Note 340 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 3)

I throw into this note several curious notices respecting Burnet, and chiefly from contemporaries.

Burnet has been accused, after a warm discussion, of returning home in a passion, and then writing the character of a person. But as his feelings were warm, it is probable he might have often practised the reverse. An anecdote of the times is preserved in “The Memoirs of Grub-street,” vol. ii. p. 291. “A noble peer now living declares he stood with a very ill grace in the history, till he had an opportunity put into his hands of obliging the bishop, by granting a favour at court, upon which the bishop told a friend, within an hour, that he was mistaken in such a lord, and must go and alter his whole character; and so he happens to have a pretty good one.” In this place I also find this curious extract from the MS. “Memoirs of the M—— of H——.” “Such a day Dr. B——t told me King William was an obstinate, conceited man, that would take no advice; and on this day King William told me that Dr. B——t was a troublesome, impertinent man, whose company he could not endure.” These anecdotes are very probable, and lead one to reflect. Some political tergiversation has been laid to his charge; Swift accused him of having once been an advocate for passive obedience and absolute power. He has been reproached with the deepest ingratitude, for the purpose of gratifying his darling passion of popularity, in his conduct respecting the Duke of Lauderdale, his former patron. If the following piece of secret history be true, he showed too much of a compliant humour, at the cost of his honour. I find it in Bishop Kennet’s MSS. “Dr. Burnet having over night given in some important depositions against the Earl of Lauderdale to the House of Commons, was, before morning, by the intercession of the D——, made king’s chaplain and preacher at the Rolls; so he was bribed to hold the peace.”—Lansdowne MSS., 990. This was quite a politician’s short way to preferment! An honest man cannot leap up the ascent, however he may try to climb. There was something morally wrong in this transaction, because Burnet notices it, and acknowledges—“I was much blamed for what I had done.” The story is by no means refuted by the naïve apology.

Burnet’s character has been vigorously 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 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.