.

His lordship says, that "Of late the appetite for _Remains_ of all kinds
has surprisingly increased. A story repeated by the Duchess of
Portsmouth's waiting-woman to Lord Rochester's valet forms the subject
of investigation for a philosophical historian; and you may hear of an
assembly of scholars and authors discussing the validity of a piece of
scandal invented by a maid of honour more than two centuries ago, and
repeated to an obscure writer by Queen Elizabeth's housekeeper. It is a
matter of the greatest interest to see the _letters_ of every busy
trifler. Yet who does not laugh at such men?" This is the attack! but as
if some half truths, like light through the cranny in a dark room, had
just darted in a stream of atoms over this scoffer at secret history, he
suddenly views his object with a very different appearance--for his
lordship justly concludes that "It must be confessed, however, that
knowledge of this kind is very entertaining; and here and there among
the rubbish we find hints that may give the philosopher a clue to
important facts, and afford to the moralist a better analysis of the
human mind than a whole library of metaphysics!" The philosopher may
well abhor all intercourse with wits! because the faculty of judgment is
usually quiescent with them; and in their orgasm they furiously decry
what in their sober senses they as eagerly laud! Let me inform his
lordship, that "the waiting-woman and the valet" of eminent persons are
sometimes no unimportant personages in history. By the _Memoires de
Mons. de la Porte, premier valet-de-chambre de Louis XIV._, we learn
what before "the valet" wrote had not been known--the shameful arts
which Mazarin allowed to be practised, to give a bad education to the
prince, and to manage him by depraving his tastes. _Madame de
Motteville_, in her Memoirs, "the waiting lady" of our Henrietta, has
preserved for our own English history some facts which have been found
so essential to the narrative, that they are referred to by our
historians. In _Gui Joly_, the humble dependant of Cardinal de Retz, we
discover an unconscious but a useful commentator on the memoirs of his
master; and the most affecting personal anecdotes of Charles the First
have been preserved by _Thomas Herbert_, his gentleman in waiting;
_Clery_, the valet of Louis the Sixteenth, with pathetic faithfulness,
has shown us the man in the monarch whom he served!

Of SECRET HISTORY there are obviously two spe