NOTE.
So far as I know, this Tragedy is the first artistic consequence of
what Voltaire termed “a terrible event without consequences;” and
although it professes to be historical, I have taken more pains to arrive
at the history than most readers would thank me for particularizing:
since acquainted, as I will hope them to be, with the chief circumstances
of Victor's remarkable European career—nor quite ignorant of the sad
and surprising facts I am about to reproduce (a tolerable account of
which is to be found, for instance, in Abbé Roman's Récit, or even the
fifth of Lord Orrery's Letters from Italy)—I cannot expect them to be
versed, nor desirous of becoming so, in all the detail of the memoirs,
correspondence, and relations of the time. From these only may be
obtained a knowledge of the fiery and audacious temper, unscrupulous
selfishness, profound dissimulation, and singular fertility in resources,
of Victor—the extreme and painful sensibility, prolonged immaturity of
powers, earnest good purpose and vacillating will of Charles—the noble
and right woman's manliness of his wife—and the ill-considered rascality
and subsequent better-advised rectitude of D'Ormea. When I say,
therefore, that I cannot but believe my statement (combining as it does
what appears correct in Voltaire and plausible in Condorcet) more true
to person and thing than any it has hitherto been my fortune to meet
with, no doubt my word will be taken, and my evidence spared as readily.
R. B.
London: 1842.