XXII. The case is, that although none could happen to the public by it, the writer himself who should make the attempt, would be exposed to a great deal. The poor historians, scarce dare to do otherwise than disguise such truths, as are not advantageous to their countrymen. They must either flatter their own nation, or lay down the pen; for if they fail to do this, they will be branded with the epithet of being disaffected to their country. I lament most heartily the lot of father Mariana; this very learned Jesuit, over and above possessing the other talents necessary for an historian, was exceedingly sincere and ingenuous; but this illustrious quality, which aggrandized his glory with found critics, diminished it among the vulgar of Spain; they said he had not a Spanish heart, and that his affections and his pen were inimical to his country; and as heretofore, the extreme rigour of Septimus Severus to the Romans, was attributed to his being of African extraction by his father’s side, they imputed to father Mariana, a certain kind of pique against the Spaniards, and assigned as the cause of it, I don’t know whether with truth or not, his being of French descent on the side of his mother. They would have had him relate events, not as they happened, but in such a way as should seem most pleasing to them; and by such as are fond of adulation, the man who is not a flatterer is regarded as an enemy. But the same thing which made this great man ill looked upon in Spain, gained him the highest eulogiums from the most eminent personages in Europe: the following, bestowed on him by the great Cardinal Baronius, is sufficient to establish his honour and his fame: _Father John Mariana, a scrupulous lover of the truth, an excellent pattern and sectary of virtue, a worthy professor among the society of Jesus, and a Spaniard by birth, but void of all national passion or prejudice, in a learned and elegant stile, wrote a most perfect and faithful history of Spain._ (Baron. ad ann. Christi 688.) XXIII. It is not only in Spain, that they would have their historians panegyrists, for the same thing happens in other countries. The King of England, sent for the famous Gregory Leti, to write the history of that kingdom; but he having protested he would not take pen in hand, unless he was allowed to speak the truth; the King, to encourage him to engage in the undertaking, assured him, that he should be permitted to comply with this indispensable obligation, upon which, he set to work, and compiled his history from the best authorities, and the most faithful monuments and records he could discover; but the natives having found reason to be dissatisfied with many of the facts laid open in it, the King repented of the permission he had given him, the copies were all called in by the procurement of administration, and the historian obliged to leave England, but ill recompensed for his trouble.