* * * * *

THE FIRST MODERN ASSAILANTS OF THE CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST.

Burnet, the ardent champion of a party so deeply concerned to oppose as well the persons as the principles of the Stuarts, levelled the father of the race; we read with delight pages which warm and hurry us on, mingling truths with rumours, and known with suggested events, with all the spirit of secret history.  But the character of James I. was to pass through the lengthened inquisitorial tortures of the sullen sectarianism of Harris.[A] It was branded by the fierce, remorseless republican Catharine Macaulay, and flouted by the light, sparkling Whig, Horace Walpole.[B] A senseless cry of pedantry had been raised against him by the eloquent invective of Bolingbroke, from whom doubtless Pope echoed it in verse which has outlived his lordship’s prose:—­

Oh, cried the goddess, for some pedant reign! 
Some gentle James to bless the land again;
To stick the doctor’s chair into the throne,
Give law to words, or war with words alone,
Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule,
And turn the council to a grammar-school!

Dunciad, book iv. ver. 175.

[Footnote A:  The historical works of Dr. William Harris have been recently republished in a collected form, and they may now be considered as entering into our historical stores.

HARRIS is a curious researcher; but what appears more striking in his historical character, is the impartiality with which he quotes authorities which make against his own opinions and statements.  Yet is Harris a writer likely to impose on many readers.  He announces in his title-pages that his works are “after the manner of Mr. Bayle.”  This is but a literary imposition, for Harris is perhaps the meanest writer in our language both for style and philosophical thinking.  The extraordinary impartiality he displays in his faithful quotations from writers on opposite sides is only the more likely to deceive us; for by that unalterable party feeling, which never forsakes him, the facts against him he studiously weakens by doubts, surmises, and suggestions; a character sinks to the level of his notions by a single stroke; and from the arguments adverse to his purpose, he wrests the most violent inferences.  All party writers must submit to practise such mean and disingenuous arts if they affect to disguise themselves under a cover of impartiality.  Bayle, intent on collecting facts, was indifferent to their results; but Harris is more intent on the deductions than the facts.  The truth is, Harris wrote to please his patron, the republican Hollis, who supplied him with books, and every friendly aid.  “It is possible for an ingenious man to be of a party without being partial” says Rushworth; an airy clench on the lips of a sober matter-of-fact man looks suspicions, and betrays the weak pang of a half-conscience.]