No More Learning

182 (#206) ############################################

182
Lesser Verse Writers
of the couplet. Ambrose Philips, ‘Namby-Pamby'—the poet of
society verse far below Prior, of pastorals pastoralised to the most
artificial-trivial extent possible, of pale translations and second-
hand things in various rococo styles—introduces a second fatalis
machina, a machine more fatal than the former, in the shape of
the three volumes of Ballads published in 1723. And Mallet, in
William and Margaret, gives the first remarkable and influential
example of that ballad pastiche which has been disdained or
abused for a century past, but which, perhaps, was very much
more effective as a shoe-horn to draw on the romantic revival than,
to that age, would have been the genuine antiquities themselves.
John Philips, almost exactly a contemporary of Ambrose so
far as birth went, was an Oxford man of the Christ Church
set noteworthy at the junction of the centuries, and a tory;
while Ambrose was of St John's college, Cambridge, and a whig.
Although there does not seem to have been any personal enmity
between John Philips and Addison-indeed they had a common
intimacy through ‘Rag' Smith, and Addison praised The Splendid
Shilling highly-Philips, rather unluckily for himself, was chosen
to be pitted against Addison in celebrating Blenheim. The
burlesque of Milton in The Splendid Shilling is good humoured,
not in the least offensive, amusing and by no means critically
unjust; while the credit of the serious blank verse of Cyder (for
John Philips was the first wellknown writer after Milton to make
this metre his chief vehicle) need not depend on the certificate
received by Johnson from the great gardener and botanist’ Miller,
to the effect that there was more truth in it than in many prose
treatises on the same subject. Blenheim is that most terrible of
failures, an unconscious burlesque. But it must be remembered,
in Philips's excuse, first, that Milton's description of the battles
in Heaven is not exactly the finest art of Paradise Lost and,
secondly, that‘Rag' Smith’s regret at its not having been written in
Latin means more than it directly conveys. Undoubtedly, Philips
thought, the poem more in the way of a prize composition in a
learned language than as anything original and vernacular; and,
had he written it thus, it would probably, to retort and enlarge
Macaulay's sneering comparison, have been quite as good as most
of Silius Italicus, and perhaps not so very much worse than parts
of Lucan. As it is, the other two poems set men on the recovery
of one of the greatest instruments of English versification; and, if
he was the author of the 'Bacchanalian song' printed with them,
1 As to Ambrose Philips, see ante, pp. 165–6.
6


## p. 183 (#207) ############################################

6
Fenton. Broome. Edmund Smith 183
he gave some hints to the latest, and almost the best, of our
practitioners in that cheerful kind—Thomas Love Peacock.
Why Pope, in commiserating his own 'ten whole years' of
collaborative translation, should have been more unkind to William
Broome than to Elijah Fenton, when both were his collaborators,
has not, I believe, been discovered: for jealousy of superior scholar-
ship, the commonly imputed cause, would have applied to both.
Possibly there is no other reason than that one presents a convenient,
the other a very unlikely, rime. There is, indeed, said to have been
a contrast in temper-Broome being rough, in that respect, and
Fenton easy-going. But, what might hardly have been expected,
even had both been of amiable dispositions, the pair of lieutenants
were perfectly good friends. It is curious that both of them
attempted blank verse translations of Homer, though the only
permanent fame that either was to achieve was as coadjutors in
Pope's couplet-manufactory, and as 'hands' so skilled' that,
from the first, it was difficult to isolate the work of any of the
three by mere reading. Except for this connection with Pope and
for this early demonstration of the fatal facility of, at least, part
of his method, neither deserves much notice here. Both 'pindar-
ised'; both, in their lighter moods, tried the licensed levities of
octosyllabic tale and of lyric, more or less prim or arch. Both,
but especially Broome, exhibit, in their blank verse, that fatal
tendency to stiff and stopped central pauses which was to reach
its height in Glover. Johnson perceived, though admitting that
he could not define, a peculiarity in Fenton's versification ; but
the present writer, though somewhat to this manner used, has
neither discovered the secret-nor, indeed, the fact.
Edmund or 'Rag' Smith and John Hughes were both friends
of Addison. The first, whose Phaedra and Hippolitus bears about
the same relation to Phèdre as Philips's Distressed Mother does to
Andromaque, was a typical example of the ne'er-do-well scholar.
His work has smuggled itself into The British Poets ; but the
assistance of his friends and the long suffering of his college could
not profit him, and his loose living carried him off before he
experienced actual want. He must have had real humour-his
Latin analysis of Pocock is one of the best things of the kind;
and Addison's reply to his objection “What am I to do with Lord
Sunderland ? ' (Smith being asked to write a whig History of the
Revolution) When were you drunk last, Rag? ' is singularly defective
in moral logic. The absurd panegyric of Oldisworth (in his memoir
of Smith), cited by Johnson, ought not to be reckoned against wits


## p. 184 (#208) ############################################

184
Lesser Verse Writers
7
which everyone seems to have acknowledged. But he has left us
hardly any material for deciding whether he could have been a
poet had he chosen. John Hughes put in more documents. That
he edited, and showed some, though no complete, appreciation of
Spenser, does not bring him within our range, but near it. It is
noteworthy that Addison actually thought of him as a collaborator in
Cato; and his own selection of the subject of his Siege of Damascus
from so unusual a quarter as the early history of Islam argues
a really poetical taste! Nor is it absolutely necessary to accept
Swift's decision that Hughes was among the mediocrists,' and
Pope's that he wanted genius. ' They were not altogether in the
wrong; but this chapter is a chapter of 'mediocrists,' and there
are things in Hughes's verse which neither Pope nor Swift was
very well qualified to recognise. The contents' of it would read
not unlike those of Broome's and Fenton's; but the quality is
sometimes superior. He seems to have been a special admirer
and follower of Dryden's lyrical work, which he was even unwise
enough sometimes to refashion, and he has succeeded in catching
something, if not much, of that touch of the older magic which
Dryden's lyre could give forth.
The members of a trio also named above, if not exactly great
in themselves, belong to gentes paullo majores in poetry. Joseph
Trapp was not only the first professor of poetry at Oxford, and,
thus, possibly, the first professor of English literature in England,
as well as the author of discourses on the subject which have solid
critical merit; but he was a practical craftsman, if not exactly
an artist in verses, and the author of one member of a most
famous pair of epigrams ; concerning which it is, perhaps, not
improper to remark that, as he was actually incorporated at
Cambridge, mere inter-university jealousy could have nothing to
do with the matter. The eccentric author of The Fool of Quality,
Henry Brooke, was a poet long before he published that strange
compound of genius and dulness. There were full thirty years
between it and Universal Beauty-his longest and best known,
though by no means his earliest or his best, work, in verse. This
philosophical poem is of a kind of which More and his group had
set the fashion in the seventeenth century, and which was taken up
in its own modes by the eighteenth. It has only to be compared
with Blackmore's much more belauded Creation—to which, in
subject, it is partly akin-in order to see the immense improvement
1 As to Hughes's dramatic work, cf. ante, vol. VIII, p. 194.


