Curiosities of Literature Volume I Part 21

Paschal, historiographer of France, had a reason for these ingenious inventions; he continually announced such t.i.tles, that his pension for writing on the history of France might not be stopped. When he died, his historical labours did not exceed six pages!

Gregorio Leti is an historian of much the same stamp as Varillas. He wrote with great facility, and hunger generally quickened his pen. He took everything too lightly; yet his works are sometimes looked into for many anecdotes of English history not to be found elsewhere; and perhaps ought not to have been there if truth had been consulted. His great aim was always to make a book: he swells his volumes with digressions, intersperses many ridiculous stories, and applies all the repartees he collected from old novel-writers to modern characters.

Such forgeries abound; the numerous "Testaments Politiques" of Colbert, Mazarin, and other great ministers, were forgeries usually from the Dutch press, as are many pretended political "Memoirs."

Of our old translations from the Greek and Latin authors, many were taken from French versions.

The Travels, written in Hebrew, of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, of which we have a curious translation, are, I believe, apocryphal. He describes a journey, which, if ever he took, it must have been with his night-cap on; being a perfect dream! It is said that to inspirit and give importance to his nation, he pretended that he had travelled to all the synagogues in the East; he mentions places which he does not appear ever to have seen, and the different people he describes no one has known. He calculates that he has found near eight hundred thousand Jews, of which about half are independent, and not subjects of any Christian or Gentile sovereign. These fict.i.tious travels have been a source of much trouble to the learned; particularly to those who in their zeal to authenticate them followed the aerial footsteps of the Hyppogriffe of Rabbi Benjamin.

He affirms that the tomb of Ezekiel, with the library of the first and second temples, were to be seen in his time at a place on the banks of the river Euphrates; Wesselius of Groningen, and many other literati, travelled on purpose to Mesopotamia, to reach the tomb and examine the library; but the fairy treasures were never to be seen, nor even heard of!

The first on the list of impudent impostors is Annius of Viterbo, a Dominican, and master of the sacred palace under Alexander VI. He pretended he had discovered the entire works of Sanchoniatho, Manetho, Berosus, and others, of which only fragments are remaining. He published seventeen books of antiquities! But not having any MSS. to produce, though he declared he had found them buried in the earth, these literary fabrications occasioned great controversies; for the author died before he made up his mind to a confession. At their first publication universal joy was diffused among the learned. Suspicion soon rose, and detection followed. However, as the forger never would acknowledge himself as such, it has been ingeniously conjectured that he himself was imposed on, rather than that he was the impostor; or, as in the case of Chatterton, possibly all may not be fict.i.tious. It has been said that a great volume in MS., anterior by two hundred years to the seventeen books of Annius, exists in the Bibliotheque Colbertine, in which these pretended histories were to be read; but as Annius would never point out the sources of his, the whole may be considered as a very wonderful imposture. I refer the reader to Tyrwhitt's Vindication of his Appendix to Rowley's or Chatterton's Poems, p. 140, for some curious observations, and some facts of literary imposture.

An extraordinary literary imposture 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 cla.s.sics 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 long-desired 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 in 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 two hundred years; and of which ages their own historians were entirely deficient in knowledge. Vella declared he had a genuine official correspondence between the Arabian governors of Sicily and their superiors in Africa, from the first landing of the Arabians in that island. Vella was now loaded with honours and pensions! It is true he showed Arabic MSS., which, however, did not contain a syllable of what he said. He pretended he was in continual correspondence with friends at Morocco and elsewhere. The King of Naples furnished him with money to a.s.sist his researches. Four volumes in quarto were at length published! Vella had the adroitness to change the Arabic MSS. he possessed, which entirely related to Mahomet, to matters relative to Sicily; he bestowed several weeks' labour to disfigure the whole, altering page for page, line for line, and word for word, but interspersed numberless dots, strokes, and flourishes; so that when he published a fac-simile, every one admired the learning of Vella, who could translate what no one else could read. He complained he had lost an eye in this minute labour; and every one thought his pension ought to have been increased. Everything prospered about him, except his eye, which some thought was not so bad neither. It was at length discovered by his blunders, &c., that the whole was a forgery: though it had now been patronised, translated, and extracted through Europe. When this MS.

was examined by an Orientalist, it was discovered to be nothing but a history of _Mahomet and his family_. Vella was condemned to imprisonment.

