moment for the literary forger; but it is improbable that any
forgery of the period has escaped detection. Three or four years
ago some one published a book to show that the 'Annals of Tacitus'
were written by Poggio Bracciolini. This paradox gained no more
converts than the bolder hypothesis of Hardouin. The theory of
Hardouin was all that the ancient classics were productions of a
learned company which worked, in the thirteenth century, under
Severus Archontius. Hardouin made some exceptions to his sweeping
general theory. Cicero's writings were genuine, he admitted, so
were Pliny's, of Virgil the Georgics; the satires and epistles of
Horace; Herodotus, and Homer. All the rest of the classics were a
magnificent forgery of the illiterate thirteenth century, which had
scarce any Greek, and whose Latin, abundant in quantity, in quality
left much to be desired.

Among literary forgers, or passers of false literary coin, at the
time of the Renaissance, Annius is the most notorious. Annius (his
real vernacular name was Nanni) was born at Viterbo, in 1432. He
became a Dominican, and (after publishing his forged classics) rose
to the position of Maitre du Palais to the Pope, Alexander Borgia.
With Caesar Borgia it is said that Annius was never on good terms.
He persisted in preaching "the sacred truth" to his highness and
this (according to the detractors of Annius) was the only use he
made of the sacred truth. There is a legend that Caesar Borgia
poisoned the preacher (1502), but people usually brought that charge
against Caesar when any one in any way connected with him happened
to die. Annius wrote on the History and Empire of the Turks, who
took Constantinople in his time; but he is better remembered by his
'Antiquitatum Variarum Volumina XVII. cum comment. Fr. Jo. Annii.'
These fragments of antiquity included, among many other desirable