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With highly superior qualities of mind and heart , which shine even through the clouds that his less estimable habits threw around them , he was almost proverbially arrogant and
contemptuous , grasping at every thing , and at universal and paramount dominion , in the world of literature . His knowledge was indeed wonderfully various , but not " uniformly exact . ** Among his * ' happiest effusions" no scholar will class his
comments on tShakspeare and his strictures on Neal . He accused the historian of the Puritans of Ci false facts and partial representations ; " but he foiled in making good the charge , and has injured his own reputation by the blows that he directed against a writer far more judicious than himself .
Had Neal lived to witness the publication of Warburton ' s str ictures on him , it is probable that he would have replied to this prelate with the same ability and success with which he vindicated his History against attacks froin other quarters . Neal did not
claim an exemption from the infirmities of our common nature : yet his characteristic soundness of judgment usually preserved him from error , in his estimates of men and of events ; while his deeply-rooted sense of religious obligation saved him from
designed misrepresentation . The memory of so excellent an individual , may well be cherished by descendants ( and such exist ) whose kindred qualities of soul enable them to appreciate the value of their ancestry , and who , on the other hand , would account it a
matter of dishonour to spring from an individual that could knowingly falsify the facts of history . While I was employed in the examination of Warburton ' s strictures on the historian of the Puritans , proofs of the calm and mild and
candid good sense of the late Editor of Neat ' s work , constantly presented themselves to my eyes , and set before me the image of a man of whom I have peculiar reason to think and speak with affectionate and grateful esteem . Dr . Touimin ' s notes on his
author , are a fine transcript of his own mind : copies of his edition of the History cannot , I learn , be easily procured ; and a republicatioa of it is , in every view , desirable .
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There are some individuals whose amiable manners in private life form a marked contrast with that blind and furious spirit of party , which , on certain subjects , distinguishes them as writers . This , I grieve to say , is the
the case of Dr . Southey , who ventures to style Neal ( the Quarterly Reviewer had used nearly the same terms ) the most prejudiced and dishonest of all historians , " and who , it is evident , has not investigated that document in Neal ' s work with a specific reference to which the accusation has been
alleged . * If the Poet Laureate be really a lover of truth , he will , in future , be more obedient to the first dictates of justice , nor wantonly offend the feelings of the living by thus calumniating the memory of the dead .
JOHN KENTISH . P . S . As strong presumptive evidence of Mr . NeaPs equal and impartial justice , in the composition of his History of the Puritans , I should
add , that he did not wholly escape censure from Nonconformists themselves . There now lies upon my table " A [ printed ] Letter to Mr . Sn 1 , occasioned by some injurious Reflections in the Fourth Volume of Mr .
Neal ' s History of the Puritans : wherein our present Liberty is opposed to the Persecutions of former Times , By a Protestant Dissenter . " It is written apparently by some descendant of Richard Cromwell , and consists , for the most part , of a vindication of his character , and of that of other
branches and friends of the family . Whether Mr . Neal took any notice of this pamphlet , does not appear . Its date is 1739—the bookseller , " Mesach Steen , [ not Steers , as the name is erroneously printed in Nichols' Literary Anecdotes , &c ., f ] iu the Inner Ternple Lane . This Mr . Steen published Owen ' s History of Serpents ;
* Neal ' s Hist . [ Toulmin ] , and Book of the Church , VoJ . II . ( 1 st ed . ) p . 309 . It is not true , as Dr . Southey affirms it to be , that the inquiries of the commissioners are twice limited to lawful ways and
means . I have shewn the contrary . The limitation regards punishment , not examination ; with the reserve indeed , see paragraph the fifth , of offences cognizable by the ecclesiastical laws , t Vol . IX . i ) , 621 ,
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602 Examination of Warburton * &c .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1825, page 602, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2541/page/26/
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