Copy 1, Volume 1

Bishop Burnet's History of his own time / with notes by the Earls of Dartmouth and Hardwicke, Speaker Onslow, and Dean Swift. To which are added other annotations.

  • Gilbert Burnet
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bishop Burnet's History of his own time / with notes by the Earls of Dartmouth and Hardwicke, Speaker Onslow, and Dean Swift. To which are added other annotations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    46/676 page 6
    If I have dwelt too long on the affairs of Scot- land, some allowance is to be made to the affection all men bear to their native country. I alter no- thing of what I wrote in the first draught of this work, only I have left out a great deal that was personal to my self, and to those I am descended from: so that this is upon the matter the same work, with very little change made in it. I look on the perfecting of this work, and the carrying it on through the remaining part of my life, as the greatest service I can do to God and to the world; and therefore I set about it with great care and caution. For I reckon a lie in history to be as much a greater sin than a lie in common dis- course, as the one is like to be more lasting and more generally known than the other. I find that the long experience I have had of the baseness, the malice, and the falsehood of mankind, has inclined me to be apt to think generally the worst both of men and of parties: and indeed the peevishness, the ill nature, and the ambition of many clergymen, has sharpened my spirits perhaps too much against them: so I warn¢ my reader to take all that I say on these heads with some grains of allowance, though I have watched over my self and my pen so care- fully, that I hope there is no great occasion for this apology. I have shewed this history to several of my friends‘, who were either very partial to me, or were accompanied with a most me, which I avoided, knowing invincible assurance. Darr- it was a favour he had granted MOUTH. to several others, and if any ¢ T will take his warning. part of it had been published Swirt. before its time, he might have d He offered to shew it to thought it came from me:
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