ority to
such an aspersion of his old and faithful friend and patron, further
than that he had related the fact, and that he and the minister differed
in opinion as to the prudence of the measure recommended. How laxly too
the story is narrated! The exact date of the recommendation by Father
Paul and the divines should have been given;--then the date of the
public annunciation of the reconciliation between the Pope and Venetian
Republic; and lastly the day on which Wotton did present the book;--for
even this Burnet leaves uncertain.

P. 26.

It is true he never returned and changed his religion himself, but his
son came from Spain into Ireland, when Bedell was promoted to the
Bishopric of Kilmore there, and told him, that his father commanded
him to thank him for the pains he was at in writing it. He said, it
was almost always lying open before him, and that he had heard him
say, "He was resolved to save one." And it seems he instructed his son
in the true religion, for he declared himself a Protestant on his
coming over.

Southey has given me a bad character of this son of the unhappy convert
to the Romish Church. He became, it seems, a spy on the Roman Catholics,
availing himself of his father's character among them, a crime which
would indeed render his testimony null and more than null; it would be a
presumption of the contrary. It is clear from his letters to Bedell that
the convert was a very weak man. I owe to him, however, a complete
confirmation of my old persuasion concerning Bishop Hall, whom from my
first perusal of his works I have always considered as one of the blots
(alas! there are too many) of the biography of the Church of England; a
self-conceited, coarse-minded, persecuting, vulgar priest, and (by way
of 'anti-climax') one of the first corrupters of and epigrammatizers of
our English prose style. It is not true, that Sir Thomas Brown was the
prototype of Dr. Johnson, who imitated him only as far as Sir T. B.
resembles the majority of his predecessors; that is, in the pedantic
preference of Latin derivations to Saxon words of the very same force.
In the balance and construction of his periods Dr. Johnson has followed
Hall, as any intelligent reader will discover by an attentive comparison.

P. 158.

Yea, will some man say, "But that which marreth all is the opinion of
merit and satisfaction." Indeed that is the School doctrine, but the
conscience enlightened to know it