Hoaxes.

HOAXES .

( Continued from p . 31 . ) HOAXING A BEPOETEB . —Mr . James Grant , in his "History of the Newspaper Press , " describes a mistake which was the outcome of a hoax played by one reporter upon another in the House of Commons . It was at the beginning of the present century , and the occasion was a debate on the question of the employment of English labourers , and being unusually dull , a drowsy reporter named Morgan O'Sullivan , just imported from Tipperary , asked the only other reporter in the gallery to allow him afterwards to copy

his notes , as during the proceedings he intended to tako a nap . The other , Peter Finnerty , agreed , and Morgan soon dropped into a sound sleep , from which he did not wake for an hour , when he immediately questioned his friend as to whether anything of importance had transpired . Finnerty , seeing a good chance for a joke , said that a very important discussion had taken place upon the virtues of the Irish potato , and described one speech in such glowing terms that Morgan became thoroughly excited , and was eager to take down the particulars .

Peter , affecting to read from his note-book , commenced thus : — " The honourable member said that if—" "Be aisy a little bit , " interrupted Morgan , " who was the honourable member ? " Peter , hesitating for a moment— " Was it his name you asked ? Sure it

was Mr . Wilberforce , " and continued : " Mr . Wilbeforce said that it always appeared to him beyond all question that the great cause why the Irish labourers were , as a body , so much stronger and capable of enduring so much greater physical fatigue than the English , was the surpassing virtues of their potato . And he— "

" Peter , my dear fellow , " shouted Morgan , at the mention of the Irish potato , " this is so important that we must give it in the first person . " Peter then resumed : — " And I have no doubt that had it been my lot to be reared in Ireland , where my food would have principally consisted of the potato—that most nutritious and salubrious root—instead of being a poor , infirm , shrivelled , stunted creature you , Sir , and honourable gentlemen , now behold me , I would have been a tall , stout athletic man , and able to carry an enormous weight . "

Here Morgan O'Sullivan observed , looking his friend eagerly in the face , " Faith , Peter , and that ' s what I call thrue eloquence ! Go on . " " I hold , " continued Mr . Wilberforce , " that root to be invaluable ; and the man who first cultivated it in Ireland I regard as a benefactor of the first magnitude to his country . And more than that , my decided opinion is that never until we grow potatoes in England in sufficient quantities to feed all our labourers , will those labourers be so able-bodied a class as the Irish . ( ' Hear , hear I' from both sides of the House . )"

Peter went away direct to the office of the paper , the " Morning Chronicle , '' for which he was employed ; while Morgan , in perfect ecstasies at the eulogium which had been pronounced on the virtues of the potatoes of " ould Ireland , " ran in breathless haste to a publichouse , where the reporters , who should have been on duty for the other morning papers , were assembled , and having communicated to them the important speoch which they had by their absence missed , they asked him to read over his notes to them , which

Morgan readily did . They copied them verbatim , and not being at the time in the best possible condition for judging of the probability of Mr . Wilberforce delivering such a speech , they repaired to their respective offices , and actually gave a copy of it into the hands of the printer . Next morning it appeared in all the papers except the one with which Peter Finnerty was connected . The sensation and surprise it created in town exceeded everything . Had it only appeared in one or two of the papers , persons of ordinary intelligence

must at once have concluded that there was some mistake about the matter . But its appearing in all of the journals except one , and that one at the time not so well known as at other periods of its history , the fact forced , as it were , people to the conclusion that it must have been actually spoken . The inference was plain—a strait-jacket and a keeper for Mr . Wilberforce . In the evening the House met as usual , and Mr . Wilberforce , on the Speaker taking the chair , rose and begged the indulgence of the House for a few

moments to a matter which concerned it , as well as himself personally . "Every honourable member , " he observed , " has doubtless read the speech which I am represented as having made on the previous night . With the permission of the House I will read it . " ( Here the honourable member read the speech , amid deafening roars of laughter . ) " I can assure honourable members that no one could have read this speech with more surprise than I myself did this morning when I found the papers on my breakfast table . For

myself , personally , I care but little about it , though if I were capable of uttering such nonsense as is here put into my mouth , it is high time that , instead of being a member of this House , I were an inmate of some lunatic asylum . It is for the dignity of this House that I feel concerned ; for if honourable members were capable of listening to such nonsense , supposing me capable of giving expression to it , it were much more appropriate to call this a theatre for the performance of farces than a place for the legislative deliberations of the representatives of the nation . "

It was proposed by some members to call the printers of che different papers in which the speech appeared to the bar of the House for a breach of privilege , but the matter was eventually allowed to drop .

