I have met, with none that may compare with him in the Weight of Solemnity of his Style, in the Strength and Clearness of Diction, in the Beauty and Majesty of Expression, and that noble Negligence of Phrase, which maketh his Words wait everywhere upon his Subject, with a Readiness and Propriety, that Art and Study are almost Strangers to.-FELTON, HENRY, 1711, Dessertation on Reading the Classics.

Had Clarendon sought nothing but power, his power had never ceased. A corrupted court and a blinded populace were less the causes of the chancellor's fall, than an ungrateful king, who could not pardon his lordship's having refused to accept for him the slavery of his country. . . . Buckingham, Shaftsbury, Lauderdale, Arlington, and such abominable men, were the exchange which the nation made for my lord Clarendon! . . . As an historian he seems more exceptionable. His majesty and eloquence, his power of painting characters, his knowledge of his subject, rank him in the first class of writers yet he has both great and little faults.-WALPOLE, HORACE, 1758, A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, Scotland, and Ireland, ed. Park, vol. III, pp. 162, 163, 164.

This age affords great materials for history, but did not produce any accomplished historian. Clarendon, however, will always be esteemed an entertaining writer, even independent of our curiosity to know the facts which he relates. His style is prolix and redundant, and suffocates us by the length of its periods; but it discovers imagination and sentiment, and pleases us at the same time that we disapprove of it. He is more partial in appearance than in reality; for he seems perpetually anxious to apologize for the king; but his apologies are often well grounded. He is less partial in his relation of facts, than in his account of characters: he was too honest a man to falsify the former; his affections were easily capable, unknown to himself, of disguising the latter. An air of probity and goodness runs through the whole work, as these qualities did, in reality, embellish the whole life of the author.-HUME, DAVID, 1762, The History of England, The Commonwealth.

We see, in the instance of the celebrated person before us, as well as in

He

many others, that the exertion of genius depends more upon chance or opportunity, than upon nature itself. The divisions and distractions of his country called forth the talents of this excellent man. had a principle share as a speaker, a writer, and an actor, in the transactions of this reign; and was thereby qualified to enrich the world with one of the best histories it ever saw.-GRANGER, JAMES, 1769-1824, Biographical History of England, vol. III, p. 4.

Though he writes as the professed apologist of one side, yet there appears more impartiality in his relation of facts, than might at first be expected. A great spirit of virtue and probity runs through his work. He maintains all the dignity of an historian. His sentences, indeed, are often too long, and his general manner is prolix; but his style, on the whole, is manly; and his merit, as an historian, is much beyond mediocrity.-BLAIR, HUGH, 1783, Lecture on Rhetoric and BellesLettres, ed. Mills, p. 407

Nothing can be more disgustful to a discerning observer of styles, than the prolixity and perplexity of Clarendon's composition. Yet he will probably be found to have written well for his time. The absurdity is in those persons who would hold up such writing as a model to after time; as if one should show a schoolboy's theme, and maintain that a man of the most approved talents, and the ripest years, could not surpass it. The English language, as well as the English annals, is indebted to the labours of Clarendon.GODWIN, WILLIAM, 1797, Milton and Clarendon, The Enquirer, p. 415.

A work, of which the impressions and profits have increased in an equal ratioand of which the popularity is built upon an imperishable basis. A statesman, a lawyer, and a philosopher in its most practical, and perhaps rational, sense, there is hardly any name which has reached us, encircled by purer rays of renown, than that of Hyde, Earl of Clarendon; or any which is likely to go down to posterity in a more unsullied state of purity. When one considers the times in which this celebrated Lord Chancellor lived, the station which he filled, the characters with whom he came in competition (as able as they were intrepid, daring, and corrupt) his family connections, his career

of glory; brightest in its wane-and, above all, the legacy, which, in his "History," he has bequeathed to posterity,

I hardly know how to call upon both "the Young," and "the Old," lover of good books, sufficiently to reverence. those invaluable volumes known by the title of the "History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, begun in the year 1641," by the great author in question.DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL, 1824, The Library Companion, p. 209.

