posed, it should immediately be quashed, by putting the question.

"Sir, the date of the present senate is expired, and your imperial majesty is now to convoke a new one, which I confess will be somewhat more expensive than the last, because the Yortes from your favourable reception have begun to resume a spirit whereof the country had some intelligence; and we know the majority of the people, without proper management, would be still in that fatal interest. However, I dare undertake, with the charge only of four hundred thousand sprangs [about a million sterling], to return as great a majority of senators of the true stamp as your majesty can desire. As to the sums of money paid in foreign courts, I hope in some years to ease the nation of them, when we and our neighbours come to a good understanding. However, I will be bold to say they are cheaper than a war where your majesty is to be a principal.

"The pensions indeed to senators and other persons must needs increase from the restiveness of some and scrupulous nature of others, and the new members, who are unpractised, must have better encouragement: however, I dare undertake to bring the eventual charge within eight hundred thousand sprangs. But to make this easy there shall be new funds raised, of which I have several schemes ready, without taxing bread or flesh, which shall be reserved to more pressing occasions.

"Your majesty knows it is the laudable custom of all eastern princes to leave the whole management of affairs, both civil and military, to their viziers.

"The appointments for your family and private purse shall exceed those of your predecessors; you shall be at no trouble further than to appear sometimes in council, and leave the rest to me; you shall hear no clamour or complaints; your senate shall upon occasion declare you the best of princes, the father of your country, the arbiter of Asia, the defender of the oppressed, and the delight of mankind.

"Sir, hear not those who would most falsely, impiously, and maliciously insinuate that your government can be carried on without that wholesome necessary expedient of sharing the public revenue with your faithful deserving senators. This I know my enemies are pleased to call bribery and corruption. Be it so: but I insist that without this bribery and corruption the wheels of government will not turn, or at least will be apt to take fire like other wheels unless they be greased at proper times. If an angel from heaven should descend to govern this empire upon any other scheme than what our enemies call corruption, he must return from whence he came and leave the work undone.

"Sir, it is well known we are a trading nation, and consequently cannot thrive in a bargain where nothing is to be gained. The poor electors who run from their shops or the plough for the service of their country, are they not to be considered for their labour and their loyalty? The candidates who with the hazard of their persons, the loss of their characters, and the ruin of their fortunes, are preferred to the senate in a country where they are strangers before the very lords of the soil, are they not to be rewarded for their zeal to your majesty's service, and qualified to live in your metropolis as becomes the lustre of their stations?

"Sir, If I have given great numbers of the most profitable employments among my own relations and nearest allies, it was not out of any partiality, but because I know them best and can best depend upon them. I have been at the pains to mould and cultivate their opinions. Abler heads might probably have been found, but they would not be equally

VOL. I.

under my direction. A buntsman who has the absolute command of his dogs will hunt more effectually than with a better pack, to whose manner and cry he is a stranger.

"Sir, upon the whole, I will appeal to all those who best knew your royal father, whether that blessed monarch had ever one anxious thought for the public, or disappointment, or uneasiness, or want of money for all his occasions during the time of my administration? And how happy the people confessed themselves to be under such a king I leave to their own numerous addresses, which all politicians will allow to be the most infallible proof how any nation stands affected to their sovereign."

Lelop-Aw having ended his speech and struck his forehead thrice against the table, as the custom is in Japan, sat down with great complacency of mind and much applause of his adherents, as might be observed by their countenances and their whispers. But the emperor's behaviour was remarkable, for during the whole harangue he appeared equally attentive and uneasy. After a short pause his majesty commanded that some other counsellor should deliver his thoughts, either to confirm or object against what had been spoken by Lelop-Aw.

SHORT REMARKS ON

BISHOP BURNET'S HISTORY.

THIS 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 of words and phrases, by repeating the same several hundred times for wat of capacity to vary them. His observations are mean and trite, and very often false. His Secret History is generally made up of coffee-house 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 40l. 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 debates in council or parliament. Nothing recommends his book but the recency of the facts he mentions, most of them being a Lady Margaret Kennedy, daughter to the earl of Cassilis, 20

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 good-nature, and very communicative; but in his ten last years was absolutely partymad, 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, 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, show him to have kept mean or illiterate company in his youth..

