Critical and Historical Essays. Volume 3

6

Frederic the Great and his Times. Edited, with an Introduction by Thomas Campbell, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1842.

7

Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay. Five vols. 8vo. London: 1842.

8

There is some difficulty here as to the chronology. "This sacrifice," says the editor of the Diary, "was made in the young authoress's fifteenth year." This could not be; for the sacrifice was the effect, according to the editor's own showing, of the remonstrances of the second Mrs. Burney; and Frances was in her sixteenth year when her father's second marriage took place.

9

The Life of Joseph Addison. By Lucy Aikin. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1843.

10

Orlando Furioso, xlv. C8.

11

It is strange that Addison should, in the first line of his travels, have misdated his departure from Marseilles by a whole year, and still more strange that this slip of the pen which throws the whole narrative into inextricable confusion, should have been repeated in a succession of editions, and never detected by Tickell or by Hurd.

12

Nos. 26, 329, 69, 317, 159, 343, 517. These papers are all in the first seven volumes. The eighth must be considered as a separate work.

13

We will transcribe the whole paragraph. How it can ever have been misunderstood is unintelligible to us.

"But our author's chief concern is for the poor House of Commons, whom he represents as naked and defenceless, when the Crown, by losing this prerogative, would be less able to protect them against the power of a House of Lords. Who forbears laughing when the Spanish Friar represents little Dicky, under the person of Gomez, insulting the Colonel that was able to fright him out of his wits with a single frown? This Gomez, says he, flew upon him like a dragon, got him down, the Devil being strong in him, and gave him bastinado on bastinado, and buffet on buffet, which the poor Colonel, being prostrate, suffered with a most Christian patience. The improbability of the fact never fails to raise mirth in the audience; and one may venture to answer for a British House of Commons, if we may guess from its conduct hitherto, that it will scarce be either so tame or so weak as our author supposes."

14

Mémoires de Bertrand Barère; publiés par MM. Hippolyte Carnot, Membre de la Chambre des Députés, et David d'Angers, Membre de l'Institut: précédés d'une Notice Historique par H. Carnot. 4 tomes. Paris: 1843.

15

O'Meara's Voice from St. Helena, ii. 170.

16

Moniteur, second, seventh, and ninth of August, 1793.

17

Vol. ii. p. 407.

18

Moniteur, thirty-first of July, 1793, and Nonidi, first Decade of Brumaire, in the year 2.

19

See the Publiciste of the fourteenth of July, 1793. Marat was stabbed on the evening of the thirteenth.

20

M. Hippolyte Carnot does his best to excuse this decree. His abuse of England is merely laughable. England has managed to deal with enemies of a very different sort from either himself or his hero. One disgraceful blunder, however, we think it right to notice.

M. Hippolyte Carnot asserts that a motion similar to that of Barère was made in the English Parliament by the late Lord Fitzwilliam. This assertion is false. We defy M. Hippolyte Carnot to state the date and terms of the motion of which he speaks. We do not accuse him of intentional misrepresentation; but we confidently accuse him of extreme ignorance and temerity. Our readers will be amused to learn on what authority he has ventured to publish such a fable. He quotes, not the Journals of the Lords, not the Parliamentary Debates, but a ranting message of the Executive Directory to the Five Hundred, a message, too, the whole meaning of which he has utterly misunderstood.

21

1. Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. 4 vols. 8vo. London: 1840.

2. Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, to Sir Horace Mann. 4 vols. 8vo. London: 1843-4.

22

In the reign of Anne, the House of Lords had resolved that, under the 23rd article of Union, no Scotch peer could he created a peer of Great Britain. This resolution was not annulled till the year 1782.