Sketches of Imposture, Deception, and Credulity

by R. A. Davenport

THE ANABASIS OF XENOPHON.

It may be worth while, in this place, to mention a doubt, that has been promulgated by some modern critics, whether the Anabasis, or retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, is really the work of Xenophon, to whom it has most generally been attributed; or, whether it is the composition of one Themistogenes. In Xenophon’s Annals of Grecian History, instead of giving any account of the expedition of Cyrus, and the return of the army, he refers the reader to the account which he ascribes to Themistogenes of Syracuse. Such an account might then possibly be extant, though the mention by Xenophon is the sole evidence that it was so; but it by no means follows that the Anabasis itself was written by Themistogenes; and, from the age of Xenophon to that of Suidas, no mention of such an author occurs in any remaining work, nor was any doubt expressed as to Xenophon being the author of the Anabasis, till Suidas thought proper to controvert the generally received opinion.

The problem is well solved by Mr. Mitford. “Why then, it will of course occur to ask,” says he, “did Xenophon, in his Grecian Annals, refer to the work of Themistogenes? Plutarch, in his treatise on the Glory of the Athenians, has accounted for it thus: ‘Xenophon,’ he says, ‘was a subject of history for himself. But when he published his narrative of his own achievements in military command, he ascribed it to Themistogenes of Syracuse; giving away thus the literary reputation to arise from the work, that he might the better establish the credit of the facts related.’”

“This explanation, though I give it credit as far as it goes, is, however, not by itself completely satisfactory. Nevertheless, I think every reader of the Anabasis, attending, at the same time, to the general history of the age, may draw, from the two, what is wanting to complete it. He cannot fail to observe, that it has been a principal purpose of the author of the Anabasis to apologize for the conduct of Xenophon. In the latter part of the work, the narrative is constantly accompanied with a studied defence of his conduct; in which, both the circumstances that produced his banishment from Athens, and whatever might give umbrage or excite jealousy against him at Lacedæmon, have been carefully considered. But there are passages in the work, speeches of Xenophon himself on delicate occasions, particularly his communication with Cleander, the Lacedæmonian general, related in the sixth book, which could be known only from himself or from Cleander. That these have not been forgeries of Themistogenes, is evident from the testimony of Xenophon himself, who refers to the work, which he ascribes to Themistogenes, with entire satisfaction.

“One, then, of these three conclusions must follow: either, first, the narrative of Themistogenes, if such ever existed, had not in it that apology for Xenophon which we find interwoven in the Anabasis transmitted to us as Xenophon’s, and consequently was a different work; or, secondly, Themistogenes wrote under the direction of Xenophon; or, thirdly, Xenophon wrote the extant Anabasis, and, for reasons which those acquainted with the circumstances of his life, and the history of the times, will have no difficulty to conceive may have been powerful, chose that, on its first publication, it should pass by another’s name. The latter has been the belief of all antiquity; and indeed, if it had not been fully known that the ascription of the Anabasis to Themistogenes was a fiction, the concurrence of all antiquity, in stripping that author of his just fame, so completely that, from Xenophon himself to Suidas, he is never once named as an author of merit, in any work remaining to us, while, in so many, the Anabasis is mentioned as the work of Xenophon, would be, if at all credible, certainly the most extraordinary circumstance in the history of letters.”

A fraud, which perhaps occasioned the greatest regret that ever was felt in the literary world, has been attributed to Peter Alcyonius, one of the learned Italians who cultivated literature in the sixteenth century. He had considerable knowledge of the Greek and Latin tongues, and wrote rhetorical treatises. He was a long time corrector of the press at Venice, in the house of Aldus Manutius, and ought to participate in the praises given to that eminent printer and classical scholar. He translated some treatises of Aristotle into Latin; but the execution of them was so severely criticised by Sepulveda, that Alcyonius, at a great expense, bought up the criticisms of his Spanish enemy to burn them. Paul Jovius says of him, in his quaint language, that he was a man of downright plebeian and sordid manners, and such a slave to his appetite, that in one and the same day he would dine three or four times, but always at the expense of another; nor was he altogether so bad a physician in this beastly practice, since, before he went to bed, he discharged the intemperate load from his stomach.

Alcyonius published a treatise, “De Exilio,” containing many fine passages; so elegant in fact was it, that he was accused of having tacked several parts of Cicero “De Gloria” to his own composition, and then to prevent being convicted of the theft, thrown the manuscript of Cicero, which was the only one in the world, into the fire. Cicero, in his twenty-seventh epistle, fifteenth book, writing to Atticus, says, “I will speedily send you my book, ‘De Gloria.’” That the manuscript was extant till nearly the period in question would seem to be indubitable, as it was enumerated by Bernard Giustiniani, the learned governor of Padua, among the works which he possessed. Along with the rest of his library, it is said to have been bequeathed to a convent of nuns, but from that time it could never be found. It was believed by many, that Peter Alcyonius, who was physician to the monastery, and to whom the nuns entrusted the management of the library, having copied into his own treatise all that suited his purpose, from that of Cicero, had secretly made away with it. This charge was first brought against Alcyonius by Paul Manutius, and was repeated by Paul Jovius, and subsequently by other writers; but Tiraboschi seems to have demonstrated that it is a calumny. It is probable that it was provoked by the excessive vanity and propensity to sarcasm and satire which distinguished Alcyonius.

When the Utopia of Sir Thomas More was first published, it occasioned a pleasant mistake. This political romance represents a perfect but visionary republic, in an island supposed to have been recently discovered in America. “As this was the age of discovery (says Granger), the learned Budæus, and others, took it for a genuine history, and consider it highly expedient that missionaries should be sent thither, in order to convert so wise a nation to Christianity.”

No literary performance has ever been the occasion of more discussion or dispute, as to its authenticity, than one which was published by the royalist party to excite the public pity for Charles I. On the day after that monarch’s execution appeared a volume called Icon Basilike, or the Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty, in his Solitude and Sufferings. It professed to be from the pen of Charles himself, and a faithful exposition of his own thoughts on the principal events of his reign, accompanied with such pious effusions as the recollection suggested to his mind.

It was calculated to create a strong sensation in favour of the royal sufferer, and is said to have passed through fifty editions in the course of the first year.

During the Commonwealth, Milton made an attempt to disprove the king’s claim to the composition of the book, but his arguments were by no means conclusive, as the subsequent publications on the same subject proved. After the restoration, Dr. Gauden, a clergyman of Bocking in Essex, came forward, and declared himself the real author; but he advanced his pretensions with secresy, and received as the price of his silence, first, the bishopric of Exeter, and subsequently, when he complained of the poverty of that see, the richer one of Worcester.

After his death, these circumstances transpired, and became the subject of an interesting controversy between his friends and the admirers of Charles the First. The subsequent publication of the Clarendon papers, has, in the opinion of Dr. Lingard, firmly established Gauden’s claim; but Dr. Wordsworth, in the year 1824, adjudged it to the king, in his work called “Who wrote Eikon Basilike?” In this, he learnedly combats the opinions of all the late controversialists on that subject. This drew forth replies from the Reverend Henry Todd, and “additional reasons” from the Reverend Mr. Broughton, in favour of Gauden’s claim.

Dr. Wordsworth, in a “postscript,” again answered his antagonists, and summed up the evidence by saying, that not any convincing arguments in favour of Gauden’s claim had been brought forward against his—Dr. Wordsworth’s—but which, by negative evidence, rather strengthened his side of the question.

In a short abstract or analysis of so voluminous a subject it can only be stated, that it seems hardly credible, that Gauden could have proposed to write, or could have completed, the Icon, labouring under the disadvantages he did. He was not a royal chaplain, nor appears to have been much connected with the court; nor ever to have had intercourse with the king, but once, when he preached before him; yet, in a sudden fit of zeal, he took upon himself the composition of a series of reflections in the name of the king, on the events of the last seven years of his reign; and that without even any communication being made to the royal party; or any suggestion received from them that it would be acceptable; whilst any discovery made by the opposite party would be followed by his certain ruin.

The evidence found in the book itself seems of a nature to disprove its being composed on the spur of the moment, or during the last act of the fatal drama, three-fourths of it being devoted to events having no near connexion with the emergency of the time; in fact, only the last six chapters treat of those subjects which were likely to have occupied the public attention at that period.

The tone of observation in general is such as, judging from his other works, it does not appear probable Gauden would have ventured to indulge in; habitual caution being visible in his other political writings. His fraudulent claim for remuneration after royalty was restored, being recompensed by a moderate promotion, does not, of necessity, prove its justice; as many reasons concurred, why the royal party should wish to hush up any reports that might tend to reflect upon the late king’s memory; nor at that time could the fact be susceptible of actual proof.

These several circumstances, in Dr. Wordsworth’s opinion, make it more than probable that Gauden’s claim was, in reality, what so many other learned persons have concurred in supposing, a literary imposture, which at the time met with undeserved success.

Literary imposture, in our own times, appears to have flourished most from the middle to the latter end of the eighteenth century; for, within forty years of that period, various very remarkable frauds in the commonwealth of letters were ushered into day, and the attention of the public was solicited to them, with all the boldness that a perfect conviction of their real worth and genuine authenticity, on the part of those who promulgated them, could possibly have inspired.

The first of these, in point of time, and intensity of malignant and selfish audacity, was the unpardonable attack made, about the year 1750, by a Mr. Lauder, on the poetical character and moral candour of Milton.

The first regular notice the public received of his intention was from the following circular, which developed his plan of attack:

“I have ventured to publish the following observations on Milton’s imitation of the moderns; having lately fallen on four or five modern authors in Latin verse, which I have reason to believe Milton had consulted in composing his Paradise Lost. The novelty of the subject will entitle me to the favour of the reader, since I in no way intend unjustly to derogate from the real merit of the writer. The first author alluded to was Jacobus Masenius. He was a professor of rhetoric, in the Jesuits’ College, at Cologne, about 1650, and he wrote Sarcotis, in five books; which, said he, in the preface, is not so much a complete model, as a rough draught of an epic poem. Milton follows this author tolerably closely through the first two books. In it Adam and Eve are described under the single name of Sarcothea, or human nature, whose antagonist, the infernal serpent, is called Lucifer. The infernal council, or Pandemonium, Lucifer’s habits, and the fight of the angels, are too obvious not to have been noticed; Milton’s exordium appears to have been almost directly taken from Masenius and Ramsay.” Lauder goes on to state that the Paradise Lost was taken from a farce, called Adamo Perso, and from an Italian tragedy, called Paradiso Perso; and that even Milton’s poem itself was said to have been written for a tragedy.

“Having procured,” continues he, “the Adamus Exul of Grotius, I found, or imagined myself to find the first draught, the prima stamina, of this wonderful poem; and I was then induced to search for the collateral relations it might be supposed to have contracted in its progress to maturity.” The Adamus Exul of Grotius was never printed with his other works, though it passed through four editions; and it was by very great labour that Mr. Lauder was at last able to get a copy from Gronovius, at Leyden. Milton is charged with having literally translated, rather than barely alluded to, this work.

The severe affliction which Milton endured, in the loss of sight, obliged him to have recourse to filial aid, in consulting such authors as he had occasion to refer to; and Lauder, wishing to prove that he feared detection and exposure, asserted that he taught his daughters only to read the several languages, in which his authorities were written, confining them to the knowledge of words and pronunciation, but keeping the sense and meaning to himself.

Apparently feeling a momentary shame at his conduct, Lauder, in a kind of apology, added, “As I am sensible this will be deemed most outrageous usage of the divine, immortal Milton, the prince of English poets, and the incomparable author of Paradise Lost, I take this opportunity to declare, that a strict regard to truth alone,[12]—and to do justice to those authors from whom Milton has so liberally gleaned, without acknowledgment,—have induced me to make this attack upon the reputation and memory of a person hitherto so universally applauded and admired for his incomparable poetical abilities.”

Dr. Douglas, to whom the world is indebted for investigating and detecting Lauder’s baseness, vindicated Milton from the injustice of the charge, in an answer full of diligent research of those authors who were said to have furnished Milton with materials for his poem.

Dr. Douglas commences by saying, “Our Zoilus charges Milton with having borrowed both the plan of his poem, and also particular passages, from other authors. Should these charges even prove true, will it follow that his pretensions to genius are disproved? The same charge might be brought against Virgil; as there is scarcely a passage in his Æneid but is taken from the Iliad or Odyssey. There is no shadow of truth in the assertion made by Lauder, that infinite tribute of veneration had been paid to Milton, through men’s ignorance of his having been indebted to the assistance of other authors, when, on the contrary, those very persons who gave him the greatest praise were the principal discoverers of many of his imitations.

“It did not enter my head,” continues Dr. Douglas, “that our critic should have the assurance to urge false quotations in support of his charge; and therefore did I, and, as I imagine, did every other person, believe, that the authors he quoted really contained those lines which he attributed to them, and which bear so striking a resemblance to passages in Paradise Lost, that the reader cannot avoid concluding, with Lauder, that Milton had really seen and imitated them. Will it not, therefore, be thought extraordinarily strange, and excite the utmost indignation in every candid person’s breast, if the reverse of all this shall appear to be the case; if it can be clearly proved that our candid conscientious critic, whose notions of morality taught him to accuse Milton of the want of common probity or honour for having boasted that he sung things yet unattempted in prose or rhyme, has, in order to make good his charge against Milton, had recourse to forgeries, perhaps the grossest that ever were obtruded on the world?”

It first occurred to Dr. Douglas to search for those authors, from whom Lauder asserted that Milton had borrowed his ideas. Many were scarce, and not to be found; but he succeeded in getting one, Staphorstius, a Dutch poet and divine, who, says Lauder, “never dreamt the prince of English poets would condescend to plume himself with his—Staphorstius’—feathers;” and he quotes certain passages in proof of this assertion,—an entire quotation of thirty-two lines, besides shorter ones. “I was,” says Dr. Douglas, “at a loss where to turn for lines; for it is remarkable, that through his whole work, Lauder omits to tell his readers where the quotations are to be found: with great labour, however, I found some allusion to the subject, and also, with great surprise, discovered that eight lines quoted as from Staphorstius have no existence in that author; and which eight lines are in Lauder’s Essay printed in italics, as having the strongest resemblance to those in Paradise Lost, and it will be impossible for Lauder to clear himself from the charge of having corrupted the text of Staphorstius, by interpolating the eight lines not to be found there. A more curious circumstance still is, that this interpolated passage is taken from a Latin translation of Paradise Lost itself, made by one Hogæus, or Hog, printed in the year 1690, without the variation of a single word: it must be thought therefore extremely hard that Milton should be run down as a plagiarist for having stolen from himself, yet this is strictly the case. Hog translated the Paradise Lost into Latin: Lauder interpolates some of Hog’s lines in Staphorstius, and then urges these very lines as a demonstration that Milton copied him. There is equal testimony to prove that Lauder interpolated Phineas Fletcher, and others, in the same way; but the most extraordinary part of the forgery is yet to be mentioned: this interpolating critic has even forged Milton himself, and interpolates the Paradise Lost, however ridiculously improbable this may seem. In 1747, Lauder makes his first appearance as the Zoilus of Milton, in the Gentleman’s Magazine, where, to prove that Milton had copied from the Adamus Exul of Grotius, he quotes, professedly from the Paradise Lost, one line and a half, beginning

‘And lakes of living sulphur ever flow,

And ample spaces.’

“After the most careful search, I can safely pronounce that the above line and a half have no existence in the Paradise Lost.”

From the difficulty of rebutting Lauder’s evidence against Milton, he had acquired some merit in the eyes of men of learning, which procured him the countenance of the great, and encouraged him to open a subscription for the publication of a new edition of those authors who, according to him, had held the torch to Milton.

Upon the publication of Dr. Douglas’s remarks on Lauder, the booksellers who had undertaken his work, thought proper to prefix the following notice to each copy of it:—

“After ten months’ insolent triumph, the Rev. Dr. Douglas has favoured the world with a detection of this scene of villany, and has so powerfully urged his proofs, that no hope was left of invalidating them; an immediate application to Lauder was necessary, and a demand, that the books from whence he had taken the principal controverted passages, should be put into our hands. He then with great confidence acknowledged the interpolation, and seemed to wonder at the folly of the world, for making such an extraordinary rout about eighteen or twenty lines. As this man has been guilty of such a wicked imposition on us and the public, and is capable of so daring an avowal of it, we declare that we will have no further intercourse with him, and we now sell his book, only as a curiosity of fraud and interpolation, which all the ages of literature cannot parallel.

“John Payne,
“Joseph Bousuet.”

In a letter addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lauder says, “I own the charge of Dr. Douglas to be just, and I humbly profess my sorrow, but I cannot forbear to take notice, that my interpolating these authors proceeded rather from my being hurried away by violent passions, and rash imprudence, without duly weighing the case, and chiefly from a fatal anxiety not to fall short of my proof in that arduous undertaking; excusing myself on the score, that Pope’s criticisms had spoilt the sale of my edition of Dr. Anthony Johnston’s elegant paraphrase of the Psalms in Latin verse: and I bethought me of this only way left of enhancing his merit by lessening that of Milton, even as Pope had endeavoured to raise Milton by lessening Johnston’s; and I thought, if I could strip Milton of his chief merit, fertility and sublimity of thought, I should at once retrieve Johnston’s honour, and convict Pope of pronouncing so erroneous a judgment, in giving so vast a preference to Milton above Johnston: a task in every way arduous and unpopular, had not necessity in a manner compelled me, as the author whom I highly value, and on whose reputation my subsistence in life in a great measure depended, was lately discredited by Pope, both in North and South Britain, in his Dunciad; and in consequence of those remarks, the sale of my edition of Johnston fell considerably, and was thought nothing of.”

Lauder wrote also to Dr. Douglas in the following curious strain:—“I resolved to attack Milton’s fame, and found some passages which gave me hopes of stigmatizing him as a plagiarist; the further I carried my researches, the more eager I grew for the discovery; the more my hypothesis was opposed, the more was I heated with rage.”[13]

Lauder had been sanguine in his hopes that the unreserved confession would atone for his guilt, and that his subscription for a new edition of “Sarcotis,” and “Adamus Exul,” would meet with the same encouragement as at first; but the anxiety of the public to see them was at an end, and the design of reprinting them met with little or no success. Thus, grown desperate by disappointment, with equal inconsistency and imprudence he renewed his attack upon the author of Paradise Lost, and then gave the world, as a reason which excited him to continue his forgeries, that Milton had attacked the character of Charles the First; by saying, that that king had interpolated Pamela’s prayer from the Arcadia, in the Icon Basilike. He also scrupled not to abuse most unjustifiably Dr. Douglas, as the first exposer of his own forgery.

Lauder afterwards went to Barbadoes, and died there in great poverty in the year 1770.

Early in the eighteenth century (1704) there was published, in London, a history of the island of Formosa, off the coast of China, accompanied by an extraordinary narrative of the author, who went under the name of George Psalmanazar, and who, from the idolatries of his own country, represented himself to have become a convert to Christianity.

The description of Formosa was given with such apparent fidelity, the manners and customs were illustrated with so many engravings of the houses, modes of travelling, and shipping, and specimens of the language and written character so philologically explained, that, though some few persons of superior penetration looked upon the work as an imposture, the belief was almost general of the truth of the history, which was considered the more interesting, as the country described in the volume had hitherto been so imperfectly known. There appeared subsequently, by the same author, “A Dialogue between a Japanese and Formosan,” about some points of the religion of the times.

Psalmanazar was much noticed, and his ingenuity had several ordeals to undergo, from the severe examinations and investigations which the curiosity of his supporters, and the suspicion of his adversaries, prompted them to make. He had actually invented a Formosan language and grammar, into which he translated several prayers and short sentences; also a vocabulary for the benefit of those who should visit that island. With this, his native language, he was naturally supposed to be familiar, and he must have had an extraordinary and tenacious memory, not to have laid himself open to more suspicion, in the several repetitions of his examinations, which were taken down for the satisfaction of others: he at last, however, confessed that the whole was a forgery from beginning to end.

He was a man of very great general knowledge, together with natural talent, and appears by his will to have deeply regretted this imposture. His will thus commences: “The last will and testament of me, a poor simple and worthless creature, commonly known by the assumed name of George Psalmanazar.” After a devout prayer to the Supreme Being and directing that he may be buried in the humblest manner, he says, “The principal manuscript that I felt myself bound to leave behind was a faithful narrative of my education, and sallies of my wretched youthful years, and the various ways by which I was, in some measure unadvisedly, led into 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 part of it hatched in my own brain, without regard to truth or honesty. It is true I have long since disclaimed even publicly all but the shame and guilt of that vile imposition; yet as long as I knew there were still two editions of that scandalous romance remaining in England, besides the several versions it had abroad, I thought it incumbent upon me to undeceive the world, by unravelling that whole mystery of iniquity in a posthumous work.” He concludes by once more thus branding his work—“It was no other than a mere forgery of my own devising, a scandalous imposition on the public, and such as I think myself bound to beg God and the world pardon for writing, and have been long since, as I am to this day, and shall be as long as I live, heartily sorry for, and ashamed of.” This document bears date in 1752, when he was in the 73d year of his age.

In the posthumous memoirs above alluded to he studiously concealed who he really was. It appears, however, that he was born about 1679, in the south of France, either in Provence or Languedoc; and having been guilty of some great excesses in the university where he was receiving his education,—though he does not explain the nature of them,—he found it necessary to take to flight, and wandered clandestinely through a great part of Europe. Finding it both troublesome and hazardous to preserve his incognito as an European, he determined on the plan of imposture which ultimately led him to write his fictitious history of the island of Formosa. The latter part of his life was spent in the practice of the most unfeigned piety. He supported himself by his literary labours, and was the author of a considerable portion of the Ancient Universal History. His death took place in 1763.

About the year 1760, much speculation was excited in the literary world by the publication of a series of poems purporting to have been translated by a Mr. Macpherson, from the original Gaelic of the famous poet Ossian, whose compositions had been handed down from his own times by oral tradition. The occasion of Mr. Macpherson’s giving them to the world was as follows:—Mr. Home, author of “Douglas,” in company with other gentlemen, being at Moffat in the summer of 1759, met there Mr. Macpherson, then tutor to Mr. Graham; and from him they heard some specimens of Gaelic poetry, which so much pleased them, that they begged Mr. Macpherson to publish them in a small volume. He complied; and this specimen having attracted a good deal of attention, he proposed to make a tour, by subscription, through the Highlands, for the purpose of collecting more complete specimens of the ancient poetry. This journey he performed in 1760, and speedily published the poems in a more complete form They were received, however, by many with suspicion; it being thought, from the remoteness of the period at which they were said to have been produced, that they could not be genuine.

In 1763; Dr. Hugh Blair wrote a dissertation on the poems of Ossian. This he sent to his friend David Hume, and requested to have his opinion as to the authenticity of the poems. In reply, Hume said that he never heard the dissertation mentioned, where some one or other did not express his doubt with regard to the antiquity of the poems which were the subject of it; and that he often heard them totally rejected with disdain and indignation, as a palpable and impudent forgery.

The absurd pride and consequence of Macpherson, scorning, as he pretended, to satisfy any body that doubted his veracity, tended much to confirm the general scepticism: and, added Hume, “if the poems are of genuine origin, they are in all respects the greatest curiosities that were ever discovered in the history of literature.”

