Note 255 — TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY.

Since this article has been sent to press I rise from reading one in the Edinburgh Review on Lord Orford’s and Lord Waldegrave’s Memoirs. This is one of the very rare articles which could only come from the hand of a master long exercised in the studies he criticises. The critic, or rather the historian, observes, that “of a period remarkable for the establishment of our present system of government, no authentic materials had yet appeared. Events of public notoriety are to be found, though often inaccurately told, in our common histories; but the secret springs of action, the private views and motives of individuals, &c., are as little known to us as if the events to which they relate had taken place in China or Japan.” The clear, connected, dispassionate, and circumstantial narrative, with which he has enriched the stores of English history, is drawn from the sources of secret history; from published memoirs and contemporary correspondence.