The improved editions, by Harles and Ernesti, of the Bibliotheca Graces and Bibliotheca Latina, of Fabricius, are well known to the learned, as immense magazines of information in regard to the Classics] and classical literature ; but as they extend over a much wider field of inquiry than is embraced by Bibliography, it does not belong to our present subject to give a more particular account of them.
The great number of Books published anonymous ly, as well as under false or feigned names, early di rected the attention of the learned to this branch of Bibliographical inquiry. In 1669, Frederic Geisler, a Professor of Public Law at Leipsic, published a Dissertation De Nominum Mutatione, which he re printed in 1671, with a short catalogue of anony mous and pseudonymous authors. About the same period, a similar but more extensive work had been undertaken by Vincent Placcius, Professor of Morals and Eloquence at Hamburg, and which was pub lished in 4to in 1674, with this title : De Scriptis d Scriptoribus, anonymis alque pseudonymis, Syntagma. Four years thereafter, John Decker, a learned German Lawyer, published Conjecturer de scriptis adespotis, pseudepigraphis, et supposititiis ; which was republished in 1686, with the addition of two Letters upon the same subjects ; one by Paul Vindlingius, a Professor at Copenhagen, and the other by the celebrated Peter Bayle. In 1689, John /Mayer, a Clergyman of Hamburg, published a letter to PI:tc due, under this title : Dissertatio epistolica ad Plac e:jut*, qua anonriorum d pseudonymorum farrago exhibitur. Placcius, meanwhile, had continued his inquiries ; and after his death, the fruits both of his first researches and additional discoveries were em bodied in one work, and published in a folio volume, at Hamburg, in 1708, by Mathew Dreyer, a Law yer of that city. The work was now entitled, Theo tram Anonymorum et Pseudonyntorunt ; and, besides an Introduction by Dreyer, and a Life of Placcius, by John Albert Fabricius, it contains, in an appen dix, the before-noticed treatises of Geisler and Decker, with the relative Letters of Vindinlingitw and Bayle, as well as Mayer's Dissertatio Epistolica, addressed to Placcius. This very elaborate work
contains notices of six thousand books or authors; but it is ill arranged, often inaccurate, and three fourths of it are made up of citations and extracts, equally useless and fatiguing. a A part of this subject, that relating to Books pub lished under false or fanciful names, had been under taken in France by Adrian Baillet, nearly about the same period that Placcius commenced his inquiries. In 1690, this author published his Auteurs Diguises ; 'but this is little more than the Introduction to an intended Catalogue of such authors, which Baillet never completed; being deterred, as Niceron says, by the apprehension, that the exposing of concealed authors might some way or other involve him in trouble. In this piece, which was reprinted in the sixth volume of De la Monnoye's edition of HQ let's Jugemens des Savans, there are some curious literary anecdotes ; particularly those illustrative of the rage which obtained after the revival of letters, for the assumption of classical names. In Italy, these names were so generally introduced into fami lies, that the names of the Saints, hitherto the com mon appellatives, almost disappeared from that coun try.
The taste for this species of research, which the work of Placcius had diffused in Germany, produced several Supplements to it in that country. In one published at Jena, in 1711, under the name of Chri stopher Augustus Neuman, there is, besides the list of authors, a dissertation upon the question, Whether it is lawful for an author either to withhold or to disguise his name ? which question he decides in the affirmative. This work is entitled, De Lihris anonymis et psettdonymis Schediasma, compledens observationes generates, et Spicilegium ad PLACCII Theatrum. But the most considerable of these Supplements was that published by John Christopher Mylius, at Ham burg, in 1740. It contains a reprint of the Sche diasma of Neuman, with remarks ; and a list of three thousand two hundred authors, in addition to those noticed by Placcius. The notices of Mylius, how ever, are limited to books in the Latin, German, and French languages.