Will any one have the Croker-like curiosity
to inquire whether any record remains of the dates of marriages
celebrated by the Spanish ambassador's chaplain?"[2]
[Footnote 1: These words, italicised by the reviewer, contain the
pith of the charge, which has no reference to her visit to London six
weeks before.]
[Footnote 2: Edinb. Review, No. 230, p. 522.]
Why Croker-like curiosity? Was there anything censurable in the
curiosity which led an editor to ascertain whether a novel like
"Evelina" was written by a girl of eighteen or a woman of twenty-six?
But Lord Macaulay sneered at the inquiry[1], and his worshippers must
go on sneering like their model--_vitiis imitabile_. The certificate
of the London marriage (now before me) shews that it was solemnised
on the 23rd July, by a clergyman named Richard Smith, in the presence
of three attesting witnesses. This, and the entries in "Thraliana,"
prove Baretti's whole story to be false. "Now Baretti was a libeller,
and not to be believed except upon compulsion;" meaning, I suppose,
without confirmatory evidence strong enough to dispense with his
testimony altogether. He was notorious for his _black_ lies. Yet he
is believed eagerly, willingly, upon no compulsion, and without any
confirmatory evidence at all.
[Footnote 1: The following passage is reprinted in the corrected
edition of Lord Macaulay's Essays:--"There was no want of low minds
and bad hearts in the generation which witnessed her (Miss Burney's)
first appearance.
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