Only it happens that the open field is not yet
entered, and the lights thrust upon the
Chinese with too much abruptness have
unfortunately burnt their fingers.

LITERARY MYSTIFICATIONS.

THE learned Jesuit, Hardouin, in his work
upon Chronology and Coins, published in
1696, somewhat startled the weak minds
of his readers, by the bold assertion that
the ancient history, which is so dear to the
learned men of the present day, through the
delightful agency of Doctor Goldsmith and
others, had been entirely re-manufactured in
the thirteenth century, with the aid of the
works of Homer, Herodotus, Cicero, Pliny,
the Georgics of Virgil, and the Satires and
Epistles of Horace the only works which,
according to him, belonged to antiquity the
Bucolics, and the Æneid of Virgil, the Odes,
and the Art of Poetry of Horace, and all the
collection of poets, historians, and ancient
writers in general, whom we are unfortunately
addicted to admiring, having been, according
to the same veracious authority, fabricated by
the monks of the middle ages.

We have not been in the habit of paying
much more attention to such erudite speculations
as that of our friend, the Jesuit, than
they deserve; but the other day, "a very
modern instance"—that of the Shelley
forgeries—set us wondering upon the subject
of literary mystification in general. The
Jesuitical hypothesis presented itself with
more than usual force, and led us insensibly,
through a long catalogue of impostures, some
of the most prominent of which we will note
for the benefit of our readers.

Before the Revival of Letters, errors, such
as those in question, were made through
ignorance; but after that period—as befitted
a more advanced degree of civilisation—it was
by fraudulent means that the learned were
misled. It was one of the favourite amusements
of the learned of the sixteenth century
to mystify one another. In many cases, the
only motive seems to have been the gratification
of some personal whim, or the bewilderment
of some literary associate. But we now
and then find examples of elaborate attempts
to misrepresent history, and to confuse names
and dates to a most mischievous extent.

Of the latter class, a very large number of
forgeries and fictions were concocted for
political purposes. Among these may be
included 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; the deception of young
Maitland, who, in order to palliate the crime
of the assassination of the Regent Murray,
drew up a pretended conference between him,
Knox, and others, in which they were made
to plan the dethronement of the young king,
and the substitution of the regent in his place;
and the story of the "bloody Colonel Kirk,
related by Hume and others, which was :
originally told of a very different person in a
previous age.

The great majority, however, of deceptions
of the kind seem to have been contrived without
any other object than the mere artistic
love of ingenuity, to which the credulity or
mystification of the learned was a flattering
and irresistible tribute.

One of the boldest and most uncompromising
of a very mischievous class of literary
impostors was Annius of Viterbo. Annius
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 well-known 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, and 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 one hundred and seventy-one 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 he
occupied at the Roman court, his irreproachable
conduct, the declaration that he had.
recovered some of these fragments at Mantua,
and that others had come from Armenia,
induced many to credit these pseudo-historians.
A literary war was soon kindled. 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 Annius in regard to the forgery,
as well as what he affirmed when alive, leave
us in doubt as to whether he really intended
to laugh at the world by these fairy tales
of the giants of antiquity. Sanchouiathon,
as preserved by Eusebius, may be classed
among these ancient writings as a forgery,
and has been equally rejected and defended.

It should not be forgotten that the statements
of Annius received a supposed confirmation
in some pretended remains—of antiquity
which were dug up in the grounds of the
Inghirami family. These remains which
were Etruscan—consisted of inscriptions, and
some fragments of an ancient chronicle.
Curtius Inghirami had no doubt of their
authenticity, and published a quarto volume of