they are in many places imperfect and uncorrect by having never been reviewed and so may be justly liable to some Exceptions of that kind And the Gallicisms upon which De Cros's Advertiser says the Criticks have been so severe may easily discover they were not designed for the Publick in that Dress they have appeared Now tho this Pretended Answerer endeavours to imitate Sir W. T. in this Point as well as in the use of several other Words which are found in the Memoirs and he imagines a little particular yet he has made so great a discovery in several others that by consisting of two such different pieces the whole lies too open to deceive For altho such words as Blunder Hans-en Kelder A man of such a Kidney with some others may well enough become such a Scribler as I am yet they are very unlike that Author's Expressions and below his Stile Another ground I have to conclude this Answer for a Counterfeit is for some Quotations which I shall never suspect such a Writer as Sir W. T. would have made use of As first that poor Line Canes qui latrant c. which looks like an English Proverb translated into very bald Latin Then to mention no more of them another Quotation as unlike as the first from Mr. Samuel Johnson which agrees very little with that Author's way who is observed in all he writes to be very tender in medling with controverted Points of State and Government Besides This whole Pamphlet tho it must be confess'd to be ingenious and written with a great deal of Wit yet that very strain of Witting it so much and running things into Ridicule makes it look very different from any thing we have yet seen of Sir W. T 's Writings And I observe in several places of the Miscellanea this very vein is taken notice of for a thing of pernicious Consequence to Learning and good Manners so that if Sir W. T. be really possessed of such a Talent he keeps it very much to himself and must be allowed for the best Disguiser of it in the World through all he had published which would make his Readers think that he intended to pass rather for a Wife and Good Man than for a Witty Another sufficient Reason for me to reject this Answer is That it makes Sir W. T. grant in some kind the severest of de Cros's unreasonable Slanders of failing in his Fidelity to his Master and to defend himself in it by excusing it from Examples of that kind which in my Opinion would be to lay himself needlesly open to Censures that I suppose he has not deserved and would shew such a want of Judgment in him as I shall not be apt to believe from and other Writings but his own and better attested than I find it here I shall add to all these what I observed in an Advertisement before the First Part of the Miscellanea where the Bookseller tells the Reader from the Author that thenceforth he would never Publish any thing without putting his Name to it which not finding before this Pamphlet was another Reason to conclude it a supposititious Piece All which put together makes me believe Sir W. T. was no more the Author of this Answer than of Tully's Offices When I had satisfied my self in this Point it was not easy for me to find out what the Writer of this Answer should mean by taking so much pains to make it pass for Sir W. T.'s which seems to me a very new way of Writing and whereof I cannot give any other instance besides this from what has occured in my Reading or Conversation I know very well that several Ancient Pieces which go under great Author's Names are found by the Learned Criticks of these latter Ages to have been spurious yet they were never born till long after the Death of the supposed Fathers I know likewise that there have been several Laws made in France one I am sure in this present Century against the Printing any Books under severe Penalties without setting the Author's Name to them and their known Name because some having two Names one by which they were commonly called tho the other perhaps were the particular Name of their Family some Persons disguised their Writings under the Name that was little known tho it might be their own To so nice and cautious Cares the Laws there thought fit to descend upon this matter I remember there was an Ingenious Discourse Printed within these few years in France upon the Custom of using borrowed or disguised Names in the Publishing of Books But in the Censures and Complaints that Author makes of this ill Custom I did not take notice of any one Example he mentions further than of such Books as had been published under Names of Persons dead or else under such as were wholly fictitious and made at their own pleasures which last has peradventure appear'd in most Ages and Countries where Printing has been used but toucht no Man farther than a Satyr of Don Quixot or Francion or any such like But I have never observed nor heard of any Example of this kind besides this Answer where the Auther whole Name was borrowed was alive and in the same Kingdom and so avowedly with the Name of a known Bookseller in the Title-page Whatever the intention may have been in the Writer whether wholly innocent or a little interessed to give Vogue to his Pamphlet or in considering the Bookseller's profit by making it pass for an Author's whose Name he knew would help it off the better yet I cannot but apprehend the Example of it ill and the Consequences of it may be worse if it should fall into Common practice for by this way of Writing and Publishing either Books or Pamphlets any Man may be made a