The Works of Sydney Smith

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: OBSERVATIONS ON THE HISTORICAL WORK OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES JAMES FOX. (E. Review, 1809.) Observations on the Historical Work of the Right Honourable Charles James Fox. By the Right Honourable George Rose. pp. 215. With a Narrative of the Events which occurred in the Enterprise of the Earl of Argyle in 1685; By Sir Patrick Hume. London, 1809. This is an extraordinary performance in itself; ? but the reasons assigned for its publication are still more extraordinary. A person of Mr. Roge's consequence? incessantly occupied, as he assures us, ' with official duties, which take equally' according to his elegant expression ' from the disembarrassment of the mind and the leisure of time, ' thinks it absolutely necessary to explain to his country the motives which have led him to do so idle a thing as to write a book. He would not have it supposed, however, that he could be tempted to so questionable an act by any light or ordinary consideration. Mr. Fox and other literary loungers may write from a love of fame, or a relish for literature; but the official labours of Mr. Rose can only be suspended by higher calls. All his former publications, he informs us, originated in ' a sense of public duty; ' and the present, in ' an impulse of private friendship.' An ordinary reader may perhaps find some difficulty in comprehending how Mr. Rose could be ' impelled by private friendship' to publish a heavy quarto of political observations on Mr. Fox's History: ? and for our own parts, we must confess, that after the most diligentperusal of his long explanation, we do not in the least comprehend it yet. The explanation, however, which is very curious, it is our duty to lay before our readers. Mr. Rose was much patronised by the late Earl of Marchmont, who left him his family papers...