From Sharpe's Magazine. LITERARY IMPOSTURES OF LAUDER AND BOWER. MR. ISAAC D'ISRAELI, in his "Curiosities, to collect them, and in 1750 he republished of Literature," has remarked that some of the most sinister literary forgeries in modern times have been perpetrated by Scotchmen, and he instances Lauder and Bower-two of the blackest sheep of the world of letters. The disgraceful fraud of which the former stands convicted, so unparalleled for its meanness, baseness, and dishonesty, has justly condemned him to eternal infamy, and rendered his name a by-word of contempt. To the credit of English literature, it did not indeed long remain undiscovered, and it may at least be said to have had one beneficial effect that of placing the unwary on their guard against an unscrupulous disputant, and of demonstrating the importance and necessity of occasionally verifying a quotation, and testing a doubtful assertion. William Lauder was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he acquired the reputation of considerable scholarship. It is not improbable, however, that his unamiable disposition displayed itself in some shape during his academical career, for at its close he was unsuccessful in all his efforts to obtain preferment in the University. He was first a candidate for the professorship of Latin, and afterwards for the office of librarian. Having been in both instances rejected, he tried for one of the masterships of the High School, and was also unsuccessful. In 1739, he published an edition of Johnson's Latin translation of the Psalms, with other passages of sacred poetry; but, however creditably he might have executed his task, the speculation was not a profitable one. Soured by disappointments, he came to London, where we find him engaged, at the time he became notorious, as a teacher of the classics. In 1747 he commenced his attack on the reputation of Milton, in various communications to the "Gentleman's Magazine," in which the great poet was denounced as an unprincipled plagiarist. These papers having led to some controversy, and excited some attention, Lauder was induced them in a volume, entitled, "An Essay on Milton's use and abuse of the moderns in his Paradise Lost;" with the motto, taken from Milton "Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme." The work is preceded by a characteristic advertisement from Lauder, which states that "Gentlemen who are desirous of securing their children from ill example, or are themselves inclined to gain or retrieve the knowledge of the Latin tongue, may be waited on at their own houses by the author of the following Essay;" an announcement certainly calculated to convey the idea that the "canny Scot" regarded his erudite performance as an excellent mercantile speculation, and favorable medium of publicity. To render the work more remarkable, the preface and postscript were contributed by Dr. Samuel Johnson. The latter contained a charitable appeal on behalf of Milton's granddaughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Foster, who was then living and in great distress, as will appear from the following quotation from the Rev. Dr. Newton's Life of Milton, with Johnson's eloquent remarks— "Such is the caprice of fortune, this granddaughter of a man who will be an everlasting glory to the nation, has now for some years, with her husband, kept a little chandler's or grocer's shop for their subsistence, lately at the Lower Holloway, in the road between Highgate and London, and at present in Cock Lane, not far from Shoreditch church.' "That this relation is true cannot be questioned; but surely the honor of letters, the dignity of sacred poetry, the spirit of the English nation, and the glory of human nature, require that it should be true no longer. In an age in which statues are erected to the honor of this great writer, in which his effigy has been distributed on medals, and his work propagated by translations and illustrated with commentaries; in an age which, amidst all its vices and all its follies, has not become infamous for want of charity, it may be surely allowed to hope that the living remains of Milton will be no longer work attracted the attention of the Rev. suffered to languish in distress." The authors from whom Lauder accused Milton of borrowing without acknowledgment, were some of them all but unknown in what was then called the learned world. Among them were Masenius, a Jesuit of Cologne; Taubmann, a German; and Staphorstius, a learned Dutchman. From these and other authors passages were quoted, in some of which there was a general resemblance, and in others a close similarity to the most admired portions of Paradise Lost. Many of Milton's admirers were surprised and confounded to find their idol in some instances a mere translator, the appropriator of the language and imagery of a few laborious versifiers, whose obscurity had secured him from detection. Having apparently established his charges by quotations, Lauder artfully proceeded to support them by indirect evidence, of which we annex a specimen "Edward Phillips, Milton's nephew," he says, "in 1675 published a work, entitled Theatrum Poetarum, or a Complete Collection of Poets, ancient and modern,' which performance is probably nothing else but a short account of all the poetical authors in his uncle's library, of which he had the perfect use and knowledge by his having been employed by him as an amanuensis. In the exercise of this office, he must have been privy