24 KEMARKS ON BISHOP BURNETt's 



b^olc, were what Burnett principally regarded. He thinks, and 

 therefore makes his readers think — i. e. reflect; since, according to 

 a striking aphorism of his model and master. Archbishop Leighton, 

 " he only thinks who reflects." 



In this, as in most of his other productions, Burnett appears to 

 have left his sentences just as the fervid heat of his imagination 

 struck them out. The duties of his life were too multifarious to 

 allow time to give to all his opinions a comely and suitable cover- 

 ing ; much less to be studious of " taffeta phrases, or silken terms 

 precise." He said what he had to say in long or short sentences, 

 with little or no regard to the turn of a phrase, to the music of a 

 cadence ; not hesitating, in his dramatic narrative, to use any image 

 or expression, however coarse or homely, provided it conveyed his 

 meaning with liveliness and force. There were no strainings for 

 false and meretricious ornaments, for mawkish sentiments, extrava- 

 gant and sparkling conceits, nor any attempts to hide a want of 

 meaning under the semblance of a stern and pompous wordi- 

 ness. Impartial criticism may assert that the work bears all the 

 traces of a rugged and careless composition ; but, at the same time, 

 it will not deny that this defect is amply atoned for by the warm, 

 native^ and ever-varying graces of a spontaneous effusion. It is a 

 question, if Burnett's language, from its idiomatical strength, did 

 not shew that the author had drawn more freely of the pure well 

 of English than many of the wits of the Augustan period, — as the 

 reign of Queen Anne has been designated. At least, in comparing 

 his cast of phraseology, especially in his sermons, with that of seve- 

 ral of his own countrymen of recent celebrity, he does not, like 

 them, from the dread of falling into Scotticisms, lose much of that 

 which Dr. Johnson has denominated, genuine anglicism. 



Swift pretends to discover, in almost every line of the Bishop's 

 work, striking instances of error, ignorance, partiality, fraud, and 

 misrepresentation: while, according to his judgment, from the 

 coarseness and vulgarity of its style, it is, as a composition, beneath 

 criticism. But, after a re})eated, after a serious, and, I hope, after 

 an impartial perusal of this work, I speak, I am persuaded, the lan- 

 guage of sound criticism, when I assert, that the ^Memoirs of the 

 reign of Queen Anne, which Swift himself designates as his mas- 

 ter-piece, and which, without doubt, he meant to be one of those 



