been defended; and time has already evinced the truth of certain records which rested on his single authority.”*

Now it will be readily admitted by all, that he who voluntarily takes upon himself to record the transactions of his own time for the instruction of posterity, engages in an office, not only of grave responsibility, but, perhaps, as thankless as can possibly be imagined: for, however severely he may be trained in the school of discretion, he will be sure to give offence to those of his contemporaries who, according to certain rooted and pre-conceived opinions, think that their own good actions cannot be too highly magnified, or their own faults too lightly censured. Unquestionably, no man is called upon to transmit to future ages the virtues or vices of his contemporaries. But if, for the benefit of his country, he will impose upon himself this task, he must know no middle line between right and wrong-he must shun all casuistry-he must show himself immeasurably superior to those who, actuated by a morbid love of popularity, make it their chief aim and intent to place the actions of their contemporaries in a flattering point of view; and whose pens, therefore, are ever silent when an honest declaration of opinion, and a fearless testimony to important but disagreeable truths may be required. Equal freedom and justice, then, must be used in speaking of the living as well as of the dead, if any one writer wish to render his work subservient to a great moral purpose, and to be known in after ages as the steady friend of human improvement and the true lover of his country. Nothing, therefore, can be more just than the remark, that impartiality is the most difficult of all virtues. To keep our faculties unbiassed, and not to suffer them to embrace one side or other of a question, appears so impracticable, that few writers have acquired sufficient strength of mind to display this rare independence. It is, indeed, as uncommon to find two cases in which the combination of circum

* Preface, p. 1., Oxford Edit. of Burnett's History of his own Time.—It reflects great credit upon the wisdom and liberality of an University so often and loudly reproached for its high principles of toryism in church and state, that the work of a whig Bishop should have issued, a century after his death, from the Clarendon Press. This surely must be regarded, by moderate men of all parties, as an unequivocal sign of the commencement of truer and juster notions respecting the author and his book; and should teach carping critics to set a higher value upon the excellences of both.

stances is exactly similar, as it is for men not to fall into opposite extremes in speaking of the same persons and the same actions.And it is also a failing no less common to every class of political reasoners, when they engage in the discussion of practical subjects of great interest, to deliver their opinions with an earnestness and passion which, to him who takes only an ordinary concern in such discussions, must pass for heat and personality. I would not, of course, be understood to apply these observations to the justification of any history deformed by violence and exaggeration. But when particular objects and particular occurrences come to be viewed through the magnifying glasses of party, it is matter even of vulgar remark, that it is difficult to distinguish between favouring and lying.

Had Burnett, then, in the History of his own Time, acknowledged no influence but what the strictest impartiality could avow, -had he always sought to disentangle truth from error, instead of permitting himself, according to the uncharitable criticisms of his opponents, to write upon the faith of popular rumour and prejudice, from the very peculiar circumstances of the times in which he lived and wrote, not to be occasionally mistaken would have been difficult, not to have offended, impossible; since he had events to record in which many a leading character was a problem.

It will, indeed, ever be remembered, by those who do not studiously seek to disparage the justness of our Author's conclusions, that his narrative treats of those periods of our country in which the human mind was deeply and roughly stirred-in which all the combustible elements of character were in full play and development. Plots, conspiracies, hair-breadth escapes, the purse, the axe, and the dagger, held sway in high places. There was a mighty fermentation throughout the political world. All was enterprise, boldness, and activity. The more attractive prizes in the lottery of life were beginning to be brought within the reach of a larger portion of the community. Accordingly we find that the questions which then pervaded and agitated the breasts of the many, were liberty of conscience, the limits of obedience, the rights of resistance, and the corruption of the Romish Church. In this state of things, when the discordant parts of society had not yet amalga

mated, but existing in a somewhat chaotic disorder, produced those various jarrings which nourish the fiercest and most unbridled passions when the national mind seemed to have obtained only a glimpse of the glorious race which, by means of a free press, it was destined hereafter to run-and when the affairs of courts, the intrigues of cabinets, and the influence of secret negociations in the relative situation of kingdoms, were considered as mysteries, not always to be unfolded even to those who lived in intimacy with the conductors of such operations; it were the height of malice and slander to impute to a premeditated perversion of truth, the errors of him who told the story of such a period. When, indeed, we think of the large field Burnett has traversed, and of the difficulties with which he had to contend, we must allow that these circumstances, if all candour had not been banished from his adversaries, should have put to silence their misrepresentations of his honest and enlightened labours, and have changed their railings against his occasional mistakes and wrong conclusions, into a conviction of the general fairness of his statements, and of his accuracy, and the extent of his information.

