EXTRAORDINARY LITERARY IMPOS H TURES. OAXES, mystifications, forgeries, impostures of every kind-whether for personal or party purposes, or from mere mercenary motives-had long ceased to be a novelty in the literature of the continent, before the literary or learned of England became addicted to the same pleasant pastime. In this country, historians, antiquarians, critics, and readers, had long suffered from the injurious effects of continental ingenuity-from the elaborate writings of scholars who never had any existence, and learned lights thrown upon "historical" events which never came to pass-before the perplexing and poisonous fruits of these practices began to flourish in our more sullen soil; and it is due to "a neighboring nation" to notice that the first literary imposture, which rises into the dignity of a real, elaborate, uncompromising, and mischievous forgery, was an importation. George Psalmanaazaar, the distinguished Japanese, and historian of the island of Formosa, if not a Frenchman-which he is ascertained to have been by education, and most probably by birth-was certainly not a native of these islands. Roxana, and Captain Singleton, are all living and breathing persons; in their biographies everything is true with the exception of the names and dates; and even these have been widely and implicitly believed by the most matter-of-fact and unimaginative persons. Defoe's most amusing mystification, however, was his pamphlet, entitled, A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal, the next day after her death, to one Mrs. Bargrave, at Canterbury, the 8th of September, 1705, which apparition recommends the perusal of Drelincourt's book of "Consolations against the Fear of Death." The story, which is told on the alleged authority of persons then living, details with marvelous minuteness the appearance of the ghost of Mrs. Veal to her friend—not under mysterious and solemn circumstances, with which even Mrs. Radcliffe can scarcely, now, inspire terror-but at noon-day, in Mrs. Bargrave's house, where the ghost gained admission by simply knocking at the door. Neither is the spirit conventionally attired; she is in Mrs Veal's (riding) habit as she lived, and has altogether the appearance of a respectable lady making a morning call. The air of truth which pervades every detail of the interview, throws the reader completely off his guard; and the first hint-which is most carelessly and artistically incidental-of the visitor's immateriality, is something startling as a sensation. Very artful, also, is the ghost's puff of Drelincourt on Death, in which lies the whole object of the pamphlet. The pam cocted to sell off a large edition of M. Drelincourt's work, which had been long lying idle on the publisher's shelves; and so great was the credence given everywhere to the ghost-story, that the not very learned or lively treatise went off like wildfire. Daniel Defoe was a master of this species of mystification. Who, among the civilized and sentimental even of the present day, does not-in the face of all fact-believe in his heart in Robinson Crusoe? There is one portion of the history of this wonderful work which, fortunately, we are not bound to believe-phlet was, in fact, a bookseller's puff, connamely, the fraudulent appropriation by the author of Alexander Selkirk's notes. This calumny has been long since successfully refuted. Some other of Defoe's "authentic" narratives are not so well known. The Adventures of a Cavalier during the Thirty Years' War were long believed, even by eminent authorities, to be literally and circumstantially true. And true indeed they are, when we have once set aside the fact that the cavalier in question had no existence; for the rest, the adventures are for the most part strictly historical, and those for which there is no direct authority are valuable probabilities illustrative of the great contest in which the cavalier is supposed to have taken part. In the same manner, the Life of Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders, The first important event in the life of Psalmanaazaar—his birth-remains a mystery; and is likely to remain so, in company with the long list of important mysteries which are not worth the trouble of solution. Nobody knows the name of the free-school where his education was commenced, nor of the archiepiscopal city at whose Jesuit college it was continued. The name of the young gentleman to whom on leaving the college he acted as tutor has not been handed down to fame, and the circumstances which led him to fall into a "mean and rambling life," as one of his biographers describes it, have never been recorded. He seems, from the very first, to have directed his attention to imposture; as much from natural taste as for the means of livelihood. His first crusade was against religious enthusiasts. He was of Irish extraction -so said some credentials which he contrived to procure; left his country, not for his country's good, but for the good of the Roman Catholic religion. Determining to proceed on a pilgrimage to Rome, his first necessity was a pilgrim's garb, which he | contrived to carry off, together with the appropriate staff, from a chapel at noonday. The rest of the adventure we gather from no unimpeachable sourcehimself. Being thus accoutred, and furnished with a pass, I began, at all proper places, to beg my way in fluent Latin, accosting only clergymen, and persons of figure, by whom I could be understood; and found them mostly so generous and credulous that I might easily have saved money, and put myself into a much better dress, before I had gone through a score or two of