## p. 185 (#209) ############################################

Henry Brooke.
David Mallet
185
of form which Pope, who is said to have actually bestowed on
it some revision, had brought about, as well as the fine talents
of the younger writer. It is more scientific than theological,
though by no means atheistic or even deistic. Indeed, Brooke,
in his latter days, was reputed a 'methodist ? . ' An attempt to
translate Tasso, also in couplet, is but ineffectual, and a condensation
of Chaucer's Man of Laro's Tale sinks far below the comparative
inadequacy of Dryden in such things, while it has nothing of his
positive excellence. Brooke also wrote Fables, in which he ex-
hibits a fair knack at using the easy octosyllables in whose undress
the century at large took refuge from the panoply of the heroic.
A very curious piece called Conrade, purporting to be an ancient
Irish legend, can hardly be without obligations to Macpherson-
unless, indeed, it is the other way. But Brooke has confined
himself, so far as form goes, to constantly redundant heroic lines.
And the songs interspersed in his play are more than fairly suc-
cessful when they are light, and not always a failure when they are
serious. Over all his work-verse and prose-there is, indeed, a
curious atmosphere of frittered and wasted talent, sometimes
approaching genius. But, in his later days, he was, at least par-
tially, insane: and whether he had been wholly sane at any time
may, perhaps, be doubted.
On the other hand, though very harsh things have been said of
David Malloch, who, for prudential reasons, changed his name to
Mallet, just as his father, a Macgregor, had already changed his to
Malloch during the outlawry of the clan, there never has been
the slightest doubt about his sanity. The transactions of his life
which made him most notorious, his reception of Sarah duchess of
Marlborough's legacy for writing the life of her husband, and his
neglect to perform the duty imposed ; his still more famous accept-
ance of hire from Bolingbroke to libel Pope after his death ; and
his much more defensible share in the attack on Byng—these do
not concern us here. But, to say, as Johnson says, that there is
no species of composition in which he was eminent' is merely to
exclude, as Johnson doubtless did, the one species in which he was
very eminent indeed. William and Margaret, written as early as
1723 is, of course, to some extent, a pastiche of older ballads and
of snatches of Elizabethan song. But the older ballads themselves
were always, more or less, pastiches of each other. And, if the
piece had some creditors, it had many more debtors; nor does any
single copy of verses deserve so much credit for setting the
1 As to his relation to the mystical movement see chap. XII, post.
6


## p. 186 (#210) ############################################

186
Lesser Verse Writers
eighteenth century back on the road of true romantic poetry by
an easy path, suited to its own tastes and powers. As to Rule,
Britannia, modern criticism has usually been inclined to assign
it rather to Thomson than to Mallet, though the two undoubtedly
collaborated in the play wherein it appeared. But, to tell the
truth, the merit of the piece lies rather in the music and the
sentiment than in the poetry. Mallet's more ambitious poems
Amyntor and Theodora, The Excursion, etc. are of little value;
but the song gift of William and Margaret reappears in The
Birks of Endermay (better known as Invermay). Edwin and
Emma, once as well known as either and, perhaps, also possessing
some schoolmaster virtue, is vastly inferior to William and
Margaret.
Before turning to the numerus numeri—the tail of the list of
these things seldom rich or rare, but somehow, ambered in literary
history-we must deal with one who, at some times, and to not a
few persons, would have seemed worthy of a much more dignified
a
place in the story. But, to the present writer, Richard Savage is
as mediocre a mediocrist as Swift could possibly have found among
his own contemporaries. The famous romance of his birth and
maltreatment seems to be now almost unanimously disbelieved
by historical critics : and, though his memory must always retain
the great and inalienable privilege of Johnson's friendship, and of
the Life which that friendship prompted, these can add nothing
to his individual and intrinsic literary value. On the other hand,
neither is it affected by the circumstance that, apart from
Johnson's testimony to his friend, and even from some dropped
hints in that testimony, we should be apt to think him an
impostor, a libeller and something of a ruffian. We have only
to do with the works; and, when we turn to them, what do we
find? The Wanderer may not be the worst of the descriptive
didactic verse-tractates of its century; but, to the usual enquiry
whether, as poems, they have any particular reason for existence,
and the usual answer in the negative, there has to be added, in
this case, the discovery that it has really no plan at all, and (the
words are Johnson's own, and the sentiment is not denied by him) is
a 'heap of shining materials thrown together by accident. ' But we
must ask, further, 'Do the materials really shine ? ' and, if so, 'with
what sort of lustre ? ' The answer, one fears, must be, 'With that of
tinsel at best. ' The Bastard has a false air of pathos and indig-
nation which will not survive careful reading. Neither passion
nor poetry, but merely rhetoric, supplies the phrasing; and, long


## p. 187 (#211) ############################################

Savage. Duck. Hill
187
before you reach the end of the poem, you have been prepared to
find it turn into a begging letter to queen Caroline. The Volunteer
Laureat odes to the same royal personage are fully exposed to the
stock satire on the regularly commissioned utterances of that kind
of muse; and the lesser pieces are quite insignificant. One famous
line of The Bastard
No tenth transmitter of a foolish face
is not uncommonly attributed to Pope ; and, perhaps, ignorance
has here hit upon the truth, for Pope was very good to Savage.
But it might well be a 'windfall of the Muses' to anyone who,
with his wits about him—and Savage certainly had his-had read
either Pope himself, or, better still, Dryden.
We must now, with more excuse than the rash Frenchman in
Henry V,‘to the throng. ' Stephen Duck, queen Caroline's laureate
en titre, and, as such, a special object not merely of Savage's jealousy
but of Pope's, was a 'silly shepherd,' who, in his own life, showed
forth a truer and a sadder moral than is to be found in all the fables
and pastorals which have dealt with his kind. There was no more
harm in Duck himself than there was good in the verses because
of which they took him from the Wiltshire downs and made him a
shepherd of souls. But he knew, if others did not, that he was in
the wrong place, and committed suicide when barely fifty. His
poems were dead before him; and nobody has ever attempted to
revive them. Aaron Hill-a busy poetaster, playwright and pro-
jector, whose work received hospitality from Anderson though not
from Chalmers, who was a friend, and, so far as his means allowed,
a patron to many poets of his time, and, coming in for Pope's satire,
'took it fighting' and maintained an honourable reputation—was
far above Duck but never got much beyond fair sprightliness. It is
difficult to pardon him when one finds him, 'on a hint,' as he coolly
says, “from Sir Henry Wotton,' helping himself to almost every word
and to whole lines of "You meaner beauties of the night' but
mixing and watering them with his own feeble verbiage till there
results one of the veriest smudges of paraphrase to be met with
anywhere. And his pindaries have all the turgidity and all the
frigidity of that luckless and misused form. But he is sometimes
not undeserving of the compliment which Pope tacked to his
sarcasm, and, if not quite a swan, is not wholly a goose, of Thames.
In sprightliness itself, Hill nowhere approaches the justly famed
1 As to his dramatic labours, see vol. x, chap. iv, post.
>


