ut going farther, therefore, into the
book, it appears to me that the Scots parliament had a right to consider it
written in a bad spirit, and to pacify the people by condemning it.

Defoe, in his _History of the Union_ (G. Chalmers' edition, London, 1786),
says:

"One Dr. Drake writes a preface to an abridgment of the _Scots
History_, wherein, speaking something reflecting upon the freedom and
independence of Scotland, the Scots parliament caused it to be burned
by the hangman in Edinburgh."

In his _Northern Memoirs_, 1715, Oldmixon observes:

"They (the Jacobites) therefore put Dr. Drake, author of the _High
Church Memorials_, upon publishing an antiquated Scotch history, on
purpose to vilify the whole nation in the preface, and create more ill
blood. This had the desired effect. The Scots parliament highly
resented the affront, and ordered it to be burnt by the common hangman
at Edinburgh."

D'Israeli, in his _Calamities of Authors_, has the following interesting
notice of Drake:

"I must add one more striking example of a political author in the case
of Dr. James Drake, a man of genius and an excellent writer. He
resigned an honorable profession, that of medicine, to adopt a very
contrary one, that of becoming an author by profession for a party. As
a Tory writer he dared every extremity of the law, while he evaded it
by every subtlety of artifice; he sent a masked lady with his MSS. to
the printer, who was never discovered; and was once saved by a flaw in
the indictment, from the simple change of an _r_ for a _t_, or _nor_
for _not_, one of those shameful evasions by which the law, to its
perpetual disgrace, so often protects the criminal from punishment. Dr.
Drake had the honor of hearing himself censured from the throne, of
being imprisoned, of seeing his _Memorials of the Church of England_
burned at (the Royal Exchange) London, and his _Hist. Angl. Scot._ at
Edinburgh. Having enlisted himself in the pay of the booksellers, among
other works, I suspect, he condescended to practise some literary
impositions; for he has reprinted Father Parsons famous libel against
the Earl of Leicester, under the title of _Secret Memoirs of Robert
Dudley, E. of L._, 1706, with a preface pretending it was printed from
an old MS."

The same instructive writer adds:

"Drake was a lover of literature; he l