Читать книгу The First Duke and Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne онлайн

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This humble form of literary labour has the signal advantage that, if it fails to attract the reader, it succeeds in affording an object for reading to the writer.

Much assistance has been most kindly given in this work by Mr. Walter Herries Pollock.

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In one or two former works relating to the seventeenth century, it has been the writer’s misfortune to lead his readers over rather muddy roads into somewhat shady places; but it will now be his privilege to offer himself as their guide along smooth paths paved with the strictest propriety into regions “of sweetness and delight,” where they may bask in the sunshine of unmitigated respectability. There will be nothing in these pages to give offence (and therefore pleasure) to Mrs. Grundy, or to raise that tender blush on the cheek of a maiden, which he has been assured still exists; although he has never yet had the good fortune to see it.

The two chief sources of information about the earlier part of the lives of the first Duke and Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, are The History of the Rebellion, by Lord Clarendon; and The Life of the Most Illustrious Prince, William Duke of Newcastle, by Margaret Duchess of Newcastle. The first-mentioned book needs no recommendation; as to the second and its fellow-works, such high authorities as the Master and other Dons of St. John’s College, Cambridge, wrote to its author: “Your Excellencies books ... will not only survive our University, but hold date even with time itself; ... and incontinently this age, by reading of your books, will lose its barbarity and rudeness, being made tame by the elegance of your style and matter”.