DIARY ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE TIMES OF GEORGE THE FOURTH, INTERSPERSED WITH ORIGINAL LETTERS FROM THE LATE 85889 QUEEN CAROLINE, THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE, AND FROM VARIOUS OTHER DISTINGUISHED PERSONS. EDITED BY JOHN GALT, ESQ. Tôt ou tard, tout se scait. MAINTENON. IN FOUR VOLUMES. VOL. III. LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, MDCCCXXXIX. [Entered at Stationers' Hall.] "THE present work ought not to have a for the next fifty years :"-such is the ger mark made on this publication. Granted has been so harshly and so unjustly dealt critics and reviewers, and they have con totally false an impression of it to all their faith on the dictum of those litera crats, that if the book could have been sup or consigned to the "contempt" and "ol which they affirm to be its desert, it m met that fate long ago; whereas the re the case. It is a curious circumstance, that no the clever pamphlets and reviews whi work, so "insignificant" and "contem has elicited from some of the most distin writers of the day, has given the lie to one single fact stated in its pages. A few errors in dates, a few discrepancies of time and place, (which do not impugn the authenticity of the matter,) are the only blunders those critics have substantiated; and not one of them, from the Quarterly down to Sir Herbert Taylor's "Remarks on the Edinburgh Review," has been able to defend the cause which he espoused. There is one circumstanee worthy of notice in Lord Brougham's criticisms on the work in the Edinburgh Review,-namely, that the passages which refer personally to the supposed author of the Diary, are feeble compared with the rest, and assume the expression of mere female malice, in a style, too, quite unworthy of his lordship's vigorous pen, and strangely at variance with that of the rest of the article. All the vituperation which has been lavished on the Diary has, however, served to give the book a marked consequence, which leads us to consider it dispassionately, both in a literary and moral point of view. In the first place, it is evident that the book |