went over
against them, are admirable; and his censure of their conduct, who
pushed the king upon the quarrel, and then would not let him fight, is
no more than what many of the king's friends (though less knowing as
soldiers) have often complained of.

In a word, this work is a confutation of many errors in all the
writers upon the subject of our wars in England, and even in that
extraordinary history written by the Earl of Clarendon; but the
editors were so just that when, near twenty years ago, a person
who had written a whole volume in folio, by way of answer to and
confutation of Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion," would have
borrowed the clauses in this account, which clash with that history,
and confront it,--we say the editors were so just as to refuse them.

There can be nothing objected against the general credit of this work,
seeing its truth is established upon universal history; and almost all
the facts, especially those of moment, are confirmed for their general
part by all the writers of those times. If they are here embellished
with particulars, which are nowhere else to be found, that is the
beauty we boast of; and that it is that much recommend this work to
all the men of sense and judgment that read it.

The only objection we find possible to make against this work is, that
it is not carried on farther, or, as we may say finished, with the
finishing the war of the time; and this we complain of also. But then
we complain of it as a misfortune to the world, not as a fault in the
author; for how do we know but that this author might carry it on, and
have another part finished which might not fall into the same hands,
or may still remain with some of his family, and which they cannot
indeed publish, to make it seem anything perfect, for want of the
other parts which we have, and which we have now made public? Nor is
it very improbable but that if any such farther part is in being, the
publishing these two parts may occasion the proprietors of the third
to let the world see it, and that by such a discovery the name of the
person may also come to be known, which would, no doubt, be a great
satisfaction to the reader as well as us.

This, however, must be said, that if the same author should have
written another part of this work, and carried it on to the end of
those times, yet as the residue of those melancholy days, to the
Restoration, were filled with the intrigues of government, the
political m