A small _catena patrum_ has been given respecting Burnet, as a
historian, in No. 3. pp. 40, 41., to which two more _scriptorum
judicia_ have been appended in No. 8. p. 120., by "I.H.M.". As a
sadly disparaging opinion had been quoted, at p. 40., from Lord
Dartmouth, I hope you will allow the following remarks on the
testimony of that nobleman to appear in your columns:--
"No person has contradicted Burnet more frequently,
or with more asperity, than Dartmouth. Yet
Dartmouth wrote, 'I do not think he designedly published
anything he believed to be false.' At a later
period, Dartmouth, provoked by some remarks on
himself in the second volume of the Bishop's history,
retracted this praise; but to such a retraction little
importance can be attached. Even Swift has the
justice to say, 'After all he was a man of generosity and
good nature.'"--_Short Remarks on Bishop Burnet's History_.
"It is usual to censure Burnet as a singularly inaccurate
historian; but I believe the charge to be
altogether unjust. He appears to be singularly inaccurate
only because his narrative has been subjected to
a scrutiny singularly severe and unfriendly. If any
Whig thought it worth while to subject Reresby's
_Memoirs_, North's _Examen_, Mulgrave's _Account of the
Revolution_, or the _Life of James the Second_, edited by
Clarke, to a similar scrutiny, it would soon appear that
Burnet was far indeed from being the most inexact
writer of his time."--Macaulay, _Hist. England_, vol. ii.
p.177, 3rd. Ed.
T.
Bath.
* * * * *