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History of the Revolution in England, in 1688. Comprising a View of the Reign of
James the Second from his Accession to the Enterprise of the Prince of Orange,
by the late Right Honorable Sir James Mackintosh; and completed to the
Settlement of the Crown, by the Editor. To which is prefixed a Notice of the
Life, Writings, and Speeches of Sir James Mackintosh. 4to. London: 1834.1
It is with unfeigned diffidence that we venture to give our opinion of the last
work of Sir James Mackintosh. We have in vain tried to perform what ought to be
to a critic an easy and habitual act. We have in vain tried to separate the book
from the writer, and to judge of it as if it bore some unknown name. But it is
to no purpose. All the lines of that venerable countenance are before us. All
the little peculiar cadences of that voice from which scholars and statesmen
loved to receive the lessons of a serene and benevolent wisdom are in our ears.
We will attempt to preserve strict impartiality. But we are not ashamed to own
that we approach this relic of a virtuous and most accomplished man with
feelings of respect and gratitude which may possibly pervert our judgment.
It is hardly possible to avoid instituting a comparison between this work and
another celebrated Fragment. Our readers will easily guess that we allude to Mr.
Fox's History of James the Second. The two books relate to the same subject.
Both were posthumously published. Neither had received the last corrections. The
authors belonged to the same political party, and held the same opinions
concerning the merits and defects of the English constitution, and concerning
most of the prominent characters and events in English history. Both had thought
much on the principles of government; yet they were not mere speculators. Both
had ransacked the archives of rival kingdoms, and pored on folios which had
moldered for ages in deserted libraries; yet they were not mere antiquaries.
They had one eminent qualification for writing history: they had spoken history,
acted history, lived history. The turns of political fortune, the ebb and flow
of popular feeling, the hidden mechanism by which parties are moved, all these
things were the subjects of their constant thought and of their most familiar
conversation. Gibbon has remarked that he owed part of his success as a
historian to the observations which he had made as an officer in the militia and
as a member of the House of Commons. The remark is most just. We have not the
smallest doubt that his campaign, though he never saw an enemy, and his
parliamentary attendance, though he never made a speech, were of far more use to
him than years of retirement and study would have been. If the time that he
spent on parade and at mess in Hampshire, or on the Treasury bench and at
Brookes's during the storms which overthrew Lord North and Lord Shelburne, had
been passed in the Bodleian Library, he might have avoided some inaccuracies; he
might have enriched his notes with a greater number of references; but he would
never have produced so lively a picture of the court, the camp, and the
senate-house. In this respect Mr. Fox and Sir James Mackintosh had great
advantages over almost every English historian who has written since the time of
Burnet. Lord Lyttelton had indeed the same advantages; but he was incapable of
using them. Pedantry was so deeply fixed in his nature that the hustings, the
Treasury, the Exchequer, the House of Commons, the House of Lords, left him the
same dreaming schoolboy that they found him.
When we compare the two interesting works of which we have been speaking, we
have little difficulty in giving the preference to that of Sir James Mackintosh.
Indeed, the superiority of Mr. Fox to Sir James as an orator is hardly more
clear than the superiority of Sir James to Mr. Fox as a historian. Mr. Fox with
a pen in his hand, and Sir James on his legs in the House of Commons, were, we
think, each out of his proper element. They were men, it is true, of far too
much judgment and ability to fail scandalously in any undertaking to which they
brought the whole power of their minds. The History of James the Second will
always keep its place in our libraries as a valuable book; and Sir James
Mackintosh succeeded in winning and maintaining a high place among the
parliamentary speakers of his time. Yet we could never read a page of Mr. Fox's
writing, we could never listen for a quarter of an hour to the speaking of Sir
James, without feeling that there was a constant effort, a tug up hill. Nature,
or habit which had become nature, asserted its rights. Mr. Fox wrote debates.
Sir James Mackintosh spoke essays.
