may incline to respect the
feelings of Clarendon, this will not save his judgment nor his
candour. We read May now, as well as Clarendon; nor is the work of May
that of a man who "had lost his wits," nor is it "meanly performed."
Warburton, a keen critic of the writers of that unhappy and that
glorious age for both parties, has pronounced this "History" to be "a
just composition, according to the rules of history; written with much
judgment, penetration, manliness, and spirit, and with a candour that
will greatly increase your esteem, when you understand that he wrote
by order of his masters the Parliament."

Thus have authors and their works endured the violations of party
feelings; a calamity in our national literature which has produced
much false and unjust criticism.[347] The better spirit of the present
times will maintain a safer and a more honourable principle,--the true
objects of LITERATURE, the cultivation of the intellectual faculties,
stand entirely unconnected with POLITICS and RELIGION, let this be the
imprescriptible right of an author. In our free country unhappily they
have not been separated--they run together, and in the ocean of human
opinions, the salt and bitterness of these mightier waves have
infected the clear waters from the springs of the Muses. I once read
of a certain river that ran through the sea without mixing with it,
preserving its crystalline purity and all its sweetness during its
course; so that it tasted the same at the Line as at the Poles. This
stream indeed is only to be found in the geography of an old romance;
literature should be this magical stream!

FOOTNOTES:

[338] A forcible description of Locke may be found in the curious
"Life of Wood," written by himself. I shall give the passage
where Wood acknowledges his after celebrity, at the very
moment the bigotry of his feelings is attempting to degrade
him.

Wood belonged to a club with Locke and others, for the purpose
of hearing chemical lectures. "John Locke of Christchurch was
afterwards a noted writer. This John Locke was a man of a
turbulent spirit, clamorous, and never contented. The club
wrote and took notes from the mouth of their master, who sat
at the upper end of a table, but the said John Locke scorned
to do it; so that while every man besides of the club were
writing, he would be prating and troublesome."