satire, general utility, united with great vivacity of composition, Gil
Blas is unrivalled: but, as a merely agreeable book, the Memoirs of
Grammont perhaps deserve that character more than any which was ever
written: it is pleasantry throughout, pleasantry of the best sort,
unforced, graceful, and engaging. Some French critic has justly
observed, that, if any book were to be selected as affording the truest
specimen of perfect French gaiety, the Memoirs of Grammont would be
selected in preference to all others. This has a Frenchman said of the
work of a foreigner: but that foreigner possessed much genius, had lived
from his youth, not only in the best society of France, but with the most
singular and agreeable man that France could produce. Still, however,
though Grammont and Hamilton were of dispositions very different, the
latter must have possessed talents peculiarly brilliant, and admirably
adapted to coincide with, and display those of his brother-in-law to the
utmost advantage. Gibbon extols the "ease and purity of Hamilton's
inimitable style;" and in this he is supported by Voltaire, although he
adds the censure, that the Grammont Memoirs are, in point of materials,
the most trifling; he might also in truth have said, the most improper.
The manners of the court of Charles II. were, to the utmost, profligate
and abandoned: yet in what colours have they been drawn by Hamilton? The
elegance of his pencil has rendered them more seductive and dangerous,
than if it had more faithfully copied the originals. From such a mingled
mass of grossness of language, and of conduct, one would have turned away
with disgust and abhorrence; but Hamilton was, to use the words of his
admirer, Lord Orford, "superior to the indelicacy of the court," whose
vices he has so agreeably depicted; and that superiority has sheltered
such vices from more than half the oblivion which would now have for ever
concealed them.

The Count de Grammont died in 1707. Some years after the publication of