The first regular attack on the authenticity of Ossian’s poems was made in 1781, by Mr. Shaw, the author of a Gaelic Dictionary and Grammar; and it was a vigorous one. He contended, from internal evidence, that the poems were forgeries; he asserted that many of the Highland persons who had vouched for their genuineness had never seen a line of the supposed originals, and that Macpherson himself had constantly evaded showing them to him; and he maintained, that both the fable and the machinery of the principal poems were Irish; and that if, as a blind, any manuscripts had ever been shown, they must have been in the Irish language, the Earse dialect of the Gaelic never having been written or printed till, in 1754, Mr. Macfarlane printed a translation of Baxter’s “Call to the Unconverted.” An answer was attempted by Mr. Clarke, a member of the Scottish Antiquarian Society; but, though he succeeded in some points, he failed in his principal object.

After a lapse of nearly twenty years, a more powerful antagonist of Ossian took the field. This was Mr. Malcolm Laing, author of a History of Scotland. To that history he added an elaborate dissertation, in which he skilfully investigated the claim of the poems to antiquity. The principal grounds on which he decided against it were, the many false and inaccurate allusions to the history of Britain while the country was under the dominion of the Romans; the flagrant difference between Highland manners as described in the poems and by historians; the many palpable imitations from the classics and the Scriptures; the fact that all the Highland traditionary poems yet known referred to the ninth and tenth centuries, and that there existed no Gaelic manuscript older than the fifteenth century; the resemblance which the strains of the pretended Ossian bore to The Highlander, one of Macpherson’s acknowledged compositions; and, lastly, certain startling expressions used in print by Macpherson, which seemed almost to render it certain that he was not the translator, but the author, of the works which he had given to the world under the name of Ossian.

Anxious that the truth should be elicited on a subject so interesting to them as their national poetry, the Highland Society had already, as far back as 1797, appointed a committee to inquire into the nature and authenticity of Ossian’s poems. Mr. Laing’s Dissertation, of which a second edition was published in 1804, seems to have quickened the movements of the committee. To assist in elucidating the subject, a series of queries was circulated throughout the Highlands and the Scottish Islands. The series consists of six articles, of which the first is the most important. “Have you ever heard repeated or sung any of the poems ascribed to Ossian, translated and published by Mr. Macpherson? By whom have you heard them so repeated, and at what time or times? Did you ever commit any of them to writing, or can you remember them so well as to set them down?” The same answer was requested as to any other ancient poems of the same kind; and the committee likewise expressed a wish to obtain as much information as possible “with regard to the traditionary belief of the country concerning the history of Fingal, and his followers, and that of Ossian and his poems.”

It was not till 1810 that the society published the result of the inquiry which it had set on foot. The answers to the queries were certainly by no means satisfactory. The report, which was drawn up by Henry Mackenzie, stated that the committee had directed its inquiry to two points: firstly, what poetry, of what kind, and of what degree of excellence, existed anciently in the Highlands of Scotland, which was generally known by the denomination of Ossianic; and, secondly, how far that collection of such poetry published by Mr. James Macpherson, is genuine. On the first point the committee spoke decidedly. It declared its firm conviction that such poetry did exist; that it was common, general, and in great abundance; that it was of a most striking and impressive sort, in a high degree eloquent, tender, and sublime. On the second point, there was a woful falling off in confident assertion. “The committee,” says the reporter, “is possessed of no documents to show how much of his collection Mr. Macpherson obtained in the form in which he has given it to the world. The poems, and fragments of poems, which the committee has been able to procure, contain, as will appear from the article in the Appendix, No. 15, often the substance, and sometimes almost the literal expression (the ipsissima verba) of passages given by Mr. Macpherson in the poems of which he has published the translations. But the committee has not been able to obtain one poem the same in title and tenor with the poems published by him. It is inclined to believe that he was in use to supply chasms, and to give connexion, by inserting passages which he did not find and to add what he conceived to be dignity and delicacy to the original composition, by striking out passages, by softening incidents, by refining the language; in short, by changing what he considered as too simple or rude for a modern ear, and elevating what in his opinion was below the standard of good poetry. To what degree, however, he exercised these liberties, it is impossible for the committee to determine. The advantages he possessed, which the committee began its inquiries too late to enjoy, of collecting from the oral recitation of a number of persons, now no more, a very great number of the same poems, on the same subjects, and then collating those different copies, or editions, if they may be so called, rejecting what was spurious or corrupted in one copy, and adopting, from another, something more general and excellent in its place, afforded him an opportunity of putting together what might fairly enough be called an original whole, of much more beauty, and with much fewer blemishes, than the committee believe it now possible for any one person or combination of persons to obtain.”

This report, published, as it was by persons who were anxious to establish the authenticity of the poems, seems decisively to prove that Macpherson was, in fact, the fabricator of the works attributed to Ossian, or at the least, that he formed a cento from fragments of ballads and tales, blended with interpolations of his own. The controversy was, however, continued for some time longer, and much ink was shed by the believers and infidels; the presumed Gaelic originals were also at length published; but the believers, nevertheless, daily lost ground, the public ceased to take an interest in the dispute, and the question seems now to be finally set to rest.

The Letters of Junius, though not so strictly to be considered as a literary imposture, have yet excited so much attention and speculation, both by their matter and the impenetrable mystery in which they have hitherto been involved, that a brief notice of that which I consider to be the most successful attempt to discover the real author may not here be unacceptable.

Mr. G. Chalmers wrote a dissertation, to prove that the author of the Letters of Junius was a Mr. M’Aulay Boyd; and, certainly, as far as circumstantial evidence goes, short of direct proof, there appears much reason for supposing him not far from the truth in his conjectures.

M’Aulay Boyd was born in April, 1746, at his father’s house, Ship Street, Dublin, and in 1761 was received as a fellow-commoner in the university of that city. He came to London in 1766, to study the law; but his propensities carried him oftener to St. Stephen’s than to Westminster Hall, and he exhibited a wonderful retention of memory, by reciting perfectly the speeches of the night to his associates in his club. He became intimate with Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Garrick, and many other members of the Literary Club.

At the time of an election in Antrim, he addressed twelve letters to the independent electors, under the appellation of “The Freeholder,” to gain their votes for a constitutional candidate—Wilson; and these letters are known to have contributed to the raising of that wild clamour, which carried Wilson’s election by an enthusiastic blast of momentary madness. The style of The Freeholder is strongly impregnated with the essence of Junius. A great deal of evidence is adduced in continuation by Chalmers, which seems to bear him out in his conjectures; and it may be briefly recapitulated, that, firstly, the letters of Junius appear to have been written by an Irishman; secondly, that they are the work of an inexperienced or juvenile pen; and if Boyd wrote them, it must have been when he was between his twenty-third and twenty-fifth years; thirdly, they were published by one “who delighted to fish in troubled waters,” a propensity which Boyd frequently gratified; fourthly, the author was a constant attendant on both houses of parliament; fifthly, compared with The Freeholder, Boyd’s acknowledged work, there is a wonderful sameness in all the faults and excellences of the two.

Boyd took a particular interest in Junius, and talked as if he knew the author, but that he never would be generally known: his wife often suspected him to be the writer. He never disclaimed the imputation, or claimed the honour.

The public, says Mr. Chalmers, has an interest in exposing this mystery; and the relatives of those respectable persons who were said to be the writers have also an interest, if it is known where the application could be made, in placing the seditious pen of Junius in the proper hands.

Almon, a bookseller, imagined that he had clearly detected Boyd as the author. In 1769, at a meeting of the booksellers and printers, H. S. Woodfall read a letter from Junius, because it contained a passage relating to the business of the meeting. Almon saw the handwriting of the manuscript, without disclosing his thoughts to the meeting; but the next time he saw Boyd at his shop, in Piccadilly, Almon said, “I have seen a part of one of Junius’s Letters in manuscript, which I believe is your handwriting.” Boyd instantly changed colour, and, after a short pause, replied, “The similitude of handwriting is not a conclusive fact.” Now, Boyd was by nature confident, and by habit a man of the world, a sort of character not apt to blush. From this time Almon used to say that he suspected Junius was a broken-down gentleman without a penny in his pocket.

The anonymous publication of a series of letters was, before this time, had recourse to for a political purpose. About the year 1722, when Charles, Duke of Grafton, was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, William Wood, a hardwareman and bankrupt, alleging the great want of copper money in that kingdom, procured a patent for coining one hundred and eight thousand pounds, to pass there as current money. This measure was thought by some persons to be a vile job from beginning to end, and that the chief procurers of the patent were to be sharers in the profits. Some anonymous letters were, therefore, written in 1724, under the assumed name of the Drapier, or Draper, warning the people not to receive the coin which was then sent over.

The real author of these letters, as afterwards appeared, was the celebrated Dr. Swift, Dean of St Patrick’s, who, indignant at the scheme, boldly withstood the designs of the grasping projector.

Wood’s project was, by virtue of a patent fraudulently obtained, to coin halfpence for Ireland, at about eleven parts in twelve under their real value; but which, even if ever so good, no man could have been obliged to receive in any payment whatever.

The first letter convinced all parties in Ireland that the admission of Wood’s money would prove fatal to the nation; some passages in the fourth, being thought to reflect upon the people in power, were selected for prosecution, and three hundred pounds offered, as a reward for the discovery of the author; but no clue was ever given by which such discovery could be made. The copies were always sent to the press by some obscure messenger, who never knew the person from whom he received them. The amanuensis alone was trusted, to whom, two years afterwards, the author gave an employment that brought him in forty pounds a-year.

The purpose of the letters was completely answered, Wood was compelled to relinquish his patent, and his halfpence were totally suppressed.

That the letters of “Junius,” “The Drapier,” and other political tracts, should have been published anonymously cannot be considered a very extraordinary caution on the part of the authors; though the public are always anxious to know the writers of such pamphlets as have been cleverly executed. But many authors of works purely literary, and which, after a perusal by the public, have been deservedly praised, have for a time kept themselves studiously concealed, as if unwilling to receive any public tribute of admiration; or, perhaps, amused by the variety of speculations afloat concerning them.

Dean Swift, at first, published his “Tale of a Tub,” anonymously; it speedily excited very considerable attention, some applauding, others reprobating its tendency and design. Fourteen years after this, “Gulliver’s Travels” appeared, which acquired a still more extended popularity. Even Swift’s most intimate friends were unacquainted with its origin; though many suspected who the author was. Gay wrote to him, saying, “About ten days ago, a book was published here of the travels of one Gulliver, which has been the conversation of the whole town ever since: the whole impression sold in a week, and nothing is more diverting than to hear the different opinions people give of it; though all agree in liking it extremely. It is usually said you are the author; but, I am told, the bookseller declares he knows not from what hand it came.”

In the summer of 1814, there appeared, anonymously, a novel, bearing the title of “Waverley.” It was written in a fascinating style, and was read with avidity by every one. It was speedily followed by other historical novels, as interesting, or more so, from the pen of “the Author of Waverley.” They succeeded each other with such prolific and astonishing rapidity, and were executed in such a masterly manner, that, at last, the curiosity of the public became extreme, to discover to whom they were indebted for them. Pamphlets on the subject, and speculations in periodicals, were abundant. Various persons were named; but the majority leaned to the opinion that Sir Walter Scott was the writer. It was not, however, till many years afterwards, that circumstances, arising out of the bankruptcy of his publishers, compelled him to throw aside the veil, and to stand forth the avowed author of productions which have spread his fame to the farthest limits of civilized society, and which can never cease to retain a strong hold upon the human mind.

From this brief notice of one extraordinary genius, who lived long to enjoy his fame, we must go back, nearly half a century, to make mention of another, who perished, unpraised and unfriended, before he reached the age of manhood. In the annals of literature there is no example recorded of precocious talent which can vie with that of Thomas Chatterton. He was born at Bristol, in St. Mary Redcliffe parish, on the 20th of November, 1752, and was the posthumous son of an individual who had been successively writing master to a classical school, singing man in Bristol Cathedral, and master of the Pyle Street Free-school. At the age of five years, he was apparently so stupid as to be deemed incapable of learning his letters. It was not till his latent powers were roused, by being shown the illuminated capitals of an old French manuscript, that he became anxious to acquire learning. Henceforth he needed no stimulant. Before he was eight years old, he was admitted into Colson’s school, the Christ’s Hospital of Bristol, where he read much in his intervals of leisure, and began to try his poetical skill. When he was somewhat under fifteen, he was apprenticed to Mr. Lambert, an attorney. It was while he was in this situation, and early in October, 1768, when the new bridge at Bristol was completed, that he gave to the world the first article of that series of literary forgeries which has immortalized him. It was sent to Farley’s Bristol Journal, and was called “a description of the Friars first passing over the old bridge: taken from an ancient manuscript.” He subsequently, from time to time, produced various poems of pre-eminent beauty, clothed in antique language. The language, however, was not that of any one period; nor was the style, nor in many instances the form of composition, that of the fifteenth century, the age to which he assigned them. He pretended that they were written by Thomas Rowley, a priest, and Thomas Canynge, and that they were copied from parchments, which his father had found in a large box, in a room over the chapel on the north side of Redcliffe church. While he was engaged in composing these poems, he was also a liberal contributor of prose and verse to the Magazines. Having, in his moody moments, avowed an intention of committing suicide, his master released him from his indentures, and Chatterton repaired to London, where he resolved to depend upon his pen for subsistence. At the outset, his hopes were raised to a high pitch; but they were soon blighted. In spite of his wonderful fertility, and his persevering exertions, he seems to have been unable to provide for the day that was passing over him. Privations and wounded pride drove him to despair, and, on the 25th of August, 1770, he put an end to his existence by poison. Editions of the pretended poems of Rowley were published by Mr. Tyrrwhit and Dean Milles; and a controversy was long and vehemently maintained on the question of their antiquity. There are now few persons who doubt that they are the work of Chatterton. That he was capable of producing them is sufficiently proved by his acknowledged poems.

We come now to a much more daring forgery, perpetrated by an individual whose talents were far inferior to those of Chatterton. Mr. Malone, in the preface to his edition of Shakspeare, had shown that Shakspeare died at the age of fifty-two in April 1616, leaving his daughter, and her husband Dr. J. Hall, executors. The will demonstrates, that he died possessed of “baubles, gewgaws, and toys to mock apes, &c.” Dr. Hall died in 1635, leaving a will, and bequeathing his library and manuscripts to J. Nash. “Here,” says Mr. Malone, “is a proof that the executor of Shakspeare’s will left a library and manuscripts behind him.” In a satisfactory manner did Mr. Malone trace down, from the public records, the legal transmission of the personal property of Shakspeare’s descendants to a recent period, from which he inferred, that, amongst the present generation of them, fragments might be found, if curiosity would prompt diligence to search the repositories of concealment. The search proved successful, and from the appearance of the manuscripts of Shakspeare in 1790, every moment was expectancy of more arrivals; in fact discovery succeeded discovery so fast, that Mr. Malone obtained documents enough to fill a folio. A painting of Shakspeare was also found, the very painting that enabled Droeshout to engrave the effigies of Shakspeare which was prefixed to the folio edition of his dramas, and of which Ben Jonson affirmed that

“The Graver had a strife

With nature, to outdo the life;”

and every thing concurred to evince the genuineness of this ancient painting.

A new discovery of Shakspearian papers was announced for exhibition in Norfolk Street, in 1794, and curiosity was again roused.

Mr. Malone, from some private reasons, seemed indifferent about these papers in Norfolk Street; and he was urged by his scepticism to contradict that probability which he had taught the imaginative world to entertain in favour of the discovery of Shakspearian fragments. Many other learned persons being, however, convinced by examination of the authenticity of these miscellaneous papers, the publication of them was undertaken by subscription, and four guineas a copy were freely paid by the subscribers.

When the book came out, and not till then, did Mr. Malone condescend to look at it, and examine its pretensions; and he quickly decided it to be a palpable and bold forgery. This he demonstrated by a learned and critical examination of each particular paper; his inquiry was drawn up in the form of a letter, and addressed to the Right Honourable James, Earl of Charlemont, in the year 1796.

The editor of them, Mr. Ireland, in his preface, had assured the public, that all men of taste who had viewed them previous to publication unanimously testified in favour of their authenticity, and declared that there was on their side a mass of irrefragable evidence, external and internal; that it was impossible, amid such various sources of detection, for the art of imitation to have hazarded itself without being betrayed; and, consequently, that these papers could be no other than the production of Shakspeare himself.

The editor, in continuation, said, that these papers came into his hands from his son, Samuel William Henry Ireland, a young man nineteen years of age, by whom the discovery was accidentally made, at the house of a gentleman of considerable property, amongst a heterogeneous collection of family papers.

The legal contracts between Shakspeare and others were, it was said, first found by the junior Ireland, and soon afterwards, the deed of gift to William Henry Ireland, described as the friend of Shakspeare, in consequence of his having saved the dramatist’s life. In pursuing this research, he was so fortunate as to meet with some deeds very material to the interests of the gentleman at whose house he was staying; and such as established, beyond all doubt, his title to considerable property, of which he was as ignorant as he was of possessing these interesting manuscripts of Shakspeare. In return for this service, the gentleman promised him every paper relative to Shakspeare.

Fully satisfied with the honour and liberality shown to him, the finder of these treasures did not feel justified in importuning or requesting a gentleman, to whom he was known by obligation alone, to subject himself to the impertinence and licentiousness of literary curiosity and cavil, unless he should voluntarily come forward. He had applied to the original possessor of them for his permission to print them, and only obtained it under the strongest injunctions of secrecy.

“It is to be observed,” says Mr. Malone, “that we are not told where the deed was first discovered; it is said in a mansion-house, but where situated is not stated. Another very remarkable incident is mentioned: the discoverer met the possessor, to whom he was unknown, at a coffee-house, or some public place, and the conversation turning on old autographs, of which the discoverer was a collector, the country gentleman said to him, ‘If you are for autographs, I am your man; come to my chambers, any morning, and rummage my old deeds, and you will find enough of them.’ Accordingly the discoverer goes, and taking down a parcel, in a few minutes lighted on the name of Shakspeare. The discovery of the title to a considerable estate was so fortunate and beneficial a circumstance to this unknown gentleman, that we cannot wonder at his liberality in giving up all his right to these valuable literary curiosities; but one naturally wishes to know in what county this estate lies, or whether any suit has been instituted within the last year or two, in consequence of such a discovery of title-deeds so little dreamt of.”

According to Mr. Malone, the great objections, critically speaking, to be brought against the manuscripts are, firstly, the orthography; this is not only not the orthography of Elizabeth or her time, but for the most part of no one age whatever. The spelling of the copulative and, and the preposition for, ande—forre, is unprecedented. “I have,” says Mr. Malone, “perused some thousands of deeds and manuscripts, and never once found such a spelling of them; the absurd way in which almost every word is overladen with both vowels and consonants, will strike every reader who has any knowledge on the subject.”

Quotations from manuscripts are made by Mr. Malone, from Chaucer downwards to the end of the sixteenth century, showing the progressive changes in the mode of orthography; and they certainly appear to prove, most satisfactorily, that the papers in which such laboured and capricious deformity of spelling is introduced, are an entire forgery. For example, the word masterre, at that period, was spelt maister. There is not a single authority for Londonne. So early as the time of Edward the First, Robert of Gloucester said,

‘And now me clepet it London, that is lighter in the mouth.’

Leycesterre for Leycester is as incorrect.

Secondly, the phraseology is equally faulty, particularly in the letter, supposed to be written and directed by Queen Elizabeth, to William Shakspeare. This letter, in particular, it is very easy to prove a forgery; as, by an anachronism, it is directed to William Shakspeare, at the Globe by the Thames. Now the Globe was a theatre which did not open till the year 1594; yet, in the same letter, mention is made of the expected presence of Leicester, who died in September 1588, when this theatre did not exist.

The deeds and miscellaneous papers were exhibited in Norfolk Street, long before their publication, and they were submitted to the critical examination of any one willing to question them; nor, from their appearance of venerable antiquity, was a doubt of their genuine authenticity allowed to be entertained. When the elder Mr. Ireland afterwards published his “Vindication,” he showed how readily the most discerning persons yielded their faith to this imposture. Mr. Boaden, he says, thus wrote to G. Steevens after having seen the manuscripts. “In some instances credulity is no disgrace, strong enthusiasm is always eager to believe; I confess that, for some time after I had seen them, I continued to think they might be genuine; they bore the character of the poet’s writing, the paper appeared of sufficient age, the water-marks were earnestly displayed, and the matter diligently applauded; I remember that I beheld the papers with the tremor of utmost delight, touched the invaluable relics with reverential respect, and deemed even existence dearer as it gave me so refined a satisfaction.”

Similar and even stronger impressions were made on James Boswell, one of those literary characters who, in company with Dr. Parr, signed a certificate expressing their belief of the authenticity of the papers. Previous to signing his name, Boswell fell on his knees, and in a tone of enthusiasm and exultation, thanked God that he had lived to witness their discovery, and that he could now die in peace. In proportion to this strong belief, therefore, was the public indignation excited against the inventors of that monstrous,—and to the subscribers expensive—forgery, which the critical acumen of Mr. Malone had so clearly exposed. The blame of the transaction was imputed as much to Mr. Ireland, the father, as to William Henry, the son, who was in reality sole contriver of this imposture. In an exculpatory pamphlet, he says, “In justice to the memory of my father, I think it necessary to give a true account of the publication of these manuscripts. After dinner my father would read different accounts of Shakspeare, and remark how wonderful it was that no vestige of his signature remains, except that at Doctors’ Commons. Curiosity led me to look at the signature, in Steevens’ edition of his plays, and it occurred to me, that if some old writing could be produced, and passed off for Shakspeare’s, it might occasion a little mirth, and show how far credulity would go in search of antiquities. I first tried an experiment by writing a letter, as from the author of an old book in my possession, in dedication of it to Queen Elizabeth: I showed it to my father, who thought it genuine. This encouraged me to proceed till the whole work was completed, and published with the following title page: “Miscellaneous papers and legal instruments under the hand and seal of William Shakspeare, including the tragedy of King Lear, and a fragment of Hamlet, folio, London, 1796.” And subsequently, “Free reflections on the miscellaneous papers, etc., in the possession of S. Ireland, to which are added extracts from the Virgin Queen, a play.”

The story of the country gentleman was told to silence the numerous inquiries as to where they came from. In conclusion, Mr. S. Ireland says, “I most sincerely regret any offence I may have given the world, or particular individuals, trusting at the same time, that they will deem the whole the work of a boy, without any evil or bad intent, but hurried on, thoughtless of any danger that awaited to ensnare him.”

The drama of Vortigern, which formed one portion of the forgery, was brought out at Drury Lane theatre, and was unanimously damned.

The art of counterfeiting old deeds and manuscripts has often been had recourse to for the purpose of fraud. Some curious evidence of such practices was given in the case of “Mossam v. Dame Theodosia Joy,” which may be found at large in the State Trials, vol. 7, p. 571. This lady was proved to have forged the title deeds of an estate to which she laid claim. Serjeant Stringer, in the course of the trial, inquired of Mrs. Duffet, one of the witnesses, “Pray what did they do to the deeds to make them look like ancient true deeds?” The witness replied, “For the making of the outsides look old and dirty, they used to rub them on the windows that were very dusty, and wear them in the pockets, to crease them, for weeks together. According as they intended to make use of them, when they had been rubbed and made to look dirty, and they were to pass for deeds of many years’ standing, it was used to lay them in a balcony, or any open place, for the rain to wet them, and the next clear day they were exposed to the sun, or placed before the fire, to dry them hastily, that they might be shrivelled.”

