Literary Forgeries (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Literary Forgeries

Perhaps the historical novelist may go too far, despite his privileges. In writing T/ie Monk of Fife, years ago, I professed to have discovered the continuation, in French, of a genuine manuscript account of Jeanne d'arc, begun in Latin by her friend, a Scot, and mysteriously broken off in the middle of a sentence. I even went so far as to forge extracts, in Old French, from the chapel register of St. Catherine of Fierbois, confirmatory of my narrative. Perhaps this was wrong. It was a blunder, if not a crime, for a learned mediaevalist could not make out whether he had a modern novel or a fifteenth century docu ment in his hands, while the novel-reading public exclaimed, Oh, this is a horrid real history!

Let this be a warning to historical novelists. As to poets, if the public will not read their poems, is it likely that they will be read when expressed in Wardour Street English, Wardour Street spelling, and attributed to a monk of the fourteenth century? Chatterton was guilty of a blunder as well as a crime, with his old Rowley the monk.

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