[213] The stone may be found in the British Museum. HARDCNVT is the reading on the Harthacnut stone; but the true orthography of the name is HARÐACNVT. It was reported to have been discovered in Kennington-lane, where the palace of the monarch was said to have been located, and the inscription carefully made in Anglo-Saxon characters, was to the effect that “Here Hardcnut drank a wine horn dry, stared about him, and died.”
Sylvanus Urban, my once excellent and old friend, seems a trifle uncourteous on this grave occasion.—He tells us, however, that “The history of this wanton trick, with a fac-simile of Schnebbelie’s drawing, may be seen in his volume lx. p. 217.” He says that this wicked contrivance of George Steevens was to entrap this famous draughtsman! Does Sylvanus then deny that “the Director” was not also “entrapped?” and that he always struck out his own name in the proof-sheets of the Magazine, substituting his official designation, by which the whole society itself seemed to screen “the Director!”
[214] He was a Dominican monk, his real name being Giovanni Nanni, which he Latinized in conformity with the custom of his era. He was born 1432, and died 1502. His great work, Antiquitatem Rariorum, professes to contain the works of Manetho, Berosus, and other authors of equal antiquity.
[215] A forgery of a similar character has been recently effected in the débris of the Chapelle St. Eloi (Département de L’Eure, France), where many inscriptions connected with the early history of France were exhumed, which a deputation of antiquaries, convened to examine their authenticity, have since pronounced to be forgeries!
[216] The volume of these pretended Antiquities is entitled Etruscarum Antiquitatum Fragmenta, fo. Franc. 1637. That which Inghirami published to defend their authenticity is in Italian, Discorso sopra l’Opposizioni fatte all’ Antichita Toscane, 4to, Firenze, 1645.
[217] I draw this information from a little “new year’s gift,” which my learned friend, the Rev. S. Weston, presented to his friends in 1822, entitled “A Visit to Vaucluse,” accompanied by a Supplement. He derives his account apparently from a curious publication of L’Abbé Costaing de Pusigner d’Avignon, which I with other inquirers have not been able to procure, but which it is absolutely necessary to examine, before we can decide on the very curious but unsatisfactory accounts we have hitherto possessed of the Laura of Petrarch.
[218] For some further notices of Psalmanazar and his literary labours, we may refer the reader to vol. i. p. 137, note.
[219] The question has been discussed with great critical acumen by Dr. Wordsworth.
[220] Since this was published I have discovered that Harry Martin’s Letters are not forgeries, but I cannot immediately recover my authority.
[221] One of the most amusing of these tricks was perpetrated on William Prynne, the well-known puritanic hater of the stage, by some witty cavalier. Prynne’s great work, “Histriomastix, the Player’s Scourge; or, Actor’s Tragedy,” an immense quarto, of 1100 pages, was a complete condemnation of all theatrical amusements; but in 1649 appeared a tract of four leaves, entitled “Mr. William Prynne, his Defence of Stage Playes; or, a Retractation of a former Book of his called Histriomastix.” It must have astonished many readers in his own day, and would have passed for his work in more modern times, but for the accidental preservation of a single copy of a handbill Prynne published disclaiming the whole thing. His style is most amusingly imitated throughout, and his great love for quoting authorities in his margin. He is made to complain that “this wicked and tyrannical army did lately in a most inhumane, cruell, rough, and barbarous manner, take away the poor players from their houses, being met there to discharge the duty of their callings: as if this army were fully bent, and most trayterously and maliciously set, to put down and depresse all the King’s friends, not only in the parliament but in the very theatres; they have no care of covenant or any thing else.” And he is further made to declare, in spite of “what the malicious, clamorous, and obstreperous people” may object, that he once wrote against stage-plays,—that it was “when I had not so clear a light as now I have.” We can fancy the amusement this pamphlet must have been to many readers during the great Civil War.