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fistener was found in one of the streets of Lisbon, wrapt in a sheet, scarcely cold, and the blood still oozing from various wounds inHicted on her with a dagger. It was not doubted (i.e. it was guessed) that she had been put to death by secret instructions issued from the Palace of Tavora; but the power of that great family, and the frequency of similar spectacles in the Portugueze capital, silenced all judicial enquiry into the causes of ker tragical end.” Vol. I. P. 29.

Unfortunately for the story, coming under the style and title of an historical memoir, it attracts the notice of the inquisitive reader who enquires how, as this matter never underwent a judicial enquiry, did these particulars come to light. Were they communicated by the murderess or the murdered ?-Such questions however never appear to have disturbed the credulous ac quiescence of Sir Nathaniel's mind: we hinted at the following story before.

"If Richelieu, as we are assured from contemporary authority, ventured to raise his eyes to Anne, of Austria, and to make her proposals of a libertine nature, it is equally a fact, however incredible it may appear, that Fleury, then above seventy years of age, carried his presumption still further with respect to Maria Luzinska. (Queen of Louis the 15th.) I shall not relate the particulars. That princess, conscious nevertheless of the ascendant which the Cardinal had obtained over her husband, possessed too much prúdence to communicate to him, in the first instance, the subject of her complaint. She wisely preferred making a confident of her fa. ther. To Stanilaus she revealed the temerity of the aged minister, and besought him at the same time to give her his advice for her conduct, particularly on the point of her acquainting Louis with the circumstance. Stanilaus exhorted her, in reply, to bury the secret for ever in her own bosom observing at the same time that sovereign princesses are placed on such an eminence as almost to render it impossible for any disrespectful propositions to be made them, unless they encourage, to a certain degree, such advances. The Queen was discreet enough to adopt this judicious and paternal council. If I had not received this anecdote here related, from a person whose intimacy with the individuals composing the court of France at that time, joined to his rank and high character, left no doubt of its authenticity, I should not venture to record the fact." Vol. I. P. 83.

Now here was a secret deposited with three persons: one of whom was advised to bury it for ever in her own bosom, and adopted the advice: the other was the prudent father, who gave that judicious council: and the third, the aged and disappointed lover. Which then of the three divulged it? And again, of whom is the story told? Of Maria Luzinska on the one part, a prudent, virtuous and not handsoine woman; who was most un

likely to have given that encouragement to a suitor, which, as Stanilaus justly observed, must have been preparatory to any improper overtures: and on the other part of Cardinal Fleury, a man then nearly eighty years of age; who had first distinguished himself by his zealous discharge of his duties as Bishop of Frejus : and who afterwards, in spite of early prejudices entertained against him as a licentious character by Louis the XIVth. had raised himself by the cautious decorum of his conduct to the situation of tutor to Louis XV. and Prime Minister of France: in a word of a man, whose prudence was his fortune. But then Sir Nathaniel had the story from a person of high rank and character! and thus it is that such idle gossip obtains currency. The world never stops

to examine the probability of even possibility of the facts asserted, or how far they are consistent with the characters involved; but is contented to take them for granted, because "communicated by a person of undoubted veracity, but whose name they are not at liberty to mention." We do conceive that the propagators of such idle stories are not a whit less contemptible than the antiquated spinster of the country town, who travels her morning ronnds to propagate her hearsay conjectures, mistakes or misinterpretations. The only difference is, that one takes scandal of the squire and apothecary's wife, and the other of queens and prime ministers.

But it is not fair on this score to bear too hard on our worthy Baronet. Credulity is at worst a good-natured, confiding, unsuspicious quality. And the blame should fall upon those that impose upon this easiness of nature, rather than upon its amiable possessor. In this particular no one has been more guilty than the first Lady Hamilton. She seems to have taken a wicked delight in palming upon Sir Nathaniel, while at Naples, every wonderful tale she could recollect or invent; and he has retailed them again to the public with all the becoming gravity of implicit belief. There is one of a surgeon at Rome, who, having been surprised and blindfolded by two masks, and conveyed through divers streets and flights of winding stairs, was forced at the point of the sword to bleed an unfortunate lady to death; with a true and authentic account of, how the said murder was discovered by the marks of his bloody fingers on the walls; and how the two masks did penance for the same. Another of a Strasbourgh executioner, who was so skilful an operator in his way, that no criminal that could afford afford to pay his fee would employ any other practitioner; and how he 'likewise travelled blindfolded many hundred miles, nobody knows where to behead another unfortunate lady, nobody knows whom. Another of a Heydue, who, to save his master, gave his horse and then himself as a meal for a drove of hungry wolves; with many

other

other stories of like kind, to be equalled only by the horrors and mysteries of the Castle of Udolpho; and which we would have transcribed for the amusement of our sentimental readers, were not the Baronet too prolix in his mode of narration to suit the narrow limits of our review.

But whatever allowances may be made for the credulous reception of absurdity, when it is decorated with the charms of novelty, we must at least expect that this author of Historical Memoirs be acquainted with matters of known and acknowledged history. And here Sir Nathanel rather too frequently trips. For instance, he represents John Vth of Portugal, as a man of very moderate endowments; fond of show, but destitute of taste; of a narrow mind and enslaved bigotry." Vol. 1. p. 62.

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Now Sir Nathaniel should have known, that John the Vth suffered from an apoplectic stroke, which weakened his abilities, and totally altered the true tone of his mind. He was originally a man of excellent understanding, of a violent and haughty disposition indeed; but possessed of more talents than any of his. predecessors of the house of Braganza. And if he was latterly of a bigotted turn, it was not till after the encroachments of disease, when, through mere imbecility, he fell into the hands of his priests.

