p. 755
For something of the discoveries which M. SimonIs there no limit to public credulity? Is there the former he produced a history of Armenia, ides proposes for their acceptance, we give no limit to the power of abusing this credulity? in which the names, through the clumsiness of the following list. M. Simonides discovers: M. Simonides is not before the public for the the inventor, happened not to be Armenian; -1. Three fragments of St. Matthew, writfirst time; but he has never made a more for the latter he promised the discovery of an ten by the hand of Nicholaus the Deacon; singular appearance before it than as author Arabian MS. in Syriac characters, from an exca- 2. Two fragments of the Epistle of St. of these "Fac-similes." It would seem that in vation then in progress near Atmeidán. The James; 3. A fragment of the Epistle of the opinions of some men there is no possible box containing the precious MS. was duly St. Jude; 4. Part of the eight first chapters folly that the British people may not be ex- found; and M. Simonides, for a few minutes, of Genesis; 5. The Ten Commandments in pected to accept and approve, if it be only was able to boast of being a prophet in his own Greek and Egyptian Demotic character; 6. presented to their notice with the requisite land. Unfortunately, however, his "enemies" The Voyages of Hanno the Carthaginian, more assurance. This view is, indeed, not wholly prevailed here as elsewhere, the workmen de- perfect, he tells us, than any yet known; 7. A erroneous. The editor of Uranius' has found claring they had seen M. Simonides burrowing piece of Aristaus; 8. The Oracles of Zoroaster a printer and publisher, and he may, therefore, in the hole while the excavators were indulging Magus. All these, he asserts, are on Papyri, hope to find a public. When you find an ass's in luncheon! Need we wonder that the East and written in the first century of our æra. Then shoe, you may expect to find an ass. Weak could not afford room enough for his enterprise, follow-Fragments of various historical writand amiable people love to be gulled by an and that he came soon after to Western Europe, ings; Seven Epistles of Hermippus, the son of enterprising genius. Lancashire is not so bearing with him a goodly stock of rarities, and Eumenides, of Berytus; A fragment of the critical as Berlin. After a long silence, M. a reputation which the Cretans of the Apostolic Oikistika of Androsthenes, of Thassos; Two Simonides speaks from an unexpected Lan- times would have envied. Of course, poor Eng- more Epistles of Hermippus, on Hieroglyphics cashire home, without the fear of Lepsius and land was to take the Levantine to her bosom: and the Kings of Egypt; most, or all of which, his myrmidons, and with the wealth, if not-wiser, more scholarlike Germany having been he asserts, belong to the second century A.D. the learning, of Liverpool to sustain him,-an warned in time. Was this really so? M. Simon- Besides these, which we should think, if "honorary" member of a distinguished northern ides did come to England; but his fame had genuine, were wonderful enough, and, if real Society, the glory of provincial newspapers, the preceded him, and when, at a solemn meeting discoveries, far exceeding those made by chosen associate--to quote the words which he of the Royal Society of Literature in May, 1853, Young, Champollion or Rawlinson,—indeed, so freely and offensively uses-of "those who he produced four books of the Iliad from his by all the inquirers whose learning has love the Lord." No wonder that he makes the uncle Benedictus" of Mount Athos, and spoke adorned the nineteenth century,-M. Simomost of a position to which the incredulity largely of an "Egyptian Hieroglyphical Dic-nides claims a personal knowledge of MSS. of English scholars and the ready zeal of the tionary containing an exegesis of Egyptian of the earliest date, at Mount Sinai, at Berlin police have raised him, and shows History," and the "Chronicles of the Babylo- the Monastery of St. Sabbas, at that of St. how resolutely he still adheres to the character nians, in Cuneiform writing, with interlinear Dionysius, of the first, second and third cenwhich, some years since, he played in Eastern Greek," men admired, as they well might, the Europe and Germany. zeal that could collect such treasures. They would, doubtless, have wondered still more had they known, as was pointed out that evening, that the so-called cuneiform characters belonged to no recognized form of these writings, while Most of these extraordinary fragments M. the Greek letters suspiciously resembled badly Simonides declares he found among papyri color carelessly formed Phoenician characters. Let lected by the Rev. H. Stobart, and now in Mr. it be borne in mind that if, in the course of his Mayer's Museum, at