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
thence He plaisters it up with saying p. 25. If the late King of England did not approve of my Conduct in the Affairs of Nimeguen which in effect he declared in publick not to be pleased with in which he plaid his part to admiration c. But since we have seen the Character he gives of him as a King let us observe how he Treats His Majesty as a Mediator and how he Represents him ballancing the Affairs of Christendom then in his hands First de Cros tells us This Dispatch of his was concerted with Monsieur Barillon For tho he says That that Ambassadour had no had in the beginning of it yet he owns him in the same place to have part of it when it was concluding and that Monsieur de Ruvigny was dispatcht by the King with an Account of it to the French Court the very same day that de Cros was sent away for Nimeguen And p. 25. He tells us further That Prince Rupert askt him upon his Return with a stern Countenance If the Peace was concluded and he answering in the Affirmative the Prince cried out O Dissimulation And p. 28. he tells us That the Prince of Orange the Kings Nephew writ thundring Letters against him and all the Ministers of the Confederates called for Vengeance c. Yet after all these Marks of something so very injurious to the Allies and confidence to France The King says he in the page last mentioned laughs in his Sleeve at the Surprize at the Sorrow and Complaints of the Confederates Which is to give us just such a Character of a Mediator as he did before of a King I leave it to all mens Judgment whether more villanous Slanders could have been broached abroad by the worst of this Prince's Enemies and whether it be not a Scandal to our Country that they should be translated and published in English But since Monsieur de Cros is so bold with the Sacred Memory of a Great King for which he is yet so Impudent as to profess a most profound Respect What can a Subject expect for whom he owns such a virulent Malice and to whom he threatens such open Revenge The same vein of truth and sincerity shines through the whole Letter and the Author's Ingenuity is at the old pitch in what he pretends to rake out of the Memoirs concerning several Persons in great Employments as the D. of Lauder dale the present E. of Rochester Sir Joseph Williamson Sir Lionel Jenkins and Mons Beverning This Conjurer in all he says of them seems resolved to raise up the Spirits of the Dead to joyn with those of the Living in the Quarrel with these Memoirs and by such distorted Consequences draws Characters of them whereof there is no Apparition but what he himself raises So that the Characters he gives of these Persons by such false Deductions for Sir W. T 's may justly be said to be his own But from all I have observed in this Letter I have wonder'd at nothing so much as that impudent Vanity in the Writer who endeavours to make himself and the World believe that these Memoirs were intended chiefly against him whose very name is hardly twice mentioned after these two Pages in the whole Book which does not pretend to give Characters of Persons but only to relate things that were done or words that were said And the way to have made an answer with any Justice had been to have laid Exceptions either against the one or the other whereof there is not one word in all this Answer without any Answer However so ridiculous is this mans Insolence that he begins his Letter thus I have been informed of the Calumnies that Sir W. T. hath caused to be printed against me And p. 7. He set upon me first he writes out of a Spirit of Revenge c. The sensless Arrogance of which I cannot think of but it remembers me of the Fly on the Chariot-wheel For he would fain make it to have been a piece of Revenge against him for having brought that Dispatch to the Hague and yet he lays it much to heart that in that Affair he should only take him for a Messenger And this indeed is to make him a very reasonable person and like a man that when he receives a blow grows angry with the Stone by which it is given But by all I can observe in these Memoirs I do not find any thing which bears the least resemblance of Anger or Spleen much less of Revenge against Mons de Cros but so far from it that in the very Passage he lays most to heart of the Kings calling him Rogue the Memoirs mention particularly that His Majesty said it pleasantly which he himself cannot forbear observing in his Letter Having thus long been considering how far he is provok'd and how well he defends himself 't is time now to see how he attacks the Person whom he fancies his capital Enemy and how the Play begins 'T is then in these words p. 1. I know very well that Sir W. T. is of great worth and deserves well and that he hath been a long time imployed and that too upon important Occasions This is a piece indeed very much of a piece with all the rest Now in the name of wonder what can be the meaning I wot well enough what he would be at in all the rest of his Letter but the Sense the Wit or the Design of these sweet Lines is not easy to devise I confess I see a good many Plays and I believe I have read more but never met before so fair a Prologue to so foul a Farce I have read somewhere of a Monster among the Ancients with a Virgins face and all beside a Serpent which holds exact Resemblance here unless de Cros should object against it because Serpents have stings and his Letter has none However if we will not grant him a Conjurer as he would fain be thought yet we cannot in Conscience deny him to be a Jugler since the first thing he presents us with is meer slight of hand For he lays down a piece of Gold upon the Table and immediately Presto 't is gone and all we can see is only half a dozen Pellets of Dirt. In short I am not able to reach what he means by so whimsical a beginning and of so different a piece from every word that follows unless that being resolved to say nothing afterwards which any body would believe he thought fit to entertain us at first with three Lines he is sure no body doubts But to be serious If Sir W. T. be of great worth If de Cros either believes it himself or would have any body else to do so why is every word that follows so contradictory to these If he deserves well why is he used so very ill Does de Cros understand what a man of great worth means I doubt he does not either by himself or by such Company as so much
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
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