PSALMANAZAR.
(Vol. vii., p. 206.)
Your correspondent inquires as to the real name of this most penitent of impostors. I fear that
there is now no likelihood of its being discovered. His most intimate friends appear to have been kept in the dark on this subject. With respect to his country, the most probable conclusion seems to be, that he was born in the south of Europe, in a city of Languedoc. A very near approximation seems to be made to the exact locality by a careful collation of the circumstances mentioned in his autobiography, in the excellent summary of his life in the Gentleman's Magazine, vols. xxxiv. and xxxv., which is much better worth consulting than the articles in Aikin or Chalmers; which are poor and superficial, and neither of which gives any list of his works, or notices the Essay on Miracles, by a Layman (London, 1753, 8vo.), which is one of them, though published anonymously. There is a very amusing account of conversations with him at Oxford, in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xxxv. p. 78., in which, before a large company of ladies and gentlemen who were curious as to the customs of Formosa, he gravely defended the practice which he said existed in that country, of cutting off the heads of their wives and eating them, in case of misconduct. "I think it is no sin," continued he, "to eat human flesh, but I must own it is a little unmannerly." He admitted that he once ate part of a black; but they being always kept to hard work, their flesh was tough and unsavoury. His grandfather, he said, lived to 117, and was as vigorous as a young man, in consequence of sucking the blood of a viper warm every morning; but they had been forced to kill him, he being attacked with a violent fit of the colic, and desiring them to stab him, which, in obedience to another "custom of the country," they had done. Splendidè mendax! was certainly, in his younger days, this much venerated friend of our great moralist. I should, however, feel inclined to forgive much of his extraordinary romancing for the admirable manner in which he settled that chattering twaddler, Bishop Burnet:
"He was one day with Dr. Burnet, Bishop of Sarum, who, after his warm manner, cried, 'Ay, you say so; but what proof can you give that you are not of China, Japan, or any other country?' 'The manner of my flight,' replied he, 'did not allow me to bring credentials: but suppose your lordship were in Formosa, and should say you are an Englishman, might not the Formosan as justly reply, You say you are an Englishman; but what proof can you give that you are not of any other country? for you look as like a Dutchman as any that ever traded to Formosa.' This silenced his lordship."
James Crossley.