Another good reason for such a publication, may perhaps be found in the necessity of checking the assumption of official men, and exciting in the nation a salutary suspicion of them. It is not seldom seen, with what an air of consequence the general claims of a minor public functionary shall be put forth; but he is apt to take a tone peculiarly authoritative and oracular, whenever he is pleased to pronounce upon questions demanding the kind of knowledge and of judgement, supposed to be acquired among exact details and minute records. He assumes, as a thing admitting no dispute, that, in his official capacity, he is the perfection of accuracy; and, on the strength of this assumption, confidently claims credit for the same virtue, in any extra-official application of his knowledge. And there is among mankind, an extreme willingness to yield to such men this credit for accuracy both in matters within their office, and in matters without it. This facility of confiding arises partly from indolence, partly from want of the means of judging, and partly from that reverence of government, through all its branches, which has always been one of the most prominent features of the human character. Now if it be really true, as many shrewd observers of human nature, and of men in place, have asserted, that there is, after all, no security against many and great errors in the arrangements, reckonings, and statements, of these men, without the constant interference of a suspicious vigilance on the part of those whose affairs they administer,-it may be very useful, as tending both to recover the people from this blind confidence, and to check the assurance that demands it, that, when any one of these official men ventures out from the shaded and the guarded sanctuary of state, where he is but very imperfectly within reach of scrutiny, and takes a ground where he can be subjected to a full and public examination,-it may be very useful for some keen inquisitor to seize upon him, and put to a severe test this public, ostentatious, and challenging display of his virtue of exquisite accuracy; which he himself can not disown to be a very fair specimen of his general accuracy, and an illustration of his official accuracy, when he professes that it is from the official cultivation of this virtue, that so much of it comes to appear in the extra-official performance.

We will name only one more of the good effects likely to attend such a work, and making'it desirable. It may serve as a warning that no man, in or out of office, who is not very sure he is a superior man to Mr. Rose, should write, (or at least should publish if he has written,) a polemical quarto in the spare hours of a very few weeks; or that, at any rate, if he is under the compulsion of fate to perform such an operation within such a time, it should not be against another book of

little more than the same bulk, on which one of the strongest minds in the world has expended about the same number of years, that the said assailant can afford weeks.—Or if any man should ever again be under the power and malice of fate even to this whole melancholy extent, the warning may, at the very . least of all, be of service so far as to save him from that last worst spite of his evil fortune, that would make him go through this task with an air of most honest and lively self-congratulation, on performing a victorious exploit !

These, we should think, will be admitted to be very good and sober reasons (and others might be added) why the book should come before the public, if it be what it professes to be With this admission the reader must begin the perusal ;—and by the time he comes to the conclusion, it may be difficult for him to refuse admitting also, that the book does fulfil, with extraordinary fidelity, the promise or threat in the title. He will probably be of opinion, that he never witnessed an attack more cool, comprehensive, and effectual, nor a defeat involving a more hopeless and complete humiliation;-complete, unless it be an alleviating circumstance that it will not be insulted with pity. Mr. Rose came forward a good deal in the manner of a person called upon by duty to stop the progress of a public mischief, and remove a public nuisance. The leisure fragments of a very few weeks were all that could be spared for the purpose from his valuable time; but quite enough for the easy task of deposing Mr. Fox from the dignified rank of historian, and proving his deeply pondered judgments, and carefully conducted narration, to be little better than a series of mis-statements in point of fact, applied to party purposes by prejudiced and erroneous comments. The Right Hon. Censor, in addition to that disinterested rectitude of judgement, the want of which in Mr. Fox is condescendingly apologized for, while condemned, holds himself forth as possessing a grand advantage, in having been accustomed to official accuracy;'-and also he has the privilege of perusing sundry va Juable M.S. documents. One inducement to his interference, indeed, is the wish to rescue the character of a friend's ancestor from misrepresentation; but he also entertains the more ambitious hope, and meritorious purpose, of rendering service to his country.' The achievement is finished. The performer has constructed for himself a proud station among the ruined labours of Mr. Fox. He receives there, and probably deems himself not much the worse for, several transient attacks. But, all this while, there is a sober indefatigable engineer, of the name of Heywood, who has silently carried a mine under this triumphal structure, and lodged his gunpowder: and while the redoubted occupant is regaling himself

he

with the self-applause, and all the rich rewards of this and so many other services to his country,' up in a moment goes into the air, frisking among the fragments of his pile, the companions of his jaculation.-We think no one who has a right notion of the virtue and duty of modesty in self-estimation, and considers the arrogance and contemptuous temerity of this proceeding, will feel any compassion at the catastrophe.

It will be enough to notice a few of the more remarkable points in this long course of refutation; in which every animadversion and contradiction, so confidently ventured by Mr. Rose, is distinctly brought to the test, and the critical cognizance is extended even to some of those smaller blunders and inaccuracies, which would not have been worth fixing on in a work which had not rested its pretensions on the superlative accuracy of the writer, and which had not deserved, by the arrogant manner of its hostility, to be exposed all round in the completeness of its character. There is, however, no great degree of asperity in any part of the Vindication, notwithstanding that the author enjoyed the personal friendship of Mr. Fox. He seems to have felt too certain of the effect of his evidence and his arguments, to need to call his temper to his assistance.