EXTRACTS FROM

SWIFT'S REMARKS

ON "BURNET'S HISTORY OF HIS OWN TIMES;" FOLIO EDITION, 1724.

PREFACE, 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. 11. Burnet. "Colonel Titus assured me that he had it from king Charles I.'s own mouth, that he was well assured his brother, prince Henry, was poisoned by the earl of Somerset's means."-Swift. Titus was the greatest rogue in England." P. 18. Burnet. 66 Gowry's conspiracy against king James was confirmed to me by my father."Swift. "And yet Melville makes nothing of it."

P. 20. Burnet. "Charles I. had such an ungracious way of bestowing favours that the manner of bestowing was almost as mortifying as the favour was obliging."-Swift. "Not worth knowing."

P. 23. Burnet. "This person (Mr. Stewart), who was only a private gentleman, became so considerable that he was raised by several degrees to be made earl of Traquair, and lord-treasurer of Scotland, and was in great favour; but suffered afterwards such a reverse of fortune that I saw him so low that he wanted bread; and it was generally believed that he died of hunger."-Swift. "A strange death! Perhaps it was want of meat!"

P. 26. Burnet. "How careful lord Balmerinoch's father was to preserve the petition and the papers relating to that trial, of which, says he, never saw any copy besides, and which I have now by me, and which indeed is a very noble piece, full of curious matter."-Swift. "Puppy!"

P. 28. Burnet. "The earl of Argyle was a more solemn sort of man, grave and sober, and free of all scandalous vices."-Swift. "As a man is free of a corporation he means."

P. 29. Burnet. "The lord Wharton and the lord

loved high and rough methods; but had neither the skill to conduct them nor the height of genius to manage them."-Swift. "Not one good quality named."

P. 31. Burnet. "The queen of Charles I. was a woman of great vivacity of conversation, and loved all her life long to be in intrigues of all sorts."— Swift. "Not of love, I hope."

P. 34. Burnet. "Dickison, Blair, Rutherford, Baily, Cant, and other popular preachers in Scotland, affected great sublimities in devotion. They poured themselves out in their prayers with a loud voice and often with many tears. They had but an ordinary proportion of learning among them; somewhat of Hebrew and very little Greek. Books of controversy with the papists, but above all with the Arminians, was the height of their study."Swift. "Great nonsense! Rutherford was half fool,

half mad."

P. 40. Burnet, speaking of the bad effects of the marquis of Montrose's expedition and defeat, says, "It alienated the Scots much from the king; it exalted all that were enemies to peace; and there seemed to be some colour for all those aspersions that they had cast on the king, as if he had been in a correspondence with the Irish rebels when the worst tribe had been thus employed by him."Swift. "Lord Clarendon differs from all this."

P. 41. Burnet. "The earl of Essex told me that he had taken all the pains he could to inquire into the origin of the Irish massacre; but could never see any reason to believe that the king had any secession to it."-Swift. "And who but a beast ever

believed it?"

P. 42. Burnet. Arguing with the Scots concerning the propriety of the king's death, he observes that Drummond said, "That Cromwell had plainly the better of them at their own weapons. Swift. "And Burnet thought as Cromwell did."

P. 46. Burnet. "Fairfax was much distracted in his mind, and changed purposes often every day.”—— Swift. "Fairfax had hardly common sense."

P. 49. Burnet. "I will not enter further into the military part; for I remember an advice of marshal Schomberg, never to meddle in the relation of military matters. His observation was, Some affected to relate those affairs in all the terms of war, in which they committed great errors, that exposed them to the scorn of all commanders, who must despise relations that pretend to exactness when there were blunders in every part of them.'"-Swift. "Very foolish advice; for soldiers cannot write."

P. 50. Burnet. "Laud's defence of himself when in the Tower is a very mean performance. In most particulars he excuses himself by this,-that he was but one of many who either in council, star-chamber, or high commission, voted illegal things. Now though this was true, yet a chief minister, and one in high favour, determines the rest so much that they are little better than machines acted by him. On other occasions he says, the thing was proved but by one witness.' Now how strong soever this defence may be in law, is of no force in appeal to the world; for if a thing is true it is no matter how full or defective the proof is."-Swift. "All this is full of malice and ill judgment."