The Spanish antiquary, Medina Conde, in order to favour the pretensions of the church in a great lawsuit, forged deeds and inscriptions, which he buried in the ground, where he knew they would shortly be dug up.

Upon their being found, he published engravings of them, and gave explanations of their unknown characters, making them out to be so many authentic proofs and evidences of the contested a.s.sumptions of the clergy.

The Morocco amba.s.sador purchased of him a copper bracelet of Fatima, which Medina proved by the Arabic inscription and many certificates to be genuine, and found among the ruins of the Alhambra, with other treasures of its last king, who had hid them there in hope of better days. This famous bracelet turned out afterwards to be the work of Medina's own hand, made out of an old bra.s.s candlestick!

George Psalmanazar, to whose labours we owe much of the great Universal History, exceeded in powers of deception any of the great impostors of learning. His Island of Formosa was an illusion eminently bold,[44] and maintained with as much felicity as erudition; and great must have been that erudition which could form a pretended language and its grammar, and fertile the genius which could invent the history of an unknown people: it is said that the deception was only satisfactorily ascertained by his own penitential confession; he had defied and baffled the most learned.[45] The literary impostor Lauder had much more audacity than ingenuity, and he died contemned by all the world.[46]

Ireland's "Shakspeare" served to show that commentators are not blessed, necessarily, with an interior and unerring tact.[47] Genius and learning are ill directed in forming literary impositions, but at least they must be distinguished from the fabrications of ordinary impostors.

A singular forgery was practised on Captain Wilford by a learned Hindu, who, to ingratiate himself and his studies with the too zealous and pious European, contrived, among other attempts, to give the history of Noah and his three sons, in his "Purana," under the designation of Satyavrata. Captain Wilford having _read_ the pa.s.sage, transcribed it for Sir William Jones, who translated it as a curious extract; the whole was an interpolation by the dexterous introduction of a forged sheet, discoloured and prepared for the purpose of deception, and which, having served his purpose for the moment, was afterwards withdrawn. As books in India are not bound, it is not difficult to introduce loose leaves. To confirm his various impositions, this learned forger had the patience to write two voluminous sections, in which he connected all the legends together in the style of the _Puranas_, consisting of 12,000 lines. When Captain Wilford resolved to collate the ma.n.u.script with others, the learned Hindu began to disfigure his own ma.n.u.script, the captain's, and those of the college, by erasing the name of the country and subst.i.tuting that of Egypt. With as much pains, and with a more honourable direction, our Hindu Lauder might have immortalized his invention.

We have authors who sold their names to be prefixed to works they never read; or, on the contrary, have prefixed the names of others to their own writings. Sir John Hill, once when he fell sick, owned to a friend 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 recollected that he did not understand a 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 rebargained with a third, who perfectly understood his original, for twelve guineas! So that the translators who could not translate 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 authors.h.i.+p has many mysteries.[48] One of the great patriarchs and primeval dealers in English literature was Robert Green, one of the most facetious, profligate, and indefatigable of the Scribleri family. He laid the foundation of a new dynasty of literary emperors. The first act by which he proved his claim to the throne of Grub-street has served as a model to his numerous successors--it was an ambidextrous trick! Green sold his "Orlando Furioso" to two different theatres, and is among the first authors in English literary history who wrote as a _trader_;[49]