For an Englishman there is no single historical work with which it can be so necessary for him to be well and thoroughly acquainted as with Clarendon. I feel at this time perfectly assured, that if that book had been put into my hands in youth, it would have preserved me from all the political errors which I have outgrown. It may be taken for granted that

knows this book well. The more he reads concerning the history of these times, the more highly he will appreciate the wisdom and the integrity of Clarendon.-SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1825, Letter to Henry Taylor, Dec. 31.

Is not only ably written and full of valuable information, but has also an air of dignity and sincerity which makes even the prejudices and errors with which it abounds respectable.-MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, 1825, Milton, Edinburgh Review; Critical and Miscellaneous Essays.

The "History of the Rebellion" is a I work in which the indications of talent disappear under the impress of virtue. Some portraits are vividly coloured; but the character of these portraits is easy of imitation; it is within the reach of the commonest minds; Clarendon himself is reflected in his pictures; his image is portrayed in every page. CHATEAUBRIAND, FRANÇOIS RENÉ, VICOMTE DE, 1837, Sketches of English Literature, vol. II, p. 196.

He is excellent in every thing that he has performed with care; his characters are beautifully delineated; his sentiments have often a noble gravity, which the length of his periods, far too great in itself, seems to befit; but, in the general course of his narration, he is negligent of grammar and perspicuity, with little choice of words, and therefore sometimes idiomatic without ease or elegance. The official papers on the royal side, which are generally attributed to him, are written.

in a masculine and majestic tone, far superior to those of the parliament. HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. iii, ch. vii, par. 36.

I cannot quit the present subject without a remark on these great party "Histories" of Clarendon and Burnet. Both have passed through the fiery ordeal of national opinion; and both, with some of their pages singed, remain unconsumed: the one criticised for its solenin eloquence, the other ridiculed for its homely simplicity; the one depreciated for its partiality, the other for its inaccuracy; both alike, as we have seen, by their opposite parties, once considered as works utterly rejected from the historical shelf. But Posterity reverences Genius; for Posterity only can decide on its true worth. Time, potent over criticism, has avenged our two great writers of the history of their own days. The awful genius of Clarendon is still paramount, and the vehement spirit of Burnet has often its secret revelations confirmed. Such shall ever be the fate of those precious writings, which, though they have to contend with the passions of their own age, yet, originating in the personal intercourse of the writers with the subject of their narratives, possess an endearing charm which no criticism can dissolve, a reality which outlasts fiction, and a truth which diffuses its vitality over pages which cannot die.-Disraeli, ISAAC, 1841, Difficulties of Publishers of Contemporary Memoirs, Amenities of Literature.

It is easy to point out faults in his "History of the Rebellion, "-its redundances, its omissions, its inaccuracies, its misrepresentations, its careless style, and its immethodical arrangement. But of all history contemporary history is the most valuable; of contemporary histories that is to be preferred which is written by one who took a part in the events related; and of all such contemporary histories, in our own or any other language, this great work is the most to be admired, for graphic narration of facts, for just exposition of motives, and for true and striking delineation of character. We find in it a freshness, a spirit, a raciness, which induce us, in spite of all its imperfections, to lay it down with regret, and to resume it with new pleasure. With regard to its

sincerity, which has been so much contested, perhaps the author may be acquitted of wilfully asserting what is false; but he seems to have considered himself fully justified in suppressing what is true, when he thought he could do so for the advantage of his party.-CAMPBELL, JOHN LORD, 1845-56, The Lives of The Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England.

His style cannot be commended for its correctness; the manner in which he con structs his sentences, indeed, often sets at defiance all the rules of syntax; but yet he is never unintelligible or obscure -with such admirable expository skill is the matter arranged and spread out, even where the mere verbal sentence-making is the most negligent and entangled. The style, in fact, is that proper to speaking rather than to writing, and had, no doubt, been acquired by Clarendon, not so much from books as from his practice in speaking at the bar and in parliament; for, with great natural abilities, he does not seem to have had much acquaintance with literature, or much acquired knowledge of any kind resulting from study. But his writing possesses the quality that interests above all the graces or artifices of rhetoric the impress of a mind informed by its subject, and having a complete mastery over it; while the broad full stream in which it flows makes the reader feel as if it were borne along on its tide. The abundance, in particular, with which he pours out his stores of language and illustration in his characters of the eminent persons engaged on both sides of the great contest seems inexhaustible. The historical value of his history, however, is not very considerable; it has not preserved very many facts which are not to be found elsewhere; and, whatever may be thought of its general bias, the inaccuracy of its details is so great throughout, as demonstrated by the authentic evidences of the time, that there is scarcely any other contemporary history which is so little trustworthy as an authority with regard to minute particulars.-CRAIK, GEORGE L., 1861, A Compendious History of English Literature and of the English Language, vol. II, p. 121.

