Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/449

 9* s. vm. NOV. so, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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became one of the secret agents of the Tribunal of Inquisitors. In a previous note (8 th S. xi. 463) I have dealt fully with this subject, and have only to adcl that the position of secret agent became in time so distasteful to Casanova that in 1780 he resigned, and retired into private life. Two years later came his quarrel with the whole of the Venetian nobility, and his final exit from the city of his birth. Under these circumstances the memoirs, in my opinion, appropriately close in 1774. A truthful record of that period of his life could not have been made without wounding his amour propre, and for that reason the record was never made. M. Armand Baschet's theory that the concluding memoirs must have been written and destroyed by either Marcolini or Waldstein is based on the fact that the original MS. bore the superscription " Histoire ae ma Vie jusqu'a Tan 1797." That point is a strong one, certainly ; but we cannot be absolutely sure that the inscription was not a forgery intended to enhance the value of the copy- right. I have within my own experience come across literary forgeries so admirable that the greatest experts in handwriting have been deceived. Angiolini, of whom nothing is known, may have been capable of deceiving Herr Brockhaus, or he may not. If we assume that Casanova wrote those words, he may have meant nothing more than that he put the last touches to his ' Histoire de ma Vie' in 1797.

We have absolute proof that Casanova was actually writing his penultimate chapter in that year. In speaking of Poland he says : "Ce demembrement amena la dissolution entiere du royaume, qui a eu lieu Van dernier:' The date "1767," inserted after those words in the printed editions, is an obvious typographical error. Casanova probably set down " 1797," in accordance with his usual practice of affixing the precise date on which certain passages were written. Every one knows that Poland was dismem- bered in April, 1795. Therefore Casanova, writing in 1797, made a pardonable mistake, due, in all probability, to the passage having been written early in that year. I merely mention this to show that the last chapter of the sixth volume was written in the year before he died.

Until the proprietors of Casanova's manu- scripts can make up their minds to publish them in the form in which they were written we cannot judge of the extent of Laforgue's manipulations. The original MSS. comprised six hundred sheets in folio (about thirty lines to the page). This has been spun out to

2954 pages of print,* or say 112,252 lines. Casanova must have written on both sides of his paper. Even so, his manuscripts cannot nave contained more than 72,000 lines. How 72,000 manuscript lines can have run to 112,252 lines of print without consider- able expansion, I know not.

It may be here mentioned that our old friend " Herr Faulkinher," to whom Casanova wrote the eleven letters to be found in every recent edition of the memoirs, turns out, upon the authority of Herr Brockhaus, to have been Herr Feldkirkner, and that there are seven more letters addressed to that gentle- man which have not yet been printed.

RICHARD EDGCUMBE. (To be continued.)

'LETTRES DTI PRINCE EDWARDE, PRINCE DES GALES, FITZ AISNE DU ROY EDW. [I.].' This most interesting contemporary docu- ment (now consisting of nineteen mem- branes), containing transcripts or abstracts of about seven hundred letters of Edward of Caernarvon, dated in the thirty-third year of his father's reign (1304-5), was discovered by Mr. Frederick Devon in the Chapter- House, Westminster, and was reported on by him in the second appendix to the Ninth Report of the Deputy- Keeper of the Public Records (1848, at pp. 246-9). Dr. Doran's ' Book of the Princes of Wales' (1860) gives translations of a considerable number of these letters (chaps, iii. iv. pp. 41-99), which show some- thing of their great importance. It is much to be desired that the transcripts should be printed in full, as a document for the philo- logist no less than for the historian, inasmuch as they are " written in French, except the letters to dignitaries of the Romish Church, and some others, of which only memoranda

are entered in Latin" (Devon, ubi sup.).^

ROBT. J. WHITWELL.

Oxford.


 * Edition Rozez, 1881.

f I hope that I may be allowed, in a foot-note, to subjoin a copy of a letter, selected very much at

(describing an entry on m. 28 of Patent Rolls, 28 Ed- ward L, dated 17 January, 1300), besides exemplify- ing the Anglo-French of 1305: "Edward, &c., au noble homme sun trescher cosin e foial monsieur Henri de Lacy Counte de Nicole saluz e cheres amistes. Pur ceo qe nous auom entendu qe nostre Seignur le Roy est tenu en iiij xx li. a Souchengoz chiualer par sa lettre sealle de votre seal en Gas- coigne, le quel argent il deuoit a Ladally e le tist son procurour. Vous priom especiaument taunt come nous pooms qe vous maundez vos lettres au Tresorer del Escheker qil face le [sic] grace Ladilli,