Books and Bookmen [18]
{10} and the rare
Drummond of haunted Hawthornden. {11}
Ah, and with those, a hundred more,
Whose names, whose deeds, are quite forgot:
Brave "Smiths" and "Thompsons" by the score,
Scrawled upon many a shabby "lot."
This playbook was the joy of Pott {12} -
Pott, for whom now no mortal grieves.
Our names, like his, remembered not,
Like his, shall flutter on fly-leaves!
At least in pleasant company
We bookish ghosts, perchance, may flit;
A man may turn a page, and sigh,
Seeing one's name, to think of it.
Beauty, or Poet, Sage, or Wit,
May ope our book, and muse awhile,
And fall into a dreaming fit,
As now we dream, and wake, and smile!
LITERARY FORGERIES
In the whole amusing history of impostures, there is no more
diverting chapter than that which deals with literary frauds. None
contains a more grotesque revelation of the smallness and the
complexity of human nature, and none--not even the records of the
Tichborne trial, nor of general elections--displays more pleasantly
the depths of mortal credulity. The literary forger is usually a
clever man, and it is necessary for him to be at least on a level
with the literary knowledge and critical science of his time. But
how low that level commonly appears to be! Think of the success of
Ireland, a boy of eighteen; think of Chatterton; think of Surtees of
Mainsforth, who took in the great Sir Walter himself, the father of
all them that are skilled in ballad lore. How simple were the
artifices of these ingenious impostors, their resources how scanty;
how hand-to-mouth and improvised was their whole procedure! Times
have altered a little. Jo Smith's revelation and famed 'Golden
Bible' only carried captive the polygamous populus qui vult decipi,
reasoners a little lower than even the believers in Anglo-Israel.
The Moabite Ireland, who once gave Mr. Shapira the famous MS. of
Deuteronomy, but did not delude M. Clermont-Ganneau, was doubtless a
smart man; he was, however, a little too indolent, a little too
easily satisfied. He might have procured better and less
recognisable materials than his old "synagogue rolls;" in short, he
took rather too little trouble, and came to the wrong market. A
literary forgery ought first, perhaps, to appeal to the credulous,
and only slowly should it come, with the prestige of having already
won many believers, before the learned world. The inscriber of the
Phoenician inscriptions in Brazil (of all places) was a clever man.
His account of the voyage of Hiram to South America probably gained
some credence in Brazil, while in England it only carried captive
Mr. Day, author of 'The Prehistoric Use of Iron and Steel.' But the
Brazilians, from lack of energy, have dropped the subject, and the
Phoenician inscriptions of Brazil are less successful, after all,
than the Moabite stone, about which one begins to entertain
disagreeable doubts.
The motives of the literary forger are curiously mixed; but they
may, perhaps, be analysed roughly into piety, greed, "push," and
love of fun. Many literary forgeries have been pious frauds,
perpetrated in the interests of a church, a priesthood, or a dogma.
Then we have frauds of greed, as if, for example, a forger should
offer his wares for a million of money to the British Museum; or
when he tries to palm off his Samaritan Gospel on the "Bad
Samaritan" of the Bodleian. Next we come to playful frauds, or
frauds in their origin playful, like (perhaps) the Shakespearian
forgeries of Ireland, the supercheries of Prosper Merimee, the sham
antique ballads (very spirited poems in their way) of Surtees, and
many other examples. Occasionally it has happened that forgeries,
begun for the mere sake of exerting the imitative faculty, and of
raising a laugh against the learned, have been persevered with in
earnest. The humorous deceits are, of course, the most pardonable,
though it is difficult to forgive the young archaeologist who took
in his own father with false Greek inscriptions. But this story may
be a mere fable amongst archaeologists,
Drummond of haunted Hawthornden. {11}
Ah, and with those, a hundred more,
Whose names, whose deeds, are quite forgot:
Brave "Smiths" and "Thompsons" by the score,
Scrawled upon many a shabby "lot."
This playbook was the joy of Pott {12} -
Pott, for whom now no mortal grieves.
Our names, like his, remembered not,
Like his, shall flutter on fly-leaves!
At least in pleasant company
We bookish ghosts, perchance, may flit;
A man may turn a page, and sigh,
Seeing one's name, to think of it.
Beauty, or Poet, Sage, or Wit,
May ope our book, and muse awhile,
And fall into a dreaming fit,
As now we dream, and wake, and smile!
LITERARY FORGERIES
In the whole amusing history of impostures, there is no more
diverting chapter than that which deals with literary frauds. None
contains a more grotesque revelation of the smallness and the
complexity of human nature, and none--not even the records of the
Tichborne trial, nor of general elections--displays more pleasantly
the depths of mortal credulity. The literary forger is usually a
clever man, and it is necessary for him to be at least on a level
with the literary knowledge and critical science of his time. But
how low that level commonly appears to be! Think of the success of
Ireland, a boy of eighteen; think of Chatterton; think of Surtees of
Mainsforth, who took in the great Sir Walter himself, the father of
all them that are skilled in ballad lore. How simple were the
artifices of these ingenious impostors, their resources how scanty;
how hand-to-mouth and improvised was their whole procedure! Times
have altered a little. Jo Smith's revelation and famed 'Golden
Bible' only carried captive the polygamous populus qui vult decipi,
reasoners a little lower than even the believers in Anglo-Israel.
The Moabite Ireland, who once gave Mr. Shapira the famous MS. of
Deuteronomy, but did not delude M. Clermont-Ganneau, was doubtless a
smart man; he was, however, a little too indolent, a little too
easily satisfied. He might have procured better and less
recognisable materials than his old "synagogue rolls;" in short, he
took rather too little trouble, and came to the wrong market. A
literary forgery ought first, perhaps, to appeal to the credulous,
and only slowly should it come, with the prestige of having already
won many believers, before the learned world. The inscriber of the
Phoenician inscriptions in Brazil (of all places) was a clever man.
His account of the voyage of Hiram to South America probably gained
some credence in Brazil, while in England it only carried captive
Mr. Day, author of 'The Prehistoric Use of Iron and Steel.' But the
Brazilians, from lack of energy, have dropped the subject, and the
Phoenician inscriptions of Brazil are less successful, after all,
than the Moabite stone, about which one begins to entertain
disagreeable doubts.
The motives of the literary forger are curiously mixed; but they
may, perhaps, be analysed roughly into piety, greed, "push," and
love of fun. Many literary forgeries have been pious frauds,
perpetrated in the interests of a church, a priesthood, or a dogma.
Then we have frauds of greed, as if, for example, a forger should
offer his wares for a million of money to the British Museum; or
when he tries to palm off his Samaritan Gospel on the "Bad
Samaritan" of the Bodleian. Next we come to playful frauds, or
frauds in their origin playful, like (perhaps) the Shakespearian
forgeries of Ireland, the supercheries of Prosper Merimee, the sham
antique ballads (very spirited poems in their way) of Surtees, and
many other examples. Occasionally it has happened that forgeries,
begun for the mere sake of exerting the imitative faculty, and of
raising a laugh against the learned, have been persevered with in
earnest. The humorous deceits are, of course, the most pardonable,
though it is difficult to forgive the young archaeologist who took
in his own father with false Greek inscriptions. But this story may
be a mere fable amongst archaeologists,