divines, and poets were alternately the subject of his invectives.These, whenever they abandoned their public duties, he lashed without measure or mercy. To have fulminated against these great monopolizers of fame and fortune was quite sufficient for the public good, without further courting their indignation, by exposing his person as well as reputation to their assaults; since some of them, experience had taught him to believe, might not be content to confine those assaults to the pen, but be eager to extend them to another mode of revenge,-the motive justifying the means. I am not here disposed to deny, that some considerations of delicacy towards the feelings of his more immediate contemporaries might have had their share in influencing him to forbid the presentation of his History to the public eye within ten years after his decease. The principal reason, however, which led him to make it a posthumous publication, was, unquestionably, the wellfounded conviction that it was the recklessness of romantic and quixotic rashness, almost approaching to insanity, to brave the obloquy to which he knew that he should be exposed, for having stood forward as the bold and uncompromising censor of the faults and vices of public men-for endeavouring, as far as possible,

"That no rich or noble knave

Should walk the earth in credit to his grave."

With respect to the oversights and mistakes, which occur in some of the dates in this History, and the inference from them, that the facts, therefore, are not to be depended upon; several examples may be found to justify the assertion, that it was not then the fashion to be remarkable for exactness in point of time, and that many violent anachronisms abound among memoir-writers, both French and English, against whom, as relators of events, no suspicion could be entertained as to their accuracy or fidelity. Indeed, it would have been considered, by the generality of readers, as a greater piece of injustice to accuse Burnett of falsifying facts, from the want of chronological precision, than, in our days, to call Abbé Raynal's celebrated work on the Indies a novel founded on fact, because, after the example of antiquity he has omitted his authorities. To the foregoing circumstances may be attributed, I think, our author's failure in rigid adherence to dates; or else to the com

mendable attempt, in disregard of the lapse of time, to exhibit his views in nearer and more admirable perspective, and to form them into groups at once pleasing and important. But the judgment can often recommend a perfection, to which the hand can seldom attain. And Burnett, in seeking to combine causes and consequences in one regular order of succession, has not always so accomplished his task, as to detach them entirely from the rubbish of littleness and insignificance. His fulness and circumstantiality are sometimes painfully tiresome, from his making subordinate particulars the constituent parts of his history. The severe critic would, perhaps, reduce to a single book, what is dilated into two by the excursiveness of the Bishop's pencil.

But if we are to listen to his calumniators, his literary sins, however great, must not be named in the same page with his moral delinquencies. We are told by the bitterest of them all, Higgons, that nothing can equal his insincerity, but his malice,-that in his description of persons, "he has so outraged virtue and innocence, as to forfeit that respect which is due to his character, and even to extinguish that tenderness which, in good-nature and charity, we owe to others;" in short, if we are to confide in his representations, we are to regard Burnett as possessing a heart vitiated, corrupted, gangrened to the very core. The portraits drawn by party prejudice, no doubt, are often like objects seen at a great distance, or at twilight; being neither in shape, size, nor colour, such as they really exist. Of all this, no man was more thoroughly aware than the Historian of his own Time. Yet it cannot be denied that, in delineating the character of some of those who have passed before him on the stage of public life, he has painted as much under the influence of this feeling as from actual observation. I would adduce the names of Archbishop Sancroft, Sir William Temple, Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and Sir George Rook. There is a dash of the abusive, in particular against the two last, that, if I might say so, appears blended with almost personal spite against them: while he has endowed, at the same time, a few characters with every species of moral and intellectual excellence, as if he had been writing epitaphs instead of history.

It must likewise be confessed, that he has sometimes, "bared the

mean heart which lurks beneath the star," in such a manner as to leave it doubtful whether public good or private pique had the chief share in the exposure. Through the whole of his life Burnett was a keen partizan, or, as he has been designated, a christian whig. On party topics, therefore, he had an utter contempt for neutrality and indecision. Where are those delicate and dignified antipathies, which would lead him to think it ignoble to repeat his blow if he missed his aim? His object was to strike hard and in the right place; no matter how clumsy the stroke, provided it brought down his antagonist. Nevertheless, where his vituperations are fiercest, he, somehow contrives to make it appear that they spring from the movements of a generous and indignant spirit; and that he is employed in what he thinks a work of just and manly castigation.Many, indeed, are the passages in this memorable book, which indicate a strong belief that a new era of historical liberality was commencing, which might dare to seize the truth under whatever form, and bring it forward to the view. In speaking, therefore, of that great Revolution which threw off a line of kings for their tyranny, and adopted a new line for their religion, he has not hesitated to display, in their true colours, the conduct, feelings, and views of that party who, in secretly abetting the house of Stuart, sought to revive at the same time, those antiquated and hateful maxims, which taught monarchs to forget that the prosperity and liberty of their subjects were the surest basis of their own greatness. While, then, it is quite apparent to which side Burnett's political feelings carried him, it never with any truth or justice can be said, that he evinces the sad prostitution of mind implied in the condition of a devoted party-man; which leads such a puppet to refer to mean and interested motives the conduct of every opponent. On the contrary, a sense of truth and justice has often forced him to condemn his political friends, and to approve the proceedings of their adversaries; besides which, of every opinion pronounced by our author, he fairly states the grounds, and the reader is thus enabled to judge whether prejudice or sound reasoning were most conspicuous in his preferences and disgusts, his resentments and his friendships. The delineation of the character of King William may be evidenced in verification of these remarks.