The introduction of the Inquisition into Portugal, has been stated to have resulted from the admirable skill in counterfeiting signatures, which was possessed by a monk named Saavedra. About the year 1540, this monk forged apostolic bulls, royal decrees, and bills of exchange, with so much accuracy that they passed for genuine. He also succeeded so well as to pass himself off for a knight, commander of the military order of St. Jago, the income of which amounted to three hundred ducats, which he received for a year and a half. In a short time he acquired, by means of the royal deeds which he counterfeited, three hundred and sixty thousand ducats. He might have remained undetected through life, had not his successes tempted him to undertake a still more hazardous fraud, which led to his detection; falling in with a Jesuit travelling to Portugal, with an apostolical brief for the foundation of a Jesuit’s College, he concerted a plan for introducing the Inquisition. Saavedra forged letters from Charles V. to the King of Portugal, and a papal bull for establishing the Inquisition there. This bull appointed Saavedra legate. Following up his deception, he assumed the character of a Roman cardinal, and made a visit to Portugal. The king despatched a distinguished nobleman to receive him. Saavedra spent three months at Lisbon, after which he travelled through the kingdom; but he was at last detected by the Inquisitor-General of Spain, and was sentenced to the galleys for ten years.

The eighteenth century was closed with a literary fraud, concocted in Germany, to which circumstances gave a temporary success. So little is known of the interior of Africa, that any thing which seems likely to add to our knowledge upon this subject can hardly fail to excite attention. Public curiosity was, therefore raised to the highest pitch, when a work was announced, with the captivating title of “Travels in the Interior of Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope to Morocco, from the years 1781 to 1797; by Christian Frederick Damberger.” Translations of a work which promised to remove the veil, that had so long covered central Africa, were immediately undertaken in England and in France; and each translator laboured indefatigably, in the fear of the market being forestalled by his rival. The delusion, however, was quickly dispelled; the work being discovered to be the manufacture of a printer of Wittemberg, by name Zachary Taurinius, who had before tried his skill in forging a Voyage to the East Indies, Egypt, &c., and a Voyage and Journey to Asia, Africa and America.

A literary imposition similar to that which was practised in England by Chatterton, was effected in France, in 1804. A small volume was published, at Paris, edited by M. Vanderbourg, and professing to be the “Poems of Margaret Eleanor Clotilda de Vallon-Chalys”, afterwards Madame de Surville, a French poetess of the fifteenth century. They were said to have been discovered, in 1782, among the dusty archives of his family, by a M. de Surville, a descendant of the fair authoress, who had a transcript of them made. The originals were unfortunately destroyed by fire, and M. de Surville lost his life during the French revolution, but the copy of the poems was saved, and, with much difficulty, was procured by the editor. Madame de Surville is represented as having displayed singularly precocious abilities; to have been married in 1421; and to have lived at least to the age of ninety, exercising her poetical talent to the last. Serious doubts as to the truth of this story are entertained by the literary men of France. But, though the authenticity of these compositions may be disputed, there can be no dispute respecting their merit. There is a grace, sweetness, and spirit, in them which are exceedingly delightful. From the following translation of the supposed Madame de Surville’s “Verses to My First Born,” which appeared in an early number of the New Monthly Magazine, some idea may be formed of her poetical talents:

My cherished infant! image of thy sire!

Sleep on the bosom which thy small lip presses!

Sleep little one, and close those eyes of fire,

Those eyelets which the weight of sleep oppresses.

Sweet friend! dear little one! may slumbers lend thee

Delights which I must never more enjoy!

I watch o’er thee, to nourish and defend thee,

And count these vigils sweet, for thee, my boy.

Sleep, infant, sleep! my solace and my treasure!

Sleep on my breast, the breast which gladly bore thee!

And though thy words can give this heart no pleasure,

It loves to see thy thousand smiles come o’er thee.

Yes, thou wilt smile, young friend, when thou awakest,

Yes, thou wilt smile, to see my joyful guise;

Thy mother’s face thou never now mistakest,

And thou hast learned to look into her eyes.

What! do thy little fingers leave the breast,

The fountain which thy small lip pressed at pleasure?

Could’st thou exhaust it, pledge of passion blest,

E’en then thou couldst not know my fond love’s measure.

My gentle son! sweet friend, whom I adore!

My infant love! my comfort! my delight!

I gaze on thee, and gazing o’er and o’er,

I blame the quick return of every night.

His little arms stretch forth—sleep o’er him steals—

His eye is closed—he sleeps—how still his breath!

But for the tints his flowery cheek reveals,

He seems to slumber in the arms of death.

Awake my child!—I tremble with affright!—

Awaken!—Fatal thought, thou art no more!—

My child!—one moment gaze upon the light,

And e’en with thy repose my life restore.

Blest error! still he sleeps—I breathe again—

May gentle dreams delight his calm repose!

But when will he, for whom I sigh—oh when

Will he, beside me watch thine eyes unclose?

When shall I see him who hath given thee life,—

My youthful husband, noblest of his race?

Methinks I see, blest mother, and blest wife!

Thy little hands thy father’s neck embrace.

How will he revel in thy first caress,

Disputing with thee for thy gentle kiss!

But think not to engross his tenderness,

Clotilda too shall have her share of bliss.

How will he joy to see his image there;

The sweetness of his large cerulean eye!

His noble forehead, and his graceful air,

Which Love himself might view with jealousy.

For me—I am not jealous of his love,

And gladly I divide it, sweet, with thee;

Thou shalt, like him, a faithful husband prove,

But not, like him, give this anxiety.

I speak to thee—thou understand’st me not—

Thou could’st not understand though sleep were fled—

Poor little child! the tangles of his thought,

His infant thought, are not unravelled.

We have been happy infants as thou art;

Sad reason will destroy the dream too soon;

Sleep in the calm repose that lulls thy heart,

Ere long its very memory will be gone.

In 1823, a visit to England was made by a singular individual, named Hunter, a native of America, who, though it appears certain that he professed to be what he was not, was undoubtedly a man of considerable abilities. During his stay in this country, he published his own adventures, under the title of “Memoirs of a Captivity among the Indians of North America, from Childhood to the Age of Nineteen; with Anecdotes descriptive of their Manners and Customs.” The work contains a highly-interesting narrative of his alleged wanderings with various tribes of the Red Men, and was at first much prized as a faithful picture of Indian life. The society of Hunter was eagerly sought by many eminent literary and philanthropic characters, who were eager to assist him in that which he professed to be his grand object: namely, to devote himself to the civilization of the red race, in order to avert the destruction which seems to impend over it. After his departure from England, however, strong evidence was brought forward, to demonstrate that his story was, in great part, if not wholly, a fabrication. That Hunter had had some intercourse with the Indians, is not improbable; but the romantic tale which he tells of his peregrinations must henceforth be classed among works of fiction.

In the following year, 1824, the extraordinary popularity which Sir Walter Scott’s novels had acquired in Germany, gave occasion to an audacious fraud on the part of some German booksellers. A novel was got up by them, with the title of Walladmor, and was ushered into the world, at the Leipsic fair, as the translation of a new production by Sir Walter. This spurious Simon Pure subsequently made its appearance in an English dress. Though the author must undoubtedly be classed among knaves, it must in justice be owned, that he was not a fool; there being some parts of his work, which are by no means contemptible.

The last instance of literary imposture dates no further back than the year 1832. A. M. Douville was the perpetrator, and the title which he gave to it was, “A Journey in Congo and the Interior of Equinoctial Africa.” M. Douville had probably visited some of the Portuguese settlements on the coast, but his astonishing discoveries in the interior must, like the captivity of Hunter, be considered as deserving of equal credence with the travels of Gulliver.

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CHAPTER XI.
IMPOSTURES IN ENGRAVING.

Fashion of decrying modern Artists—M. Picart asserts the Merit of modern Engravers—Means employed by him to prove the Truth of his Assertions—“The innocent Impostors”—Goltzius imitates perfectly the Engravings of Albert Durer—Marc Antonio Raimondi is equally successful—Excellent Imitation of Rembrandt’s Portrait of Burgomaster Six—Modern Tricks played with respect to Engraved Portraits—Sir Joshua Reynolds metamorphosed into “The Monster.”

About a century since, it was the fashion, among the would-be pretenders in matters of taste, to decry the works, and depreciate the talents, of the engravers of that time, in comparison with the earlier artists. This induced M. Picart, an ingenious engraver, to undertake the task of exposing the fallacious reasoning of these cognoscenti, who asserted that they could easily distinguish the works of the earlier painters, which had been engraved by themselves; and, secondly, that, as an engraver could never attain the picturesque style, they could easily distinguish whether an engraving was the work of a painter, or of merely an engraver; and, thirdly, that the modern engravers could not copy the paintings of the older masters so well as the contemporary engraver.

In direct opposition to these frivolous conceits, M. Picart asserted that the plates engraved by Signor Contarini, after Guido, were much preferable to those incontestably engraved by Guido himself; and also, that the works of Gerard Audran, an engraver by profession, were touched with as much spirit as could possibly have been given by a painter.

To put it to the test of experiment, however, Picart chose some designs of the earlier painters, which had not been engraved, worked at them in secret, stamped some of them on old paper, and dispersed them quietly; and no one ventured to doubt but that they had been both engraved and printed in Italy. Having by this artifice sufficiently disproved the validity of those assertions which tended to depreciate the modern engravers, M. Picart collected in one volume all the plates he had so circulated, and they were afterwards published under the name of “Picart’s innocent Impostors.”

Goltzius, a celebrated engraver of an earlier period, had recourse to a somewhat similar artifice, to convince the world of the malevolent detraction of certain rival artists, who, to humble Goltzius, were accustomed to say that his works were not to be compared with those of Albert Durer, or Lucas of Leyden. He, therefore, engraved the Circumcision, after the manner of Albert Durer, stamped below with his own name and mark; some impressions were taken off on old and discoloured paper, and his name was burnt out, or otherwise effaced. This plate went thus in masquerade to Rome, Venice, and Amsterdam, and was received by all the amateurs and curious with astonishment and pleasure, and was purchased at a very high price by those who esteemed themselves too happy to have found an opportunity of possessing themselves of an engraving by Albert Durer. Soon after, the same plate appeared entire, and freshly stamped with the name and mark of Goltzius; the connoisseurs were of course greatly confused and extremely angry, and the malevolent jealousy of his rivals was exposed to the world.

Marc Antonio Raimondi raised himself into notice in the following manner: many engravings by Albert Durer were brought to Venice for sale, and Raimondi was so much struck by the style and execution, that he purchased them, and set to work to copy them, counterfeiting Albert Durer’s mark, A. D. These copies appeared so similar, that they were believed to be the genuine works of Albert, and, as such, were exposed to sale, and became speedily purchased. This made Albert so indignant, that he quitted Flanders, and came to Venice, to make a complaint against Raimondi to the government; and he was forbidden in future to make use of Albert’s name or mark.

The engraving of the Burgomaster Six, the patron of Rembrandt, was so much valued, and so scarce, that Beringhen could not obtain it for any money; and he, therefore, procured a copy of it to be made with a pen, and afterwards washed with Indian ink, which was in the French king’s cabinet at the time M. Gersaint wrote Rembrandt’s life, and was so excellent an imitation, that it deceived several good judges.

The tricks of transmutation which are often played with copper-plate engravings are well known. At the time when the person so justly execrated and branded with the name of “The Monster,” made such a noise, the dealer in one of the catchpenny accounts of his life and adventures was very desirous of giving to the public some representation of him. Not being able suddenly to procure one, it was necessary for him to find a substitute. An old plate, which had been engraved for a magazine, and intended to pass for a likeness of Sir Joshua Reynolds, was luckily obtained, and was made to answer the purpose. As the print bore no resemblance whatever to Sir Joshua, and had, indeed, a most unprepossessing appearance, the original inscription was erased, “The Monster” substituted, and it did very well. In the ephemeral publications which daily issue from the press similar metamorphoses are by no means uncommon.

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CHAPTER XII.
FORGED INSCRIPTIONS AND SPURIOUS MEDALS.

Ancient Memorials of Geographical Discoveries—Mistakes arising from them—Frauds to which they gave occasion—Imposture of Evemerus—Annius of Viterbo wrongfully charged with forging Inscriptions—Spurious works given to the World by him—Forged Inscriptions put on statues by ignorant modern Sculptors—Spurious Medals—Instances of them in the Cabinet of Dr. Hunter—Coins adulterated by Grecian Cities—Evelyn’s Directions for ascertaining the Genuineness of Medals—Spurious Gold Medals—Tricks of the Manufacturers of Pseudo-Antique Medals—Collectors addicted to pilfering Rarities—Medals swallowed by Vaillant—Mistakes arising from Ignorance of the Chinese Characters.

It appears to have been the practice of the early Greek navigators to leave memorials on shores discovered for the first time, and to take possession of them by a dedication to one of their gods or heroes; as modern navigators in their discoveries have usually named prominent headlands, islands, or secure harbours, from some statesman or hero of the day.

These ancient inscriptions being found among barbarous nations by succeeding navigators, when the original discoverers were forgotten, it might be concluded that those heroes, to whom the shores had been merely dedicated in the first instance, had actually been there.

The probability of such circumstances led the way in after times to a species of fraud, for conferring a spurious antiquity on certain places and things by persons, producing, as authentic and ancient, histories and monuments of their own manufacture.

Evemerus, a Messenian, or, according to some writers, a Sicilian, a cotemporary of Cassander, king of Macedon, seems to have been the first who attempted this kind of fraud; for he pretended to have found on a golden column, in an ancient temple in the island of Panchæa, a genealogical account of a family that had once reigned there, in which were comprised the principal deities then worshipped by the Greeks. Not only were their lives recorded, but also their deaths; and thus a deadly blow was aimed at their divinity. This fable was translated into Latin by Ennius.

Annius of Viterbo, who was born at Viterbo, in 1432, and whose real name was John Nanni, has been charged with framing inscriptions from his own imagination, and burying them in certain places, that, when they had acquired an appearance of antiquity, he might pretend to find, and might vend them. He is also said to have manufactured medals of an early date. Both these charges are, however, erroneous. It is nevertheless certain that, accompanied by his own commentaries, he presented to the world, as genuine, the pretended works of several exceedingly ancient authors; for this he has incurred much odium, but it is believed, by many learned men, that, instead of being a forger, he was himself deceived by forged manuscripts. This fraud gave rise to a violent controversy, in which many of the most eminent literary men were engaged.

The great uncertainty relative to the genuineness of inscriptions on ancient statues originated in the ignorance or fraud of those who restored them. Even Phædrus, in the application of a fable at the beginning of his fifth book, alludes to this practice in his time by mercenary artists. “The name of Apollodorus, on the plinth of the Venus de Medicis,” says Mr. Dallaway, “has been detected as a modern forgery. The statues which have been dug up in a mutilated state, and placed in the hands of venal or ignorant artists, have always had the name of some eminent character given to them. Doubts of genuineness are at least allowable, and often justified, of those statues the hands of which have been evidently engrafted.”

The fabrication of spurious coins for the market was neither a modern contrivance nor of unfrequent occurrence. The collection of medals belonging to Dr. Hunter affords some examples. One of a leaden coin, cased in silver, as remote as the time of Selcucus, king of Syria, may be seen in that cabinet; and also a similar coin of the city of Naples. In the Roman series, Neumann makes mention of a remarkable instance from Schulzius, of a leaden coin of Nero, which had been anciently circulated for brass, in which metal it was enclosed. In Dr. Hunter’s cabinet are two examples of leaden coins covered with gold; one of the Emperor Trajan, the other of his successor.

Demosthenes relates, on the authority of Solon, that several cities in Greece adulterated their coins; and Dion Cassius states, that the Emperor Caracalla, instead of gold and silver, issued brass and leaden coins, which were merely washed or cased with silver or gold, to conceal the fraud.

Evelyn, in his “Numismata,” exposes many of the tricks of those who, at the period at which he wrote, supplied the market with spurious coins and medals. “The most likely means,” says he, “for procuring genuine coins or medals, are from country people, who plough and dig about old walls, mounds, &c., where castrametations have formerly been. The composition or grouping of the figures should also be well considered, that it be with judgment; for the ancients seldom crowded many figures together. A perfect medal has its profile and out-strokes sharp, and by no means rugged; the figures clean and well polished, and an almost inimitable spirit of antiquity and excellence, in the most ancient. Yet after much research, travel and diligence, cost and caution, one is perpetually in danger of being deceived, and imposed upon, by cheaters and mercenary forgers; and even the country people, in Italy and Holland, often deceive the less wary medalist. Where a series of ancient medals is known to be imperfect, suspicion should always attach to him who pretends to supply the chasm, and complete the series.[14]

“All medals of gold, Greek or Roman, that are not of the best alloy, are to be considered impostures.

“The manufacturers of pseudo-antiques, will raise and carve the effigies of one emperor out of another antique head of a less costly and rare description; for instance, an Otho out of a Nero; and also the reverses: nay, they have the address to slit and divide two several medals, and, with a certain tenacious cement, join the reverse of one to the head of the other, and so repair and trim the edges that it is impossible to discover the ingenious fraud. A partial deceit is often practised on the unwary, by taking off a part of a relievo, and applying it to another medal; by the same artifice and dexterity, the title of a genuine medal may be entirely altered, where there are but few letters, by pinching up a letter in one part, or removing superfluous matter in another, so that in process of time the metamorphosis is complete.”

Mr. Obadiah Walker accuses the Jews of being most industrious in putting off spurious medals. Some persons purposely bury medals near the remains of some Roman works, and then pretend to have found them by chance; as is also reported of a certain statuary, who carved the pseudo Hercules, and sold it at a great price, before the justly-admired original statue was discovered.

Rival collectors have been known to prey on each other’s rarities, by clandestinely swallowing the most precious gem in a collection; at least an anecdote to this effect is related on the continent, of Baron Storch, a celebrated gem collector.

The Abbé Barthelemi, taught by experience, was very careful how he exposed to visiters the rarities in the French cabinet of medals, of which he was the keeper; for in his account of the duties of his office he says, “Such a depository as this cabinet of medals cannot safely be made public; several persons might put their hands on them at one time, and it would be easy to carry them off, or substitute such as are spurious or common. I had no other resource, after I had got rid of the groups, but to examine the shelves at which they had been looking.”

Vaillant, the celebrated numismatist, when pursued at sea by Algerine pirates, is said to have swallowed a whole series of Syrian kings. When he landed at Marseilles, he hastened to his friend, physician, and brother antiquary, Dufour, groaning horribly, with the treasures in his belly. Dufour was only anxious to know, whether the medals were of the higher empire; Vaillant showed him two or three, of which nature had relieved him: a bargain was immediately struck, and the coins recovered.

The almost universal ignorance in Europe of the Chinese alphabet, and written character, has been the cause of some curious mistakes in deciding on the merits of certain coins. So little was a professor of Chinese, at Rome, versed in the language he professed to know, that he is said, by Mr. Pauw, to have mistaken some characters found on a bust of Isis for Chinese; which bust and characters were afterwards proved to be the work of a modern artist of Turin, made after his own fancy.

In Great Britain, we have, till recently, known still less of the Chinese language and literature than on the Continent. “It is not many years since,” says Mr. Barrow, “that one of the small copper coins of China, stamped in the reign and with the name of the late Tchien-lung, was picked up in a bog in Ireland, and, being considered as a great curiosity, was carried to an indefatigable antiquary, whose researches have been of considerable use in investigating the ancient history and language of that island. Not knowing the Chinese character, nor their coin, it was natural enough for him to compare them with some language with which he was acquainted; and the conclusion he drew was, that the four characters on the face were ancient Syriac, and that the reverse appeared to be astronomical or talismanic characters, of which he could give no explanation. The Mantchoo Tartar characters of another coin he supposed to signify p, u, r, which he construed into sors, or lot; and it was concluded, that these coins must either have been imported into Ireland by the Phœnicians, or manufactured in the country; in which case the Irish must have had an oriental alphabet. In either case, these medals,” it was sagely observed, “contribute more to authenticate the ancient history of Ireland than all the volumes that have been written on the subject.”

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CHAPTER XIII.
ATTEMPT TO STEAL THE REGALIA FROM THE TOWER.

First Opening of the Regalia to public Inspection—Edwards appointed Keeper—Plan formed by Blood to steal the Regalia—He visits the Tower with his pretended Wife—Means by which he contrived to become intimate with Edwards—His Arrangements for carrying his Scheme into Execution—He knocks down Edwards, and obtains Possession of the Jewels—Fortunate Chance by which his Scheme was frustrated—He is taken—Charles II. is present at his Examination—Blood contrives to obtain a Pardon, and the Gift of an Estate from the King.

Bayley, in his History of the Tower of London, has very circumstantially related the attempt made by a desperado, named Blood, to steal the regalia from thence; though it failed in the execution, this scheme was most ingeniously planned. The subsequent ingenuity of the culprit, on his examination before the king, also saved him from a just punishment, and not only procured him pardon for his offence, but even a handsome reward in the form of an annuity.

Soon after the appointment of Sir Giles Talbot to the office of Master of the Jewel-House in the Tower, the regalia first became the object of public inspection. The privilege of showing them was granted by Charles II. to the keeper, in consequence of certain reductions in the emoluments of the office. The person appointed to take charge of them was a confidential servant, named Talbot Edwards; and soon after, in 1673, the attempt of the notorious Blood was made.

Three weeks before the execution of his plan, Blood went to the Tower, in the canonical habit of a clergyman, accompanied by a woman whom he called his wife. They desired to see the regalia, and just as their wishes had been gratified, the lady feigned indisposition: this circumstance called forth the kind offices of Mrs. Edwards, who courteously invited her into the dwelling-house. The lady, however, soon recovered, and, on departing, professed great gratitude.

A few days after this, Blood came again, bringing Mrs. Edwards four pair of white gloves, as a present from his pretended wife. This civility opened a way to a more intimate acquaintance, and, at length, Blood offered a proposal of marriage between his nephew, (whom he represented as possessing two hundred pounds per annum in land,) and Miss Edwards, if agreeable to all parties, on a longer acquaintance. A treaty was entered into, and the young gentleman was to come in a day or two to be presented.

At the time appointed, Blood went with three others to the Jewel-House, armed with rapier-blades in their canes, and every one had a dagger, and a brace of pistols. Two of the friends, to fill up the time whilst the daughter was adorning herself, expressed a wish to view the regalia before dinner, and it was arranged, that, together with Blood, they should accompany old Mr. Edwards for that purpose, whilst the anxious lover should wait below for the coming of his mistress, but in reality to watch lest interruption should take place. When the three had entered with Edwards into the room, a cloak was thrown over him, a gag was placed in his mouth, and he was threatened with death if he made the least noise; but, as he was not intimidated, and made attempts to sound an alarm, he was silenced by some blows on the head with a mallet, and a stab in the belly, when he lay as if dead.

They then proceeded to secrete the booty about their persons. One of them, named Parrot, put the orb into his pocket, Blood held the crown under his cloak, and the third was about to file the sceptre into two pieces, to place it in a bag, when fortunately the son of Mr. Edwards visited his father, and, regardless of the opposition made by the watchful pretended lover, persisted to force his way in. The scuffle below was heard, and this unexpected incident spreading confusion among them, they instantly decamped, leaving the sceptre undivided. The aged keeper, recovering, forced the gag from his mouth, and cried “Treason!” The alarm was given, and parties were sent to the several gates to stop them. They escaped, however, out at St. Catherine’s gate, where horses were waiting for them, but were speedily overtaken. Under Blood’s cloak was found the crown, and, even when a prisoner, he had the impudence to struggle for his prize, and said it was a gallant attempt, however unsuccessful, as it was for a crown.

