struck with the similarity of certain productions of those writers—at least in their subjects-to the Paradise Lost of Milton, Lauder imagined he should find that our great poet had been directly indebted to them. Failing in this anticipation, he proceeded to the length of inserting into a quotation which he made from the Triumphus Pacis of Staphorstius, no fewer than eight lines, which he took from the Latin translation of the Paradise Lost, made by William Hog, a Scotchman, and published in 1690. He also committed the like fraud, more or less, in several other quotations, and then instituted a violent attack against Milton as a gross plagiarist. These acts were the more inexcusable from being the deliberate and cherished employment of a long course of years, and the partial success which for a time attended them, made their perpetrator unwilling to abandon them, even when they had been fully proved against him, when he had admitted them by a public confession, and when he had experienced some taste of the disgrace and contempt which they brought upon him.

But I am anticipating the final result of a long series of transactions, the full narration of which would occupy too great a space, were I not determined to pass very briefly over the particulars, except as they affect myself, Mr. Cave, and Dr. Johnson.

It was in the Magazine for January 1747 that we gave admission to the first paper by Lauder. It was entitled An Essay on Milton's Imitation of the Moderns, parodying the title of An Essay on Milton's Imitation of the Ancients, published at Edinburgh in 1742. Lauder produced a poem by

Jacobus Masenius, with the suggestion that it had been followed by Milton; and in Feb. p. 82, he presented with the same view the first act of Adamus Exsul, a tragedy by Hugo Grotius. To this was attached a Latin poem in its commendation, written by Janus Douza. Mr. Cave forthwith procured an English paraphrase of the last, "for the benefit of the English reader," as it was passing to the press; and, anxious to put the work of Grotius to the same test, he offered, as a prize for the best translation, in Miltonic verse, of this first act of Grotius's tragedy, “two folio volumes of Du Halde's History of China, (pr., bound, 3 guineas,) or two guineas in money." This invitation proved the command which we still held over the poetasters, for, before the first of May, it was answered by thirteen competitors, and the prize was awarded to J. C.S

Lauder pursued his argument in April, quoting the Poemata Sacra of Andrew Ramsay, 1633; and again in June, with parallel passages of Grotius and Milton. The second act of the Adamus Exsul was printed in the Magazines for July and August; and in the latter (at p. 404) was inserted a copy of Proposals for printing the Adamus Exsul, with an English Version. These proposals, on Mr. Cave's suggestion, were written by the experienced hand of Johnson, who took that interest in Lauder's inquiries, and was so free from suspicion of his honesty, that he further assisted him in the Preface and Postscript of his " Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns," which was finally published as an octavo volume late in 1750. Johnson incurred much obloquy in this transaction, which was attributed to his blind hatred of Milton, arising from political prejudices: on

GENT. MAG. vol. xvii. pp. 254, 302. A copy, "composed from those versions that were sent us," was printed in the Magazine for Jan. 1749; the intention which Mr. Cave had entertained of printing the whole tragedy of Grotius, with an English translation, being then abandoned.

Of this injustice Sir John Hawkins was especially guilty, introducing the long

that point I need make no remark, for Boswell has fully vindicated him; but no one has done justice to the sympathy and kindness which undoubtedly prompted him—and that in spite of his antipathies to the Scotch-to befriend a struggling scholar, who had been unfortunate in the business of tuition, as was once the case with himself. Johnson had no suspicion of the man's honesty: he thought him too much of an enthusiast to be a rogue. With that impartiality which ever characterized Cave in his conduct towards correspondents, and no one, certainly, ever obeyed more implicitly the maxim of Audi alteram partem,-replies to the arguments of Lauder were at once admitted into the Magazine, which, throughout the year 1747 and the beginning of 1748, abounds with personal reflections upon him, both in prose and in verse, for he was at once reproached with malice by the Philo-Miltonists, though not suspected of forgery. But after January 1748 there was a lull in the controversy, so far as our pages were concerned, whether arising from weariness of the subject, or from a difference with Mr. Lauder himself. I believe both causes were in operation. Except by inserting in the Magazine for January, 1749, an English translation of the first act of the Adamus Exsul, composed from the several versions that had been sent us, we maintained silence until the year 1750. The volume for that year contains several other letters upon Lauder, but all in an incredulous and bantering spirit, shewing that his pretensions were greatly suspected; until at last, in November, at p. 528, there appeared this announcement in the list of new books:

"Milton vindicated from Lauder's charge of plagiarism, and Lauder detected of forgery. By John Douglas, M.A. 1s. 6d. Millar. (Lauder has admitted the charge ".)"

