the following passage:--"It is a more important
service to the public to contribute _something not before known_ to the
general fund of history, than to give new form and colour to what we are
already possessed of, by superadding refinement and ornament, which too
often tend _to disguise the real state of the facts_; a fault not to be
atoned for by the pomp of _style_, or even the fine _eloquence_ of the
historian." This was an oblique stroke aimed at Robertson, to whom Birch
had generously opened the stores of history, for the Scotch historian
had needed all his charity; but Robertson's attractive inventions and
highly-finished composition seduce the public taste; and we may forgive
the latent spark of envy in the honest feelings of the man, who was
profoundly skilled in delving in the native beds of ore, but not in
fashioning it; and whose own neglected historical works, constructed on
the true principles of secret history, we may often turn over to correct
the erroneous, the prejudiced, and the artful accounts of those who have
covered their faults by "the pomp of style, and the eloquence of the
historian."

The large manuscript collections of original documents, from whence may
be drawn what I have called _positive secret history_, are, as I
observed, comparatively of modern existence. Formerly they were widely
dispersed in private hands; and the nature of such sources of historic
discovery but rarely occurred to our writers. Even had they sought them,
their access must have been partial and accidental. Lord Hardwicke has
observed, that there are still many untouched manuscript collections
within these kingdoms, which, through the ignorance or inattention of
their owners, are condemned to dust and obscurity; but how valuable and
essential they may be to the interests of authentic history and of
sacred truth, cannot be more strikingly demonstrated than in the recent
publications of the Marlborough and the Shrewsbury Papers by Archdeacon
Coxe.[254] The editor was fully authorised to observe, "It is singular
that those transactions should either have been passed over in silence,
or imperfectly represented by most of our national historians." Our
modern history would have been a mere political romance, without the
astonishing picture of William and his ministers, exhibited in those
unquestionable documents. Burnet was among the first of our modern
historians who showed the world the preciousness of such materials, in
h