But now we take up another supposition. After tracing as we have done, the history of the work in question, up through a continued series of quotations, in the Greek and Latin writers, and obtaining by that means a conclusive proof of its antiquity, we may imagine that there is in existence a Persian translation of the History of Herodotus, which, by the peculiarities of its style, as well as by external evidence, is ascertained to have been executed in the time of Artaxerxes. Another translation of the same work is then brought forward in the language of ancient Carthage, which, except in this (supposed) translation, has been long extinct. And there is another in the Coptic, or ancient language of Egypt; and another in the Latin, of the time of Plautus and Terence. If these several translations had each descended to modern times, through some independent channel, and if each possessed a separate mass of evidence in proof of its antiquity; and if, when collated among themselves, and with the Greek original, they were found to harmonize, except in those variations which must always belong to a translation; then, and in such a case, we should possess an instance of that sort of redundant demonstration which in fact does belong in full to the Jewish and Christian Scriptures; but to no other writings whatever. Let it now be granted as _possible_ that a writer of a later age, who was a perfect master of the Greek language, who possessed an endless fund of various learning, and who was gifted in a high degree with the imitative faculty, might produce nine books like those of Herodotus, which, supposing there were no external evidence to contradict the fraud, might pass as genuine. To affirm that a forgery such as this is _possible_, is to allow the utmost that our knowledge of the powers of the human mind will permit to be granted; and much more than the history of literary forgeries will warrant us to suppose: for all the attempts of that sort that have been detected, either abound with manifest incongruities; or if executed by men of learning and ability, they have been formed upon a small scale, and have excluded, as far as possible, all exact references to particular facts. But the work before us is of great extent; its allusions to particular facts are innumerable, precise, and incautious; its style and dialect are proper to the age to which it pretends:--in a word, it is in every respect what a genuine production of that age ought to be. If then it were to be judged of, on the ground of internal evidence alone, no scholar could for a moment hesitate to decide in favour of its genuineness. The reader will recollect that the supposition of a forgery in a later age is excluded by the evidence already adduced in this chapter. CHAPTER XVIII. METHOD OF ARGUING FROM THE GENUINENESS, TO THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS.