REMARKS

O N

BISHOP BURNET's HISTORY.

TH

HIS author is in moft particulars the worst qualified for an historian that ever I met with. His ftyle is rough, full of improprieties, in expreffions often Scotch, and often fuch as are used by the meaneft people. He discovers a great scarcity of words and phrases, by repeating the fame feveral hundred times, for want of capacity to vary them. His obfervations are mean and trite, and very often false. His Secret History is generally made up of coffeehouse scandals, or at best from reports at the third, fourth, or fifth hand. The account of the Pretender's birth, would only become an old woman in a chimney-corner. His vanity runs intolerably through the whole book, affecting to have been of confequence at nineteen years old, and while he was a little Scotch parfon of 40 pounds a year. He was a gentleman born, and, in the time of his youth, and vigour, drew

in an old maiden daughter of a Scotch Earl to marry him. His characters are miferably wrought, in many things miftaken, and all of them detracting, except of those who were friends to the Presbyterians. That early love of liberty he boasts of is abfolutely falfe; for the first book that I believe he ever published is an entire treatise in favour of paffive obedience and abfolute power; fo that his reflexions on the clergy, for afferting, and then changing those principles, come very improperly from him. He is the most partial of all writers that ever pretended fo much? to impartiality; and yet I, who knew him well, am convinced that he is as impartial as he could poffibly find in his heart; I am fure more than I ever expected from him; particularly in his accounts of the Papist and Fanatic plots. This work may be more properly called A Hiftory of Scotland during the author's time, with fome digreffions relating to England, rather than deferve the title he gives it. For I believe two thirds of it relate only to that beggarly nation, and their infignificant brangles and factions. What he fucceeds beft in, is in giving extracts of arguments and debates in council or parliament. Nothing recommends

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mends his book but the recency of the facts he mentions, most of them being still in memory, especially the ftory of the Revolution; which, however, is not fo well told as might be expected from one who affects to have had fo confiderable a share in it. After all, he was a man of generofity and goodnature, and very communicative; but, in his ten last years, was abfolute party-mad, and fancied he faw Popery under every bush. He hath told me many paffages not mentioned in this Hiftory, and many that are, but with feveral circumstances fuppreffed or altered. He never gives a good character without one effential point, that the person was tender to diffenters, and thought many things in the church ought to be amended.

Setting up for a maxim, Laying down for a maxim, Clapt up, Decency, and fome other words and phrafes, he uses many hundred times.

Cut out for a Court, Apardoning planet, Clapt up, Left in the lurch, The Mob, Outed, Agreat beauty, Went roundly to work: All these phrases ufed by the vulgar, fhew him to have kept mean or illiterate company in his youth.

AN

AN

ABSTRACT

OF THE

HISTORY of ENGLAND,

From the Invafion of it by JULIUS CESAR to WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.

HE moft antient account we have of

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Britain is, that the island was full of inhabitants, divided into feveral petty kingdoms, as moft nations of the world appear to have been at firft. The bodies of the Britons were painted with a fky- Britons. coloured blue, either as an ornament or elfe for terror to their enemies. In their religion they were Heathens, as all the Heathens. world was before CHRIST, except the Jews.

Their priests were called Druids: These Druids: lived in hollow trees, and committed not their mysteries to writing, but delivered them down by tradition, whereby they were in time wholly loft.

The Britons had wives in common, fo many to a particular tribe or fociety, and the children were in common to that fociety.

About

About fifty years before Chrift, Julius Cæfar, the firft Roman Emperor, having conquered Gaul or France, invaded Britain rather to increase his glory than conquefts; for, having overcome the natives in one or two battles, he returned.

The next invasion of Britain by the Romans (then masters of most of the known

world) was in the reign of the Emperor Claudius. Claudius; but it was not wholly fubdued Nero. till that of Nero. It was governed by lieutenants, or deputies, fent from Rome,, as Ireland is now by deputies from England; and continued thus under the Romans for about 460 years; till that empire being invaded by the Goths and Vandals, the Romans were forced not only to recal their own armies, but also to draw from hence the braveft of the Britons, for their affiftance against thofe Barbarians.

The Roman conquefts in this ifland reached no further northward than to that part of Scotland where Stirling and Glafgow are feated: The region beyond was held not worth the conquering: It was inhabited by a barbarous people, called CalePias. donians and Picts; who, being a rough fierce nation, daily infefted the British borders. Therefore the Emperor Severus

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built