As far as mere diction was concerned, indeed, Mr. Fox did his best to avoid
those faults which the habit of public speaking is likely to generate. He was so
nervously apprehensive of sliding into some colloquial incorrectness, of
debasing his style by a mixture of parliamentary slang, that he ran into the
opposite error, and purified his vocabulary with a scrupulosity unknown to any
purist. "Ciceronem Allobroga dixit." He would not allow Addison, Bolingbroke, or
Middleton to be a sufficient authority for an expression. He declared that he
would use no word which was not to be found in Dryden. In any other person we
should have called this solicitude mere foppery; and, in spite of all our
admiration for Mr. Fox, we cannot but think that his extreme attention to the
petty niceties of language was hardly worthy of so manly and so capacious an
understanding. There were purists of this kind at Rome; and their fastidiousness
was censured by Horace, with that perfect good sense and good taste which
characterize all his writings. There were purists of this kind at the time of
the revival of letters; and the two greatest scholars of that time raised their
voices, the one from within, the other from without the Alps, against a
scrupulosity so unreasonable. "Carent," said Politian, "quae scribunt isti
viribus et vita, carent actu, carent effectu, carent indole . . . Nisi liber
ille praesto sit ex quo quid excerpant, colligere tria verba non possunt . . .
Horum semper igitur oratio tremula, vacillans, infirma . . . Quaeso ne ista
superstitione te alliges . . . Ut bene currere non potest qui pedem ponere
studet in alienis tantum vestigiis, ita nec bene scribere qui tanquam de
praetscripto non audet egredi."--"Posthac," exclaims Erasmus, "non licebit
episcopos appellare patres reverendos, nec in calce literarum scribere annum a
Christo nato, quod id nusquam faciat Cicero. Quid autem ineptius quam, toto
seculo novato, religione, imperiis, magistratibus, locorum vocabulis,
aedificiis, cultu, moribus, non aliter audere loqui quam locutus est Cicero? Si
revivisceret ipse Cicero, rideret hoc Ciceronianorum genus."
While Mr. Fox winnowed and sifted his phraseology with a care which seems hardly
consistent with the simplicity and elevation of his mind, and of which the
effect really was to debase and enfeeble his style, he was little on his guard
against those more serious improprieties of manner into which a great orator who
undertakes to write history is in danger of falling. There is about the whole
book a vehement, contentious, replying manner. Almost every argument is put in
the form of an interrogation, an ejaculation, or a sarcasm. The writer seems to
be addressing himself to some imaginary audience, to be tearing in pieces a
defense of the Stuarts which has just been pronounced by an imaginary Tory.
Take, for example, his answer to Hume's remarks on the execution of Sydney; and
substitute "the honorable gentleman" or "the noble Lord" for the name of Hume.
The whole passage sounds like a powerful reply, thundered at three in the
morning from the Opposition Bench. While we read it, we can almost fancy that we
see and hear the great English debater, such as he has been described to us by
the few who can still remember the Westminster scrutiny and the Oczakow
Negotiations, in the full paroxysm of inspiration, foaming, screaming, choked by
the rushing multitude of his words.
It is true that the passage to which we have referred, and several other
passages which we could point out, are admirable when considered merely as
exhibitions of mental power. We at once recognize in them that consummate master
of the whole art of intellectual gladiatorship, whose speeches, imperfectly as
they have been transmitted to us, should be studied day and night by every man
who wishes to learn the science of logical defense. We find in several parts of
the History of James the Second fine specimens of that which we conceive to have
been the great characteristic Demosthenes among the Greeks, and of Fox among the
orators of England, reason penetrated, and, if we may venture on the expression,
made red-hot by passion. But this is not the kind of excellence proper to
history; and it is hardly too much to say that whatever is strikingly good in
Mr. Fox's Fragment is out of place.
With Sir James Mackintosh the case was reversed. His proper place was his
library, a circle of men of letters, or a chair of moral and political
philosophy. He distinguished himself in Parliament. But nevertheless Parliament
was not exactly the sphere for him. The effect of his most successful speeches
was small when compared with the quantity of ability and learning which was
expended on them. We could easily name men who, not possessing a tenth part of
his intellectual powers, hardly ever address the House of Commons without
producing a greater impression than was produced by his most splendid and
elaborate orations. His luminous and philosophical disquisition on the Reform
Bill was spoken to empty benches. Those, indeed, who had the wit to keep their
seats, picked up hints which, skillfully used, made the fortune of more than one
speech. But "it was caviar to the general." And even those who listened to Sir
James with pleasure and admiration could not but acknowledge that he rather
lectured than debated. An artist who should waste on a panorama, or a scene, or
on a transparency, the exquisite finishing which we admire in some of the small
Dutch interiors, would not squander his powers more than this eminent man too
often did. His audience resembled the boy in the Heart of Midlothian, who pushes
away the lady's guineas with contempt, and insists on having the white money.
