"Captain Halley, Savilian Professor of the Mathematics, Oxford, and some other gentlemen," touching the sun's position at mid-day and the duration of twilight in Formosa, all their inquiries upon which subjects he declares were satisfactorily answered. On turning to the chapter that treats of "the situation, &c., of the isle," we find a passage not contained in the first edition wherein the sun's verticality at midsummer is curtly mentioned. To unenlightened readers these passages might seem commonplace announcements. "Rem acu tetigisti!"' cried those in the secret. The eminent astronomer and his learned companions, Drs. Mead and Woodward, gave their own version of the conversation referred to. When they questioned him respecting the sun's position and the length of twilight, he was utterly dumbfoundered. In anyone less remarkable for exact observation and retentive memory, a lapse on such points might not excite suspicion; in Psalmanazar's case the savans, coupling it with the other incredibilities of his story, can arrive at but one conclusion-that he is an impudent impostor.

lisher he procured employment as a literary drudge, and for half a century worked upon the Universal History and other meritorious but now obsolete productions. He long outlived his infamy, and the world-if it heard his name at allknew it only as that of a learned, assiduous, inoffensive man of letters. Dr. Johnson delighted in his society, and has recorded him with affectionate praise as one of the best men he had ever known. He died in 1763, leaving directions that his MS. autobiography should be published for the benefit of his executrix, an old woman in whose house he had long lodged. This singular narrative, published in the following year, contains a full confession of what the writer calls "the base and shameful imposture of passing upon the world for a native of Formosa and a convert to Christianity, and backing it with a fictitious account of that island and of my own travels, conversion, &c., all or most of it hatched in my own brain without regard to truth or honesty."

Slowly and reluctantly the public mind was brought to acquiesce in this view. For a considerable time the adventurer braved exposure, and retained a congregation of believers. Some influential patrons procured him private tutorships, a regimental clerkship, and other appointinents, but he failed to keep them. His next stroke of imposture was to lend his name to the advertisements of one Pattenden, the inventor of a "white Japan enamel," which the public was requested to believe had been prepared from a Formosan recipe. The public, however, either questioned the statement, or whether, if true, the enamel was recommended by its origin-at any rate declined to purchase it. He maintained his assumed character nevertheless for some years longer, and so late as 1716 found a sufficient number of subscribers to make up an annuity of 20/. or 30l. for him as a convert, He eventually underwent what appears to have been a genuine conversion, abandoned his career of imposture, and set about obtaining an honest livelihood. Few rogues have ended their days so creditably. Through the aid of a kindly pub

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While maintaining reserve as to his real name, parentage, and place of birth, he confesses that "out of Europe I was not born, nor educated, nor ever travelled." He received his early training under the Jesuits in the south of France, to whom he was indebted for his proficiency in Latin and the acquaintance which he displayed with the current questions of theological polemics. Preferring a vagabond life in France and Germany to any settled occupation, but finding it difficult to subsist, he assumed the disguise of a Japanese convert for the purpose of exciting sympathy. Failing in this attempt, he adopted the rôle of a heathen fugitive, and invented the outlines of the imposture which he subsequently elaborated in his Account of Formosa. Having been pressed into the service of the Elector of Cologne, and accompanying his regiment to Sluys, he there fell in with Innes, who undertook to convert him to Christianity. During the colloquies that ensued, the chaplain discovered and taxed him with the imposture; but, instead of disclosing it, proposed to become his accomplice. A scheme which should be mutually advantageous was then matured between them. Innes saw the opportunity which offered of securing a reputation for pro

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fessional zeal and a prospect of preferment, while Psalmanazar was ambitious of obtaining his discharge from the army and figuring as a lion in London society. Having gone through the farce of converting" his confederate, Innes found a dupe in Brigadier Lauder, who consented to stand as sponsor at the baptism. The story was then communicated to the Bishop of London, who unhesitatingly received it for gospel, and gave the chaplian and his proselyte the desired invitation to England. Soon after their arrival, a lucrative regimental chaplaincy in Portugal became vacant, and was placed at the disposal of Innes, who left Psalmanazar to carry on the fraud alone, which he proceeded to do in the manner already told.

