P. 30. Burnet. [King Charles I.] was now in great straits ... his treasure was now exhausted; his subjects were highly irritated; the ministry were all frighted, being exposed to the anger and justice of the Parliament. ...  He loved high and rough methods, but had neither the skill to conduct them, nor the height of genius to manage them.—­Swift. Not one good quality named.

P. 31. Burnet. The Queen [of Charles I.] was a woman of great vivacity in conversation, and loved all her life long to be in intrigues of all sorts.—­Swift. Not of love, I hope.

Ibid. Burnet. By the concessions that he made, especially that of the triennial Parliament, the honest and quiet part of the nation was satisfied, and thought their religion and liberties were secured:  So they broke off from those violenter propositions that occasioned the war.—­Swift. Dark, or nonsense.

Ibid. Burnet. He intended not to stand to them any longer than he lay under that force that visibly drew them from him contrary to his own inclinations.—­Swift. Sad trash.

P. 33. Burnet. The first volume of the Earl of Clarendon’s “History” gives a faithful representation of the beginnings of the troubles, though writ in favour of the court.—­Swift. Writ with the spirit of an historian, not of [a raker] into scandal.

P. 34. Burnet. Dickson, Blair, Rutherford, Baily, Cant, and the two Gillispys ... affected great sublimities in devotion:  They poured themselves out in their prayers with a loud voice, and often with many tears.  They had but an ordinary proportion of learning among them; something of Hebrew, and very little Greek:  Books of controversy with Papists, but above all with the Arminians, was the height of their study.—­Swift. Great nonsense.  Rutherford was half fool, half mad.

P. 40. Burnet, speaking of the bad effects of the Marquess of Montrose’s expedition and defeat, says:—­It alienated the Scots much from the King:  It exalted all that were enemies to peace.  Now they seemed to have some colour for all those aspersions they had cast on the King, as if he had been in a correspondence with the Irish rebels, when the worst tribe of them had been thus employed by him.—­Swift. Lord Clarendon differs from all this.

P. 41. Burnet. The Earl of Essex told me, that he had taken all the pains he could to enquire into the original of the Irish massacre, but could never see any reason to believe the King had any accession to it.—­Swift. And who but a beast ever believed it?

P. 42. Burnet, arguing with the Scots concerning the propriety of the King’s death, observes:—­Drummond said, “Cromwell had plainly the better of them at their own weapon.”—­Swift. And Burnet thought as Cromwell did.

P. 46. Burnet. They [the army] will ever keep the Parliament in subjection to them, and so keep up their own authority.—­Swift. Weak.