Selected quad for the lemma: judgement_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
judgement_n	alive_a	good_a	great_a	52	3	2.0868	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A58391	Reflections upon two pamphlets lately published one called, A letter from Monsieur de Cros, concerning the memoirs of Christendom. And the other, An answer to that letter. Pretended to have been written by the author of the said memoirs. By a Lover of truth. Imprimatur, Edward Cooke. April 21st. 1693.	Lover of truth.	1693 (1693)	Wing R734AA; ESTC R220579	25,503	41

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

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