June 19. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



579 



•will be observed that Defoe does not give the title 

 of the pamphlet, and that he does not notice that 

 it was attributed by Boyer to Addison ; which he 

 would scarcely have omitted doing if he had 

 written his letter with Boyer's words before him, 

 in which also the term " inconsistency " is not 

 used. Such is my solution of the difficulty, which 

 unexplained would throw a new, and certainly a 

 very unfavourable light on Defoe's character as a 

 pamphleteer and politician. James Ceossley. 



ARTHUR CONNOR. 



!f'rom the French recent papers we learn that 

 Arthur O'Connor, one of the prominent actors in 

 the Irish Rebellion of 1798, has just closed his 

 prolonged life at his residence, the Chateau de 

 Bignon, near Nemours (Seine et Marne) in 

 France. ^Vhen, in 1834, by permission of the 

 government of Lord Grey, he and his accom- 

 plished wife were in this city (Cork), with the view 

 of disposing of his inherited and not confiscated 

 property, in order to invest the produce in France, 

 I was almost in daily intercourse with them ; and, 

 from my recollection of the lady's fixther, the 

 Marquis de Condorcet, a distinguished mathe- 

 matician, but better known as the biographer 

 and ardent propagator of Voltaire's infidel prin- 

 ciples, as well as the zealous partisan of the 

 Revolution, though finally its victim, I was al- 

 ways a welcome visitor. O'Connor, whom Bona- 

 parte had raised to the rank of General of Di- 

 vision, equivalent to that of General in full in our 

 service, being next to the degree of Marshal, told 

 me that the disunion and personal altercations of the 

 Irish Legion engaged in the service of the then 

 republican France had deservedly and utterly 

 estranged and disgusted the French successive 

 rulers, particularly Napoleon, in whose triumphs 

 they consequently were not allowed to partici- 

 pate as a national body. The rancorous duel 

 between two officers, McS weeny and Corbet, 

 both from Cork, had made a deep impression on 

 the great soldier, and the Legion was disbanded. 

 Having inquired from O'Connor whether he did not 

 intend to publish the events of his variegated life, 

 he told me that he was preparing the narrative ; 

 but, on mentioning to his wife that he had made 

 this acknowledgment, she immediately called on 

 me with an earnest request that I would dissuade 

 iiirn^ from doing so. She did not explain her 

 motive, and I only promised to avoid the future 

 renewal of the subject in our conversations. As 

 yet, whatever preparations he may have made, 

 the press has not been resorted to ; though, if in 

 existence, as may be presumed, the work, or its 

 materials, will not, most probably, be suffered to 

 remain in closed and mysterious secrecy. The 

 Memoirs, for so he entitled it, cannot fail to be 



most interesting ; for he was a man of truth, and 

 incapable of misrepresentation, though, of course, 

 liable to misconception, in his recital of events ; 

 nor can it be denied, that a history, in any degree 

 worthy of the theme — that is, of the Irish Rebel- 

 lion, 13 still unpublished.* Whatever objection 

 may have prevented the publication during his 

 life, none, I should suppose and hope, can now be 

 urged after his 'death, which, singularly enough, 

 in an article devoted to him in the Biographie 

 Universelle, I find as having occurred so lontr 

 since as 1830. His son, too, is there represented 

 as the husband of his own mother! the writer, 

 with other confusions of facts, having mistaken 

 Arthur for his elder brother, Roger O'Connor, 

 father of the present eccentric Feargus, M.P. It 

 is thus, too, that the great vocalist Braham is ia 

 the same voluminous repository stated to have 

 died of the cholera in August, 1830, though, 

 several years subsequently, I saw him in hale 

 flesh and blood ; but the compilation, valuable, it 

 must be admitted, in French biography, teems 

 with ludicrous blunders on English lives, which, 

 in the new edition now in state of preparation, 

 will, I hope, be corrected. Even the articles 

 of Newton, though by Biot, and of Shakspearo 

 and Byron by Villemain, are not much to their 

 credit, particularly the latter, in which the na- 

 tional prejudices prominently emerge. 



O'Connor, after having for sixteen years occu- 

 pied apartments in the house of an eminent book- 

 seller and printer, Monsieur Renouard, in the 

 Rue de Tournan, leading to the Luxembourg, 

 and the only street that I remember, now sixty 

 years since, had a flagged footpath in that, at 

 present, embellished metropolis, purchased his, 

 late residence, the Chateau de Bignon, with the 

 proceeds of his paternal estates sold here, as pre- 

 viously stated, in 1834. The purchase was made 

 from tbe heirs of Mirabeauj who was born in that 

 mansion, and not in Provence, as generally supposed, 

 because that southern province was the family's 

 original seat. The great orator's father, distin- 

 guished, per antiphrasim, as " I'Ami des homraes," 

 for he was the most unamiable of men, had ac- 

 quired and removed to the castle so called, in. 

 order to approach the royal court of Versailles. 

 The renowned son's bursts of eloquence still, I 

 may say, resound in my ears, dazzling and en- 

 trancing my judgment, as Lord Chatham is re- 

 ported similarly to have atfected his hearers. 

 Yet my old friend Vergniaux's genuine oratory 

 and reasoning power struck me as far superior ; 

 and I can well believe that Chatham's son's were 

 to those of his father, which his contemporary, 

 Hume, no incompetent judge, and doubtless his 



* Indeed, the general history of the kingdom is still 

 a sad desideratum, and, in the impassioned dissensions 

 of the people, not likely to be adequately supplied. 



