10 REMARKS UPON BISHOP BURNETt's 



Notwithstanding, however, the accusations brought against Bur- 

 nett of his wish to vilify and blacken the character of his royal 

 benefactor, we still feel a love of truth predominant in him which 

 must ever entitle him to jiublic confidence. He may have fallen 

 into some incongruities, — some absurdities, — and some ridiculous 

 stories in describing the politics, the hopes, the fears, the quarrels, 

 and the errors, of the court and country party : but there is in every 

 thing he says, both of friend and foe, a certain fearlessness and 

 open-hear tedness of manner, which cannot fail of powerfully im- 

 pressing this on the reader's mind, that he is listening to the story 

 of an honest as well as able man ; — though one by no means exempt 

 from the common delusions of self-love and self-deceit, and though, 

 also, occasionally seduced, by his political bias, into expressions con- 

 cerning the personage and actions he is tracing, from which it 

 would have been more laudable to abstain ; the same bias having 

 induced him to give undue weight to some circumstances and to 

 overlook others, as they agree well or ill with his system. '^Some- 

 times," says Noble, "he disguised real excellences only because 

 they were opposite in sentiments to the mode he had adopted." 



Nor can we deny that there is an act of truth and candour 

 in his descriptions of the adverse political leaders, which inclines us 

 strongly to believe, that not only is he correct in the more pro- 

 minent lineaments, but that he has contemplated them with that 

 discriminating and divining eye, which had looked, as it were, 

 into their most hidden thoughts. So graphic are his portraits 

 that two or three lines are sufficient to mark the whole man. They, 

 indeed, who do not take their idea of Burnett from the abuse of 

 professed enemies, will give their cordial assent to the assertion, 

 that his general opinions are sound, intelligent, and enlightened ; 

 and that several of his remarks not only discover a manly strength 

 of intellect, but a habit of assigning grounds for the conclusions 

 which he formed not usual when he lived and wrote ; and evidently 

 «hew, that he was capable of appreciating, in a considerable degree, 

 the influence which the great events of his age must exercise upon 

 future generations. Giving him, however, this high praise, that he 

 occasionally fell into a train of thinking, which proved his antici- 

 pation of the sentiments of a more experienced and impartial pos- 



