HISTORY OF HIS OWN TIME. 5 



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 pro- 

 fessed 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 misre- 

 present truths to serve his party, or, for its sake, vituperate charac- 

 ters 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 stu- 

 pid 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 sto- 

 ries 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 life- 

 time, it follows, as a necessary consequence, that the evidence of 

 others, even reported through two or three informants, must fre- 

 quently 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 suc- 

 cessive 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 vio- 

 lently, by Bevil Higgons, of swallowing the grossest and most im- 



