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“A Scotch, seditious, unbelieving priest, The brawny chaplain of the calves’-head feast, Who first his patron, then his prince betray’d, And does that church he’s sworn to guard, invade, Warm with rebellious rage, he thus began,” &c. |
One hardly suspects the hermit Parnell capable of writing rather harsh verses, yet stinging satire; they are not in his works; but he wrote the following lines on a report of a fire breaking out in Burnet’s library, which had like to have answered the purpose some wished—of condemning the author and his works to the flames—
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“He talks, and writes, that Popery will return, And we, and he, and all his works will burn; And as of late he meant to bless the age With flagrant prefaces of party rage, O’ercome with passion and the subject’s weight, Lolling he nodded in his elbow-seat; Down fell the candle! Grease and zeal conspire, Heat meets with heat, and pamphlets burn their sire; Here crawls a preface on its half-burn’d maggots, And there an introduction brings its fagots; Then roars the prophet of the northern nation, Scorch’d by a flaming speech on moderation.” |
Thomas Warton smiles at Burnet for the horrors of Popery which perpetually haunted him, in his “Life of Sir T. Pope,” p. 53. But if we substitute the term arbitrary power for popery, no Briton will join in the abuse Burnet has received on this account. A man of Burnet’s fervid temper, whose foible was strong vanity and a passion for popularity, would often rush headlong into improprieties of conduct and language; his enemies have taken ample advantage of his errors; but many virtues his friends have recorded; and the elaborate and spirited character which the Marquis of Halifax has drawn of Burnet may soothe his manes, and secure its repose amid all these disturbances around his tomb. This fine character is preserved in the “Biographia Britannica.” Burnet is not the only instance of the motives of a man being honourable, while his actions are frequently the reverse, from his impetuous nature. He has been reproached for a want of that truth which he solemnly protests he scrupulously adhered to; yet, of many circumstances which were at the time condemned as “lies,” when Time drew aside the mighty veil, Truth was discovered beneath. Tovey, with his visual good humour, in his “Anglia Judaica,” p. 277, notices “that pleasant copious imagination which will for ever rank our English Burnet with the Grecian Heliodorus.” Roger North, in his “Examen,” p. 413, calls him “a busy Scotch parson.” Lord Orford sneers at his hasty epithets, and the colloquial carelessness of his style, in his “Historic Doubts,” where, in a note, he mentions “one Burnet” tells a ridiculous story, mimicking Burnet’s chit-chat, and concludes surprisingly with, “So the Prince of Orange mounted the throne.”
After reading this note, how would that learned foreigner proceed, who I have supposed might be projecting the “Judgments of the Learned” on our English authors? Were he to condemn Burnet as an historian void of all honour and authority, he would not want for documents. It would require a few minutes to explain to the foreigner the nature of political criticism.
Dryden was very coarsely satirised in the political poems of his own day; and among the rest, in “The Session of the Poets,”—a general onslaught directed against the writers of the time, which furnishes us with many examples of unjust criticism on these literary men, entirely originating in political feeling. One example may suffice;
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“Then in came Denham, that limping old bard, Whose fame on the Sophy and Cooper’s-hill stands, And brought many stationers, who swore very hard That nothing sold better except ’twere his lands. But Apollo advised him to write something more, To clear a suspicion which possessed the Court, That Cooper’s-hill, so much bragg’d on before, Was writ by a vicar, who had forty pounds for’t.” |
Dr. Wagstaffe, in his “Character of Steele,” alludes to the rumour which Pope has sent down to posterity in a single verse: “I should have thought Mr. Steele might have the example of his friend before his eyes, who had the reputation of being the author of The Dispensary, till, by two or three unlucky after-claps, he proved himself incapable of writing it.”—Wagstaffe’s Misc. Works, p. 136.