University of Virginia Library

LETTER XXXIII.
Literary larceny, forgery, and swindling
—Chatterton—Ireland, and Macpherson

IN our simple country, whenever you
hear theft or forgery mentioned, you are
immediately impressed with the idea of
some low fellow stealing a horse, or with
Burroughs' issuing his Canada bank-bills;
but here, in this sublime metropolis,
where every virtue and every vice is carried
to a refined extreme, are rogues
found who can steal the cardinal virtues,
and forge counterfeit immortality. Horace

might boast that his name was too hard a
nut for envy to crack,
but if ancient Rome had been like modern
London, the Augustan poet could
not have passed one half the via sacra before
he might have been robbed of his
monumentum ære perennius, and his flattery
ad Mecænam into the bargain.

There are several instances mentioned
of persons who have borrowed or purloined
original manuscripts, and sold
them to the booksellers; and some have
had the daring effrontery to print their
own names in the title-page, as the authors,
thus almost literally stealing the
writer's fame. A droll instance was mentioned
to me by Mr. Wright, a respectable
bookseller in St. John's Square, Clerkenwell:—One
of these literary pilferers
had surreptitiously taken, from a gentleman
in Litchfield, a fine address to the

king, on the peace in 1783, written in
blank verse. He unblushingly printed it
with his name glaring in capitals on the
title-page. A friend, complimenting him
on his work, observed, that the verse was
very elegant. “Verse!” exclaimed our
adventitious author; “dear sir, you have
“not read my address—it is not verse,
“there is not a single rhyme in it: No,
“no, I leave it to your Priestleys, your
“Prices, and your Franklins, to write
“poetry, and sich like stuff.”—Do not
laugh—I'll assure you it was no laughable
matter to the real author; it cost him a
large sum, to the editors of newspapers
and magazines, to reclaim his own work.
For the amusement of the town, their respective
rights to the contested poem was
disputed by the hackney writers, and
eleven sixpenny pamphlets printed, abounding
with very ingenious arguments on
both sides; and long before the natural
parent could prove his kindred to the
foundling, the putative father had obtained
a snug birth in the customs, as the meed
of oblation to majesty. The question still
remains undecided in the popular opinion.
The advocates for the thief are numerous,
although they acknowledge the Litchfield
gentleman could have written as elegantly,
and might have composed this—
and that if the putative father wrote it,
it must have been a miracle. I had the
curiosity to read this address, and found,
to my surprise, that he whom I supposed
the real author possessed but little more
right to it than his rival, for I found that,
excepting a simile about the oak's becoming
more vigorous and flourishing when
it is cropt, in allusion, I imagine, to the
dismemberment of the colonies, all that
was valuable was taken from Waller's
Address to King Charles II. upon his
majesty's happy return.

But there is yet a viler practice, too
common in England; writers of real
merit, who are popular, frequently loan,
and sometimes, I fear, sell, their names,

and permit themselves to be announced
to the public as authors of very inferior,
and often very dull performances. There
may be some excuse, as there may be a
powerful temptation, for an ignorant and
conceited fellow to pilfer the plumes of
science—but how men of genuine genius
and learning can stoop to this base folly is
astonishing. They condemn, with great
sensibility, those who, from vanity or want,
purloin the works of others; not reflecting
that he who gives currency to that
which is base, by gilding it with the bullion
of his name, does more injury to the
reading world than he who ushers into it
what is intrinsically valuable under a
worthless name: it is swindling in essence—it
is defrauding the purchaser by
false tokens. If not in a legal, in a moral
view, he who lends his name to accelerate
the sale of a worthless work should be
held in the same estimation with him who
gilds brass beads and vends them for pure
gold.

But petit larceny and swindling are not
the only crimes perpetrated in the English
republic of letters. The learned complain
that forgery is committed with astonishing
effrontery. We have read of the forgery
of deeds and other instruments:
indeed, the sessions' papers mention an
instance, sadly ludicrous, of some villains
having forged a will, put a pen into the
hand of the corpse, and forced the words
indicative of the publication of it, into
the mouth of the dead man, which they
withdrew, and then swore, boldly, before
the Probate, that they saw the deceased
set his hand to the will, and that
“he published it to be his last will and
“testament” were the last words that
came from his mouth. But these were
clumsy prevaricators, calculated to impose
upon the credulity and obtain the sanction
of an ecclesiastical court. It remained
for Chatterton and Ireland, by more acute
and bolder daring, to establish the superiority
of lettered genius over the awkward