Notwithstanding, however, the accusations brought against Burnett of his wish to vilify and blacken the character of his royal benefactor, we still feel a love of truth predominant in him which must ever entitle him to public confidence. He may have fallen into some incongruities, some absurdities, and some ridiculous stories in describing the politics, the hopes, the fears, the quarrels, and the errors, of the court and country party: but there is in every thing he says, both of friend and foe, a certain fearlessness and open-heartedness of manner, which cannot fail of powerfully impressing this on the reader's mind, that he is listening to the story of an honest as well as able man ;-though one by no means exempt from the common delusions of self-love and self-deceit, and though, also, occasionally seduced, by his political bias, into expressions concerning the personage and actions he is tracing, from which it would have been more laudable to abstain; the same bias having induced him to give undue weight to some circumstances and to overlook others, as they agree well or ill with his system. "Sometimes," says Noble, "he disguised real excellences only because they were opposite in sentiments to the mode he had adopted."

Nor can we deny that there is an act of truth and candour in his descriptions of the adverse political leaders, which inclines us strongly to believe, that not only is he correct in the more prominent lineaments, but that he has contemplated them with that discriminating and divining eye, which had looked, as it were, into their most hidden thoughts. So graphic are his portraits that two or three lines are sufficient to mark the whole man. They, indeed, who do not take their idea of Burnett from the abuse of professed enemies, will give their cordial assent to the assertion, that his general opinions are sound, intelligent, and enlightened; and that several of his remarks not only discover a manly strength of intellect, but a habit of assigning grounds for the conclusions which he formed not usual when he lived and wrote; and evidently shew, that he was capable of appreciating, in a considerable degree, the influence which the great events of his age must exercise upon future generations. Giving him, however, this high praise, that he occasionally fell into a train of thinking, which proved his anticipation of the sentiments of a more experienced and impartial pos

terity, it must, at the same time, be admitted that he was by no means exempt from an imperfection common to those who write the history of their own times-I mean that he was too much occupied with the designs of the statesmen and courtiers, to whom he was politically attached, to attend sufficiently to the immediate influence of those designs upon the national mind, and the tendency to advance or retard it. Nevertheless, from the habit he had acquired of analyzing, with the most piercing sagacity, the characters of those remarkable persons with whom he had come in contact in the course of his long career, and of studying their strongest and profoundest passions, under the conviction that a knowledge of these would develope that which is so difficult to comprehend,—the machinery of a court; and from being influenced by no squeamish feelings, in boldly and unsparingly testifying against the faults and corruptions of public men; certain it is, that, from these combined circumstances, he was often enabled to place an obscure and complicated subject in a correct and distinct point of view.

He acknowledges, however, with the greatest frankness, his narrative of English affairs to be imperfect and out of order; but, at the same time, trusting to the lights he had to guide him, challenges for his statements the fullest belief, though given on the mere strength of bare assertion. For a wise man, the Bishop was, unquestionably, too much governed by his passions; and these sometimes led him, in his reflections upon great questions of domestic policy, and upon the changes and revolutions of the ministry at home, to speak of those who were opposed to him, with a deep irony, and bitter malevolence, which trespass equally against candour, and the rules of fair and honourable controversy. But with respect to his account of the affairs of Scotland, certainly among the most interesting and curious portions of the work, though his ill-judging critics have, with singularly bad taste, characterized it among the dullest and most wearisome, the gallery of portraits there exhibited, is finished with scrupulous accuracy. In his delineation, also, of the leading Presbyterians and Episcopalians we meet with an impartiality which the prejudices of education and profession can scarcely be perceived to warp: thus reflecting the highest credit upon his independence as a politician, and his tolerant