1876 Cornhill Magazine

JJK 115 Anon. - The Oera Linda Book - The Cornhill Magazine - Aug. 1876, pp. 181-192.

JJK 83 and JJK 103 - The Academy, 29-4 and 17-6-1876.
(Dutch:) JJK 123 (identical to JJK 118, 8-8-1876) About the articles in The Cornhill Magazine [JJK 115] and The Academy [JJK 103] (copied from Zwolsche Crt.) - Arnhemsche Crt. 14-8-1876.

The Oera Linda Book.

[181] We are accustomed to pride ourselves on the progress that we have made during the past century in the matter of critical insight. Without doubt the elements of technical knowledge are more widely spread than they were in the days of George Psalmanazar. We no longer believe in the highly-polished mahogany-coloured old masters that our forefathers cherished; we have reduced our belief in the music of the ancients to scientific limits; but it is questionable, after all, whether we are much less in thraldrom to tradition, or much more ready to give an independent opinion on an undiscussed subject, than our ancestors of the eighteenth century were. In the particular matter of literary forgeries, it is hard to say positively whether our generation would or would not be deceived by the productions of a Chatterton or a Walpole, whose skill and learning were in due ratio advanced beyond the average culture of a hundred years ago. It is more a question, perhaps, of ingenuity in the forger than of intuition in the reader. A blunderer like Ireland is detected almost at once; and there has never, in all probability, been a believer in Vortigern since the solitary performance of that unique drama. On the other hand there are still people of education and taste who uphold the comedies of the Terentian nun Hroswitha, and pin their faith to the antiquity of Clotilde de Surville. These celebrated productions may be said to reach the high-water mark of intelligent forgery; their inherent value is so great that there may always be admirers too blind to be critical. But it is one thing to be delighted with a rondeau like “Au clair de lune,” and another to be taken in by a History of Formosa in the language of that island. Yet there is just now being circulated and discussed throughout the learned societies of the North of Europe a hoax that bears a remarkable likeness to the geographical and linguistical revelations of the mysterious Mr. George Psalmanazar.

The Oera Linda Book — which, from being translated out of Frisian into Dutch and German, has now been exalted into an English translation, and which is expected by its faithful band of admirers to be about to revolutionize the history of Europe — has had a variety of evasive stages in its long and singular history. As at present published it is understood to be taken from a MS. of the thirteenth century, and its more rational adherents no longer seek to claim for it a greater antiquity. But when it first appeared on the scenes, and indeed still in Friesland itself, no more modest pretensions were put forth on its behalf than that it was “the oldest production, after Homer and Hesiod, of [182] European literature.” It can be imagined what excitement has been caused by the sudden appearance on the quiet horizon of Frisian letters of a meteor so portentous as this. It is well known that the industrious and intelligent inhabitants of the north-eastern provinces of Holland preserve in remarkable purity the old Frisian language; and that, though Dutch has superseded it in the towns and in business relations, yet that a strong conservative process is going on there as elsewhere in Europe, having for its object a patriotic preservation of the national language, laws, and customs. The capital of this peculiar district, Leeuwarden, boasts a variety of Frisian institutions, and the strength of feeling and the literary activity of the people has been more obvious than their critical acumen in this wordy warfare about the Oera Linda Book. Friesland is by no means ready to allow itself to be snuffed out by its wealthier and more influential neighbours. It claims for itself and its language all the dignity due to a most ancient noble stock fallen into decay. It produces learned little books, intended as trumpet-blasts to waken slumbering philology, and bearing such titles as the Old Friesic above all others the Fons et Origo of the Old English, and Archaic — little books which are too apt to give an uncertain sound when the supreme moment of trumpeting arrives. Friesland, moreover, does not forget that it has twice contributed a great name to European poetry and art: in the sixteenth century, Gijsbert Japix; in the nineteenth, Laurence Alma Tadema. In the ferment of patriotic feeling it becomes quite a sin against the fatherland not to believe in any great memorial of the national glory. As we shall see, if only the Oera Linda Book were trustworthy, Greece and Egypt and Rome would be obliged to come down from their pedestals of honour, and do obeisance. Friesland is thirsty after national glory, and a MS. suddenly appears, showering a whole deity of magnificence into the lap of its respectable and sleepy history. That it should be difficult to be critical under such circumstances is pardonable; and yet the Oera Linda Book might have taxed our credulity a little less. With the sincerest affection for Friesland, this is too much. “Hitherto we have believed that the historical records of our people reach no farther back than the arrival of Friso, the presumptive founder of the Frisians; whereas here we become aware that their records mount up to more than 2,000 years before Christ, surpassing the antiquity of Hellas, and equalling that of Israel!” This is a quotation from a paper read by a well-known scholar before a meeting of the Frisian Society, at Leeuwarden, in 1871, and warmly commended by all present. These are big words, and we cannot do better than examine the document on which their assumptions are founded.