finesse of unlettered ingenuity, and to
forge the works of those who had been
buried for centuries. In the year 1768,
Chatterton, a boy of Bristol, then scarcely
fourteen years of age, ushered into notice
certain poems which purported to have
been written by Thomas Rowley, a monk
of the 15th century. The boy had written
the poems on parchment smoke-dried,
to give it the appearance of antiquity—
suited the idiom and the orthography to the
age in which they were pretended to have
been written—and even wrote the rhyme
in the mode we arrange prose, which was
the economical fashion of that day—and
asserted that he found them in a chest, in
a room over the chapel in Radcliffe
Church, which chest was called Canynge's,
as containing certain deeds of benefaction
which had been executed to the church
by a merchant of that name, who lived in
the reign of Edward the Fourth. The
lovers of antiquity pored over the black
letter with their accustomed enthusiasm,
while the lovers of poetry read the poems
with delight for their strong expression
and beautiful imagery;—and they might
both have been delighted with more from
the same copious source, but a puerile
curiosity, which may be compared to a
child who breaks his fiddle to discover
whence the sound proceeds, was to be
satisfied. Where did he procure these
poems? are they original? did he write
them himself? could he write them? are
they a mere fabrication? was the cry
among the learned. A jury of antiquarians
de ventre temporis inspiciendi was impanelled;
Canynge's chest was found; it
was proved that Chatterton had access to
it—it was empty, but had contained parchments
which no one had the curiosity to
have inspected; but, unluckily, some modern
words, and a few Arabic numerals,
raised a doubt—and, to the immortal honour
of the genius of Chatterton, the
poems were cast in the verdict; principally
from the consideration that no man
in the age of Edward the Fourth, and they
might have added in the present, could
have written so finely. Upon this detection
of the fraud, Chatterton, instead of
being cherished by patronage, and a right
direction given to his erring infant course,
was condemned and avoided as if deeply
stained with the moral turpitude of a man
grown gray in villany; and this wonderful
boy, more precious than a whole theatric
corps of infant Rocii, after making an
abortive attempt to support himself by
writing for the periodical papers, in the
midst of the opulent and enlightened city
of London, at the age of 17 years, was
driven to suicide to avoid the pressing ills
of hunger and poverty! The English
now pride themselves in his genius, and
deeply regret his untimely death. A splendid
edition of his works has been published,
and every memorial of his brief
life carefully collected. A learned nobleman,
who had spent a long life in collecting
and hoarding up the rubbish and chaff
of ancient lore, but who esteemed the
pearls of Chatterton as the cock in æsop's
Fables did the jewel which he found on
the dunghill, was obliged to apologize to
the public for his neglect of the boy bard.
And both antiquarians and amateurs of
poetry now gather round the tomb of
Chatterton and lament the national loss
with emotions of mingled shame and
grief.

Ireland, a man of mature years, pretended
that he had found certain original
writings of Shakespear, and even produced
a play written with so close an imitation
of some of the minor dramas of that immortal
bard that it was actually exhibited
upon the stage, and afterwards published:
and not only the undiscerning vulgar, but
many gentlemen of philological and antiquarian
research pronounced it genuine,
and defended its authenticity against the
sceptics. The style, idiom, metaphors,
similies, quaint expressions, and appropriate
language of the characters introduced

were so accurately copied, that, to
the credit of the fabricator, a mere mistake
in using paper of later manufacture than
the days of Elizabeth was the principal
circumstance which led to the discovery
of the fraud. Upon the detection, the
same clamour was raised against him as
against the unfortunate Chatterton, and
similar attempts were made to abash him
with obloquy and ignominy, but he turned
upon his pursuers, and declared, in print,
that he meant merely to expose the ignorance
and credulity of the London
literati. Excepting those who are the objects
of it, every one inclines to laugh at
the joke; but, nevertheless, Ireland's reputation
as an author is irreparably injured,
and if he should, hereafter, produce
a drama equal to Hamlet, it would probably
be hissed from the stage.

