180 RICARDUS CORINENSIS. 



to Frederick, Crown Prince of Denmark, who, witliin less than three 

 years thereafter, succeeded his father on the throne of Denmark and 

 Norway, by the title of Frederick Y. The English princess won uni- 

 versal good-will by her simple, unaffected manners, in striking contrast 

 to the exclusiveness and formal etiquette which had prevailed during 

 the previous reign. She gave an heir to the throne, in the Crown 

 Prince, afterwards Christian VII. ; but within two years the Danes had 

 to lament her death, in giving birth to another son. 



Among the attendants who constituted the retinue of this royal 

 daughter of England, there went to Copenhagen one Bertram, a silk 

 dyer, and with him, if not earlier, his son, Charles Julius, a youth who 

 by-and-by achieved for himself, in very questionable fashion, a notable 

 reputation among European scholars. 



The age was one of much literary ingenuity, and of not a little suc- 

 cessful imposture. The prevailing ideas in reference to historical evi- 

 dence were so vague and crude, that the most barefaced literary frauds 

 obtained ready acceptance even among scholars and critics ; and their 

 exposure brought little or no discredit on their perpetrators. One well- 

 known example of literary masqueradicg will suflice to illustrate this 

 curious phase of the eighteenth century. Lady Wardlaw, of Pitreavie, 

 the wife of a Scottish Baronet, found, according to her own account, in 

 a vault of Dunfermline Abbey, or elsewhere, an ancient manuscript 

 containing the greater part of the heroic ballad of " Hardyknute.'' 

 This was published in 1719 as a genuine antique, at the joint expense 

 of Lord President Forbes and Sir Gilbert Elliot, of Minto ; and figured 

 at a later date, in Percy's " Beliques of Ancient English Poetry," as 

 " a Scottish fragment : a fine morsel of heroic poetry.^' After a time 

 some less credulous critics began to suspect the modern authorship ; 

 and Lady Wardlaw, without distinctly admitting it, practically con- 

 firmed their judgment by producing additional stanzas. Still later, 

 Lord Hailes — who had persisted in the opinion that the ballad was 

 ancient, though retouched and much enlarged by its professed dis- 

 coverer, — is said Ly Bishop Percy to have communicated extracts of a 

 letter from Sir John Bruce, of Kinross, the year after his death in 

 1766, "which plainly proved the pretended discoverer of the fragment 

 of Hardyhiute to have been himself." According to the earlier 

 account. Lady Wardlaw " pretended she had found this poem, written 

 on shreds of paper employed for what is called the bottoms of clues." 

 But Lord Hailes furnishes this quotation from the letter asserted to 