In the first place, the publisher of the Oera Linda Book has an advantage over Mr. Macpherson and other producers of strange works, in that the ancient MS. from which he took his text has not been burned to ashes at the moment when the task of transcription was complete, or been stolen and destroyed by some person ignorant of its value, [183] or even carried up into heaven by a young gentleman with wings, as befell the hapless golden books of the Mormons. None of these unfortunate accidents has arrived to baffle students of primeval Frisian history. The Oera Linda MS. remains in the possession of Mr. C. Over de Linden, Chief Superintendent of the Royal Dockyard at the Helder. Some rather scrappy information has been published, from which we gather that the present possessor received the MS., in August, 1848 (we are very particular about dates), from his aunt, Mrs. Aafje Meylhoff, who had preserved it for twenty-eight years in her house at Enkhuizen, in Friesland. This takes us back to 1820; and we learn that on April 15 of that year it was delivered to Mrs. Meylhoff, then Miss Aafje Over de Linden, by her father, Mr. Andries Over de Linden, at his death. Here the chain breaks, and we are blandly told that the document had been handed down to the last-named gentleman by generation after generation from time immemorial. The tradition of the great antiquity of this record seems to have been accepted by the family; but no attempt was made to decipher or analyse it until Dr. E. Verwijs requested permission, about ten years ago, to examine the MS. He, we are told, “immediately recognised it as very ancient Fries.” A letter at the commencement, which we shall presently examine, gave the year 1256 as that of the present copy, attributing the actual composition to a certain Adela, who lived and wrote about twenty centuries and a half before the Christian era, and to some other persons of a less extreme antiquity. This record, consequently, assumes to be 3,900 years old in its contents, and to belong to the thirteenth century in its present and physical form. It is a large quarto volume, of cotton paper, and written upon with large uncial letters in a previously unknown, but easy and consistent, alphabet. As a specimen of thoroughly intelligent modern criticism, we quote at this juncture some remarks by the Frisian enthusiast, Dr. Ottema, who first saw the book through the press:—

In old writings the ink is very black or brown; but while there has been more
writing since the thirteenth century, the colour of the ink is often grey or yellowish, and sometimes quite pale, showing that it contains iron. All this affords convincing proof that the manuscript before us belongs to the middle of the thirteenth century, written with clear black letters between fine lines carefully traced with lead. The colour of the ink shows decidedly that it does not contain iron. By these evidences the date given, 1256, is satisfactorily proved, and it is impossible to assign any later
date. Therefore all suspicion of modern deception vanishes.

Was there ever such a sweet simplicity in any man since that poor dear Abbé blinded himself in deciphering the scribblings of a German schoolboy in the Mexican Cave! Here is a man after Horace Walpole’s own heart. Dr. Ottema is a phenomenon in the modern life of a European philosopher. He ought to have been a don at Oxford when George Psalmanazar was made Professor of Formosa. We return again and again to this reminiscence. There seems to us no parallel in literary history closer than that between the eighteenth-century History [184] of Formosa and this Pre-historic Chronicle of Friesland in our own days; and when we find Dr. Ottema saying, as he does, “As a specimen of antiquity in language and writing, I believe I may venture to say that this book is unique of its kind,” we cannot help pausing to call his attention to that earlier and once so famous masterpiece.