miles. But so powerful was my vanity and extravagance, that as soon as I had got what I thought a sufficient viaticum, I begged no more, but viewed everything worth seeing, and then retired to some inn, where I spent my money as freely as I had obtained it." He seems to have been about sixteen years of age when, while wandering in Germany, he first hit upon the project of passing for a native of the island of Formosa. He set to work immediately, with equal ardor and ingenuity, to form a new alphabet and language; a grammar; a division of the year into twenty months; and, finally, a new religion. In the prosecution of his scheme he experienced many difficulties; but these he surmounted by degrees. He accustomed himself to writing backward, after the practice of eastern nations, and was observed worshiping the rising and setting sun, and practicing various minor mummeries, with due decorum. In short, he passed everywhere for a Japanese converted to Christianity; and, resuming his old pilgrim habit, recommenced his tour in the Low Countries. At Liege he entered into the Dutch service, and was carried by his commander to Aix-la-Chapelle. He afterward entered into the service of the Elector of Cologne ; and finding, it may be presumed, that as a convert he did not attract sufficient attention, he assumed the character of a Japanese in a benighted and unenlightened condition. As he probably anticipated, he immediately became an object of interest. At Sluys, Brigadier Lauder, a Scottish colonel, introduced him to one Innes, the chaplain of his regiment, with a view to a spiritual conference. This was an important step in the life of the adventurer. Innes seems to have been the chief cause of the imposture being carried to its height. That he had an early inkling of the deception there can be no doubt; but he was far too prudent to avow the fact, preferring the credit of the conversion, as likely to favor his advancement in the Church. It was arranged, in the first instance, that Innes should procure Psalmanaazaar's discharge; but he delayed taking this preparatory step until he should hear from the Bishop of London, to whom he had written on the subject. At length, finding that his protégé was paying attention to some Dutch ministers, he saw that no time was to be lost, and resolved at once to baptize the impostor-for such he had now, in his own mind, established him to be. It may be here mentioned that he had arrived at this fact by a stratagem. He had asked Psalmanaazaar to write a passage of Cicero twice in the Formosan language, and he noticed some considerable variations in the respective renderings. He advised the adventurer, with some significance, to be more prepared for the future-a warning of which Psalmanaazaar took advantage by perfecting his alphabet and general system, and producing in fact an entirely new language. He subsequently accompanied Innes to England, where he attracted considerable attention among the learned. When a version of the catechism was made into the pretended Formosan language, it was pronounced by some of the first men of the day to be grammatical, and a real language, from the simple circumstance that it resembled no other. Next appeared the Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, with accounts of the Religion, Customs, and Manners of the Inhabitants, by George Psalmanaazaar, a native of that Isle, 1704; which contained, besides the descriptive matter, pictorial illustrations of their dress. religious ceremonies, their tabernacle, and ancient manuscript. The performance attracted attention; and, after much inquiry, it was discovered that the person who brought the copy to the office was a youth between fifteen and sixteen years of age, whose name was Thomas Chatterton. He was at first very unwilling to discover whence he had obtained the original MS., and returned some evasive answers. Ultimately he stated, that he had received this, together with many other MSS., in prose and verse, from his father, who had found them in a large chest, in an upper room over the chapel, on the north side of Redcliffe Church. The evidence of the boy's mother and sister is corroborative of his statement. Mrs. Chatterton tells us that her husband's uncle, John Chatterton, being sexton of Redcliffe Church, furnished her husband, the schoolmaster, with many old parchments for covering the boys' copy-books-these parchments having been found as described by her son. The best of them were put to the use intended; the rest remained in a cupboard. She thinks her husband read some of them, but does not know that he transcribed any, or was acquainted with their value. It was not until years afterward altars to the sun, moon, and the ten stars; their architecture, royal and domestic habitations, &c. This fabulous history seems to have been projected by Innes, who lent | Varenius to Psalmanaazaar to assist him in his task. In the meantime he trumpeted forth the Formosan and his work in every possible direction-to such an extent, indeed, that the booksellers scarcely allowed the author two months for the production of his wonderful volume. The fame of the work spread far and near. The first edition was sold at once; but it was not long before doubts were expressed as to its veracity, and in the second edition the author was fain to publish a vindication. The fact was, he had fallen into some awkward blunders. He stated, for instance, that the Formosan's sacrificed eighteen thousand male infants annually; and though this was proved to be an impossibility in so small an island without occasioning depopulation, he persisted in not lessening the number. A