They preferred the silver with which they were familiar, and which they were
constantly passing about from hand to hand, to the gold which they had never
before seen, and with the value of which they were unacquainted.
It is much to be regretted, we think, that Sir James Mackintosh did not wholly
devote his later years to philosophy and literature. His talents were not those
which enable a speaker to produce with rapidity a series of striking but
transitory impressions, and to excite the minds of five hundred gentlemen at
midnight, without saying anything that any one of them will be able to remember
in the morning. His arguments were of a very different texture from those which
are produced in Parliament at a moment's notice, which puzzle a plain man who,
if he had them before him in writing, would soon detect their fallacy, and which
the great debater who employs them forgets within half an hour, and never thinks
of again. Whatever was valuable in the compositions of Sir James Mackintosh was
the ripe fruit of study and of meditation. It was the same with his
conversation. In his most familiar talk there was no wildness, no inconsistency,
no amusing nonsense, no exaggeration for the sake of momentary effect. His mind
was a vast magazine, admirably arranged. Everything was there; and everything
was in its place. His judgments on men, on sects, on books, had been often and
carefully tested and weighed, and had then been committed, each to its proper
receptacle, in the most capacious and accurately constructed memory that any
human being ever possessed. It would have been strange indeed if you had asked
for anything that was not to be found in that immense storehouse. The article
which you required was not only there. It was ready. It was in its own proper
compartment. In a moment it was brought down, unpacked, and displayed. If those
who enjoyed the privilege--for a privilege indeed it was--of listening to Sir
James Mackintosh had been disposed to find some fault in his conversation, they
might perhaps have observed that he yielded too little to the impulse of the
moment. He seemed to be recollecting, not creating. He never appeared to catch a
sudden glimpse of a subject in a new light. You never saw his opinions in the
making, still rude, still inconsistent, and requiring to be fashioned by thought
and discussion. They came forth, like the pillars of that temple in which no
sound of axes or hammers was heard, finished, rounded, and exactly suited to
their places. What Mr. Charles Lamb has said, with much humor and some truth, of
the conversation of Scotchmen in general, was certainly true of this eminent
Scotchman. He did not find, but bring. You could not cry halves to anything that
turned up while you were in his company.
The intellectual and moral qualities which are most important in a historian, he
possessed in a very high degree. He was singularly mild, calm, and impartial in
his judgments of men, and of parties. Almost all the distinguished writers who
have treated of English history are advocates. Mr. Hallam and Sir James
Mackintosh alone are entitled to be called judges. But the extreme austerity of
Mr. Hallam takes away something from the pleasure of reading his learned,
eloquent, and judicious writings. He is a judge, but a hanging judge, the Page
or Buller of the High Court of Literary justice. His black cap is in constant
requisition. In the long calendar of those whom he has tried, there is hardly
one who has not, in spite of evidence to character and recommendations to mercy,
been sentenced and left for execution. Sir James, perhaps, erred a little on the
other side. He liked a maiden assize, and came away with white gloves, after
sitting in judgment on batches of the most notorious offenders. He had a quick
eye for the redeeming parts of a character, and a large toleration for the
infirmities of men exposed to strong temptations. But this lenity did not arise
from ignorance or neglect of moral distinctions. Though he allowed perhaps too
much weight to every extenuating circumstance that could be urged in favor of
the transgressor, he never disputed the authority of the law, or showed his
ingenuity by refining away its enactments. On every occasion he showed himself
firm where principles were in question, but full of charity towards individuals.