publick Defamer of himself at another Man's pleasure and not only so but to accuse himself of any Crime which the Rigour of our Laws requires no man to do As far as my Thoughts will reach I do not conceive why it should not be as bad to counterfeit a Book as a Bond and to wrong a Man in his Reputation as great an Injury as to cheat him of his Money This must be the reason why Slander and Scandal are as sufficient a ground to maintain an Action in Law as Damage and Battery Nothing is an injury any farther than it is taken and hurts a Man more or less as he is sensible of it Now tho it may be true that in every Age there may be more than Nine Worthies who put a greater value on their Money than their Honour yet there may be every where and at all times some silly Foplings who do quite the contrary and I know no reason why they should not pretend to be safe in the Possessions they most value as well as the others nor why the Law should not take fome care of such poor Innocents Nor further can I find out why a Stationer should not be punisht for Forgery as well as a Notary or Scrivener may be Whether I am too serious or no upon a Subject that may appear trivial at first sight or whether such a Trifle be worth any legal Provisions against it I am sure Hae Nugae seria ducunt in Mala and that 't is at least an Edg-tool which ought not to be plaid with I could never well comprehend the true reason why it should be such a disgrace to be a Cuckold or why one Person should suffer for another's fault how nearly soever related to him But I can very easily apprehend the Injury of it which is that one Man should be put upon fathering another Man's Children or at the best should be in danger of it and this seems to be meant by the word which at first was intended that a Man was Cuckoo'd that is dealt with as Cuckoos are said to do with other Birds by laying their Eggs in their Nests and thereby making them hatch and bring up young Ones that are none of their own for this is the best Etymology I can find out for a word so commonly used Now the same Injury may be as sensible in what concerns the Children of the Brain as Books have been call'd which may be as lawful and as natural Issues and some parents may be as fond of them and as much concerned about them And tho it pass for no Crime for People to expose their Children when they have no mind to own them or think they are not able to maintain them and they may be content any body else should father them that will yet this is an Office no body would be forc'd upon undertaking how little soever it may cost them and how innocently soever it may have been intended I could not forbear to make this Reflection upon this Subject if it were for nothing else but to make good my Profession in the Title-page of being A Lover of Truth FINIS
good Language in all the rest of his Letter would make us believe he keeps Can a man of great worth and that deserves well be Vain Proud Revengeful Ungrateful to his Friend False to his Master and impertinently Ambitious in his very Retreat from all Publick Affairs This is indeed a very worthy and a very lively Character of a Man of worth But is not such stuff as this just a sputtering out Quicquid in Buccam venerit Like hot Porridge that burns his Tongue tho 't is pretty plain that all his heat proceeds from the overflowing of his Gall within and from nothing without One would think he has very well practised the old Rule of Calumniare fortiter yet he has lamentably fail'd of the consequence Aliquid inherebit for all the Dirt he endeavours to fling about loves its own Element and sticks close to his own Fingers I never knew so unlucky a Gamester to throw so often and to be always out What not one hit I think the devil 's in the Dice however le ts throw again but first we 'll change Dice and if the good Morals of this Man of great worth will not pass let 's try our luck at his Naturals Sir W. T. says my Gamester has been often and long employ'd but he himself did not know about what 't was too upon very important occasions but he did not know why unless because as de Cros tells us The King had an Aversion for him and never trusted him how often soever he imployed him This great Ambassador to say the truth is a very Bubble and has as little Wit in some parts of the Letter as Honesty in the other Good Lord how this silly World is apt to be gull'd What a Cheat and what a Jilt this common Fame is Who would have believed that the Author of the Observations on the Netherlands and of the charming Miscellanea should be such a Cully if de Cros had not made the discovery but sure he could never be Author of those Books doubtless he either hired some body to write them for him or else some honest-Bookseller like his own had got the Copies and set Sir W. T 's name to them I would to God he had been so honest to set mine in the stead But not we have heard the Charge pray make room for the Evidence Sir W. T. is the proudest Man in the World and what are the proofs or the Instances Why de Cros says it and that 's Demonstration He is ungrateful to his Friend and why Because de Cros knows it He is false to his Master and the Reason's plain de Cros pretends to believe it He is the most revengeful of-Men for he calls de Cros by his own Name He is of all men the most Ambitious and never did man desire more to have a hand in Affairs This is beyond dispute for de Cros knows his thoughts and tells us not only what he says of others but what he thinks