## p. 188 (#212) ############################################

188
Lesser Verse Writers
Pipe of Tobacco of Isaac Hawkins Browne, a series of parodies
which is one of the pleasantest items of Dodsley and which
deserves a very respectable place among the many imitations
of it which have appeared. David Lewis, who published two
collections of poems by various hands many years before Dodsley
itself, is, at least probably, responsible for the charming piece
My Winifreda, which appears there as well as in Percy's Reliques,
and has no other known author. To the names of Laurence
Eusden, once poet laureate, Hildebrand Jacob and others it is
difficult to attach the mention of any diploma-piece : but Anthony
Hammond and his son James show, by comparison with their
ancestor William ? in the seventeenth century, that poetry, or at
least verse-making, does run in families. Johnson was severe on
James ; but his amorousness will, perhaps, stand proof as well
as Yalden's sublimity.
Two writers who, in the busy part of their lives, were nearly
contemporary, who belong, one by attraction and the other by
repulsion, to the circle of Pope, were active practitioners of verse
as translators and otherwise, but, perhaps, derive their chief
importance from connection with the criticism of poetry rather
than with its production. Leonard Welsted, a Westminster and
Cambridge man, wrote a good deal of verse and, indeed, hardly
deserved, though he had provoked it, his place in the inferno of
The Dunciad, even as a versifier. But his translation of Longinus
does not show any mark of dulness, while the original remarks
connected with it show that, if he could not exactly produce
poetry, he could appreciate it in Spenser and Shakespeare to a
degree not common in his day. Christopher Pitt, who was of
Winchester and Oxford, and who could be intimate with Dodington
and yet not lose some favour with Pope, throws a longer and
larger shadow in this skiagraphy. His translation of Vergil, in a
measure, ousted Dryden's in the favour of the eighteenth century;
though, to the possibly more impartial judgment of a posterity
almost equally remote from either, it has not much, if anything,
more of Vergil and a good deal less of poetry. His miscellaneous
poems—which include many minor translations, one of the abso-
lutely un-Spenserian imitations of the time, addresses to Young,
Spence, Dodington and others, and some trifles—require no com-
ment. But his other chief translation, earlier in date than The
Æneid, that of Vida's Art of Poetry, is one of those things which,
whatever their comparative merit and value as to kind, have a
1 See ante, vol. VII, pp. 83, 88.


## p. 189 (#213) ############################################

Christopher Pitt. Gilbert West 189
very high position in the kind to which they belong. Vida himself
is open to plentiful censure. But, earlier than anyone else and in
Latin verse of remarkable ease and finish, he had put the very
theory of poetry which was held for much more than two centuries
after his death in almost every country of Europe. And Pitt,
holding that view still, and helped in testifying to it by the
methodic achievements of Dryden and Pope, besides being pos-
sessed, too, of adequate scholarship and a competent faculty of
verse, produced that rarest of things—a verse translation which
really represents the original. For once, the translator is no
traitor : the substance and the manner of his author are repro-
duced with extraordinary felicity. No real student of the history
and criticism of poetry should fail to read Vida : and if (most
unfortunately) he cannot read him in his own words and lines, he
will lose very little of him in those of Pitt.
The imitation of Spenser which has just been glanced at, and
which, despite some recent attempts to contest the fact, was
certainly a very important feature in the history of eighteenth
century poetry, is, perhaps, not the only thing that need keep
alive the memory of Gilbert West (to be distinguished from
Richard West, the friend of Gray). He would otherwise be 'only
an excellent person,' as, indeed, he seems also to have been. In
his translations from Pindar and others, it is impossible to take
any interest, and his occasional poems are very few and very
slight. But his Spenserian pastiches, The Abuse of Travelling
and Education, are not mere sketches or mere parodies, and
deserve a little study. Johnson who, more than once, protested
against the practice of which West seems to have furnished some of
the earliest examples, yet allowed them to be successful as regards
'the metre, the language and the fiction’; but a single line,
taken at random,
And all the arts that cultivate the mind
will, perhaps, induce readers to doubt the critic's praise as much
as his blame. West, it is true, is not always so utterly un-
Spenserian as this; but his choice of subjects is, in itself, fatal,
and his intention is generally defeated by his execution itself.
The verses of James Bramston, some of which are to be found
in Dodsley, are fair specimens of the easiest eighteenth century
'verse of society'; but the honour of bringing up the rear in this
procession of individuals must be reserved for one who, mere hack
of letters as he was, and little as is positively known about him,


## p. 190 (#214) ############################################

190
Lesser Verse Writers
accumulates an unusual assemblage of interesting details round
his personality and his work. Reputed son of the great marquis
of Halifax, ancestor, it seems, of Edmund Kean; creator, in the
farce-burlesque of Chrononhotonthologos, of many quaint names
and some actual lines of verse which have stuck in literary
memory; inventor of Ambrose Philips's nickname, and of a rare
set of skittish verses attached to it; musician, playwright and it
would seem, almost as much in gaiety of heart as on any other
occasion in his life) suicide-Henry Carey will live for ever, if not
in any of the above capacities, as author of the delightful words,
and the almost more delightful music, of Sally in Our Aley.
More than one or two of these poets and versifiers, as
well as several to be mentioned later, and some who must
be merely catalogued or left altogether to silence, owed, if not
(as in some cases they did) actual first publication, at any rate
notoriety and even popularity, to a member of the maligned
order of booksellers '—Robert Dodsley, footman, verse-writer,
playwright and publisher. Nearly all testimonies to the good
natured author of The Muse in Livery' (as Thackeray calls
him, in one of those invented touches which have almost the
value of historical anecdotes) are favourable ; and, if not a man
of remarkable taste himself, he must have had a faculty very
close thereto, that of catching at good suggestions from others.
That he published much good work by many great men-Pope,
Gray, Johnson—and others not far short of great-Young, Aken-
side, Chesterfield, Walpole-may have been partly matter of luck.
But the publisher of the two collections of Old Plays, and of
Poems by Several Hands, must, necessarily, have been a man of
enterprise, and, almost as necessarily, one who knew a good thing
when the idea occurred or was suggested to him. His own verse,
which may be found in Chalmers, is by no means contemptible,
and displays that peculiar ease-conventional to a certain extent,
but with a conventionality differing from affectation—which, it
may almost be said, came in and went out with the eighteenth
century itself. But he had far too much good sense to make his
Collection a means of publishing or republishing his own work.
At first (1748), it consisted of three volumes only; the fourth, fifth
and sixth appeared later, and the set was not completed till 1758.
But it was very frequently reprinted ; and, in 1775, more than a
decade after Dodsley's death, it was revised by Pearch, with a
continuation of four volumes more, in which many of the contribu-
tors to Dodsley reappear in company with some younger writers.
>