A CUBIOUS PAVEMENT . —According to Warton , the laureate , that eminent antiquary and collector of ancient books and manuscripts Thomas Hearne was once made the subject of a waggish trick . There was an ale house at Oxford , known by the sign of " Whittington and his Cat , " and here the antiquary was taken ono night that he might see a newly-discovered tesselated Roman pavement in the kitchen of the house . This , which was nothing more than the floor curiously paved with the bones of sheeps' trotters neatly

arranged in compartments , did not impress him favourably ab first sight as to its ancient origin ; but , being reminded that the Standsfield Roman pavement upon which he had just finished a dissertation was dedicated to Bacchus , his doubts wero easily removed , and he quaffed bumper after bumper of the best ale the house could afford in honour of the pagan god .

As the liquor began to assert its potency , the faith and enthusiasm of the antiquary increased , and he became thoroughly convinced of the ancient character of the pavement . He accordingly went down on his knees to make a closer inspection , but was so completely overcome that he was obliged to lie on the floor till the discoverers of the pavement assisted him home to his lodgings , and saw him safely put to bed .

NEWSI ' APEB HOAX AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM . —Au account of the celebrated hoax in connection with the " English Mercurie , " is thus described in Chambers ' s "Book of Days " : —We fancied wc possessed in our great National Library at the British Museum a real printed English newspaper two centuries and a half old : Among the Sloane MSS . is a volume containing what purported to be three numbers of tho " English Mercurie , " a newspaper

Hoaxes.

published in 1588 : they profess to be Nos . 50 , 52 , and 54 of a series , and they give numerous particulars of the Spanish Armada . Where they had remained for two centuries nobody knew ; but they began to be talked about at the close of the last century—first in Chalmer ' s " Life of Ruddiman , " then in the " Gentleman ' s Magazine , " then in Nichols ' " Literary Anecdotes , " then in D'Israeli ' s " Curiosities of Literature , " then in tho English Edition of " Beckmann , " then in various English and foreign

Encyclopedias , and then , of course , in the cheap popular periodicals . So tho public faith remained firm that the " English Mercurie " was the earliest English newspaper . The fair edifice was , however , thrown down in 1839 . Mr . Thomas Watts , the able assistant librarian at the British Museum , on subjecting the sheets to a critical examination , found abundant evidence that the theory of their antiquity was not tenable . Manuscript copies of

three numbers are bound up in the same volume , and from a scrutiny of the paper , the ink , the handwriting , the type ( which he recognised as belonging to tho Caslon foundry ) , the literary style , the spelling , the blunders in fact and in date , and the corrections , Mr . Watts came to the conclusion that the so-called " English Mercurie " was printed in the latter half of the last century .

The evidence in support of this opinion was collected in a letter addressed to Mr . Panizzi , afterwards printed for private circulation . Eleven years later , in 1850 , Mr . Watts furnished to the "Gentleman ' s Magazine " the reasons which led him to think that the fraud had been perpetrated by Philip York , second Earl of Hardwicke ; in other words , that the earl , for some purpose not now easy to surmise , had written certain paragraphs in a

seemingly Elizabethan style , and caused them to be printed as if belonging to a newspaper of 1588 . Be this as it may concerning the identity of the writer , all who now look at the written and printed sheets agree that they are not what they profess to be ; and thus a pretty bit of national complacency is set aside ; for we have become ashamed of our " English Mercurie . "