to the secret practice of his uncle in rifling the treasures of others, and that he was privy to it, I think is manifest from his passing over in silence, in the above-mentioned piece, all those authors that Milton was most obliged to." Farther on, he suggests a still more remarkable proof of Milton's felonious practices. "I cannot," he continues, "omit observing here, that Milton's contrivance of teaching his daughters to read, but to read only, several learned languages, plainly points the same way as Mr. Phillips's secreting and suppressing the books to which his uncle was most obliged. Milton knew well the loquacious and incontinent spirit of the sex (!), and the danger on that account of entrusting them with so important a secret as his unbounded plagiarism; he therefore wisely confined them to the knowledge of the words and pronunciation only, but kept the sense and meaning to himself." But Lauder's triumph was of short duration. The detection of the imposition and the chastisement of the impostor fell into able hands. Upon its first publication, the John Douglas, afterwards bishop of Salisbury, whose jealous regard for the reputation of Milton induced him to investigate its contents. Confident of the great poet's integrity, and not content with Lauder's assertions, he proceeded with considerable pains to search for the passages which had been quoted from Masenius, Staphorstius, Grotius, and others. The result was most triumphant; in nearly every instance he found that Lauder had tampered with the text, and had impudently inserted several lines from a translation of the Paradise Lost in Latin hexameters, by William Hogg, and others of his own manufacture. The detection was so complete, that the impostor had no alternative but confession. A full avowal of the fraud was accordingly drawn up by Dr. Samuel Johnson, who naturally enough considered his reputation somewhat involved in the transaction, and after some demur, signed by Lauder. Upon a calm review of the whole circumstances of the case, we cannot, however, absolve Johnson from all blame. That he was the dupe of the impostor, and entirely innocent of the fraud, will be readily admitted, but can it be said that he exercised a proper discretion in giving his sanction and support to a charge, the accuracy of which he had not taken the trouble to investigate? It is to be feared that his latent hostility to Milton-his rooted abhorrence of the "sour republicanism" of the great Puritan poet-prompted him to lend a readier ear to Lauder's assertions than can be justified on principles of fairness and candor. When referring to the subject in after years, he said with characteristic sententiousness, believing it perhaps the best defense he had to offer, "In the business of Lauder I was deceived, partly by thinking the man too frantic to be fraudulent.” After the appearance of Mr. Douglas's reply, the following advertisement, (which we quote as a literary curiosity in its way,) was inserted in the public newspapers by Lauder's publishers as a masterpiece of fraud, which the public may | uted to King Charles I.) The introductory be supplied with at 1s. 6d. stitched. JOHN PAYNE, In a second edition of his Defence of Milton, Mr. Douglas was enabled to give the result of some further investigations, and the details of Lauder's confession. Among many other instances of audacious fraud, he quotes the following, which may serve as a specimen of the whole. "In the eightyeighth page of his (Lauder's) Essay, we meet with a very extraordinary interpolation. There he has quoted, as from Ramsay, a Scotch poet 'Pallentes umbras Erebi noctemque profundam,' a line which never existed but in Virgil. Upon my asking him his reason for being guilty of so unnecessary a piece of fraud, he made no other apology, but that he thought the insertion of this line would be a great improvement to the text of Ramsay. Like an abandoned pickpocket, he cannot abstain from his infamous occupation, even when there can be no temptation to exercise it." A curious instance of another description of fraud is afforded in one of his communications to the "Gentleman's Magazine," where he quotes two lines from the " Adamus Exul" of Grotius sentences clearly show that Lauder was still smarting under the infliction he had received from the pen of Mr. Douglas, and his clumsy attempts at vindication are somewhat amusing. He had intended to publish a collection of modern Latin poets from whom Milton had borrowed; "but all at once," he says, "my hopes were dashed to pieces, and my project entirely defeated, by the Rev. Mr. Douglas, who, conscious of the unpopularity of my subject, unfairly and ungenerously took occasion for an overcharge of twenty or thirty lines in my Essay on Milton, to discredit the reputation of the whole; though, I still maintain, with no more justice than if, by paying twenty pieces, he should falsely or vainly imagine he had conscientiously discharged a debt of a thousand." In his former work he had disavowed any feeling of hostility towards Milton, and had even spoken of him with respect and admiration; he now threw off the mask, and with frantic malignity denounced him as "an odious and presumptuous liar, an abandoned monster of mankind, of insatiable avarice, of unbounded ambition, implacable malice, unparalleled impudence, and shocking impiety." But little attention was paid to the raving and railing of the wretched Zoilus, however clamorous and indecent, after his recent and