LORD GOWER'S DESPATCHES.
pro THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."' SIR,—The very competent critic who reviewed my " Despatches of Lord Gower," in the Spectator of December 26th, finds fault with me for not having stated that the accounts of the Terror in the appendix, which he admits to be of the greatest historical value, were by Mallet-du-Pan, and for not knowing that some of them had been published before. 1 must plead guilty to the charge of not having examined the Life of Mallet-du-Pan by Sayous when I published my baok ; but I should certainly have attributed the papers to Mallet on other grounds, had I not been assured by the highest authority that they were not by Mallet, and could not have been written by him. It is true that Mallet's drafts for some of these letters have been published in Sayous' Life, but these particular letters in the Record Office have never, as far as I am aware, been copied before, much less printed. M. Sorel writes to me:—" Le meinoire de 25 janvier, 1794, que vous publiez, p. 314 et suiv , se trouve dans Sayous, p. 2 et suiv. ; sae nu passage tres interessant que vows donnez, p. 335, Its se vantent,' jusqul p. 337, sub- sistances. Une partie du memoire 15 Wrier, 1794, est aussi dans Sayous, II., p. 34. Le rests, qui est considerable et bieu interessant, me parait entierement inedit." It is surely worth while to have placed these valuable documents within easy reach of English students of history, even though portions of them may have been published thirty-five years ago.
With regard to the despatches of Lord Gower, it must always be a matter of opinion whether original documents are worth pub- lishing or not. Probably those who know the history best, will be most likely to find something new and valuable in such papers. My critic agrees with the four London publishers. I am supported by the authority of M. Henri Taine and M. Albert Sorel, who, I suspect, know the French Revolution better even than my critic. M. Taine wrote to me in November, 1883, when I consulted him about publishing the despatches:—'• Des hommes competents qui m'ont parle de ces depeches m'ont declare qu'elles etaient de la plus haute importance." And further on : —"Je donnerais ciuq cents volumes de journaux, pamphlets, et brochures pour les lettres qu'un ambassadeur, homme d'etat, a ecrit sur place, de semaine en semaine, au premier ministre de son pays, ou a son souverain." He writes to me two years later, when he has read the book :—" J'ai recu les 'Despatches of Lord Gower,' et je ne Buis pas de l'avis des librkires. Meme an point de vue anecdotique elles contiennent nombre de faith in- teressants, par exemple, apred le sac de l'hotel de Castries la fuite de 200 families parisiennes." M. Sorel writes in January, 1886:—" J'ai pris dans ces derniers jours connaissance suivie de votre belle publication des papiers de Lord Gower. J'y ai trouve au taut d'interet que de profit pour le travail que je fais en ce moment, et j'aurais l'occasion de titer plus d'une fois votre livre qui merite a tons egards d'être signals en France."
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