In the struggle the great pearl, and a large diamond, with a few smaller jewels, were lost from the crown, but fortunately they were afterwards found and restored.

Blood being carried before Sir Gilbert Talbot, the king went to hear his examination and confession. This was a fortunate circumstance for the culprit, who artfully worked at once on the vanity and the apprehensions of the monarch. He told him that he had formerly been engaged with others to kill his majesty, while he was bathing at Battersea, and had concealed himself in the reeds to effect his purpose; but that when he had taken aim, the awe inspired by the royal presence unnerved his hand, and he desisted from his sanguinary design. He added, that he was but one of three hundred, who were sworn to revenge each other’s fall; that the king might do with him as he pleased, but that, by dooming him to suffer, he would endanger his own life, and the lives of his advisers; while, on the contrary, by displaying clemency, he would win the gratitude and the services of a band of fearless and faithful followers. Either won over by the boldness and candour of the ruffian, or alarmed by his threats, Charles not only pardoned Blood, but likewise gave him an estate in Ireland, worth 500l. a year. Poor Edwards (who suffered severely from his injuries), was less fortunate; he had only a grant of two hundred pounds, and his son one hundred, and even of these trifling sums the payment was so long deferred, that they were obliged to sell the orders at half price for ready money.

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CHAPTER XIV.
VAMPYRISM.

Horrible nature of the Superstition of Vampyrism—Persons attacked by Vampyres become Vampyres themselves—Signs by which a Vampyre was known—Origin of one of the signs—Effect attributed to Excommunication in the Greek church—Story of an excommunicated Greek—Calmet’s theory of the origin of the Superstition respecting Vampyres—St. Stanislas—Philinnium—The Strygis supposed to have given the idea of the Vampyre—Capitulary of Charlemagne—Remedy against attacks from the Demon—Anecdote of an impudent Vampyre—Story of a Vampyre at Mycone—Prevalence of Vampyrism in the north of Europe—Walachian mode of detecting Vampyres.

Among the many superstitions which have terrified and degraded mankind, that which has received the name of Vampyrism is, perhaps, the most horrible and loathsome. The Vampyre, or Blood-sucker, has been forcibly described as “a corporeal creature of blood and unquenchable blood-thirst,—a ravenous corpse, who rises in body and soul from his grave, for the sole purpose of glutting his sanguinary appetite with the life-blood of those whose blood stagnates in his own veins. He is endowed with an incorruptible frame to prey on the lives of his kindred and his friends—he re-appears among them from the world of the tomb, not to tell its secrets of joy or of woe, not to invite or to warn by the testimony of his experience, but to appal and assassinate those who were dearest to him on earth—and this, not for the gratification of revenge or any human feeling, which, however depraved, might find something in common with human nature; but to banquet a monstrous thirst, acquired in the tomb, and which, though he walks in human form and human lineaments, has swallowed up every human motive in its brutal ferocity.”

It is manifest that a being of this kind must be infinitely more terrible than the common race of ghosts, spectres, and fiendish visitants. But there was another circumstance which inexpressibly heightened the horror excited by the dread of being attacked. Wasting illness, closed by death, was not all that the victim had to endure. He who was sucked by a Vampyre was doomed to become in his turn a member of the hideous community, and to inflict on others, even on those who were nearest and dearest to him, the same evils by which he had himself suffered and perished.

When a grave was opened in order to search for one of these pests, to put a stop to his career, the sanguinary offender was recognised by the corpse being fresh and well preserved, the eyes open or half closed, the face of a vermilion hue, the limbs flexible, the hair and nails long, and the pulse beating.

The idea of this unchanged state of the corpse seems to have originated from a superstition of the Greek church. It was believed that excommunication, inflicted by the Greek priests, had the power of preventing the lifeless remains of the excommunicated person from sinking into decay. An instance of this effect being produced is mentioned by Ricaut, in his History of the Greek Church. A young man, of Milos, who had been put under the ecclesiastical ban, was buried in a remote and unconsecrated ground. He became a Vampyre, or, as the modern Greeks term it, a Vroucolaca. The corpse was disinterred, and displayed all the signs of Vampyrism. The priests were about to treat it as was usual in such cases; but the friends of the deceased solicited and obtained a cessation of hostilities, till a messenger could be sent to Constantinople, to pray for absolution from the Patriarch. The corpse, meanwhile, was placed in the church, and masses were daily and nightly said. One day, while the priest was reading the service, a crash was heard from the coffin; the lid was opened, and the body was found as entirely decayed as though it had been buried for seven years. When the messenger arrived with the absolution, it was ascertained that the Patriarch had affixed his signature to it at the exact moment when the crash was heard in the coffin!

The superstition relative to Vampyres is supposed by Calmet to be derived from ancient legends. The first of these legends is the story of St. Stanislas raising a man, who had been dead three years, and whom he called to life that he might give evidence, in the saint’s behalf, in a court of justice. After having given his testimony, the resuscitated man returned quietly to his grave. A second is to be found in Phlegon de Mirabilibus, who relates that a girl of the name of Philinnium, a native of Tralles, in Asia Minor, not only visited, ate, and drank, with her lover, after her death, but even cohabited with him. But in neither of these cases do we find a trace of the diabolical malignity which characterizes the Vampyre. A more congenial origin may perhaps be found in the Strygis, of which Ovid makes mention; and this origin appears the more probable when we consider that, in the middle ages, the Strygis had an established place among the demon tribe; and, in the shape of suspected males and females, was often burnt, among other sorcerers and magicians, by the Lombards and Germans. There is extant a capitulary of Charlemagne, which shows how prevalent the belief was in the existence of the Strygis, and how strong a resemblance the fiend bore to the Vampyre of modern times. It enacts that “if any person, deceived by the devil, shall believe, after the manner of the Pagans, that any man or woman was a Strygis, or Stryx, and was given to eat men, and for this cause should burn such person, or should give such person’s flesh to be eaten, or should eat such flesh, such man or woman should be capitally punished.”

From the capitulary it is clear, that eating the flesh of the delinquent Stryx was supposed to be a remedy for the evils which the demon inflicted. There is a somewhat similar circumstance connected with the Vampyre, which strengthens the idea that it is a legitimate descendant of the Stryx. In a French work, published nearly a century and a half ago, is an account of the Upiers or Vampyres, which infested Poland and Russia. “They appear,” says the author, “from midday to midnight, and suck the blood of men and beasts in such abundance, that it often issues again out of their mouth, nose and ears; and the corpse sometimes is found swimming in the blood with which its cere-cloth is filled. This Redivive, or Upier (or some demon in his form) rises from the tombs, goes by night to hug and squeeze violently his relations or friends, and sucks their blood, so as to weaken and exhaust them, and at length occasion their death. This persecution is not confined to a single person, but extends throughout the family, unless it is arrested by cutting off the head, or opening the heart, of the Upier, which they find in its cere-cloth, soft, flexible, tumid, and ruddy, although long ago dead. A large quantity of blood commonly flows from the body, which some mix up with flour and make bread of it; and this bread, when eaten, is found to preserve them from the vexation of the spectre.” It is singular, however, that though the Vampyre himself might thus be rendered edible, he was imagined to communicate an infectious quality to whatever he fed on; so that, if any one were unlucky enough to eat the flesh of cattle which had been sucked, he would, after death, be sure of becoming a member of the blood-sucking fraternity.

In one part of his statement this author is incorrect. Vampyres were not to be so easily got rid of as he imagined. Nothing short of burning would, at least in a majority of cases, put an end to their diabolical visitations. Some of them had the audacity to make a jest of driving a stake through them. Of this class was a peasant, of the village of Blow, in Bohemia, who had long been most mischievously active. “At last they dug him up, and drove a stake through him, during which he had the impudence to laugh and jeer at his executioners, and thank them for giving him a stick to defend himself against the dogs. This procedure did not answer at all. He became still more troublesome than ever. Then they delivered him over to the hangman, who placed him in a cart, to carry him out of the village and burn him. But in this new situation he kicked and struggled like a man in a frenzy, and, when they again drove stakes into him, uttered loud shrieks, and gave a large quantity of fine healthy blood. At last they burnt him: and the village at the moment ceased to be infested as before.”

The belief in Vampyrism prevailed in Greece, where, as we have already stated, the demon was known by the name of Vroucolaca, or Broucocolas. Tournefort relates an amusing story of one that wofully annoyed the inhabitants of Mycone. Prayers, processions, stabbing with swords, sprinklings of holy water, and even pouring it in large doses down the throat of the refractory Vroucolaca, were all tried in vain. An Albanian, who chanced to be at Mycone, objected to two of these remedies. It was no wonder that the devil continued in, he said, for how could he possibly come through the holy water! and as to the swords, they were equally effectual in preventing his exit; for, their handles being crosses, he was so much terrified that he dared not pass them. To obviate the latter objection, he recommended that Turkish scimetars should be used. The scimetars were accordingly put in requisition, but the pertinacious devil still retained his hold of the corpse, and played his pranks with as much vigour as ever. At length, when all the respectable inhabitants were packing up, to take flight to Syra or Tinos, an effectual mode of ousting the Vroucolaca was fortunately suggested. The body was committed to the flames, on the first of January, 1701, and the spirit, being thus forcibly ejected from his abode, was rendered incapable of doing farther mischief. He, however, left behind him a legacy of vexation to the Myconians; for, as a punishment for having had doings with the evil one, a fine was imposed upon them by the Turks, when they next visited the island to receive the capitation tax.

But though Vampyrism was known in Greece, it was far more prevalent in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Poland, Hungary, and Walachia. In those countries it raged particularly from 1725 to 1735. There was scarcely a village that was not said to be haunted by one of the blood-sucking demons; and the greatest part of the population was a prey to terror. The belief was not confined to the vulgar; all classes participated in it; military and ecclesiastical commissions were appointed to investigate the facts; and the press teemed with dissertations and narratives from the pens of erudite individuals, whose learning was at least equalled by their inveterate credulity.

In the mode which was employed by the Walachians for the detection of Vampyres, there is a touch of the romantic. On a jet-black horse, which had never approached the female, they mounted a young boy, and made them pass up and down in the churchyard by all the graves; and wherever the animal refused to proceed, they concluded that particular grave to be inhabited by a Vampyre. “They then open it,” says the narrator, “and find within it a corpse equally fat and fair as a man who is quietly sleeping.” By cutting off the head, and filling up the trench, all danger was removed, and those who had been attacked were gradually restored to their strength and faculties.

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CHAPTER XV.
JUGGLING.

Feats of Jugglers formerly attributed to witchcraft—Anglo-Saxon Gleemen—Norman Jugglers or Tregatours—Chaucer’s Description of the Wonders performed by them—Means probably employed by them—Recipe for making the Appearance of a Flood—Jugglers fashionable in the Reign of Charles II.—Evelyn’s Account of a Fire-eater—Katterfelto—Superiority of Asiatic and Eygptian pretenders to magical Skill—Mandeville’s Account of Juggling at the Court of the Great Khan—Extraordinary Feats witnessed by the Emperor Jehanguire—Ibn Batuta’s Account of Hindustanee Jugglers—Account of a Bramin who sat upon the Air—Egyptian Jugglers—Mr. Lane’s Account of the Performance of one of them—Another fails in satisfying Captain Scott.

The mountebanks who now exhibit on the travelling stage or cart, and whose buffoonery pleases only the clown, were formerly thought to practise witchcraft, or deal with some unlawful powers.

The joculators, jugglours, or tregatours, of the Normans, were men of much higher pretensions than the gleemen. Some of the delusions which they practised could not have been performed without considerable scientific knowledge. We have the authority of Chaucer for the fact, that they “cheated the eyes with blear illusion,” in a manner which may excuse ignorant spectators for having attributed the effect to supernatural means. “In a large hall they will,” says he, “produce water with boats rowed up and down upon it. Sometimes they will bring in the similitude of a grim lion, or make flowers spring up in a meadow; sometimes they cause a vine to flourish, bearing white and red grapes; or show a castle built with stone, and when they please they cause the whole to disappear.” He tells us, too, of a “learned clerk, who showed to a friend forests filled with wild deer, where he saw an hundred of them slain, some with hounds and some with arrows; the hunting being finished, a company of falconers appeared upon the banks of a fair river, where the birds pursued the herons and slew them. He then saw knights jousting upon a plain,” and, which was a more attractive sight, “the resemblance of his beloved lady dancing, which occasioned him to dance also.” But when “the maister that this magike wrought thought fit, he clapped his hands together, and all was gone in an instante.” Another feat, which he describes as having himself witnessed, is still more striking:

“There saw I Coll Tregetour,

Upon a table of sycamour,

Play an uncouth thing to tell;

I saw him cary a wynde mell

Under a walnote shale.”

It is probable that the deceptive effect was produced by the magic lantern, and the concave mirror. With respect to the method “to make the appearance of a flode of water to come into a house,” the following recipe has been gravely handed down to us from our ancestors:—steep a thread in the liquor produced from snake’s eggs bruised, and hang it up over a basin of water in the place where the trick is to be performed. Recipes of this kind were perhaps meant to mislead those who wished to penetrate the mystery.

In the reign of Charles the Second, jugglers appear to have been in much repute with the great. In the “Diary” of Evelyn, under the date of October 8th, 1672, we find the following notice: “I tooke my leave of my Lady Sunderland; she made me stay dinner at Leicester House, and afterwards sent for Richardson, the famous fire-eater. He melted a beer-glass, and eat it quite up; then, taking a live coal on his tongue, he put on it a raw oyster; the coal was blown on with bellows, till it flamed and sparkled in his mouth, and so remained, till the oyster gasped and was quite boiled; then he melted pitch and wax with sulphur, which he drank down as it flamed; I saw it flaming in his mouth a good while. He also took up a thick piece of iron, like an ironing heater, and, when fiery-hot, held it between his teeth, then in his hand, and threw it about like a stone; but this, I believe, he cared not to hold very long.” Lady Sunderland seemed fond of such exhibitions, as Mr. Evelyn recounts on another occasion, that “dining with Lady Sunderland, I saw a fellow swallow a knife, and divers great pebble stones, which could make a plain rattling one against another; the knife was in sheath of horn.”

Katterfelto, described by Cowper, as

“With his hair on end, at his own wonders

Wondering for his bread,”

was a compound of conjuror and quack-doctor, and seems at one time to have enjoyed a great repute in his way. He practised on the people of London, during the influenza of the year 1782, and added to his nostrums the fascination of hocus-pocus. Among other philosophical apparatus, he employed the services of some extraordinary black cats, with which he astonished the ignorant, and confounded the vulgar. He was not so successful out of London; as he was committed, by the Mayor of Shrewsbury, to the common house of correction, as a vagrant and impostor.

But, though European jugglers have manifested great skill in the various branches of their art, they appear to be far exceeded by those of other parts of the world. Clavigero describes many of the performances of Mexican professors; and adds that “the first Spaniards who were witnesses of these and other exhibitions of the Mexicans were so much astonished at their agility, that they suspected some supernatural power assisted them.”

It is, however, in the Asiatic and African quarters of the globe that the art of deluding the eye by false presentments is to be found in its perfection. Sir John Mandeville gives an account of an exhibition, which took place before the Great Khan; “And be it done by craft, or by nicromancy,” says he, “I wot not.” That, in an unenlightened age, he should doubt whether “nicromancy” had not something to do with such wonders is not astonishing. “They make,” he tells us, “the appearance of the sun and the moon in the air; and then they make the night so dark, that nothing can be seen; and again they restore the daylight, and the sun shining brightly. Then they bring in dances of the fairest damsels of the world, and the richest arrayed. Afterwards they make other damsels to come in, bringing cups of gold, full of the milk of divers animals, and give drink to the lords and ladies; and then they make knights joust in arms full lustily, who run together, and in the encounter break their spears so rudely, that the splinters fly all about the hall. They also bring in a hunting of the hart and of the boar, with hounds running at them open-mouthed; and many other things they do by the craft of their enchantments, that are marvellous to see.”

Mandeville has the reputation, not justly in every instance, of being such “a measureless liar,” that his evidence in this case may, perhaps, excite incredulity; but we must hesitate to disbelieve the old traveller, when we find that similar, or even greater wonders are attested by an unexceptionable witness, no less a personage than Jehanguire, the Emperor of Hindustan. In his Autobiography, that monarch enumerates no less than twenty-eight tricks, which were played by Bengalee jugglers before him and his court, and at which he expresses, as well he might, the utmost astonishment. One of them, that of cutting a man in pieces, and then producing him alive and perfect, resembles a trick which Ibn Batuta saw long before in China. Another was the putting of seeds of curious trees into the earth, which speedily grew to the height of two or three feet, and bore fruit. This was repeated at Madras, not many years ago, on the lawn before the Government-house. A mango stone was put into the ground, which, to all appearance, rapidly sprung up into a fruit-bearing tree. Another of the tricks exhibited before the emperor is equally marvellous: “They produced a chain fifty cubits in length, and in my presence threw one end of it towards the sky, where it remained, as if fastened to something in the air. A dog was then brought forward, and, being placed at the lower end of the chain, immediately ran up, and, reaching the other end, immediately disappeared in the air. In the same manner, a hog, a panther, a lion, and a tiger, were alternately sent up the chain, and all equally disappeared at the upper end of the chain. At last, they took down the chain and put it into a bag, no one ever discerning in what way the different animals were made to vanish into the air, in the mysterious manner above described. This, I may venture to affirm, was beyond measure strange and surprising.”

Ibn Batuta (the celebrated traveller, who has been called the Mahometan Marco Polo of the fourteenth century), to whom a reference has already been made, narrates delusions of the same kind, of which he was an eye-witness. He informs us that, when he was once in the presence of the Emperor of Hindustan, two Yogees came in, whom the monarch desired to show him what he had never yet seen. They said, “‘We will.’ One of them then assumed the form of a cube, and arose from the earth, and, in this cubic shape, he occupied a place in the air over our heads. I was so much astonished and terrified at this, that I fainted and fell to the earth. The emperor then ordered me some medicine which he had with him, and, upon taking this, I recovered and sat up; this cubic figure still remaining in the air just as it had been. His companion then took a sandal, belonging to one of those who had come out with him, and struck it upon the ground as if he had been angry. The sandal then ascended until it became opposite in situation with the cube. It then struck it upon the neck, and the cube gradually descended to the earth, and at last rested in the place it had left. The emperor then told me that the man who took the form of a cube was a disciple to the owner of the sandal. ‘And,’ continued he, ‘had I not entertained fears for the safety of thy intellect, I should have ordered him to show thee greater things than these.’ From this, however, I took a palpitation of the heart, until the emperor ordered me a medicine, which restored me.”

It is not more than seven years since a Bramin died at Madras, who was accustomed to perform apparently the difficult feat of sitting on the air. He did not exhibit for money, but merely as an act of courtesy. Forty minutes is said to have been the longest time that he ever remained in this extraordinary situation; the usual time seems to have been about twelve minutes. An eye-witness thus describes the act and the preparation for it: “The only apparatus seen is a piece of plank, which, with four pegs, he forms into a kind of long stool; upon this, in a little brass saucer or socket, he places, in a perpendicular position, a hollow bamboo, over which he puts a kind of crutch, like that of a walking-crutch, covering that with a piece of common hide; these materials he carries with him in a little bag, which is shown to those who come to see him exhibit. The servants of the house hold a blanket before him, and, when it is withdrawn, he is discovered poised in the air, about four feet from the ground, in a sitting attitude, the outer edge of one hand merely touching the crutch; the fingers of that hand deliberately counting beads; the other hand and arm held up in an erect posture. The blanket was then held up before him, and they heard a gurgling noise, like that occasioned by wind escaping from a bladder or tube, and, when the screen was withdrawn, he was again standing on terra firma. The same man has the power of staying under water for several hours. He declines to explain how he does it, merely saying he has been long accustomed to do so.”

The Bramin died without communicating his secret, and though attempts were made to explain it, none of them were satisfactory. It was asserted by a native that it is treated of in the Shasters, and depends upon the art of fully suppressing the breath, and of cleansing the tubular organs of the body, joined to a peculiar mode of drawing, retaining, and ejecting the breath—an explanation which leaves the mystery as dark as ever.

Egypt, which, more than thirty centuries ago, produced men so confident of their magical skill as to venture to emulate the miracles of Moses, still has pretenders to preternatural powers. The modern magicians seem by no means to be a degenerate race. One of their modes of delusion is “the magic mirror of ink,” and the address with which they manage the trick is really wonderful, and, indeed, inexplicable. It is performed by pouring ink into the hand of a boy not arrived at puberty, an unmarried woman, or a woman who is “as ladies wish to be who love their lords.” The boy is told to look into the ink, and to say what he sees. Mr. Lane, in his recent valuable work on Egypt, has described the operation, and he declares his utter inability to account for the result. “After some preliminary ceremonies had been gone through, the magician,” says he, “addressed himself to me, and asked me if I wished the boy to see any person who was absent or dead. I named Lord Nelson, of whom the boy had evidently never heard; for it was with much difficulty he pronounced the name, after several trials. The magician desired the boy to say to the Sooltan, ‘My master salutes thee, and desires thee to bring Lord Nelson: bring him before my eyes, that I may see him, speedily.’ The boy then said so; and almost immediately added, ‘A messenger is gone, and has returned, and has brought a man, dressed in a black[15] suit of European clothes; the man has lost his left arm.’ He then paused for a moment or two, and, looking more intently and more closely into the ink, he said, ‘No, he has not lost his left arm, but it is placed to his breast.’ This correction made his description more striking than it had been without it; since Lord Nelson generally had his empty sleeve attached to his coat: but it was the right arm that he had lost. Without saying that I suspected the boy had made a mistake, I asked the magician whether the objects appeared in the ink as if actually before the eyes, or as if in a glass, which makes the right appear left. He answered, that they appeared as in a mirror. This rendered the boy’s description faultless.” Mr. Lane adds, “A short time since, after performing in the usual manner, by means of a boy, he prepared the magic mirror in the hand of a young English lady, who, on looking into it for a little while, said that she saw a broom sweeping the ground without any body holding it, and was so much frightened that she would look no longer.” To make this appearance understood, it must be mentioned, that the first thing seen in the mirror is the sweeping of the ground by a broom. In the case of Lord Nelson, however, the broom was in the hands of a man. The boy is said not to have been a confederate of the magician.

The same experiment was tried, at another time, in the presence of Captain Scott; but, in this instance, the conjuror seems to have been less a proficient in his trade than the one who was employed by Mr. Lane, and the result was unsatisfactory to the captain.

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CHAPTER XVI.
PRODIGIES.

Hold taken on the public Mind by Prodigies—Dutch Boy with Hebrew Words on the Iris of each Eye—Boy with the word Napoleon in the Eye—Child with a Golden Tooth—Speculations on the Subject—Superstition respecting changeling Children in the Isle of Man—Waldron’s Description of a Changeling—Cases of extraordinary Sleepers—The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus—Men supposed, in the northern Regions, to be frozen during the Winter, and afterwards thawed into Life again—Dr. Oliver’s Case of a Sleeper near Bath—Dr. Cheyne’s Account of Colonel Townshend’s power of voluntarily suspending Animation—Man buried alive for a Month at Jaisulmer—The Manner of his Burial, and his Preparation for it.

Prodigies of every kind, moral or physical, have ever taken hold of the imagination of the public, nor has the better education of some prevented them from lending a greedy ear to accounts of such phenomena, and the belief of the vulgar has thus been sanctioned and strengthened. Many, from interested speculation, have pretended to undergo most extraordinary privations, or to be independent of the established laws of nature; such impostures met with a very flattering reception in the earlier part of the eighteenth century.

