ions of the
clergy.

The Morocco ambassador purchased of him a copper bracelet of Fatima,
which Medina proved by the Arabic inscription and many certificates to
be genuine, and found among the ruins of the Alhambra, with other
treasures of its last king, who had hid them there in hope of better
days. This famous bracelet turned out afterwards to be the work of
Medina's own hand, made out of an old brass candlestick!

George Psalmanazar, to whose labours we owe much of the great Universal
History, exceeded in powers of deception any of the great impostors of
learning. His Island of Formosa was an illusion eminently bold,[44] and
maintained with as much felicity as erudition; and great must have been
that erudition which could form a pretended language and its grammar,
and fertile the genius which could invent the history of an unknown
people: it is said that the deception was only satisfactorily
ascertained by his own penitential confession; he had defied and
baffled the most learned.[45] The literary impostor Lauder had much more
audacity than ingenuity, and he died contemned by all the world.[46]
Ireland's "Shakspeare" served to show that commentators are not blessed,
necessarily, with an interior and unerring tact.[47] Genius and learning
are ill directed in forming literary impositions, but at least they must
be distinguished from the fabrications of ordinary impostors.

A singular forgery was practised on Captain Wilford by a learned Hindu,
who, to ingratiate himself and his studies with the too zealous and
pious European, contrived, among other attempts, to give the history of
Noah and his three sons, in his "Purana," under the designation of
Satyavrata. Captain Wilford having _read_ the passage, transcribed it
for Sir William Jones, who translated it as a curious extract; the whole
was an interpolation by the dexterous introduction of a forged sheet,
discoloured and prepared for the purpose of deception, and which, having
served his purpose for the moment, was afterwards withdrawn. As books in
India are not bound, it is not difficult to introduce loose leaves. To
confirm his various impositions, this learned forger had the patience to
write two voluminous sections, in which he connected all the legends
together in the style of the _Puranas_, consisting of 12,000 lines. When
Captain Wilford resolved to collate the manuscript with others, the
learned Hindu began to disfigure his own manuscript, the captain's, and