The letter which claims 1256 as the date of the MS., and which all the Frisian scholars point to with especial insistence, it may be as well to quote here in full and literal translation:—

Okke, my Son,—
These books thou must preserve with body and soul. They contain the history of all our folk and of our ancestors. Last year I saved them out of the flood with thee and thy mother. Then they became wetted; they in consequence began to perish. In order not to lose them I have copied them on to foreign paper (vp wrlandisk pampyer). In case thou inheritest them, thou also must copy them. Thy children also, that they may never be destroyed.
Written at Ljuwert. After Atland sank the three thousand four hundred and forty-ninth year; that is, after Christian reckoning, the twelve hundred six and fiftieth year.
(Signed) Hidde, surnamed Oera Linda. Watch.

Below this, and, as far as we can discover, written on the same paper, is a letter dated four hundred years earlier. This also has a peculiar importance. It reads as follows:—

Beloved Successors,—
For the sake of our dear forefathers, and of our dear liberty, I entreat you a thousand times never let the eye of a monk look on these writings. They are very insinuating, but they destroy in an underhand way all that relates to us Frisians. In order to gain rich benefices, they conspire with foreign kings, who know that we are their greatest enemies because we dare to speak to their people of liberty, rights, and duties of princes. Therefore they seek to destroy all that we derive from our forefathers, and all that is left of our old customs.
Ah! my beloved ones! I have visited their courts! If Wr-alda permits it, and we do not show ourselves strong to resist, they will altogether exterminate us.
Written at Ljudwerd. Eight hundred and three years after Christ.

Liko, surnamed Ovira Linda.

It will be noticed that an air of superior archaism is introduced by the spelling of the signature, Ovira Linda, in 803, becoming Oera Linda in 1256. Unfortunately this difference of language is not kept up consistently, exactly the same forms and the same spelling occurring in the first document as in the last; this paradox being the result, that during the four centuries in which the Gothic languages were undergoing the most rapid and complete transfiguration, the Frisian dialect alone preserved its forms with inflexible rigidity; which is absurd.

The narrative is opened with very considerable ingenuity. In order to avoid the awkwardness of an introduction we are suddenly plunged into the middle of things. Adela, the priestess-prophetess, is discoursing, and we learn from her words that a crisis has just taken place in the Frisian polity. The commander Magy, for whose name an ingenious Dutch [185] note accounts by saying “King of the Magjars or Finns,” has murdered the Folksmother, or female president of the Frisian Commonwealth. On this deed of violence other misfortunes have followed, and the same “Magjars or Finns” have wrested from Friesland all the lands beyond the Weser. To stem the tide of conquest, and to consider in what way best to prevent the total extinction of the Frisian power, a council is called of the sovereign women and the men who hold office under them. We see at once that we have before us the curious idea of a republic governed by august maidens. At this council Adela rises and demands a hearing, and recapitulates for the benefit of her people, and for our amusement, the various matters that follow. She opens with a denunciation of the infidel policy which has disregarded the commands of the tutelary goddess Frya, and has negligently relaxed those god-given laws on which the whole framework of the community subsists. She harangues the assembly with very considerable eloquence, and charges the maidens to carry out instant reforms. They are to visit all the citadels, and to write down the Laws of Frya on the walls of each. The internal machinery of government is to be subdivided and put into full working order, and this significant exhortation is subjoined:—

If I might add more, I would recommend that all respectable girls in the towns
should be taught; for I say positively, and time will show it, that if you wish to remain true children of Frya, never to be vanquished by fraud or arms, you must
take care to bring up your daughters as true Frya’s daughters.

And this, which sounds sweet in the ears of Leeuwarden to-day:—

You must teach the children how great our country has been, what great men our forefathers were, how great we still are if we compare ourselves to others.

Adela’s advice, we are told, was followed, and a tedious list of apparently meaningless names is added in due course. Then an account is given of the earliest history of Friesland: how Wr-alda, the Infinitely Old, the only eternal and good God, breathed upon the earth so that she brought forth three maiden daughters, Lyda the fierce, Finda the sweet-voiced and treacherous, and Frya the mild and beneficent. The description of Frya has a real charm of style in it. Her body is of the colour of snow at sunrise. Her hair, as fine as a spider’s web, shines like the sun itself. When she opens her lips, the birds stop singing, and not a leaf rustles in the forest; the lion lies down at her feet, and the asp forgets its poison. She has three lessons for her children: the first is self-control, and the second the love of virtue, and the third the value of freedom; for, she says, “Without liberty all other virtues serve to make you slaves.” When she had gathered around her her children to the seventh generation, she was taken suddenly up to heaven and made divine. Her children were gathered around her, when suddenly she was not. The earth shook, the air grew black and leaf-green with tears, and at last, as they gazed upwards, they saw the lightning flash out for one moment the word “Watch” [186] written across the firmament. Her children consoled themselves by building a great citadel, on which they wrote her laws, called the Tex. They are the Frisians of this wondrous history.

