74.

Burnet’s History of His Own Time.  Vol. i. (pp. 186-91).

This passage brings together ten of the great divines of the century.  It would be easy, as critics have shown, to name as many others, such as Jeremy Taylor, Sanderson, Sheldon, Cosin, Pearson, and South.  But Burnet is mainly concerned with the men who in his opinion had the greatest influence during the time of which he is writing, and who were known to him personally.  By way of introduction he speaks of the Cambridge Platonists under whom his great contemporaries had been formed.  Incidentally he expresses his views on Hobbes’s Leviathan, and he concludes with a valuable account of the reform in preaching.  The passage as a whole is an excellent specimen of Burnet’s method and style.

Page 246, ll. 6, 7.  John Owen (1616-83), made Dean of Christ Church by Cromwell in 1651, Vice-Chancellor of the University, 1652-8, deprived of the Deanery, 1659.  Thomas Goodwin (1600-80), President of Magdalen College, 1650-60, likewise one of the Commission of Visitors to the University appointed by the Parliament.  Both were Independents.  See H.L.  Thompson, Christ Church (College Histories), 1900, pp. 69, 70; and H.A.  Wilson, Magdalen College, 1899, pp. 172-4.

Page 248, l. 5.  Simon Episcopius, or Bischop (1583-1643), Dutch theologian and follower of Arminius:  see p. 101, l. 3, note.

Page 249, l. 12. Irenicum. A Weapon-Salve for the Churches Wounds, published 1661.

Page 252, l. 10.  The following sentence is in the original manuscript (folio 98) before ‘But I owed’:  ’and if I have arrived at any faculty of writing clear and correctly, I owe that entirely to them:  for as they joined with Wilkins in that Noble tho despised attempt at an Universall Character, and a Philosophicall Language, they took great pains to observe all the common errours of language in generall, and of ours in particular:  and in the drawing the tables for that work, which was Lloyds province, he had looked further into a naturall purity and simplicity of stile, than any man I ever knew:  into all which he led me, and so helpt me to any measure of exactnes of writing, which may be thought to belong to me.’  The sentence is deleted in the transcript that was sent to the printer; but whether it was deleted by Burnet himself, or by the editor, is uncertain.  There are other minor alterations in the same page of the transcript (p. 140).

The book referred to in the omitted passage is Wilkins’s Essay Towards a Real Character And a Philosophical Language, presented to the Royal Society and published in 1668.  Lloyd’s ’continual assistance’ is acknowledged in the ‘Epistle to the Reader’.

75.

Burnet’s History of His Own Time.  Vol. i. (pp. 168-70.)

Page 253, l. 23.  He served under Turenne in four campaigns, 1652-5, latterly as Lieutenant-General.  His own account of these campaigns has fortunately been preserved.  It is a portion of the journal to which Burnet refers.  See The Life of James the Second King of England, etc., collected out of memoirs writ of his own hand....  Published from the original Stuart manuscripts in Carlton-House, edited by James Stanier Clarke, 2 vols, 1816.