There can be no doubt that one or both of these astute knaves had formed a shrewd estimate of the character of the society which they undertook to delude. The inception of the scheme was due to Psalmanazar, but Innes must be credited with the idea of executing it in England, and cloaking it in the attractive garb of religion. In the excited state of the public mind upon that subject, no bait could be better timed than a fiction which aggravated the Protestant hatred of Jesuitical craft and exalted the via media of Anglicanism above all the rest of the Reformed Churches. That the That the religious world of England had recently begun to feel interested in missions to the heathen, was another fact which the chaplain with his professional training was not likely to overlook. The historical details of the fraud were concocted by Psalmanazar alone, after he had resided for some months in England, and enjoyed ample opportunities of observation.

The systematic shape in which they appear in his work may thus be regarded as embodying his deliberate calculation of the extent to which the public appetite for marvels would bear cramming. No society, perhaps, ever afforded a better subject for experiment than that in which he found himself. The faithful mirror of the time which Steele and Addison held up for it in the Spectator, has reflected one feature of its likeness as especially prominent. Athens, Rome, and Paris, in their most frivolous days, cannot have displayed a more feverish eagerness "to tell and to hear

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some new thing," than possessed the London of Anne. In one paper, marked by his favorite vein of quiet satire, Addison ridicules "the general thirst after news' which could not be sated without some daily draught, however vapid or stale. "It is notorious," he says, that men who frequent coffeehouses and delight in news are pleased with everything that is matter of fact, so it be what they have not heard before. A victory or a defeat is equally agreeable to them; the shutting of a cardinal's mouth pleases them one post, and the opening of it another. They read the advertisements with the same curiosity as the articles of public news, and are as pleased to hear of a piebald horse that is strayed out of a field near Islington as of a whole troop that has been engaged in any foreign adventure. In short, they have a relish for everything that is news, let the matter of it be what it will; or, to speak more properly, they are men of a voracious appetite but no taste." The writer in whose mouth he puts these observations is represented as a "projector who is willing to turn a penny by this remarkable curiosity of his countrymen,' and accordingly proposes to start a daily paper which shall comprehend in it all the most remarkable occurrences in every little town, village, and hamlet that lie within ten miles of London."'* In another paper Addison illustrates the avidity with which the quidnuncs of the day seized upon any material for gossip, however untrustworthy, by recounting how he tracked from coffeehouse to coffee-house the passage of a casual report that the King of France was dead, and how the serious discussions to which it gave rise suddenly collapsed upon the arrival of another report that His Majesty had just taken an airing.t

The advantage which charlatans took of this disposition in the public mind to accept any statement for truth is the subject of other papers from the pen of Steele. Of Duncan Campbell, the deaf and dumb fortune-teller, already named, he says "that the blind Tiresias was not more famous in Greece than this dumb artist has been for some years last

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past in the cities of London and Westminster.' All classes of society showed an equal readiness to take pretenders at their own valuation, and a robustness of faith that was staggered by no demonstration of their falsehood. "There is hardly a man in the world, one would think, so ignorant as not to know that the ordinary quack doctors who publish their great abilities in little brown billets, distributed to all that pass by, are to a man impostors and murderers. Yet such is the credulity of the vulgar and the impudence of these professors that the affair still goes on, and new promises of what was never done before are made every day." After quoting one of these advertisements from a "professed surgeon, lately come from his travels, after twenty-four years' practice by sea and land," who affects to cure "all diseases incident to men, women and children," Steele proceeds-" There is something unaccountably taking among the vulgar, in those who come from a great way off. Ignorant people of quality, as many there are of such, doat excessively this way, many instances of which every man will suggest to himself, without my enumerating them." Among the impostors who profitably traded upon this footing, he names "a doctor, in Mouse Alley, near Wapping, who sets up for curing cataracts upon the credit of having, as his bill sets forth, lost an eye in the Emperor's service. His patients come in upon this, and he shows the muster-roll, which confirms that he was in his Imperial Majesty's troops, and he puts out their eyes with great success."t

