1680, in Mr.
Blencowe's interesting collection.] [Footnote 217: Speaker Onslow's note on Burnet, i.

596.; Johnson's Life of Sprat.] [Footnote 218: No person has contradicted Burnet more frequently or with more asperity than Dartmouth.

Yet Dartmouth wrote, "I do not think he designedly published anything he believed to be false." At a later period Dartmouth, provoked by some remarks on himself in the second volume of the Bishop's history, retracted this praise but to such a retraction little importance can be attached.

Even Swift has the justice to say, "After all, he was a man of generosity and good nature."-- Short Remarks on Bishop Burnet's History.
It is usual to censure Burnet as a singularly inaccurate historian; hut I believe the charge to be altogether unjust.

He appears to be singularly inaccurate only because his narrative has been subjected to a scrutiny singularly severe and unfriendly.