BORLASE. 123 Aspersions cast upon both." And lastly, his most exten- sive and celebrated work, "The History of the execrable Irish Rebellion, traced from many preceding Acts to the Grand Eruption, October 23, 1641; and thence pursued to the Act of Settlement 1679." Wood informs us that much of this is taken from “The Irish Rebellion ; or, the History of the beginning and first Progress of the General Rebellien raised within the Kingdom of Ireland, October, 28, 1641," which was written by Sir John Temple, master of the rolls, and one of his majesty's privy council in Ireland, and father of the celebrated Sir William Temple The following observations on this work are by Dr. Nalson, who says, "That besides the hearness of his rela- tion to one of the lords justices, and his being avowedly a favouret of the faction, men, and actions of those times, he is an author of such strange inconsistency, that his book is rather a paradox than a history. And it must needs be so; for I know not by what aecident the copy of a MS. written by the Earl of Clarendon, happening to fall into his hands, he has very unartfully blended it with his own rough and unpolished heap of matter ; so that his book looks like a curious embroidery, sowed with coarse thread upon a piece of sackeloth. And truly had he no other crime than that of a plagiary, it is such a sort of theft to steal the child of another's brain, that may well render him suspected not to be overstocked with honesty and justice, so necessary to the reputation of an unblemish- ed historian; but it is far more unpardonable to castrate the lawful issue of another man's pen, and thereby disable it from propagating truth, and to teach it to speak a lan- guage which the parent never intended. And yet this is the exact case of Dr. Borlase's history, in which he has taken great pains to expunge some, and alter many pas- sages, which he thought were too poignant against his favourites, or spoke too much in vindication of his late majesty and his ministers!"
