SHORT

REMARKS

O N

BISHOP BURNET's HISTORY.

THIS author is in most particulars the worst

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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 meanest people. He difcovers a great scarcity of words and phrases, by repeating the fame several hundred times, for want of capacity to vary them. His obfervations are mean and trite, and very often falfe. His Secret Hiftory is generally made up of coffee-house fcandals, 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 40l. a-year. He

was

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 chanacters are miferably wrought, in many things mistaken, and all of them detracting, except of those who were friends, to the Prefbyterians. That early love of liberty he boafts of, is abfolutely false; 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 reflections 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 so 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 best in is, in giving extracts of arguments, and debates in council or parliament. Nothing recommends his book but the recency of the facts he mentions, moft of them being still in memory, especially the story of the Revolution; which, however, is not fo well told as might be expected, from one who

affects

affects to have had fo confidérable a share in it. After all, he was a man of generofity and good nature, and very communicative; but, in his ten laft years, was abfolute party-mad, and fancied he faw Popery under every bush. He hath told me many paffages not mentioned in his history, and many that are, but with feveral circumftances, fuppreffed or altered. He never gives a good character without one effential point, that the perfon 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 ufes many hundred times.

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

A N

ABSTRACT

O F THE

HISTORY OF ENGLAND,

FROM

The Invafion of it by JULIUS CESAR,

T 0

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR,

HE moft antient account we have

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of Britain, is, that the island was full of inhabitants, divided into several petty kingdoms, as moft nations of the world appear to have been at first. The bodies of the Britons were painted with Britons. a sky-coloured blue, either as an ornament, or else for terror to their enemies.

In their religion they were Heathens, as Heathens. all the world was before CHRIST, ex

cept the Jews.

VOL. XI.

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Their

Druids.

Nero.

Their priests were called Druids : Thefe 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 fifty years before Chrift, Julius Cæfar, the first 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 invafion of Britain by the Romans (then mafters of most of the known world) was in the reign of the Claudius. Emperor Claudius; but it was not wholly fubdued till that of Nero. It was governed by lieutenants, or deputies, sent from Rome, as Ireland is now by deputies from England, and continued thus under the Romans for about

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.

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