nothing more than the talk of the town!-just as the science of physics was founded on chimeras which have been repeated from age to age to the present time.

Those who take the trouble of noting down at night what they have heard in the day, should, like St. Augustin, write a book of retractations at the end of the year.

Some one related to the grand-audiencier* L'Etoile, that Henry IV. hunting near Creteil, went alone into an inn, where some Parisian lawyers were dining in an upper room. The king, without making himself known, sent the hostess to ask them if they would admit him at their table, or sell him a part of their dinner. They sent him for answer that they had private business to talk of, and had but a short dinner; they therefore begged that the stranger would excuse them.

Henry called his guards, and had the guests outrageously beaten, to teach them, says L'Etoile, to show more courtesy to gentlemen.

Some authors of the present day, who have taken upon them to write the life of Henry IV., copy this anecdote from L'Etoile without examination, and, which is worse, fail not to praise it as a fine action in Henry.

The thing is, however, neither true nor likely; and were it true, Henry would have been guilty of an act at once the most ridiculous, the most cowardly, the most tyrannical, and the most imprudent.

First, it is not likely that, in 1502, Henry IV. whose physiognomy was so remarkable, and who showed himself to every body with so much affability, was unknown at Creteil near Paris.

Secondly, L'Etoile, far from verifying his impertinent story, says he had it from a man who had it from M. de Vitri; so that it is nothing more than an idle rumour,

Thirdly, it would have been very cowardly, and very hateful, to inflict a shameful punishment on citizens, assembled together on business, who certainly committed no crime in refusing to share their dinner with a stranger (and, it must be allowed, an indiscreet one) who could easily find something to eat in the same house.

* An officer in the French Chancery.-T.

Fourthly, this action, so tyrannical, so unworthy not only of a king but of a man, so liable to punishment by the laws of every country, would have been as imprudent as ridiculous and criminal; it would have drawn upon Henry IV. the execrations of the whole commonalty of Paris, whose good opinion was then of so much importance to him.

History, then, should not have been disfigured by so stupid a story, nor should the character of Henry IV. have been dishonoured by so impertinent an anecdote.

In a book, entitled Anecdotes Littéraires, printed by Durand in 1752, avec privilège, there appears the following passage, (vol. 3, page 183.) "The Amours of Louis XIV. having been dramatised in England, that prince wished to have those of King William performed in France. The Abbé Brueys was directed by M. de Torcy to compose the piece; but though applauded, it was never played, for the subject of it died in the mean time."

There are almost as many absurd lies as there are words in these few lines. The Amours of Louis XIV. were never played on the London stage. Louis XIV. never lowered himself so far as to order a farce to be written on the amours of King William. King William never had a mistress; no one accused him of weakness of that sort. The Marquis de Torcy never spoke to the Abbé Brueys; he was incapable of making to the Abbé, or to any one else, so indiscreet and childish a proposal. The Abbé Brueys never wrote the piece in question. So much for the faith to be placed in anecdotes.

The same book says, that "Louis XIV. was so much pleased with the opera of Isis, that he ordered a decree to be passed in council, by which men of rank were permitted to sing at the opera, and receive a salary for so doing, without demeaning themselves. This decree was registered in the parliament of Paris.”

No such declaration was ever registered in the parliament of Paris. It is true that Lulli obtained in 1672, long before the opera of Isis was performed, letters permitting him to establish his opera, in which letters he got it inserted that "ladies and gentlemen

might sing in this theatre without degradation." But no declaration was ever registered.*

Of all the anas, that which deserves to stand foremost in the ranks of printed falsehood is the Segraisiana: it was compiled by the amanuensis of Segrais, one of his domestics, and was printed long after the master's death. The Menagiana, revised by La Monnoye, is the only one that contains anything instructive.

Nothing is more common than to find in our new miscellanies old bon-mots attributed to our contemporaries, or inscriptions and epigrams, written on certain princes, applied to others.

We are told in the Histoire Philosophique et Politique du Commerce dans les deux Indes (the Philosophical and Political History of the Commerce of the two Indies)+ that the Dutch having driven the Portuguese from Malacca, the Dutch captain asked the Portuguese commander when he should return; to which he replied, when your sins are greater than ours. This answer had before been attributed to an Englishman in the time of Charles VII. of France, and before then to a Saracen emir in Sicily; after all, it is the answer rather of a Capuchin than of a politician; it was not because the French were greater sinners than the English, that the latter deprived them of Canada.

