human
No person has contradicted Burnet more frequently, or with more asperity, than Dartmouth. Yet Dartmouth wrote, 'I do not think he designedly published anything he believed to be false.' At a later period, Dartmouth, provoked by some remarks on himself in the second volume of the Bishop's history, retracted this praise; but to such a retraction little importance can be attached. Even Swift has the justice to say, 'After all he was a man of generosity and good nature.'
gpt
It is usual to censure Burnet as a singularly inaccurate historian; but I believe the charge to be altogether unjust. He appears to be singularly inaccurate only because his narrative has been subjected to a scrutiny singularly severe and unfriendly. If any Whig thought it worth while to subject Reresby's _Memoirs_, North's _Examen_, Mulgrave's _Account of the Revolution_, or the _Life of James the Second_, edited by Clarke, to a similar scrutiny, it would soon appear that Burnet was far indeed from being the most inexact writer of his time.