of himself and with equal truth This is the Conjurer again and with a witness he tells us further p. 9. of men whose ruin Sir W. T. desires at the bottom of his heart where it is not to be questioned but de Cros has been and to put it beyond all doubt that he was so he says p. 13. That Sir W. T. came once to render him a visit at his Lodging and that Mons Olivencrants the Swedish Ambassador was then at his House which gives me a scruple that the visit might be meant to him rather than to Mons de Cros. However this is all the instances I find of his Acquaintance with a Person whose heart he pretends to know so well and with whom by all the rest of his Letter I should be apt to judge he was the least acquainted with of any man in the World But to close all these Generals before we come to particulars he tells us p. 29. he knows something of Sir W. T. upon the Subject of what passed between him and my Lord Arlington that makes his hair stand an end Alas the poor Gentleman 's in an Agony Bless us all from sprights what a puny Conjurer is this to raise a Spirit that scares no body else and run into a hole for fear of it himself He has formed so terrible an Image of Sir W. T. in his own little working Noddle that he knows not were he is nor what he does but is all in a maze However this I am certain that no man alive who has read the rest of de Cros's Letter but will allow him to be one that if he knew any thing ill of Sir W. T. would at least be sure not to tell it we have his own word for it p. 7. My design is not at all my Lord to write you a Letter full of Invectives against Sir W. T. And in another place That says he would not be like a Gentleman But yet to give him his due and as he says p. 7. To let everybody see he has means in his hands to be revenged there is one point and that alone where he brings his Proof lays downs his Instance and that out of the Memoirs themselves 't is designed undeniably to convince the World of Sir W. T 's Vanity of which he could give my Lord many instances but at present contents himself with one and 't is a thumping one 'T is the following Period which I shall quote out of the Memoirs a little more faithfully than he does in his Letter which I was so curious to observe by thinking the word Clutches to be no part of Sir W. T 's stile and found he had taken a great deal of pains to wrest it as much as he could to his turn It runs thus Mem. p. 30. This I suppose gave some occasion for my being again designed for this Ambassy who was thought to have some credit with Spain as well as Holland from the Negotiations I had formerly run through at the Hague Brussels and Aix la Chapelle by which the remaining part of Flanders had been saved out of the hands of France in the year 1668. Now for my own part I must confess my self so giddy a Reader and of so much inadvertency that when I read that Passage I took it for a singular piece of Modesty since the Author gives for a Reason why the King chose him for his second Ambassy in Holland because he had been formerly employed in those Countries and not for any Personal Merit in himself but de Cros is so great a Stranger to Modesty that we cannot blame him for not knowing it when he meets it and since he has no other Accusations of this kind I must profess I can discover nothing of Vanity in the whole Series of all those Relations nor can reckon for such the Author 's not avoiding to speak of himself any more than of other Persons when it came in his way who had so great and so continual
this of the Memoirs And finding Common Fame wherever I had met it agrees so well with the Picture these Pieces had given me of him I will own to have had a very great Honour for the Author as well as for his Books and could not but esteem both a great deal the more for this Letter of de Cros when I found that the triple-corded Malice of the Writer the Translator and the Advertiser had not given one lash either to the Honour of the Person or the truth of his Books And all this put together has in very truth given me so much Spight and Indignation that I could not refrain entring on the Pamphletiers Trade which I never did before nor ever thought I should have done at all And but for this Provocation could have been very well satisfied to have lived on without the itch of seeing how I look in Print so that I may truly say for this as the Poet does for his Verses Facit Indignatio Versus Before I enter upon observing what de Cros says concerning Sir W. T. which takes up the greatest part of his Letter and leaves him either no Room or no Memory for the Memoirs he pretends to Answer I shall first examine what he speaks of himself and in his own defence against what he takes himself to be charged with He begins p. 10. There arrived says he quoting the Memoirs at that time from England one whose Name was de Cros. Upon this he falls immediately into a Scurrilous Chafe Now one would wonder what should make the Man so offended to be called by his own Name or what would have become of Sir W. T. if he had call'd him out of his Name which is indeed commonly thought an injury but not the other as ever I heard of before yet he reckons it a terrible one to himself and his Family which he tells us is a good one I know not whether he means the de Cros's or the Monks The first I must confess I never heard of in France but the other is indeed a great one abroad and a good one at home But whatever he would have us think of the Goodness of his Family