A work which everybody must read who desires to understand the personal feelings which were elicited, and the men

who occupied prominent positions, in that stormy period; and the student, if possible, should endeavour to obtain an edition of it later than the year 1825, as all editions published previous to that date are more or less corrupt.-FRISWELL, JAMES HAIN, 1869, Essays on English Writers, p. 32.

The effect which an historical work can have is, perhaps, nowhere seen more strongly than in the "History of the Rebellion." The view of the event in England itself and in the educated world generally, has been determined by the book. The best authors have repeated it, and even those who combat it do not get beyond the point of view given by him; they refute him in details, but leave his views in the main unshaken. Clarendon belongs. to those who have essentially fixed the circle of ideas for the English nation. -RANKE, LEOPOLD, VON, 1875, A History of England, vol. VI, p. 29.

Clarendon's authority, totally worthless as it is, has without question been accepted, as Herr von Ranke says, by a great multitude of persons. It is a question of some interest how this has occurred. Something must be attributed to his style to that "eloquence of the heart and imagination" which Hallam acknowledges, to that stateliness and felicity of phrase over which Professor Masson walks as if "stepping on velvet;" but perhaps. not very much. Hume, who owed Clarendon a good word-for his account of the Puritan Revolution is simply that of Clarendon told by a skilful and unscrupulous. literary artist says plainly that his style is "prolix and redundant, and suffocates by the length of its periods." So it is, and so it does. More is accounted for by his anecdotic talent, his skill at an afterdinner story, his occasional chuckle of dry fun, his grave irony. his strenuous hatreds, his love of scandal.-BAYNE, PETER, 1876, Clarendon, The Contemporary Review, vol. 28, p. 426.

A history which remains, whatever its faults, the model of such writing, to this day.-WASHBURN, EMELYN W., 1884, Studies in Early English Literature, p. 156.

In some of the greatest characteristics of the historian, has been equalled by no Englishman, and surpassed by few foreigners. . . . No one has put together, or, to

adopt a more expressive phrase, heaped together such enormous paragraphs; no one has linked clause on clause, parenthesis on parenthesis, epexegesis on exegesis, in such a bewildering concatenation of inextricable entanglement. Sometimes, of course, the difficulty is more apparent than real, and by simply substituting full stops and capitals for his colons and conjunctions, one may, to some extent, simplify the chaos. But it is seldom that this is really effective: it never produces really well balanced sentences and really well constructed paragraphs; and there are constant instances in which it is not applicable at all. It is not that the jostling and confused relatives are as a rule grammatically wrong, like the common blunder of putting an "and which" where there is no previous "which" expressed or implied. They, simply, put as they are, bewilder and muddle the reader because the writer has not taken the trouble to break up his sentence into two or three. -SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1887, History of Elizabethan Literature, pp. 315, 347.

To such an experience as Clarendon's, the making of history was far more than the writing of it; and the habits bred of action in a great scene and in a great crisis, the varied tasks which had been thrust upon him, the tragic significance of the long struggle that constituted his life, have, in combination with those literary interests that from first to last sweetened his toil, given to his style its special and inimitable characteristics. It is often cumbrous and prolix; its construction is frequently irregular; the arrangement is sometimes confusing, and the sense of proportion seems to be lost. But its chief note is one of almost tragic

dignity. His "History of the Rebellion" --be it noted, the first history which our literature possesses from the hand of a great actor in the struggle it portrayshas something of the burden of an epic. But it is enlivened by those inimitable characters which his careful study of human nature, his intense desire to know those who were worthy to be known, enabled him to draw; portraits in which every feature is given in its due proportion, and in which no trait, however homely, is omitted which can add to their dramatic force.-CRAIK, HENRY, 1893, English Prose, vol. II, p. 391.