## p. 191 (#215) ############################################

>
6
Robert Dodsley and his Collection 191
The complete collection will supply something like a companion or
chrestomathy to any review, like the present, of lesser eighteenth
century poets.
W. P. Courtney, in a privately published book on the Collection,
invaluable to all students of it, quotes, from The Gentleman's
Magazine for 1845, a diatribe (originally dated August 1819, and
extracted from The Portfolio of a Man of the World), the author
of which does not seem to be known, against Dodsley as something
than which 'a more piteous farrago of flatness never was seen. '
This Aristarch proceeds to denounce its 'paltry page of dilettante
rhymes,' 'its namby-pamby rhyming'; wonders 'how there could
have been so many men in England who could write such stuff,'
finds in it a littleness, an utter dulness which would be dishearten-
ing if it were not so gloriously contrasted by our present race' and
remarks 'what giants we appear in comparison to our fathers. '
Yet this censor, though he did admit ‘some redeeming pieces of
the preceding generation,' forgot that the best of them were not
older but strictly contemporary. Gray was but just over thirty when
Dodsley appeared first; Collins was but seven-and-twenty. If it
was a day of small things generally in poetry; yet, but for Dodsley
and his continuator, the proper estimation of that day would be
very much more difficult than it is. And the censor might, to
his advantage, have remembered that no period was ever more
cheerfully convinced of the satisfactory appearance which it pre-
sented ‘in comparison with its fathers' than the very age which
he was denouncing.
At the same time, if there was a great deal of ineptitude in
attacking, there would, perhaps, be some in defending too ostenta-
tiously and apologetically a collection which enshrines most of the
best things of Gray, and some of not the worst things of Collins ;
The Spleen and Grongar Hill and The Schoolmistress and the
Hymn to the Naiads ; the inimitable mischief of Lady Mary's
satire on society, and the stately rhetoric of Johnson's Vanity of
Human Wishes ; besides scores of pleasant trifles, like Browne's
Pipe of Tobacco and Byrom's celebration of the Figg and Sutton
battle, Warton's Progress of Discontent and James Merrick's
Cameleon. Of the many mansions of poetry this may not be the
most magnificent; but there are worse places for at least occasional
residence than a comfortable Georgian house, with now and then a
prospect from the windows into things not merely contemporary.
a


## p. 192 (#216) ############################################

CHAPTER VII
HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL WRITERS
I
BURNET
THE historical writers of the period covered by this volume
may be grouped round two who, in the greater part of their
literary activity, belong respectively to two different ages of
English history. But Burnet survived the accomplishment of the
Hanoverian succession, and Bolingbroke's most important literary
activity connects itself with the early Georgian age.
Among the already numerous writings of Gilbert Burnet',
while he was still resident in Scotland and wholly occupied with
the affairs—more especially, of course, the ecclesiastical affairs,
of that kingdom, the following seem to call for special mention.
In 1665 was printed anonymously A Discourse on the Memory of
that rare and truly virtuous Person Sir Robert Fletcher of
Saltoun, written by a gentleman of his acquaintance? , which is
,
in fact, only the reproduction of an inflated funeral sermon. His
Thoughts on Education, on the other hand, though not printed
till 1761, was written in 1668 ; designed as a series of suggestions
for the training of a Scottish nobleman or gentleman's son, it
does not make any reference to a university course, and is chiefly
remarkable for the general breadth and liberality of the author's
educational ideas. Burnet rightly deprecated the choice of a
governor or tutor who was 'a man of one study only’; and his
ideas on religious instruction were in accordance with the latitu-
dinarian tendencies of his later years, and with the dictates of
common sense. In the following year, he put forth, in the then
popular dialogue form, A Modest and Free Conference betwixt a
Conformist and a Non-conformist, about the present distempers
1 Concerning Burnet as a divine, see vol. vii, chap. II.
2 It appears to contain little or nothing about either Sir Robert or, of course,
more celebrated son, Burnet's pupil, who, at the time, was about twelve years of age.
his


## p. 193 (#217) ############################################

Memoires of the Hamiltons
193
6
of Scotland—a plea for 'peace' from the moderate episcopalian
point of view, which ends with an explanation of the oath of
supremacy, not unfairly characterised by the (otherwise rather
ineffective) nonconformist of the dialogue as clearly making way
for Erastianism. ' The announcement prefatory to these dialogues
makes a great to-do of secrecy in connection with their publication.
In the same year, Burnet moved to Glasgow, where he had been
appointed professor of divinity, and where the failure of the
accommodation scheme promoted by archbishop Leighton and
himself rendered him impatient of episcopalian, and, still more,
of presbyterian, modes of action. His attention was thus diverted
from theology to history, and it was while still at Glasgow, that,
by 1673, he completed his earliest historical work, though, in
consequence of numerous changes which fear of Lauderdale, and
consideration for even more exalted personages, made it advisable
to introduce into the work, he did not publish it till four years later.
The Memoires of the Lives and Actions of James and William
Dukes of Hamilton and Castleherald grew out of a series of visits
to Hamilton, where Anne, the gifted wife of the third, and daughter
of the first, duke, gave the eager young professor access to her
father's, and her husband's, papers. Thus, it naturally suggested
itself to him to compose a work on the lines which had already
been followed in numerous French memoirs, although, to quote
Burnet's preface, 'there is but one in this country that hath
hitherto written in that Method, and his Collections are so well
received that it gives great encouragement to anyone who will
follow him in it. ' In other words, Rushworth? was Burnet's
exemplar; and, in an interesting disquisition in this preface, he
argues in favour of the change of plan which, in accordance with
the advice of Sir Robert Moray, esteemed by Burnet the wisest
and worthiest man of the age, he had adopted, in substituting for
a historical relation a series of original documents, connected
with one another by a narrative thread. Some of these links
(the account, for instance, of Scottish church affairs from the
reformation; the summary of Montrose's chances; the story of
James duke of Hamilton's escape from Windsor; and the
character of the duke following on the long account of his trial,
with farewell letters, dying speech and prayer) are clear and
impressive pieces of writing ; but the interest of the work, as
a whole, lies in the documents, as to which we have Gardiner's
assurance that the general accuracy of the book bears the test
1 See, as to his Collections, vol. VII, p. 187,
E, L. IX.
13
ante.
CH. VII.


## p. 194 (#218) ############################################

194
Historical and Political Writers
of a comparison’ with the Hamilton papers examined by himself? .
Burnet's work, by reason, rather than in spite, of its pragmatic
character, has a place of its own in English historical literature.
Whether its purpose of vindicating the character of the first duke
of Hamilton from the reflections freely cast upon it was successfully
accomplished is not a question which calls for discussion here? .
Failure was the result of practically every undertaking in which
he engaged, from his expedition in support of Gustavus Adolphus
to his invasion of England at the head of a Scottish army; and
his conciliatory spirit in public, as well as in private, affairs (he
was a chief supporter of Dury's scheme for the union of the
protestant churches) is no set-off against his repeated lack of
insight as well as of resolution. His brother William, the second
duke, of whose experiences up to his death at Worcester Burnet
treats in a short concluding seventh book, was of a quicker,
brisker and more determined nature; but there is a touch of
pathos in the story of his 'good end. '
When, in May 1679, Burnet brought out the first portion of
his second historical work, which may be said to have established
his importance in both English politics and in English historical
literature, he had been a resident in London for about five years.
His position there long had in it an element of uncertainty.
Charles II, who, in 1673, had received him kindly as a visitor from
Scotland, and had shown himself pleased with what he had read
in manuscript of The Memoires of the Hamiltons, he found con-
siderably cooled towards him at a second audience in the following
year. Lauderdale, to whom, in the same year, Burnet had dedicated,
in fulsome terms, his Vindication of the Authority, Constitution,
and Laws of the Church of Scotland (a series of dialogues
composed from the point of view of a moderate episcopalian,
staunch, however, to the principle of non-resistance), was now his
enemy; and, in April 1675, Burnet actually appeared before a
committee of the House of Commons in support of charges brought
against the duke. For the rest, though, in a sense, cast upon the
world, Burnet never more signally displayed his buoyancy of spirit.
His acquaintance, the veteran Lord Holles", now a leader of the
opposition, induced Sir Harbottle Grimston, formerly speaker of
the convention parliament, and now master of the rolls, a bitter
>
· Burnet himself states : The Vouchers of this whole Work lie at Hamilton. '
?
At least, it thoroughly refutes. one of the most bloody and pernicious of all the
hellish slanders' to which the duke's name was subjected--the charge that he confused
Scottish affairs in order to fish a crown for himself out of the troubled waters.
3 As to Denzil, Lord Holles, of, ante, vol. vii, chap. ix, pp. 225 and bibl. 451 and 457.
{


## p. 195 (#219) ############################################

Burnets History of the Reformation 195
foe of Rome, to appoint him preacher at the Rolls chapel, to
which post was soon added the Thursday lectureship at St Clement
Danes ; and his efforts in the pulpit-perhaps of all spheres of
his activity the most congenial to him_were seconded by those
of his pen. In London, he came into constant contact with
Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Tenison and other representatives of the
latitudinarianism under the influence of which, well read as he
was in patristic literature, he had already fallen during an early
visit to Cambridge (1663). By far the most important of his
productions in these London years in which, it should be re-
membered, fell the so-called discovery of the popish plot and the
ensuing agitation) was The History of the Reformation of the
Church of England. The first volume of this work, on which
he had been busy during a large part of the years 1677 and 1678,
was published in the summer of 1679. No historical work was
ever more fortunate in the time of its appearance; a protestant
terror was sweeping the country; and the opposition, with which
his relations had become very friendly, at last seemed to have the
game in its own hands. So late as December 1680, he preached
before the Commons on the occasion of a public fast for the
prevention of all popish plots, and was thanked by the House for
his sermon and for his History, the Lords joining in the latter
acknowledgment. And so much importance was attached to his
ability and address, that, a year or two earlier (1678—9), he was
repeatedly summoned to a secret audience with the king, when,
however (as was not unfrequently the case with him), his in-
discretions completely ruined the situation.
Quite apart, however, from the circumstances which made The
History of the Reformation a book of the moment, there are con-
siderations which go far to justify the opinion of Burnet's most
recent biographer that this work 'forms an epoch in our historical
literature? ' This tribute is its due, not so much because of the
style of the book, which, besides being far more readable than
any historical work proper which had preceded it, has the great
merit of sincerity and clearly reflects the reasoned convictions of
its author, a protestant and an erastian to the core. But the
distinctive excellence of The History lies in its combination of
these qualities with a sustained endeavour on the part of the author
to base his narrative upon a personal investigation of the original
documents at his command. In other words, he seeks, however
1 Cf. ante, vol. viri, chap. XI.
Foxcroft, H. C. , A Life of Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, p. 151.
13_2


