ROBERTSON. 287 



faithful of penmen?" We should then have possessed 

 a Work of which the brilliant outside gloss being sus* 

 tained by the intrinsic value of the coin, it would no 

 longer have been necessary for the student to read one 

 narrative for its dranmtic effect, while he sought in 

 another the real facts of the story, and to refuse giving 

 the first praise of an historian to the first master of 

 historical composition. Nor would the acquisition of 

 an English history, at once readable and credible, have 

 been purchased by the sacrifice of the other works with 

 which this great Writer, after the failure of the treaty, 

 enriched our literature. It was part of the conditions 

 which he imposed that he should first be allowed to finish 

 his ' Charles V. ;' and when we reflect on ten years having 

 elapsed after he finished his ' America,' without resuming 

 his pen, there seems no reason to doubt that he could have 

 written this and the English history also during the pe- 

 riod between 1769, when ' Charles ' was published, and 

 1789, when he began the ' Disquisition on Ancient 

 India.' The failure of the treaty, therefore, is a matter 

 of unmingled regret ; and is one of the worst of the 

 many mischiefs which we owe to the English plan of 

 conducting government by the conflict of adverse 

 parties, with the consequence inevitably flowing from 

 it, of all the principles, and all the measures, and all the 

 designs of one ministry becoming, as a matter of course, 

 an object of suspicion, and even of dislike, to their 

 successors. 



It is probable that he did not begin his second work 

 for some little time after the publication of the first ; 

 but from the correspondence just now referred to, we 

 learn that in July, 1762, a third part of it was finished, 



