Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/18

x Cicero, expressions not to be justified by truth, reason, or common sense; yet think him a most powerful orator, and a great historian.

No unprejudiced person will blame the dean, for doing all that is consistent with truth and decency to vindicate the government of the queen, and to exculpate the conduct of her ministers and her last general; all good men would rejoice at such a vindication. But, if he meant no more than this, his work would ill deserve the title of history. That he generally tells truth, and founds his most material assertions upon facts, will, I think, be found very evident. But, there is room to suspect, that while he tells no more than the truth, he does not tell the whole truth. However, he makes it very clear that the queen's allies, especially our worthy friends the Dutch, were much to blame for the now generally condemned conduct of the queen, with regard to the prosecution of the war and the bringing about the peace.

The author's drawings of characters are confessedly partial: for he tells us openly, he means not to give characters intire, but such parts of each man's particular passions, acquirements, and habits, as he was most likely to transfer into his political schemes. What writing, what sentence, what character, can stand this torture? What extreme perversion may not, let me say, does not this produce? Yet thus does he choose to treat all men, that were not favourers of the latest measures of the queen; when the best that has been said for her, shows no more than that she was blindfolded and held in leading-strings by her ministers.

He does not spare a man, confessed by all the Rh