Footnote 12: [(return)]
I do not know whether it be worth while to attempt to refute the opinion which has been founded on an erroneous passage in Eginhard, that Charlemagne could not write. Eginhard understood, as Gibbon says, the court and the world, and the Latin language, it is true; but, nevertheless, we may much more rationally believe that the secretary made use of a vague expression, than suppose that he wished to imply, in one sentence, the manifest contradiction of Charlemagne being in the habit of going through all the abstruse calculations of astronomy, in an age when those calculations were most complicated, without being able to write. The whole of Charlemagne's life renders the supposition absurd. He studied under Alcuin, whose first rule was to teach the most correct orthography in writing. We know that he subscribed many deeds, though his signature was abbreviated, to render it as rapid as possible. Eginhard himself states, that the monarch wrote the history of the ancient kings in verse: and Lambecius, one of the highest antiquarian authorities, declares, that the imperial library still contains a manuscript, corrected by the hand of Charlemagne himself.
Footnote 13: [(return)]
Amongst other interpretations of "Under the Rose," why may we not conjecture that it may have something to do with bribes to silence? with hush-money? the Rose, in many countries, being not an unusual stamp on their coins.
Footnote 14: [(return)]
"The foregoing anecdote was told to the writer by the late James Burton, Esq., of Lockeridge House, a seat of the Marquess of Aylesbury's, near Marlborough. Mr. Burton married a daughter of the celebrated actress, Mrs. Cibber, by General Sloper, a man of the highest fashion of his day, from whom, I believe, Mr. Burton received the account; the particulars of which, as I have narrated, no doubt, many persons of Mr. Burton's acquaintance still remember."
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