HISTORY OF HIS OWN TIME. 7 



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 expos- 

 ing his person as well as reputation to their assaults ; since some 

 of them, experience had taught him to believe, might not be con- 

 tent 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 contempora- 

 ries 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 well- 

 founded conviction that it was the recklessness of romantic and 

 quixotic rashness, almost approaching to insanity, to brave the oblo- 

 quy 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 suspi- 

 cion 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 Abbe 

 Raynal's celebrated work on the Indies a novel founded on fact, 

 because, after the example of antiquity he has omitted his authori- 

 ties. To the foregoing circumstances may be attributed, I think, 

 our author's failure in rigid adherence to dates ; or else to the com- 



