cause it was on the Duke of Dorset's death that Lord Camden had the garter and Sir Nathaniel solemnly asserts, he himself had it from the Duke, who, however, died before the thing could have occurred. Sir Nathaniel had forgotten the proverb that dead men tell no tales.' We really never read a more impertinent story. When Sir Nathaniel blusters (vol. ii. p. 297) about the indignation which Lord North and his friends might have felt at the dereliction of the American Loyalists by the ministry of 1783, he should have acquainted us in what manner he conceives better terms could have been made for these persons; and he should have remembered also, that besides the perpetual annuity of 4,000l. to the Penns, sums to the amount of 4,300,000l. have been given to those very Loyalists by the ministers who are accused of neglecting them. Well might Mr. Rose* ask- Is there to be met with, in the history of the world, a similar instance of the munificence of a nation?" Sir Nathaniel states, (vol. ii. p. 374,) that in the year 1783, he himself met Mr. Pitt, in company with Mr. Rose, at Antwerp. Now we happen to know that Mr. Pitt never was in Antwerp in his life. He, in another place, (vol. ii. p. 473) represents Mr. Pitt as endeavouring to bilk a turnpike-keeper in a drunken frolic, and having been fired at, while making his escape; but Mr. Pitt, even in his moments of convivial elevation, could not have been betrayed into such mean irregularities: the truth of the matter is, that Mr. Pitt's postillions having missed the road as he was one night returning from Croydon, alighted to ask the way, and Mr. Pitt having also got out of his carriage, they knocked at a house to obtain information, and were answered by a shot, which the owner fired, supposing them to be house-breakers. Sir Nathaniel quotes the Rolliad for his account of this adventure, but it is plain he does not understand what he quotes, as the Rolliad clearly points to the facts as we have stated them, and refers to the instance of Mr. Pitt's late peril from the farmer at Wandsworth!' 'How as Pitt wander'd, darkling o'er the plain, Had shed a Premier's, for a robber's blood !'—Roll. p. 34. On the famous night of Lord North's sudden resignation, he had ' ordered his coach to remain at the House of Commons in waiting, on that evening. In consequence of so unexpected an event as his resig *Brief Examination,' 1799, p 25. nation, nation, and the House breaking up at such an early hour, the housekeeper's room became crowded to the greatest degree; few persons having directed their carriages to be ready before midnight. In the midst of this confusion, Lord North's coach drove up to the door; and as he prepared to get into it, he said, turning to those persons near him, with that unalterable equanimity and good temper which never forsook him, “Good night, Gentlemen, you see what it is to be in the secret."' -vol. ii. p. 152. Here Sir Nathaniel hardly does justice to the bon-mot of the retiring minister: I protest, Gentlemen,' said Lord North, 'this is the first time in my life I ever derived any personal advantage from being in the secret.' The not-very-cleanly joke which (vol. i. p. 520) Sir Nathaniel attributes to Lord Sandwich, is the property of Lord North. Lord Sandwich was not of a turn to make such a reply. The anecdote (vol. i. p. 504) which Sir Nathaniel tells of Lord Sackville and Sir John Elliot, we have heard, we believe more truly, of the late Lord Melville and Sir Walter Farquhar. The following story, told by Sir Nathaniel, of George Selwyn, is related by Grimm, with a greater probability of truth, of the famous Condamine; if true of either, it is a melancholy and disgraceful instance of morbid curiosity. Selwyn's nervous irritability, and anxious curiosity to observe the effect of dissolution on men, exposed him to much ridicule, not unaccompanied with censure. He was accused of attending all executions; and sometimes, in order to elude notice, in a female dress. I have been assured that in 1756, he went over to Paris, expressly for the purpose of witnessing the last moments of Damien, who expired under the most acute torture, for having attempted the life of Louis the Fifteenth. Being among the crowd, and attempting to approach too near the scaffold, he was repulsed by one of the executioners; but, having informed the person, that he had made the journey from London solely with a view to be present at the punishment and death of Damien, the man immediately caused the people to make way, exclaiming at the same time, "Faites place pour Monsieur, c'est un Anglois, et un