In a very long preface, he disposes of some matters touch. ing the general qualifications of the two writers. He could not fail to be struck with the charity and innocence of the Right Hon. Observer's excuse for Mr. Fox's inaccurate statements, and erroneous reflections- that with perfect rectitude and impartiality of intention,a man in a particular political situation can hardly form impartial opinions, because he breathes an atmosphere of party, with which the constitution and temperament of his own mind can hardly fail to be affected.' As this judicious remark was doubtless uttered to be reflected back on his own self-complacency, Mr. Rose will have the benefit of possessing, in the Serjeant's book, something analogous, in effect, to those remarkable walls and rocks, that are said to echo a man's words to him ten or twenty times. The reflection is sure to be repeated to him, with the most gracious and flattering effect, whenever Mr. Fox has on another, and still another instance, been proved to be equally accurate in his facts, and impartial in his observations. It serves as an interlude, by the enchanting melodies of which Mr. Heywood soothes and dulcifies his man when he has in one instance shewn him he has written just in the style of a partizan and placeman, and is going to do it in another. And sometimes in addition, he warbles him a finale of surpassing sweetness ;-as when it is observed, that the subordinate men of a party are more completely under the perverting influence in question than

even the chiefs, since they are attached not only to the party by common principle, but to its leader by the still stronger ties of personal interest, gratitude, and affection.' To this perverting influence, together with that extreme inattention, either learnt, or at least not corrected, in official employment, the Vindicator is willing, on second thoughts, to ascribe the errors of Mr. Rose's book,-for at first he could not help sus specting a less pardonable cause.

• With the feelings described in the last paragraph,' (feelings acquired from an intimate acquaintance with the ingenuousness and candour of Mr. Fox's character I certainly perused Mr. Rose's work with a considerable degree of indignation I found there, quotations not correct, arguments not logical, deductions not justified by the premises, observations not founded, and in short, as I then thought, such unfair advantage taken of the unfinished state of Mr. Fox's fragment, as to justify the imputation of an unworthy attempt to detract unjustly from the reputation of its author. Upon further investigation, however, I have been induced to alter my opinion; for discovering that the same want of accuracy, both in fact and argument, and the same culpable carelessness, attend those parts of the work which have no reference whatever to Mr. Fox, I no longer impute to its author any improper motives. In the ensuing pages, therefore, it will be taken for granted, upon every occasion, that he has done his best to be correct, and even candid and impartial; and that whatever errors may be detected, have arisen from any other source than a wilful perversion of the heart.'-p. xxxviii.

The reader will see a little oversight in this paragraph: much culpable carelessness'-and-having on every occasion 'done his best to be correct'-being things quite incompatible as attributed to the same man. And it is fair to notice any such an inadvertency in the Serjeant's work, because the unfortunate subject of his critical discipline is not suffered to commit with impunity even such a blunder as this.

Among the first exemplifications of the excessive carelessness of that writer, are two quotations formally given in his Introduction as from the work of Mr. Fox-while the passages so quoted for animadversion do not exist in that work; the one being a sentence contained in a private letter of Mr. Fox, inserted in Lord Holland's preface, and the other a sentence written by Lord Holland himself. And these instances of accuracy occur in that very same Introduction in which the writer, aware, he says, of the imputations his work would be liable to, on account of his political connexions, professes to be certain that he has been more scrupulous both of his authorities and his own opinions than he might have been in commenting on the work of any other author.' Mr. Heywood then remarks on the dubious explanation of the Right Hon. Observer's motives for writing; and seems to have some diffi

culty in maintaining his gravity at the highly sentimental and pathetic emotions and professions relative to the memory of Sir Patrick Hume,-who had been dead 85 years, and who, during his own very protracted life, had not deemed it necessary, or, as the Serjeant is rather inclined to surmise, had feared it would be unavailing to his justification, to publish the Narrative which Mr. Rose was now in such earnest haste to produce in vindication of Sir Patrick against a charge-incorrectly represented as made by Mr. Fox, but which, whoever had made it, Mr. Heywood maintains-that Sir Patrick's own Narrative, thus produced in his exculpation, proves to be just.-Spirited notice is taken of the undervaluing terms in which Mr. Rose very confidently delivers himself, respecting the worth and utility of the whole of the Historical Work, and the trifling result of its author's researches for new information.

Mr. Rose having made an absolutely rectangular deviation from his road to applaud Vertot, as an historian, the Serjeant cuts across and meets him with one of the most pleasant anecdotes in literary history.

This recommendation of Mr. Vertot by a person accustomed to offi. cial accuracy is rather extraordinary; for it is a well-known anecdote, that when his History of Malta was preparing for the press, notes of the transactions at the siege, taken by an eye-witness, being sent to him, he declined to use them, saying, " Mon siege est fait."

6

The beginning of the first section asserts, argumentatively, the just discrimination with which Mr. Fox divides the periods of our history at which the mind is disposed to pause for reflection. Among the marks, or effects, of national improvement, in the period comprized between 1588 and 1640, the historian has noted the additional value that came to be set on a seat in the House of Commons.' The Observer has taken the word 'value' here to mean the money it would bring;' and to prove that the value set on the thing, in the period in question, was pitifully low, has cited an instance of five pounds being given for a seat in 1571. Mr. Heywood observes that Mr. Fox certainly was not thinking of a market-price of a thing that cannot legally be sold, but of the more honourable estimation in which the House was beginning to be held; but that even if he had meant a pecuniary price, the low rate of the article in 1571, could be no proof it might not have come to bear a very good price by, or before, the end of the period, in 1640. The point, however, in which this argument bears the special characteristic of its author is, that, whereas the sum stated is five pounds, and the record cited is the fifth volume of the Journals, the sum was actually four pounds, and the record is in the first volume.