## p. 196 (#220) ############################################

196 Historical and Political Writers
1
imperfectly, to apply to the exposition of his subject the principles
underlying a scientific treatment of history ; in yet other words,
he desires to reproduce so much of the truth concerning that
subject as has become visible to his eye. These ideas, as has been
seen, had been present to his mind when he set out to write The
Hamilton Memoirs; and now he undertook to carry them out
on a much larger scale and in reference to a body of events and
transactions of the highest historical significance. Indeed, he
seems to have contemplated the execution of the still more com-
prehensive design of a history of England, suggested to him by
Sir William Jones, when he was diverted from this by the ap-
pearance, in 1676, of a new French translation, by F. de Mancroix, e
of Nicholas Sanders’s De Origine ac Progressu Schismatis
Anglicani, first printed in 1585, and first translated into French
in the following year. The collection of materials, which Burnet
was resolved upon obtaining, so far as possible, at first hand,
proved a matter of great difficulty ; for, though he had the en-
couragement and the advice of Stillingfleet and Lloyd' (to whom,
with Tillotson, the first draft of the work was submitted), as well
as that of Sir John Marsham and William Petyt, he confesses to
have had little experience in the very first requisite of the modern
historian's task, the search for materials; and, to the chief store-
house of them, in the present case, Sir John Cotton's library, he
and his amanuensis had only surreptitious access for a few days
during the absence of the owner. In addition to Burnet's in-
.
experience in the work of transcription, and the baste in which
much of it had to be performed, the natural impatience of his
disposition, and an inborn readiness to overleap difficulties in the
way of conclusions, could not but affect the actual result of his
labours. A great deal of fault has been found—and, no doubt,
justly--with the inaccuracy and general imperfection of the
transcripts on which his work was largely founded and which
gave rise to endless blunders, although, of the myriad which his
conscientious editor declares himself to have corrected', a large
proportion must have been excusable, and many, of course, are
trivial. Some, however, were prompted by the strong opinions
which Burnet never made any pretence of concealing. But, as
1 As to Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester, see vol. viii, chapters XI and xvi ante
as to William Lloyd, successively bishop of St Asaph, Lichfield and Coventry and
Worcester, see ib. chap. XII.
2 See the elaborate preface in the concluding (seventh) volume of N. Pocock's edition
(Oxford, 1865); where the critical and controversial literature connected with Burnet's
work is examined at length. For the controversy with Atterbury see pp. 187 ff.
>


## p. 197 (#221) ############################################

Attacks and Replies
197
he spared no pains—he is said to have read over Paolo Sarpi's
History of the Council of Trent four or five times in order to
master the historian's method-s0 he was certainly not inten-
tionally incorrect. Notwithstanding the mistakes which he
continued to commit, even after the success of his first volume
had opened to him the Paper office, with Cotton's library and
other invaluable collections of documents, his work, which was
not published in its complete form till 1715', remains an achieve-
ment worthy of the love of research which inspired it. Nor is
the book without other merits. The story, as here given, of the
renunciation of the Roman obedience by the church of England,
and the conjunct story of Henry VIII's divorce from Catharine and
of the imposition by him of the Acts of Succession and Supremacy,
are told with force as well as with clearness, and without obvious
suppression of any element in the tale. The author does not make
any attempt to disguise his thoroughly protestant convictions ;
indeed, as against the Jesuits, he lets himself lapse into invective.
But, in general, the dispassionateness of his narrative is almost as
striking as its straightforwardness—the catastrophe of More and
Fisher, for instance, seems related without partiality.
Of the principal controversial writings to which The History of
the English Reformation gave rise, at a time when polemics
between the church of Rome and her opponents could not but
be at their height, a bibliographical list must suffice. To a French
historian's, Joachim Legrand, elaborate 'refutation of the first
two books of the work (1688), Burnet wrote a reply, which his
adversary immediately published in a French translation, with
his own counter-blast. Burnet himself was not one of those rarae
aves, in any branch of literature, who hold that criticisms are best
left to answer themselves, and few challenges found him unready.
He quickly (1688) retorted in the Oxford Theses Relating to
the English Reformation attributed to Obadiah Walker. On the
other hand, in the case of the first two volumes of the popular
Antoine Varillas's long-expected history of heresies, Burnet himself
assumed the offensive, and, in two pamphlets printed at Amster-
dam in the year of the appearance of this portion of Varillas's
work (1686) and in the following year respectively, contributed to
the overthrow of its author's reputation. Varillas had avowedly
1 Part 1 had covered the reign of Henry VIII. Part 1, dealing with the reign of
Edward VI, and said to have been written in six weeks, appeared in 1681; part III
(supplement) in 1715, when an unsatisfactory edition of the two earlier parts was also
published. The records, throughout, were kept separate from the narrative.


## p. 198 (#222) ############################################

198
Historical and Political Writers
attacked the protestant reformation from the political side ; and
Burnet was well qualified to carry the war into the enemy's camp,
and to show that the new History was 'nothing but Sanders drest
up in another Method. ' That method was the assumption of great
documentary learning, and an audacious use of the imagination
in the handling of such materials as the writer possessed. Burnet's
pamphlets are in the perennial style of a 'smashing' review, with
an infusion of the personal element hardly in excess of what con-
temporary readers expected; and they served their purpose.
Finally, he took up Bossuet's gauntlet, flung down by the
greatest catholic controversialist of his age in his famous Histoire
des Variations, where The History of the English Reformation
had been treated as the authoritative text-book of English
Protestantism”, in A Censure of M. de Meaux History (1688),
which sought to turn the tables on his august adversary.
Before the second volume of The History had been actually
issued, Burnet had produced the interesting monograph on the last
phase in the life of Rochester, who had read the first volume with
real interest. To this pamphlet, which reveals a power of sympathy
more valuable than the ordinary tact in which Burnet was signally
deficient, reference has already been made? To a slightly later
date (1682) belongs the publication of The Life and Death of
Sir Matthew Hale, sometime Lord Chief Justice of His Majesty's
Court of King's Bench, an admirable little biography. Though
Hale habitually heard Burnet preach at the Rolls, they were not
personally acquainted, and the book was chiefly founded on the
notes of a confidential clerk of the great lawyer, who was an
incorruptible but successful judge, a powerful thinker and a man
of lofty spirit and godliness of life. Burnet deprecates his History
being set down as a ‘Panegyrick,' and it merits preservation as the
record of a man who, whatever his failings, in a factious age strove
consistently to remain outside party? Soon afterwards (1683), as
if the personal history of one great lawyer had inspired him with
interest in the more or less remote speculations of another, Burnet
beguiled his leisure with a translation of Utopia, published in
1685, with a preface containing some verdicts on English con-
temporary and Elizabethan literature.
a
i Foxcroft, H. C. , u. s. , p. 247.
2 See ante, vol. vin, chap. XII, p. 209.
8 Sir Matthew Hale proposed to himself as a model T. Pomponius Atticus, of whose
Life by Cornelius Nepos he published a translation (1667), described as "very in.
accurate. ' He is taken to task for his leaning to the popular side in Roger North's
Life of Lord Guilford, pp. 79 ff. (Jessopp's edn. ).
.