After this prologue the Laws themselves, Frya’s Tex, are given in full. Here the Oera Linda Book challenges comparison with the most important fragment of genuine mediæval Frisian which we possess — the Old Laws of Friesland, put down at various times during the Middle Ages, but all claiming to have been originally drawn up by Charlemagne. There is no doubt whatever of the genuine authenticity of these very remarkable documents; and in point of style they resemble, sometimes very closely, this primæval Tex of Frya. The Old Frisian Laws were printed so early as the end of the fifteenth century; again revived, they were published by Christian Schotanus, in 1664, in his Description of the Glory of Friesland. More than a century elapsed before they were printed again; and then they appeared in the form which I have before me at this moment, printed at Campen and Leeuwarden, in 1782, by J.A. de Chalmot and J. Seydel. This edition of the Old Frisian Laws is worthy of some note; it might even suggest itself to a sceptical mind to inquire whether this volume was not the real nucleus and “fons et origo,” to use the true Frisian phrase, of Adela and Frya and the whole structure of the Oera Linda Book.

It must be understood, however, that the compilers of the Old Laws knew no such strange gods as Linda [sic JO] and Wr-alda. Their straightforward statement, on the contrary, opens thus:— “To the honour of God, of his dear mother Mary, and of the whole heavenly host, and of all free Frisian freedom.” These last words, on which much interesting speculation might be founded, reveal to us a high level of national vitality at that early period. The sturdy alliterativeness, alre fria Fresena fridam, has in itself the ring of a watchword, and a noble music of liberty in it. Again and again it is repeated, and throughout the code Di fria Fresa, the free Frisian, is invariably used for citizen or inhabitant.

Either this characteristic is of an infinite age, or the Oera Linda has cunningly borrowed it, for the Tex abounds in such spirited enactments as this:—

If any man shall deprive another, even his debtor, of his liberty, let him be to you as a vile slave; and I advise you to burn his body and that of his mother in an open place, and bury them fifty feet below the ground, so that no grass shall grow upon them. It would poison your cattle.

There is something sans-culottish about this. This lawgiver has the soul of a Robespierre. Again we note the date of the edition of the Frisian Laws, 1782.

We now come to the passages which are wholly ridiculous, if taken in the serious, historical way affected by Dr. Ottema and his Frisian friends, and which might have shown them, without a moment’s hesitation, that, whatever the MS. was, it was a relation not of fact, but of fiction. We are told that Minno, obviously Minos, was a Frisian king, born at [187] Lindawrda in Friesland, and that he wandered about the world till he came to Kreta, where he gave laws to the inhabitants. An extract from his institutions has a good deal of the antique Teuton flavour about it:—

The toad blows himself out, but he can only crawl. The frog cries “Work, work,” but he can do nothing but hop and make himself ridiculous. The raven cries “Spare, spare” (Spår, spår), but he steals and wastes everything that he gets into his beak.

Minos settled a Frisian colony in Kreta, and, returning home, left a virgin ruler to govern the island in his stead. Her suggestive title was Nyhellenia; but her real name, we are told, was Min-Erva. There is here some obscurity in the narrative; but, if we understand aright the meaning of the author, this lady Min-Erva, in her turn, sailed from Kreta and settled in Krekalanda. A Dutch note to the Frisian text kindly explains that “Krekaland means Magna Grecia, as well as Greece.” We feel a curiosity to know who supplied this note, and from what authority. Min-Erva teaches the Krekalanders to worship one God; to be wise, and self-restrained, and tolerant.

