“It may be proper to mention to you that the French Government are disposed to go every length in the way of negotiation with the person mentioned by Lord Kinnaird, or others, to discover the plot.”
Kinnaird absolutely declined to give up the name of his informant, but, acting on the strength of the postscript, which had been read but not shown to him, started for Paris with “the great unknown.” Some days after their arrival, and while Kinnaird was a guest of the Duke, the man was arrested, and discovered to be one Nicholle or Marinet, who had been appointed receveur under the restored government of Louis XVIII, but during the Cent jours had fled to Belgium, retaining the funds he had amassed during his term of office. Kinnaird regarded this action of the French Government as a breach of faith, and in a “Memorial” to the French Chamber of Peers, and his Letter, maintained that the Duke’s postscript implied a promise of a safe conduct for Marinet to and from Paris to Brussels. The Duke, on the other hand, was equally positive (see his letter to Lord Liverpool, May 30, 1818) “that he never intended to have any negotiations with anybody.” Kinnaird was a “dog with a bad name.” He had been accused (see his Letter to the Earl of Liverpool, 1816, p. 16) of “the promulgation of dangerous opinions,” and of intimacy “with persons suspected.” The Duke speaks of him as “the friend of Revolutionists”! It is evident that he held the dangerous doctrine that a promise to a rogue is a promise, and that the authorities took a different view of the ethics of the situation. It is clear, too, that the Duke’s postscript was ambiguous, but that it did not warrant the assumption that if Marinet went to Paris he should be protected. The air was full of plots. The great Duke despised and was inclined to ignore the pistol or the dagger of the assassin; but he believed that “mischief was afoot,” and that “great personages” might or might not be responsible. He was beset by difficulties at every turn, and would have been more than mortal if he had put too favourable a construction on the scruples, or condoned the imprudence of a “friend of Revolutionists.” —Editor ↩
The reference may be to the Duke of Wellington’s intimacy with Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. Byron had “passed that way” himself (see Letters, 1898, II 251, note I, 323, etc.), and could hardly attack the Duke on that score. —Editor ↩
“Thou art the best o’ the cut-throats.”
Macbeth, act III sc. 4, line 17
—Editor ↩
“I have supped full of horrors.”
Macbeth, act V sc. 5, line 13
—Editor ↩
Vide speeches in Parliament, after the battle of Waterloo. ↩
“I at this time got a post, being for fatigue, with four others. We were sent to break biscuit, and make a mess for Lord Wellington’s hounds. I was very hungry, and thought it a good job at the time, as we got our own fill, while we broke the biscuit—a thing I had not got for some days. When thus engaged, the Prodigal Son was never once out of my mind; and I sighed, as I fed the dogs, over my humble situation and my ruined hopes.”
—Journal of a Soldier of the 71st Regiment, 1806 to 1815 (Edinburgh, 1822), pp. 132, 133
—Editor ↩
“We are assured that Epaminondas died so poor that the Thebans buried him at the public charge; for at his death nothing was found in his house but an iron spit.”
—Plutarch’s Fabius Maximus, Langhorne’s translation, 1838, p. 140
See, too, Cornelius Nepos, Epam., cap. III
“Paupertatem adeo facilè perpessus est, ut de Republica nihil praeter gloriam ceperit.”
—Editor ↩
For Pitt’s refusal to accept £100,000 from the merchants of London towards the payment of his debts, or £30,000 from the King’s Privy Purse, see Pitt, by Lord Rosebery, 1891. p. 231. —Editor ↩
To you this one unflattering Muse inscribes.
—[MS. erased]
He strips from man his mantle (which is dear
—[MS. erased]
Though beautiful in youth) his carnal skin.
Hamlet, act III sc. I, line 56. —Editor ↩
“O dura messorum ilia!” etc.
—Hor., Epod. III 4
—Editor ↩
Ye iron guts—.
—[MS. erased]
“Ce n’est qu’à l’édition de 1635 qu’on voit paraître la devise que Montaigne avait adoptée, le que sais-je? avec l’emblème des balances. … Ce que sais-je que Pascal a si sévèrement analysé se lit au chapitre douze du livre II; il caractérise parfaitement la philosophie de Montaigne; il est la conséquence de cette maxime qu’il avait inscrite en grec sur les solives de sa librairie: ‘Il n’est point de raisonnement au quel on n’oppose un raissonnement contraire.’ ”
—Oeuvres de … Montaigne, 1837, “Notice Bibliographique,” p. XVII
—Editor ↩
Concerning the Pyrrhonists or Sceptics and their master Pyrrho, who held that Truth was incomprehensible (inprensibilis), and that you may not affirm of aught that it be rather this or that, or neither this nor that (οὐ μᾶλλον οὕτως ἔχει τόδε ἢ ἐκείνως ἢ οὐδετέρως), see Aul. Gellii Noct. Attic., lib. XI cap. V. —Editor ↩
See Othello, [act II sc. 3, lines 206, 207:
“Well, God’s above all, and there be souls must be saved; and there be souls must not be saved—Let’s have no more of this.”]
Hamlet, act V sc. 2, lines 94,
