BISHOP BURNET.
Having but recently become acquainted with your useful and learned work (for scire ubi aliquid invenire possis, magna pars eruditionis est), I have been much interested in looking over the earlier volumes. Allow me to add a couple of links to your catena on Bishop Burnet. The first is the opinion of Hampton, the translator of Polybius; the other is especially valuable, it being nothing less than the portrait of Burnet drawn by himself, but certainly not with any idea of its being suspended beside the worthies of his "Own Time," for the edification of posterity.
Hampton's testimony is as follows:
"His personal resentments put him upon writing history. He relates the actions of a persecutor and benefactor; and it is easy to believe that a man in such circumstances must violate the laws of truth. The remembrance of his injuries is always present, and gives venom to his pen. Let us add to this, that intemperate and malicious curiosity which penetrates into the most private recesses of vice. The greatest of his triumphs is to draw the veil of secret infamy, and expose to view transactions that were before concealed from the world; though they serve not in the least either to embellish the style or connect the series of his history, and will never obtain more credit than, perhaps, to suspend the judgment of the reader, since they are supported only by one single, suspected testimony."—Reflections on Ancient and Modern History, 4to.: Oxford, 1746.
Let me now refer you to a document, written with his own hand, which sets the question of
Burnet's truthfulness and impartiality in his delineations of character completely at rest.
From the Napier charter-chest, "by a species of retributive justice," there has recently risen up in judgment against him a letter of his own, proving his own character. It is, I regret, too long for insertion in your pages in extenso, but no abstract can give an adequate idea of its contents. It is, in fact, so mean and abject as almost to overpass belief. I must refer your readers to Mr. Mark Napier's Montrose and the Covenanters, vol. i. pp. 13-21. All the reflections of the Whig historian Dalrymple, all the severe remarks of Swift and Lord Dartmouth, as to Burnet's dishonesty and malice, would now seem well bestowed upon a writer so despicable and faithless, and the credit of whose statements, when resting on his own sole authority, must be totally destroyed. This curious epistle was written, in an agony of fear, on a Sunday morning, during the memorable crisis of the Rye-House plot, and while Lord Russell was on the eve of his execution. Addressed to Lord Halifax, it was intended to meet the eye of the King. It evidently proves the writer's want of veracity in divers subsequent statements in his history. The future bishop also protests that he never will accept of any preferment, promises never more to oppose the Court, and intimates an intention to paint the King in the fairest light—"if I ever live to finish what I am about;" i.e. the History of his Own Time, in which the villanous portrait of Charles afterwards appeared.
"Here, then," says Mr. Napier, "is Burnet Redivivus; and now the bishop may call Montrose a coward or what he likes, and persuade the world of his own super-eminent moral courage, if he can. For our own part, after reading the above letter, we do not believe one malicious word of what Burnet has uttered in the History of his Own Time against Charles I. and Montrose; and he has therein said nothing about them that is not malicious. We do not believe that the apology for Hamilton, which he has given to the world in the memoirs of that House, is by any means so truthful an exposition of the character of that mysterious marquis as the letters and papers entrusted to the bishop enabled him to give. We feel thoroughly persuaded that Bishop Burnet, in that work, as well as in the History of his Own Time, reversed the golden maxim of Cicero, 'Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat.' The marvellous of himself, and the malicious of others, we henceforth altogether disbelieve, when resting on the sole authority of the bishop's historical record, and will never listen to when retailed traditionally and at second-hand from him. Finally, we do believe the truth of the anecdote, that the bishop, 'after a debate in the House of Lords, usually went home and altered everybody's character as they had pleased or displeased him that day;' and that he kept weaving in secret this chronicle of his times, not to enlighten posterity or for the cause of truth, but as a means of indulging in safety his own interested or malicious feelings towards the individuals that pleased or offended him. So much for Bishop Burnet, whose authority must henceforth always be received cum nota."
Wm. L. Nichols.
Lansdown Place, Bath.