With more reason I can avow myself guilty of the last objection, I apprehend, and that is, having inserted too many trifling circumstances. Yet, as this is but the annal of a single year, events which would die away to nothing in a large body of history, are here material; and what was a stronger reason with me, the least important tend to illustrate either the character of the persons or the times. The objection will particularly have weight against the notes; I do not doubt but some anecdotes in them will be thought very trifling; it is plain, I thought them so myself, by not inserting them in the body of the work. I have nothing to say for them, but that they are trifles relating to considerable people; and such all curious persons have ever loved to read. Are not such trifles valued, if relating to any reign of 150 years ago? If this book should live so long, these too may become acceptable; if it does not, they will want no excuse. If I might, without being thought to censure so inimitable an author, I would remark that Voltaire, who in his _Siècle de Louis XIV_. prescribes the drawing only the great outlines of history, is as circumstantial as any chronicler, when he feels himself among facts and seasons that passed under his own knowledge. If it is any satisfaction to my readers to assist them in censuring the Author, I may say that I have spared the most inconsiderable person in the book as little as the demigods: obliquely it is true, for my own character could have very little to do directly in this Work: but I have censured very freely some measures, for which I voted, particularly the transactions about Mr. Murray, which I must confess were carried on with an intemperate rashness very ill-becoming Parliament or justice. Among these measures I must not have involved the rigorous clauses in the Mutiny Bill, or the _præmunire_ clause in the Regency Bill, for none of which, I thank God, I ever voted! When I said I foresaw no other objections, let me be understood to mean objections to faults that I might have avoided, such as want of sincerity, partiality, &c.: I hope I have cleared myself from them. As to the composition, I fear faults enough will appear in it: I would excuse them too if I could: but if imputations must lie upon my memory, let my character as a writer be the scape-goat to bear my offences! FOOTNOTES: [10] Vide Preface. [11] See the Preface to the first volume of L’Histoire de France. Paris, 1720. [12] As personal enmity undoubtedly operates on every man’s mind more or less, I have, in a subsequent part of these Memoirs, specified the persons whom I did not love, that so much may be abated in the characters I have given of them, as are not corroborated by facts. [13] Vide Gen. Dict. vol. 10, p. 426. [14] Vide Gen. Dict. vol. 10, p. 336. [15] Vide his Examen, part i. chap. 2, p. 33. [16] The soil the Virtues like.--POPE. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. CHAPTER I.