lively controversy on the subject was kept up for some years; but eventually the author repented of his imposture, and made a full confession, which he left to be printed after his death. The latter years of his life were spent in useful literary pursuits, notwithstanding that he was guilty of a in another house, whither the parchminor imposture in connection with his great one-nothing less than fathering the invention of a white composition called Formosan japan-which speculation proved a decided failure. Psalmanaazaar was a favorite in cotemporary literary circles, where he was recommended by his powers as a conversationalist. Dr. Johnson took pleasure in his society, and speaks of him with respect. He fared better than his patron, Innes, who, in consequence of another nefarious transaction in which he was engaged, lost his character, and was generally avoided. Psalmanaazaar died in May, 1763. In the year 1752, there was born at Bristol, of poor parents, a boy who was destined, some sixteen years after, to occasion a literary controversy which can scarcely be considered settled, even in our own day. In the year 1768, at the time of the opening of the New Bridge, at Bristol, there appeared in Farley's Weekly Journal, (October 1,) an Account of the Ceremonies observed at the opening of the Old Bridge, taken, it was said, from a very | ments were removed with the familythat her son made the important discovery. Having examined their contents, he told his mother that he had "found a treasure, and was so glad nothing could be like it.". He then took possession of all the parchments, and was continually rummaging for more. "One day," she says, happening to see Clarke's History of the Bible covered with one of these parchments, he swore a great oath, and, stripping the book, carried away the cover in his pocket." 66 After the affair of the Bridge, Chatterton imparted some of the MSS. to Mr. George Calcott, pewterer, of Bristol; namely, the "Bristow Tragedy," and some other pieces. These Calcott communicated to Mr. Barrett, a surgeon, who had been long engaged upon a History of Bristol. Most of the pieces. purported to have been written by one Thomas Rowley, a monk or secular priest of the fifteenth century, and his friend, Mr. Cannynge, an eminent Bristol merchant of the same period. Notwithstanding some prevarications in Chatterton's story, Mr. Barrett believed the main portion of it, and even inserted some specimens of Rowley in his History. sequence, it is supposed, of having swallowed arsenic in water, or some preparation of opium. He was buried in a shell, in the burying-ground belonging to ShoeLane workhouse. Thus was the seal put upon Chatterton's secret. In March, 1769, Chatterton sent Horace Walpole, who had not then long completed his Anecdotes of Painters, an offer to furnish him with accounts of a series of Warton, one of the most distinguished great painters who had once flourished at opponents of the genuineness of these Bristol-sending him at the same time poems, makes a general onslaught against a specimen of some poetry of the same them in his History of Poetry. He does remote period. Receiving some encour- not even consider them to be very skillful agement on the score of the verses, he forgeries. The characters in several of again wrote to Walpole, asking for his in- the manuscripts are of modern formation, fluence and assistance in a project which he mixed up most inconsistently with antique. had then formed of" seeking his fortune" in The parchment is old, but made to look the metropolis-not on the ground that he still older by yellow ochre, which can himself was a man of genius, but because he easily be rubbed off; the ink also has was acquainted with a person, as he said, been tinctured with a yellow cast. In who possessed great manuscript treas- some coats of arms, drawn upon the MS. ures, discovered at Bristol. It was this of Cannynge's Feast, the hand of a person who had lent him the former speci- modern herald is clearly traceable. He mens, and also the "Elenoure and Inga," remarks, also, upon an unnatural affectawhich he transmitted with his second let- tion of antique spelling and obsolete words ter. Walpole was at first deceived by side by side with combinations of words these alleged antiquities; but Gray and and forms of phrases, which had no exMason having pronounced them to be for- istence at the pretended date of the poems. geries, he returned them to Chatterton In the Battle of Hastings-said to be with a cold reply. There are various translated from the Saxon-Stonehenge reports about Chatterton's personal con- is called a Druidical temple; while, at the duct at this period; he is said to have period when the poem might be supposed become an infidel and a profligate-but to have been written, no other notion preneither charge has been proved. All vailed concerning this monument than the that we know for certain is, that he con- supposition that it was erected in memory trived to get to London without Walpole's of Hengist's massacre. After urging assistance; that he there subsisted by writ- several similar arguments, Warton coning satires and miscellaneous pieces-being cludes by giving the whole of the poems employed, it is said, in some cases, by the to Chatterton; if for no other reason, government, for party purposes. He on the very probable supposition that the made the acquaintance of Wilkes, Beck-author of the Execution of Sir C. Baudwin ford, and others; but failed to procure any might easily be the writer of the rest. substantial benefit from them. The sad and solemn conclusion of poor Owing to some change in his affairs