BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAYS. REPRINTED FROM REVIEWS, WITH ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. A NEW SERIES. BY A. HAYWARD, ESQ., Q.C. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1873. All rights reserved. ESSAYS. THE PEARLS AND MOCK PEARLS OF HISTORY. (FROM THE QUARTERLY REVIEW, APRIL, 1861.) 1. L'Esprit des Autres, recueilli et raconté par Édouard Fournier. Troisième édition. Paris, 1857. 2. L'Esprit dans l'Histoire. Recherches et Curiosités sur les Mots historiques. Par Édouard Fournier. Deuxième édition, revue et considérablement augmentée. Paris, 1860. MANY years before' aerated bread' was heard of, a company was formed at Pimlico for utilising the moisture which evaporates in the process of baking, by distilling spirit from it instead of letting it go to waste. Adroitly availing himself of the popular suspicion that the company's loaves must be unduly deprived of alcohol, a ready-witted baker put up a placard inscribed Bread with the Gin in it,' and customers rushed to him in crowds. We strongly suspect that any over-scrupulous writer who should present history without its pleasant illusions, would find himself in the condition of the projectors who foolishly expected an enlightened public to dispense (as they thought) with an intoxicating ingredient in their bread. 'Pol, me occidistis, amici! Non servastis, ait, cui sic extorta voluptas, Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error.'1 Horace. Epistles, Lib. 2, Ep. 2, thus translated by Francis:'My friends, 'twere better you had stopped my breath; Your love was rancour, and your cure was death; |