a hundred other motives
which may easily be imagined, and of which a list has been drawn up:[81]
the "pseudepigraphic" literature of antiquity and the middle ages is
enormous. There are, in addition, documents which are forged from
beginning to end; the forgers have naturally furnished them with very
precise indications of their alleged authorship. Verification is
therefore necessary. But how is it to be had? When the apparent
authorship of a document is suspected, we use for its verification the
same method which serves to fix, as far as possible, the origin of
documents which are furnished with no indications at all on this head.
As the procedure is the same in both cases, it is not necessary to
distinguish further between them.

I. The chief instrument used in the investigation of authorship is the
_internal analysis_ of the document under consideration, performed with
a view to bring out any indications it may contain of a nature to supply
information about the author, and the time and place in which he lived.

First of all we examine the handwriting of the document. Saint
Bonaventura was born in 1221; if poems attributed to him are contained
in manuscripts executed in the eleventh century, we have in this
circumstance an excellent proof that the attribution is ill-founded: no
document of which there exists a copy in eleventh-century handwriting
can be posterior in date to the eleventh century. Then we examine the
language. It is known that certain forms have only been used in certain
places and at certain dates. Most forgers have betrayed themselves by
ignorance of facts of this kind; they let slip modern words or phrases.
It has been possible to establish the fact that certain Phoenician
inscriptions, found in South America, were earlier than a certain German
dissertation on a point of Phoenician syntax. In the case of official
instruments we examine the formulae. If a document which purports to be a
Merovingian charter does not exhibit the ordinary formulae of genuine
Merovingian charters it must be spurious. Lastly, we note all the
positive data which occur in the document--the facts which are mentioned
or alluded to. When these facts are otherwise known, from sources which
a forger could not have had at his disposal, the _bona fides_ of the
document is established, and the date fixed approximately between the
most recent event of which the author shows knowledge, and the next
following event which he does no