The Bibliographical Dictionaries, producing no evidence, name
quite another person, or series of persons, [A certain "N. de
Bonneville" (afterwards a Revolutionary spiritual-mountebank, for
some time) is now the favorite Name;--proves, on investigation, to
be an impossible one. Barbier (Dictionnaire des
Anonymes), in a helpless doubting manner, gives still
others.] highly unmemorable otherwise. Whereupon you proceed to
said other person's acknowledged WORKS (as they are called);
and find there a style bearing no resemblance whatever; and are
left in a dubious state, if it were of any moment. In the absence
of proof, I am unwilling to charge his Highness de Ligne with such
an action; and indeed am little careful to be acquainted with the
individual who did it, who could and would do it. A Prince of
Coxcombs I can discern him to have been; capable of shining in the
eyes of insincere foolish persons, and of doing detriment to them,
not benefit; a man without reverence for truth or human
excellence; not knowing in fact what is true from what is false,
what is excellent from what is sham-excellent and at the top of
the mode; an apparently polite and knowing man, but intrinsically
an impudent, dark and merely modish-insolent man;--who, if he fell
in with Rhadamanthus on his travels, would not escape a horse-
whipping, Him we will willingly leave to that beneficial chance,
which indeed seems a certain one sooner or later; and address
ourselves to consider the theory itself, and the facts it pretends
to be grounded on.

"As to the theory, I must needs say, nothing can be falser, more
heretical or more damnable. My own poor opinion, and deep
conviction on that subject is well known, this long while. And, in
fact, the summary of all I have believed, and have been trying as