It was on the symptoms of this epidemic phrenitis, while yet in an early stage, that Psalmanazar reckoned for success. Having already secured the suffrages of the religious world, he proceeded to draw the majority of his dupes from the class to which Steele refers as ignorant people of quality." The Sir Plumes and Dapperwits, who passed their lives in retailing club and coffeehouse gossip, required no better evidence of his savage origin than that he ate roots and raw meat, and told monstrous stories of cannibal atrocity and repulsive modes of life. The fine ladies

to whom these marvels were repeated were well disposed to a visitor who described a state of existence so unlike their own. An affected love of simplicity is a familiar characteristic of the most artificial societies, and there are always to be found" Mrs. Merdles," who, though forced to live in the fashionable world, "are pastoral to a degree by nature, and would have been charmed to be savages in the tropical seas." Psalmanazar had wit to discern the prevalence of a tendency which had already given rise to "Arcadian" verse, and was about to develope the "Dresden-Shepherd period" of art, and played his game accordingly His invention of a barbarous alphabet and grammar was plausible enough to mystify even men of culture, acquainted only with the classical languages of Europe, and ignorant of the rudiments of comparative philology. Literary critics were equally baffled by the ingenuity with which, while pretending to rectify the mis-statements of previous historians, he pieced together so much of their information as sufficed, with additions of his own, to compose an independent narrative. It was not until the light of a positive science had been brought to bear upon his fabrication that its true character was detected.

Early in 1795, Mr. Samuel Ireland, well known in the literary world of London as a collector of rare books and prints, and the author of several contributions to belles lettres, publicly announced that he had come into possession of a large number of MSS. in the handwriting of Shakespeare, the authenticity of which he was desirous of submitting to the opinion of all competent judges. His latest illustrated work had been devoted to the scenery of the Warwickshire Avon, which he had explored with the particular object of gleaning any unknown memorials relating to the poet, of whose genius and fame he was a fervently avowed worshipper; so that this momentous discovery appealed to the sympathy of all likeminded enthusiasts as the legitimate reward of much pious labor. His invitation to inspect the MSS. was accepted by a large concourse of the brotherhood, including several men of high literary distinction. Few living scholars were more erudite

cluded many persons of celebrity, besides those already named, and the committees of several public libraries.

than Dr. Parr, Dr. Valpy, and Dr. Joseph Warton. George Chalmers and John Pinkerton were experts, specially skilled in old English literature. The professional antiquaries were well represented by Sir Isaac Heard, Garter King-at-Arms, and Francis Townshend, Windsor Herald; and miscellaneous men of letters by R. B. Sheridan, Sir Herbert Croft, H. J. Pye, the Poet Laureate, and James Boswell. After carefully collating the principal MSS. with the poet's undoubted autographs, these critics expressed a firm conviction of their authenticity, and a certificate to that effect was numerously signed. A collection of rarer literary and biographical value was certainly never offered to the world. It comprised the entire MS. of Lear, varying in some important respects from the printed copies; a fragment of Hamlet; two unpublished plays, entitled, Vortigern and Henry the Second; a number of books from the poet's library, enriched with copious marginal notes; besides letters to Anne Hathaway, Lord Southampton, and others; a Profession of Faith, legal contracts, deeds of gift, and autograph receipts. The external evidence for the authenticity of these precious remains was pronounced by the attesting critics to be strikingly confirm ed by their internal evidence. The inimitable style of the master was to be clearly discerned in the unpublished writings. After hearing the Profession of Faith read, Warton exclaimed, "We have very fine things in our Church Service, and our Litany abounds with beauties; but here is a man who has distanced us all!" Boswell, before signing the certificate of authenticity, fell upon his knees to kiss "the invaluable relics of our bard," and, "in a tone of enthusiasm and exultation, thanked God that he had lived to witness the discovery, and . . . could now die in peace." The public interest excited by the discovery was so great that Mr. Ireland's house in Norfolk Street was besieged by visitors, and he had to limit their number by orders and the days of admission to three in the week. The publication of the MSS. by subscription was soon announced, and the first volume was issued in 1796 at the price of four guineas, under the editorship of Mr. Ireland. The list of subscribers for this handsome folio in

