Bannatyne Club > Historie and life of King James the Sext

XXI
436; Memoirs, 60, 61.] And thus, in the rash dexterity of a
coxcomb, he appears to have corrected a language that was equal
to his own ; to have reformed a method wliich was better than his
own ; and, under pretence of doing both, to have luxuriated in
alterations, to have suppressed notices, to have inserted circum-
stances, and to have unwittingly encroached upon the very con-
fines of imposition and forgery.
" All serves to hurt the reputation of these Memoirs. Amidst
so many evidences of corruption, we hardly know where to find
the text in its original integrity. Our references to it at present,
therefore, except where we have the original preserved by Keith,
must be made with a dubiousness of confidence ; and I notice the
necessity for this, in order to be faithful to the truth ; and in
hopes of inducing some gentleman of Edinburgh, to procure either
Crawfurd's MS. or Keith's copy of it, and to give it unsophistica-
ted to the world."
^Vith these impressions on his mind, it cannot but be matter of
surprise that Mr Whitaker, in the course of his elaborate Vindi-
cation, should have ventured to rely so frequently on the evidence
of a work, which, however anxious he might be to regard it as the
testimony of a contemporaneous writer, his acuteness had suffi-
ciently enabled him to expose as the coiTupted and imfaithful
composition of a modern partizan. But in this respect, his acute-
ness and his prudence were over-matched by his ardent and chi-