Amateur."vol. ii. pp. 186-187. Sir Nathaniel states, (vol. ii. p. 252,) 'that on the 29th August, 1782, the Royal George, the pride and ornament of the British navy, &c. &c. &c. disappeared in an instant in the midst of Portsmouth harbour;' and he employs two pages in descanting on this subject: yet it is known to all mankind, except Sir Nathaniel, that she did not sink in Portsmouth harbour, and that her masts were, till within the few last years, visible at Spithead; and poor Sir Nathaniel, with all his curiosity and feeling on this subject, seems not to have known the cause of the accident, but to to attribute it to some mysterious fatality, in which superstitious impression his mind is much fortified by recollecting that another first-rate, the Queen Charlotte, was blown up on the 17th March, 1800. The stories of barefaced corruption alleged to have been practised by Roberts, (vol. ii. p. 497,) and Ross Mackay, (vol. ii. p. 501,) the private secretaries respectively of Mr. Pelham and Lord Bute, are wholly unworthy of credit; the authority on which they stand would not support the credibility of the most common event, much less of such monstrous profligacy. But the most impudent and flagrant instance of the loose and unjustifiable manner in which Sir Nathaniel deals out imputation and libel in the shape of anecdotes, occurs in his account of Augusta Caroline of Brunswick, first wife of the King of Wirtemberg, the husband en secondes nôces of our Princess Royal: and with this anecdote we shall conclude our observations on the pompous gossip and inflated trash of Sir Nathaniel Wraxall. This princess, who was born towards the end of the year 1764, before she attained the age of sixteen, was married to the present king, at that time Prince of Wirtemberg. Some years after her marriage, she accompanied the prince her husband into Russia. They resided during some time at Petersburgh, or in other parts of the Russian Empire; but in 1787 he quitted Catherine's service and dominions; leaving his wife behind, of whose conduct, it was asserted, he had great reason to complain. At the end of a year or two, it was notified to the Prince of Wirtemberg, as well as to the Duke of Brunswick, by order of the Empress, that the wife of the one, and the daughter of the other, was no more. Doubts were not only entertained whether she died a natural death, but it remained questionable whether she did not still survive, and was not existing in Siberia, or in the Polar Desarts. 'I have heard this subject agitated between 1789 and 1795, when great uncertainty prevailed respecting the point; though it seemed to be generally believed that she was dead, and that her end had been accelerated or produced by poison. It was natural to ask, who had caused the poison to be administered? Was the empress herself the perpetrator of this crime? And even if that fact should be admitted, was not the Prince of Wirtemberg tacitly a party to its commission? Though no positive solution of these questions could be given, yet when the fact of the princess's death came to be universally understood, many persons doubted the innocence of her husband. The King of Great Britain himself was strongly imbued with the opinion, of which he made no secret. In 1796, when the first overtures were begun, on the part of the court of Wirtemberg, for the marriage of their prince to the Princess Royal; George the Third was so prepossessed against him, for having been supposed privy to the death of his wife, that he would not listen to the proposal. In order to remove an obstacle of such magnitude, the prince sent over to London a private agent, instructed to ascertain from what quarter 0 3 quarter the accusation came, and furnished with documents for disproving it. That agent I personally knew, while he was here, employed on the above mission. He possessed talents, spirit, zeal, and activity, all of which he exerted in the cause. Having clearly traced the imputation up to Count Woronzoff, who long had been, and who then was the Russian envoy at our court; he induced the count, by very strong personal remonstrances, accompanied, as we must suppose, by proofs, to declare his conviction of the prince's innocence, and utter ignorance of the nature or manner of his wife's end. It followed of course, that Catherine, under whose exclusive care she remained, could alone be accused of having produced it. The agent finally satisfied his Majesty that the empress, and she only, caused the princess to be dispatched, without the participation, consent, or knowledge of her husband; if after all she did not die of a natural death.'