246
as little encouragement as a dedicatee could in po-
liteness return. "There are many good lines," he
says, "in your poem; but when you have kept it
by you a week or two, I fancy you will not think
it correct enough as yet to appear in public."1 But
Pinkerton had a mind too roughly cast for poetry,
and it was only when his imitations were mistaken
for the rudeness of antiquity that his verses were at
all admired.
After 1780, when his father died, he visited London,
and having previously contracted a slight bibliomania,
the extent and variety of the booksellers' catalogues
are said to have proved a motive for his taking up
his residence in the metropolis as a literary man, and
eschewing Scotch law. In 1781 he published in
octavo some trifles, which it pleased him in his in-
dependence of orthography to term Rimes. This
work contained a second part to Hardyknute, which
he represented as "now first published complete."
If Pinkerton thought that his imposition was to get
currency by being added to a ballad really ancient,
the circumstance would show the extreme ignorance
of the period as to the literature of our ancestors;
for it is now needless to remark how unlike this
composition is to the genuine productions of the
elder muse. The imposition in this case was not
entirely successful. "I read over again," says Mr.
Porden the architect, "the second part of Hardy-
knute; and I must inform you that I have made up
my mind with respect to the author of it. I know
not whether you will value a compliment paid to
your genius at the expense of your imitative art, but
certainly that genius sheds a splendour on some
passages which betrays you."2 In 1782 appeared a
second edition of the Rimes, and at the same time
he published two separate volumes of poetry, which
have dropped into oblivion. In the ensuing year
he published, in two volumes, his Select Scottish Bal-
lads, a work rather more esteemed. At this period
he turned the current of his laborious intellect to
numismatics. Early in life a latent passion for the
collection of antiquities had been accidentally (as
is generally the case with antiquaries) called into
action. He drew up a manual and table of coins
for his own use, which afterwards expanded itself
into the celebrated Essay on Medals, published in
two volumes 8vo, in 1784; and published a third
time in 1808. These volumes form a manual which
is continually in the hands of numismatists. In
1785 he published, under the assumed name of
Robert Heron, a work termed Letters of Literature:
the singularity of this work suggests that its author
was guilty of affecting strangeness for the purpose
of attracting notice. Among the most prominent
subjects was a new system of orthography, or, more
properly, of grammar, which, by various transmuta-
tions, such as classical terminations (e.g. the use of a
instead of s in forming plurals), was to reduce the
harshness of the English language. Such an attempt
on the public sense was not in all respects effective,
but the odium occasioned very naturally fell on poor
Robert Heron, who was just then struggling into
being as a literary man. The work, however, pro-
cured for Pinkerton an introduction to Horace Wai-
pole, who made him acquainted with Gibbon. The
proud spirit of that great historian seems to have
found something congenial in the restless and acrid
Pinkerton. He recommended him to the booksellers
as a person fit to translate the English Monkish
Historians. In an address which Gibbon had in-
tended to prefix to the work, his protege was almost
extravagantly lauded: but the plan as then designed
1 Pinkerton's Correspondence, i. 2.          2 Ibid. i. 25.
was never put in practice. The friendship of Wai-
pole continued till his death; and, light and versatile
in his own acquirements, he seems to have looked
on the dogged perseverance and continually accumu-
lating knowledge of Pinkerton with some respect.
After Walpole's death Pinkerton sold a collection
of his Ana to the proprietors of the Monthly Maga-
zine, and they were afterwards published under the
title Walpoliana.
In 1786 Pinkerton published "Ancient Scottish-
Poems, never before in Print, but now Published
from the Manuscript Collections of Sir Richard
Maitland of Lethington, Knight, Lord Privy-seal
of Scotland; comprising Pieces written from about
1420 till 1586: with Large Notes and a Glos-
sary." Pinkerton maintained that he had found the
manuscript in the Pepysian Library at Cambridge,
and in his correspondence he sometimes alludes to
the deceit with very admirable coolness. The for-
gery was one of the most audacious recorded in
the annals of transcribing. Time, place, and cir-
cumstances were all minutely stated—there was no
mystery. Among Pinkerton's opinions as to char-
acter, that of literary impostor was of the most de-
graded order. The whole force of his nature and
power over the language were employed to describe
his loathing and contempt. On Macpherson, who
executed the task with more genius but certainly
much less historical knowledge than himself, he
poured the choice of his denunciations. In 1787
he published "The Treasury of Wit; being a Me-
thodical Selection of about Twelve Hundred of the
best Apophthegms and Jests, from Books in several
Languages." This work is not one of those which
may be presumed to have been consonant with Pink-
erton's pursuits, and it probably owed its existence
to a favourable engagement with a bookseller; but
even in a book of anecdotes this author could not
withstand the desire of being distinct from other
men, and took the opportunity of making four divi-
sions of wit and humour, viz. "serious wit, comic
wit; serious humour, and comic humour." During
the same year he produced a "Dissertation on the
Origin and Progress of the Scythians or Goths, being
an Introduction to the Ancient and Modern History
of Europe." In the compilation of this small treatise
he boasts of having employed himself eight hours
per day for one year in the examination of classical
authors: the period occupied in consulting those of
the Gothic period, which he found to be "a mass of
superfluity and error," he does not venture to limit.
This production was suggested by his reading for his
celebrated account of the early history of Scotland,
and was devised for the laudable purpose of proving
that the Celtic race was more degraded than the
Gothic, as a preparatory position to the arguments
maintained in that work. He accordingly shows
the Greeks to have been a Gothic race, in as far as
they were descended from the Pelasgi, who were
Scythians or Goths—a theory which, by the way,
in the secondary application, has received the sanc-
tion of late etymologists and ethnologists of eminence
—and, by a similar progress, he showed the Gothic
origin of the Romans. Distinct from the general
account of the progress of the Goths, which is cer-
tainly full of information and acuteness, he had a
particular object to gain in fixing on an island formed
by the influx of the Danube in the Euxine Sea, fortu-
nately termed by the ancient geographers "Peuke,"
and inhabited by Peukini. From this little island,
of the importance of which he produces many highly
respectable certificates, he brings the Peukini along
the Danube, whence, passing to the Baltic, they
afterwards appear in Scotland as the Picts or  Pechts.