Rebus, et inde homines didicisse vocabula prima
Desipere est.”
[34] Richardson’s Dictionary, preface, lxvii.
[35] This man, who never told his true name, was from the age of fifteen to seventeen a private teacher—then passed for an Irishman—went to Rome as a pilgrim with a habit stolen from before an altar where it was lying as a votive offering of another pilgrim—wandered about in Germany, Brabant, Flanders—indolent, abject, shameless, covered with vermin and sores—entered the military service of Holland, which he left to become waiter in a coffee-house in Aix-la-Chapelle—enlisted in the troops of the elector of Cologne. He acted all these parts, with those above-mentioned, before he was baptised under the name of George, by a Scotch clergyman, and, having learned English, passed over to England to be protected by Compton, the lord-bishop of London. At the expense of the latter, he studied at Oxford—became a preceptor—chaplain of a regiment—fell back into indolence, and lived upon alms.—(See A New and General Dictionary, London, 1798, vol. XII; and Vie de plusieurs Personnages célèbres des Temps anciens et modernes, par C. A. Walckenaer, membre de l’Institut, tome II. 1830.)
[36] This change took place in his thirty-second year—he learned Hebrew and became an honest man, esteemed by Samuel Johnson; he wrote eleven articles in a well-known work, the Universal History, and his own Life at the age of seventy-three years; the latter work was published after his death, which happened in his eighty-fourth year, in 1763.
[37] See Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits, vol. IX. pp. 365-396.
[38] I am here applying to the forger of a language what Lucretius, in continuation of his above quoted verses ([p. xxx]), urges against the belief that a single individual could ever have been the inventor of human speech.
[39] By Norris, Asiatic Journal, vol. IX., November, 1820, p. 430.
[40] Journal des Savans, February, 1821, pp. 69-70.
[41] See Transact. of the Lit. Soc. of Bombay, vol. II.: “On the Authenticity of the Desátir, with remarks on the Account of the Mahabadi Religion contained in the Dabistan,” by William Erskine, esq., p. 360.