prose in which was found a French police regulation which required newly arrived travellers to register their names in the book of a police officer of an Italian village of the first century. Although they are still retained in the text by some editors, this is done to give some measure of continuity to an otherwise interrupted narrative, but they can only serve to distort the author and obscure whatever view of him the reader might otherwise have reached. They are generally printed between brackets or in different type. In 1768 another and far abler forger saw the light of day. Jose Marchena, a Spaniard of Jewish extraction, was destined for an ecclesiastical career. He received an excellent education which served to fortify a natural bent toward languages and historical criticism. In his early youth he showed a marked preference for uncanonical pursuits and heretical doctrines and before he had reached his thirtieth year prudence counseled him to prevent the consequences of his heresy and avoid the too pressing Inquisition by a timely flight into France. He arrived there in time to throw himself into the fight for liberty, and in 1800 we find him at Basle attached to the staff of General Moreau. While there he is said to have amused himself and some of his cronies by writing notes on what Davenport would have called “Forbidden Subjects,” and, as a means of publishing his erotic lucubrations, he constructed this fragment, which brings in those topics on which he had enlarged. He translated the fragment into French, attached his notes, and issued the book. There is another story to the effect that he had been reprimanded by Moreau for having written a loose song and that he exculpated himself by assuring the general that it was but a new fragment of Petronius which he had translated. Two days later he had the fragment ready to prove his contention. This is the account given by his Spanish biographer. In his preface, dedicated to the Army of the Rhine, he states that he found the fragment in a manuscript of the work of St. Gennadius on the Duties of Priests, probably of the XI Century. A close examination revealed the fact that it was a palimpsest which, after treatment, permitted the restoration of this fragment. It is supposed to supply the gap in Chapter 26 after the word “verberabant.” Its obscenity outrivals that of the preceding text, and the grammar, style, and curiosa felicitas Petroniana make it an almost perfect imitation. There is no internal evidence of forgery. If the text is closely scrutinized it will be seen that it is composed of words and expressions taken from various parts of the Satyricon, “and that in every line it has exactly the Petronian turn of phrase.”