Note 369 — Chapter XXI

Grimaldi was a Genoese. He had been educated for the church, and always retained the soft and insinuating manners of an Italian ecclesiastic. It was to his address, rather than to his talents, that he was indebted for high situations he filled. In negotiating the celebrated treaty of Paris, he appears to have been overmatched by Choiseul, and the loss of the Havannah, and the other misfortunes of the war, were the immediate fruits of his eagerness for a French alliance. His administration in Spain was neither popular nor successful. It ended with the failure of the expedition to Algiers. His chief merit lay in the encouragement he gave to literature, his patronage of the arts, his love of justice, and the mildness and generosity of his disposition. On his resignation, in 1777, he was created a Duke, and a Grandee of Spain. Having been allowed to nominate his successor, he was at his own request appointed Ambassador at Rome. Coxe’s Spain, vol. v. c. 63; and Memoirs of a Traveller now in Retirement, vol. iv. p. 109.—E.