Formosan alphabet! In his conferences before the Royal Society with a
Jesuit just returned from China, the Jesuit had certain strong
suspicions that our hero was an impostor. The good father remained
obstinate in his own conviction, but could not satisfactorily
communicate it to others; and Psalmanazar, after politely asking pardon
for the expression, complains of the Jesuit that "HE _lied most
impudently," mentitur impudentissime!_ Dr. Mead absurdly insisted
Psalmanazar was a Dutchman or a German; some thought him a Jesuit in
disguise, a tool of the non-jurors; the Catholics thought him bribed by
the Protestants to expose their church; the Presbyterians that he was
paid to explode their doctrine, and cry up episcopacy! This fabulous
history of Formosa seems to have been projected by his artful prompter
Innes, who put Varenius into Psalmanazar's hands to assist him;
trumpeted forth in the domestic and foreign papers an account of this
converted Formosan; maddened the booksellers to hurry the author, who
was scarcely allowed two months to produce this extraordinary volume;
and as the former accounts which the public possessed of this island
were full of monstrous absurdities and contradictions, these assisted
the present imposture. Our forger resolved not to describe new and
surprising things as they had done, but rather studied to clash with
them, probably that he might have an opportunity of pretending to
correct them. The first edition was immediately sold; the world was more
divided than ever in opinion; in a second edition he prefixed a
vindication!--the unhappy forger got about twenty guineas for an
imposture, whose delusion spread far and wide! Some years afterwards
Psalmanazar was engaged in a minor imposture; one man had persuaded him
to father a white composition called the _Formosan japan!_ which was to
be sold at a high price! It was curious for its whiteness, but it had
its faults. The project failed, and Psalmanazar considered the
miscarriage of the _white Formosan japan_ as a providential warning to
repent of all his impostures of Formosa!

Among these literary forgeries may be classed several ingenious ones
fabricated for a _political_ purpose. We had certainly numerous ones
during our civil wars in the reign of Charles the First. This is not the
place to continue the controversy respecting the mysterious _Eikon
Basilike_, which has been ranked among them, from the ambiguous claim of
Gauden.[219] A recent