complete discomfiture. Consigned upon all hands to contumely and neglect, it is not surprising that he should have sought relief kept a school for some time in the island of in exile. The last we hear of him is, that he Barbadoes, and died there about the year 1771. The exposure of Lauder was not the only service of the same kind rendered by Mr. Douglas to the literary world. With equal address he unmasked another impostor who occupied for some years a large share of the public attention, but whom we will dismiss with a very brief notice. Archibald Bower, the individual to whom we allude, was born at Dundee in the year 1686, and at the age of sixteen was sent to the Scotch Jesuit college at Douay. Four years afterwards he was removed to Rome, and admitted into the order of Jesus. After the usual noviciate, he was sent to Fano, and he afterwards became philosophical reader in the college of Arezzo. He was from thence transferred to Macerata, where he remained till the year 1726. He had now reached the age of forty, a period of life when the passions are generally supposed to be under the control of the judgment; he had hitherto manifested | pal English Jesuits, and this was satisfactono distaste for the pursuits in which he had rily shown by Mr. Douglas, in a pamphlet, been educated, when all at once he came to entitled, "Six Letters from Archibald Bower the resolution of quitting the Jesuits, and to Father Sheldon, Provincial of the Jesuits flying from Italy. It was afterwards alleged in England," in which his double-dealing and by him, as the principal reason for his de- hypocrisy were proved by incontrovertible parture, that he was shocked and disgusted evidence. Matters stood thus when he pubby the cruelties practised in the Inquisition, lished the first volume of his "History of the but his enemies assign a very different cause, Popes," which called forth another pamphlet -namely, a disgraceful abuse of his ecclesi- from his indefatigable adversary. He was astical functions, which rendered it danger- now charged by Mr. Douglas not merely ous for him to remain where he was. His with religious duplicity, but with a piece of escape was attended with some difficulty, shameful plagiarism in appropriating to himand he has worked it up into a narrative self the work of De Tillemont, a French hishighly colored, and diversified with marvel- torian, without notice or acknowledgment. lous incidents and adventures. Having ta- In order that there might be no mistake, ken refuge in England, he avowed himself, Mr. Douglas printed a few chapters of De with some reservation, a convert to Protest- Tillemont page by page with Bower, and antism. I declined," he says, "at first thus triumphantly exposed the fraud. A conforming to any particular church, but lengthened controversy followed, and dull suspecting all alike, after I had been so long and uninteresting as the details of such a and so grossly imposed on, I formed a sys- dispute may now appear, no less than tem of religion to myself, and continued a twenty-two pamphlets were published on the Protestant for the space, I think, of six subject. The dishonesty and hypocrisy of years, but a Protestant of no particular de- Bower were thus made patent to the world. nomination." Considerable interest was ta- Mr. Garrick, it is said, at one time contemken by the public in the supposed proselyte; plated caricaturing him on the stage, in remany generous and powerful friends came venge for a contemptuous notice in the imforward to assist him, and being a man of postor's "Summary view of his controversy ability, he easily obtained literary employ- with the Papists," in which he had spoken ment. It is rather a singular fact that he of Mr. Garrick as a was engaged on the Univeral History with George Psalmanasar, the celebrated impostor of Formosan notoriety. In the course of a few years he had saved a considerable sum of money, with which he resolved to purchase a life annuity. Proceeding to London for this purpose, according to his own account, he accidentally met with one Mr. Hill, a Jesuit, "who transacted money matters as an attorney," with whom he concluded a bargain. Whatever might have been the real nature of this transaction, it seems very clear that Bower, notwithstanding his assumed Protestantism, was in constant intercourse and communication with the princi gentleman who acted on the stage, and Mrs. Garrick, alias Violetta," as a lady "who within these few years danced upon the stage. The gentleman, though no Roscius, is as well known and admired for his acting as the lady for her dancing, and the lady was as well known and admired for her dancing as the gentleman is for his acting; and they are in that sense par nobile." We may conclude this article by stating that Archibald Bower died in the year 1766, at the age of eighty, and that he was buried in Marylebone churchyard, where a monument was erected to his memory, with an inscription attesting his pu| rity and innocence. INSANITY OF ROSSINI.