invented most of the situations in the Odyssey and Iliad. According
to this theory the 'cooker' of the extant epics was far the greatest
and most successful of all literary impostors, for he deceived the
whole world, from Plato downwards, till he was exposed by Mr. Paley.
There are times when one is inclined to believe that Plato must have
been the forger himself, as Bacon (according to the other
hypothesis) was the author of Shakespeare's plays. Thus "Plato the
wise, and large-browed Verulam," would be "the first of those who"
forge! Next to this prodigious imposture, no doubt, the false
'Letters of Phalaris' are the most important of classical forgeries.
And these illustrate, like most literary forgeries, the extreme
worthlessness of literary taste as a criterion of the authenticity
of writings. For what man ever was more a man of taste than Sir
William Temple, "the most accomplished writer of the age," whom Mr.
Boyle never thought of without calling to mind those happy lines of
Lucretius, -


Quem tu, dea, tempore in omni
Omnibus ornatum voluisti excellere rebus.


Well, the ornate and excellent Temple held that "the Epistles of
Phalaris have more race, more spirit, more force of wit and genius,
than any others he had ever seen, either ancient or modern." So
much for what Bentley calls Temple's "Nicety of Tast." The greatest
of English scholars readily proved that Phalaris used (in the spirit
of prophecy) an idiom which did not exist to write about matters in
his time not invented, but "many centuries younger than he." So let
the Nicety of Temple's Tast and its absolute failure be a warning to