In comparatively modern times also, how many delusions do we find worthy of ancient history. The story of the Sicilian Vespers,[4] for instance, and the episode concerning Doctor Procida, who far from being a principal in the massacre, was not even present at it. We may also mention some of the anecdotes of Christopher Columbus:[5] the fable of the egg that he is said to have broken, in order to make it stand upright: the account of his anxiety, amounting to agony, among his mutinous crew, to whom he had faithfully promised a sight of land--all of which has been disproved by M. de Humboldt in his _Examen critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie_. The history of England also furnishes many examples of similar credulity. Without entering upon the murder of King Edward’s children, which story has been discussed by Walpole, may we not cite the death of the Duke of Clarence, who for four centuries was believed to have been drowned in a butt of Malmsey?--an error exposed by John Bayley in “_The historic Antiquities of the Tower of London_.” We may cite again the often-mooted question of the exhumation of the body of Cromwell, and of the outrages committed on his remains by order of Charles II:[6] the interesting but imaginative picture of Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters, while, if we may believe Doctor Johnson, he never even allowed them to learn to write. Modern historians, however, are often equally incorrect. Among them we may quote the poet laureate Southey, who was guilty of a remarkable perversion of facts regarding one of the wisest men of the 19th century. In an article in the _Quarterly Review_ (Vol. XXXIX. p. 477. April 1829) entitled, _State and Prospects of the Country_, we are told that Conrad, a monk of Heresbach, had pronounced in presence of an assembly, an anathema against Greek, saying that: “a new language had been discovered called Greek, against which it was necessary to guard, as this language engendered every species of heresy; just as all they who learned Hebrew, infallibly became Jews.” This curious anecdote was repeated in _La Revue Britannique_, No. 46. p. 254, whence it found its way into a note of the _Poème de la Typographie_ of M. Pelletier (1 vol. 8ᵛᵒ. Genève, 1832) and the mistake was republished in many other books. Now the real fact is, that Conrad of Heresbach had never been a monk, but was a confidential counsellor of the Duke of Cleves, and that, far from prohibiting the study of the ancient languages, he was one of the savans of the 16th century who shewed the greatest zeal in encouraging a taste for their culture. It is he himself who, in order to expose the ignorance of the clergy of that period, relates, that he heard a monk from the pulpit pronounce the anathema on the Greek language which we have mentioned above. So easy is it, by distorting facts, to make or mar a reputation!