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It cost the lives of about two hundred on each side; at least, that is the usual estimate, which seems somewhat incongruous with the stories of fusillading and cannonading at close quarters, until we remember that it is the custom of memoir-writers and newspaper editors to trick out the details of a fight, and in the case of civil warfare to minimise the bloodshed.
In truth, as Fulton had not then applied motive power to this invention, the name "plunging boat" conveyed an exaggerated notion of its functions, which were more suited to a life of ascetic contemplation than of destructive activity. It appears that the memoir-writers named above have confused the two distinct inventions of Fulton just referred to.
Is he the mysterious Muscovite adviser of the Dalai Lama? Who knows? He is a will-o'-the-wisp of the memoir-writers of the eighteenth century. Whenever you think you have a chance of finding him in good authentic State papers, he gives you the slip; and if his existence were not vouched for by Horace Walpole, I should incline to deem of him as Betsy Prig thought of Mrs. Harris.
And the French memoir-writers, Marmont, Bourrienne, Pasquier, and Bausset, have expressed their surprise that so able a chief as Napoleon should have neglected this potent ally. Their criticisms seem to be prompted by later reflections rather than based on an accurate statement of facts. In truth, the nineteenth-century Hercules was still in his cradle.
My "True History" is much inferior, in fancy and invention, in force of wit and keenness of satire, to your "History of the Acts of Gargantua and Pantagruel." Rabelais. You do me great honour; but I may say, without vanity, that both those compositions entitle the authors of them to a very distinguished place among memoir-writers, travellers, and even historians, ancient and modern. Lucian.
There were no gossipping memoir-writers at the court of Hesse Cassel to chronicle his sayings and doings. He died at Sleswig, under the roof of his friend the Prince, in the year 1784. This famous charlatan, the friend and successor of St. Germain, ran a career still more extraordinary.
Is he the mysterious Muscovite adviser of the Dalai Lama? Who knows? He is a will-o'-the-wisp of the memoir-writers of the eighteenth century. Whenever you think you have a chance of finding him in good authentic State papers, he gives you the slip; and if his existence were not vouched for by Horace Walpole, I should incline to deem him as Betsy Prig thought of Mrs. Harris.
And the French memoir-writers, Marmont, Bourrienne, Pasquier, and Bausset, have expressed their surprise that so able a chief as Napoleon should have neglected this potent ally. Their criticisms seem to be prompted by later reflections rather than based on an accurate statement of facts. In truth, the nineteenth-century Hercules was still in his cradle.
Among this group of writers, Cardinal de Retz seems to me to be beyond question the greatest, but La Rochefoucauld is not to be despised in his capacity as the arranger of personal recollections. We must not expect from these seventeenth-century autobiographers the sort of details which we demand from memoir-writers to-day.
As in his writings, he had the knack of saying brilliant things, and scattering bons mots with apparent ease, so that in listening to him one felt the pleasure that is derived from such books as Horace Walpole's correspondence and those of the French memoir-writers.... He knew not how to care for money, yet he had none of those vices which ordinarily reduce men of genius to destitution, and are cloaked beneath the hackneyed phrase, "He had no enemy but himself."
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