Liverpool. The remainder many dealings, M. Simonides has sometimes are said to have belonged to a once well-known persuaded simple men like Sir Thomas Phillipps dealer in curiosities, Mr. Sams. M. Simonides to purchase his pretended MSS., such good appears to have made Mr. Mayer acquainted luck tells but little in his favour. Nothing is as quickly as possible with his discoveries; and more easy than to deceive a red-hot collector, that gentleman, with laudable zeal, at once especially if the object produced be just what assembled an archæological meeting in his he chances to have sought far and wide. Museum, May 1, 1860, to whom he communiSo it was that Lepsius, and Bunsen, and Din-cated them. The local journals vied with each dorf fell, when exposed somewhat later to the other and with a London literary journal in wily blandishments of M. Simonides. The trumpeting forth the wonderful news. Germans wanted a confirmation of their own of the learned in Liverpool," says M. Simonides, wild dreams; the Greek had the wit to cater for "called on me in order to see the passages, their wants: and some few scholars of a nation and, after a minute inspection, heartily glorified eminent for sagacity, heedlessly swallowed all God." Could M. Simonides oblige mankind he had ready for them. Not so, however, in with the names of these Liverpool sages? England:-neither the British Museum nor the Many wise men of the metropolis, we are also Bodleian failed to discriminate the chaff from told, saw these fragments, and were delighted the wheat, though the former institution bought at these discoveries; especially "the amiable no less than eleven genuine MSS. from him. and truly evangelical family of N. Banyard, From England M. Simonides migrated to Ger- Esq., who invited to their house, for the purmany, and, as we have said, made fools, for a pose of seeing and examining the fragments, short time, of the ablest scholars of that country. several learned persons, all of whom were in They were, and are, very angry to have been ecstacies at the sight, and particularly the made the dupes of a wholesale dealer in sus- brother of Mrs. Banyard, a genuine servant of picious papers,—and we sympathize with them. the Lord (whose name, unfortunately, I do not Such is a brief and a very inadequate sketch remember), who took for his text at evening of the life and deeds of M. Simonides, so far devotions the 28th of St. Matthew, and offered as they had become public property, up to the up prayer and thanksgiving for the discovery explosion of the Uranius bubble. Since then of these sacred fragments of the oldest version we have heard nothing of him; and, for the of the New Testament!" What a pity that comfort of bibliopolists, and the repose of M. Simonides should have forgotten the name public libraries, we had hoped he had found of this "genuine servant of the Lord." Perhaps
Before we notice the wonderful Fac-similes now printed, it may be desirable for us to remind our readers of some of this Greek gentleman's antecedents, that we may not be deemed discourteous should we value his lucubrations at a lower figure than Mr. Mayer and the Cheshire archæologists. In the whirl of events the practices of M. Simonides must have been partially, if not wholly, forgotten, and thus an opportunity was afforded him of emerging from his retirement, armed with a mass of documents far weightier than any he has produced as yet. Now, of the early history of this gentleman we know so much as this, if we accept the story he has repeatedly told of himself that he was the nephew of an old gentleman who had something to do with the MS. treasures preserved at Mount Athos, and that in this way he early acquired a taste for deciphering and copying MSS. Other stories, possibly as credible, declare that he came from Syme, in Caria, a statement in some degree confirmed by his publication of a work entitled 'Symais: a History of the School of Syme,' the genuineness of which no scholar has ever ventured to advocate. It is certain that many years ago M. Simonides came to Athens with a collection of the rarest MSS., sacred and classical, professedly obtained at Mount Athos, and containing, inter alia, an ancient Homer, with the complete Commentary of Eustathius, of which the Homer, on close examination, turned out to be a minutely accurate copy of Wolf's edition of that poet, errata included! We know, also, that in 1851 he proposed at Constantinople to publish a complete Sanchoniathon-but did not; that he, then, declared himself the possessor of an ancient Greek work on hierogly
turies respectively, together with one in the handwriting of the Emperor Theodosius, and a mass of miscellaneous documents relating to Papias and to Heliodorus the Elder, which, he tells us, are still "unfortunately unpublished."
