Letter from Monsieur de Cros,... being an answer to Sir Wm Temple's memoirs... [1693]

Excerpt

My Lord,

I have been informed of the Calumnies that Sir W. T. hath caused to be Printed against me. I know very well that Sir W. is of great Worth, and deserves well; and that he hath been a long time employed, and that too upon important occasions; but I am as certain, that he had but a small share in the Secrecy of the late King Charles's Designs in the greatest part of the Affairs, for which he was employed, from 72, till 79, which is the main Subject of his Work.

This Consideration alone might not perhaps have given me the curiosity, or at least, any great earnestness to read his Memoirs; and I might have very well judged that I could draw from them no sufficient light and insight for the discovery of so many Intrigues.

Nay besides, I might have doubted whether or no these Memoirs might not have been his own Panegyrick upon himself, and the diminution and undervaluing of the real Worth and Glory of several Persons of Quality, and distinguished by their Merit; whose Fortune and Reputation Sir W. T. hath so much envied: for I am particularly acquainted with Sir W's Pride. He looks upon himself to have the greatest Reach, to be the wisest and ablest Politician of his Time; and a man may perceive abundance of Satyrical Reflexions scattered here and there in his Work against most illustrious Persons, and that he hath stuffed his Memoirs with his own Praise, and the fond over-weening Opinion he hath of himself.

Without doubt this is quite different from that Sincerity and Modesty which reigns throughout the Memoirs of Villeroy, in the Negotiations and Transactions of Jeanin, in the Letters of Card. Dossat, those mighty and truly eminent Persons, esteemed as such by the greatest Princes of their Age; and even still are to this day, by the ablest Politicians, with much more Justice and Glory than Sir W's Book-Seller stiles him, One of the Greatest Men of this Age. It had been Sir W's duty to have regulated himself according to their most excellent Pattern.

I shall at present only quote one Passage, which I accidentally light on at the first opening his Book, whereby one may easily guess at the greatness of his presumption; in a short time, My Lord, I shall give you occasion to observe many others. The Negotiations, saith he, that I managed and transacted at the Hague, at Brussels, at Aix la Chapelle, which saved Flanders from the French Churches, in 68. made People believe I had some Credit and Reputation amongst the Spaniards, as well as in Holland.

'Twas a Piece of strange Ingratitude of the Hollanders and Spaniards, as well as of his own dear Country-men, so much concern'd for the preservation of Flanders, not to rear him a Statue, which, he saith, some-where else, Mr. Godolphin had promised him. Could Sir. W. T. have done any thing to deserve it more; or was there any thing more worthy of Triumph than to have preserved Flanders, a Country so important to the Spaniard, and the only Bulwark of Holland and England? But Sir W. was apt to believe he could not find any one who was better able to hammer out his own Glory than himself; and he flattered himself with the Opinion that he should erect himself as many Statues, as there are places in his Memoirs, crouded with intolerable and ridiculous Vain-glory....