This anxiety of Smith’s, who had justly confidence in his executors, has frequently been entertained very reasonably indeed with regard to reminiscences, the spicy character of which often requires the publication to be long posthumous, but tempts the graceless to make it not so. Rochefoucauld’s “Mémoires,” which have, however, more of the chronicle and less of the journal than is generally relished, were certainly delayed, as the event turned out, long enough after his death, in appearing in any tolerable form. But it had been like not to be so. While he was still living he found that at the shop of Widow Barthelin, relict of a printer of Rouen, his work had been secretly put to press by the orders of the Comte de Brienne. The Count had furtively made a copy from the manuscript borrowed from Arnaud d’Andilly, to whom Rochefoucauld had submitted it for the purposes of correction—“Particulièrement pour la pureté de la langue.” Measures as furtive were necessary to recover it. The Duke accordingly pounced on the printer, gave Widow Barthelin twenty-five pistoles, carried off the whole of the edition, and stored it in a garret of the Hôtel de Liancourt at Paris. We doubt if it is generally known that this edition, wherein the widow had shown few signs of care, was entitled, “Relation des guerres civiles de France, depuis août 1649 jusqu’à la fin de 1652.” In curious contrast is the fact that sometimes a relative destroys what the author has shown no vigilant scrupulousness in suppressing. It was perhaps esteemed by the “very devout lady of the family of St. John,” who was mother to the notable Rochester, on whose death Bishop Burnet has so improvingly written, that the final scenes of her son made it unsuitable that any of his papers should be kept—especially the history of the intrigues of the court of Charles II. reported by Bolingbroke to have been written by him in a series of letters to his friend Henry Saville. Nor let it be supposed that this would have been so adverse to the desires of Rochester himself. The late James Thompson, author of the “City of Dreadful Night,” destroyed before his death all that he had written previous to 1857, though he has been very virulent against a sample king who of malice prepense with gross ingratitude thus treated the donor of a priceless if imaginary gift:— A writer brought him truth; And first he imprisoned the youth; And then he bestowed a free pyre That the works might have plenty of fire, And also to cure the pain Of the headache called thought in the brain.