Mr. Douglas, who won the credit of refuting this imposture, was the same who was afterwards Bishop of Salisbury. The Rev. John Bowle, of Idmiston, is said to have suggested the clue to him. But when the forgery was at length exposed, we had the mortification to find that we had for nearly two years actually possessed its detection in our own hands. The Rev. Richard Richardson, B.A., of Epping, had been one of the first to come forward in Milton's defence, and he was anxious to reply to Lau

account of Lauder's affair which he gives in his Life of Johnson, pp. 275-285, as "another instance of the enmity of Johnson towards Milton."

"I append, as a literary curiosity, the following Advertisement:

White-Hart, in Pater-Noster Row, London, Nov. 28, 1760.

U immediately sent to

PON the Publication of the Rev. Mr. DOUGLAS'S Defence of Milton, in Answer self from the Charge of Forgery, which Mr. DOUGLAS has brought against him, by producing the Books in Question.

He has this Day admitted the Charge, but with great Insensibility.

We therefore disclaim all Connection with him, and shall for the future sell his Book ONLY as a Master-Piece of Fraud, which the public may be supplied with at 1s. 6d. stitched.

JOHN PAYNE.
JOSEPH BOUQUET.

[The original price of the book had been 3s. 6d.] A copy of "A New Preface by the Booksellers," whieh was written by Dr. Johnson, is placed in the book at the British Museum (1066, i. 24).

In the Magazine for July 1747, p. 322. Mr. Richardson had nearly finished a second letter, when Lauder replied to his first (in the next month, p. 363). This obliged him not only to defend Milton, but himself,-which he did in a third letter; but as there was no longer room in the Magazine, he published all his three letters in the form of a pamphlet, under the title of "Zoilomastix: or a Vindication of Milton from all the invidious Charges of Mr. William Lauder, with several new Remarks on Paradise Lost. By R. Richardson, B.A., late of Clare-Hall, Cambridge. 1747. 8vo." This is not mentioned in Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica, nor in the Bibliographer's GENT. MAG. VOL. CCII. Qq

der's Essay on its publication. He then observed that eight lines which Lauder professed to have taken from Masenius were really from Hog, who wrote twenty years after Milton's death; and so with eight lines professedly taken from Staphorstius; but our unwillingness to suspect so gross a forgery led us to the conclusion that Hog must have copied Masenius to save himself the unnecessary trouble of translating Milton; and, as the controversy was become tedious to our readers, we declined Mr. Richardson's wish to continue it. He was thus deprived of the fair honour he might have acquired as the bold slinger who slew the Philistine.

Johnson, when at length undeceived, took an active part in dictating to Lauder his recantation, (which was published,) as he had previously aided him in his first appeals to the literary world. It was all in vain: the unclean dog returned to his vomit, and in 1754 renewed his attacks on the reputation of Milton, in a pamphlet entitled The Grand Impostor detected, to which Mr. Douglas replied in a second edition of his own pamphlet. This last production of Lauder was briefly reviewed in our vol. xxiv. p. 97,-as Mr. Alexander Chalmers thought, by Johnson; but Mr. Croker is quite right in his opinion that Johnson would have expressed himself with greater energy in the temper he then was. He was too disgusted with the subject to meddle with it again.

THE NORTHMEN IN ENGLANDa.

