a history of the Stuarts in folio, and a Critical
History of England, in two volumes octavo. The former of these
pieces was undertaken to blacken the family of the Stuarts. The most
impartial writers and candid critics, on both sides, have held this
work in contempt, for in every page there breathes a malevolent
spirit, a disposition to rail and calumniate: So far from observing
that neutrality and dispassionate evenness of temper, which should
be carefully attended to by every historian, he suffers himself to
be transported with anger: He reviles, wrests particular passages and
frequently draws forced conclusions. A history written in this spirit
has no great claim to a reader's faith. The reigns of the Stuarts
in England were no doubt chequer'd with many evils; and yet it is
certainly true, that a man who can fit deliberately down to search
for errors only, must have a strong propension to calumny, or at least
take delight in triumphing over the weakness of his fellow creatures,
which is surely no indication of a good heart.

Mr. Oldmixon, being employ'd by bishop Kennet, in publishing the
Historians in his collection, he perverted Daniel's Chronicle in
numberless places. Yet this very man, in the preface to the first of
these, advanced a particular fact, to charge three eminent persons
of interpolating the lord Clarendon's History, which fact has been
disproved by the bishop of Rochester, Dr. Atterbury, then the only
survivor of them; and the particular part he pretended to be falsifed
produced since, after almost ninety years, in that noble author's own
hand.

He was all his life a virulent Party-Writer, and received his reward
in a small part in the revenue at Liverpool, where he died in an
advanced age, but in what year we cannot learn.

Mr. Oldmixon, besides the works we have mentioned, was author of a
volume of Poems, published in 1714.

The Life of Arthur Maynwaring, Esq; prefixed to the works of that
author, by Mr. Oldmixon.

England's Historical Epistles (Drayton's revived).

The Life of queen Anne.

[Footnote A: See Jacob's Lives of the Poets, p. 197.]

* * * * *

LEONARD WELSTED, Esq;

This gentleman was descended from a very good family in
Leicestershire, and received the rudiments of his education in
Westminster school. We are informed by major Cleland, author of a
Panegyric on Mr. Pope, prefixed to the Dunciad, that he was a member
of both the univer