At this point there comes a break, and the story is told, in somewhat different fashion, in the form of an extract of some autobiography of Minos. It is primarily interesting because he says that he started from “Athenia” on his way to Kreta, and thus supplies us with another familiar name. The historical style of the author is very molluscous, and we find it difficult to state precisely what he intends us to learn. This passage, however, is plainly enough intended to add an original testimony to the fact of the disappearance of that mysterious continent of Atlantis whither the ancients timidly set sail to gather precious dragon’s blood, and of which it has been supposed that the Azores and the Canaries, Madeira and the Cape Verdes, are the loftiest summits, too high to be submerged:—

How the bad time came. During the whole summer the sun had been hid behind the clouds, as if unwilling to look upon the earth. There was perpetual calm, and the damp mist hung like a wet sail over the houses and the marshes. The air was heavy and oppressive, and in men’s hearts was neither joy nor cheerfulness. In the midst of this stillness the earth began to tremble as if she were dying. The mountains opened to vomit forth fire and flames. Some sank into the bosom of the earth, and in other places mountains rose out of the plain. Aldland, called by the seafaring people Atland, disappeared, and the wild waves rose so high over hill and dale that everything was buried in the sea. Many people were swallowed up by the earth, and others who had escaped the fire perished in the water. It was not only in Finda’s land that the earth vomited fire, but also in Twiskland. Whole forests were burned one after another, and when the wind blew from that quarter our land was covered with ashes. Rivers changed their course, and at their mouths new islands were formed of sand and drift.

Twiskland is Germany. We seem, in the early part of this description, to be listening to a man whose imagination was full of the horrors of the earthquake at Lisbon.

One hundred and one years after the event just recorded, we are told, [188] a people came up out of the East, driven onward by another people. They called themselves Magjars, and their king was named Magy. We now find ourselves brought down to the age of Adela herself, who began her narration thirty years after the murder of the Volksmoeder by the commander of the Magjars. We can therefore supply some outlines of chronology; for since Hiddo Oera Linda made the present copy of the MS. in “the three thousand four hundred and forty-ninth year after Atland was submerged ” — that is, in A.D. 1256 — the date of the disappearance of Atlantis may be placed at B.C. 2193, the incursion of the Magjars at B.C. 2092, and the event narrated so suddenly at the opening of the book in B.C. 2062. In the year B.C. 1982, then, to continue the Oera Linda chronology, Wodin, a Danish viking, invited by the Frisians, went out to fight the Magjars, and, after repulsing them for some time, was captured by them and — made their king. We are next introduced to two Frisian brothers, Nef Tunis and Inka, who start for the southern seas to win their fortunes; they proceed together in amity as far as a town in Spain, called Kadik, where there is a stone quay. It is very instructive to note that nearly two thousand years before the Christian era, Cadiz existed and flourished. Here they fell to a disagreement, and it was determined that one brother should go west, the other east. Inka, accordingly, set out to try whether there might not be, far beyond the Hesperides, some remnant of the vanished Atlantis. The Oera Linda Book says that he was never heard of again, but we are inclined to think that we have met with him in the history of Peru. Nef Tunis went eastward up the Mediterranean, and after divers troubles arrived, in the year B.C. 2000, at “an island with two deep bays so that there appeared to be three islands. In the middle one they established themselves, and afterwards built a city wall round the place. Then they wanted to give it a name, but disagreed about it. Some wanted to call it Fryasburch, others Nef Tunia (!); but the Magjars and Finns begged that it might be called Thyrhisburch.” The Dutch annotator has again been afraid that we should not recognise this name, and has added “Tyrus.”

With the inhabitants of the coast, and as far as the town of Sydon, they traded, exchanging amber and iron for wine, honey, and various products of the land. It is a pity that they did not elect the name Neftunia; it would have formed an elegant pendant to Min-Erva! We meet with other familiar names as we proceed — Athens, Ulysus, Troja, and so on; but we find nothing very important or interesting till near the end of the first part, the Book of Adela. This, as being in our opinion the most vigorous episode in the work, we give in summary.

