged in the ninth century with a view to the maintenance of the papal authority. Isidore, archbishop of Seville, in whose name they were fabricated, died in 636.

Let us now descend to more modern times, and notice some of the most remarkable forgeries which they present to view. Precise chronological order in narrating them is not of consequence, and will not be sought.

The first which we shall mention are those executed by one Joseph Vella in the latter part of the last century, an account of which we transcribe from D'Israeli. The source from which this account is derived is not stated by D'Israeli; and we have not been able to discover it. In a French Biographie Universelle we find a narrative differing from his in some not very material points; but, as D'Israeli's is rather more circumstantial, we bave chosen to rely on his authority. "One of the most extraordinary literary impostures was that of one Joseph Vella, who, in 1794, was an adventurer in Sicily, and pretended that he possessed seventeen of the lost books of Livy in Arabic. He had received this literary treasure, he said, from a Frenchman, who had purloined it from a shelf in St. Sophia's church at Constantinople. As many of the Greek and Roman classics have been translated by the Arabians, and many were first known in Europe in their Arabic dress, there was nothing improbable in one part of his story. He was urged to publish these longdesired books; and Lady Spencer, then in Italy, offered to defray the expenses. He had the effrontery, by way of specimen, to edit an Italian translation of the sixtieth book; but that book took up no more than one octavo page! A professor of oriental literature in Prussia introduced it into his work, never suspecting the fraud. It proved to be nothing more than the Epitome of Florus. He also gave out that he possessed a code which he had picked up in the Abbey of St. Martin, containing the ancient history of Sicily in the Arabic period, comprehending above 200 years, and of which ages their own historians were entirely deficient in knowledge. Vella declared he had a VOL. XI No. 29.

7