## p. 199 (#223) ############################################

Burnet in Exile
199
In the last years of Charles II's reign, Burnet, from fair-
mindedness rather than from caution, declined to throw in his lot
with the extreme protestant faction, though he was always more
or less in touch with them. On the discovery of the Rye house
plot (1683)-early in which year Burnet seems first to have set
hand to The Memoirs, or Secret History, which were ultimately
to become The History of My Own Timehe, after a passing
moment of ignoble fear, courageously devoted himself to the
interests of Lord Russell, and addressed to him two discourses
not published till 1713, besides composing for Lady Russell a
journal of the last five years of her husband's life, which has
justly attained imperishable renown. The connection of Burnet
with the Russell family inevitably brought him into worse odour
with the court, although the belief which the king seems to have
entertained that Burnet wrote Lord Russell's dying speech was
not founded on fact; and, after he had been deprived of both
his lectureship and his preachership, he, in 1685, thought it safest
to leave the country. Of the travels with which he occupied nine
months, an account, as a matter of course both intelligent and
lively, remains in Some Letters (to Robert Boyle), printed at
Amsterdam in the following year. The accession of James II
had made the prolongation of his exile more necessary than
ever. In 1686, he settled down at the Hague, where, after a
time, he became the confidential adviser of the princess of
Orange, and, in a more restricted measure, of her wary consort.
Burnet’s activity as a political writer was now at its height,
and, of the Eighteen Papers relating to the Affairs of Church
and State, during the reign of King James the Second, all but
one were written during his residence in Holland. It must suffice
to note among these A Letter, written some little time before,
Containing some Remarks on the two Papers writ by King
Charles II, concerning Religion (1686), which contributed to the
stir created by their publication and the comments from opposite
points of view of Stillingfleet and Drydenº; Vindication from
the two Letters containing some Reflections on His Majesty's
Proclamation for Liberty of Conscience, dated, respectively,
12 February and 4 April 1687; Reflections on the pamphle
entitled Parliamentum Pacificum, and charges contained in it
(1688); the important and anonymous Enquiry into the measures
1 Foxcroft, H. C. , u. 8. , p. 187.
? Printed in Lord (John) Russell's Life of William Lord Russell (1919).
3 This, with the Reflections on the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, had been
previously printed among the Six Papers published in 1687.


## p. 200 (#224) ############################################

200
Historical and Political Writers
of submission to the supreme authority (1688), which, by allowing
restrictions upon the duty of non-resistance, practically rendered
it futile. William's army of invasion was supplied with copies
of this pamphlet (for gratuitous circulation), which completes
the orbit of its author's political tenets.
A Review of the Reflections on the Prince's Declaration (1688),
printed in the course of the march upon London, cut Burnet loose
for ever from the cause of James II and the prince whom he
persisted in treating as supposititious? . Other pamphlets accom-
panied the successive steps in the consummation of the revolution
which established William and Mary on the throne and Burnet
as bishop of Salisbury; but, with a few exceptions, of which we
proceed to mention only the more important, and, above all,
with the exception of his Memoirs, the pulpit now absorbed the
indefatigable activity of his pen.
Besides part ii of The History of the Reformation and a
work which may be regarded as supplementary to it, the celebrated
Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (1699), in which the
historical element is at least of as great value as the theological,
Burnet produced, in the concluding period of his career, An
Essay on the Memory of the late Queen (Mary II) (1695), which
should find a place among the éloges of which the age was
peculiarly prolific, rather than among critical disquisitions. There
cannot be any doubt either that it was the result of profound
grief, or that this feeling was warranted alike by the pure and
noble character of Mary, and by Burnet's personal loss in the
death of a princess whose trust in him was among the most
cherished experiences of his life. With her sister, he was not on
similar terms of intimacy; nor was it at all to Anne's liking that
(in 1698) he was appointed preceptor to her son the duke of
Gloucester, afterwards heir-apparent. He was, however, on good
terms with the duke and duchess of Marlborough, his relations with
queen Anne herself improved, and it was only in her last years
that he found himself in steady opposition to her government.
What he had most at heart, as a politician, was the succession
of the house of Hanover, for which he had laboured hard in the
critical season of the Act of Settlement (1701). For some time
previously, he had been in correspondence with the electress
Sophia and with her trusted counsellor Leibniz, between whom
and Burnet there was much sympathy on religious, as well as
1 Printed in A second Collection of Several Tracts and Discourses, written in the
years 1686—9, by Gilbert Burnet (consecrated Bishop of Sarum, Easter Day, 1689), 1689.


## p. 201 (#225) ############################################

A Memorial for the Electress Sophia 201
on political, subjects, though, as in the case of the problem
of a reunion of the protestant churches, these aspects could
not be kept asunder. But the most interesting of Burnet's
communications with Hanover is A Memorial offered to the
electress by him in 1703, containing a Delineation of the Con-
stitution and Policy of England: with Anecdotes concerning
remarkable Persons of that Time, first published, from the
original in the Hanover archives, in 1815. The electress, who
was not a friend of long or tedious discourses, could not have
objected to Burnet's treatise on either ground; though she may
not have altogether relished the free criticism of the system
of government pursued by her uncle Charles I and her cousin
Charles II, and the assumption as to the 'pretended' birth of her
young living kinsman, whom the Jacobites called James III. To
us, the interest of this characteristic manual lies not so much in
the historical exposition of the reasons of the weakness of crown
and nobility and the suggestion of remedies' designed to strengthen
the stability of the throne, as in the plea for a generous treat-
ment by the church of England, with a view to future reunion, of
presbyterians and even of other nonconformists. For the rest,
though the treatise has not any particular value as a sketch of parties
or persons, its anecdotes and general style make it very readable ;
and it was probably unnecessary for the artful prelate to forward
for perusal, with his own manuscript, copies of Hudibras and The
Snake in the Grass. Burnet's fear of being dull was, of all the
fears which, from time to time, interfered with his self-confidence,
the least wellgrounded. The protest against the reprinting of the
political works of Harrington and Milton is, however, unworthy of him.
Finally, we come to the work which, during the greater part
of his life of ceaseless effort, Burnet must have regarded as that
upon which his reputation as a writer would, in the end, mainly
rest. It is true that he declared A Discourse of the Pastoral
Carel to be of all his writings the one which pleased himself best?
a preference well according with the fine ironical tribute paid
by Halifax to his ‘ill-natured' fondness for 'degrading himself
into the lowest and most painful duties of his calling? ' But,
though the spiritual element in Burnet's activity was never
quenched, ‘his times' and the world absorbed his most continuous
i Cf. ante, vol. vini, p. 300.
2 See his 'Autobiography'in A Supplement to Burnet's History of My Own Time, by
Foxcroft, H. C. (Oxford, 1902), p. 506.
3 Cf. Lady Russell's Letters (edition 1772), p. 201 note.