66

P. 50. Burnet, speaking of the Basilicon, supposed to be written by Charles I."-Swift. “I think it is a poor treatise, and that the king did not write it."

P. 53. Burnet. "King Charles II., when in Scotland, wrought himself into as grave a deportment as he could. He heard many prayers and sermons, some of great length. I remember, in one fast-day, there were six sermons preached without intermission. I was there myself, and not a little weary of so tedious a service."-Swift. "Burnet was not then eight years old."

P. 61. Burnet, speaking of the period of the usurpation in Scotland-"Cromwell built three citadels, Leith, Ayr, and Inverness, besides many little forts. There was good justice done, and vice was suppressed and punished; so that we always reckon those eight years of usurpation a time of great peace and prosperity."-Swift. "No doubt you do."

P. 63. Burnet, speaking of the Scotch preachers in the time of the civil wars, says, "The crowds were far beyond the capacity of their churches or the reach of their voices."-Swift. "And the preaching beyond the capacity of the crowd-I believe the church had as much capacity as the minister."

P. 64. Burnet. "The resolutions sent up by one Sharpe, who had been long in England, and was an active and an eager man."-Swift. "Afterwards a bishop, and murdered."

P. 66. Burnet. "Thus Cromwell had all the king's party in a net: he let them dance in at pleasure and upon occasions clapt them up for a short time."-Swift. "A pox of his claps."

P. 87. Burnet, speaking of the Restoration-" Of all this, Monk had both the praise and the reward; for I have been told a very small share of it belonged to him."-Swift. "Malice."

P. 126. Burnet, speaking of the execution of the marquis of Argyle;-Swift. "He was the greatest villain of his age."

P. 127. Burnet. "The proceeding against Warriston was soon despatched."—Swift. "Warriston was an abominable dog."

P. 134. Burnet, of bishop Leightoun's character, "The grace and gravity of his pronunciation was such, that few heard him without a very sensible emotion-his style, however, was rather too fine."Swift. "A fault that Burnet is not guilty of."

P. 140. Burnet. "Leightoun did not stand much upon it. He did not think orders given without bishops were null and void. He thought the forms of government were not settled by such positive laws as were unalterable, but only by apostolical practices which, as he thought, authorised episcopacy, as the best form: yet he did not think it necessary to the being of a church, but he thought that every church might make such rules of ordinations as they pleased."-Swift. Here's a specimen of style!-think! - thought! — thought ! — think !— thought!"

P. 154. Burnet, speaking of a proclamation for shutting up 200 churches in one day!" Sharpe said to myself he knew nothing of it; yet he was glad it was done without his having any share in it, for by it he was furnished with somewhat in which he was no way concerned, upon which he might cast all the blame of all that followed; yet this was suitable enough to a maxim that he and all that sort of people set up-that the execution of the laws was that by which all governments maintained their strength, as well as their honour."-Swift. "Dunce! Can there be a better maxim?"

P. 163 Burnet. "John Goodwin and Milton did also escape all censure, to the surprise of all people."--Swift. "He censures even mercy." Ibid. Burnet. Milton was not excepted out of the Act of Indemnity; and afterwards he came out

of his concealment and lived many years, much visited by all strangers and much admired by all at home for the poems he writ, though he was then blind; chiefly that of Paradise Lost,' in which there is a nobleness both of contrivance and execution, that, though he affected to write in blank verse, without rhyme, and made many new and rough words, yet it was esteemed the beautifullest and perfectest poem that ever was writ, at least in our language."-Swift. “A mistake!—for it is in Eng

lish."

P. 164. Burnet. "The great share that sir Henry Vane had in the attainder of the earl of Strafford, and in the whole turn of affairs to the total change of government, but above all the great opinion that was had of his parts and capacity to embroil matters again, made the court think it necessary to put him out of the way."-Swift. "A malicious turn!-Vane was a dangerous enthusiastic beast."

