will heal the wounds by the same plaster that made the flesh raw."-A very low comparison. "The

P. 586. Letter to the city of London. affection to us in the city of London, hath exceedingly raised our spirits, and no doubt hath proceeded from the spirit of God, and his extraordinary mercy to the nation; which hath been encouraged by you and your good example-to discountenance the imaginations of those who would subject our subjects to a government they have not yet devised." -Cacophonia.

P. 595. Proclamation of the king, May 8, by the Parliament, lord mayor, &c. "We acknowledge, that he (Charles II.) is of England, France, and Ireland, the most potent, mighty, and undoubted king; and thereunto we most humbly and faithfully do submit, and oblige ourselves, our heirs, and posterity for ever."-Can they oblige their posterity for 10,000 years to come?

P. 596. The case of Colonel Ingoldsby. After he had refused to sign the death-warrant of the king, "Cromwell and others held him by violence, and Cromwell, with a loud laughter, taking his hand in his, and putting the pen between his fingers, with his own hand writ, Richard Ingoldsby, he making all the resistance he could."-A mistake; for it was his own hand-writ, without any restraint.

HIS author is, in most particulars, the worst qualified for an historian that ever I met with. His style is rough, full of improprieties, in expressions often Scotch, and often such as are used by the meanest people.* He discovers a great scarcity

* His own opinion, says my predecessor, Mr. Nichols, was very different, as appears by the original MS. of his History, wherein the following lines are legible, though among those which were ordered not to be printed: "And if I have arrived at any faculty of writing clear and correctly, I owe that entirely to them, (Tillotson and Lloyd;) for as they joined with Wilkins in that noble, though despised attempt, of an universal character, and a philosophical language, they took great pains to observe all the common errors of language in general, and of ours in particular. And in drawing the tables for that work, which was Lloyd's province, he looked farther into a natural purity and simplicity of style, than any man I ever knew. Into all which he led me, and so helped me to any measure of exactness of writing which may be thought to belong to me." The above was originally designed to have followed the words, "I knew from them," vol. I. p. 191, 1. 7, fol. ed., near the end of A.D. 1661.

VOL. XII.

M

of words and phrases, by repeating the same several hundred times, for want of capacity to vary them. His observations are mean and trite, and very often. false. His Secret History is generally made up of coffeehouse scandals, or at best from reports at the third, fourth, or fifth hand. The account of the Pretender's birth would only become an old woman in a chimney-corner. His vanity runs intolerably through the whole book, affecting to have been of consequence at nineteen years old, and while he was a little Scotch parson of 40 pounds a-year. He was a gentleman born, and in the time of his youth and vigour, drew in an old maiden daughter of a Scotch earl to marry him. His characters are miserably wrought, in many things mistaken, and all of them detracting, except of those who were friends to the Presbyterians. That early love of liberty he boasts of, is absolutely false; for the first book that, I believe, he ever published, is an entire treatise in favour of passive obedience and absolute power; so that his reflections on the clergy, for asserting, and then changing, those principles, come very improperly from him. He is the most partial of all writers that ever pretended so much to impartiality; and yet I, who knew him well, am convinced that he is as impartial as he could possibly find in his heart; I am sure more than I ever expected from him; particularly in his accounts of the Papist and fanatic plots. This work may more properly be called A History of Scotland during the Author's Time, with some Digressions relating to England, rather than deserve the title he gives it; for I believe two-thirds of it relate only to that beggarly nation, and their insignificant brangles and factions. What he succeeds best in is, in giving extracts of arguments and

* Lady Margaret Kennedy, daughter to the Earl of Cassilis.

debates in council or Parliament. Nothing recommends his book but the recency of the facts he mentions, most of them being still in memory, especially the story of the Revolution; which, however, is not so well told as might be expected from one who affects to have had so considerable a share in it. After all, he was a man of generosity and goodnature, and very communicative; but, in his ten last years, was absolutely party-mad, and fancied he saw Popery under every bush. He has told me many passages not mentioned in his history, and many that are, but with several circumstances suppressed or altered. He never gives a good character without one essential point, that the person was tender to dissenters, and thought many things in the church ought to be amended.

Setting up for a maxim; laying down for a maxim; clapt up; decency; and some other words and phrases he uses many hundred times.

Cut out for a court; a pardoning planet; clapt up; left in the lurch; the mob; outed; a great beauty; went roundly to work: All these phrases used by the vulgar, shew him to have kept mean or illiterate company in his youth.

From the Original, in the Library of the late

MARQUIS OF LANSDOWN.

REFACE, p. 3. Burnet. "Indeed the peevishness, the ill-nature, and the ambition of many clergymen, has sharpened my spirits, perhaps, too much against them-so I warn my readers to take all that I say on those heads with some grains of allowance."-Swift. "I will take his warning."

P. II. Burnet. "Colonel Titus assured me that he had it from King Charles the First's own mouth, that he was well assured his brother, Prince Henry, was poisoned by the Earl of Somerset's means.