LITERARY FRAUD DETECTED.
A REVIEW exercises a kind of literary police. The Foreign- Quarterly Review, just published, has before it, as the newspapers say, "a singular case of fraud." A soi-disant savant has been imposing upon the scientific world in the most egregious manner, The English reviewer has been the first to detect the rogue : not, however, before he has been, on the credit of his supposed die-' coveries in the interior of Africa, elected Secretary of the Geogra- phical Society of Paris, and a member of that of London. The title of this gentleman's grand take-in is " Voyage au Congo et dans l'Interieur de l'Afrique Equinoxiale fait dui las : Ann/es 1826, 1520, et 1830. Par J. B. Douville, Secretaire de la Societe de Geoe'Taphie de Paris pour l'anu6e 1832, et Membre dc plusieurs Societ&s Sa- vantes Franeaises et etrangi'res. Onerage au quel la SocEte de Geographic iMeernd le prix dans an seance du 30 Mars 1832. 3 tomes."
Great, doubtless, will be the satisfaction of this savante so.;, ciety, when they see the exposure of the work to which they have had the credulity—not to say ignorance—to decree their annual prize. The article is executed with great ability, and implies con- . siderable ingenuity and much varied acquirement on the part of the writer. For the modern Mendez Pinto is not only -" a liar of the first magnitude," but chose his ground well, tells a story with in- " vincible impudence, and "circumstances" his falsehoods with a great • pomp and parade of science. This science has, however, been his undoing. Had he confined his rbodomontades to manners, customs, and adventures, detection would have been difficult to the most in- credulous and. acute : but the gentleman thought fit to masquerade as a philosopher, with a barometer in one hand and a repeating cir- cle in the other. Unluckily for him, science is a stubborn thing; the sun and moon are the same in his eutueumuquissila as at Paris; and when the moon says one thing and the traveller another, the antho- rity of Diana must be preferred to that of DOUVILLE. Mr. J)ou- vi made observations on the moon when she was not visible: he sometimes skipped a few hundred miles between the sixteenth and the seventeenth day of his Journal : he makes rivers run up-hill, or run the wrong way : through countries where an individual could scarcely pick up a meal, he travels en prince with five or silt hundred-people as his train, and his commissariat is never tressed. He finds nations that never existed, and has missed others that lay in his very course. He has written a journal, and has had a map constructed; but, unhappily, they are far front agreeing. In short, he has ventured upon an elaborate lie, in- trenched behind huge tables of figures, defended by meteoro- logical columns, and masked at every corner by misty calcula- tions of-distances and elevations. These are the means of deter,- tion, but not the grandest of his bounces. His presents, his con- quests, amorous and warlike, his expeditions, and his .adventures, are all on the scale of the most glorious munificence. Par ex- - emple,
"EN ADVENTURE IN THE INTERIOR OF AFRICA.
So much for the adventure of a French private gentleman fit Gaseon, we presume), taking his pleasure in the interior of Mimi How small our PARRS and DENHAMS and Cnapennross.appear after this ! It is the exact performance of the advice of an African. Prince to.Latinzn: "when they are insolent," said be,"hi1lafeq,::,
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