Art. 46. Nascita, Carattere, e Alcuni Fatti Notabili di Luigi XVI. Re di Francia. Sua Prigonia nel Tempio, tradotta dal Giornale del Sigr. Clery, Cameriere del Re. Con una breve Appendice al Giornale.
author: Elizabeth Moody
source date: September 1803

Elizabeth Moody Art. 46. Nascita, Carattere, e Alcuni Fatti Notabili di Luigi XVI. Re di Francia. Sua Prigonia nel Tempio, tradotta dal Giornale del Sigr. Clery, Cameriere del Re. Con una breve Appendice al Giornale. 8vo. pp. 232. Printed at Oxford, 1802. [The Monthly Review , second series, vol. 42, September 1803, p. 109. Benjamin Nangle identifies Elizabeth Moody as the author of this review from an editor's marked copy of The Monthly Review . See Nangle, The Montly Review, Second Series, 1790-1815: Indexes of Contributors and Articles , Clarendon Press, 1955. Jonathan Pinkerton and Mary A. Waters prepared this edition of the article for The Criticism Archive .]

This work is politely dedicated by the anonymous author to the Hon. Mrs. Ellis;[^1] and a sensible and ingenious Preface then introduces us to an ingenious simile, illustrating a comparison between the renovating ashes of the phœnix and the immortal flame of virtue, which rises triumphant, refined, and exalted, from the darkest shades of persecuted calamity. Often as we have read the afflicting tragedy of Louis the Sixteenth, we still find our sensations the same: but, having before spoken on the affecting and simple detail contained in the journal of the faithful Clery [See Rev. Vol. xxvi. N. S. p. 410. [Moody's note]], we have only now to remark on its present appearance in Italian. This sweet language is so well calculated by its harmonious accents for the pathetic, that numerous passages in this translation may be said to have derived additions both of elegance and pathos; and in the part of the work intitled Notizie Preliminari al Giornale, we meet with many amusing anecdotes of the early and later years of this unfortunate monarch. The volume is handsomely printed, and is ornamented by a well-executed engraving of Louis XVI.

[^1: In 1797, Elizabeth Catherine Caroline Hervey, daughter of Captain John Augustus Hervey, Lord Hervey, married Charles Rose Ellis, 1st Baron of Seaford, and the pro-slavery heir to several Jamaican plantations and over 1,000 slaves. Her early death may have been the consequence of bearing three children in rapid succession.]