HISTORY OF HIS OWN TIME, 23 



cratical abuses, — upon a radical reformation of the people by educa- 

 tion and a good judicature, — his further observations upon the 

 employment of able men in diplomacy, — and of the best means of a 

 sovereign's obtaining the noblest reward of his labours, the love and 

 esteem of his subjects, — have been the themes of panegyric among 

 all competent judges. At a period, too, when the science of political 

 economy was little known or attended to, the suggestions of Burnett, 

 respecting that most important branch — the bettering the condition 

 of the poor, — evince a sagacity and sound sense very surprising in 

 their start before the public mind, if we consider the direct contrary 

 notions so current with the best and wisest statesmen of his day : 

 " The other matter that must take its rise in the House of Com- 

 mons is about the poor, and should be much laid to heart. It may 

 be thought a strange notion from a bishop to wish that the act for 

 charging every parish to maintain their own poor, were well re. 

 viewed, if not quite taken away ; this seems to encourage idle and 

 lazy people in their sloth, when they know they must be maintained. 

 I know no other place in the world, where such a law was ever 

 made. Scotland is much the poorest part of the island; yet the 

 poor there are maintained by the voluntary charities of the people." 

 Strong claims, however, as the History of his own Time possesses 

 to our attention, from having been written, according to a former 

 observation, at a most interesting period, in which the author was 

 not merely a spectator, but often an actor in some of the most im- 

 portant and striking scenes described in it; jet, as a piece of com- 

 position, it must be confessed, that it will stand very low in the 

 estimation of those who are fond of pretty conceits and laborious 

 efforts after fine writing. Swift, who hated Burnett, if it were 

 only because the consistency of his political attachment reminded 

 him of the baseness and profligacy of his own apostacy, has been 

 scurrilous to the last degree respecting the style of his performance. 

 Unquestionably, it has too great a profusion of low, familiar and 

 colloquial forms of expression, — though graphic and acute, the man- 

 ner is too often garrulous and vulgar. The sterling weight, how- 

 ever, of most of his observations^ and the masterly boldness which 

 often sketches a portrait in a single line, will more than compen- 

 sate for the want of polished sentences and figurative modes of 

 speech. Things, not words — the matter, not the manner of the 