Ibid. Burnet. "When sir Henry Vane saw his death was designed, he composed himself to it with a resolution that surprised all who knew how little of that was natural to him. Some instances of this were very extraordinary, though they cannot be mentioned with decency."-Swift. "His lady conceived by him the night before his execution." P. 180. Burnet, speaking of the dissenters in Charles II.'s time looking for a new liturgy, continues, "But all this was overthrown by Baxter, who was a man of great piety and, if he had not meddled in too many things, would have been esteemed one of the learned men of the age. He writ near two hundred books."-Swift. "Very sad ones indeed!"

P. 186. Burnet, speaking of the great fines raised on the church ill applied, proceeds, "If the half had been applied to the buying of tithes or glebes for small vicarages, here a foundation had been laid for a great and effectual reformation.”—Swift. “He judges here right, in my opinion."

Ibid. Burnet, continuing the same subject, "The men of merit and services were loaded with many livings and many dignities. With this accession of wealth there broke in upon the church a great deal of luxury and high living, on the pretence of hospitality, whilst others made purchases and left great estates, most of which we have seen melt away."-Swift. "An uncharitable aggravation, a base innuendo."

P. 189. Burnet. "Patrick was a great preacher and wrote well on the Scriptures. He was a laborious man in his function, of great strictness of life, but a little too severe against those who differed from him; but that was where he thought their doctrines struck at the fundamentals of religion. He became afterwards more moderate."-Swift. "Yes, for he turned a rank Whig."

P. 190. Burnet. "Archbishop Tenison was a very learned man, endowed schools, set up a public library," &c., &c.-Swift. "The dullest good-fornothing man I ever knew."

P. 191. Burnet, condemning the bad style of preaching before Tillotson, Lloyd, and Stillingfleet, says, "Their discourses were long and heavy; all was pyebald, full of many sayings of different languages."-Swift. "A noble epithet! How came Burnet not to learn this style? He surely neglected his own talents."

P. 193. Burnet, speaking of the first formation of the Royal Society, "Many physicians and other ingenious men went into a society for natural philosophy, but he who laboured most was Robert Boyle, the earl of Cork's youngest son, who was looked upon by all who knew him as a very perfect

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 good-nature, and very communicative; but in his ten last years was absolutely partymad, 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, 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, show him to have kept mean or illiterate company in his youth..

EXTRACTS FROM

SWIFT'S REMARKS

ON "BURNET'S HISTORY OF HIS OWN TIMES;" FOLIO EDITION, 1724.

PREFACE, 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. 11. Burnet. "Colonel Titus assured me that he had it from king Charles I.'s own mouth, that he was well assured his brother, prince Henry, was poisoned by the earl of Somerset's means."-Swift. Titus was the greatest rogue in England." P. 18. Burnet. 66 Gowry's conspiracy against king James was confirmed to me by my father."Swift. "And yet Melville makes nothing of it."

P. 20. Burnet. "Charles I. had such an ungracious way of bestowing favours that the manner of bestowing was almost as mortifying as the favour was obliging."-Swift. "Not worth knowing."

P. 23. Burnet. "This person (Mr. Stewart), who was only a private gentleman, became so considerable that he was raised by several degrees to be made earl of Traquair, and lord-treasurer of Scotland, and was in great favour; but suffered afterwards such a reverse of fortune that I saw him so low that he wanted bread; and it was generally believed that he died of hunger."-Swift. "A strange death! Perhaps it was want of meat!"

P. 26. Burnet. "How careful lord Balmerinoch's father was to preserve the petition and the papers relating to that trial, of which, says he, I never saw any copy besides, and which I have now by me, and which indeed is a very noble piece, full of curious matter."-Swift. "Puppy!"

P. 28. Burnet. "The earl of Argyle was a more solemn sort of man, grave and sober, and free of all scandalous vices."-Swift. "As a man is free of a corporation he means."

P. 29. Burnet. "The lord Wharton and the lord Howard of Escrick undertook to deliver some of these; which they did, and were clapt up upon it." Sirift. "What dignity of expression!"

named."

loved high and rough methods; but had neither the skill to conduct them nor the height of genius to manage them."-Swift. "Not one good quality P. 31. Burnet. "The queen of Charles I. was a woman of great vivacity of conversation, and loved all her life long to be in intrigues of all sorts."— Swift. "Not of love, I hope."