One stormy winter night the watchman on the citadel of Texland heard, above the roar of the tempest and the sea, a noise of ruin in the watch-tower. In another moment he saw the sacred immortal light fall from its high station on to the bastion, and by its glare he saw thousands of men battering the gates and scaling the walls. Without a moment’s warning war had fallen upon the Frisian people. It was the old foe, [189] Magy, come with a fleet of light vessels to steal the sacred lamp. The watchman gave the alarm, but it was too late; the multitudes rushed into the city, and one brutal Finn pierced to the chamber of the Mother herself. He ran a sword through her before a guardsman of her own could cleave his skull. Her still living body was borne on board the ship of Magy. When she was in measure restored, the insolent conqueror offered her humiliating terms for her life, and attempted to make use of her prophet’s power. The dying maiden made as if she heard him not; but at last she took up her speech against him, and cried: “Before seven days have passed, your soul shall haunt the tombs with the night-birds, and your body shall be at the bottom of the sea.” She fell fainting on the deck, and her captive maidens clustered around her; but the raging conqueror thrust them all aside, and bade his soldiers throw her still breathing body into the deep. This episode is invented with extraordinary force and skill, and is well worthy of attention. In the figure of the Maiden, Mother of her People, the author whom Dr. Ottema and his friends traduce by supposing him capable of a monstrous chronicle, has not thought of history, but typifies from the point of view of a romance-writer the fervour of liberty, the passion of Frisian freedom and unity, which has always characterized this remarkable little nation. Judged as a romance, the Oera Linda Book is a fairly interesting and novel Utopia; judged as a veracious piece of ancient history, it only casts ridicule on the critical faculty of those who have discussed it.

With the event last described, the Book of Adela closes; but not so the manuscript. A certain Adelbrost immediately takes up the thread, and states himself to be the son of Adela. But before he has written more than a page and a half, he comes to a horrid end. Two and thirty days after his mother’s death, Adelbrost was found murdered on the wharf, his skull fractured, and his limbs torn asunder. It is his brother [sic JO] Apollonia, who continues the narrative, to whom we owe these harrowing particulars. After dwelling on them, he gives us an account of his mother Adela’s death, who was also murdered by the Magjars. Friesland would seem to have fallen on very troublous times about the year B.C. 2000. We learn that Adela, like Queen Guenevere, was seven feet high, and that her wisdom exceeded her stature. There were giants on the earth in those days.

On the occasion of the death of Adela, there was inscribed on the outside wall of the city tower a long statement of religious opinion, which was to serve as doctrine to the inhabitants. This is a sort of impersonal deistic creed, dealing more largely in morality than faith, and apparently the result of a well-digested course of the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau. We learn therefrom that the causes of sin are dulness, carelessness, and ignorance; that the principles of Calvinism and elective grace are base and false; and that the existence of man ought to be a constant advance towards that absolute perfection which is Wr-alda, or the One God; but that the human spirit is not the Spirit of God, but a shadow of it. [190] There is also happily defined the familiar reflection that without the powers of the senses we should have had no proper thoughts at all. “If Wr-alda had given us no organs, we should have known nothing, and been more irrational than a piece of seaweed driven up and down by the ebb and flood.”

It can serve no critical purpose to follow the disjointed narrative any further. One narrator after another takes it up, recording the deeds of successive generations; but there is no alteration of style, and the characteristics of the history remain unaltered. An attempt to give an account, from the Frisian point of view, of the rise of the Christian religion, is grotesquely ingenious, and would hardly have disgraced a speculative encyclopædist. In the heart of Cashmere the daughter of a king brought forth a child, whose father was a high priest. To save herself from destruction she had to entrust her babe to a poor couple, who brought him westward till he fell into the hands of a Frisian sailor, who taught him to value the wisdom of Texland, and become, in short, a good fria Fresa. There follows a piece of brilliant comparative mythology, the force of which is less apparent in the English version, because Mr. Sandbach, in a fit of inexplicable prudery, has outraged the Frisian text by disguising the first name as Jessos:—

His first name was Jes-us; but the priests, who hated him, called him Fo, that is, false; the people called him Kris-en (Krishna), that is, shepherd; and his Frisian friend called him Bûda (Buddha), purse, because he had in his head a treasure of wisdom, and in his heart a treasure of love.