Mr. Evelyn mentions a Dutch boy, eight or nine years old, who was carried about by his parents as a show. He had about the iris of one eye the words Deus meus, and about the other Eloihim, in the Hebrew characters. How this was done by artifice none could imagine, and his parents affirmed he was born so. Three years before this period, in 1699, Mr. C. Ellis wrote to Dr. Edw. Tyson, that he had seen the Friesland boy, “round the pupils of whose eyes, they pretend, are naturally engraved the above words. This is looked upon as a prodigious miracle, in these parts, but, upon more nicely surveying it, I could perceive it was only the iris not circularly joined, but lashed into fimbriæ, which might be thought to form imaginary letters; there is something like D. J. and V., but not a footstep for the strongest fancy to work out any more. But it was like to have been of danger to me to have discovered this trick; for acquainting a gentleman in English of this cheat, one of the mob happened to understand it, and I was forced to make the best of my way.” It is hardly three years since a lad was exhibited in London, who is said to have had “Napoleon,” in distinct letters, written in his eye. There is little doubt, if this was really the case, but it was the result of artificial rather than natural, causes.

The eyes are not the only part of the head in which miraculous appearances have been supposed to be manifested. In 1593, it was reported that a child of seven years old, in Silesia, having shed its teeth, a double tooth had been replaced by one of gold. This phenomenon soon brought a number of learned men into the field, to dissertate upon the wonder. Horst, more generally known under his Latinized name of Horstius, who was a professor of medicine, and really a man of abilities, wrote in raptures upon the subject. According to his idea, the production of the tooth was partly a natural and partly a miraculous event, and was intended by Heaven to console the Christians for the perils to which they were exposed from the Turks. How consolation was to be derived from such a source, it would not be easy to discover. Horst was followed by Martin Ruland, another physician, who published a treatise called “Nova et omni Memoriâ omnino inaudita Hist. de Aureo Dente,” &c. Two years after Ruland had given his tract to the world, the opinions which it broached were controverted by Ingesteterus; and were immediately defended, in another dissertation, by Ruland. Lastly, the pen was taken up by Libavius, an eminent chemist and physician, the first proposer of the transfusion of blood. Unhappily, all this labour and erudition were thrown away. Some one had, at last, the good sense to institute an inquiry as to the reality of the miracle; and, to the great discomfort of the literary and non-literary believers, it was discovered that the tooth was gilt.

Waldron, in his Description of the Isle of Man, says, “The old story of infants being changed in their cradles is here in such credit, that mothers are in continual terror at the thoughts of it. I was prevailed on,” says he, “to go and see a child, who, as they told me, was one of these changelings, and indeed I must own I was not a little surprised and shocked at the sight. Nothing under heaven could have a more beautiful face; though between five and six years old, and seemingly healthy, he was so far from being able to walk, that he could not so much as move a joint; his limbs were vastly long for his age, but smaller than an infant’s of six months; his complexion perfectly delicate, and he had the finest hair in the world. He never spoke or cried, ate scarce any thing, and was very seldom seen to smile; but if any one called him fairy elf he would frown, and fix his eyes so earnestly on those who had said it, as if he would look them through. His mother, or supposed mother, being poor, frequently went out a-charing and left home a whole day together; the neighbours, out of curiosity, have often looked in at the window to see how he behaved alone, which whenever they did, they were sure to find him laughing and in the utmost delight. This made them judge that he was not without company, more pleasing to him than any mortal; and what made this seem more reasonable was, that if he was left ever so dirty, the woman, at her return, saw him with a clean face, and hair combed with the utmost exactness.”

Instances have been often recorded of extraordinary sleepers, which, supposing them to have been true, have puzzled physiologists to account for. So many eccentricities in the animal economy have been proved by a careful investigation to be impostures, that it is but natural to suppose them all to have been feigned, to accomplish some particular purpose.

The popular tale of the Seven Sleepers has had a most extended circulation, and, as a divine revelation, was extensively believed among the Mahometans. When the emperor Decius persecuted the Christians, seven noble youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a spacious cavern, the entrance to which the tyrant ordered should be firmly secured with a pile of stones. They immediately fell into a deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged, without injuring the powers of life, during a period of one hundred and eighty-seven years. After this slumber, as they thought, of a few hours, they were pressed by the calls of hunger, and it was resolved that Jamblichus, one of them, should secretly return to the city for bread. The youth could hardly recognise his native city, and, to his surprise, a large cross was triumphantly erected over the principal gate of Ephesus. His singular dress and obsolete language confounded the baker, to whom he offered an ancient medal of Decius, as the current coin of the empire. Taken up on suspicion, he found that two centuries had nearly elapsed since his escape from the tyrant. The bishop of Ephesus, the clergy, and others, hastened to visit the cave of the Seven Sleepers, who bestowed their benediction, and peaceably expired.

Arguing from analogy, it was supposed that the inhabitants of the colder regions hibernated, as certain smaller animals are known to do. Baron Herberstein, in his Commentaries on Russian History, asserts, that there are in the northern parts of Muscovy, near the river Oby, on the borders of Tartary, a people he calls Leucomori, who sleep from the 27th day of November till the 23d of April, like tortoises, under ground, and then come to life again, though quite frozen all the winter. This gentleman was a creditable sort of person, and twice ambassador in Russia, from Ferdinand the emperor. It is most likely, however, that in points of this nature he was contented to rely on the reports of others.

Dr. Oliver has given to the world “a relation of an extraordinary sleeping person, at Finsbury, near Bath;” the truth of which he seemed not to doubt. Samuel Chilton, in May, 1694, fell into a profound sleep, out of which no art could rouse him, till after a month’s time: during this time, food and drink were put before him, which always disappeared, though no one ever saw him eat or drink.

Two years afterwards, he slept seventeen weeks, and in the following year for five months, with only one intermission for a few minutes. It does not appear, from the relation, that there was reason to suspect any imposture; yet it was rather remarkable that the stimulus of hunger should have induced him, though asleep, to eat and drink whatever was put before him, and yet the most powerful stimuli applied in other forms should have made no impression upon him.

This protracted sleep, strange as it is, does not, however, appear so wonderful as the power of voluntarily suspending animation, and returning to life, after a considerable time has elapsed. A remarkable case of this kind is recorded by the celebrated Doctor Cheyne, in his “English Malady.” The patient was a Colonel Townshend, “a man of great honour and integrity,” who had long been suffering under an acute nephritic disorder, attended with constant vomitings, which made life a burden to him. Early one morning, he sent for his two physicians, Dr. Cheyne and Dr. Baynard; they went, accompanied by Mr. Skrine, his apothecary, and found his senses clear, and his mind perfectly collected. He had, he said, sent for them that they might give him “some account of an odd sensation which he had for some time observed and felt in himself, which was, that composing himself, he could die or expire when he pleased, and yet, by an effort, or somehow, he could come to life again, which (says Cheyne) it seems he had sometimes tried before he had sent for us.”

The physicians were naturally surprised at this communication, and reluctant to believe a fact which was seemingly so improbable. Yet they hesitated to allow of his making the experiment before them, lest, in his debilitated state, he might carry it too far. He, however, insisted so strongly on their seeing the trial made, that they at last consented. “We all three,” says Cheyne, “felt his pulse first; it was distinct, though small and thready; and his heart had its usual beating. He composed himself on his back, and lay in a still position some time; while I held his right hand, Dr. Baynard laid his hand on his heart, and Mr. Skrine held a clean looking-glass to his mouth. I found his pulse sink gradually, till at last I could not feel any by the most exact and nice touch. Dr. Baynard could not find the least motion in his heart, nor Mr. Skrine the least soil of breath on the bright mirror which he held to his mouth; then each of us by turns examined his arm, heart, and breath, but could not, by the nicest scrutiny, discover the least symptom of life in him. We reasoned a long time about this odd appearance as well as we could, and all of us judging it inexplicable and unaccountable, we began to conclude that he had indeed carried the experiment too far, and at last were satisfied he was actually dead, and were just ready to leave him. This continued about half an hour, by nine o’clock in the morning, in autumn. As we were going away we observed some motion about the body, and, upon examination, found his pulse and the motion of his heart gradually returning: he began to breathe gently, and speak softly; we were all astonished to the last degree of astonishment at this unexpected change, and after some farther conversation with him, and among ourselves, went away fully satisfied as to all the particulars of this fact, but confounded and puzzled, and not able to form any rational scheme that might account for it. He afterwards called for his attorney, added a codicil to his will, settled legacies on his servants, received the sacrament, and calmly and composedly expired about six o’clock that evening.”

A case of voluntary death and resuscitation, still more remarkable, because the individual by whom the act was performed was buried alive, and remained for a month in his tomb, has recently occurred in India. The fact appears to be authenticated by unexceptionable evidence. The account is given in a letter, by Lieutenant A. H. Boileau, an officer of engineers, who is employed on the extensive trigonometrical survey of India. “I have (says he) just witnessed a singular circumstance, of which I had heard during our stay at this place, but said nothing about it before, the time for its accomplishment not being completed. This morning, however, the full month was over, and a man who had been buried all that time, on the bank of a tank near our camp, was dug out alive, in the presence of Esur-Lal, one of the ministers of the Muhar-wull of Jaisulmer, on whose account this singular individual was voluntarily interred a month ago.

“The man is said, by long practice, to have acquired the art of holding his breath by shutting the mouth, and stopping the interior opening of the nostrils with his tongue; he also abstains from solid food for some days previous to his interment, so that he may not be inconvenienced by the contents of his stomach, while put up in his narrow grave; and, moreover, he is sown up in a bag of cloth, and the cell is lined with masonry and floored with cloth, that the white ants and other insects may not easily be able to molest him. The place in which he was buried at Jaisulmer is a small building about twelve feet by eight, built of stone; and in the floor was a hole about three feet long, two and a half feet wide, and the same depth, or perhaps a yard deep, in which he was placed in a sitting posture, sewed up in his shroud, with his feet turned inwards towards the stomach, and his hands also pointed inwards towards the chest. Two heavy slabs of stone, five or six feet long, several inches thick, and broad enough to cover the mouth of the grave, so that he could not escape, were then placed over him, and I believe a little earth was plastered over the whole, so as to make the surface of the grave smooth and compact. The door of the house was also built up, and people placed outside, that no tricks might be played nor deception practised. At the expiration of a full month, that is to say, this morning, the walling of the door was broken, and the buried man dug out of the grave; Trevelyan’s moonshee only running there in time to see the ripping open of the bag in which the man had been enclosed. He was taken out in a perfectly senseless state, his eyes closed, his hands cramped and powerless, his stomach shrunk very much, and his teeth jammed so fast together, that they were forced to open his mouth with an iron instrument to pour a little water down his throat. He gradually recovered his senses and the use of his limbs; and when we went to see him was sitting up, supported by two men, and conversed with us in a low, gentle tone of voice, saying that ‘we might bury him again for a twelvemonth, if we pleased.’”

That his powers of abstinence are great, there can be no doubt; as Cornet Macnaghten once suspended him for thirteen days, shut up in a wooden box. During the time that he is buried, his hair ceases to grow. Previously to his being buried he lives entirely upon milk, regulating the quantity in such a manner as to be just sufficient for sustaining life. After his release, and on his first taking food, he is said to feel some anxiety, till he has ascertained that the faculties of his stomach and bowels are not injured.

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CHAPTER XVII.
THE DELUSIONS OF ALCHEMY.

Origin of Alchemy—Argument for Transmutation—Golden Age of Alchemy—Alchemists in the 13th century—Medals metaphorically described—Jargon of Dr. Dee—The Green Lion—Roger Bacon—Invention of Gunpowder—Imprisonment of Alchemists—Edict of Henry VI.—Pope John XXII.—Pope Sixtus V.—Alchemy applied to Medicine—Paracelsus—Evelyn’s hesitation about Alchemy—Narrative of Helvetius—Philadept on Alchemy—Rosicrucians—A Vision—Hayden’s description of Rosicrucians—Dr. Price—Mr. Woulfe—Mr. Kellerman.

The subject of Alchemy occupies so large a space in the humiliating history of the misapplication of talent, as to justify a particular inquiry into the causes of its origin, the grounds of its success, and the reason of its gradual decline. So much mysticism and fondness for ambiguity exist in the writings of the hermetic philosophers, as they were called, that it will not be surprising to find accounts of the origin of the science wrapped in equally extraordinary language.

To begin with Adam: he is said to have foreseen the deluge, and, for the purpose of providing against that catastrophe, to have erected two tables of stone, which contained the foundation of this wisdom. One of them, after the flood, was found on Mount Ararat. Alchemy has as frequently been called the hermetic art, as it is more generally supposed to have been invented by Hermes, King of Egypt, and master of this science, when Egypt was the garden of God. According to chronologers, his era was before that of Moses. This was the true philosopher’s stone, which so enriched that kingdom, and by means of which all the arts flourished; but in quest of which so many persons of all nations and ages have since fruitlessly consumed both their fortunes and lives. Unlike their baffled successors, the Egyptians increased their wealth to that immense degree, that they studied means how to expend their exuberant stores in the erection of pyramids, obelisks, colossuses, monuments, pensile gardens, cities, and the labyrinth, and in forming the immense lake Mœris, and the like stupendous works, which cost so many millions of talents. “All these (say the believers in the science) are sufficient arguments of their skill in alchemy, whence they received so vast a supply of riches; for, since no authors mention any gold mines in the time of Osiris, or Hermes, whence could they have acquired such exceeding great wealth, but from the chemical art of transmuting metals?”

The Egyptian priests, under a promise of secrecy, communicated the knowledge they possessed to the Alexandrian Greeks. The actual possession of much lucrative knowledge, and the reputation of still more valuable secrets, would attract the notice of the credulous and ignorant. With many the extent of the science was confined to the refining of metals, and preparations of chemical compounds; but the theoretical alchemist having in view a certain mysterious and unattainable object, despised the occupation of the mere chemist, and from policy, or want of clear ideas on the subject, the language of his art became more and more obscure. Knaves and impostors crept in, and, by impositions on the unwary and credulous, indemnified themselves for the ill success of their experiments.

Those chemists who assumed the pompous title of alchemists, were persuaded that all metals were no other than nature’s rude unfinished essays towards the making of gold; which, by means of due coction in the bowels of the earth, advanced gradually towards maturity, till at last they were perfected into that beautiful metal. Their endeavours, therefore, were to finish what nature had begun, by procuring for the imperfect metals this much-desired coction; and upon this grand principle all their processes were dependent.

The golden age of alchemy commenced, properly speaking, with the conquests of Arabian fanaticism in Asia and Africa, about the time of the destruction of the Alexandrian Library, and the subjection of Europe to the basest superstition. The Saracens, lively, subtle, and credulous, intimate with the fables of talismans and celestial influences, admitted, with eager faith, the wonders of alchemy. The rage of making gold spread through the whole Mahometan world; and in the splendid courts of Almansor and Haroun Al Raschid, the professors of the hermetic art found patronage, disciples, and emolument.

About the thirteenth century, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, and Raymond Lully, appeared as the revivers of this science, which had been nearly lost in the interval from the tenth century; their writings again raised alchemy to a very high degree of credit, and their adventures as well as those of their disciples partake more of the character of oriental romance than the results of philosophic study. The most celebrated of the alchemic philosophers were not only the companions of princes, but many of them were even kings themselves, who chose this royal road to wealth and magnificence.

No delusion in the world ever excited so extensive and long-continued an interest, or rather it might be called madness; though it now seems wonderful how the fallacy of it should have escaped detection during a period of seven or eight hundred years, when so many causes for suspicion and disappointment must have occurred amongst its professors; but the fond idea seems to have been strengthened by this want of success, which was attributed to any cause rather than the proper one.

An alchemist, in his writings, complains of the difficulties attending the search after the Immortal Dissolvent, as the grand agent in the operations was sometimes called; and very feelingly asserts, that the principal one is the want of subsistence or money, as without a supply of the latter to buy glasses, build furnaces, etc., the operations cannot go on.

The several metals were described metaphorically, as plants, animals, &c., and mystical allusions were made to the sacred Scriptures, in confirmation of the truth of the science, by the most forced interpretations of certain passages: as for instance—“He struck the stone and water poured out, and he poured oil out of the flinty rock;” and the whole composition of the philosopher’s stone was thought to be contained in the four verses, beginning, “He stretched forth the heavens as a curtain, the waters stood above the mountains.”

The descriptions of the several necessary processes partook of such figurative language, as none but the adepts could possibly understand. Dr. Dee, in the fulness of his wisdom, thus instructs his disciples: “The contemplative order of the Rosie-cross have presented to the world angels, spirits, plants, and metals, with the times in astromancy and geomancy to prepare and unite them telesmatically. This is the substance which at present in our study is the child of the sun and moon, placed between two fires, and in the darkest night receives a light from the stars and retains it. The angels and intelligences are attracted by a horrible emptiness, and attend the astrolasms for ever. He hath in him a thick fire, by which he captivates the thin genii. That you may know the Rosicrusian philosophy, endeavour to know God himself, the worker of all things; now I will demonstrate in what thing, of what thing, and by what thing, is the medicine or multiplier of metals to be made It is even in the nature, of the nature, and by the nature, of metals; for it is a principle of all philosophy that Nature cannot be bettered but in her own nature. Common gold and silver are dead, and except they be renewed by art, that is, except their seeds, which are naturally included in them, be projected into their natural earth, by which means they are mortified and revived, like as the grain of wheat that is dead.” This is somewhat worse than what Mr. Burke denominated a gipsy jargon.

The powder of transmutation, the grand means of projection, was to be got at by the following process, in which it was typified as the Green Lion: “In the Green Lion’s bed the sun and moon are born, they are married, and beget a king; the king feeds on the lion’s blood, which is the king’s father and mother, who are, at the same time, his brother and sister. I fear I betray the secret, which I promised my master to conceal in dark speech from every one who does not know how to rule the philosopher’s fire.” One would imagine, in the present day, that there was very little fear of being accused of too rashly divulging the important secret by such explanations. Our ancestors must have had a much greater talent than we have for finding out enigmas, if they were able to elicit a meaning from these mystical, or rather nonsensical, sentences.

Roger Bacon was the first English alchemist. He was born in 1214. Popular belief attributed to him the contrivance of a machine to rise in the air, and convey a chariot more speedily than by horses; and also the art of putting statues in motion, and drawing articulate sounds from brazen heads. From this it appears that he had made considerable progress in the formation of automata. There can be no doubt that he discovered the mode of making gunpowder; in his works the secret may be found, veiled under an anagram. The discovery has, however, on doubtful authority, been ascribed to Berthold Schwartz, a German Benedictine friar, who lived about the middle of the fourteenth century. In an old print, the merit of the invention is ascribed to the devil, who is represented as prompting the friar’s operations, and enjoying their success.

Can we be surprised, that in an age of ignorance, the wonderful doings of Bacon obtained for him the name of a magician, and the friars of his own order refused to admit his works into their library, as though he was a man who ought to be proscribed by society? His persecution increased till 1278, when he was imprisoned, and obliged to own that he repented of the pains he had taken in the arts and sciences; and he was at last constrained to abandon the house of his order.

The credulity and avarice of princes often caused them to arrest alchemists, and, by means of the torture, endeavour to force them to multiply gold, or furnish the powder of projection, that it might be ready for use at any time; but it was generally found that, like poetical composition, perfect freedom of thought and action were necessary to so desirable an end.

There is an edict of Henry VI. king of England, in letters patent to lords, nobles, doctors, professors, and priests, to engage them in the pursuit of the philosopher’s stone, especially the priests, who having power (says the pious king) to convert bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, may well convert an impure into a perfect metal.

Even Pope John XXII., the father of the church, was weak enough to become an adept; he worked at the practice of hermetic philosophy in Avignon, and at his death were found eighteen millions of florins in gold, and seven millions in jewels and sacred vases. Notwithstanding his writing a treatise on alchemy, and making transmutations, yet such was the mischief arising in his times from the knavery of pretended alchemists, that he issued a bull, condemning all traders in this science as impostors.

Pope Sixtus V. had a true idea of the real value of this science; for, when one presented to him a book on alchemy, his holiness gave the author an empty purse, emblematic of the vanity of the study.

In the fifteenth century this science was applied to medical uses, and the preparations of mercury, antimony, and other metals, were used with the happiest success. The unexpected success which attended the first exhibition of chemical preparations awakened a new hope in the minds of the alchemists, which was no less than the discovery of a universal medicine, an elixir vitæ, for conferring immortality and perpetual youth and health. Paracelsus and Van Helmont entertained these visionary speculations; and the hopes of possessing a universal solvent long haunted the imaginations of writers on chemistry.

Paracelsus was born in 1494; he practised physic in Basle, and the following circumstance induced him to leave it. A canon was in extreme sickness, and the physicians forsook him, as incurable: Paracelsus saw him, and promised to restore him to health. The canon expressed himself gratefully, as one who would feel the obligation, and make him a suitable recompense. Two pills performed the cure; which was no sooner effected, than the canon undervalued it, and contended against the claim of the doctor: he had been cured too soon. The magistrates were applied to, and they awarded Paracelsus a very moderate fee, proportioned to his short attendance; so, in disgust, he quitted the city, and declared that he would leave the inhabitants of Basle to the eternal destruction which they deserved. He then retired to Strasburg, and thence into Hungary, where he took to drinking; he died in great poverty, at Saltzburg, in 1541. Oporinus, who served him as his pupil, said he often saw him in great want, borrowing money of carmen and porters, and the next day he would repay them double from a fund that could not be discovered. His proper name was Philip Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus, of Hohenheim; and his disciples add, “Prince of Physicians, Philosopher of Fire, the Trismegistus of Switzerland, Reformer of Alchemistical Philosophy, Nature’s faithful Secretary, Master of the Elixir of Life, and Philosopher’s Stone, Great Monarch of Chemical Secrets.”

The ingenious Mr. Evelyn, both a sensible and learned man, seems to have been unwilling to deny the truth of what had so often been asserted to him; in his entertaining “Diary,” he says, “June 4th, 1705, the season very dry and hot; I went to see Dr. Dickenson, the famous chymist; we had a long conversation about the philosopher’s elixir, which he believed attainable, and himself had seen it performed, by one who went under the name of Mundanus, who sometimes came among the adepts, but was unknown as to his country or abode. The doctor has written a treatise in Latin, full of astonishing relations; he is a very learned man, formerly of St John’s, Oxford, where he practised physic.”

Being in Paris, Mr. Evelyn visited Marc Antonio, an ingenious enameller, who told him two or three stories of men who had the great arcanum, and who had successfully made projection before him several times. “This,” says Evelyn, who obviously hesitated between doubt and belief, “Antonio asserted with great obtestation; nor know I what to think of it, there are so many impostors, and people who love to tell strange stories, as this artist did; who had been a great rover, and spake ten different languages.”