In an ornate preface the editor, describing the instalment as "part of that valuable treasure of our Shakespeare, which having been by accident discovered in MS., has since been deposited in his hands, his hands," assures the public that from the "first moment of their discovery he has labored by every means to inform himself with respect to the validity of these interesting papers;' that "he has courted, he has even challenged the critical judgment of those who are best skilled in the poetry or phraseology of the times in which Shakespeare lived, as well as those whose profession or course of study has made them conversant with ancient deeds, writings, seals, and autographs;" that, not content with having them tested by "the scholar, the man of taste, the antiquarian, and the herald,' he has submitted them to the "practical experience of the paper-maker," and, as the result of these investigations, has "the satisfaction of announcing to the public that, as far as he has been able to collect the sentiments of the several classes of persons above referred to, they have unanimously testified in favor of their authenticity, and declared that where there was such a mass of evidence, internal and external, it was impossible, amidst such various sources of detection, for the art of imitation to have hazarded so much without betraying itself, and consequently that these papers can be no other than the production of Shakespeare himself." Respecting the source whence they were obtained, some little reserve was unavoidably necessary. The editor "received them from his son, Samuel William Henry Ireland, a young man then under nineteen years of age, by whom the discovery was accidentally made at the house of a gentleman of considerable property.' The contracts to which Shakespeare was a party were first found among a mass of family papers, and soon afterwards the deed of gift to William Henry Ireland, described as Shakespeare's friend, in consequence of having saved his life from drowning in the Thames."' The owner of the papers was struck by the coincidence that they should be discovered by a namesake of this person,

narrative of their discovery and ownership, and any doubt as to the resemblance of the handwriting to Shakespeare's, the evidence of error in minute particulars of language, spelling, and date was so cumulative as to determine the question in the minds of all impartial judges. Many of the experts who had compromised their reputation were now satisfied that they had been duped, but a few still clung to their belief, especially George Chalmers, who, in two bulky volumes of "Apology,' marked by considerable research, attempted to refute Malone's arguments. Samuel Ireland also put forth an immediate reply to them, but rather by way of vindicating his character from the imputation of fraud, than of sustaining the credit of the papers. Any chance of his doing so with success was rendered hopeless by the simultaneous appearance of a pamphlet written by his son, William Henry Ireland, a young law-student, who avowed himself the sole author of the imposture. Induced in the first instance, according to his own account, by the sole motive of gratifying his father's ardent wish for Shakespearian relics, he had commenced by the forgery of a single autograph, and finding this succeed, was prompted partly by a mischievous desire to see "how far credulity would go in the search for antiquities," and partly by flattered vanity, to carry the deception further. When pressed by his father to disclose the source whence he obtained the manuscripts, he concocted a story that they belonged to a descendant of the actor Heminge, who had been a comrade of Shakespeare's, and acquired them as his trustee of certain bequests to an imaginary W. H. Ireland, which had never been fulfilled. The owner's readiness to part with his treasures to a namesake and presumed representative of the man whom his ancestor had defrauded, and his reluctance to let his own name be known, were thus plausibly explained.

This curious confession, in which the writer particularises the gradual process of his forgery, the places where the materials were procured, and the persons whom he entrusted with the secret, exculpates his father from any complicity in it, and pleads on the score of his youth for a lenient verdict from those

whom he had duped. Notwithstanding this avowal, the elder Ireland remained, or affected to remain, incredulous of the forgery, and for two or three years afterwards kept up a paper warfare in its defence; vindicating his own honor at the same time by discarding his son. The latter, thrown upon his wits for a livelihood, and bitterly complaining of the persecution which he underwent for an act of youthful folly, maintained himself more or less creditably by literature, until his death in 1835. He repeated his former narrative with some further details in a volume of Confessions published in 1805, and adhered to it in the preface to a reprint of Vortigern, in 1832; but is said to have made a last confession shortly before his death, in which he recanted all that he had said before as a tissue of lies," invented for the sole purpose of gaining money.

If this final version may be trusted, it was his father who originated the forgery, and systematically employed him and his sisters in elaborating it. Other evidence has been adduced to show that the elder Ireland was not wholly incapable of the part imputed to him, but how much credit can be given to the testimony of a thrice-convicted liar against a deceased accomplice, and what may be their respective shares of criminality, it would scarcely be profitable to enquire.

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It will be more instructive to consider how a fact so unique in the annals of literature as the duping of several eminent experts at once, and under circumstances singularly favorable to the detection of fraud, may be reasonably explained. We shall hardly err in ascribing the forger's success, in great measure, to the opportuneness of the occasion which he selected. The indifference with which Shakespeare's genius had been regarded by his greatest countrymen since the