Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 edition. Excerpt: ... WARREN HASTINGS This book seems to have been manufactured in pursuance of a contract, by which the representatives of Warren Hastings, on the one part, bound themselves to furnish papers, and Mr. Gleig, on the other part, bound himself to furnish praise. It is but just to say that the covenants on both sides have been 5 most faithfully kept; and the result is before us in the form of three big bad volumes, full of undigested correspondence and undiscerning panegyric. If it were worth while to examine this performance in detail, we could easily make a long article by merely pointing out 10 inaccurate statements, inelegant expressions, and immoral doctrines. But it would be idle to waste criticism on a bookmaker; and whatever credit Mr. Gleig may have justly earned by former works, it is as a bookmaker, and nothing more, that he now comes before us. More eminent men than Mr. Gleig have 15 written nearly as ill as he, when they have stooped to similar drudgery. It would be unjust to estimate Goldsmith by the "History of Greece," or Scott by the " Life of Napoleon." Mr. Gleig is neither a Goldsmith nor a Scott; but it would be unjust to deny that he is capable of something better than these Memoirs. 20 It would also, we hope and believe, be unjust to charge any Christian minister with the guilt of deliberately maintaining some propositions which we find in this book. It is not too much to say that Mr. Gleig has written several passages which bear the same relation to "The Prince" of Machiavelli that 25 "The Prince" of Machiavelli bears to "The Whole Duty of Man," and which would excite amazement in a den of robbers 93 or on board of a schooner of pirates. But we are willing to attribute these offenses to haste, to thoughtlessness, and to...
