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.

[341] 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;

"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,