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have undertaken to write a Romance of which the scene was laid in
Armenia, and at the desire of his publisher had made sketches of
landscape to illustrate the text.
I feel bound to mention this singular hypothesis as it has actually
been put forward (see No. 1336 note 5); and it would certainly seem
as though there were no other possible way of evading the conclusion
to which these letters point, and their bearing on the life of the
master,--absurd as the alternative is. But, if, on a question of
such importance, we are justified in suggesting theories that have
no foundation in probability, I could suggest another which, as
compared with that of a Fiction by Leonardo, would be neither more
nor less plausible; it is, moreover the only other hypothesis,
perhaps, which can be devised to account for these passages, if it
were possible to prove that the interpretation that the documents
themselves suggest, must be rejected a priori; viz may not Leonardo
have written them with the intention of mystifying those who, after
his death, should try to decipher these manuscripts with a view to
publishing them? But if, in fact, no objection that will stand the
test of criticism can be brought against the simple and direct
interpretation of the words as they stand, we are bound to regard
Leonardo's travels in the East as an established fact. There is, I
believe nothing in what we know of his biography to negative such a
fact, especially as the details of his life for some few years are
wholly unknown; nor need we be at a loss for evidence which may
serve to explain--at any rate to some extent--the strangeness of his
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