Chatterton's career, leaves us no heart to -the nature of which is unknown-he dwell upon the feeble waggeries of some seems, soon after, to have abandoned all literary mystificators who succeeded him. hope of gaining the objects of his ambi- Nor, indeed, under any circumstances, tion-advancement and distinction. He are such frolics worthy of any special removed from Shoreditch to a lodging in notice. It was more than a score of Brook-street, Holborn, and here he fell years after the publication of the Rowinto poverty and despondency. "The ley Poems, before any deep-meaning forshort remainder of his days were spent in gery was brought to light. With the a conflict between pride and poverty. On author of Vortigern and Rowena is assothe day preceding his death he refused ciated no vulgar mystery. He has told with indignation a kind offer from Mrs. us all about himself with most touching Angel (his landlady) to partake of her confidence. dinner, assuring her that he was not hungry-though he had not eaten anything for two or three days. On the 25th of August, 1770, he was found dead, in con Mr. Ireland's first essay at literary imposture was unwittingly suggested by his father, whose estimation of the works of Shakspeare was without bounds. It was not a mere matter of literary taste,—it | Malone, one of the most distinguished was not merely enthusiasm,-but a creed and a faith. The most minute matters associated in the most distant manner with his idol, were carefully treasured. To please his father, young Ireland hit upon the notion of concocting nothing less than an autograph of the great poet. This duly made its appearance in the form of a mortgage deed, drawn up with a careful imitation of the legal handwriting of the reign of James the First, and the "signature" of Shakspeare cramped, eccentric, and unmistakably genuine! Who but the son can properly describe the father's joy when this precious parchment was presented to him, as having been found among some (unspecified) | documents in the (imaginary) library of some château belonging to some (fictitious) friend! The deed, which purported to be between Shakspeare and one Fraser and Elizabeth his wife, was inspected by crowds of antiquaries, to whom it gave the greatest satisfaction. Then, as the novelty of the discovery wore off, came the increased voracity which follows the first taste of blood. The old gentleman became eager and inquiring. There were probably more Shakspeare papers in the same place; and it was the duty of the son to make further researches. In vain did the unfortunate fabricator resist and return evasive answers. The antiquaries, and his father at the head of them, became more exacting. To save himself from importunities, and perhaps exposure, Mr. Ireland now penned Shakspeare's Profession of Faith, and a few letters, all of which passed muster; in many instances documents produced as two hundred years old, had scarcely been in existence two hours. Then followed a decisive step. An original play by Shakspeare was pronounced to be extant; and to support his assertion, Ireland, to the great joy of the happiest of parents, produced the Vortigern and Rowena, which distinguished critics admitted to private readings pronounced to be a genuine work of the poet; and it was ultimately arranged to bring it out at Drury Lane. Prior to this, however, some suspicions of the validity of the production had crept abroad, and were now made the subject of controversy in pamphlets and newspapers. among the opponents, made a collection of documents intended to prove the forgery; but he did not succeed in bringing them out before the representation of the piece. He issued, however, a notice to the public, warning them of the imposture, which he intended to expose. To this the elder Ireland replied by a hand-bill, which he caused to be circulated among the multitude, who, toward the hour of performance, were choking up the avenues to the theater. Meantime, there were enemies within as well as without Drury Lane; and the principal of these was no less important a personage than Kemble, the manager. The latter brought all the force of his wide and weighty influence against the piece; by which he called forth a very severe rebuke from Sheridan, who reminded him that he was forgetting his duty as a servant of the theater. Ireland had also an important opponent in Mrs. Siddons, who refused to lend her aid in palming Vortigern upon the public. The piece, however, was announced for representation, "positively," on the 2d of April, 1796. Kemble had, it seems, endeavored to fix the previous night for its production," in order to pass upon the audience the compliment of All Fools' Day." Being detected in this damaging attempt, probably by the quick perception of Sheridan, the uncompromising manager succeeded in announcing “My Grandmother" as the farce to follow—a sarcasm obvious enough to a thoroughly London audience. This was not all; leagued with Malone, and the rest of the sworn opponents, and with a real literary enthusiasm to which he was cheerfully prepared to sacrifice the interests of the theater, Kemble had recourse to every expedient prior to, and on the night of representation, in order to crush the play. He arranged with a number of devoted adherents, who were carefully posted in the house, to give himself the signal for the uproar. The signal agreed upon was the line which happened to occur in one of his own speeches, And when this solemn mockery is o'er,which line he took care to deliver in a sufficiently pointed manner, and with a tremendous result. Never had such an uproar, and such derisive laughter and |