Yet it would seem as if a candid and impartial historian could not well be greatly in doubt in the matter.

His reputation was helped by several clever if somewhat wrong-headed publications, including a satirical pamphlet entitled The Theology and Philosophy of Cicero's Somnium Scipionis (1751), a defence of the Hutchinsonians in A Fair, Candid and Impartial State of the Case between Sir Isaac Newton and Mr Hutchinson (1753), and critiques upon William Law (1758) and Benjamin Kennicott (1760).

The ordinary Egyptian is not self-reliant or energetic by nature, and, like most Eastern people, finds it difficult to be impartial where duty and family or other personal relations are in the balance.

The solecism in the Preface to the Adonais, " My known repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his earlier compositions were modelled prove at least that I am an impartial judge," would probably have been corrected by the poet if his attention had been called to it; but the two first ones, with others, cannot be thus regarded.

It was his cool treatment of such sanctified names as Charles, Cranmer and Laud that provoked the indignation of Southey and the Quarterly, who forgot that the same impartial measure was extended to statesmen on the other side.