Philip Rollo; or, the Scottish Musketeers, Vol. 1 (of 2)Grant, James
General
Philip Rollo; or, the Scottish Musketeers, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Grant, James
Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 -- Fiction
On examining our literary and antiquarian treasure, which we did with
ardour, we found that it was the adventures of a Scottish gentleman,
of that stirring period indicated by the date, who had served for a
time, as a soldier of fortune, in the armies of Denmark. We found
the book interesting, from the glimpses of wild adventure,
hair-breadth escapes, high military courage, and raciness it
exhibited; thus, the more we read, the more pleased did we become.
Philip Rollo, for such was the name of the writer, seemed to be
beside us relating his own startling adventures; and we were upon the
point of handing over the MS. to our enterprising friends of the
Bannatyne Club, when, lo! we discovered that there were two serious
gaps in it. Though having little doubt that the archaeologists would
gladly publish these curious memoirs even in their mutilated state,
we preferred to restore the thread of the narrative, so far as we
could do so, from the quaint pages of the _Amsterdam Courant_, the
_Swedish Intelligencer_, the warlike story of Colonel Monro and
others, and, after modernising the spelling and language of the
whole, so as to make it more generally readable, handed over our
transcript to our friend Mr. Routledge, of London.
Those portions of the work which have been made up from contemporary
authority, we are much too cunning to point out; though we have
little doubt that the critical reader will easily recognise them.
But we may add that, historically considered, we have found the
military details to tally so closely with those given in the Low
Dutch "Relation," "Ye Danish Warres," and other works, that our
soldier of fortune may defy the closest scrutiny.
When we read the memoirs of any eminent man of whom no portrait is
extant, we are naturally curious to know what like he was--the colour
of his eyes, of his hair, and so forth; and, most fortunately, before
entering upon the adventures of Philip Rollo, we are enabled to
afford the reader a pretty good idea of these matters; for at the
same extensive sale, where it was our fortune to find the MS., a
portrait of the cavalier was "knocked down" to us for a comparative
trifle--nothing, absolutely, when we consider that it was a real and
well-authenticated _Jamesone_, an artist, so justly esteemed the
Vandyke of Scotland, and who studied with Sir Anthony under Rubens at
Antwerp.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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