by contending factions.  The writers, who have undertaken to review those unhappy times, have rather struggled to defend a party, to which they may have been swayed by education or interest, than, by stripping themselves of all partiality, to dive to the bottom of contentions in search of truth.  The heats of the Civil War produced such animosities, that the fervour which then prevailed, communicated itself to posterity, and, though at the distance of a hundred years, has not yet subsided.  It will be no wonder then if Mr. Banks’s Review is not found altogether impartial.  He has, in many cases, very successfully defended Cromwell; he has yielded his conduct, in others, to the just censure of the world.  But were a Whig and a Tory to read this book, the former would pronounce him a champion for liberty, and the latter would declare him a subverter of truth, an enemy to monarchy, and a friend to that chaos which Oliver introduced.

Mr. Banks, by his early principles, was, no doubt, biassed to the Whig interest, and, perhaps, it may be true, that in tracing the actions of Cromwell, he may have dwelt with a kind of increasing pleasure on the bright side of his character, and but slightly hinted at those facts on which the other party fasten, when they mean to traduce him as a parricide and an usurper.  But supposing the allegation to be true, Mr. Banks, in this particular, has only discovered the common failing of humanity:  prejudice and partiality being blemishes from which the mind of man, perhaps, can never be entirely purged.

Towards the latter end of Mr. Banks’s life, he was employed in writing two weekly news-papers, the Old England, and the Westminster Journals.  Those papers treated chiefly on the politics of the times, and the trade and navigation of England.  They were carried on by our author, without offence to any party, with an honest regard to the public interest, and in the same kind of spirit, that works of that sort generally are.  These papers are yet continued by other hands.

Mr. Banks had from nature very considerable abilities, and his poems deservedly hold the second rank.  They are printed in two volumes 8vo.  Besides the poems contained in these volumes, there are several other poetical pieces of his scattered in news-papers, and other periodical works to which he was an occasional contributer.  He had the talent of relating a tale humorously in verse, and his graver poems have both force of thinking, and elegance of numbers to recommend them.

Towards the spring of the year 1751 Mr. Banks, who had long been in a very indifferent state of health, visibly declined.  His disorder was of a nervous sort, which he bore with great patience, and even with a chearful resignation.  This spring proved fatal to him; he died on the 19th of April at his house at Islington, where he had lived several years in easy circumstances, by the produce of his pen, without leaving one enemy behind him.