uthor:--"_Writers_
who never visited foreign countries, and _travellers_ who have run
through immense regions with fleeting pace, have given us long accounts
of various countries and people; evidently collected from the idle
reports and absurd traditions of the ignorant vulgar, from whom only
they could have received those relations which we see accumulated with
such undiscerning credulity."

Some authors have practised the singular imposition of announcing a
variety of titles of works preparing for the press, but of which nothing
but the titles were ever written.

Paschal, historiographer of France, had a reason for these ingenious
inventions; he continually announced such titles, that his pension for
writing on the history of France might not be stopped. When he died, his
historical labours did not exceed six pages!

Gregorio Leti is an historian of much the same stamp as Varillas. He
wrote with great facility, and hunger generally quickened his pen. He
took everything too lightly; yet his works are sometimes looked into for
many anecdotes of English history not to be found elsewhere; and perhaps
ought not to have been there if truth had been consulted. His great aim
was always to make a book: he swells his volumes with digressions,
intersperses many ridiculous stories, and applies all the repartees he
collected from old novel-writers to modern characters.

Such forgeries abound; the numerous "Testaments Politiques" of Colbert,
Mazarin, and other great ministers, were forgeries usually from the
Dutch press, as are many pretended political "Memoirs."

Of our old translations from the Greek and Latin authors, many were
taken from French versions.

The Travels, written in Hebrew, of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, of which we
have a curious translation, are, I believe, apocryphal. He describes a
journey, which, if ever he took, it must have been with his night-cap
on; being a perfect dream! It is said that to inspirit and give
importance to his nation, he pretended that he had travelled to all the
synagogues in the East; he mentions places which he does not appear ever
to have seen, and the different people he describes no one has known. He
calculates that he has found near eight hundred thousand Jews, of which
about half are independent, and not subjects of any Christian or Gentile
sovereign. These fictitious travels have been a source of much trouble
to the learned; particularly to those who in their zeal to authentica