The most celebrated history of transmutation is that given by Helvetius, in his “Brief of the Golden Calf.” It is thus given by Mr. Brande. “The 27th day of December, 1666, came a stranger to my house at the Hague, in a plebeick habit, of honest gravity and serious authority, of a mean stature, and a little long face, black hair not at all curled, a beardless chin, and about forty-four years of age, and born in North Holland. After salutation, he beseeched me, with great reverence, to pardon his rude access, for he was a lover of the pyrotechnian art, and having read my treatise against the sympathetic powder of Sir Kenelm Digby, and observed my doubt about the philosophic mystery, induced him to ask me if I really was a disbeliever as to the existence of an universal medicine, which would cure all diseases, unless the principal parts were perished, or the predestinated time of death come. I replied, I never met with an adept, or saw such a medicine, though I had fervently prayed for it. Then I said, ‘Surely, you are a learned physician.’ ‘No,’ said he, ‘I am a brass-founder, and a lover of chemistry.’ He then took from his bosom-pouch a neat ivory box, and out of it three ponderous lumps of stone, each about the bigness of a walnut. I greedily saw and handled this most noble substance, the value of which might be somewhere about twenty tons of gold; and having drawn from the owner many rare secrets of its admirable effects, I returned him this treasure of treasures with a most sorrowful mind, humbly beseeching him to bestow a fragment of it upon me, in perpetual memory of him, though but the size of a coriander seed. ‘No, no,’ said he, ‘that is not lawful, though thou wouldest give me as many golden ducats as would fill this room; for it would have particular consequences, and if fire could be burned of fire, I would at this instant rather cast it into the fiercest flames.’ He then asked if I had a private chamber, whose prospect was from the public street; so I presently conducted him to my best furnished room backwards, which he entered, (said Helvetius, in the true spirit of Dutch cleanliness,) without wiping his shoes, which were full of snow and dirt. I now expected he would bestow some great secret upon me, but in vain. He asked for a piece of gold, and opening his doublet, showed me five pieces of that precious metal, which he wore upon a green riband, and which very much excelled mine in flexibility and colour, each being the size of a small trencher. I now earnestly again craved a crumb of the stone, and at last, out of his philosophical commiseration, he gave me a morsel as large as a rape-seed, but I said, ‘This scanty portion will scarcely transmute four grains of lead.’ ‘Then,’ said he, ‘deliver it me back;’ which I did, in hopes of a greater parcel; but he, cutting off half with his nail, said, ‘Even this is sufficient for thee.’ ‘Sir,’ said I, with a dejected countenance, ‘what means this?’ And he said, ‘Even that will transmute half an ounce of lead.’ So I gave him great thanks, and said, ‘I would try it, and reveal it to no one.’ He then took his leave, and said he would call again next morning at nine. I then confessed, that while the mass of his medicine was in my hand the day before, I had secretly scraped off a bit with my nail, which I projected in lead, but it caused no transmutation, for the whole flew away in fumes. ‘Friend,’ said he, ‘thou art more dexterous in committing theft, than in applying medicine. Hadst thou wrapped up thy stolen prey in yellow wax, it would have penetrated, and transmuted the lead into gold.’ I then asked, if the philosophic work cost much, or required long time, for philosophers say, that nine or ten months are required for it. He answered, ‘Their writings are only to be understood by the adepts, without whom no student can prepare this magistery. Fling not away, therefore, thy money and goods in hunting out this art, for thou shalt never find it.’ To which I replied, ‘As thy master showed it thee, so mayest thou, perchance, discover something thereof to me, who know the rudiments, and therefore it may be easier to add to a foundation than begin anew.’ ‘In this art,’ said he, ‘it is quite otherwise; for, unless thou knowest the thing from head to heel, thou canst not break open the glassy seal of Hermes. But enough: to-morrow, at the ninth hour, I will show thee the manner of projection.’ But Elias never came again; so my wife, who was curious in the art whereof the worthy man had discovered, teased me to make the experiment with the little spark of bounty the artist had left. So I melted half an ounce of lead, upon which, my wife put in the said medicine; it hissed and bubbled, and in a quarter of an hour the mass of lead was transmuted into fine gold, at which we were exceedingly amazed. I took it to the goldsmith, who judged it most excellent, and willingly offered fifty florins for each ounce.”

The accumulated disappointments of several centuries, in the prosecution of this science or discovery, did not eradicate the belief in its practicability; and, so late as the year 1698, one, humbly styling himself Philadept, wrote a book concerning adepts, not proving that they did exist, but leaving the onus probandi to those who were sceptical on the subject. Indeed, it was a generally received opinion, in the seventeenth century, that the philosopher’s stone did really exist; and the gravity and sincerity of the authors who discoursed of it, prove this. Philadept says, “It is evidently unreasonable to assert or deny any thing without reason; no man can give any good reason, importing that there is no such thing as the philosopher’s stone. On the contrary, there are many reasons to believe there is such a thing. There is a tradition of it in the world: there are many books on that subject, written by men that show an extraordinary gravity, sincerity, and fear of God, and who solemnly and sacredly protest they have wrought it with their own hands; and, besides, they have, at several times, shown the effects of it before divers witnesses, whereof there are too many instances to reject this proof. Then, they lay down principles which appear rational to any one that considers them. There have been, also, too many great cures performed by philosophers, to be reasonably questioned by them who are acquainted with those matters. Those that are not, ought not, in reason, to determine against it. My intention is not to dispute about the principles of hermetic philosophy, they have been established by many authors beyond dispute, but most clearly and invincibly by the learned Gasto Claveus of any I know.”

Passages in Scripture, as has been stated above, were often brought forward in corroboration of the theory of alchemy, and it resulted, in the course of time, that a religious sect arose, who blended the mysteries of the Christian religion with the several processes of alchemy towards the grand regeneration of metals; a species of allegory understood and to be interpreted only by the disciples of that order, known by the name of Rosie Cross; its symbol being four red roses arranged in a crucial form.

In later times there have been a few believers in transmutation. In the year 1782, Dr. Price, of Guildford, by means of a white and red powder, professed to convert mercury into silver and gold; and he is said to have convinced many disbelievers of the possibility of such a change. His experiments were repeated seven times before learned and intelligent persons, who themselves furnished all the materials except the powders, which were to operate the transmutation. These powders were in very small quantity. By whatever means it may have been accomplished, it is certain that gold and silver were produced. But, admitting that, with respect to its production, Price was an impostor, it is indubitable that he must have been in possession of one valuable secret, that of fixing mercury, so as not to evaporate in a red heat. Price published an account of these experiments, but stated that he had expended the whole of his powder, and that he could not obtain more, except by a tedious process, which had already injured his health, and which, therefore, he would not repeat. He died in the following year, and his death was attributed to his having swallowed laurel-water, in order to evade further scrutiny and the detection of his imposture. The fact of his having poisoned himself is at least doubtful.

Another true believer in the mysteries of this art, says Mr. Brande, was Peter Woulfe. He occupied chambers in Barnard’s Inn, when he resided in London. His rooms, which were extensive, were so filled with furnaces and apparatus, that it was difficult to reach his fireside. A gentleman once put down his hat, and never could find it again, such was the confusion of boxes, packages, and parcels, that lay about the chamber. Woulfe had long vainly searched for the elixir, and attributed his repeated failures to the want of due preparation by pious and charitable acts. Some of his apparatus is said to have been extant since his death, upon which are supplications for success, and for the welfare of the adepts. He had an heroic remedy for illness: when he felt himself seriously indisposed, he took a place in the Edinburgh mail, and, having reached that city, immediately came back in the returning coach to London. He died in 1805.

The last of the English alchemists seems to have been a gentleman of the name of Kellerman, who, as lately as 1828, was living at Lilley, a village between Luton and Hitchin. He was a singular character, who shunned all society, carried six loaded pistols in his pockets, barricaded his house, and filled his ground with spring-guns. The interior of his dilapidated mansion was a complete chaos. He pretended to have discovered the universal solvent, the art of fixing mercury, and the powder of projection. With the last of these he had, he said, made gold, and could make as much as he pleased. He kept eight men for the purpose of superintending his crucibles, two at a time being employed, who were relieved every six hours. He had one characteristic of a disturbed intellect, that of believing that all the world was in a confederacy against him, and that there was a conspiracy to assassinate him.

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CHAPTER XVIII.
ASTROLOGY.

Supposed Origin of Astrology—Butler on the Transmission of Astrological Knowledge—Remarks on Astrology by Hervey—Petrarch’s Opinion of Astrology—Catherine of Medicis—Casting of Nativities in England—Moore’s Almanack—Writers for and against Astrology—Horoscope of Prince Frederick of Denmark—Astrologers contributed sometimes to realize their own Predictions—Caracalla.

Astrology has been divided into natural and judiciary, or judicial; but it is only the latter division which will come under present consideration, and its definition has been said to be the art of foretelling future events, from the aspects, positions, and influences of the heavenly bodies.

The idea that they should have any influence, direct or indirect, on our actions in this nether world, or that they obliged us to the performance of any act, however extraordinary, may have been originally supposed, by those who were familiar with the figurative language of the Prophets, to receive confirmation from the facts, and the style of the predictions, recorded in sacred history. They would find, for instance, that the Star in the East was foretold, which at its coming was to announce peace and goodwill towards men; and the later and more solemn revelations, concerning the final consummation of all things, typified that awful event by signal appearances in the heavens.

Traditionary knowledge of these events and predictions, coupled with ignorance of the causes of meteorological phenomena, now better understood, might easily lead the timid and superstitious to forebode evil, from the disastrous twilight of the eclipse, or to impute a favouring influence to the rising of certain stars at particular seasons. The universal custom of traversing the deserts, or navigating ships across the pathless ocean, by the observation of the stars, previously to the discovery of the compass, led the imaginative to conceive, that the moral path of life was equally to be regulated by astral indications. It must be owned, too, that it was not unnatural for simple unreasoning minds thus to connect the glorious sun, the moon, when walking in brightness, queen of heaven, and the host of stars, with the destinies of man.

Fear, it is said, first deified the ancient heroes. It was a storm and an eclipse that first consecrated Romulus; nor had Jupiter himself been master of heaven, or worshipped on earth, if the terrors of his thunders had not advanced the conceit of his divinity. It is quite certain that, by degrees, a system was formed, which took hold of the imaginations of all classes of persons; and the truth of such a doctrine, and its decisions, it was heretical to doubt. J. Butler, one of the devout believers in astrology, far from thinking it a remnant of Pagan superstition, calls it a divine science. He pretended, with many others, “that Adam, after his fall, communicated it out of his memories of the state of innocency, to Seth. He in his turn made impressions of the same in certain permanent pillars, able to withstand fire and water, by which means the science passed to Enoch and Noah. Shem was instructed by his father, and communicated his knowledge to Abraham, who carried it into Chaldea and Egypt. Moses, ‘skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians,’ was also thought to have been an able astrologer.”

Thus was the vanity of the more modern professors of the art encouraged, and they maintained that the heavens were one great volume, wherein God had written the history; and, of course, it was to be understood, that the astrologers were the high-priests, who alone could expound its mysterious pages.

The author of the “Contemplations on the Starry Heavens” has, with great propriety, made the following remarks on this science:—“The pretenders to judicial astrology talk of I know not what mysterious efficacy, in the different aspects of the stars, or the various conjunction and opposition of the planets. Let those who are unacquainted with the sure word of revelation give ear to these sons of delusion and dealers in deceit. For my own part, it is a question of indifference to me, whether the constellations shone with smiles, or lowered in frowns, on the hour of my nativity. Can these bodies advertise me of future events, which are unconscious of their own existence?”

In the time of Petrarch, though astrologers had great credit, that learned man only laughed at their pretensions. Of one of them, in particular, he says, “The astrologer was older and wiser than I was; I loved him, and should have been still more attached to him if he had not been an astrologer. I sometimes joked, and sometimes reproached him, about his profession. One day, when I had been sharper than usual with him, he replied, with a sigh, ‘Friend, you are in the right; I think as you do, but I have a wife and children.’ This answer touched me so much, that I never spoke to him again on that subject.”

Queen Catherine of Medicis, though a woman of strong mind, was deluded with the more ignorant, by the vanity of astrological judgments; the professors of the science were so much consulted in her court, that the most inconsiderable act was not to be done without an appeal to the stars.

In England, William Lilly, John Gadbury, and others, set up for prophets; and nativities were cast for all who could afford to pay for the privilege of searching into futurity. It was but natural that the inquirers should have to reward such intelligence in proportion to the distance it was brought, or its flattering nature; events, however, soon proved it to be far-fetched and nothing worth.

The volumes of tiresome absurdity, written on this subject, about the beginning and middle of the seventeenth century, would exceed present belief; and nothing but a thorough though unaccountable conviction, in their readers, that they spoke the language of truth, could have ever made the perusal of them tolerable.

Moore’s “Prophetic Almanack,” with its astrological predictions and “hieroglyphic for the year,” is the only legacy left to us of this species of composition and imposition. It would be beneath the dignity of such a philosopher to be guilty of a pun; though the more irreverent of his readers might naturally have suspected him of such an intention, when, a few years since, he prophesied that, “Towards the close of the year Turkey will be much embroiled.”

Some writers, in the more fortunate era of astrology, ventured to impugn the truth of the doctrine, and to ridicule its professors, particularly in the persons of Lilly and Gadbury, who retorted with acrimonious and arrogant vulgarity. Further curiosity on this subject may be gratified, by turning to such works as “Supernatural Sights and Apparitions, seen in London by William Lilly;” or the reply to it, “Black Monday turned White, or a Whip at Star-gazers.”

One of the opposers of this science argued, naturally enough, that God had assigned the stars their site and course, which no power of man or angel was able to alter; but man’s fancy had built us imaginary houses in the heavens, to which were attached such qualifications, affections, &c., as the framers pleased.

These houses were twelve in number; in one or other of which, according to the hour and season of the person’s birth, did he take his position, as pointed out in the horoscope. An outline of a general horoscope is annexed, and, in explanation of it, Mr. William Lilly is pleased to say, “When I speak of the tenth house, I intend somewhat of kings or persons represented by that house, which is also called medium cœli, the mid-heaven; when mention is made of the first house, ascendant or horoscope, I intend the commonalty in general. Dic et eris mihi magnus Apollo.”

PLAN OF A HOROSCOPE.

THE SIGNIFICATION OF
THE TWELVE HOUSES OF
HEAVEN, IN AN ANNUAL
REVOLUTION, BY WHICH
EVERY ONE IS DIRECTED
TO THE KEY OF THE
BOOK.

1. Ascendant.
   Commonalty.
   Vulgar Life of every Man.
2. Wealth.
   Riches. Estate.
   Moveable Goods.
3. Kindred.
   Neighbours.
   Small Journeys.
4. Fathers. Towns.
   Castles.
   King’s Wives.
5. Children.
   Ambassadors.
   Commissioners.
6. Servants.
   Small Cattle.
   Sickness.
7. Women.
   Wars.
   Lawsuits.
   Suitors.
8. Death.
   Inheritance.
9. Clergymen
   Long Journeys.
   Religion.
10. Kings.
    Emperors.
    Princes. Generals.
    Commanders of Armies.
11. Friends in general.
    Servants in particular;
    their aid or service.
12. Whispering.
    Great Cattle.
    Envy.
    Sorcery.

Mr. Gadbury, also, in the nativity cast for the illustrious Prince Frederick of Denmark, informs us, that “It is an aphorism nearly as old as astrology itself, that if the lord of the ascendant of a revolution be essentially well placed, it declares the native to be pleasant, healthful, and of a sound constitution of body, and rich in quiet of mind all that year; and that he shall be free from cares, perturbations, and troubles. The nativity of Frederick Prince of Denmark, astrologically performed by John Gadbury, 1660.”

It often happened, with regard to the responses given by the oracles, that they in some measure corresponded with the subsequent events; in like manner did the astrological casters of nativities seem to have their presumptuous pretensions verified by after circumstances. Caracalla lost his life by seeking to preserve it from supposed treachery; for, while in Mesopotamia, being jealous of a plot against him, he sent to the Roman astrologers for the particulars of it. They accused Macrinus, his faithful prefect, of a conspiracy, which nothing but his death could frustrate. This answer coming while the emperor was intent on some sport, he gave it to Macrinus to read; who, finding his innocent life in danger by this trick of the astrologers, secured it by the murder of Caracalla, of which, even in thought, he had before been innocent; though the result proved the apparent truth of the prediction of the astrologers.

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CHAPTER XIX.
MEDICAL DELUSIONS AND FRAUDS.

State of Medicine in remote Ages—Animals Teachers of Medicine—Gymnastic Medicine—Cato’s Cure for a Fracture—Dearness of ancient Medicines and Medical Books—Absurdity of the ancient Materia Medica: Gold, Bezoar, Mummy—Prescription for a Quartan—Amulets—Virtues of Gems—Corals—Charms—Charm for sore Eyes—Medicine connected with Astrology—Cure by Sympathy—Sir Kenelm Digby—The real Cause of the Cure—The Vulnerary Powder, &c.—The Royal Touch—Evelyn’s Description of the Ceremony—Valentine Greatrakes—Morley’s Cure for Scrofula—Inoculation—Vaccination—Dr. Jenner—Animal Magnetism—M. Loewe’s Account of it—Mesmer, and his Feats—Manner of Magnetizing—Report of a Commission on the Subject—Metallic Tractors—Baron Silfverkielm and the Souls in White Robes—Mr. Loutherbourg—Empirics—Uroscopy—Mayersbach—Le Febre—Remedies for the Stone—The Anodyne Necklace—The Universal Medicine—Conclusion.

The history of the art of medicine begins with fable and conjecture, and rests on dubious tradition. Fifty years prior to the Trojan war, Esculapius is said to have been deified, on account of his medical skill; and Machaon and Podalirius, his sons, formed the medical staff of the Grecian army before Troy. In the temples of the gods diseases and cures were registered, and engraved on marble tables and hung up, for the benefit of others. The priests, at that time, prepared the medicines, and made it a lucrative trade; and fables were invented to increase the renown of the oracle, for difficult cases were stated to be caused by the immediate wrath of Heaven, in which the only remedies were prayer and sacrifices, fear urging the trembling patients to follow whatever course was prescribed.

From the sacred writings little medical information is derived: Moses gave precautionary directions for the prevention or cure of leprosy, consisting chiefly of cleanliness; and religion was called in to enforce the medicinal ordinances. In Babylon, we are told by Herodotus, that the sick were carried out to the public roads, that travellers might converse with them, and acquaint them with any remedies they had seen used in such complaints with success. In Egypt, each physician applied himself to one disease; and Prosper Alpinus, in his History of Egyptian Medicine, reports that they took the hints of curing divers diseases from brute beasts: thus phlebotomy was taken from a practice noticed in the hippopotamus, or river-horse, which bleeds itself when plethoric, by pressing its thigh on a sharp-pointed reed. Dogs and cats are known, when sick, to vomit themselves by eating grass; swine, when ill, refuse meat, and so recover by abstinence. In like manner from numerous bodies, as flies, locusts, &c., being enclosed in amber, it is thought the art of embalming was first suggested.

Gymnastic medicine was founded by Herodicus; games and sports had been early instituted in the Grecian states, and were divided into religious, military, athletic, and lastly medical gymnastics, particularly adapted for the prevention or cure of diseases. Herodicus, from his own observations on its advantages, commenced practising as a physician, and it was his only panacea. After him came Hippocrates, who made the first successful attempt to separate the medical profession from rash empiricism, and the frivolous dreams of philosophers. He compared the body to a circle, in which an universal sympathy of parts existed; his great repute arose from his skill in predicting crises, which he was enabled to do with perfect precision.

Pliny says Rome was inhabited six hundred years before any physicians established themselves there; and for some time the medicine of the Romans consisted of charms, fascinations, incantations, and amulets. The book of Cato de Re Rustica, is a proof of the gross superstition and ignorance of those times. He proposed in a case of fracture to have it bound up, and the following words sung every day—“Huat, Hanat, ista pista, fista, dominabo, damnastra et luxata.”

When the religious frenzy of the Mahometans was abated, and they became enriched by commerce, arts and literature, after ages of barbarism, were again cultivated with great industry, and the medical profession, in particular, was rewarded and encouraged with rank and bountiful endowments. Ætius complained in his time of the general use of quack medicines, nostrums, &c., and of the immense price demanded for those which were fortunate enough to rise into general repute. Danaus, he tells us, sold his collyrium, at Constantinople, at the astonishing price of one hundred and twenty pieces of gold to each patient, and sometimes could scarcely be persuaded upon to sell it at any price. Nicostratus demanded no less than two talents for his celebrated isotheosis, or antidote against the colic.

The works of the Grecian and Arabian physicians, when they came to be more generally known in the fifteenth century, were most highly prized. In the year 1471, Louis XI. borrowed the works of Rhazes from the Paris faculty, but was obliged, previously, to deposit a quantity of plate, and find a nobleman to join with him, as an additional security for the care and safe return of the book. Jew physicians were at that time employed by the Pope, and most of the crowned heads in Europe. John of Gaddesden was the first Englishman appointed Court Physician in London. His idea of the treatment of diseases was rather different from the theories of the present day; for when attending the king’s son for smallpox, he directed the room to be hung with scarlet cloth, and the patient to be rolled up in similar stuff.

The rationale of the Materia Medica one hundred and fifty or two hundred years since was very extraordinary, as well with respect to the nature of the substances proposed as remedies, as to the number of ingredients, sometimes thirty or forty, which were congregated together in each composition, upon the principle that if one did not reach the disorder another might.

The nature of the substances used was, often, even more extraordinary and disgusting than their variety; many of them were thought to act by a charm, or by the strong sensation of disgust which their exhibition excited, rather than by any more direct appeal to the disordered part. The more precious also the article, the more certain was thought the cure.

The aurum potabile, and other preparations of gold, were conceived to have many virtues. Gold, by the chemical writers, was styled the sun and king of metals. Kings and princes were thus amused and defrauded, and their lives made shorter than those of their subjects who were beneath the use of gold. The chickens they ate were fed with gold, that they might extract the sulphur, and prepare the metal by their circulation; the physicians were contented to collect all the gold, which passed unaltered and undiminished through the poultry, into their pockets.

Bezoar denotes an antidote, from a Persian word, and is generally applied to medicinal stones, generated in the stomach and other viscera of animals. Bezoars usually attain the size of acorns or pigeons’ eggs, the larger the more valuable. A stone of one ounce was sold in India for one hundred livres, and one of four ounces and a quarter for two thousand; they were very scarce, and few of the genuine ever came into the European market, the greater number that were sold being artificial compounds. The hog bezoar, or Pedra del Porco, was first brought into Europe by the Portuguese; it is found in the gall-bladder of a boar in the East Indies; the Indians attribute infinite virtues to it, as a preservative against poison, cholera, &c. The porcupine and monkey bezoars were held in such esteem by the natives of Malacca, that they never parted with them unless as presents to ambassadors and princes; single stones have been sold for sixty or eighty pounds sterling. In 1715, bezoar was thought equal in value to gold. Dr. Patin says of it, the most visible operation it hath is when the bill is paid; and he calls it the scandalous stone of offence, and lasting monument of perseverance in imposture.

The most loathsome preparations were recommended, and eagerly used by the sick. Mummy had the honour to be worn in the bosom, next the heart, by kings and princes, and all those who could bear the price. It was pretended, that it was able to preserve the wearer from the most deadly infections, and that the heart was secured by it from the invasion of all malignity. A dram of a preparation called treacle of mummy, taken in the morning, prevented the danger of poison for all that day. Thus decayed spices and gums, with the dead body of an Egyptian, were thought to give long life.

To cure a quartan, or the gout, “take the hair and nails, cut them small, mix them with wax, and stick them to a live crab, casting it into the river again.” The moss from a dead man’s skull was held to be of sovereign virtue in some cases.

Amulets were much used formerly, not only to cure but to prevent disease, and also were thought to have a wonderful power over the moral qualities and affections. The onyx, worn as an amulet, strengthened the heart, and refreshed phantasms. The ruby resisted poisons, and preserved from the plague. If a man was in danger it changed colour, and became dim, but recovered its brightness when the danger was past. Hence, perhaps, was the original motive for carrying jewels and precious stones, set in rings or in seals.