Speaking of the rise of the celebrated Sebastian Joseph Carvalho, Condé de Ocyras, afterwards known better by the name of the Marquess de Pombal, he says,

"That his birth, noble but not illustrious, would never have opened him a way to power, if he had not been aided by extraordinary talents. Maria Anna of Austria, daughter of the Emperor Leopold the First, and the Queen to John the Vth, recommended him to her son Joseph, who, on his accession to the throne in, 1750, named Carvalho Secretary for Foreign Affairs.” Vol. i., p. 64.

It was not his extraordinary talents that first raised Carvalho to eminence. He married a relation of Marshal Daun, bywhose interest he was recommended to Anna Maria. The meagre way indeed, in which Sir N. has alluded to the important and curious transaction of Carvalho's celebrated ministry, only leads us to lament how much we want a history of Portugal. Mate-rials for such a work were begun to be collected by a gentleman of high literary reputation, who would have done ample justice to the undertaking. But he has since directed his attention to matters of perhaps still higher interest to us as Englishmen.

Our author asserts (p. 66, vol. i.) that Malgrida, the famous ·

7

jesuit, was burnt at the stake; and laments his execution as a cruel and odions act. He was strangled before he was burnt.

He represents Louis XVth as "exhibiting during eleven or twelve years after his marriage a pattern of conjugal felicity," and states, that in contrast to the licentious manner in which Louis the XIVth spent his youth," that his successor did not till the afternoon and evening of his life sink into the arms of the Marchioness de Pompadour and of the Countess du Barry.

Does Sir N. mean to say, that Louis XVth did not disgrace himself with intrigue till late in life? If so, we are sorry to contradict Sir Nathaniel, but must beg leave to remind him of the names of the two sisters, Mad. de Mailly and Mad. de Vintrimille; with the first of whom that King was acquainted as early as 1732 (he married in 1726) while he was, as Richelieu expresses it, yet sauvage, délicat et dévot; and we must recommend it to our author to re-peruse the 5th volume of that minister's memoirs.

These however are very venial errors, and had Sir William Wraxall only trespassed against accuracy and probability, we could have been contented to have continued a tone of banter. But heavier charges lie at his door; and we are sure the public will join with us in raising the voice of indignation against him for the outrageous and unnecessary indecency, which in every shape and character, pervades, not only this, but most of his publications, We suggested to him as a title, "A continuation of the new Atalantis," and by our faith as dispensers of literary justice, he would not have done discredit to it. He not only alludes, or rather expatiates upon, those facts, which modesty would blush to record, did not history oblige her narrator to observe them for the sake of truth, but goes out of his road to introduce anecdotes that afford neither explanation, nor amusement, nor any other sentiment than pure disgust In the freedom of mixed conversation, when wine has loosened the reins of the imagination, there may be some palliation, though little enough even then, for a loose and unguarded expression. But for a man, in the calm and cool retirement of his study, while he has leisure not only to balance sentences, but to weigh the purport of every word, deliberately to commit to paper that which cannot fail to put modesty to the blush, is an offence that deserves a severer punishment than we can inflict by the censures of a literary tribunal. But for such delinquencies, his book might have afforded considerable amusement to those who are fond of light and desul tory reading; for with all its faults, we will allow it the merit of being highly entertaining; but, as it is, it is fit for no class

of

of readers. To the man of accuracy and research in matters of history it is utterly contemptible; to the other sex and the youth of our own, it is a sealed book on account of its gross indecencies.

We stated in our account of the life of Sir William, that he represented himself, "as having been admitted on the credit of some of his publications," into the society of the " Gens de lettres, or the blue stocking club," as he is pleased to translate it, during the day of Mrs. Montague and Dr. Johnson. Upon the whole, however, if we may judge from the spleen and acri mony with which he speaks of the principal members of that coterie, he was not very well pleased with his reception. He attributes the fame of Mrs. Montague to her excellent dinners, rather than her wit: and supposes that her guests "admired more the splendor of her fortune than the lustre of her talents.'' To the memory of Dr. Johnson he gives no quarter, and beards the dead lion with no little courage.

"I will freely confess, that his rugged exterior and garb, his uncouth gestures, his convolutions and distortions, when added to the rude or dogmatical manner in which he delivered his opinions and decisions on every point, rendered him so disagreeable in com pany and oppressive in conversation, that all the superiority of his talents could not make full amends, in my estimation, for these defects." Vol. i. p. 143,

Now we could not conceive what had raised the puny indignation of Sir W. Wraxall against this great potentate in liter. rature, till the following sentence explained the mystery.

"Those whom he could not always vanquish by the force of his intellect, by the depth and range of his arguments, and by the compass of his gigantic faculties, he silenced by rudeness: and I have myself (prodigious!) more than once stood in the predicament I here describe." Vol. i. p. 144.

So here is the truth of the matter: our accomplished baronet had ventured to intermeddle in some argument maintained by Johnson, and having advanced something, as is his custom, not quite consistent with accuracy or decency; that surly watch-dog over the cause of truth and morality, has seized the intruder, and shook him somewhat roughly for his interference. Hinc ille lacrymæ. Sir Nathaniel has endeavoured to revenge himself by the following morsel of criticism.

"Even as a biographer, Johnson, however masterly, profound, and acute, has always appeared to me to have evinced great inaccuracy and neglect. I do not mean to speak of his political par tialities, but I allude to errors which could only have arisen from an ignorance of facts, with which he might and ought to have been

acquainted,

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