I will never believe by what little understanding I have of Heraldry that any Gentleman would either write such a Letter or Translate it tho it were only out of the common Respect that is due to the Memory of a Great King whose Person Sir W. T. has so often represented and in so high a Character But to proceed That he was formerly a French Monk as the Memoirs call him he confesses and owns besides tho with a great deal of ill-will that He changed his Frock for a Petticoat For tho he denies it positively p. 11. yet five Lines after he has these words There was too great advantage to throw off my Frock for the Petticoat I have taken not to do it it is a Petticoat of a Scotch Stuff c. I am glad it is of one so good as he mentions and wish it were large enough to cover all his Shame But whatever he says in the same Page too malicious to be taken notice of here of Princesses who have quitted the Veil for the Breeches tho in that it self I believe he is mistaken yet all this will never serve to wipe off the Ignominy of Un Moin Defroquè Upon which I shall only add That the Marriage of a Monk when stripp'd of his Frock is not thought likely to mend the matter And I believe men of all Religions will agree in the Opinion That if a Monk leaves his Frock he ought to do it for a Gown rather than for a Petticoat and if he leaves the Orders of one Church should in decency continue in the Orders of that Church to which he professes himself converted As to his being a Swedish Agent tho he is very angry the Memoirs should call him so one cannot well discover by his Letter whether he has a mind to grant it of no however he confesses p. 13 14. That being Envoy from the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp the Interests of his Master being inseperable from those of Sueden he found himself engaged to be very much concerned in the Interests of that Crown and that Monsieur Van Beuninguen believed He was intrusted with some Affairs from thence Which amounts to the very same with what the Memoirs say p. 335. That he de Cros had a Commission from the Court of Sueden or Credence at least for a certain petty Agency in England This he says Is very Dirty Alas for the cleanly Gentleman one would think he was afraid of fouling his Fingers but he had a great deal more need have taken care of his mouth By the way I cannot but admire at the insufferable Impudence of the English Printer or Translator who hath in the Title Page named this man An Ambassador at the Treaty of Nimeguen since in the several Accounts I have seen printed of that Treaty there is not the least mention of such a Name any other way than in those Memoirs he pretends to Answer And 't is doubt less very agreeable to think that a man who gives himself so good a Character in his own Letter should make so great a one in so August an Assembly as that is recorded to have been And he himself in his whole Letter arrogates no other besides that of Envoy Extraordinary from the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp into England who was a Prince at that time wholly dispossess'd of His Dominions Another Passage in the Memoirs which he takes sadly to heart is in the same Pag. 335. as follows At London he had devoted himself wholly to Monsieur Barillon the French Ambassador though pretending to pursue the Interests of Sweden Against which he thus defends himself First Letter pag. 14. He absolutely denies it and says in the next He fell out with Monsieur Barillon for three Months because he diverted the King of England from taking into his consideration the Interests of Sweden And pag. 16. He says further That Monsieur Barillon put all in practice to sift him to the bottom concerning the Swedish Affairs nevertheless all the Offers of this Ambassador proved ineffectual and wrought nothing upon this man meaning himself who if a man would give credit to Sir W. T. was entirely devoted to Monsieur Barillon and yet Monsieur Barillon found him not to be corrupted or bribed All this would be an Account good enough of his Innocence in that point if it had not the misfortune to be so ill plac'd 'T is indeed a good way back to the fifth Page of his Letter And therefore what he says there one may by the help of a little Charity impute to the shortness of his Memory These are his Words I have had the happiness during some years to partake in the confidence of a Minister of State c. And a little after Sir W. T. may well imagine that I did not ill improve this
wish he had made a fairer Quotation in a Line or two out of one of them by which he would seem to make Sir W. T. say That Prince Maurice's Parrot spoke and askt and answered common Questions like a reasonable Creature Tho indeed he only says That his curiosity made him enquire from the first hand about such a common Story Of a Parrot that spoke c. For my self I must needs say That that Digression gave me not only some Entertainment when I read it but a good deal of thought since and the more because I remember one of the Athenian Mercuries in Answer to a Question sent them upon this very Story seem'd to allow the thing possible But after all my rambling thoughts upon that Subject I must leave it to better Reasoners than my self to determine whether Speech and Reason are so individual that whatever Creature has any share in the one must be allow'd to partake of the other However it be the Letter I have been lately observing has throughly convinc'd me that whether a Man may Speak or no at least