Corals, says Paracelsus, “are of two sorts: one, a clear bright shining red; the other, a purple dark red. The bright is good to quicken phansie, and is against phantasies, or nocturnal spirits, which fly from these bright corals, as a dog from a staff, but they gather where the dark coral is. A spectre or ghost is the starry body of a dead man: now these ethereal or starry bodies cannot endure to be where the bright corals are, but the dark coloured allures them; the operation therefore, is natural, not magical, or superstitious, as some may think. Bright coral restrains tempests of thunder and lightning, and defends us from the cruelty of savage monsters, that are bred by the heavens contrary to the course of nature; for sometimes the stars pour out a seed, of which a monster is begotten; now these monsters cannot be where corals are.”

The use of charms in medicine was a very ancient practice, and, when once commenced, each succeeding charm became more ridiculous. Pierius mentions an antidote against the sting of a scorpion; the patient was to sit on an ass, with his face to the tail, for by this means the poison was transmitted from the man to the beast. Sammonicus, a poetical physician, recommended the fourth book of Homer’s Iliad to be laid under the patient’s head to cure a quartan ague. The efficacy of scriptural sentences was deduced from the custom of the Jews wearing phylacteries.

An approved spell for sore eyes was worn as a jewel about many necks: it was written on paper, and enclosed in silk, “never failing to do sovereign good when all other helps were helpless. No sight might dare to read it, but at length a curious mind, while the patient slept, by stealth ripped open the mystical cover, and found in Latin, Diabolus effodiat tibi oculos, impleat foramina stercoribus.”

When astrology was in repute, physic was generally practised with some reference to the stars, and the astrological judgments became a very common object of inquiry amongst physicians. A Dr. Saunders, who wrote very fully on this branch of the science, thus commences:—

“From hence

Withdraw all carping critics that deny

The great art of sublime astrology,

Which, unto such as have attained the key,

Shows the true cause of a disease, and may

Direct the doctor, expeditiously,

The nearest way to cure the malady.”

But, says he, “the firm and steadfast confidence in the Almighty is quite essential to the happy conclusion of all expectionates; for, if thou presumest otherwise, no doubt but that will be verified on thee which the prophet sayeth to the Chaldeans, ‘Sapientia et scientia te decepiet,’ for either, by thy own ignorance and mistaking, thou wilt be seduced, or else Heaven itself shall yield unto thee so ambiguous an answer, that thou shalt not be able to conclude any certainty.

“The Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Arabians, do observe many curious observations in this art, as translation of light, prohibition, contraradiation, restitution, frustration, obsession, cursuvacation, cursutardation, ferality, augedescention, meridiodescentia, luminiminution, numeriminution, via combusta, &c., which, although I wish not to deny to have some small effect, yet I have often proved, that overmuch curiosity doth rather deviate a man from concluding any thing certainly.

“If thou findest the cusp of the ascendant to fall in the very latter end of a sign, then, doubtless, the querent comes but to tempt thee; or if the question be not radical, if the lord of the ascendant or the hour be not of one triplicity, it signifies the carelessness of the querent, and that he cares not whether you hit or miss.”

Among the more remarkable of subsequent medical delusions were, the cure by sympathy, royal touch, and animal magnetism. Sounder views of medical practice were entertained by degrees; but enough of the old leaven of folly and superstition has, at different times, shown itself, to prove that human nature will never be free from the imputation of lending itself, either from vanity, indolence, or ignorance, to forward the views of ridiculous or unprincipled empiricism; the disciples of which would, nevertheless, be the first to disbelieve or dispute similar assertions or arguments, when applied to the exercise of other professions or trades.

The first medical delusion which claims our notice is the cure by sympathy. What is now the common method of healing wounds, appeared most unnatural to the surgeons at the end of the seventeenth century; and their legitimate and only cure proved such torture to the unhappy patients, that, in those days, nothing was to be heard in the hospitals, at the time of dressing, but howling and cries. A man proposing the romantic doctrine of adhesion of wounds by union of their edges, would have been despised; but, if he were bold and cunning enough to give an air of incantation to his cures, or declare that they were performed by a secret philosophical sympathy, he was sure of success. No surgeon in Europe ventured to unite wounds directly, without pretending to have learnt, from some Eastern sage, or to have discovered, by abstruse studies in philosophy and alchemy, a sympathetic or philosophical mode of cure.

The first inventor of the sympathetic powder was the celebrated Paracelsus, and the Paracelsian doctors flourished in England when Dr. Charleton wrote his ternary of paradoxes, chiefly on the magnetic or attractive power of wounds. This fanaticism lasted no short time, and was hardly to be paralleled, except by the study of the perpetual elixir, and the universal solvent.

Sir Kenelm Digby, secretary to Charles I., was driven into exile during the civil wars. In a discourse upon the cure by sympathy, pronounced at Montpelier before an assembly of nobles and learned men, he gave the curious case of Mr. Howell, who, whilst endeavouring to part two of his friends who were fighting, had his hand cut to the bone. Sir Kenelm was applied to for assistance. “I told him,” says he, “I would willingly serve him; but if, haply, he knew the manner how I would cure him, without touching or seeing him, it may be he would not expose himself to my manner of curing, because he would think it, peradventure, either ineffectual or superstitious.” He replied, “The wonderful things which many have related unto me of your way of medicinement makes me nothing doubt at all of its efficacy; and all that I have to say unto you is comprehended in the Spanish proverb—Hagase el milagro y hagalo Mahoma—Let the miracle be done, though Mahomet do it.”

“I asked him then for any thing that had the blood upon it; so he presently sent for his garter, wherewith his hand was first bound, and dissolving some vitriol in a basin of water, I put in the garter, observing in the interim what Mr. Howell did. He suddenly started, as if he had found some strange alteration in himself. I asked him what he ailed? ‘I know not what ails me, but I find that I feel no more pain; methinks that a pleasing kind of freshness, as it were a wet cold napkin, did spread over my hand, which hath taken away the inflammation that tormented me before.’ I replied, ‘Since then that you feel already so good effect of my medicament, I advise you to cast away all your plaisters, only keep the wound clean, and in a moderate temper betwixt heat and cold.’ To be brief; there was no sense of pain afterward; but within five or six days the wounds were cicatrized and entirely healed.”

The king obtained from Sir Kenelm the discovery of his secret, which he pretended had been taught him by a Carmelite friar, who had learned it in Armenia or Persia.

The fact was, the sympathetical physician understood the cure of wounds by adhesion more perfectly than others; but it was necessary to cheat the world into this safe method of cure, and they declined the use of it altogether, where they foresaw, from the nature of the wound, it could not succeed. The public opinion would have been so strong against any open innovation, that the sympathetic doctors got credit for something like witchcraft, and condescended to dress axes and swords, that the wounds might have leave to lie at rest till they healed. All cures by adhesion were mysteriously performed, and one in particular, called the secret dressing, in which great pains were taken, before laying the lips of the wound together, to suck out all the blood. This was chiefly used by drummers in regiments, to conceal the quarrels of the soldiers.

The trick of this way of cure consisted in making grimaces and contortions, signing their patients with the cross, and muttering between their teeth some unintelligible jargon. Their care was to keep the profession among themselves, and it was from the profanation of the sign of the cross that there arose a hot war between the priests and the suckers; the former refusing confession, extreme unction, or any sacrament to those who had undergone the magical or diabolical ceremonies of the suckers, who, on the other hand, refused to suck those connected in any way with the priests, being anxious to preserve their trade, which was not without its emoluments; for Verduc observes that they were still more skilful in sucking gold than blood.

The “Vulnerary Powder, and Tincture of the Sulphur of Venus,” performed wonders, one of which Dr. Colebatch relates of a Mr. Pool, who was run through the body with a sword, and lost four quarts of blood. The medicines being applied, the bleeding stopped; on the following day he “was gnawing tough ill-boiled mutton,” and drank a quart of ale; and in the course of five days he returned to duty in the camp. “A Mr. Cherry also, sergeant of grenadiers at the attack of the castle of Namur, was wounded in twenty-six places, twenty-three with bullets, and three large cuts on the head with a sword. He lay forty-eight hours stripped naked upon the breach, without a bit of bread or drop of drink, or any thing done to his wounds; yet this man was cured by the vulnerary powder and tincture alone, and never had any fever.”[16]

The materials of the sympathetic powder were more heterogeneous and horrid than those which the witches used to drop into the caldron; human fat, human blood, mummy, the moss that grows in dead men’s skulls, or hogs’ brains; and the chief schism among the great masters of the sympathetic school arose from the question, whether it was necessary that the moss should grow absolutely in the skull of the thief who had hung on the gallows, and whether the medicine, while compounding, was to be stirred with a murderer’s knife?

Some, anxious to avoid the damnable charges which were urged against this practice, defended it on philosophical principles, and from the analogy of other natural operations. Any lute, said they, being tuned in unison with another, is affected when the other is struck, the magnet turns by sympathy to the pole, amber attracts light bodies, loadstones hung to the breast make us cheerful and merry, and the wearing of jewels secures chastity.

All acknowledged sympathetic cures were successful, and the established surgeons of that day refused to practise the treatment, only because it was impious and unlawful; for, said they, how can we contradict matters of fact?

We come now to the second of the great medical delusions, that which attributed to the royal touch a sanative power in scrofulous cases. This is supposed to have been a monkish invention, to increase the reverence for kings, and was practised in England and France.

Becket, a writer in the time of Charles II., fully describes the royal gift of touching for the evil, which gift had been confirmed and continued for six hundred and forty years. It is proved out of Corinthians I. chap. xii. ver. 9. “To another the gift of healing by the same spirit,” and they must needs be allowed no good subjects who dare deny this sanative faculty, when so many thousands had received benefit!

Clovis I., the fifth king of France, who reigned about five hundred years after the birth of Christ, is reputed to have been the first who had the gift of curing this disease. William of Malmesbury states, that Edward the Confessor was the first in England who healed strumous patients by the touch. Dr. Plott describes a piece of gold of this monarch, found in St. Giles’s Fields, near Oxford, having E. C. over the head, as well as two small holes through it by which it was hung on a riband, and used at the ceremony of touching for the evil. Some have considered this gift as the most efficacious part of the cure; some imagined that the success was principally owing to the sign of the cross made on the swellings.

The power of healing by the royal touch does not seem to have been very frequently practised till the time of Charles I. and II., after which it almost ceased.

Mr. Evelyn gives a full description of the ceremony. “His majesty,” says he, “began to touch for the evil according to custom, thus:—His Majesty, sitting under his state in the Banqueting House, the chirurgeons cause the sick to be brought or led up to the throne, where, they kneeling, the king strokes their faces or cheeks with both his hands at once, at which instant a chaplain, in his formalities, says, ‘He put his hands upon them and he healed them;’ this is said to every one in particular. When they have all been touched they come up again in the same order, and the other chaplain kneeling, and having angels of gold strung on white ribands on his arm, delivers them one by one to his majesty, who puts them about the necks of the touched as they pass, whilst the first chaplain repeats, ‘That is the true light who came into the world.’ Then follows an Epistle, with the Liturgy, and prayers for the sick, with some alteration; lastly the blessing. Then the lord chamberlain and comptroller of the household bring a basin, ewer, and towel, for his majesty to wash. John Bird says, the king expresses his belief in the cure being effected through the grace of God, saying, at the time of the ceremony, ‘I touch, God heals.’”

One of the historians of the royal touch gives a numerical table of the number of persons touched by Charles II., from May 1660 to 1680, distinguishing the exact number of each year; the grand total amounts to the incredible number of ninety-two thousand one hundred and seven, at the average of twelve every day!

Others, besides those of royal extraction, set up pretensions of curing certain diseases by touch. The seventh sons of seventh sons had a more than usual virtue inherent in them. But the one who attracted public attention most was Mr. Valentine Greatrakes, called, par excellence, “The Stroker.” He was an Irish gentleman, and came to England, invited by the Earl of Orrery, to cure the Viscountess Conway of an inveterate headache; and though he failed in that attempt, he is said to have wrought many surprising cures, not unlike miracles. He was born in 1628, seemed very religious, his looks grave but simple. He had felt a strange persuasion, or impulse, that he had the gift of curing the evil, which suggestion becoming very strong, he stroked several persons and cured them. During an epidemical fever, he cured all who came to him, his power of curing extending over divers maladies. He performed such extraordinary cures that he was cited into the Bishop’s Court, at Lismore, for not having a license to practise. He arrived in England in 1666; and, as he proceeded through the country, magistrates of the cities and towns through which he passed begged him to come and cure their sick. Having arrived in London, he every day went to a particular part, where a prodigious number of sick of all ranks and both sexes assembled. His fame did not last, however. He returned to Ireland in 1667, and lived many years, but no longer kept up the reputation of performing strange cures. On the strictest inquiry, no sort of blemish was ever thrown on his character.

A Mr. Morley wrote on the virtues of the vervain root, as an effectual cure for scrofula. “I recommend,” says he, “a piece of the root of common purple vervain, fresh, about three or four inches long, all the fibres to be cut off, and it is to be always worn at the pit of the stomach, tied with one yard of white satin riband half-inch wide; no other colour is proper, because the dye may be prejudicial.”

It is the fate of all useful discoveries or improvements to meet with bigoted or interested opposition from those who would willingly remain in the beaten path of habit, rather than acknowledge any change to be profitable.

That most important discovery of the circulation of the blood by Harvey was at first furiously opposed, and was proved, according to the laws of hydraulics, to be both impossible and absurd; yet, when it was in vain to dispute the fact, it was undervalued, as one almost known long before!

Inoculation, it is well known, as a means of rendering small-pox less severe, was introduced into England by Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who had frequent opportunities of seeing the operation performed, when residing at Constantinople with her husband, the English ambassador there. She was so thoroughly convinced of the safety of this practice, that she was resolved to submit her only son to it; a boy about six years of age. The operation succeeded perfectly; this happened in 1717. After her return to England, she set the first and great example, by having her little girl, then five years old, also inoculated.

Mr. C. Maitland, who had accompanied the family of Mr. Wortley, and had inoculated the son and daughter of that gentleman, performed the operation, by royal command, on six condemned criminals at Newgate, in the presence of several eminent physicians and surgeons, and they all did well. Mr. Maitland, however, was not prepared to find this species infectious, and was much surprised to find that the disorder was caught by six servants, who were wont to hug and caress a little child, sick of the inoculated disease.

So great a novelty, as the inoculation of a disease, produced much astonishment and dread, and it was opposed professionally and theologically. Mr. Edmund Massey preached a sermon, at St. Andrew’s, Holborn, July 8, 1722, against the dangerous and sinful practice of inoculation. His text was Job, chap. ii. v. 7, “So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils, from the sole of his foot unto his crown.” From this text he argued that the disease with which Job was smitten was neither more nor less than the confluent small-pox. “With this view, I shall not,” said he, “scruple to call it a diabolical operation, usurping an authority founded neither in nature nor religion. This practice also tends to promote vice and immorality, inasmuch as it diminishes the salutary terror which prevails respecting the uncertain approach of the disease.”

Inoculation has doubtless been of infinite benefit to society, but it is now superseded by a much greater improvement, namely, that of vaccination. This is, beyond all comparison, the most valuable and the most important discovery ever made; it strikes out one of the worst in the catalogue of human evils; it annihilates a disease which has ever been considered as the most dreadful scourge of mankind.

Dr. Edward Jenner, the inventor of vaccination, was born in Gloucestershire, in 1749, and, being educated for the medical profession, was placed under the immediate tuition of Mr. John Hunter, with whom he lived two years, as a house pupil. After finishing his studies in London, he settled at Berkeley. His inquiry into the nature of cow-pox commenced about the year 1776. His attention to this singular disease was first excited by observing, that among those whom he inoculated for the small-pox many were insusceptible of that disorder. These persons, he was informed, had undergone the casual cow-pox, which had been known in the dairies from time immemorial, and a vague opinion prevailed that it was a preventive of the small-pox. He instituted a series of experiments, and several persons were successively inoculated from each other with vaccine matter, and then exposed to the infection of small-pox, which they all resisted. When these facts were communicated to the world envy assailed his fame, his discovery was depreciated, then denied. Truth, however, ultimately prevailed, vaccination obtained a complete triumph, and the foes of Jenner and humanity were covered with confusion. Dr. Mosely, one of his opponents, asks if any person can say, “What may be the consequences of introducing a bestial humour into the human frame, after a long lapse of years?” He was asked, in return, “What may be the consequences, after a long lapse of years, of introducing into the human frame cow’s milk, beefsteaks, or a mutton-chop?” Dr. Jenner had numerous presents of plate, &c., honours were conferred on him by different societies; and a grant of ten thousand pounds was voted to him by Parliament.

The phenomena of Animal Magnetism, when announced to the world, excited the greatest sensation on the Continent, particularly in France; for some years the subject filled their “Journals” and “Mercuries,” and employed some of their best pens and brightest wits.

M. Mesmer, the inventor, was a native of Switzerland, of great talents, but enthusiastic fancy. He undertook to defend the old doctrine of the influence of the planets on the human frame, and he searched for some means of communication between them. Electricity did not answer his expectations, and he turned his attention to magnetism. Iron becomes magnetic after being rubbed with a magnet; he therefore rubbed the human body with the loadstone. The phenomena which resulted he attributed, at first, to the magnetic influence; but experience proved to him that the application of the bare hand produced the same effect, yet he called this animal magnetism.

M. Loewe, a supporter, says, “On a certain application of the palm of the hand and tips of the fingers, made by the magnetiser, without, however, touching the person, or even at the distance of two or three inches, the magnetised individual feels an increase of warmth, at times a chilliness or uneasiness within him, particularly near the pit of the stomach. After repeated applications, the eyelids become heavy, and the patient falls into a sleep, from which he cannot be aroused by sense of hearing, or by any other of the external organs of sense. There was one instance of a magnetised person, who had only occasion to enter the house of the magnetiser, in order to fall into a profound and magnetical sleep. A very rare result of this state is that of clairvoyance, when it has been observed, that the internal sense seems to present itself wholly unconfined, and all nature appears to be disclosed to it; the body being, as it were, completely numbed, eyelids open, pulse soft and hardly perceptible, the countenance is transformed, and exhibits the picture of innocence. They are in fervent prayer to the Creator, or perhaps they describe scenes and pastimes at the antipodes. A female, who had never been in America, and had never read geographical descriptions, described that continent, its inhabitants, &c., very accurately.”

Meeting with but little encouragement in Germany, Mesmer went to France, where he was exceedingly successful. His cures were numerous, and of the most astonishing nature. He was obliged to form a number of pupils, under his inspection, to administer his process. His house, at Creteil, was crowded with patients, and a numerous company was daily assembled at his house at Paris, where the operation was publicly performed.

One evening, M. Mesmer walked with six persons in the gardens of the Prince de Soubise. He performed a magnetical operation upon a tree, and, a little after, three ladies of the company fainted away. The duchess, the only remaining lady, supported herself upon the tree, without being able to quit it. The Count of ——, unable to stand, was obliged to throw himself upon a bench. The effects upon M. A——, a gentleman of muscular frame, were more terrible; and M. Mesmer’s servant, who was summoned to remove the bodies, and who was inured to these scenes, found himself unable to move. The whole company were obliged to remain in this situation for a considerable time.

The public method of magnetising was performed in a large room, in the centre of which stood a circular box, large enough to admit of fifty persons standing round it. Out of the lid came numerous branches of iron, one to each patient. The patients applied this branch to the part affected, and a cord, passed round their bodies, connected one with the other, and each patient pinched the thumb of his neighbour. A piano-forte played different airs, with various rapidity, the sound of which was also a conductor of magnetism. The bucket in the centre was the grand reservoir, from which the fluid was diffused through the branches of iron inserted in the lid. All this was purely imaginary, for, on being tested with an electrometer and needle of iron, it was evident the bucket contained no substance either electric or magnetical. By degrees, however, the several ranks of patients round the bucket became affected with drowsiness, convulsions, or hysterics, and nothing was more astonishing than the combination of effects at one view. The patients appeared entirely under the government of the person who distributed the magnetic virtue.

This system at length was thought to deserve the attention of government, and a committee, partly physicians and partly members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, with Dr. Benjamin Franklin at their head, were appointed to examine it. M. Mesmer refused communication with them, but M. Deslon, the most considerable of his pupils, consented to disclose to them his principles. The result of the investigation was made known by a report from the commissioners. They decided that, instead of being a novelty, Mesmer’s was merely an ancient and worthless system, which had long been abandoned by the learned.

The commissioners afterwards made experiments on single subjects, and upon themselves. After repeated experiments, not one of the commissioners felt any sensation that could be ascribed to the action of magnetism. Of fourteen sick persons, operated upon in private, five only appeared to feel any effect from the operation. In fact, magnetism did not appear to them to have any existence for those subjects who submitted to it with any degree of incredulity.

M. Sigault, by pretending to possess the magnetising power, had all the success of Mesmer himself. He detailed, in a letter to the commissioners, the results, as follows:—“The magisterial tone and serious air I affected, together with certain gestures, made a very great impression on the woman of the house, which she was desirous to conceal, but, having guided my hand upon the region of the heart, I felt it palpitate. Her face became convulsed, her eyes wandered; she at length fell into a swoon, and was reduced to a state of weakness and sinking perfectly incredible. I repeated the same trick upon others, and succeeded more or less, according to their different degrees of sensibility and credulity. A celebrated artist complained for several days of an extreme headache, and acquainted me with it on the Pont-Royal. Having persuaded him that I was initiated in the mysteries of Mesmerism, I expelled his headache, almost instantaneously, by means of a few gestures, to his great astonishment.”

From numerous experiments made by the commissioners, it was quite clear that those who were most susceptible of the magnetic influence, if magnetised unknown to themselves, were not in the least affected; whereas, when they suspected the operation was performing, they exhibited all the usual phenomena attributed to that power, though in reality nothing was done.

Metallic tractors, as the agents of animal magnetism, under the superintendence of Dr. Perkins, for a time produced a sensation equally extraordinary in England; but it was satisfactorily proved that the imagination of the patient alone gave virtue to the tractors. Dr. Thornton found a wooden skewer had all the power of the tractors in removing pain when clandestinely used instead of them.

The Baron Silfverkielm, of Uleáteog, in Finland, was a great proficient in Mesmerism. He imagined the souls of those magnetically asleep were translated to the regions above, where the souls of the departed were all dressed in white robes, and enjoyed constant scenes of delight. He would interrogate the sleepers, concerning the white robes, Paradise, and the Elysian Fields. He was also desirous to receive intelligence from his ancestors, and, in general, they very kindly sent him their compliments by the mouths of the couriers in white jackets.

By directly attacking the imagination did Mr. Loutherbourg cure vast numbers of patients. He became impressed with the idea that he had a commission from above to cure diseases, and his door was soon crowded with patients all day. Amongst others, a respectable man, from the country, had been afflicted with great pains and swellings, particularly about the loins, so that he could not walk across the room. On entering, Mr. Loutherbourg looked steadfastly at him, and said, “I know your complaint, sir, look at me.” They continued looking at each other some minutes; then Mr. L. asked, if he did not feel some warmth at his loins. The man replied that he did. “Then you will feel in a few minutes much greater warmth.” After a short pause, the man said, “I feel as if a person was pouring boiling water upon me.” Still looking him in the face, Mr. L. said, “How did you come here, sir?” “In a coach.” “Then go and discharge your coach, and walk back to town” (from Hammersmith Terrace, where Mr. L. resided). The coach was discharged, and the patient walked to town, and next day he walked five hours about town without fatigue. He offered ten pounds; but Mr. L. would not take a farthing.

