did candidly, in the Number of the Revue Britannique for October 1839, print, from the Naval Archives of France, the original Despatch of Captain Renaudin to his own Government; the full official Narrative of that battle and catastrophe, as drawn up by Renaudin himself and the surviving officers of the Vengeur; dated Tavistock, 1 Messidor, An II,* and bearing his and eight other signatures;-whereby the statement of Admiral Griffiths, if it needed confirmation, is curiously and even minutely confirmed in every essential particular, and the story of the Vengeur is at length put to rest forever. In that objurgatory effervescence,-which was bound by the nature of it either to cease effervescing and hold its peace, or else to produce some articulate testimony of a living man who saw, or of a dead man who had said he saw, the Vengeur sink otherwise than this living Admiral Griffiths saw it, or than a brave ship usually sinks after brave battle, the one noticeable vestige of new or old evidence was some dubious traditionary reference to the Morning Chronicle of the 16th June; or, as the French traditionary referee turned out to have named it, 'le Journal LE MORNING du 16 Juin. Following this faint vestige, additional microscopic researches in the Morning Chronicle of the 16th June and elsewhere did, at last, disclose to me what seemed the probable genesis and origin of Barrère's Fable; how it first suggested itself to his mind, and gathered shape there, and courage to publish itself: the discovery, unimportant to all other things and men, is not of much importance even to our criticism of Barrère; altering somewhat one's estimate of the ratio his poetic faculty may have borne to his mendacity in this business, but leaving the joint product of the 4 Twenty days before that final sublime Report of Barrère's. two very much what it was in spiritual value;—a discovery not worth communicating. The thing a Lie wants, and solicits from all men, is not a correct natural-history of it, but the swiftest possible extinction of it, followed by entire silence concerning it. BAILLIE THE COVENANTER.1 [1841.] EARLY in the seventeenth century of our era, a certain Mr. Robert Baillie, a man of solid wholesome character, lived in moderate comfort as Parish Minister of Kilwinning, in the west of Scotland. He had comfortably wedded, produced children, gathered Dutch and other fit divinity-books; saw his duties lying tolerably manageable, his possessions, prospects not to be despised; in short, seemed planted as for life, with fair hopes of a prosperous composed existence, in that remote corner of the British dominions. A peaceable, ‘solid-thinking, solid-feeding,' yet withal clear-sighted, diligent and conscientious man,-alas, his lot turned out to have fallen in times such as he himself, had he been consulted on it, would by no means have selected. Times of controversy; of oppression, which became explosion and distraction: instead of peaceable preaching, mere raging, battling, soldiering; universal shedding of gall, of ink and blood: very troublous times! Composed existence at Kilwinning, with rural duties, domestic pledges, Dutch bodies of divinity, was no longer possible for a man. Till the advent of Laud's Service-book into the High 1 LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW, No. 72.-The Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie, A.M., Principal of the University of Glasgow, 1637-1662. Edited from the Author's Manuscripts, by David Laing, Esq. 3 vols. (Vols. i. and ii.) Robert Ogle, Edinburgh, 1841. |