Note 43 — LITERARY IMPOSTURES.

Burnet's little 12mo volume was printed at Amsterdam, "in the Warmoes-straet near the Dam," 1686, and compiled by him when living for safety in Holland during the reign of James II. He particularly attacks Varillas' ninth book, which relates to England, and its false history of the Reformation, or rather "his own imagination for true history." On the authority of Catholic students, he says "the greatest number of the pieces he cited were to be found nowhere but in his own fancy." Burnet allows full latitude to an author for giving the best colouring to his own views and that of his party—a latitude he certainly always allowed to himself; but he justly censures the falsifying, or rather inventing, of history; after Varillas' fashion. "History," says Burnet, "is a sort of trade, in which false coyn and false weights are more criminal than in other matters; because the errour may go further and run longer, though their authors colour their copper too slightly to make it keep its credit long."