P. 34. Burnet. "Dickison, Blair, Rutherford, Baily, Cant, and other popular preachers in Scotland, affected great sublimities in devotion. They poured themselves out in their prayers with a loud voice and often with many tears. They had but an ordinary proportion of learning among them; somewhat of Hebrew and very little Greek. Books of controversy with the papists, but above all with the Arminians, was the height of their study."Swift. "Great nonsense! Rutherford was half fool, half mad."

P. 40. Burnet, speaking of the bad effects of the marquis of Montrose's expedition and defeat, says, "It alienated the Scots much from the king; it exalted all that were enemies to peace; and there seemed to be some colour for all those aspersions that they had cast on the king, as if he had been in a correspondence with the Irish rebels when the worst tribe had been thus employed by him."Swift. "Lord Clarendon differs from all this."

P. 41. Burnet. "The earl of Essex told me that he had taken all the pains he could to inquire into the origin of the Irish massacre; but could never see any reason to believe that the king had any accession to it."-Swift. "And who but a beast ever believed it?"

P. 42. Burnet. Arguing with the Scots concerning the propriety of the king's death, he observes that Drummond said, "That Cromwell had plainly the better of them at their own weapons."Swift. "And Burnet thought as Cromwell did."

P. 46. Burnet. "Fairfax was much distracted in his mind, and changed purposes often every day."Swift. "Fairfax had hardly common sense."

P. 49. Burnet. "I will not enter further into the military part; for I remember an advice of marshal Schomberg, never to meddle in the relation of military matters. His observation was, 'Some affected to relate those affairs in all the terms of war, in which they committed great errors, that exposed them to the scorn of all commanders, who must despise relations that pretend to exactness when there were blunders in every part of them.'”—Swift. "Very foolish advice; for soldiers cannot write."

P. 50. Burnet. "Laud's defence of himself when in the Tower is a very mean performance. In most particulars he excuses himself by this,—that he was but one of many who either in council, star-chamber, or high commission, voted illegal things. Now though this was true, yet a chief minister, and one in high favour, determines the rest so much that they are little better than machines acted by him. On other occasions he says, the thing was proved but by one witness.' Now how strong soever this defence may be in law, it is of no force in appeal to the world; for if a thing is true it is no matter how full or defective the proof is."-Swift. "All this is full of malice and ill judgment."

P. 50. Burnet, speaking of the Basilicon, " supposed to be written by Charles I."-Swift. "I think it is a poor treatise, and that the king did not write it."

P. 53. Burnet. "King Charles II., when in Scotland, wrought himself into as grave a deportment as he could. He heard many prayers and sermons, some of great length. I remember, in one fast-day, there were six sermons preached without intermission. I was there myself, and not a little weary of so tedious a service."-Swift. "Burnet was not then eight years old."

P. 61. Burnet, speaking of the period of the usurpation in Scotland-"Cromwell built three citadels, Leith, Ayr, and Inverness, besides many little forts. There was good justice done, and vice was suppressed and punished; so that we always reckon those eight years of usurpation a time of great peace and prosperity."-Swift. "No doubt you do."

P. 63. Burnet, speaking of the Scotch preachers in the time of the civil wars, says, "The crowds were far beyond the capacity of their churches or the reach of their voices."-Swift. "And the preaching beyond the capacity of the crowd-I believe the church had as much capacity as the minister."

P. 64. Burnet. "The resolutions sent up by one Sharpe, who had been long in England, and was an active and an eager man."-Swift. "Afterwards a bishop, and murdered."

P. 66. Burnet. "Thus Cromwell had all the king's party in a net: he let them dance in at pleasure and upon occasions clapt them up for a short time."-Swift. "A pox of his claps."

P. 87. Burnet, speaking of the Restoration-" Of all this, Monk had both the praise and the reward; for I have been told a very small share of it belonged to him."-Swift. "Malice."