We have no hesitation in pronouncing this Fragment decidedly the best history
now extant of the reign of James the Second. It contains much new and curious
information, of which excellent use has been made. But we are not sure that the
book is not in some degree open to the charge which the idle citizen in the
Spectator brought against his pudding; "Mem. too many plums, and no suet." There
is perhaps too much disquisition and too little narrative; and indeed this is
the fault into which, judging from the habits of Sir James's mind, we should
have thought him most likely to fall. What we assuredly did not anticipate was,
that the narrative would be better executed than the disquisitions. We expected
to find, and we have found, many just delineations of character, and many
digressions full of interest, such as the account of the order of Jesuits, and
of the state of prison discipline in England a hundred and fifty years ago. We
expected to find, and we have found, many reflections breathing the spirit of a
calm and benignant philosophy. But we did not, we own, expect to find that Sir
James could tell a story as well as Voltaire or Hume. Yet such is the fact; and
if any person doubts it, we would advise him to read the account of the events
which followed the issuing of King James's declaration, the meeting of the
clergy, the violent scene at the privy council, the commitment, trial, and
acquittal of the bishops. The most superficial reader must be charmed, we think,
by the liveliness of the narrative. But no person who is not acquainted with
that vast mass of intractable materials of which the valuable and interesting
part has been extracted and condensed can fully appreciate the skill of the
writer. Here, and indeed throughout the book, we find many harsh and careless
expressions which the author would probably have removed if he had lived to
complete his work. But, in spite of these blemishes, we must say that we should
find it difficult to point out, in any modern history, any passage of equal
length and at the same time of equal merit. We find in it the diligence, the
accuracy, and the judgment of Hallam, united to the vivacity and the coloring of
Southey. A history of England, written throughout in this manner, would be the
most fascinating book in the language. It would be more in request at the
circulating libraries than the last novel.
Sir James was not, we think, gifted with poetical imagination. But that lower
kind of imagination which is necessary to the historian he had in large measure.
It is not the business of the historian to create new worlds and to people them
with new races of beings. He is to Homer and Shakespeare, to Dante and Milton,
what Nollekens was to Canova, or Lawrence to Michael Angelo. The object of the
historian's imitation is not within him; it is furnished from without. It is not
a vision of beauty and grandeur discernible only by the eye of his own mind, but
a real model which he did not make, and which he cannot alter. Yet his is not a
mere mechanical imitation. The triumph of his skill is to select such parts as
may produce the effect of the whole, to bring out strongly all the
characteristic features, and to throw the light and shade in such a manner as
may heighten the effect. This skill, as far as we can judge from the unfinished
work now before us, Sir James Mackintosh possessed in an eminent degree.
The style of this Fragment is weighty, manly, and unaffected. There are, as we
have said, some expressions which seem to us harsh, and some which we think
inaccurate. These would probably have been corrected, if Sir James had lived to
superintend the publication. We ought to add that the printer has by no means
done his duty. One misprint in particular is so serious as to require notice.
Sir James Mackintosh has paid a high and just tribute to the genius, the
integrity, and the courage of a good and great man, a distinguished ornament of
English literature, a fearless champion of English liberty, Thomas Burnet,
Master of the Charter-House, and author of the most eloquent and imaginative
work, the Telluris Theoria Sacra. Wherever the name of this celebrated man
occurs, it is printed "Bennet," both in the text and in the index. This cannot
be mere negligence. It is plain that Thomas Burnet and his writings were never
heard of by the gentleman who has been employed to edit this volume, and who,
not content with deforming Sir James Mackintosh's text by such blunders, has
prefixed to it a bad Memoir, has appended to it a bad continuation, and has thus
succeeded in expanding the volume into one of the thickest, and debasing it into
one of the worst that we ever saw. Never did we fall in with so admirable an
illustration of the old Greek proverb, which tells us that half is sometimes
more than the whole. Never did we see a case in which the increase of the bulk
was so evidently a diminution of the value.
Why such an artist was selected to deface so fine a Torso, we cannot pretend to
conjecture. We read that, when the Consul Mummius, after the taking of Corinth,
was preparing to send to Rome some works of the greatest Grecian sculptors, he
told the packers that if they broke his Venus or his Apollo, he would force them
to restore the limbs which should be wanting. A head by a hewer of milestones
joined to a bosom by Praxiteles would not surprise or shock us more than this
supplement.
The "Memoir" contains much that is worth reading; for it contains many extracts
from the compositions of Sir James Mackintosh. But when we pass from what the
biographer has done with his scissors to what he has done with his pen, we can
find nothing to praise in his work. Whatever may have been the intention with
which he wrote, the tendency of his narrative is to convey the impression that
Sir James Mackintosh, from interested motives, abandoned the doctrines of the
Vindiciae Gallicae. Had such charges appeared in their natural place, we should
leave them to their natural fate. We would not stoop to defend Sir James
Mackintosh from the attacks of fourth-rate magazines and pothouse newspapers.
