offer his wares for a million of money to the British Museum; or
when he tries to palm off his Samaritan Gospel on the "Bad
Samaritan" of the Bodleian. Next we come to playful frauds, or
frauds in their origin playful, like (perhaps) the Shakespearian
forgeries of Ireland, the supercheries of Prosper Merimee, the sham
antique ballads (very spirited poems in their way) of Surtees, and
many other examples. Occasionally it has happened that forgeries,
begun for the mere sake of exerting the imitative faculty, and of
raising a laugh against the learned, have been persevered with in
earnest. The humorous deceits are, of course, the most pardonable,
though it is difficult to forgive the young archaeologist who took
in his own father with false Greek inscriptions. But this story may
be a mere fable amongst archaeologists, who are constantly accusing
each other of all manner of crimes. Then there are forgeries by
"pushing" men, who hope to get a reading for poems which, if put
forth as new, would be neglected. There remain forgeries of which
the motives are so complex as to remain for ever obscure. We may
generally ascribe them to love of notoriety in the forger; such
notoriety as Macpherson won by his dubious pinchbeck Ossian. More
difficult still to understand are the forgeries which real scholars
have committed or connived at for the purpose of supporting some
opinion which they held with earnestness. There is a vein of
madness and self-deceit in the character of the man who half-
persuades himself that his own false facts are true. The Payne
Collier case is thus one of the most difficult in the world to
explain, for it is equally hard to suppose that Mr. Payne Collier
was taken in by the notes on the folio he gave the world, and to
hold that he was himself guilty of forgery to support his own
opinions.