Walter Scott. There are moments when I half suspect "the Shirra
himsel" (who blamelessly forged so many extracts from 'Old Plays')
of having composed 'Kinmont Willie.' To compare old Scott of
Satchell's account of Kinmont Willie with the ballad is to feel
uncomfortable doubts. But this is a rank impiety. The last ballad
forgery of much note was the set of sham Macedonian epics and
popular songs (all about Alexander the Great, and other heroes)
which a schoolmaster in the Rhodope imposed on M. Verkovitch. The
trick was not badly done, and the imitation of "ballad slang" was
excellent. The 'Oera Linda' book, too, was successful enough to be
translated into English. With this latest effort of the tenth muse,
the crafty muse of Literary Forgery, we may leave a topic which
could not be exhausted in a ponderous volume. We have not room even
for the forged letters of Shelley, to which Mr. Browning, being
taken in thereby, wrote a preface, nor for the forged letters of Mr.
Ruskin, which occasionally hoax all the newspapers.



BIBLIOMANIA IN FRANCE



The love of books for their own sake, for their paper, print,
binding, and for their associations, as distinct from the love of
literature, is a stronger and more universal passion in France than
elsewhere in Europe. In England publishers are men of business; in
France they aspire to be artists. In England people borrow what
they read from the libraries, and take what gaudy cloth-binding
chance chooses to send them. In France people buy books, and bind