or as crabbed Anthony Wood phrases it, in the language of celibacy and cynicism, "he wrote to maintain his _wife_, and that high and loose course of living which _poets generally follow_." With a drop still sweeter, old Anthony describes Gayton, another worthy; "he came up to London to live in a _s.h.i.+rking condition_, and wrote _trite things_ merely to get bread to sustain him and his _wife_."[50] The hermit Anthony seems to have had a mortal antipathy against the Eves of literary men.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 43: Burnet's little 12mo volume was printed at Amsterdam, "in the Warmoes-straet near the Dam," 1686, and compiled by him when living for safety in Holland during the reign of James II. He particularly attacks Varillas' ninth book, which relates to England, and its false history of the Reformation, or rather "his own imagination for true history." On the authority of Catholic students, he says "the greatest number of the pieces he cited were to be found nowhere but in his own fancy." Burnet allows full lat.i.tude to an author for giving the best colouring to his own views and that of his party--a lat.i.tude he certainly always allowed to himself; but he justly censures the falsifying, or rather inventing, of history; after Varillas' fas.h.i.+on.

"History," says Burnet, "is a sort of trade, in which false coyn and false weights are more criminal than in other matters; because the errour may go further and run longer, though their authors colour their copper too slightly to make it keep its credit long."]

[Footnote 44: The volume was published in 8vo in 1704, as "An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, an Island subject to the Emperor of j.a.pan." It is dedicated to the Bishop of London, who is told that "the Europeans have such obscure and various notions of j.a.pan, and especially of our island Formosa, that they believe nothing for truth that has been said of it." He accordingly narrates the political history of the place; the manners and customs of its inhabitants; their religion, language, &c. A number of engravings ill.u.s.trate the whole, and depict the dresses of the people, their houses, temples, and ceremonies.

A "Formosan Alphabet" is also given, and the Lord's Prayer, Apostles'

Creed, and Ten Commandments, are "translated" into this imaginary language. To keep up the imposition, he ate raw meat when dining with the Secretary to the Royal Society, and Formosa appeared in the maps as a real island, in the spot he had described as its locality.]

[Footnote 45: Psalmanazar would never reveal the true history of his early life, but acknowledged one of the southern provinces of France as the place of his birth, about 1679. He received a fair education, became lecturer in a Jesuit college, then a tutor at Avignon; he afterwards led a wandering life, subsisting on charity, and pretending to be an Irish student travelling to Rome for conscience sake. He soon found he would be more successful if he personated a Pagan stranger, and hence he gradually concocted his tale of _Formosa_; inventing an alphabet, and perfecting his story, which was not fully matured before he had had a few years' hard labour as a soldier in the Low Countries; where a Scotch gentleman introduced him to the notice of Dr. Compton, Bishop of London; who patronised him, and invited him to England. He came, and to oblige the booksellers compiled his _History of Formosa_, by the two editions of which he realized the n.o.ble sum of 22_l._ He ended in becoming a regular bookseller's hack, and so highly moral a character, that Dr.

Johnson, who knew him well, declared he was "the best man he had ever known."]

[Footnote 46: William Lauder first began his literary impostures in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1747, where he accused Milton of gross plagiarisms in his _Paradise Lost_, pretending that he had discovered the prototypes of his best thoughts in other authors. This he did by absolute invention, in one instance interpolating twenty verses of a Latin translation of Milton into the works of another author, and then producing them with great virulence as a proof that Milton was a plagiarist. The falsehood of his pretended quotations was demonstrated by Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, in 1751, but he returned to the charge in 1754. His character and conduct became too bad to allow of his continued residence in England, and he died in Barbadoes, "in universal contempt," about 1771.]

[Footnote 47: Ireland's famous forgeries began when, as a young man in a lawyer's office, he sought to imitate old deeds and letters in the name of Shakspeare and his friends, urged thereto by his father's great anxiety to discover some writings connected with the great bard. Such was the enthusiasm with which they were received by men of great general knowledge, that Ireland persevered in fresh forgeries until an entire play was "discovered." It was a tragedy founded on early British history, and named _Vortigern_. It was produced at Kemble's Theatre, and was d.a.m.ned. Ireland's downward course commenced from that night. He ultimately published confessions of his frauds, and died very poor in 1835.]