P. 126. Burnet, speaking of the execution of the marquis of Argyle;-Swift. "He was the greatest villain of his age."

P. 127. Burnet. "The proceeding against Warriston was soon despatched."-Swift. "Warriston was an abominable dog."

P. 134. Burnet, of bishop Leightoun's character, "The grace and gravity of his pronunciation was such, that few heard him without a very sensible emotion-his style, however, was rather too fine."Swift. "A fault that Burnet is not guilty of." P. 140. Burnet. "Leightoun did not stand much upon it. He did not think orders given without bishops were null and void. He thought the forms of government were not settled by such positive laws as were unalterable, but only by apostolical practices which, as he thought, authorised episcopacy, as the best form: yet he did not think it necessary to the being of a church, but he thought that every church might make such rules of ordinations as they pleased."-Swift. "Here's a specimen of style!-think! · thought!-thought!-think !— thought!"

P. 154. Burnet, speaking of a proclamation for shutting up 200 churches in one day!" Sharpe said to myself he knew nothing of it; yet he was glad it was done without his having any share in it, for by it he was furnished with somewhat in which he was no way concerned, upon which he might cast all the blame of all that followed; yet this was suitable enough to a maxim that he and all that sort of people set up-that the execution of the laws was that by which all governments maintained their strength, as well as their honour."-Swift. "Dunce! Can there be a better maxim?”

P. 163 Burnet. "John Goodwin and Milton did also escape all censure, to the surprise of all people."--Swift. "He censures even mercy."

Ibid. Burnet, "Milton was not excepted out of the Act of Indemnity; and afterwards he came out

of his concealment and lived many years, much visited by all strangers and much admired by all at home for the poems he writ, though he was then blind; chiefly that of Paradise Lost,' in which there is a nobleness both of contrivance and execution, that, though he affected to write in blank verse, without rhyme, and made many new and rough words, yet it was esteemed the beautifullest and perfectest poem that ever was writ, at least in our language."-Swift. "A mistake!—for it is in Eng

lish."

P. 164. Burnet. "The great share that sir Henry Vane had in the attainder of the earl of Strafford, and in the whole turn of affairs to the total change of government, but above all the great opinion that was had of his parts and capacity to embroil matters again, made the court think it necessary to put him out of the way."-Swift. "A malicious turn!-Vane was a dangerous enthusiastic beast."

Ibid. Burnet. "When sir Henry Vane saw his death was designed, he composed himself to it with a resolution that surprised all who knew how little of that was natural to him. Some instances of this were very extraordinary, though they cannot be mentioned with decency."-Swift. "His lady conceived by him the night before his execution."

P. 180. Burnet, speaking of the dissenters in Charles II.'s time looking for a new liturgy, continues, "But all this was overthrown by Baxter, who was a man of great piety and, if he had not meddled in too many things, would have been esteemed one of the learned men of the age. He writ near two hundred books."-Swift. "Very sad ones indeed!"

P. 186. Burnet, speaking of the great fines raised on the church ill applied, proceeds, "If the half had been applied to the buying of tithes or glebes for small vicarages, here a foundation had been laid for a great and effectual reformation."-Swift. "He judges here right, in my opinion."

Ibid. Burnet, continuing the same subject, "The men of merit and services were loaded with many livings and many dignities. With this accession of wealth there broke in upon the church a great deal of luxury and high living, on the pretence of hospitality, whilst others made purchases and left great estates, most of which we have seen melt

away."-Swift. "An uncharitable aggravation, a base innuendo."

P. 189. Burnet. "Patrick was a great preacher and wrote well on the Scriptures. He was a laborious man in his function, of great strictness of life, but a little too severe against those who differed from him; but that was where he thought their doctrines struck at the fundamentals of religion. He became afterwards more moderate."-Swift. "Yes, for he turned a rank Whig.”

P. 190. Burnet. "Archbishop Tenison was a very learned man, endowed schools, set up a public library," &c., &c.-Swift. "The dullest good-fornothing man I ever knew."

P. 191. Burnet, condemning the bad style of preaching before Tillotson, Lloyd, and Stillingfleet, says, "Their discourses were long and heavy; all was pyebald, full of many sayings of different languages."-Swift. "A noble epithet! How came Burnet not to learn this style? He surely neglected his own talents."

P. 193. Burnet, speaking of the first formation of the Royal Society, "Many physicians and other ingenious men went into a society for natural philosophy, but he who laboured most was Robert Boyle, the earl of Cork's youngest son, who was looked upon by all who knew him as a very perfect