THE present state of our knowledge, or rather ignorance, of the history of the Northmen in England, is very similar to that which existed respecting our early architecture twenty-five or thirty years ago. At that time Norman buildings of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were regarded as Saxon, and figured in architectural publications as such. Gothic, whether early English or Perpendicular, was only regarded as Gothic; and in the "Gothic" erections of the period the various styles were indiscriminately employed in the same building, and generally with an intermixture of the Greek or Roman styles also: but, thanks to Rickman and his followers, the chaos has been reduced to system, and the means supplied by which we may now discriminate between the various styles, and read the dates of buildings by the alphabet placed within our reach. What has been done for our architecture remains to be done for our ethnology. The largest contributor at Manual of Lowndes, in his list of the Lauder controversy. It put Mr. Richardson to an expense which its sale did not repay; and thus he was discouraged from publishing, at further personal loss, his subsequent discovery of the forgery.

* Masenius was an author not easily to be seen in England: see, in the Magazine for Oct. 1747, p. 485, a letter to say he had been found in the library at Louvaine.

In justice to Mr. Richardson, his letter written on the first publication of Lauder's pamphlet, and dated 28th Jan. 1749, was inserted in the Magazine for Dec. 1750, as a sequel to the account there given of Mr. Douglas's "detection" of the forgery. The following statement which it contains has been overlooked by the biographers of Johnson, though it is remarkable in proof how completely he was deceived:-"The first [passage, that from Masenius] so struck Mr. J—, that the last time I had the pleasure of seeing him, he said he would venture the merits of the cause that Milton had seen Masenius, since it is rendered almost verbum verbo,”

Biographical Dictionary, art. Lauder.

"The Northmen in Cumberland and Westmoreland. By Robert Ferguson." (London: Longman and Co.)

present is Mr. Worsaae; the most recent, Mr. Ferguson, whose essay has been called into existence by Mr. Worsaae's "Danes and Norwegians in England."

Interested in the subject, Mr. Ferguson prepared a popular lecture, embracing the leading facts presented by Mr. Worsaae, and, induced to investigate the subject more deeply, he has presented us with an exceedingly interesting work, the chief object of which is to characterize the marked distinction between the traces left by the Northmen in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, and those that are to be met with in Cumberland and Westmoreland: with regard to the two latter counties, he has started the theory that their colonization was to be derived more particularly from the Norwegian than from the Danish branch of the great Scandinavian family :

"The great stream of Northern adventurers which swept the eastern shore of England appears to have been composed principally of Danes; their descents were made chiefly on the Yorkshire coast, the estuary of the Humber being one of their favourite landingplaces; in the adjacent district were the strongholds of their power, and the number of names of places more purely Danish in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire serves to attest the preponderance of that race over the others in the colonization of this part of the kingdom.

"The first recorded invasion of Cumberland by the Danes from this quarter took place in 875, when an army under the command of Halfdene entered Northumberland, and wintering near the Tyne, took possession of that district, upon which they seem to have made permanent settlements. From thence they made incursions into Cumberland, and even extended their ravages as far as the British kingdom of Strathclyde, in Galloway. In one of these incursions they destroyed the city of Carlisle, which lay in ruins, as it is asserted, till the time of Rufus. Although the main object of these expeditions was, no doubt, plunder, there is every reason to suppose that many of the invaders settled at that period in the district."—(p. 7.)

Up to the present time it has been common to point to Lincolnshire and Yorkshire as the sources from whence flowed the population of Cumberland and adjacent districts, but Mr. Ferguson argues that, although a great number of the Danes, who undoubtedly did invade Cumberland from the eastern shores, became permanent settlers, the far greater portion of the inhabitants were of Norwegian origin, and that the immigration from Norway took place at least a century later than the year A.D. 875. Without pausing to examine the soundness of this theory, we will merely say that the facts and arguments adduced in its favour are full of interest, and well deserve a careful investigation by all who are interested in our Northern antiquities. It will be sufficient for us to point out a few of the principal facts on which this theory is based, of which not the least important part is the nomenclature of the district comprised within the counties forming the subject of this enquiry :

