whole estate would have fallen in, agreed to accept of a lease for one and twenty years, for which the bishop would take no more than four hundred pounds fine to himself; but made it part of his agreement, that the tenant should pay ten pounds yearly rent to the minister of the parish, as a perpetual augmentation to that poor living, besides the usual reserved rent to the see. In March 1714, being the seventy-second year of His death. his age, our author was taken ill of a violent cold, which soon turned to a pleuritic fever: he was attended in it by his worthy friend and relation Dr. Cheyne, who treated him with the utmost care and skill; but finding the distemper grew to a height which seemed to baffle all remedies, he called for the assistance of sir Hans Sloane and Dr. Mead, who quickly found his case was desperate. His character was too well known to induce any one to conceal from him the danger his life was in: he bore the notice of it with that calm resignation to Providence which had always supported him under the severest trials. As he preserved his senses to the last, so he employed the precious remnant of life in continual acts of devotion, and in giving the best 725 advice to his family; of whom he took leave in a manner that shewed the utmost tenderness, accompanied with the firmest constancy of mind. And whilst he was so little sensible of the terrors of death as to embrace its approach with joy, he could not but express a concern for the grief he saw it caused in others. He died on the seventeenth day of that month. It would be a presumption in me to attempt the drawing his character, when it has been done by so His character, by the marquis of Halifax. elegant a hand as that of the late marquis of Halifax: as this beautiful piece, I believe, has never been made public, the reader will pardon my inserting it here. 66 "Dr. Burnet " is, like all men who are above the ordinary level, seldom spoke of in a mean; he must "either be railed at or admired: he has a swiftness " of imagination that no other man comes up to; "and as our nature hardly allows us to have enough "of any thing without having too much, he cannot "at all times so hold in his thoughts, but that at "some time they may run away with him; as it is "hard for a vessel that is brim-full, when in motion, "not to run over; and therefore the variety of mat"ter that he ever carries about him, may throw "out more than an unkind critic would allow of. "His first thoughts may sometimes require more di 66 66 gestion, not from a defect in his judgment, but "from the abundance of his fancy, which furnishes "too fast for him. His friends love him too well to see small faults; or, if they do, think that his greater talents give him a privilege of straying "from the strict rules of caution, and exempt him "from the ordinary rules of censure. He produces 66 so fast, that what is well in his writings calls for "admiration, and what is incorrect deserves an ex"cuse; he may in some things require grains of al"lowance, which those only can deny him, who are "unknown or unjust to him. He is not quicker in u The copy from which this is printed, was taken from one given to the bishop, in the marquis of Halifax's own hand writing, which was in the editor's hands, but is at present mislaid. AUTHOR, 66 66 66 discerning other men's faults than he is in forgiving them; so ready, or rather glad, to acknowledge his own, that from blemishes they become ❝ornaments. All the repeated provocations of his "indecent adversaries have had no other effect, than "the setting his good-nature in so much a better light, since his anger never yet went farther than "to pity them. That heat which in most other men "raises sharpness and satire, in him glows into "warmth for his friends, and compassion for those "in want and misery. As dull men have quick eyes 726 "in discerning the smaller faults of those that na"ture has made superior to them, they do not miss "one blot he makes; and being beholden only to "their barrenness for their discretion, they fall upon "the errors which arise out of his abundance; and by a mistake, into which their malice betrays "them, they think that by finding a mote in his eye, they hide the beams that are in their own. 66 66 His quickness makes writing so easy a thing to "him, that his spirits are neither wasted nor soured "by it: the soil is not forced, every thing grows "and brings forth without pangs; which distin 66 guishes as much what he does from that which "smells of the lamp, as a good palate will discern "between fruit which comes from a rich mould, "and that which tastes of the uncleanly pains that "have been bestowed upon it. He makes many "enemies, by setting an ill-natured example of living, which they are not inclined to follow. His “indifference for preferment, his contempt not only "of splendour, but of all unnecessary plenty, his degrading himself into the lowest and most painful "duties of his calling, are such unprelatical quali 66 66 65 66 "ties, that, let him be never so orthodox in other things, in these he must be a dissenter. Virtues "of such a stamp are so many heresies in the opinion of those divines who have softened the primitive injunctions, so as to make them suit bet"ter with the present frailty of mankind. No won"der then, if they are angry, since it is in their own "defence; or that from a principle of self-preserva"tion they should endeavour to suppress a man, "whose parts are a shame, and whose life is a scan"dal to them "." x With great submission to the editor, Mr. Thomas Burnett, if there ever were any such character of his father in the marquis of Halifax's own handwriting, it must have been wrote by the figure of irony; for it is notoriously known, that the marquis, after he sat with him in the house of lords, made it his constant diversion to turn him and all he said into ridicule; and his son, the last marquis, told me, in his private conversation he always spoke of him with the utmost contempt, as a factious, turbulent, busy man, that was most officiously meddling with what he had nothing to do, and very dangerous to put any confidence in, having met with many scandalous breaches of trust whilst he had any conversation with him. Therefore I believe Tom must have been mistaken, and that it will appear, if ever he finds the original, to be in his father's, not the marquis's own handwriting. D. |