The easy manner in which people have become a prey to illiterate and dangerous pretenders, in the medical art, has been long known. Many thousand volumes would attest the truth of this observation, which has been often repeated. Cotta, in 1612, says, “There is no place or person ignorant how all sorts of vile people and unskilful persons, without restraint, make gainful traffic by botching in physic; and hereby numbers of unwotting innocents daily enthrall and betray themselves to sustain the riot of their enemies and common homicides.” The late Dr. Buchan exclaimed, “As matters stand at present it is easier to cheat a man out of his life than a shilling, and almost impossible to detect or punish the offender.” The case is still the same.

Uroscopy, or water-casting, was once very much practised, and those who professed to cure diseases by such inspection, simply, were consulted by all classes of persons. The absurdity of these pretensions was forcibly exposed by Dr. Radcliffe, on the following occasion. A shoemaker’s wife applied to him to relieve her husband, who was very ill, presenting him with a phial of his water for inspection. The doctor exchanged the contents, and bade her take that back, and tell her husband to make a pair of shoes, by the same instructions.

A Dr. Meyersbach started, about 1770, as a water doctor; he had arrived from Germany in a starving state, and was first an ostler at a riding-school. Not making money fast enough, he set up as a doctor, and was consulted by all classes. Dr. Lettsom took great pains to expose the ignorance and knavery of Meyersbach, whose violent medicines, if they sometimes cured, more often aggravated, his patients’ sufferings. It is believed that he acquired a good fortune, with which he retired to his native country.

Le Fevre, another German, a broken wine-merchant, set up for a gout doctor, and was much noticed by the nobility. Under pretence of going to Germany for more of his powders, he quitted this country, and had the prudence never to return. He carried over above ten thousand guineas, obtained by subscription and otherwise. Living in the style of a prince, he drank daily, as his first toast, “To the credulous and stupid nobility, gentry, and opulent merchants, of Great Britain.”

Calculous disorders are so painful in general, that people suffering from such causes eagerly fly to what promises relief. Many specifics for this disease, lithontriptics as they were called, had their day. In 1771, a Dr. Chittick advertised such a remedy, and made use of a very unusual expedient to keep it secret. He would not intrust it to any one unmixed. The vehicle in which it was to be taken was weak veal broth, which was sent him from day to day. Each of his patients sent him three pints of broth in a tin bottle, padlocked, to prevent curious persons from prying, the doctor and patient each having a key. His terms were two guineas a week, regularly paid, besides which he expected a considerable premium for his pains. Mr. Blackrie, who exposed this species of fraud, detected by analysis a solution of alkaline salts and quicklime; yet the doctor greatly exclaimed against the use of those salts, as highly mischievous.

A Mrs. Joanna Stephens was the proprietor of a lithontriptic, which for a long time had a great repute, and was even thought worthy the attention of parliament, who voted her five thousand pounds for making known the composition of it, a favourable report of its efficacy having been given by the gentlemen who were appointed trustees to examine into its pretensions. Subsequent experience has shown that it is not so well adapted to the ends proposed, being a medley of soap and ill-prepared alkaline substances, very nauseous and oppressive to the stomach.

The recent and valuable discovery of lithotrity, now practised by Baron Heurteloup and others, namely, the application of mechanical power for the destruction of the stone, without the use of the knife, is likely to be of more signal advantage than internal remedies, and, though it is candidly stated by its supporters not to be applicable in every case, yet it may frequently be performed without either pain or inconvenience.

The anodyne necklace, which was the result of some ridiculous superstition respecting the efficacy of Sir Hugh’s bones, is still gravely offered for sale, to facilitate the cutting of the teeth. In 1717, a “philosophical treatise” was published, wherin it says, “The effluvia and atoms, driven off by the heat of the body, bear such a tendency to the ailing part, as the loadstone does to iron, and that they will never leave off acting till they have given ease, and consequently it is a thing most capable of curing sympathetically the diseases of a human body, of any thing in the whole world. Since this famed necklace has been published, the bills of mortality have so decreased, as to be less than ever they have been known to be.”

But the summum bonum, with which this series of medical deceptions may appropriately be closed, was the “universal medicine, or virtues of the magnetical antimonial cup, addressed to the houses of parliament by John Evans, minister and preacher of God’s word. It is warranted to be alone the phœnix and miracle of all physical miracles: the elixir of life, balsam of nature. It containeth mystically and essentially the quintessence of all minerals and vegetables, and magnetically sympathiseth with all animals.”

In spite, however, of such admirable never-failing specifics, which, it would seem, ought to have exterminated every malady from the face of the earth, diseases, hydra-headed, still baffle their assailants, and return to the charge with renewed force and provoking obstinacy. But the matter is too serious for the subject of a joke. If even practitioners who have conscientiously studied their profession are unavoidably in some degree open to the old charge of “pouring medicines, of which they know little, into a body of which they know less,” what must be said, or what ought to be the punishment, of such villanous pretenders as those who have been described in this chapter,—men without talent or education, and who seem to think that, like charity, impudence covers a multitude of sins!

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CONCLUDING CHAPTER.
MISCELLANEOUS.

Superstition of the Hindoos—The Malays—Asiatic superstitions—The Chinese—Miracle of the Blessed Virgin—Stratagem of an architect—Michael Angelo’s Cupid—Statue of Charles I.—Ever-burning sepulchral lamps—Lamp in the tomb of Pallas—The art of mimicry—Superiority of the ancients—Fable of Proteus—Personation of the insane Ajax—Archimimes at funerals—Demetrius the cynic converted—Acting portraits and historical pictures—War dances of the American Indians—The South Sea Bubble—Gay the poet—Law’s Mississippi scheme—Numerous bubbles—Speculations in 1825.

Such has been the extent of the credulity of the human mind, that it would require many volumes to enumerate the whole of its singular vagaries. Our object in compiling such a work cannot be accomplished without greatly condensing those accounts which historians and travellers have communicated; we therefore devote the concluding chapter to summary notices of several matters, that to enlarge upon would defeat the intent of this publication.

The religion of India is based upon the grossest superstition; divided into castes, the persons of the Brahmins are sacred; the food of the Hindoos is entirely of vegetables, as it was in the time of Alexander; widows were burned alive to insure their eternal happiness; one hundred and fifty thousand persons assemble yearly at the temple of Juggernaut in honour of a blind deity, precipitating themselves voluntarily before its wheels, where they are crushed to death, thus instantly as they believe, entering a blessed immortality.

More individual cases of absurd and disgusting fanaticism occur in the Hindoo religion than, probably, in all the other religions in the world. The excruciating penances these Indian devotees voluntarily undergo, their number and extent, have struck all travellers. In making a pilgrimage to Hurdwar, one zealous devotee performed a journey of some hundred miles, prostrating himself and measuring every inch of the way with his body as he advanced; some swing themselves on a rope by means of a hook passed through the muscles of the back; some over fires with their heads towards the flame; every variety of personal torture is endured from a mistaken principle of religion conjoined with pride of caste; some have literally burned themselves alive; mutilation to propitiate some goddess is no uncommon occurrence; some years since a Hindoo actually cut out his tongue to propitiate the amiable goddess Kali-Ghat.

The Malays have equally absurd superstitions, and charms are bought at extravagant prices. A volume would alone be required to cite the superstitions of Asia, where the human mind remains to this day in a childlike state. The peculiar tenets of the Chinese have been ably set forth by many writers, and by none more successfully than by Davis, in his history of this curious nation. Their priests are taken from the lowest orders, and a Chinaman depends upon their prayers.

But we need not visit China to be convinced of the natural tendency of man to superstition; a story is current of a picture of the immaculate conception, which was in the late college of Jesuits in Valencia, that may challenge competition for absurdity. This picture is the object of general veneration, and by the devout is considered almost equal to the Virgin herself; for tradition reports, that it was painted of Father Alberto, to whom the Blessed Virgin condescended to appear on the eve of the assumption, ordering her portrait in the dress she then wore; he employed Juanes, who, after many trials succeeding, the work was sanctified, and the pencil, like a sword, was blessed and made invincible by the Pope, so that it never missed its stroke. One day Juanes seated on a scaffold at work on the upper part of the picture, the painter being in the act of falling, the holy personage, whose portrait he had finished, stepped suddenly from the canvass, and seizing his hand, preserved him from the fall, when the gracious lady returned to her post!

A very ancient fraud connected with architecture is mentioned by Sandys, in his curious and rare book on the East. One of the Ptolemies caused a tower to be built of a wonderful height, having many lanterns for the use of ships at sea during the night. It was reputed the seventh wonder of the world. Sostratus, of Cnidos, the ambitious architect, was refused by the king the satisfaction of setting his name to the work. This, however, the artist effected by cutting an inscription on a block of marble, which he encrusted over with a fictitious stone, on which was engraved a pompous inscription in honour of the king; when it decayed his own name appeared as the builder.

Michael Angelo, to try how far he could impose upon the curious in sculpture, carved a statue of Cupid. Having broken off the arm, he buried the rest of the figure under a certain ruin, where they were wont to dig in search of marbles. It was soon after discovered, and passed among the learned antiquaries for an invaluable and undoubted piece of ancient sculpture, till Angelo produced the arm previously broken off, which fitted so exactly as to convince them of their too easy credulity, and the vanity of their speculations.

In the year 1678, was erected the animated statue of Charles I., at Charing Cross. The parliament, in Cromwell’s time ordered it to be sold, and broken to pieces; but the brazier who purchased it dug a hole in his garden, and buried it unmutilated, producing to his masters several pieces of brass which he told them were parts of the statue; and in the true spirit of trade, he cast a number of handles of knives and forks, offering them for sale as composed of the brass of the statue; they were eagerly sought for, and purchased by the loyalists, from affection for their murdered monarch. When the second Charles was restored, the statue was brought forth from its place of concealment, and eagerly purchased at a great profit to the brazier.

A superstition now forgotten, was long credited, that sepulchral lamps have burned for several hundred years, and that they would have continued burning, perhaps for ever, had they not been broken by the accidental digging into the tombs by husbandmen and others; few have declared themselves to have been eye-witnesses of the fact, but many learned and ingenious authors give abundance of instances on the report of others. The origin of these lamps seems to have been with the Egyptians, who, through a firm belief of the metempsychosis, endeavoured to procure a perpetuity to the body itself, by balsams or embalming, and security to it afterwards, by lodging it in pyramids or catacombs: so also they endeavoured to animate the defunct by perpetual fire, the essence of which answered to the nature of the soul in their opinion: for with them fire was the symbol of an incorruptible, immortal, and divine nature. The soul was to be lighted by its lamp when it wandered according to its option, and thus safely return to its old quarters.

One of the most remarkable of the sepulchral lamps has thus been described as found in the tomb of Pallas. In the year 1501, a countryman, digging deep into the earth, near Rome, discovered a tomb of stone, wherein lay a body, so tall, that being raised erect, it overtopped the walls of the city, and was as entire as if newly buried, having a very large wound on the breast, and a lamp burning at the head, which could neither be extinguished by wind nor water; so that they were obliged to perforate the bottom of the lamp, and by that means put out the flame. This was said to be the body of Pallas, slain by Turnus; the lamp is said to have burned two thousand five hundred and eleven years; and perhaps would have continued to burn to the end of the world, had it not been broken, and the liquid spilt!

At the present day of intellectual advancement, this story of the size of Pallas, and of the lamp whose contumacious flame, well befitting such a giant, exceeds all belief, however gravely stated; yet the time was, when, instead of exciting contemptuous laughter, it was implicitly credited. The lamp in the temple of Jupiter Ammon was reported by the priests to have burned continually, yet it consumed less oil each succeeding year; though burning in the open air, neither wind nor water could extinguish it. A similar lamp also burned in honour of Venus. Trithemius obliges his readers with two long receipts for the artificial manufacture of these lamps, yet seems to doubt their efficacy.

The possibility of such eternal lamps being made in Egypt has been attributed to the existence of the bituminous wells or fountains, from which the learned in those days laid secret canals or pipes to the subterranean caves, where, in a convenient place, they set up a lamp with a wick of asbestos. It seems, indeed, to have been thought a great desideratum in the arts to invent a perpetual lamp for the companion of the dead as a complimentary illumination to the manes of the departed, or from some foolish desire to strike wonder, in after times, in some carnal beholder, unwittingly violating the tomb; the accounts of such appear to have been generally believed authentic up to the end of the seventeenth century; the utilitarian age we live in is content to possess a perpetual locomotive fire for those above ground.

The art of mimicry, in its modern sense though confined to a mere imitation of manners, in former times, by the excellence of its action, imposed on the imaginations of the spectators, and persuaded them into a belief of the reality of what was represented, even as it were against conviction.

The endeavour of one or more individuals to express or relate any story by mere action, was carried to much greater perfection among the ancients than now appears to be possible. According to Lucian, a single dancer or mime was able to express all the incidents and sentiments of a whole tragedy or epic poem by action, accompanied by music, and the fable of Proteus he seemed to think meant no more than that he was an accomplished pantomime. The education of a mime required, he says, his whole life to make himself master of his profession; he must know the past, the present, and what is to come; in short, the spectator must understand the dancer though dumb, and hear him though silent.

Lucian mentions a famous mime, who played Ajax the madman so well, and raged in such a way that one would have said he did not counterfeit, but was mad in reality. Timocrates, a tutor in philosophy, and who from conscientious motives had declined being present at such plays, by accident seeing a pantomime, cried out, “What admirable sights have I lost by a philosophical modesty!” and ever afterwards attended them.

This kind of scenic representation was given at funerals, and the actors were called archimimes; they went before the coffin, and imitated the gestures and actions of the deceased; his virtues and vices were depicted. Demetrius the cynic, disdained and railed at the art of the mime, declaring all the success was derived from the music; but a famous mime in Nero’s time, invited him to see him dance, and, having witnessed his performance, then to find fault with him. Having imposed silence on the music, he danced the story of the amours of Mars and Venus, the discovery of them by the sun; in short so well was it done, that Demetrius, transported, cried out aloud, “I hear, my friend, what you act; I not only see the persons you represent, but methinks you speak with your hands.”

There is less to be said of this art in its present state, though pantomime, considered distinct from harlequinade, now receives great attention in Italy. The acting of portraits and historical pictures, exhibited with the greatest fidelity of costume and attitude in Florence, and which amusement is now common in well-bred circles at home, is another species of ingenious deception, which is almost perfect. The war-dance among the American Indians is most striking, representing a campaign. The departure of the warriors from their village, their march into the enemy’s country, the caution with which they encamp, the address with which they station some of their company in ambuscade, the manner of surprising their enemy, the noise and ferocity of the combat, the scalping of those who are slain, the seizing of the prisoners, the triumphant return of the conquerors, and the torture of the victims, are successively and ably exhibited with the tact of actors. The performers enter with such enthusiastic ardour into their several parts; their gestures, their countenance, their voice, are so wild, and so well adapted to their various situations, that Europeans can hardly believe it to be a mimic scene, or view it without emotions of horror.

Public credulity, founded on the inordinate desire of gain, was perhaps never exhibited in a stronger point of view than by the fatal belief in the South Sea scheme, which to the credulous believer, like that of Law’s Mississippi bubble, was made to appear a royal road to El Dorado. It was patronised by persons of both sexes in the highest ranks of society, and even by royalty itself and men of letters; Gay, the poet, had a present of some of the stock, and at one time believed himself worth twenty thousand pounds, but like others lost all; Chandler, the learned non-conformist divine, lost his whole fortune, and turned bookseller for subsistence.

The scheme originated in the reign of Queen Anne, in the year 1711, a fund being formed on the chimerical notion that the English would be allowed to trade to the coast of Peru. Sir John Blunt, who was bred a scriviner, devised the scheme, and communicated it to Aislabie, the chancellor of the exchequer. The pretence of this scheme was to discharge the national debt by reducing all the funds into one stock. The Bank of England and the South Sea Company vied with each other, and the latter ultimately offered such high terms that the proposal of the Bank was rejected, and the Company’s stock rose considerably. It produced a kind of national delirium. Sir John Blunt took this hint from Law’s scheme, which was that a royal bank be erected by subscription, and, having a fund in hand to answer bills on demand, the scheme began to take, and established its credit by its punctual discharge, till it increased to such extraordinary magnitude as to pay bills for one million and a quarter sterling a day.

In this project of Law, however, there was something substantial; an exclusive trade to Louisiana promised advantage, though the design was defeated by the frantic eagerness of the people. Law himself had become the dupe of the regent, who transferred the burden of fifteen hundred million of francs of the king’s debt to the shoulders of the people, while the projector was sacrificed as the scape-goat of political iniquity.

The South Sea scheme promised no commercial advantage of any consequence; it was buoyed by nothing but the folly and rapacity of individuals, who became so blinded with the prospect of gain as to become easy dupes.

When the projector found that the South Sea stock did not rise to his expectation, he circulated reports that Gibraltar and Port Mahon would be exchanged for some places in Peru, by which the South Sea trade would be protected and enlarged. This report acted like a contagion; persons of all ranks crowded to subscribe; the Exchange Alley was filled with a strange concourse of statesmen, clergymen, dissenters, whigs, tories, physicians, lawyers, &c. &c., and even females. All other professions and employments were neglected. Other companies without foundation were got up to deceive, and all found favour with the mad public. There were actually some shares of a fictitious company, called Globe Permits, each of which came at last to be currently sold for sixty guineas and upwards, and yet were only square bits of card, on which were the impression of a seal in wax, having the sign of the Globe tavern. A burlesque upon this reigning folly appeared in an advertisement for a company with a capital of two millions for melting down sawdust and chips, and casting them into clean deal boards without knots.

The public infatuation lasted till the 8th of September, when the stock began to fall and soon reached the point of being worthless. Public credit received a severe shock; the cunning ones devised a scheme for relief from the Bank of England, and sold out for what they could realize; some of the ministry were implicated. Knight, the Treasurer, fled the kingdom; the Committee of the House of Commons to investigate discovered a train of the deepest villany; the directors were seized, and it appeared that large sums had been given to persons in the administration and House of Commons for promoting the passing of the act, and a fictitious stock of five hundred and seventy-four thousand pounds had been disposed of by the directors to facilitate the passing of the bill. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was committed to the Tower and convicted of peculation; the estates of the most guilty directors were confiscated for the benefit of the sufferers.

In 1825 the general feeling for bubbles was again led captive by the unreasonable hopes of speculation. In January of that year there existed in London no less than one hundred and twenty speculating schemes, carried on by companies, often consisting of only the projector and his clerk, causing great misery and frequent ruin.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Second Part of King Henry IV.

[2] There recently arrived in London a specimen of this species of manufacture; it is a singular relic, consisting of a very elaborate carving in wood of the Crucifixion, and is a ludicrous evidence of monkish trickery. A hole is perforated from behind, through which, by the application of a sponge dipped in blood, a stream was made to travel to the front, where it was seen to discharge itself from a crevice in the Saviour’s side, which stands for the spear-wound, so that the figure had the appearance of shedding real blood, and the drops so discharged were sold to the devotees at an enormous price.

[3] “The camels which have had the honour to bear presents to Mecca or Medina, are not to be treated afterwards as common animals. They are considered consecrated to Mahomet, which exempts them from all labour and service; they have cottages built for their abodes, where they live at ease and receive plenty of food, and the most careful attention.”—Travels of Father Strope.

[4] “The rising of dead men’s bones every year in Egypt is a thing superstitiously believed by the Christian worshippers, and by the priests out of ignorance, or policy. Metrophanes, patriarch of Alexandria, thought the possibility of such an occurrence might be proved out of Isaiah, c. lxvi., v. 24, ‘and they shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me.’ A Frenchman at Cairo, who had been present at the resurrection of these bones, showed me an arm from thence; the flesh was shrivelled and dried like the mummies. He observed the miracle to have been always performed behind him, and once casually looking back, he discovered some bones carried privately by an Egyptian, under his vest, whence he understood the mystery.”—Sandys’s Travels.

[5] “It is as hard as a stone.”

[6] Balaam’s ass may remind the reader of the “Feast of the Ass.” In several churches in France they used to celebrate a festival, in commemoration of the Virgin Mary’s flight into Egypt. It was called the Feast of the Ass. A young girl richly dressed, with a child in her arms, was set upon an ass superbly caparisoned. The ass was led to the altar in solemn procession, high mass was said with great pomp, the ass was taught to kneel at proper places, a hymn, no less childish than impious, was sung in its praise, and when the ceremony was ended, the priest, instead of the usual words with which he dismissed the people, brayed three times like an ass; and the people, instead of the usual response, “We bless the Lord,” brayed three times in the same manner. Vide Du Cange, voc. Festum, vol. iii. p. 424.

[7] Quarterly Review, July, 1819; art. “British Monachism, by D. Fosbrooke.”

[8] In Candide, or the Optimist, there is an admirable stroke of Voltaire’s; eight travellers meet in an obscure inn, and some of them with not sufficient money to pay for a scurvy dinner. In the course of conversation they are discovered to be eight monarchs in Europe, who had been deprived of their crowns. What gave point to this satire was, that these eight monarchs were not the fictitious majesties of the poetic brain; imperial shadows, like those that appeared to Macbeth; but living monarchs, who were wandering at that moment about the world.

[9] This was not the tree which gave the name to “Royal Oak Day.”

[10] The hair has often been found very useful as a means of concealment for other purposes. The Indian lavadores, whilst washing the sand, for the grains of gold, were observed by the overseers to be continually scratching their heads, or passing their fingers through their thick woolly hair. A suspicion arising, the hair was combed, and was found full of the gold grains. On keeping their hair quite short it was discovered that the necessity for such frequent application to the head had ceased.

[11] The editor saw her at Philadelphia, where she exhibited once to a small audience, and then disappeared.

[12] This lover of truth, at the commencement of his pamphlet, with consummate assurance thus proposes himself as a private tutor: “Gentlemen who are desirous to secure their children from ill example, by a domestic education, or are themselves inclined to gain or retrieve the knowledge of the Latin tongue, may be waited on at their houses, by the author of the following essay, upon the receipt of a letter directed to the publisher or author.—N.B. Mr. Lauder’s abilities, and industry in his profession, can be well attested by persons of the first rank in literature in this metropolis.”

[13] “Dr. Johnson, who had been so far imposed upon by Lauder, as to furnish a preface and postscript to his work, now dictated a letter for him, addressed to Dr. Douglas, acknowledging his fraud in terms of suitable contrition. This extraordinary attempt of Lauder’s was no sudden effort; he had brooded over it for years, and it is uncertain what his principal motive was.”—Boswell’s Life of Johnson.

[14] The modern mode of copying coins enables any one with industry to possess a large cabinet.

[15] Dark blue is called, by the modern Egyptians, eswed, which properly signifies black, and is therefore so translated here.

[16] Mr. Matthews, the comedian, in his “Humours of a Country Fair,” has hardly exaggerated, in describing a quack thus reading acknowledgments from those cured by his specific. ‘Sir,—I was cut in two in a saw-pit, and cured by one bottle.’ ‘Sir,—By the bursting of a powder-mill, I was blown into ten thousand anatomies. The first bottle of your incomparable collected all the parts together; the second restored life and animation—before the third was finished, I was in my usual state of health.’ This hardly exceeds a reasonable satire on the presumptuous promises that still frequently accompany each bottle or box licensed from the Stamp Office!

Transcriber’s Notes:

• A few obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
• Otherwise spelling and hyphenation variations remain unchanged.