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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Hahhy of Newmarket . To be sure ha did ^ -half a , doz en , or more . Mr . Albion ( gravely ) . But surel y a great many historical , anecdotes of Napoleon are easily to be collected from authentic sources ?
Harry of Newmarket { laughing ) . Doubtless , doubtless ; but the joke was , that Ireland agreed to furnish volumes of Napoleon Anecdotes as long as people would buy them . And this he most certainly did , for a vast quantity were sold . It was no fault of his that they eventually ceased to be found , depend upon it .
Mrs . Albion . I suppose then he was chary of his authentic stories , and only threw them in here and there , to give an authentic colour to the rest ? Habry of Newmarket . Perhaps so ; but let me tell you he had the art of combining authentic details with fiction in such a
way that few can tell who ' s who . Besides , he could relate the same story in different volumes , in such different ways—giving " all the authorities' different also—that it is scarcely possible to contend with him . But he latterly committed a grievous mistake , and g rievously heavy were the consequences it entailed upon him . I call it a mistake , because , from the very nature of it , there would
be hundreds of living witnesses who would rise up and controvert it in a moment . I allude to the last of his publications I ever heard of , ' The History of Kent . ' Speaking of a certain river , or piece of water , he somehow or other took it into his head to make a statement about a particular bridge that ran across it at a particular part . This fact he considered not sufficiently interesting ,
and perhaps , miserabile dictu ! he wanted to fill up a certain space of print for a Sunday ' s dinner . Whether he had never visited that unlucky spot , or his memory did not serve him , and no book would help him out of the dilemma , certain it is he * Suffered his imagination to lead him into an account of all the details , ' dates , wood-work , stone-work , builders' bills / even to putting a
habitants / came pell-mell up to the astounded publisher ! The sheet—the whole number , I think—was immediately cancelled . The expense of this cancel fell upon poor Ireland . In vain he protested that it was a venial error anybody might have fallen into ^—that he had read somewhere or other of a bridge ; though he had mistaken the place , &c . The expense fell upon him . This
ira * a blow of ruin—he had received many before , but then he was a younger man . In various misdirected struggles to extricate himself , he only got inextricably deeper . In short , be never recovered it , and , having despair in his heart , put ' the enemy into \ um mowth / that his mind might be stolen away from the contemplation . Mas , Albion . Peer man ! kidmd ' ttus'it v # rje uwriancholy . It
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toll upon it ; and a very interesting account he made . No bridge at all had ever existed ! No sooner did the number of the said history arrive in Kent , than letter after letter , from € the oldest in-
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990 Jhetsub Cmkx
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1835, page 390, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2646/page/26/
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