THE BOTTLE HOAX . —We are told in the "Gentleman ' s and Scot ' s Magazine" ( 1749 ) that there took place in London a bubble or hoax , which somewhat agitated the public mind . A person * advertised that he would , on the evening of 16 th January 1749 , at the Haymarket Theatre , play on a common walking cane the music of every instrument then used , to surprising perfection ; that he would , on the stage , get into a tavern quart bottle , without equivocation , and while there sing several songs , and suffer any

spectator to handle the bottle ; that if any spectators should go masked , he would , if requested , declare who they were ; and that in a private room , he would produce the representation of any person dead , with which the person requesting it should converse for some minutes , as if alive . The prices proposed for this show were—Gallery , 2 s ; pit , 3 s ; boxes , 5 s ; stage , 7 s 6 d . At the proper time the house was crowded with curious people , many of them of the highest rank , including no less eminent a person than the Culloden

Duke of Cumberland-t They sat for a little while with tolerable patience , though uncheered with music ; but by-and-bye , the performer not appearing , signs of irritation were evinced . In answer to a sounding with sticks and catcalls , a person belonging to the theatre came forward and explained that in the event of a failure of performance , the money should be returned . A wag then cried out that if the ladies and gentlemen would give double prices , the conjurer would go into a pint bottie , which proved too much for the philosophy of the audience . A young gentleman threw a lighted candle upon

the stage , and a general charge upon that part of the house followed . According to a private letter , to which we have had access ( it was written by a Scotch Jacobite lady ) , " Cumberland was the first that flew into a rage , and called to pull down the house He drew his sword , and was in such a rage that somebody slipped in behind him and pulled the sword out of his hand , which was as much as to say , ' Fools should not have chopping sticks . ' This sword of his has never been heard tell of , nor the person who took it . Thirty guineas of reward are offered for it . Monster of Nature , I am sure I wish he may never get it ! "

The greater part of the audience made their way out of the theatre , some losing a cloak , others a hat , others a wig , and others hat , wig and swords also . One party , however , stayed in the house in order to demolish the inside ; when , the mob breaking in , they tore up the benches , broke to pieces the scenes , pulled down the boxes , in short dismantled the theatre entirely , carrying away the particulars above mentioned into the street , where they made a mighty bonfire , the curtain being hoisted in the middle of it by way of flag .

There is a want of explanation as to the intentions of this conjurer . The proprietor of the theatre afterwards stated that , in apprehension of failure , he had reserved all the money taken , in order to give it back , and he would have returned it to the audience if they would have stayed their hands from destroying his house . It therefore would appear that either money was not the object aimed at , or , if aimed at , was not attained by the conjurer . Most probably he only meant to try an experiment on the credulity of the public .

The bottle hoax proved an excellent subject for the wits , particularly those of the Jacobite party . The following advertisement appeared in the paper called "Old England " : — "Found entangled in a slit of a lady's demolished smock-petticoat , a gilt-handled sword of martial temper and length , not much the worse of wearing , with the Spey curiously engraven on one side , and the Scheldt on the other ; supposed to be taken from the fat sides of a certain great general in his hasty retreat from the Battle of Bottlenoodles in the Haymarket . Whoever has lost it may inquire at the sign of the Bird and Singing Lane in Potter's Bow .

UTOPIA . —An unconscious hoax was perpetrated by Sir Thomas More when his visionary romance of Utopia was first issued , the imaginary description of an island supposed to have been discovered in America being accepted with credulous innocence even by learned men of the day who ought to have known better . . , Cresacre More , who wrote the life of his ancestor ( Sir Thomas ) ,

accentuates the above fact . He says : — " But the book that carrieth the prize of all his Latin works of witty invention in his ' Utopia . ' Many great learned men , as Budtuus and others , upon a fervent zeal , wished that some excellent divines might be sent thither to preach Christ ' s Gospel ; yea , there were learned divines here among us at home very desirous to undertake the voyage ! "

THE CASTLE OP OTKANTO . —This story was first published in the year 1764 , by Horace Walpole anonymously , as a work found in the library of an ancient Roman Catholic family in tho north of England , and printed at Naples in black letter , in 1529 . " I wished it to be believed ancient , and