Bristol and Its Famous Associations (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. (continued). PART V. CLOSING ASSOCIATIONS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Sir Nathaniel Wraxall?Maria Edgeworth; Description of her life in Clifton?Lady Hesketh?Mrs. Draper. WRITER who attained considerable celebrity in the closing years of the eighteenth century as the Greville of his day was Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall, the son of a Bristol merchant, born in 1751 on the south side of Queen Square. His Historical Memoirs of My Own Time from 1772 to 1784 is steeped in the very atmosphere of that period. It created a storm of hostile criticism, and the first edition of it was sold out in a month. Among its critics have been Croker, Mackintosh, and Macaulay, who vigorously attacked the truth of its statements. The Edinburgh Review of the time contained the following caustic epigram, said to have been written by George Coleman: ? Men, measures, scenes, and facts all, Misquoting, misstating, Misplacing, misdating, Here 'lies' Sir Nathaniel Wraxall. WRAXALL AND MARIA EDGEWORTH. 141 Notwithstanding this powerful onslaught, Wraxall replied with considerable success to his critics' charges. Indeed, Sir George Osborn, for fifty years equerry to George III. and a disinterested onlooker, declared: I pledge my name that I personally know nine parts out of ten of your anecdotes to be perfectly correct; whilst Sir Archibald Alison, the historian, writing in Blackwood, said nothing but truth could produce so portentous an alliance as that between the Quarterly and the Edinburgh. In brief, time has signally falsified the prediction of his critics that the work would be rapidly forgotten. In addition to this celebrated work he wrote others. He died at Dover in his 8 1st year. Maria Edgeworth came to Clifton in the year 1793. She was charmed with the pla...