But here his own fame is turned against him. A book of which not one copy would
ever have been bought but for his name in the title-page is made the vehicle of
the imputation. Under such circumstances we cannot help exclaiming, in the words
of one of the most amiable of Homer's heroes,
Nun tis enieies Patroklios deilio Mnisastho pasin gar epistato meilichos einai
Zoos eun' nun d' au Thanatos kai Moira kichanei
We have no difficulty in admitting that during the ten or twelve years which
followed the appearance of the Vindicae Gallicae, the opinions of Sir James
Mackintosh underwent some change. But did this change pass on him alone? Was it
not common? Was it not almost universal? Was there one honest friend of liberty
in Europe or in America whose ardor had not been damped, whose faith in the high
destinies of mankind had not been shaken? Was there one observer to whom the
French Revolution, or revolutions in general, appeared in exactly the same light
on the day when the Bastile fell, and on the day when the Girondists were
dragged to the scaffold, the day when the Directory shipped off their principal
opponents for Guiana, or the day when the Legislative Body was driven from its
hall at the point of the bayonet? We do not speak of light-minded and
enthusiastic people, of wits like Sheridan, or poets like Alfieri; but of the
most virtuous and intelligent practical statesmen, and of the deepest, the
calmest, the most impartial political speculators of that time. What was the
language and conduct of Lord Spencer, of Lord Fitzwilliam, or Mr. Grattan? What
is the tone of M. Dumont's Memoirs, written just at the close of the eighteenth
century? What Tory could have spoken with greater disgust or contempt of the
French Revolution and its authors? Nay, this writer, a republican, and the most
upright and zealous of republicans, has gone so far as to say that Mr. Burke's
work on the Revolution had saved Europe. The name of M. Dumont naturally
suggests that of Mr. Bentham. He, we presume, was not ratting for a place; and
what language did he hold at that time? Look at his little treatise entitled
Sophismes Anarchiques. In that treatise he says, that the atrocities of the
Revolution were the natural consequences of the absurd principles on which it
was commenced; that, while the chiefs of the constituent assembly gloried in the
thought that they were pulling down aristocracy, they never saw that their
doctrines tended to produce an evil a hundred times more formidable, anarchy;
that the theory laid down in the Declaration of the Rights of Man had, in a
great measure, produced the crimes of the Reign of Terror; that none but an
eyewitness could imagine the horrors of a state of society in which comments on
that Declaration were put forth by men with no food in their bellies, with rags
on their backs and pikes in their hands. He praises the English Parliament for
the dislike which it has always shown to abstract reasonings, and to the
affirming of general principles. In M. Dumont's preface to the Treatise on the
Principles of Legislation, a preface written under the eye of Mr. Bentham, and
published with his sanction, are the following still more remarkable
expressions: "M. Bentham est bien loin d'attacher une preference exclusive a
aucune forme de gouvernement. Il pense que la meilleure constitution pour un
peuple est celle a laquelle il est accoutume . . . Le vice fondamental des
theories sur les constitutions politiques, c'est de commencer par attaquer
celles qui existent, et d'exciter tout au moins des inquietudes et des jalousies
de pouvoir. Une telle disposition n'est point favorable au perfectionnement des
lois. La seule epoque ou l'on puisse entreprendre avec succes des grandes
reformes de legislation est celle ou les passions publiques sont calmes, et ou
le gouvernement jouit de la stabilite la plus grande. L'objet de M. Bentham, en
cherchant dans le vice des lois la cause de la plupart des maux, a ete
constamment d'eloigner le plus grand de tous, le bouleversement de l'autorite,
les revolutions de propriete et de pouvoir."
