Dr. Munro's acute and interesting book, _Archaeology and False
Antiquities_, {6} does not cover the whole of its amusing subject. False
gems, coins, inscriptions, statues, and pictures are scarcely touched
upon; the author is concerned chiefly with false objects of the
pre-historic and "proto-historic" periods, and with these as bearing on
the Clyde controversy of 1896-1905. Out of 292 pages, at least 130 treat
directly of that local dispute: others bear on it indirectly.
I have taken great interest in this subject since I first heard of it by
accident, in the October or November of 1898. As against Dr. Munro, from
whose opinions I provisionally dissent, I may be said to have no _locus
standi_. He is an eminent and experienced archaeologist in matters of
European pre-historic and proto-historic times. Any one is at liberty to
say of me what another celebrated archaeologist, Mr. Charles Hercules
Read, said, in a letter to Dr. Munro, on December 7, 1901, about some one
else: a person designated as "---," and described as "a merely literary
man, who cannot understand that to practised people the antiquities are
as readable as print, and a good deal more accurate." {7} But though
"merely literary," like Mr. "---," I have spent much time in the study of
comparative anthropology; of the manners, ideas, customs, implements, and
sacred objects of uncivilised and peasant peoples. Mr. "---" may not
have done so, whoever he is. Again, as "practised people" often vary
widely in their estimates of antique objects, or objects professing to be
antique, I cannot agree with Mr. Read that "the antiquities" are "as
readable as print,"--if by "antiquities" he means antiquities in general.
At the British Museum I can show Mr. Read several admirable specimens of
the art of faking, standing, like the Abomination of Desolation, where
they ought not. It was not by unpractised persons that they were
purchased at the national expense. We are all fallible, even the oldest
of us. I conceive Mr. Read, however, to mean the alleged and disputed
"antiquities" of the Clyde sites, and in that case, his opinion that they
are a "curious swindle" is of the most momentous weight.
But, as to practised opinion on antiquities in general, Dr. Munro and I
agree that it is really very fallible, now and again. The best
authorities, he proves, may read antiquities differently. He is not
certain that he has not himself, on occasion, taken "fakes" for true
antiques. {8a} The _savants_ of the Louvre were lately caught by the
notorious "tiara of Saitaphernes," to the pecuniary loss of France; were
caught on April 1, 1896, and were made _poissons d'Avril_, to the golden
tune of 200,000 francs (8000 pounds).
Again, M. Lartet and Mr. Christy betted a friend that he could not hoax
them with a forged palaeolithic drawing. They lost their bet, and, after
M. Lartet's death, the forged object was published, as genuine, in the
scientific journal, _Materiaux_ (1874). {8b} As M. Reinach says of
another affair, it was "a _fumisterie_." {8c} Every archaeologist may be
the victim of a _fumisterie_, few have wholly escaped, and we find Dr.
Furtwangler and Mr. Cecil Smith at odds as to whether a head of Zeus in
terra-cotta be of the fifth century B.C. or, quite the contrary, of the
nineteenth or twentieth century A.D.
Verily all "practised people" do not find "antiquities as readable as
print." On the other hand, my late friend, Dr. A. S. Murray, Keeper of
Classical Antiquities in the British Museum, "read" the Mycenaean
antiquities erroneously, placing them many centuries too late. M. de
Mortillet reckoned them forgeries, and wrote of the discoverer, Dr.
Schliemann, and even of Mrs. Schliemann, in a tone unusual in men of
science and gentlemen.
The great palaeolithic discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes, the very
bases of our study of the most ancient men, were "read" as impostures by
many "practised people." M. Cartailhac, again, has lately, in the most
candid and honourable way, recanted his own original disbelief in certain
wall-paintings in Spanish caves, of the period called "palaeolithic," for
long suspected by him of being "clerical" impostures. {9}
Thus even the most "practised people," like General Councils, "may err
and have erred," when confronted either with forgeries, or with objects
old in fact, but new to them. They have _not_ always found antiquities
"as readable as print." Dr. Munro touches but faintly on these "follies
of the wise," but they are not unusual follies. This must never be
forgotten.
Where "practised people" may be mistaken through a too confirmed
scepticism, the "merely literary man" may, once in an azure moon, happen
to be right, or not demonstrably wrong; that is my excuse for differing,
provisionally, from "practised people." It is only provisionally that I
dissent from Dr. Munro as to some of the points at issue in the Clyde
controversy. I entered on it with very insufficient knowledge: I remain,
we all remain, imperfectly informed: and like people rich in
practice,--Dr. Joseph Anderson, and Sir Arthur Mitchell,--I "suspend my
judgement" for the present. {10}
This appears to me the most scientific attitude. Time is the great
revealer. But Dr. Munro, as we saw, prefers not to suspend his judgment,
and says plainly and pluckily that the disputed objects in the Clyde
controversy are "spurious"; are what the world calls "fakes," though from
a delicate sense of the proprieties of language, he will not call them
"forgeries." They are reckoned by him among "false antiquities," while,
for my part, I know not of what age they are, but incline I believe that
many of them are not of the nineteenth century. This is the extent of
our difference. On the other hand I heartily concur with Dr. Munro in
regretting that his advice,--to subject the disputed objects at the
earliest possible stage of the proceedings, to a jury of experts,--was
not accepted. {11a}
One observation must be made on Dr. Munro's logical method, as announced
by himself. "My role, on the present occasion, is to advocate the
correctness of my own views on purely archaeological grounds, without any
special effort to refute those of my opponents." {11b} As my view is
that the methods of Dr. Munro are perhaps,--and I say it with due
deference, and with doubt,--capable of modification, I shall defend my
opinions as best I may. Moreover, my views, in the course of seven long
years (1898-1905) have necessarily undergone some change, partly in
deference to the arguments of Dr. Munro, partly because much new
information has come to my knowledge since 1898-99. Moreover, on one
occasion, I misstated my own view, and, though I later made my real
opinion perfectly dear, some confusion was generated.