In treating of a period such as I have just described, it cannot fail to occur to every reflecting reader, as a natural and obvious consideration, that with Burnett's temperament, his passions were sure to be warmly actuated, and his prejudices to be strongly interested in the events he had to relate. These feelings, therefore, must be duly weighed. We must take the chaff with the wheat, we must suffer the tares to grow up with the rich grain, until the harvest of time shall have enabled us to separate them. From the following sentence it is evident that our historian judged himself as severely as his neighbours; and, therefore, if the mistakes of conduct into which his impetuosity of temper betrayed him cannot be defended by this explanation, the manliness and sincerity with which he avows them ought to render him, in other respects, worthy of public confidence. "I find," says he, "that the long expe rience I have had of the baseness, the malice, and the falsehood of mankind, has inclined me to be apt to think generally the worst both of men and parties: and, indeed, the peevishness, the ill-nature, and the ambition of many clergymen, has sharpened my spi

rits too much against them: so I warn my reader to take all I say, on these heads, with some grains of allowance, though I have watched over myself and my pen so carefully, that I hope there is no great occasion for this apology."

When a writer frequently repeats this sentiment "that a lie in history is a much greater sin than a lie in common discourse," there is a strong presumption that he will feel more powerfully urged to the observance of this moral distinction than if he had never professed to recognize it. Under the influence of this persuasion, we may expect to find in Burnett many inconsistencies less real than apparent. The first question, in short, which a conscientious man, in such cases, will ask himself, is, whether a writer, of common honesty, would so far degrade himself as intentionally to misrepresent truths to serve his party, or, for its sake, vituperate characters with a venom only to be surpassed by his ignorance?—and if he is satisfied that he would not, he will consider it no false or stupid reasoning, that most of the seeming inconsistencies which occur in the History of his own Time, may be fairly accounted for by the different aspects which the same object presented to the author at different periods: and that he, whose character was one intense glow, in the ardour of composition might have related certain stories and sayings, received from a second or third hand, which, on that account alone, a more cautious and regulated mind would have discarded. But as it is not to be supposed that the same man sees all that is done, or hears all that is said, during his own lifetime, it follows, as a necessary consequence, that the evidence of others, even reported through two or three informants, must frequently be the basis upon which he has to rest some of his positive conclusions ;-while it is equally obvious that when the original story is not wholly true, it must still suffer more and more by successive transmissions. And thus may our historian, even when borrowing his account from eye-witnesses or contemporary narrators, or grounding his belief upon the general notoriety of facts, have identified himself completely with their prejudices and passions, though endowed with a moral sense as keen and apprehensive as any of his readers. When Burnett, therefore, is accused so violently, by Bevil Higgons, of swallowing the grossest and most im

probable stories, and of making malleable to his wish the most stubborn facts, and of uttering those untruths which he would have shrunk from publishing in his life-time, it must strike every unbiassed person, that his accuser was bound, in strict justice, to shewwhere public opinion could not be adduced on the evidence of public opinion-where that which is referable to oral testimony could not be supported by oral testimony-and, in like manner, historical proof by historical proofs. Fondly credulous, as the Bishop is stated by the foregoing writer, to have been, it should be remembered, to the eternal honour of his heart and head, that he was incredulous upon a subject, where almost all were believers. He was among the first, strongly anti-papistical as he confessedly was, to offend the principles, and to shock the prejudices of the public, by avowing his disbelief of the existence of the Popish Plot. At this distracting period of our domestic history, when the high and the low were infected with one common panic and one common delusion, he nobly, but vainly, attempted to save one of its victims and in the very height of this epidemical phrenzy, when it was even dangerous to express, either to Whig or Tory, any doubts of the reality of this conspiracy, he had the courage to tell the House of Commons, that it was unlawful to inflict punishment upon the Roman Catholics on account of conscientious dissent. In reference, again, to the accusation made by Higgons, and his other opponents, that he gives a most welcome reception to so many hearsay stories, built on a wondrous slender foundation, and does not balance and compare contrary statements and sentiments, I run little risk of contradiction in affirming that, to his ardent temperament, strong feelings, and lively fancy, and, more especially, to the extreme rapidity with which he committed his thoughts to paper, may be chiefly ascribed his hasty and not altogether consistent opinions.Such, I venture to pronounce, will be the uniform judgment of those, who are not disposed to impeach our author's candour and good faith because he cannot always follow the right track through the variety of his details and expositions.

As to the charge made by Higgons against the Bishop, that he was afraid to publish his History in his life-time; this explanation can alone be given. Kings, statesmen, warriors, courtiers, lawyers,