Fungeris angelico sola ministerio.”
“Detector’s” reference is Vida ad Eranen, El. ii. v. 21; but it is almost needless to add there are no such lines, and no piece bearing such a title in Vida’s works.
It was afterwards ascertained that the waggish author of this hoax was a Cambridge scholar named Drury.
THE MOON HOAX.
The authorship of the “Moon Hoax,” an elaborate description (which was first printed in the New York Sun) of men, animals, &c., purporting to have been discovered in the moon by Sir John Herschel, is now disputed. Until recently it was conceded to R. A. Locke, now dead; but in the Budget of Paradoxes, by Professor De Morgan, the authorship is confidently ascribed to M. Nicollet, a French savant, once well known in this country, and employed by the government in the scientific exploration of the West. He died in the government service. Professor De Morgan writes as follows:—“There is no doubt that it (the ‘Moon Hoax’) was produced in the United States by M. Nicollet, an astronomer of Paris, and a fugitive of some kind. About him I have heard two stories. First, that he fled to America with funds not his own, and that this book was a mere device to raise the wind. Secondly, that he was a protegé of Laplace, and of the Polignac party, and also an outspoken man. The moon story was written and sent to France, with the intention of entrapping M. Arago—Nicollet’s especial foe—in the belief of it.” It seems not to have occurred to the sage and critical professor that a man who could steal funds, would have little scruple about stealing a literary production. It is, hence, more than probable that Nicollet translated the article immediately after its appearance in the New York Sun, and afterwards sent it to France as his own.
A LITERARY SELL.
A story is told in literary circles in New York of an enthusiastic Carlyle Club of ladies and gentlemen of Cambridge and Boston, who meet periodically to read their chosen prophet and worship at his shrine. One of them, not imbued with sufficient reverence to teach him better, feloniously contrived to have the reader on a certain evening insert something of his own composition into the reading, as though it came from the printed page and Carlyle’s hand. The interpolation was as follows:—“Word-spluttering organisms, in whatever place—not with Plutarchean comparison, apologies, nay rather, without any such apologies—but born into the world to say the thought that is in them—antiphoreal, too, in the main—butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers; men, women, pedants. Verily, with you, too, it’s now or never.” This paragraph produced great applause among the devotees of Carlyle. The leader of the Club especially, a learned and metaphysical pundit, who is the great American apostle of Carlyle, said nothing Carlyle had ever written was more representative and happy. The actual author of it attempted to ask some questions about it, and elicit explanations. These were not wanting, and, where they failed, the stupidity of the questioner was the substitute presumption, delicately hinted. It reminds us of Dr. Franklin’s incident in his life of Abraham, which he used to read off with great gravity, apparently from an open Bible, though actually from his own memory. This parable is probably the most perfect imitation of Scripture style extant.
MRS. HEMANS’s “FORGERIES.”
A gentleman having requested Mrs. Hemans to furnish him with some authorities from the old English writers for the use of the word “barb,” as applied to a steed, she very shortly supplied him with the following imitations, which she was in the habit of calling her “forgeries.” The mystification succeeded completely, and was not discovered for some time afterwards:—
The warrior donn’d his well-worn garb