s; and he adds, "so far from this bequest being
one of slight importance, and exhibiting small esteem, it was the
usual mode of expressing a mark of great affection."

LITERARY FORGERIES.

The preceding article has reminded me of a subject by no means incurious
to the lovers of literature. A large volume might be composed on
literary impostors; their modes of deception, however, were frequently
repetitions; particularly those at the restoration of letters, when
there prevailed a _mania_ for burying spurious antiquities, that they
might afterwards be brought to light to confound their contemporaries.
They even perplex us at the present day. More sinister forgeries have
been performed by Scotchmen, of whom Archibald Bower, Lauder, and
Macpherson, are well known.

Even harmless impostures by some unexpected accident have driven an
unwary inquirer out of the course. George Steevens must again make his
appearance for a memorable trick played on the antiquary Gough. This was
the famous tombstone on which was engraved the drinking-horn of
Hardyknute, to indicate his last fatal carouse; for this royal Dane died
drunk! To prevent any doubt, the name, in Saxon characters, was
sufficiently legible. Steeped in pickle to hasten a precocious
antiquity, it was then consigned to the corner of a broker's shop, where
the antiquarian eye of Gough often pored on the venerable odds and ends;
it perfectly succeeded on the "Director of the Antiquarian Society." He
purchased the relic for a trifle, and dissertations of a due size were
preparing for the Archaeologia![212] Gough never forgave himself nor
Steevens for this flagrant act of ineptitude. On every occasion in the
_Gentleman's Magazine_, when compelled to notice this illustrious
imposition, he always struck out his own name, and muffled himself up
under his titular office of "The Director!" Gough never knew that this
"modern antique" was only a piece of retaliation. In reviewing Masters's
Life of Baker he found two heads, one scratched down from painted glass
by George Steevens, who would have passed it off for a portrait of one
of our kings. Gough, on the watch to have a fling at George Steevens,
attacked his graphic performance, and reprobated a portrait which had
nothing human in it! Steevens vowed, that wretched as Gough deemed his
pencil to be, it should make "The Director" ashamed of his own eyes, and
be fairly taken in by something scratched much worse. Such wa