mitive Persecutors, translated from the Latin of Lactantius: with a large Preface, in which the Principles, the Spirit, and the Practice of Persecution are freely censured and condemned;' his History of the Rights of Princes, in disposing of Ecclesiastical Benefices and Church-Lands;' his Translation and Examination of a Letter, written by the last General Assembly of the Clergy of France to the Protestants, inviting them to return to their Communion, &c.;' and his Translation of Sir Thomas More's Utopia,' preceded by a Preface concerning the Nature of Translations, &c. &c.

Distinguished generally, as a writer, by his vigour and the depth and variety of his knowledge, as a

Accordingly, this Prelate's History of his own Times' was as much vilified and depreciated by the Tories, as praised and magnified by the Whigs. Relating the actions of a Persecutor and a Benefactor, he was accused of partiality, injustice, malignity, flattery, and falsehood. Bevil Higgins, Lord Lansdowne, and others wrote Remarks on him; and Lord Peterborough's animadversions (as his amanuensis, Mr. Holloway, assured Dr. W.) were very severe: but they were never published. As Burnet was much trusted and consulted by King William, and had a great share in bringing about the Revolution, his narratives, it must be owned, have a strong tincture of self-importance and egotism. These two qualities are chiefly exposed in these Memoirs. Hume and Dalrymple have taken occasion to censure him. After all, he was a man of great abilities, of much openness and frankness of nature, of much courtesy and benevolence, indefatigable in his studies and in performing constantly the duties of his station.-Few persons, or Prelates, would have had the boldness and honesty to write such a remonstrance to Charles II. on his dissolute life and manners, as did Burnet in the year 1680. We may easily guess what the sycophants of that profligate court, and their profligate master, said and thought of the piety and freedom of this letter."

theologian more especially he stands high in the estimation of his church. Of his historical powers a modern writer says:

Yet Burnet's page may lasting glory hope,
Howe'er insulted by the spleen of Pope.

Though his rough language haste and warmth denote,
With ardent honesty of soul he wrote:

Though critic censures on his works may shower,
Like faith, his freedom has a saving power.'

This testimony from a poet, observes Aikin, is the more honourable, as Burnet was by no means partial to poets, and has exposed himself to just obloquy for what he has said of Dryden and Prior. He appears, indeed, to have been little conversant with the amenities of literature. He had the virtues and the defect of an ardent, active, and honest character. No man seems to have been more honestly zealous in promoting what he thought conducive to the public good; and he possessed a great fund of benevolence, liberality, and disinterestedness. His failings were

+ The first he 66 pronounces a monster of immodesty, and of impurity of all sorts" (I. 269.); and the latter he calls " one Prior (II. 280.), which a friend to the poet's memory thus avenged:

"One Prior!" and is this, this all the fame, The poet from th' historian can claim?

No: Prior's verse posterity shall quote,

When 'tis forgot one Burnet' ever wrote.'

His censure also of Milton, whom, though he admits he wrote in Latin with great purity and elegancy of stile against Salmasius and others, he seems astonished and almost indignant to find pardoned for his affectation of blank verse and his new and rough words, is not very friendly.

vanity, credulity, officiousness, and a kind of gossiping garrulity. He appears, however, to have been a real lover of truth; though his foibles occasionally exposed him to the charge of misrepresentation. He lived in times, when it was impossible that a conspicuous public character should escape party-abuse; but his name has lost none of it's honours in it's descent to posterity. His controversial works, indeed, are nearly forgotten; but his two noble Histories, and his Lives of Rochester, Bedell, Hale, &c. will sustain and prolong his fame.

With regard to his domestic habits, private meditation (we are told) took up the two first hours, and the last half hour, of his day. The Morning and Evening Prayers he always read himself to his family, though his Chaplains were present. At the tea-table, he instructed his children in religion, and gave them his own comment upon some portion of Scripture. He seldom spent less than six, and often eight, hours a day in his study. At his table, which was accessible to every one, appeared plenty without luxury his equipage was decent and plain; and all his expenses were, though generous, short of profusion. He was a most affectionate husband to his wives; and to his children he showed his love most judiciously, not by hoarding up wealth for them, but by giving them an excellent education. In his friendships, he was warm, open-hearted, and constant; and though his station and his principles raised him many enemies, he invariably endeavoured to overcome them by returning good for evil. Kind and bountiful to his servants, he was to all that stood in need most charitable. He gave a hundred pounds at a time for the augmentation of small livings, bestowed pen

sions on poor clergymen and their widows, and on students for their education at the Universities; and contributed frequent sums toward the repair or the rebuilding of churches and parsonage-houses, to all public collections, to the support of charity-schools, and to the putting out of apprentices. Nor were his alms confined to one nation, sect, or party: want, and merit in the object, were the only measures of his liberality. With regard to his episcopal revenue, he looked upon himself as a mere trustee for the church, bound to expend the whole in a decent maintenance of his station, and in acts of hospitality and charity: and so faithfully had he balanced this account, that at his death no more of the income of his bishopric remained to his family, than was barely sufficient to discharge his debts.

The character of this eminent Prelate, written by his contemporary, the Marquis of Halifax, has been much admired: "Dr. Burnet is, like all men who are above the ordinary level, seldom spoken of in a mean; he must either be railed at, or admired. He has a swiftness of imagination, that no other man comes up to; and, as our nature hardly allows us to have enough of any thing without having too much, he cannot at all times so hold-in his thoughts, but that at some time they may run away with him; as it is hard for a vessel, that is brim-full, when in motion, not to run over: and, therefore, the variety of matter that he ever carries about him may throw out more than an unkind critic would allow of. His first thoughts may sometimes require more digestion, not from a defect in his judgement, but from the abundance of his fancy, which furnishes too fast for him. His friends love him too well to see small

faults; or, if they do, think that his greater talents give him a privilege of straying from the strict rules of caution, and exempt him from the ordinary rules of censure. He produces so fast, that what is well in his writings calls for admiration, and what is incorrect deserves an excuse: he may, in some things, require grains of allowance, which those only can deny him who are unknown or unjust to him. He is not quicker in discerning other men's faults, than he is in forgiving them; so ready, or rather glad, to acknowledge his own, that from blemishes they become ornaments. All the repeated provocations of his indecent adversaries have had no other effect than the setting his good-nature in so much a better light, since his anger never yet went farther than to pity them. That heat, which in most other men raises sharpness and satire, in him glows into warmth for his friends, and compassion for those in want and misery. As dull men have quick eyes in discerning the smaller faults of those that nature has made superior to them, they do not miss one blot he makes: and, being beholden only to their barrenness for their discretion, they fall upon the errors which arise out of his abundance; and by a mistake into which their malice betrays them, they think that, by finding a mote in his eye, they hide the beams that are in their own. His quickness makes writing so easy to him, that his spirits are neither wasted nor soured by it: the soil is not forced: every thing grows and brings forth without pangs; which distinguishes as much what he does from that which smells of the lamp, as a good palate will discern between fruit which comes from a rich mould, and that which tastes of the uncleanly pains that have been bestowed