he may Write without Reason But this I am sure is a Digression in me whatever it was in the Author of the Memoirs The last Criticism the Advertiser mentions is That in these Memoirs there are several Persons Eminent both for their Station and Quality and some of them still alive treated with so much Freedom and so little Ceremony This in my slender Judgment appears a more extraordinary Objection than the other two For I had ever imagined that the very Ratio formalis of a good History or Memoirs had been the Truth of them which it is impossible should ever appear without great Freedom and little Ceremony either to the Persons they represent or concerning the Actions they relate And this in my Opinion gives the great and general Esteem that is deservedly put upon the Memoirs of Philip de Comines whose Stile seems very mean and vulgar but his Freedom great and Ceremony very little either with those two Great Princes that were his Masters or in any Account he gives of Actions or of Persons tho many of these were probably alive at the time of Writing or Publishing these Memoirs But in truth since his time his Method has been very little pursued and more is the pity since it has made so much room and so unworthily for the fulsome Flatteries and nauseous Panegyricks of so many Books or Prefaces as have over-run the Press in our Age which not only endeavour to put Shams and Cheats upon Mankind but are I doubt of great Mischief to the Interests and Concernments of those Countries where they grow For let the Criticks say what they please against writing Story with too much Freedom and too little Ceremony I am a little disposed to believe That if there were more such Authors there would not be so many such Actors as have been so often seen upon the Publick Stages of the World who like Rooks when they are gotten to the Top-branches of great Trees think only of building their own Nests as high as they can and feathering them as well as they can without any care how the Tree thrives under them or whether by their Muting and Fluttering about they spoil the Branches and Leaves of that Tree it self where they were bred or found shelter Peradventure such Actors would not have plaid such Parts upon the Stage if they had not trusted to the Disguises and Masks they were in or had suspected they would be pull'd off by some plain rough hand either while the Play lasts or as soon as 't is ended For men are seldom so harden'd as to grow totally careless of their Names and their Memories after they are dead tho they may hope to escape while they are alive For these and some other such trivial Reasons I must profess I cannot joyn heartily with the Criticks in this last Objection but shall be very glad to joyn with the Advertiser in believing or at least in wishing that Sir W. T. would be prevailed with by the Letter or this Advertisement to take some notice himself either of the one or the other which might possibly make the Press some amends for this Scribble of mine at least it would me who should think my self very well rewarded by it For whatever Passion de Cros or the Advertiser or any of those US's he speaks of in the beginning of his short Paper may have against the Author I shall ever have as much Passion for his Writings And as for this of my own I pretend to no more than to be forgiven by him and other Men because it is my first Essay and for ought I yet know it may be my last REFLECTIONS UPON AN ANSWER TO THE Letter from Mons De Cros. Pretended to be written by the Author of the Memoirs By a Lover of Truth LONDON Printed for Richard Baldwin near the Oxford-Arms in Warwick-Lane 1693. REFLECTIONS upon an Answer to the Letter from Monsieur De Cros. Pretended to be written by the Author of the Memoirs c. WHEN the foregoing Papers were finished and just ready for the Press I was surprized to hear that Sir W. T. himself had thought fit contrary to what I had conjectured in the first pages of those to take publick notice of Mons De Cros's Letter That it was now just come out and crying about the Streets Tho I had then several surmises that it might be some Imposture yet one could not well be more amazed than I was as a piece of News I had so little expected and the contrary of which I thought I had so well convinced both the world and my self Whatever I expected from it I was eager enough to get it and to read it over My suspicion increased sufficiently when I had not gone above ten Lines and when I had perused it I found my self as much disappointed as I was by De Cros's Letter being throughly convinced it was a Counterfeit tho a witty one and perhaps an innocent one too For this I found several undeniable Reasons which I suppose any thinking Reader could not but observe as well as I. And first I took notice of the Exordium as a little too common and thredbare for that Author and imagined a worse Writer might have been hard put to it not to have found a better than The importunity of his Friends for writing in his own defence Besides I thought the disguise of it was something mean and could not conceive why if that Author had a mind to own it he should chuse to do it in the Third Person rather than the First Another Reason is That this Answerer makes him publickly own the Memoirs which I could never hear he has yet done Nay farther He makes Him defend them in all parts which I doubt if he had owned them he would not do it any further than the Truth since for the rest as the Publisher of them observes