PREFATORY AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE.
THE existence of Lord Hervey's "Memoirs from his first coming to Court to the Death of the Queen"* was announced to the world in 1757 in Walpole's "Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors," and in 1788 we find Lord Hailes, in a note to his compilation of the Opinions of the Duchess of Marlborough, saying, with reference to the quarrel between George II. and Frederick Prince of Wales
"I cannot discover what was the real cause of this un
happy quarrel. The Duchess seems to think that it originated in the motion for augmenting the Prince's revenue. It is probable that the whole matter will be explained to posterity should the Memoirs of Lord Hervey ever see the light. I have reason to believe they are written with great freedom. And here I must be permitted to observe, that they who suppress such memorials of modern times do all that in them lies to leave the history of the eighteenth century in darkness. In the sixteenth century it was the fashion to preserve original papers, during the eighteenth it is the fashion to destroy them. Hence we know more of the reign of Queen Elizabeth than we do of the reign of George I."-Opinions.
Mr. Bowles, in his Life of Pope (1806), says :
"Lord Hervey wrote Memoirs of his Own Time, with strict injunctions that they were not to be published until the decease of his present Majesty (George III.) They are now in the possession of Lord Hervey's son, General Hervey, and will be published as soon as the event mentioned takes place."
This injunction was not given by Lord Hervey, but in the will of his son Augustus, third Earl of Bristol; and Lord * Lord Hervey's own title is given at the head of the Memoirs. 2