To so conservative a frame of mind had the excesses of the French Revolution
brought the most illustrious reformers of that time. And why is one person to be
singled out from among millions, and arraigned before posterity as a traitor to
his opinions only because events produced on him the effect which they produced
on a whole generation? People who, like Mr. Brothers in the last generation, and
Mr. Percival in this, have been favored with revelations from heaven, may be
quite independent of the vulgar sources of knowledge. But such poor creatures as
Mackintosh, Dumont, and Bentham, had nothing but observation and reason to guide
them; and they obeyed the guidance of observation and of reason. How is it in
physics? A traveler falls in with a berry which he has never before seen. He
tastes it, and finds it sweet and refreshing. He praises it, and resolves to
introduce it into his own country. But in a few minutes he is taken violently
sick; he is convulsed; he is at the point of death. He of course changes his
opinion, denounces this delicious food a poison, blames his own folly in tasting
it, and cautions his friends against it. After a long and violent struggle he
recovers, and finds himself much exhausted by his sufferings, but free from some
chronic complaints which had been the torment of his life. He then changes his
opinion again, and pronounces this fruit a very powerful remedy, which ought to
be employed only in extreme cases and with great caution, but which ought not to
be absolutely excluded from the Pharmacopoeia. And would it not be the height of
absurdity to call such a man fickle and inconsistent, because he had repeatedly
altered his judgment? If he had not altered his judgment, would he have been a
rational being? It was exactly the same with the French Revolution. That event
was a new phenomenon in politics. Nothing that had gone before enabled any
person to judge with certainty of the course which affairs might take. At first
the effect was the reform of great abuses; and honest men rejoiced. Then came
commotion, proscription, confiscation, bankruptcy, the assignats, the maximum,
civil war, foreign war, revolutionary tribunals, guillotinades, noyades,
fusillades. Yet a little while, and a military despotism rose out of the
confusion, and menaced the independence of every state in Europe.
And yet again a little while, and the old dynasty returned, followed by a train
of emigrants eager to restore the old abuses. We have now, we think, the whole
before us. We should therefore be justly accused of levity or insincerity if our
language concerning those events were constantly changing. It is our deliberate
opinion that the French Revolution, in spite of all its crimes and follies, was
a great blessing to mankind. But it was not only natural, but inevitable, that
those who had only seen the first act should be ignorant of the catastrophe, and
should be alternately elated and depressed as the plot went on disclosing itself
to them. A man who had held exactly the same opinion about the Revolution in
1789, in 1794, in 1804, in 1814, and in 1834, would have been either a divinely
inspired prophet, or an obstinate fool. Mackintosh was neither. He was simply a
wise and good man; and the change which passed on his mind was a change which
passed on the mind of almost every wise and good man in Europe. In fact, few of
his contemporaries changed so little. The rare moderation and calmness of his
temper preserved him alike from extravagant elation and from extravagant
despondency. He was never a Jacobin. He was never an Anti-Jacobin. His mind
oscillated undoubtedly, but the extreme points of the oscillation were not very
remote. Herein he differed greatly from some persons of distinguished talents
who entered into life at nearly the same time with him. Such persons we have
seen rushing from one wild extreme to another, out-Paining Paine,
out-Castlereaghing Castlereagh, Pantisocratists, Ultra-Tories, heretics,
persecutors, breaking the old laws against sedition, calling for new and sharper
laws against sedition, writing democratic dramas, writing Laureate odes
panegyrising Marten, panegyrising Laud, consistent in nothing but an intolerance
which in any person would be censurable, but which is altogether unpardonable in
men who, by their own confession, have had such ample experience of their own
fallibility. We readily concede to some of these persons the praise of eloquence
and poetical invention; nor are we by any means disposed, even where they have
been gainers by their conversion, to question their sincerity. It would be most
uncandid to attribute to sordid motives actions which admit of a less
discreditable explanation. We think that the conduct of these persons has been
precisely what was to be expected from men who were gifted with strong
imagination and quick sensibility, but who were neither accurate observers nor
logical reasoners. It was natural that such men should see in the victory of the
third estate of France the dawn of a new Saturnian age. It was natural that the
rage of their disappointment should be proportioned to the extravagance of their
hopes. Though the direction of their passions was altered, the violence of those
passions was the same. The force of the rebound was proportioned to the force of
the original impulse. The pendulum swung furiously to the left, because it had
been drawn too far to the right.
1 In this review, as it originally stood, the editor of the History of the
Revolution was attacked with an asperity which neither literary defects nor
speculative differences can justify, and which ought to be reserved for offences
against the laws of morality and honor. The reviewer was not actuated by any
feeling of personal malevolence: for when he wrote this paper in a distant
country, he did not know, or even guess, whom he was assailing. His only motive
was regard for the memory of an eminent man whom he loved and honored, and who
appeared to him to have been unworthily treated.
The editor is now dead; and, while living, declared that he had been
misunderstood, and that he had written in no spirit of enmity to Sir James
Mackintosh, for whom he professed the highest respect.
Many passages have therefore been softened, and some wholly omitted. The severe
censure passed on the literary execution of the "Memoir" and "Continuation"
could not be retracted without a violation of truth. But whatever could be
construed into an imputation on the moral character of the editor has been
carefully expunged.
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