A question naturally arises, if these persons
had sufficient ability to produce works
equal to, or, at least, with difficulty discernible
from, those they imitated, and,

consequently, superior to those of the
present degenerated day, why not have
honoured and employed them? If a man
should imitate as nearly the painted glass
of the monkish, the perpetual or horribly
inextinguishable fire of the ancient, or the
sympathetic needle of the fanciful ages—
by which modern churches might be ornamented;
tombs, and cities like tombs,
enlightened; ships burnt; and absent lovers
be enabled to “annihilate both time
“and space;” ought we to refuse the
imitator a patent because he had endeavoured
to pass off his first models as the
works of those great masters who flourished
in times when these rarities were
brought to the greatest perfection? Michael
Angelo Buonarotti, when the Italians
were more enthusiastic in their veneration
for the antique than the English ever
were, chisselled a statue of a sleeping
Cupid, in the style of the Grecian school
in its happiest period; he stained the marble
and mutilated the god, to give the
statue an appearance of antiquity, and,
finally, buried it in a garden in Rome,
pretending it was discovered by accident:
it was produced, and acknowledged to be
the work of ancient times. Michael Angelo
then, boldly, claimed his own work,
and produced an amputated limb, as unquestionable
evidence of his claim. The
Cognoscenti of Rome, in the 15th century,
instead of contemning, maligning, and
abandoning Michael Angelo, more wisely
concluded that the man who had genius
and taste to imitate the ancient masters
should be encouraged to adorn modern
times, by his wonderful powers: and
Michael Angelo erected the church of St.
Peter's, in Rome—that admirable structure
which the united taste of the world
pronounces the phænix of modern architecture,
and which the English travellers
are constrained to acknowledge, would
even rival St. Paul's if it were not considerably
larger, and had not been a house
of worship for the papists.

Now, what have Chatterton and Ireland
done more than Michael Angelo? They
have produced, like him, imitations of
elder genius—but they have excelled the
Italian artist in modesty, that unerring
index of merit; they did not, boldly,
claim their own exquisite performances—
the learned were obliged to force them to
acknowledge what all might be proud to
own. Might it not have been expected
that the English, like the Italians, would
have honoured, rewarded, and employed
them? That they might not want new
emissions of the black letter of the monk
Rowley, might be pardonable—but the
man who could imitate the sublime, the
immortal, the hitherto unrivalled Shakespear,
should have had a statue erected
to his honour whilst living, and an honourable
place in Westminster-Abbey, or St.
Paul's, designated for his mausoleum
when dead. But, to the disgrace of English
patronage, Chatterton swallowed
poison, and the great Ireland, the second

Shakespear of England—a man who
might, probably, have raised the Thalian
glory of the reign of George the Third
above that of the Virgin Queen—is now
treated with affected contempt, and his
forgeries on the bank of Parnassus are
held, apparently, in as much detestation
as forgeries upon the bank of England!

If a solution should be required to this
enigma, I can only answer that literature
is a trade in England; and the making of
books, and the vending the copy-right, is
as much a handicraft occupation, upon
which a person depends for his daily maintenance,
as the making and vending patent
boots;—for, in this commercial land
where every thing is bought and sold,
the sallies of fancy may be bartered for
cheese and porter, and works of imagination
are chattels personal, which may produce
to the author bread, and even
wealth, and sometimes fame; they are
therefore, like other property, protected
by the municipal law—but as that law

does not contemplate the counterfeiting
the writings of defunct poets, as an injury
to the living, these forgers are not obnoxious
to the criminal code. Those,
however, who are interested by taste in
supporting the value of these precious
metals of genius, supply this defect in the
law by raising a violent and opprobrious
clamour against any who are guilty of
such literary felony. Again, whenever one
of these Parnassian forgeries is attempted,
the learned, as if by instinct, immediately
divide in sentiment as to its authenticity,
and fill the town with controversial pamphlets;
and, as most of their modern
books are made up by plagiarisms from
old works, the English book-makers are
admirably qualified to detect literary fraud
—the trick is soon exposed, and the fabricator
must be consigned to contempt.
Those who detected him, to magnify their
own services, will abuse him, while his
former advocates endeavour to conceal
the mortification of defeat in declamations
against his turpitude.

But there is a third, and more substantial
reason to be offered why the English
consign this second Shakespear to contempt.
They have so long prided themselves
in this great master of the drama
and the passions, that they are ashamed
to confess that he can be imitated whom
they have, with so much national pride,
pronounced to be inimitable.