-Rossini, the most popular of living composers, is stated, in private letters from Italy to Paris, to have become insane. He had not been able to bear up against the shock of political events. Persecuted as a moderate, by a revolutionary faction who were exasperated at the ruin of their cause having escaped miraculously from a furious band who had come to kill him, and who not having found him, had shot him in effigy-Rossini only preserved his life, and his great mind has been shattered by such terrible emotion. Great composers would seem to be especially liable to these attacks of mental derangement. Mozart, Donizetti, and now Rossini, are on the list of illustrious victims. NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. A Tour in the United States. By Archibald Prentice. The record of a tour undertaken for the purposes of health and information in the summer of last year, by a man well qualified to judge of the capacities, manners, and prospects of the American people. Mr. Prentice was a member of the Council of the late "League;" and he brings the subject of free commerce prominently forward in these letters-but not in a way to annoy even the most fastidious and anti-political reader. On all other points he is singularly free from prejudice, and gives his impressions of men and things in a calm and dispassionate tone which at once entitles them to confidence. If we cannot assert that Mr. Prentice has added much to our knowledge of the country visited, we can say that he has added a pleasant gossipping book to our library of transatlantic travel. An hour or so could hardly be more amusingly spent than in following him from the "staid and aristocratic" festivities of Astor House, in New York-now become not less famous in story than our own 66 Clarendon"-to his anchorage in the Mersey, after a passage of just ten days; which he reminds us, in conclusion, is just the length of his last sea voyage, twenty years ago, from Glasgow to Liverpool.-Literary Gazette. History of Mary Queen of Scots. By Jacob Abbott. With some nice engravings, representing Scotland three hundred years ago, and the principal scenes in the sorrowful life of Mary, this is an interesting volume for youthful readers. No discussions, either political or moral, of a nature unsuited to their age, are admitted, and there is simply the tale of royal sufferings to occupy the mind with pictures of stern and unstable times.-Literary Gazette. Frontenac; a Poem. By Alfred B. Street. Mr. Street is one of the writers of whom his country has reason to be proud. His originality is not less striking than his talent. In dealing with the romaace of North American life, at a period when the red man waged war with the European settler, he has skilfully preserved that distinctive reality in ideas, habits, and action, characteristic of the Indian tribes, while he has constructed a poem of singular power and beauty. In this respect, "Frontenac" is entirely different from "Gertrude of Wyoming," which presents us only with ideal portraiture. Mr. Street has collected all his materials from nature. They are stamped with that impress of truth which is at once visible, even to the inexperienced eye, and, like a great artist, he has exercised his imagination only in forming them into the most attractive, picturesque, and beautiful combinations. tion by saying that it resembles one of Cooper's Indian romances thrown into sweet and various verse. The frequent change of metre is not, we think, advantageous to the effect of the poem as a whole, and the reader uninitiated in the pronunciation of Indian proper names may find their frequent recurrence a stumbling-block as he reads; but the rapidity of the narrative, the exciting incidents of strife and peril which give it life and animation, and the exquisite beauty of the descriptive passages, must fascinate the mind of every class of readers, while the more refined taste will dwell with delight on the lovely images and poetic ideas with which the verse is thickly studded.-Britannia. Visits to Monasteries in the Levant. By the Hon. Robert Curzon, Jun. A subject full of interest and character is here treated with that neat and gentlemanly pleasantness of style which would impart piquancy to topics in themselves far more threadbare. Mr. Curzon's "visits" to the monasteries were principally paid a dozen years ago, before the summer tourist had begun to turn to the East, as though the journey were a mere "nothing." But by none among the travelling brotherhood or sisterhood have the haunts there sojourned in been so dwelt upon as in any respect to forestall Mr. Curzon's book.-Spectator. Memoirs and Correspondence of Sir Robert Murray Keith, K. B. Edited by Mrs. Gillespie Smyth. 2 vols. This correspondence is worthy the pious care with which it has been collected and produced. Sir R. M. Keith was a favorable specimen of the English ambassador in the last century. With him, diplomacy was not regarded as a kind of amateur trifling, at once amusing and profitable, but a serious profession, requiring skill, experience, and diligence. His social qualities and ready wit, while they gained him the favor of every one with whom he was brought into contact, never interfered with his regular transaction of business. Under the most bland exterior he concealed a resolute spirit and a sound judgment. His honesty was incorruptible; his truth never suffered suspicion; nor did his honor ever contract a stain.-Britannia. The Earth's Antiquity in harmony with the Mosaic Record of Creation. By James Gray, M.A. A welcome light to many yearning for settled opinions on this interesting question. No distortion of facts here; no violence of supposition-volcanoes raging and coal running down their sides, coal mixed with silex, called shale, flying up above the surface, &c.; no compromise either on the side of Scripture We can best give an idea of Mr. Street's produc-or of science; but a solution (we trust satisfactory |