CHRONICLES OF THE HOUSE OF BORGIA.
Chronicles of the House of Borgia. By Frederic, Baron Corvo. (Grant Richards. 21s.)—This clever volume, which relates in part to certain historical enigmas unsuitable for discussion in our columns, has been dismissed by half-educated criticism as an ignorant scribbler's attempt to " whitewash" Pope Alexander VI. and his children, Machiavolles ideal Prince, Caesar Borgia, and the operatic Lucrezia. The book is nothing of the kind, and, if we could have deodorised its main subject, we should have reviewed it in detail. The author's exculpatory arguments concerning daggers, poison bolls, and so forth are in every instance based on study of the original cinguecento texts, and of the approved results of modern German and French scientific inquiry ; and, what is more, they are largely in accordance with the deliberate judgments of writers like Voltaire, old Roscoe, the late Bishop Creighton, and the very impartial Professor Pastor, whose Papal History was reviewed in the Spectator of February 25th,1899. Our Jacobites will read with special interest some letters of the year 1800 disinterred by this writer, which show how, by the intercession of the Cardinal Stefano Borgia of that date, the young Pretender's brother, "Cardinal-King Henry IX." (known to us Hanoverian recusant as Cardinal York), received a large money subvention from our George
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