From some of these motives a long and
severe contest has been maintained upon
Macpherson's translation of the Poems of
Ossian, in which the great Dr. Johnson,
styled by these moderns the Colossus of
English literature, took a decided part.
He insisted that he would not credit the
translation as genuine until he saw the
original Erse manuscripts;—as if poetry
could not exist without being written.
Did the great doctor ever see the original
manuscript of a Lapland ode? have not
the bards, or prophets, or priests—for they

likewise were bards, in all ages been the
depositaries of the national poetry—and
have not popular hymns and songs been
preserved, with wonderful accuracy, in the
memories of the common people? is it
not the case in England, even now? does
not language, and poetry, which is but a
modulation of language, necessarily exist
before written characters? The doctor
was opposed by Macpherson, and, in a
personal interview, it is said, the illustrious
moralist and philologist detonated in a
language, if moral, not extremely philological;
in terms, I am told, for the honour
of his work, not to be found in his
Dictionary. He observed, to one of his
humble friends, a few days after, “Sir, I
“knew the Scot to be a liar, and I enun
“ciated in the vernacular of a scoundrel.”
But maugre the doctor's argumentum ad
hominum, the authenticity of the poems
has found numerous advocates. The
Scotch enthusiastically admire them; and
if what is now held by them to be a translation
from the ancient Erse could be
proved, to their satisfaction, to have been
fabricated, they would admire it the more,
because it was made by a Scotchman—
that is, if the character given of that people
by Dr. Johnson, and related to me by
an old gentleman, Mr. J. M*****, who
was in habits of intimacy with that Diogenes
of modern colloquy, be correct.—
On a certain occasion, when the authenticity
of the Poems of Ossian was the
common topic, and Dr. Johnson was disgusting
every man of common sensibility
who unfortunately disagreed with him on
that subject, Mr. M***** modestly observed,
“Doctor, there are many learned,
“and even pious men in Scotland, who
“profess to be convinced that the transla
“tion is a correct version of the originals;
“they, certainly, are possessed of the best
“means of detecting imposition if any
“exists; may I not place, safely, some
“reliance on their testimony?” Johnson—
“No, sir, you cannot, safely, rely on them;
“a Scot, sir, prizes a national fiction more
“than an exotic truism.” The old gentleman
mentioned, with apparent chagrin,
that he had sent this anecdote to Mr. Boswell,
one of the biographers of Dr. Johnson,
but as it was accompanied with one
not quite so respectful to a nobleman
whom Boswell was then flattering, he imagined
as that biographer could not decently
insert the one without the other, he had
concluded to omit both. Mr. M*****
added he had hopes of having them both
published in a note, stating Boswell's sycophancy,
in an expected new edition
of Sir John Hawkins's life of Johnson,
which, he observed, after all, gave the most
accurate picture of the great moralist, although
rather in the Rembrandt style. But
I am digressing too widely. The Scotch
after having sustained with fortitude and
success the repeated attacks of Johnson
and his coadjutors, are now attacked
more seriously, from an unexpected quarter.
Johnson disputed the existence of
the Erse originals—the Irish have since
acknowledged their existence, but insist,
with some show of argument, that the
bard with his harp and heroes were all
Irish, and charge Macpherson with having
garbled the original text to give to Ossian,
his beauties and his warriors, a “local
“habitation and a name” in Scotland.
This contest is not yet decided, but is
combated with great spirit: to which side
victory will incline, is, perhaps, only known
to certain booksellers, who, as they subsidize
the combatants on both sides, could,
probably, inform which party they intend
shall wear the laurel. Although both these
disputes are yet undecided, the wars of
Fingal and Oscar are read with pleasure
in England.

In our happy land, far removed from
any interest in the combats of these lettered
gladiators, we, who prize books, as the
principles of our excellent republican government
teach us to value men, not for

their origin but their intrinsic merit—
we, read Ossian's Poems with delight;
and, surely, the heroic ardour, the dignified
friendship, the strength, purity, and
sublimity of love, and the sweet remembrance
of departed worth which they inspire,
are highly calculated to rectify
the passions, and to amend while they
delight us.

Remember me as I ought to be remembered
to those I love. Say what
is proper to Amelia, of which she will
have the condescension to judge. I
send little Francis a patent purse, with
some medals and new coins: the purse
will have this advantage, that when he
has wit enough to open it himself he will
have prudence enough to spend its contents
economically.—Although we are divided
by the Atlantic, recollect we are
near in friendship.