[Footnote 48: Fielding, the novelist, in _The Author's Farce_, one of those slight plays which he wrote so cleverly, has used this incident, probably from his acquaintance with Hill's trick. He introduces his author trying to sell a translation of the _aeneid_, which the bookseller will not purchase; but after some conversation offers him "employ" in the house as a translator; he then is compelled to own himself "not qualified," because he "understands no language but his own." "What! and translate _Virgil!_" exclaims the astonished bookseller. The detected author answers despondingly, "Alas! sir, I translated him out of Dryden!" The bookseller joyfully exclaims, "Not qualified! If I was an Emperor, thou should'st be my Prime Minister! Thou art as well vers'd in thy trade as if thou had'st laboured in my garret these ten years!"]

CARDINAL RICHELIEU.

The present anecdote concerning Cardinal Richelieu may serve to teach the man of letters how he deals out criticisms to the _great_, when they ask his opinion of ma.n.u.scripts, be they in verse or prose.

The cardinal placed in a gallery of his palace the portraits of several ill.u.s.trious men, and was desirous of composing the inscriptions under the portraits. The one which he intended for Montluc, the marechal of France, was conceived in these terms: _Multa fecit, plura scripsit, vir tamen magnus fuit_. He showed it without mentioning the author to Bourbon, the royal Greek professor, and asked his opinion concerning it.

The critic considered that the Latin was much in the style of the breviary; and, had it concluded with an _allelujah_, it would serve for an _anthem_ to the _magnificat_. The cardinal agreed with the severity of his strictures, and even acknowledged the discernment of the professor; "for," he said, "it is really written by a priest." But however he might approve of Bourbon's critical powers, he punished without mercy his ingenuity. The pension his majesty had bestowed on him was withheld the next year.

The cardinal was one of those ambitious men who foolishly attempt to rival every kind of genius; and seeing himself constantly disappointed, he envied, with all the venom of rancour, those talents which are so frequently the _all_ that men of genius possess.

He was jealous of Balzac's splendid reputation; and offered the elder Heinsius ten thousand crowns to write a criticism which should ridicule his elaborate compositions. This Heinsius refused, because Salmasius threatened to revenge Balzac on his _Herodes Infanticida_.

He attempted to rival the reputation of Corneille's "Cid," by opposing to it one of the most ridiculous dramatic productions; it was the allegorical tragedy called "Europe," in which the _minister_ had congregated the four quarters of the world! Much political matter was thrown together, divided into scenes and acts. There are appended to it keys of the dramatis personae and of the allegories. In this tragedy Francion represents France; Ibere, Spain; Parthenope, Naples, &c.; and these have their attendants:--Lilian (alluding to the French lilies) is the servant of Francion, while Hispale is the confidant of Ibere. But the key to the allegories is much more copious:--Albione signifies England; _three knots of the hair of Austrasie_ mean the towns of Clermont, Stenay, and Jamet, these places once belonging to Lorraine. _A box of diamonds_ of Austrasie is the town of Nancy, belonging once to the dukes of Lorraine. The _key_ of Ibere's great porch is Perpignan, which France took from Spain; and in this manner is this sublime tragedy composed! When he first sent it anonymously to the French Academy it was reprobated. He then tore it in a rage, and scattered it about his study.

Towards evening, like another Medea lamenting over the members of her own children, he and his secretary pa.s.sed the night in uniting the scattered limbs. He then ventured to avow himself; and having pretended to correct this incorrigible tragedy, the submissive Academy retracted their censures, but the public p.r.o.nounced its melancholy fate on its first representation. This lamentable tragedy was intended to thwart Corneille's "Cid." Enraged at its success, Richelieu even commanded the Academy to publish a severe _critique_ of it, well known in French literature. Boileau on this occasion has these two well-turned verses:--

"En vain contre le Cid, un ministre se ligue; Tout Paris, pour _Chimene_, a les yeux de _Rodrigue_."

