Memoirs of a Cavalier - A Military Journal of the Wars in Germany, and the Wars in England. - From the Year 1632 to the Year 1648. by Daniel Defoe
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page 11 of 338 (03%)
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soldiers) have often complained of.
In a word, this work is a confutation of many errors in all the writers upon the subject of our wars in England, and even in that extraordinary history written by the Earl of Clarendon; but the editors were so just that when, near twenty years ago, a person who had written a whole volume in folio, by way of answer to and confutation of Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion," would have borrowed the clauses in this account, which clash with that history, and confront it,--we say the editors were so just as to refuse them. There can be nothing objected against the general credit of this work, seeing its truth is established upon universal history; and almost all the facts, especially those of moment, are confirmed for their general part by all the writers of those times. If they are here embellished with particulars, which are nowhere else to be found, that is the beauty we boast of; and that it is that much recommend this work to all the men of sense and judgment that read it. The only objection we find possible to make against this work is, that it is not carried on farther, or, as we may say finished, with the finishing the war of the time; and this we complain of also. But then we complain of it as a misfortune to the world, not as a fault in the author; for how do we know but that this author might carry it on, and have another part finished which might not fall into the same hands, or may still remain with some of his family, and which they cannot indeed publish, to make it seem anything perfect, for want of the other parts which we have, and which we have now made public? Nor is it very improbable but that if any such farther part is in being, the publishing these two parts may occasion the proprietors of the third |
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