LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
"JOHN 1NGLESANT."
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—As a rule, I consider it most undesirable that an author should trouble the editor of a literary periodical with any re- marks on a review with which his book may be favoured. I leave it, therefore, entirely in your hands to print these few lines or not.
I enthusiastically agree with the reviewer that in a romance it is not fair that words and actions should be accredited to the dead, unless some kind of evidence exists that they spoke and acted in some such fashion. I have consciously endeavoured to act upon this principle. The words and actions of the King are what I sincerely believe to be in accordance with his char- acter, as I should have described it, had I been writing what is called "history." Every word spoken by Hobbes, Dr. Moore, and Nicholas Ferrar may be gathered from their published books. Father St. Clare is an .entirely imaginary person. Of the foreign characters, I cannot say quite so much. The exact date of the time Inglesant spent in Rome is left somewhat vague, so that several Rectors may possibly be able to share the responsibility of the few words spoken in the English College, on the night he slept there, among them. The Cardinal Rinucini is an imaginary character ; there were, so far as I know, only two brothers of his immediate family during the period of the story, the Nuncio, and Thomas, chamberlain to the Grand Duke. I conceive that his opinions were not infre- quent for some centuries among Italian ecclesiastics.
I have no authority for the words put into the mouths of Cressy and Molinos in their conversations with Inglesant, but they are, I venture to think, of a character of which no man need be ashamed. The words put into the mouth of Count Vespiriani are the exact expressions used by his party.
I have not, perhaps, been so successful in depicting the Church of Rome as a whole, but I have strenuously endeavoured to be fair, and, at any rate, I have not erred more than I should have done had I been writing a controversial or historical work.
Previous page
