When we reflect on the innumerable errors daily propagated by books, we have cause to be alarmed at the strange confusion in which all literature may find itself a few centuries hence. It is very possible that historical events will be even more difficult of proof than before the invention of printing, which may consequently have served to augment disorder and perplexity rather than to have assisted in the promotion of truth and accuracy. In a recent number of the _Constitutionnel_, in a _feuilleton_ supposed to be from the pen of M. de Lamartine, it is stated that: “The tombs of great poets inspire great passions. It was at Tasso’s tomb,” he says, “that Petrarch, during his first absence, nourished his regretful remembrance of _Laura_!” Now Petrarch died in 1374, and it was more than two hundred years afterwards (in 1581) that Tasso published his first edition of the _Gerusalemme Liberata_! We should not know where to stop if we attempted to bring forward examples of all the improbable and the untrue in history. We shall confine ourselves therefore to the examination of a few of the most universally accredited facts, the truth of which, to say the least, is extremely doubtful. We at one time entertained the project of reconstructing the critical work of the Abbé Lancelotti already mentioned, by enlarging its scope. This rare and scarcely known book (_Farfalloni degli antichi Storici_) would have served us as a basis, upon which we should have proceeded to review history in general. It would have been an instructive and a pleasant task to demolish falsehood in order to arrive at truth; to set aside, in good faith, worn out platitudes, deeds of heroism resting on no proof whatsoever, and crimes wanting the confirmation of authenticity; but when we set ourselves to estimate its extent, we shrank from so laborious an undertaking. In working out the subject, we should have related, with Henry Schnitzler (_De la colonisation de l’ancienne Grèce_), and with Schœll (_la littérature grecque_), that _Cecrops_ the Egyptian had imposed upon us when he pretended to come out of Egypt, as did _Cadmus_ when he professed to arrive from Phœnicia. The Abbé Barthélemy (_Voyage du jeune Anarcharsis_) would have enlightened us on the memorable battle of _Thermopylæ_, where _Leonidas_, instead of resisting the Persians with three hundred men, commanded, according to _Diodorus_, at least seven thousand--or even twelve thousand, if we may believe _Pausanias_. We should have exposed the fabulous part of the history of _Sappho_, by following Mr. C. F. Neue (_Sapphonis Mytilinææ fragmenta_) and M. J. Mongin, in his remarkable article on this poetess in _l’Encyclopédie nouvelle_; and the learned Spon (_Miscellanies_) would have explained to us the pretended tub of Diogenes. Other innumerable errors would have been brought before the reader, for we have only cited a very small portion of the programme.