--we must place a man well known in the literary
world under the assumed name of George Psalmanazar. He composed his
autobiography as the penance of contrition, not to be published till he
was no more, when all human motives have ceased which might cause his
veracity to be suspected. The life is tedious; but I have curiously
traced the progress of the mind in an ingenious imposture, which is
worth preservation. The present literary forgery consisted of
personating a converted islander of Formosa: a place then little known
but by the reports of the Jesuits, and constructing a language and a
history of a new people and a new religion, entirely of his own
invention! This man was evidently a native of the south of France;
educated in some provincial college of the Jesuits, where he had heard
much of their discoveries of Japan; he had looked over their maps, and
listened to their comments. He forgot the manner in which the Japanese
wrote; but supposed, like orientalists, they wrote from the right to the
left, which he found difficult to manage. He set about excogitating an
alphabet; but actually forgot to give names to his letters, which
afterwards baffled him before literary men.

He fell into gross blunders; having inadvertently affirmed that the
Formosans sacrificed eighteen thousand male infants annually, he
persisted in not lessening the number. It was proved to be an
impossibility in so small an island, without occasioning a depopulation.
He had made it a principle in this imposture never to vary when he had
once said a thing. All this was projected in haste, fearful of detection
by those about him.

He was himself surprised at his facility of invention, and the progress
of his forgery. He had formed an alphabet, a considerable portion of a
new language, a grammar, a new division of the year into twenty months,
and a new religion! He had accustomed himself to write his language; but
being an inexpert writer with the unusual way of writing backwards, he
found this so difficult, that he was compelled to change the complicated
forms of some of his letters. He now finally quitted his home, assuming
the character of a Formosan convert, who had been educated by the
Jesuits. He was then in his fifteenth or sixteenth year. To support his
new character, he practised some religious mummeries; he was seen
worshipping the rising and setting sun. He made a prayer-book with rude
drawings of the sun, moon, and stars, to which he add