George Psalmanazar, Imposter and Penitent

Extract

Should we enter some old-established library of size and respectability, we shall be pretty sure to notice on its topmost shelves the sixty volumes, seldom dusted and never opened, of the Universal History, a vast compilation which appeared between the years 1760 and 1790, and which, though perhaps of no critical value, contains an infinity of matter never brought together before or since. Bishop Warburton, the one-time dictator and tyrant of the world of literature, used to speak with contempt of this work as ‘miserable trash’ and ‘infamous rhapsody’ ; but Gibbon, a very much better judge, says that the excellence of a great part of it is ‘universally admired’, and that some portions of it in particular are ‘executed with erudition, taste, and judgment.’ Now by far the greater number of the volumes in this series that deal with Ancient History were written by the subject of the present sketch, one of the most extraordinary characters the eighteenth or indeed any century ever produced—George Psalmanazar.

What Psalmanazar’s real name was has never been discovered, any more than his parentage and the country and place of his birth. The name he fashioned for himself was taken from that of the Assyrian king mentioned in IV Kings xvii, 3, while the intimate friends of his later years believed him to be a Frenchman born in some part of Languedoc. He appeared in London in 1703, being then about twenty-four years old. His amazing story at once rivetted public attention.