-vol. i. pp. 203–207. We beg our readers to observe how the assertion, that this princess was barbarously murdered, dwindles away into the innocent alternative, IF indeed she did not die a natural death.' Sir Nathaniel then goes on to state several circumstances which induce him to suspect that the princess's husband, though thus acquitted by the testimony of Count Woronzow, and the deliberate judgment of George the Third, was nevertheless not guiltless of her death, and amongst them he makes the following observations: 'We have seen that Count Woronzoff originally maintained his sovereign's innocence of the princess's death, though he was afterwards induced to depart from that assertion. But when did he make such an admission? Much depends on the time. For Catherine died on the 6th of November, 1796; and after her death, a crime, more or less, might not appear to be of much consequence, where so many could be justly attributed to her.'-vol. i. p. 214. These are terrible charges against the King of Wirtemberg and the Empress Catharine, and a rather serious imputation against Count Woronzow. It happens a little unluckily for Sir Nathaniel, that in his eagerness to publish his book, he forgot that Count Woronzow was still alive; and this nobleman, whose long residence in this country and connection with some of our illustrious families, quicken his natural sense of honour and his indignation at being slandered by a British historian, wrote, we fiud, to Sir Nathaniel a formal and flat denial of every circumstance in which his name was mentioned, and required of the historical Baronet to state the name of the agent whom he professes to have known so intimately, and from whom he had received a report so injurious to the Count's character, as well as the proofs of the imputation having been clearly traced up to him;-to this Sir Nathaniel replied, that he really did not recollect the agent's name!-but that if Count Woronzow would assure him that the statement in the Memoirs was inaccurate, he would correct it in the next edition, as an historical error. Count Woronzow, however, not contented with the correction which Sir Nathaniel proposes to inflict upon himself, is so kind as to assist him in the work of penitence with some help from the law: the case is now before the King's Bench, and (a new circumstance in literature) the veracity of the historian will be tried, not at the bar of posterity, nor even of a Review, but at that of Westminster.-God send him a good deliverance ! We may regret the awkward situation in which Sir Nathaniel has placed himself; but we cannot blame those against whom such grave accusations are made for resorting to the only means of defence left to them. Sir Nathaniel may be, and we believe is, in private society, a good-natured gentleman, and a man quite above practising any premeditated deception; but his work is as far from deserving a character of good-nature as of veracity. It is not a sufficient justification of his moral character, that he does not mean to deceive, and that where he leads his reader astray he has been himself previously misled. We think that a writer is under no inconsiderable responsibility in his moral character, to set down as fact, no more than he knows: for the injury to private feeling and public confidence is quite as great from his presumptuous ignorance as it would be from absolute falsehood or malice.—The fables of Sir Nathaniel are now capable of detection, but the detection will not accompany them down to posterity; and we even doubt whether the conviction of Sir Nathaniel for a libel, if it should occur, will reach many readers who, fifty years hence, may chance to pick up Wraxall's History of My Own Time. We fear that to such works as that which we are now reviewing, we may prophesy, in the eloquent expression of Junius, a longer existence than it merits- trides float and are preserved-while what is solid and valuable sinks to the bottom, and is lost for ever.' ART. XII. The Life of the Most Noble Arthur Duke of Wellington, from the Period of his first Achievements in India, down to his Invasion of France, and the Peace of Paris in 1814. By George Elliott, Esq. 8vo. London. 1814. A TITLE like this, designed for the hawker's catalogue and the provincial newspapers, may be supposed sufficiently to indicate the sort of book to which it is prefixed. The book, however, is not altogether so bad as the bill of fare promises. The right wood for making a Mercury may be spoiled by a clumsy carver: but he who has to make a molten image of precious metal, what 04 ever |