371 



In our own times, too, we have the same monomania as that of John 

 Annius de Yiterbo and Father Higuera forcing itself obtrusively on 

 public attention, and manifesting opeuly and shamelessly the same per- 

 version of moral feeling, the same utter unconsciousness of all difference 

 and distinction between truth and falsehood. "We have all the ancient 

 devices of literary impostors imitated by modern ones. We have the 

 fabrication in America within the last quarter of a century, of " The Book 

 of Mormon," by Mr. Joseph Smith; and we have the concoction of lite- 

 rary frauds in Ireland within the same period, by another monomaniac, 

 half lunatic, half knave, Mr. Eoger O'Connor, in " The Chronicles of Eri." 



We have the still later impudent forgeries of prophecies ascribed to 

 Columbkille — adapted to the political circumstances of our own times, 

 and the agencies of the leading actors in them. To be enabled to expose 

 these . scandalous impostures in the pages of a periodical of this citj, in 

 1858, I was indebted to the invaluable aid of the late John 0' Donovan, 

 whose generous services were ever readily and gratuitously given for any 

 similar legitimate object. 



At the close of the last century, we had Ghatterton, whose name can 

 never be recalled without feelings of emotion very different from those 

 which are excited by recollections of any others of those concocters of 

 literary frauds I have referred to. In the early part of this century we 

 have the younger Ireland and his laborious literary frauds ; but these 

 must be classed in a different order from those ancient ones I have dealt 

 with — they were perpetrated evidently for gain, and the perpetrators 

 were sane enough to pursue their unscrupulous occupations successfully 

 for some time. 



It is impossible, however, to doubt the insanity of the class of im- 

 postors I have referred to in the preceding pages. I by no means desire 

 to be understood as being of opinion that persons of a low order of in- 

 tellect, and destitute of moral principles, giving themselves up to lying 

 habitually for the pleasure of lying, or the object merely of falsification 

 of facts, with a view to the embellishment of the circumstances that 

 surround them, for the sake of notoriety or of some unfair advantage, 

 are necessarily monomaniacs. My wish is to express the strong convic- 

 tion on my mind that men of considerable abilities and acquirements, 

 who make forgery and falsehood the great business and labour of their 

 lives, not for the sake of pecuniary gain — not for the accomplishment of 

 any political purpose or ambitious project — but for the gratification of 

 morbid feelings of pride and vain-glor^^ — that seek no better triumph than 

 over truth, and no greater achievement than an imposture by which con- 

 siderable numbers of intelligent and erudite people are deceived — labour 

 under that form of insanity which is called monomania. 



