Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope, as related by herself in conversations with her physician, vol. 1 (of 3)

LADY HESTER STANHOPE. London Henry Colburn, 1845.
AS RELATED BY HERSELF IN CONVERSATIONS WITH HER PHYSICIAN; COMPRISING HER OPINIONS, AND ANECDOTES OF SOME OF THE MOST REMARKABLE PERSONS OF HER TIME.
All such writings and discourses as touch no man will mend no man.—Tyers’s Rhapsody on Pope .
Second Edition. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I.
LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1846.
LONDON: F. SHOBERL, JUN. 51, RUPERT STREET, HAYMARKET, PRINTER TO H. R. H. PRINCE ALBERT.
In publishing a second edition of the “Memoirs of Lady Hester Stanhope,” the Author does not feel himself called upon to reply to the many desultory criticisms on his work which have issued from the press. It was naturally to be expected that, among the numerous adherents of statesmen, noblemen, and princes, whose lives had been commented upon in these pages, there would be no lack of writers to vindicate their reputation, or, failing in this, to censure the narrator. But, to do so with vulgarity, as was the case in two or three reviews, is surely departing from the rules of literary courtesy, and must rather have weakened their arguments than otherwise.
We read in the number of the Quarterly Review for September last (p. 449) a paragraph, which the writer must have known was a misrepresentation of facts. It is there asserted that the Earl Stanhope had given a flat contradiction to a portion of Dr. M.’s Conversations . Now, the critic ought to have been aware that what his lordship denied was no part of the “Conversations,” but an extract from a letter written by Lady Hester herself to his Grace the Duke of Wellington; and yet, not acting with the fairness and impartiality which became him, and becomes every person sitting in judgment on another, he forgets to give at the same time the answer, and in this way hopes to cast odium on the Author of the Memoirs, at the expense of truth and justice. No apology therefore is needed for inserting the answer, thus, it is to be hoped, unintentionally omitted, and which was as follows:—