i — SS 
“ WISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.” 189 
Sir, the high honour I beare to you made me thus bold to trouble 
you about this matter. Praying, therefore, for your good health. 
I rest, 
Your most obliged Servant, 
Herald’s Office, London, Wixwiram Duepae.* 
20th December, 1677. 
Every able man is conscious of his own efficiency ; and Burnett. 
had too much confidence in his powers to be induced, by any obstacles 
of this kind, to relinquish his design. Admitting, however, that his 
modesty of deportment might have diminished with the growth of 
his celebrity, and that, therefore, his character might provoke resent- 
ment and encourage prejudices,t there is something so monstrous in 
* “Communicated to me by the Rev. Dr. Tunstall. Wednesday, Nov. 
13th, 1754.”Tho. Birch, Lansdowne MSS. 
+ Were we to lay any stress upon the satirical effusions of the day upon 
Burnett, we should be tempted to regard him as one who conceived that his 
learning, in point of civil and ecclesiastical history, was so superior to any of 
his contemporaries, that he stood in that respect, according to his own ima- 
gination, like Saul in the assembly of the Jews, higher from his shoulders 
upwards than any of his people, and therefore disdained all literary assist- 
ance whatever, come from what quarter it would. ‘To those, indeed, who 
acquiesce in the averments of Swift, Scott, Sewell, and Bevil Higgons, and 
believe the bishop to be what they would fain make him, the most self-opini- 
onated of mortals, the following extracts will have their redeeming traits of 
modesty in them. 
For the most honoured Doctor Bolase, at Chester. 
Most honoured Sir, 
This daies carrier brings you downe 2nd part (sic M S.) of my History 
to which you contributed so considerable an assistance that I am sure it de- 
served both a higher acknowledgment than you will find I have made for it, 
in my book, and a greater return than so poor a present; but you are so 
kind, and have obliged me by so many waies, will, I hope, read what I have 
written with so favourable a censure, that if you except to any thing in it 
you will so far oblige me as to let me know it; and that you will alwaies look 
on me as one that you have, by many great favours, bound to live and die, 
dear Sir, 
Your most humble and most obliged servant, 
G. Burnett. 
(Sloane, MSS. 1008, original). The reader will find, also, in the third vol. 
of the History of the Reform. a very grateful allusion to the Rev. Thomas 
Baker, the erudite antiquary at Cambridge, for the literary services rendered 
