The daily Alaskan., 1909-12-30
LITERARY F0RGERIES
Versatility and CIevernesS of a
 ShreWd Scotch Lad.
FOOLED THE CoNNOISSEURs.

Documents In Protuslon to supply
 the Demand and Was Finally Ex-
 posed by a Simple Little Slip.
 From the days of Isldor Mercater, who forged letters of the bishops of Rome with such skill and success that they were treasured for centuries in the Roman archives, to the days of Ireland, the notorious forger of Shake spearean plays and letters, and Chat terton. the clever and i'll fated boy who died miserably In his attic, there have never been wanting unprlncipled men who could forge ancient manu- scripts so cleyer'y that leading experts have been deceived.
 But for versatility and cleverness none of these forgers of past centuries could approach the cleyerness of a young Scotchman who years ago pro- duced a long succession of forged man. uscripts which completely bafled the counolsseurs of the world. The true and full story of these remarkable forgerlcs is almost unknown and is so extraordinary that 1t may well be told.
 It was in Edinburgh that this in- comparable forger practiced his arts, and 1t was by an accident that he was tempted to embark on a career which, after a spell of great success, involved him in disaster. One day the princi- pal of an Edinburgh firm of lawyers told one of his clerks to clear out sev- eral boxes full of old documents the accumulation of many years. Among them were several documents and au- tographs the value of which the clerk was quick to recognize, and he had no difficulty in finding purchasers for them. As the supply was limited and the demand constantly increasing 1t occurred to him to supplement the gen uine documents with others of his own manufacture, and as he developed a remarkable skill in forging and had already won the confidence of a large number of collectors he found 1t easy to dispose of as many forgeries as he could produce at very profitable prices.
 Many of them were sold to collectors in different parts of the world, others were disposed of by auction, and the remainder were pawned and sold as unredeemed pledges. These forgeries covered very wide range and includ- ed autographs and letters by Crom- well, Mary. queen of Scots; James VI, Prince Charlie, John Knox, Rob Roy, Burns. Scott. ThuckcrNy Carlyle, Sails bury. Gladstone, Lord Nelson and many other men of note as well as vast quantities of JOcoblte correspond cuce.
 So cleverly were the forgerles exc cuted that the largest purchaser of Scotts letters was gentleman who as a boy had carried most of the great authors manuscripts from Abbotsford to his Edinburgh publishers and was as familiar with Scotts handwriting as his own, and the head of the firm that published Lord Byron's works purchased fOrty-seven letters purport- ing to be Lord Byron's for the sum of l125 Is. Cd. A very large collection of these manuscripts was purchased for a sum of over E4,OOO and presented to the Lenox library, New York, where they were for some time regarded with reverence as the chief treasure of the library, and another collection was presented to the city of Edinburgh.
 Although these forgerles were pour ed on the market in such profusion, no suspicion seems to have been aroused. They were accepted without question by the experts and found ready pur- chasers at large prices, Whether the forger's success made him careless or whether 1t was due to one of those re- markable overslghts to which the most skiufuI criminals seem liable and which bring their career to a close, the forger was at last exposed through a mistake of which such clever man should scarcely have been capable.
 Among the many forgeries he pro- duced poem signed by Robert Burns It was called "The Poor Mans Pray CT" and opened with this stanza:
 Amidst the more important tolls of state,
 The counsels laborIng in the patriotic
 soll
 Though Europe from thy voice expect her
 And 'tS: thy keen glance extend from pole
 to pole
 This poem, which consisted of nine teen verses. might well have escaped detection with the rest but for the fact that a gentleman to whom tue poem was shown discovered the iden- tical verses in the London Magazine of l76G in a poem addressed to the Earl of Chatham by one Simon Hodge, laborcr
 Thus it appeared that if the verses were actually written by Burns the poet must have opened them under the pseudonym of Simon Hodge at the very immature age of a poet of seven years. Suspicion once aroused, doubt was at once cast on the hundreds of other documents which had emanoted from the same source. The Lenox col lection was submitted to the experts of the British museum and pronounced ,,. .,tt,,,-., lot gF eoroorioe % and pOl-