of the West," 1649,
says that a slip was preserved by a vintner dwelling at Glastonbury,
when the soldiers cut down the tree; that he set it in his garden,
"and he with others did tell me that the same doth likewise bloom on
the 25th day of December, yearly."

[207] Many of these tales of treasures in hills, are now reduced to
the simple facts of discoveries being made of coins and personal
ornaments, in tumuli of Roman and Saxon settlers in England. In the
British Museum is a gold breastplate found in a grave at Mold, in
Flintshire. The grave-hills of Bohemia have furnished the museum at
Vienna with a large number of gold objects of great size and value.
In Russia the dead have been found placed between large plates of
pure gold in the centre of such tumuli; and in Ireland very large
and valuable gold personal ornaments have been frequently found in
grave-hills.

ON PUCK THE COMMENTATOR.

Literary forgeries recently have been frequently indulged in, and it is
urged that they are of an innocent nature; but impostures more easily
practised than detected leave their mischief behind, to take effect at a
distant period; and as I shall show, may entrap even the judicious! It
may require no high exertion of genius to draw up a grave account of an
ancient play-wright whose name has never reached us, or to give an
extract from a volume inaccessible to our inquiries and, as dulness is
no proof of spuriousness, forgeries, in time, mix with authentic
documents.[208]

We have ourselves witnessed versions of Spanish and Portuguese poets,
which are passed on their unsuspicious readers without difficulty, but
in which no parts of the pretended originals can be traced; and to the
present hour, whatever antiquaries may affirm, the poems of
Chatterton[209] and Ossian[210] are veiled in mystery!

If we possessed the secret history of the literary life of George
Steevens, it would display an unparalleled series of arch deception and
malicious ingenuity. He has been happily characterised by Gifford as
"the Puck of Commentators!" Steevens is a creature so spotted over with
literary forgeries and adulterations, that any remarkable one about the
time he flourished may be attributed to him. They were the habits of a
depraved mind, and there was a darkness in his character many shades
deeper than belonged to Puck; even in the playfulness of his invention
there was usually a turn