ions to political history[1]. At
the head of these must be placed Bishop Burnet's 'History of His
Own Time.' Bishop Burnet had lived in confidential relations with
four Sovereigns and their Ministers, and it would be a mistake to
compare the position of Mr. Greville (who never filled any office
of a political nature, and who never lived in confidential
intercourse with the Court) with that of the bold adviser of
Charles II. and James II., and the trusted councillor of William
and Mary. Bishop Burnet finished his history of the reigns of
Charles II. and James II. about the year 1704; that of William
and Queen Anne between 1710 and 1713. In 1714 he died. The first
folio containing the earlier reigns was published by his son in
1724; the second in 1734, barely twenty years after the death of
Queen Anne. Many passages were, however, suppressed, and the text
was not restored in its integrity until the publication of the
Oxford edition in the present century.

[1] To look back as far as the Memoirs of the fifteenth
century, it may be noted that the first edition of the
Memoirs of Philippe de Comines, who had lived in the
confidential intimacy of King Louis XI. and King
Charles VIII. of France, was published in Paris in
1524, under a special privilege obtained for that
purpose. Louis XI. died in 1483, and his son Charles
VIII. in 1498. Comines himself died in 1511. These
Memoirs, therefore, were published at a time when many
of the persons mentioned in them, and most of their
immediate descendants, were still alive.

Lord Clarendon died in 1674, and the first edition of his
'History of the Rebellion and the Civil Wars' was published in
1702-4, with some alterations and omissions, which were supplied
by the publication of the complete text in 1826.

Lord Chesterfield died in 1773, and his 'Letters to his Son,' a
work abounding in keen and sarcastic observations on his
contemporaries, were published in the following year, 1774.

Sir Nathaniel Wraxall's 'Memoirs,' which contain the best account
extant of the debates at the time of the Coalition Ministry in
1783, and on the Regency Question in 1788, were published in
1815, about thirty years after those discussions.

But it is scarcely necessary to seek for remote precedents to
justify the publication of the materials of contemporary history.
Our own time has been fert