Mr. Mayer, if he values his collection, should be more careful how he uses his MS. treasures. The Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire has surprised everybody by their selection of an honorary" member. Our own opinion is, that not one of these pretended documents is genuine. We are not alarmed by the threat which M. Simonides levels against all those who object to his pretended relics of antiquity. We are content to share the abuse levelled at Dr. Cureton, Dr. Tregelles, and the authorities of the British Museum.
it may be recovered. What reason, scholars | Mayer's Museum, nor how many of them may | pared human (female) skin," of the same date; will ask, is there for putting more faith in this actually have belonged to either Mr. Stobart though by what ingenuity M. Simonides can work of M. Simonides than in his previous or Mr. Sams. But if they are the product detect whether his presumed skin be male or labours, seeing that exposure has no terrors for of one scribe as would appear on the female, is hard enough to conjecture. him, and that he is ready to bring forward face of them it is remarkable that they again, in 1861, what has been repeatedly shown should have been found in one collection, in previous years to be forgeries? Perhaps he in such suspicious company as Uranius & Co. rests his claim to be heard again on the portrait and under the supervision and editing of of St. Matthew, which forms the frontispiece of M. Simonides. That the handwriting of all of his new work, and which, he says, "was executed them is that of one and the same person, in the fifth century by Hierotheus of Thessalonica, we appeal with confidence to every one who the saint portrait painter..... The original is pre- has any acquaintance with early MSS. Let served among frescoes of Athos. The copy here them compare, for instance, the Os, Es, As, given was taken from it by C. S." Fifth century, As, and they will not fail to perceive running indeed! either language must have lost its usual through them all the most striking family meaning, or M. Simonides must have gone likeness - a resemblance too remarkable to stark mad. Byzantine art! why the original be the result of accident, and such as we of this portrait, if, indeed, there be any original nowhere find in genuine MSS. differing by at Athos, is assuredly later than the times of centuries in date. The examiner will further Raphael or Michael Angelo, probably of a notice, or we are greatly mistaken, on some of date not earlier than 1600. If M. Simonides the MSS. what may be called fanciful or imreally believes that such a portrait could be of possible letters; in other words, such letters as the fifth century, the fact only proves that he are met with nowhere else, and which we knows no more of Art than of Theology and should be justified in declaring are not ancient History. Greek at all. We allude particularly to the transcript of a stone said to have been found at Thyatira, and published here in Plate I. B, p. 14. With some knowledge of palæography, we do not scruple to say that we have never yet seen a Greek inscription containing such a jumble of characters as this page presents; while among them we observe also a MS. 0, if not some other letters, the form of which, so far as they resemble anything Greek, approach more nearly to MS. than to lapidary writing.
The reader will have gathered from what we have already stated our opinion of the documents; but it may not be wholly useless to subject them to a closer examination. Now, in the first place, we consider it would require nothing short of a miracle to bring together in one place, at the bidding of any one person, so extraordinary a collection of rarities as M. Simonides avers he has found in Mayer's Museum during the researches of only two or three days. It may not be generally known, but it is an undoubted fact, that no MSS. of any kind, if we except the Hieratic papyri, are known to ascend to the first or second century, and that of those of the fourth or fifth there are not more than five or six throughout all the libraries of Europe; yet M. Simonides, if he is to be believed, has got these wonders "plenty as blackberries," there being, as it would seem, no limit to the treasures with which he kindly proposes to flood the world. Again, when we remember with what zeal the MS. treasures of antiquity have been hunted during the last three centuries, and especially within the last fifty years, we may pronounce it wholly past belief that so many and such valuable fragments should be huddled together in one small collection. More than this, as regards Mr. Stobart's papyri, though it may be true they were not all minutely examined while in the Museum, yet sufficient research was made among them to detect 'The Funeral Oration of Hyperides over Leosthenes,' which has been edited so admirably by the Rev. C. Babington. It could hardly be that every one of the important documents M. Simonides professes to have discovered among them should have been overlooked during the researches then made. On these and similar grounds, we hold that the à priori evidence against M. Simonides' new discoveries is irresistible. We are, however, prepared to go much further than this, and to declare, unreservedly, that we have no confidence whatever in any one of the documents he has just put forward; and this, not from the subject-matter of which they treat, but from the manner in which these MSS. have been made. We may add our belief, that there is not one person, however little acquainted with palæography, who will not condemn them wholly at the first glance; and more than this, that a careful examination of them has convinced us, that they are quite modern, and probably the work of some scribe of the nineteenth century. Of course, we have no means of knowing how it is that they have found their way into Mr.
