ough the trick and favoured it, that he might recommend
himself to the Bishop of London for promotion. He professed to have
converted Psalmanazar, baptized him, with the Brigadier for godfather,
got his discharge from the regiment, and launched him upon London under
the patronage of Bishop Compton. Here Psalmanazar, who on his arrival
was between nineteen and twenty years old, became famous in the
religious world. He supported his fraud by invention of a language and
letters, and of a Formosan religion. To oblige the Bishop he translated
the church catechism into 'Formosan,' and he published in 1704 'an
historical and geographical Description of Formosa,' of which a second
edition appeared in the following year. It contained numerous plates of
imaginary scenes and persons. His gross and puerile absurdities in print
and conversation--such as his statements that the Formosans sacrificed
eighteen thousand male infants every year, and that the Japanese studied
Greek as a learned tongue,--excited a distrust that would have been
fatal to the success of his fraud, even with the credulous, if he had
not forced himself to give colour to his story by acting the savage in
men's eyes. But he must really, it was thought, be a savage who fed upon
roots, herbs, and raw flesh. He made, however, so little by the
imposture, that he at last confessed himself a cheat, and got his living
as a well-conducted bookseller's hack for many years before his death,
in 1763, aged 84. In 1711, when this jest was penned, he had not yet
publicly eaten his own children, i.e. swallowed his words and declared
his writings forgeries. In 1716 there was a subscription of L20 or L30 a
year raised for him as a Formosan convert. It was in 1728 that he began
to write that formal confession of his fraud, which he left for
publication after his death, and whereby he made his great public
appearance as Thyestes.

This jest against Psalmanazar was expunged from the first reprint of the
_Spectator_ in 1712, and did not reappear in the lifetime of Steele
or Addison, or until long after it had been amply justified.]

* * * * *

No. 15. Saturday, March 17, 1711. Addison.

'Parva leves capiunt animos ...'

Ovid.

When I was in _France_, I used to gaze with great Astonishment at the
Splendid Equipages and Party-coloured Habits, of that Fantastick Nation.
I was one Day in par