Clarendon was by a few months Milton's senior, yet in reading him we seem to have descended to a later age. That he owed not a little to the Theophrastian fashion of his youth is certain; but the real portraits which he draws with such picturesque precision are vastly superior to any fantastical abstractions of Overbury or Earle. Clarendon writes, in Wordsworth's phrase, with his eye upon the object, and the graces of his style are the result of the necessity he finds of describing what he wishes to communicate in the simplest and most convincing manIt is his great distinction that, living in an age of pedants, he had the courage to write historya species of literature which, until his salutary example, was specially overweighted with ornamental learning in a spirit of complete simplicity. The diction of Clarendon is curiously modern; we may read pages of his great book without lighting upon a single word now no longer in use. GOSSE, EDMUND, 1897, A Short History of Modern English Literature, pp. 150, 151.

ner.

PERSONAL

He was a man of no quick utterance, but often hesitant; but spoke with great reason. He was most precisely just; insomuch as I believe he would have lost all that he had in the world rather than do an unjust act patient in hearing the tediousest speech which any man had to make for himself. The pillar of justice, the refuge of the subject who feared oppression, and one of the greatest honours of his majesty's government. - BAXTER, RICHARD, 1682, Notes on the Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale.

This excellent person, whose learning in the law was scarce equalled, and never exceeded; was, in many respects, one of the most perfect characters of his age. Nor was his knowledge limited to his own profession: he was far from inconsiderable as a philosopher and a divine. He was as good and amiable in his private, as he was great and venerable in his public, capacity. His decisions upon the bench were frequently a learned lecture upon the point of law; and such was his reputation for integrity, that the interested parties were generally satisfied with them, though they happened to be against themselves. No man more abhorred the chicane of lawyers, or more discountenanced the evil arts of pleading. He was so very conscientious, that the jealousy of being misled by his affections made him perhaps rather partial to that side to which he was least inclined. Though he was a man of true humility, he was not insensible of that honest praise which was bestowed on him by the general voice of mankind, and which must have been attended with that self-applause which is the natural result of good and worthy actions. -GRANGER, JAMES, 1769-1824, Biographical History of England, vol. v, p. 120.

Gentlemen, in the place where we now sit to administer the justice of this great country, above a century ago the neverto-be-forgotten Sir Matthew Hale presided; whose faith in Christianity is an exalted. commentary upon its truth and reason, and whose life was a glorious example of its fruits in man, administering human justice with a wisdom and purity drawn. from the pure fountain of the Christian dispensation, which has been, and will be in all ages, a subject of the highest reverence and admiration.-ERSKINE, THOMAS

LORD, 1797, Speech in the Court of the King's Bench.

His authority coming at last to be regarded as all but infallible, it would by no means be surprising if he became, as North alleges, exceedingly vain and intolerant of opposition; but of this, beyond North's word, we have no evidence. Hale remained throughout life attached to his early puritanism. He was a regular attendant at church, morning and evening, on Sunday, and also gave up a portion of the day to prayer and meditation, besides expounding the sermon to his children. He was an extreme antiritualist, having apparently no ear for music, and objecting even to singing, and in particular to the practice of intoning. Though strictly orthodox in essentials, he was impatient of the subtleties of theology. He carried puritan plain

ness of dress to such a point as to move even Baxter to remonstrate with him.-— RIGG, J. M., 1890, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XXIV, p. 20.

GENERAL

The following Treatise, ["Pleas of the Crown"] being the genuine off-spring of that truly learned and worthy Judge, Sir Matthew Hale, stands in need of no other recommendation than what that great and good name will always carry along with it.

Whoever is in the least acquainted with the extensive learning, the solid judgment, the indefatiagble labours, and, above all, the unshaken integrity, of the author, cannot but highly esteem whatever comes from so valuable a hand. —EMLYN, S., 1736-39, ed., Pleas of the Crown, Preface.

His writings have raised him a character equal to his greatest predecessors, and will always be esteemed as containing the best rationale of the grounds of the law of England. Nor was he an inconsiderable master of polite, philosophical, and THOMAS, 1752, Life of Archbishop Tillotson. especially theological, learning.-BIRCH,

In whom

Our British Themis gloried with just cause, Immortal Hale! for deep discernment praised And sound integrity not more, than famed For sanctity of manners undefiled. -COWPER, WILLIAM, 1785, The Task, bk. iii.

So authoritative an "History of the Common Law of England," written by so