## p. 202 (#226) ############################################

202
Historical and Political Writers
literary effort; and something must here be said, in the first
instance, concerning the genesis and evolution of one of the best-
abused books in historical literature.
The two folio volumes of which the original edition of Burnet's
History of My Oron Time consists appeared in 1724 and 1734
respectively-in both cases, therefore, posthumously, as Burnet
died in 1715. The first volume, however, which ends with the
close of the reign of James II and the ensuing interregnum, and
so much of the second volume as covers the reign of William III
and the first two years, or thereabouts, of the reign of Anne, had,
in their original form, been intended to constitute part of a work,
designed on a somewhat different and looser plan, as ‘Memoirs' or
a 'Secret History' of the period which they covered. It will,
therefore, be most convenient to trace this earlier production to
its beginnings, before passing on to the published work in which it
was ultimately merged.
Burnet's biographer, Miss Foxcroft”, assigns to the spring
of 1683 the inception of the aforesaid "Memoirs' or 'Secret
History. At this date, Burnet was residing in London, having,
since his estrangement from Lauderdale, practically ceased to take
any active part in Scottish affairs, and already held a conspicuous
position in the English political world ; although, in consonance
with the course of affairs, as well as with the logical evolution
of his opinions, he had not yet definitively thrown in his lot with
the whigs. It was, therefore, before the discovery of the Rye
house plot, of which event the consequences reacted upon his
career, that he may be concluded to have written the earliest
section of his memoirs, which came to form, in substance, book i
of The History of My Own Time, and comprises a summary of
affairs, in England and Scotland, before the restoration. This
section is written with a clearness and vivacity sufficient to arrest
attention in what often proves the dullest portion of a memoir, its
opening; but, already here, when partisanship was, of course, in
abeyance, there are evident inaccuracies of statement about
foreign and English affairs—for instance, as to James I's supposed
intention of a reconciliation with Somerset Early in the narra-
.
tive, the writer turns to the affairs of Scotland, which, he says, are
but little known. ' 'Nor worth knowing' was the annotation added
by Swift, who, by way of a sneer at the entire work, interlined
1 A Life of Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury. 1. Scotland, 1643–1674. By
Clarke, T. E. S. II. England, 1674-1715. By Foxcroft, H. C. , with an introduction
by Firth, C. H. (Cambridge, 1907), p. 187.


## p. 203 (#227) ############################################

Burnet's
Original Memoirs
203
2
its title as The History of (Scotland in) His Own Times? . It
must be allowed that the method of Burnet's narrative, which
frequently passes from England to Scotland, and back again, like
a play with a main and a bye plot, though more or less unavoid-
able, is trying. Moreover, in the earlier part of the work, there
is a marked contrast between the grasp which the writer possesses
over Scottish affairs, and the less strenuous texture of the English
sections of the narrative. In book I, the struggle between re-
solutioners and protesters is related with a thorough command
of the subject, while the ensuing chapter on Cromwell, though
highly entertaining, manifestly rests on evidence of a very
doubtful character.
After, in July 1683, sentence had been passed on Lord Russell,
Burnet, unmanned, for the moment, by the terrible catastrophe,
wrote a letter to his friend John Brisbane, secretary of the
admiralty, who was cognisant of at least the plan of the memoirs,
containing an abject attempt to conciliate the king by promising
favourable treatment of him in the narrative which the writer
was preparing? On the other hand, the character of Charles II,
which is the first of a series of characters with which the next
division of the memoirs opened, conveyed a hint that a more
complete treatment of the subject would follow when it would
be more safe. When that time arrived, Burnet was a refugee in
Holland ; but he had taken his memoirs with him, and was busily
engaged upon them while abroad. This appears from the threat
which, in May 1687, he contrived to convey to James II through
the secretary of state, when informing him of his nationalisation
in Holland, that, if he were condemned, in his absence, on a
charge of intercourse with traitors in Scotland, he would have to
publish what might be disagreeable to the king—to wit, his
memoirs. Before he set sail with the expedition of William of
Orange, in 1688, Burnet had brought them up to date, and he
carried them on through the busy next period of his life; the last
extant fragment of them deals with the dismissal, in 1696, of bis
kinsman, James Johnston, from the Scottish secretaryship.
Nothing remains of Burnet's original memoirs which treats of
events or transactions dating from the period between February
1 The History of My Own Time, ed. Airy, 0. , vol. 1, p. 29 and note.
2 See Life, by Foxcroft, H. C. , p. 192. Charles II is said to have, more philo-
sophically, told Buckingham, who had advised conciliating Burnet, that the latter
would not dare to malign him while he was alive, and that, after his death, it would
not hurt him.
3 Ib. p. 196.


## p. 204 (#228) ############################################

204
Historical and Political Writers
1696 and April 1708; and, some years before the latter date, he
had resolved upon recasting his memoirs in a different form-that
in which they were ultimately given to the world. It is supposed
that the appearance, in 1702—4, of the first edition of Clarendon's
History of the Rebellion inspired Burnet with the thought of
emulating his great predecessor in his own field"; while a more
direct model was, together with a title, supplied to him in the
Historiae sui Temporis of de Thou, for whom Burnet had a great
admiration and whose general method of treatment he sought to
follow, avoiding, like him, any attempt to deal at length with
military operations or even to enter into a full discussion of
foreign affairs, but falling far short of him by omitting to furnish
either a general survey of the progress of European politics or
any adequate notice of great literary personalities? . It was, as
,
he states, likewise the example of de Thou, which induced Burnet
to compose, in November 1710, a short autobiography, which,
however, he never revised and which was not published till our
own days. This 'rough draught' deserved to become a permanent
possession of English biographical literature, and could bardly fail
to achieve popularity were it more widely known. For, apart from
its lucid and perfectly trustworthy statement of the data of an
enlightened and single-minded man's remarkable career, it reveals
the quintessence of his most characteristic personal qualities and,
being absolutely sincere, forms a most delightful, as well as a
most instructive, piece of writing. When, in 1734, Burnet's
family brought out the second volume of his History, they
opined to substitute for these plain and candid confessions a
more regular and elaborate life by the editor, Burnet's youngest
son Thomas, on the promise of whose education the father had
dilated towards the end of his suppressed sketch.
The changes made by Burnet in transforming what, if it had
not been his life's work, had occupied a very considerable share
of his attention during the years of his maturity, were, in sum,
1 It is curious to find the second' earl of Shaftesbury in his Letter concerning
Enthusiasm (written 1707) declare that we have few modern writers, who, like
Xenophon or Cicero [Caesar ? ] can write their own Commentaries, and the raw Memoir
Writings, and uninformed Pieces of modern Statesmen full of their own interested and
private Views, will, in another Age, be of little Service to support their Memory or
Name, since already the World begins to sicken with them. ' Cited by Oldmixon,
A Critical History of England, 3rd ed. 1727, vol. I, p.