RICARDUS CORINENSIS. 193 



It need not excite our wonder that what is thus set forth by the 

 highest antiquarian authorities, is taught without hesitation in schools 

 and colleges. The maps provided for them are supplemented with 

 names derived from Kichard's Itinerary ; and the authoritative book of 

 reference on Ancient Geography produced under the editorship of Dr. 

 William Smith, presents to every student of Roman Britain a text in 

 which Richard of Cirencester amends Ptolemy, overrides Tacitus, and 

 mingles truth and fable in inextricable confusion. 



The difficulties of the Romano-British antiquary have been perplex- 

 ing enough ; but once he fully awakes to the worthlessness of this 

 long accepted authority, the complexities attendant on his researches will 

 be wonderfully multiplied : when he is compelled to be on his guard in 

 every reference to his authorities, for more than a century subsequent 

 to the year 1748, lest he too be cheated with the chaff they have thus 

 persistently mingled with the true grains of knowledge. 



So recently as 1858, Mr. Henry MacLauchlan's " Survey of the 

 Roman "Wall" issued from the press, in fulfilment of the liberal pur- 

 pose of the late Duke of Northumberland. There Richard of Ciren- 

 cester is referred to, along with Nenuius and Bede, without a doubt 

 being hinted as to the one being less genuine than the other; and on 

 the elaborately executed maps of the survey the names of Roman 

 stations are taken as freely from Richard as from any other authority. 

 The same is true of the maps of the Ordnance Survey; of Mr. C. C, 

 Babbington's Map of Roman Cambridgeshire ; and indeed of nearly 

 every map of Roman Britain published during the present century. 



So far, then, it is obvious that, if the " De Situ Britannise," ascribed 

 to Richard of Cirencester be indeed one of the literary forgeries of the 

 eighteenth century, produced in that age of perverse ingenuity which 

 gave birth to Hardyknute, Ossian, Rowley, and other poetic creations 

 of the same class : its fabricator had his abundant reward. His success 

 is, indeed, without a parallel in the history of literary frauds : unless 

 we go back to a time little less modern than that of the Westminster 

 monk, when Ingulfs reputed History of his Abbey of Croyland, and 

 its Saxon charters, — including the Golden Charter of Ethelbald, res- 

 plendent with illuminations wholly unknown in Saxon times; — were 

 produced in A.D. 1415, by Prior Richard, to the discomfiture of his 

 opponents, when prosecuting a suit in the King's Court, against those 

 who were treating his ecclesiastical sentence of excommunication with 

 open contempt. Hickes, in his Dissertatio Epistolaris, inclines to 

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