is worse, received for the most part their infor|tween the King and the Parliament, and mations and advertisements from clergymen who understand the least, and take the worst measure of human affairs of all mankind that can write and read.

It is easy to trace in this celebrated passage the inward satisfaction with which Clarendon contrasted his own social advantages with the somewhat narrow education of Laud. His own temper apparently had something of the same sort of roughness in it, for he continually boasts of his habitual plainness of speech. The following account of himself is one of the oddest passages that ever were written:

took part emphatically and passionately for the King; and this although, in the earlier part of his career, he was as well aware as any one of the existence of great abuses which required a remedy. All study of that period leads to the conclusion that the real question was the question of sovereignty. Was the King or the Parliament to be the substantive or the adjective? Clarendon took the Royal side, perhaps, all the more warmly because he had sufficient faith in it to wish to reform collateral abuses, like the Courts of the Earl Marshal and those of the President of the North, and the Council of Wales. He appears really and honestly to have believed that it was an everlasting divine decree that the King and the Bishops should direct, substantially and really, all the temporal and spiritual affairs of the nation, and that it was in the highest degree morally wicked, and even impious, to try to alter this arrangement. Nothing is more difficult for us, at this distance of time, to realize than the view which in those days a man like Clarendon took of a man like Hampden. What Hampden thought of Clarendon we do not know, but Clarendon obviously considered Hampden as a wicked man, a rebel, a traitor, and a in obliging. His integrity was ever without hypocrite. In a curious summary of his blemish, and believed to be above temptation. life with which the book concludes, he says, He was firm and unshaken in his friendships; and though he had great candour towards others in the differences of religion, he was zealously and deliberately fixed in the principles both of the doctrine and discipline of the Church.

He was in his nature inclined to pride and passion, and to a humour between wrangling and disputing, very troublesome; which good company in a short time so much reformed and mastered, that no man was more affable and courteous to all kinds of persons; and they who knew the great infirmity of his whole family, which abounded in passion, used to say he had much extinguished the unruliness of that fire. That which supported and rendered him generally acceptable was his generosity (for he had too much a contempt of money), and the opinion men had of the goodness and justice of his nature which was transcendent in him, in a wonderful tenderness and delight

Few men have sung their own praises with such calm assurance. A person who says, "Upon mature reflection, I pronounce myself to be a man of transcendent goodness and justice, wonderful tenderness, unblemished integrity, a firm friend, and as candid as I am strict in my religious views," must really be a sort of phenomenon. In every part of his autobiography Clarendon shows a solid, deliberate admiration of himself, which it seems hardly fair to call vanity, because it is so calm and grave, but which, so far as we know, is unrivalled by any oth

er writer.

The great blemish of the early part of the Memoirs is that they throw very little light either upon the logical groundwork of Clarendon's earlier life or on the nature of his change. Perhaps the most plausible guess-for, after all, it is little more that can be made -as to his frame of mind, is that he was one of the very few who clearly understood the nature of the struggle be

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in language too ample for quotation, that he began by "so great a tenderness and love towards mankind" that he believed every one to be virtuous, but that his Parliamentary experience soon taught him that men upon whose ingenuity and probity he would willingly have deposited all his concernments of this world" were "totally false and disingenuous;" that "religion was made a cloak to cover the most impious designs, and reputation of honesty a stratagem to deceive and cheat others who had no mind to be wicked." It is true that he adds that the Court was "as full of murmuring, ingratitude, and treachery against the best and most bountiful master in the world as the country and the city;" but scores of passages might easily be quoted from his works which show that he was utterly unable to believe that the Parliamentary party could have any conscientious belief at all in their own principles. This intense zeal is the more difficult to explain because he stood almost alone in it. Falkland, for instance, was obviously in great doubt as to the course which he had taken; but perhaps the most curious case was that of Sir Edmund Verney, the standard-bearer. On the march to Edge Hill he complimented

Hyde on his cheerfulness, adding that, for his own part, he could not be cheerful:

"You," said Verney, "have satisfaction in your conscience that you are in the right; that the King ought not to grant what is required of him but for my part, I do not like the quarrel, and do heartily wish that the King would yield, and consent to what they desire. .. I will deal freely with you. I have no reverence for the Bishops for whom this quarrel subsists."