This fourfold deity combines in himself all the virtues of the Orient, and the benefits of four great philosophic systems. Shortly after his death we find kingly tyranny and priestly aggression, the two great bugbears of the author of the Oera Linda Book, rapidly undoing all the lovely work of the man-god’s blameless life, and the rhetoric rises to passionate eloquence as the corruption and enthralment of the world are bewailed.

Soon after this lyric outburst the narrative incontinently closes in the middle of a sentence, and the weary reader hardly wishes it completed. The monotony of the style has been excessive, and the invention has seldom had the power of riveting the student’s attention or persuading his conviction.

In summing up, we must regard this much-discussed MS. chronicle of primæval history as a romance of the end of the last century, written in all probability by a radical and free-thinker whose mind was steeped with the sceptical ideas of the eighteenth century, but still more with the intense and passionate patriotism which has never ceased to characterize the Frisian people. He was evidently a man of learning and talent, but of no genius; for a man of genius would have arranged his narrative with more art, would have given it shape and proportion, and would have set here and there some jewel of suggestion or insight which would have [191] constrained our belief, though only for a moment. These gifts one cannot recognise in the writer of the Oera Linda MS. His book is replete with feeling, elevation, and sentiment: it is, above all, what the Germans call a Tendenz-Buch; it strives to teach an earnest moral lesson in the form of a romance. All this is characteristic of the period to which we are inclined to assign its authorship. We would go further, and dare to conjecture that its composition dates from the earliest years of reaction, when the ideas of the Encyclopædia had fully blossomed in the French Revolution, and had borne such bitter fruit that men began, still clinging fast to Rousseau, to give up all other free-thinking supports, and return to a modified deism and a modified conservatism. The tide once turned, the flood rushed back with violence; in a few years Joseph de Maistre and Chateaubriand were the leaders of opinion. The Oera Linda Book seems to us to mark the instant of reaction, and to stand midway between Diderot and the Seraphic Epos. But while giving the author credit, not only for most pure and exalted desires, but for very considerable talent and ingenuity in putting them forth, we are at a loss how to characterize the critics who have palmed this romance upon the world as a genuine primæval history. They are seriously to be blamed for having wasted their time in attempting to persuade European scholarship of the truth of such a frivolity — time that might better have been spent in discovering the exact date of composition of the MS., and the name and purpose of its author. It is to be hoped that they will at length be persuaded to give their attention to this investigation. To find out who wrote the Oera Linda Book, and what its subsequent history has been, cannot, to say the least, be more difficult than to discover what song the Sirens sang to Ulysses; and this we know, on the authority of Sir Thomas Brown, is a legitimate subject for scientific inquiry.

Since the above lines were written there has appeared in the Academy (June 17, 1876) a letter from M. Jules Andrieu, which we should do very wrong to fail to notice. It is, as far as we know, the only piece of true criticism which has hitherto been brought to bear on the Oera Linda Book. We recommend those of our readers who feel disposed to pursue the subject further to read this learned and scholarly communication, the more so as M. Andrieu’s opinion does not wholly coincide with our own. It is needless to say that he rejects without discussion the assumption of the great antiquity of the MS., but he is inclined to place the date of composition at the end of the seventeenth and not of the eighteenth century. He cites a variety of passages showing beyond a doubt that the author borrowed largely from Olof Rudbeck, whose celebrated work, in folio, appeared in 1679 and in 1689. These plagiarisms from Rudbeck are supplemented by some, equally obvious, from Lipsius; and we do not suppose that it will occur to any one, even in Friesland, to attack [192] the position that the Oera Linda Book was subsequent to the works of these writers. We contend, however, that the spirit of the French writers of the eighteenth century is quite as present as the words of the authors named, only in a diffused form; and, pending fuller light on the subject, we continue to hold that the Oera Linda Book was written in the last years of the eighteenth century.

M. Andrieu further draws our attention to a curious parallel to the Oera Linda Book in a romance published in 1806 by a Flemish Councillor, the object of which was to prove that the Elysian as well as the Infernal Regions of the ancients were situated in the islands of the Lower Rhine, and that Ulysses left his own name in that of the town of Flushing. This writer makes great use of the works of Rudbeck, and, like our MS., talks of Min-Erva. Here, we think, is more than a clue to the discovery of the authorship of the Oera Linda Book.