"To oppose the Cid, in vain the statesman tries; All Paris, for _Chimene_, has _Roderick's_ eyes."

It is said that, in consequence of the fall of this tragedy, the French custom is derived of securing a number of friends to applaud their pieces at their first representations. I find the following droll anecdote concerning this droll tragedy in Beauchamp's _Recherches sur le Theatre_.

The minister, after the ill success of his tragedy, retired unaccompanied the same evening to his country-house at Ruel. He then sent for his favourite Desmaret, who was at supper with his friend Pet.i.t. Desmaret, conjecturing that the interview would be stormy, begged his friend to accompany him.

"Well!" said the Cardinal, as soon as he saw them, "the French will never possess a taste for what is lofty; they seem not to have relished my tragedy."--"My lord," answered Pet.i.t, "it is not the fault of the piece, which is so admirable, but that of the _players_. Did not your eminence perceive that not only they knew not their parts, but that they were all _drunk_?"--"Really," replied the Cardinal, something pleased, "I observed they acted it dreadfully ill."

Desmaret and Pet.i.t returned to Paris, flew directly to the players to plan a _new mode_ of performance, which was to _secure_ a number of spectators; so that at the second representation bursts of applause were frequently heard!

Richelieu had another singular vanity, of closely imitating Cardinal Ximenes. Pliny was not a more servile imitator of Cicero. Marville tells us that, like Ximenes, he placed himself at the head of an army; like him, he degraded princes and n.o.bles; and like him, rendered himself formidable to all Europe. And because Ximenes had established schools of theology, Richelieu undertook likewise to raise into notice the schools of the Sorbonne. And, to conclude, as Ximenes had written several theological treatises, our cardinal was also desirous of leaving posterity various polemical works. But his gallantries rendered him more ridiculous. Always in ill health, this miserable lover and grave cardinal would, in a freak of love, dress himself with a red feather in his cap and sword by his side. He was more hurt by an offensive nickname given him by the queen of Louis XIII., than even by the hiss of theatres and the critical condemnation of academies.

Cardinal Richelieu was a.s.suredly a great political genius. Sir William Temple observes, that he inst.i.tuted the French Academy to give employment to the _wits_, and to hinder them from inspecting too narrowly his politics and his administration. It is believed that the Marshal de Grammont lost an important battle by the orders of the cardinal; that in this critical conjuncture of affairs his majesty, who was inclined to dismiss him, could not then absolutely do without him.

Vanity in this cardinal levelled a great genius. He who would attempt to display universal excellence will be impelled to practise meanness, and to act follies which, if he has the least sensibility, must occasion him many a pang and many a blush.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 49: The story is told in _The Defence of Coneycatching_, 1592, where he is said to have "sold _Orlando Furioso_ to the Queen's players for twenty n.o.bles, and when they were in the country sold the same play to the Lord Admirall's men for as much more."]

[Footnote 50: Edmund Gayton was born in 1609, was educated at Oxford, then led the life of a literary drudge in London, where the best book he produced was _Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixote_, in which are many curious and diverting stories, and among the rest the original of Prior's _Ladle_. He ultimately retired to Oxford, and died there very poor, in a subordinate place in his college.]

ARISTOTLE AND PLATO.

No philosopher has been so much praised and censured as Aristotle: but he had this advantage, of which some of the most eminent scholars have been deprived, that he enjoyed during his life a splendid reputation.

Philip of Macedon must have felt a strong conviction of his merit, when he wrote to him, on the birth of Alexander:--"I receive from the G.o.ds this day a son; but I thank them not so much for the favour of his birth, as his having come into the world at a time when you can have the care of his education; and that through you he will be rendered worthy of being my son."