"In Lincolnshire and Yorkshire the names of places are, as it has been observed, more particularly Danish. But as we proceed northwards towards the confines of Cumberland and Westmoreland, a marked change begins to appear in the nomenclature of the district. The names more purely Danish become less frequent, and some of them, as we advance, altogether disappear. On the other hand, Norwegian names become more frequent as we proceed, till we arrive, among the mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland, at a nomenclature which it will be my object to shew is more purely Norwegian. Here, then, is evidently another and a distinct immigration, and it will in the next place be our object to investigate, as well as we are able, the probable source from which this immigration proceeded. Not, as we have just seen, from the district of the ancient Denelaga; still more evidently not across the border from Scotland, for, as Mr. Worsaae has observed, the course of the stream may be distinctly traced as running in the opposite direction. Notwithstanding the strong Scandinavian element to be found in the language of Scotland, and in the character of the Lowland Scots, the

number of Scandinavian names of places is comparatively small, and of these, the most strongly marked are to be found along the Cumberland border, gradually diminishing as we advance further into the interior. It is evident, then, that whatever Scandinavian element exists in the Lowlands of Scotland must have been imparted at an anterior period, and under different circumstances; that a fusion of races had already taken place, and that the more purely Scandinavian colonists from Cumberland made some encroachments upon this territory, which was already settled. The whole Scandinavian tide-mark, so to speak, along the Scottish border, is that of a more recent immigration proceeding from Cumberland, or from the shore of the Solway.

"In the same manner it may be shewn that the Scandinavian colonists of Cumberland could not have proceeded across the island from the opposite coast of Northumberland. Like the Lowlands of Scotland, this county shews strong Scandinavian traces in its dialect, but contains a limited number of Scandinavian names of places, and the boundary of the two counties is scarcely more distinctly marked than the change in their nomenclature."-(pp. 8, 9.)

Were it not for the great uncertainty that exists in clearly distinguishing between the languages of two nations or peoples so closely connected as the Norwegians and Danes, we should be inclined to regard this evidence. conclusive as a proof of the fact sought to be established, as, with reference to the Hellenic cities of Southern Italy, that Magna Græcia was colonized by men from the far distant shores of Asia Minor. We doubt not, however, that further researches will throw much light upon this interesting and important subject. We must refer our readers to Mr. Ferguson's chapter on the sepulchral remains of the Northmen and Runic inscriptions, which deserves more than a cursory notice. We cannot refrain, however, from calling attention to one of those indisputable signs of a common origin for all nations of the earth, of which the apparent impossibility in tracing the links can only be dispelled by the powerful light of philological science:

"There is a class of names common in the district, and which are interesting as probably referring indirectly, if not directly, to that great Assyrian deity, Baal, Bel, or Veli, whose worship, in various forms, extended over almost the whole of the East. We have Hill-bell, Bells, and Green Bells, in Westmoreland; Bell-hill, near Drigg, and Cat-bells, bordering the side of Derwentwater, in Cumberland. Mr. Carr also mentions, in his 'Glossary of the Craven Dialect,' similar hills upon the Yorkshire moors, where fires have once been lighted, as he supposes, in honour of this deity, and which are still called Baal-hills."-(p. 95.)

"The word from which the names in question are, however, more immediately derived, is probably the old Norse and Anglo-Saxon bal, a sacrificial fire, in reference to the fires which used to be lighted upon these hills. None of the names in question shew evidence of a Celtic origin, unless it be Catbells, which might indeed be derived from the Celtic cad, or cat, (a grove,)-Catbells signifying the 'groves of Baal;' but which is more probably so called-in common with other names in the district, as Catsgeam-from the wild-cats with which it was infested; Catbells signifying simply the cat-hills."—(p. 96.)

The significant fact of the root bel being so often found in the proper names of countries between which there is not the least apparent connection, is not the least remarkable feature in this enquiry :

"The name of Helvellyn, the second mountain in England, may perhaps be derived from a similar origin: we find in Norway the names of Belling Fjeld, and Bellinger Fjeld, and the substitution of hill (a word both Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian) for fell, would bring us at once very near the name, the letters b and v being convertible; or if we take the name of Hill-bell, by adding the definite article, we should get Hillbellin, which by a natural euphonic change would make Hellvellyn. While in the language of the Celts we have el, 'a height,' according to Bullet, El-Velin signifying 'the hill of Baal or Veli.' Without, then, pronouncing upon the exact etymology of the name, there seems a probability that it refers directly or remotely to the wide prevailing worship of this deity."-(p. 96.)