The author of this same history relates, in a serious manner, a little story invented by Steele, and inserted in the Spectator; and would make it pass for one of the real causes of war between the English and the savages. The tale which Steele opposes to the much pleasanter story of the Widow of Ephesus, is as follows. It is designed to prove that men are not more constant than women: but, in Petronius, the Ephesian matron exhibits only an amusing and pardonable weakness; while the merchant Inkle, in the Spectator, is guilty of the most frightful ingratitude.

This young traveller Inkle is on the point of being taken by the Caribbees on the continent of America, without its being said at what place, or on what occasion. Yarico, a pretty Caribbee, saves his life,

* See OPERA.

+ By the Abbé Raynal.-T.

and at length flies with him to Barbadoes. As soon as they arrive, Inkle goes and sells his benefactress in the slave-market. Ungrateful and barbarous man! says Yarico, wilt thou sell me, when I am with child by thee? With child! replies the English merchant; so much the better, I shall get more for thee!

And this is given as a true story, and as the origin of a long war. The speech of a woman of Boston to her judges, who condemned her to the house of correction, for the fifth time, for having been brought to bed of a fifth child, was a pleasantry of the illustrious Franklin; yet it is related in this same work as an authentic occurrence. How many tales have embellished and disfigured every history!

An author, who has thought more correctly than he has quoted, asserts that the following epitaph was inade for Cromwell:

Ci gît le destructeur d'un pouvoir légitime,
Jusqu'à son dernier jour favorisé des cieux,
Dont les vertus méritaient mieux
Que le sceptre acquis par un crime.
Par quel destin faut-il, par quelle étrange loi
Qu'à tous ceux qui sont nés pour porter la couronne
Ce soit l'Usurpateur qui donne

L'exemple des vertus que doit avoir un Roi?

Here lies the man who trod on rightful power,
Favoured by Heaven to his latest hour;
Whose virtues merited a nobler fate
Than that of ruling criminally great.
What wondrous destiny can so ordain,
That among all whose fortune is to reign,
The usurper only to his sceptre brings
The virtues vainly sought in lawful kings!

These verses were never made for Cromwell, but for King William. They are not an epitaph; but were written under a portrait of that monarch. Instead of Ci gît (Here lies), it was

Tel fut le destructeur d'un pouvoir légitime.

Such was the man who trod on rightful power.

No one in France was ever so stupid as to say, that Cromwell had ever set an example of virtue. It is granted that he had valour and genius; but the title of virtuous was not his due.

A thousand stories-a thousand facetiæ, have been travelling about the world for the last thirty centuries. Our books are stuffed with maxims which come forth as new, but are to be found in Plutarch, in Athenæus, in Seneca, in Plautus, in all the ancients.

These are only mistakes, as innocent as they are common: but wilful falsehoods-historical lies, which attack the glory of princes and the reputation of private individuals, are serious offences.

Of all the books that are swelled with false anecdotes, that in which the most absurd and impudent lies are crowded together, is the pretended Mémoires de Madame de Maintenon. The foundation of it was true: the author had several of that lady's letters, which had been communicated to him by a person of consequence at St. Cyr; but this small quantity of truth is lost in a romance of seven volumes.

In this work, the author shows us Louis XIV. supplanted by one of his valets-de-chambre. It supposes letters from Madlle. Mancini (afterwards Madame Colonne) to Louis XIV., in one of which he makes this niece of Cardinal Mazarin say to the King" You obey a priest-you are unworthy of me if you submit to serve another.-I love you as I love the light of heaven, but I love your glory still better." Most certainly the author had not the original of this letter.

"Madlle. de la Vallière," he says in another place, "had thrown herself on a sofa, in a light dishabille, her thoughts employed on her lover. Often did the dawn of day find her still seated in a chair, her arm resting on a table, her eye fixed, her soul constantly attached to the same object, in the extacy of love. The King alone occupied her mind; perhaps at that moment she was inwardly complaining of the vigilance of the spies of Henriette, or the severity of the queen-mother. A slight noise aroused her from her reverie-she shrunk back with surprise and dread ;Louis was at her feet-she would have fled-he stopped her; she threatened-he pacified; she wept-he wiped away her tears." Such a description would not now be tolerated in one of our most insipid novels.

VOL. I.

K