rously attacked, with all the
nerve of satire, in "Faction Displayed," attributed to
Shippen, whom Pope celebrates--

----"And pour myself as plain
As honest Shippen or as old Montaigne."

Shippen was a Tory. In "Faction Displayed," Burnet is
represented with his Cabal (so some party nicknames the
other), on the accession of Queen Anne, plotting the
disturbance of her government. "Black Aris's fierceness," that
is Burnet, is thus described:--

"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--

"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