extreme minuteness into most of the points on which his impeachment was grounded, and to show, step by step, how unreasonable they were, and how hardly he was used. This he does successfully enough, but at wearisome length to a modern reader. One only of the personal scenes of the book is curious enough to be worth particular reference. It is the one in which he describes his behaviour on hearing of his daughter's private marriage to James II. When informed of the fact by the Marquis of Ormond and the Earl of Southampton, at the desire of Charles II., he behaved in a manner which it takes him two pages to describe, the nature of which is sufficiently indicated by the marginal notes which illustrate them.. "The Chancellor struck with it to the heart" is the summary of about guess from his writings that he had voted half a page; "and breaks out into a very for Strafford's attainder, or for the Bill for immoderate passion" is the summary of the perpetual Parliaments. Other instances remainder. It is a most appropriate one, for the concluding sentences, the stately style of which are in strange contrast to their character, are :—

Clarendon's intense partisanship for the King and the Bishops, wherever he got it, certainly went a very long way, for it made him thoroughly disingenuous in his subsequent account of the transactions in which he was concerned. No one would ever

of great forgetfulness or deceitfulness have been exposed elaborately by Mr. Forster, in his Life of Eliot. It ought, however, to be observed that both his History and his Life are exceedingly imperfect. He omits many matters which ought to have found a place in his writings. For instance, he does not even allude to the Act for abolishing feudal tenures.

In the second stage of his life- the civil war, and the years of exile which followed it the autobiography adds little to the History of the Rebellion except a certain number of personal anecdotes. The most interesting relate to his residence at Jersey, where he employed himself, between 1646 and 1648, in writing his History. As usual, he commends his own industry with that grave, measured self-esteem which was pe

culiar to him:

He seldom spent less than ten hours in the day [amongst his books and papers], and it can hardly be believed how much he read and writ there; inasmuch as he did usually compute that during his whole stay in Jersey, which was some months above two years, he writ daily little less than one sheet of large paper with his own hand.

Creditable enough, but nothing to make a marvel of, one would think.

The third part of Clarendon's Life stands alone, relating as it does, to a period subsequent to the termination of his History. It relates to the first years of the reign of Charles II. It is a good deal occupied with Clarendon's own personal affairs, which have now fallen much out of date. He finds it necessary, for instance, to go with

He hoped their Lordships would concur with him that the King should immediately cause the woman to be sent to the Tower, and to be cast into a dungeon, under so strict a guard that no person living should be permitted to come to her; and then that an Act of Parliament should be immediately passed for the cutting off of her head, to which he would not only give his consent, but would very willingly knew the man will believe that he said all this be the first man to propose it; and whoever very heartily.

cut off.

of the

He also observed "that he had much ra-
ther his daughter should be the Duke's
whore than his wife," as, in the first case,
he might turn her out of doors, and have
done with her; whereas, in the second, his
duty as a loyal subject, and as first Minister
of the Crown, would be to get her head
This story is often told as a proof
passionate, bigoted loyalty of Clar-
endon. We agree with Lord Campbell in
thinking that his lordship did protest too
much, and that in truth he was by no
means so angry as he professed to be. The
worst part of his whole character and
the fault is illustrated in endless ways-is
his frequent insincerity. No doubt the
events of his life afforded much excuse for
it, but it shows itself continually, and al
most always in the same form. He keeps
continually saying, almost in so many words
but at all events indirectly
"I am a
rough, honest, passionate, plainspoken man,
proud of my sincerity, perhaps too secure

in my good conscience. My frank harsh- disposal." Clarendon would, no doubt, ness of manner was the cause of all my have liked the Parliament to have greater misfortunes." The slyness which lurks purity and less power. Charles felt that under this sort of roughness is the shyest the Parliament could never again recede to thing in the whole world. the position which it had occupied in the early part of the century, and that the only chance of maintaining his power was by the use of influence. The honester man of the two was less favourable to freedom than the other. A remarkable summary of Clarendon's own views is given in the latter part of the book:

the custom of supping. During the civil war there was a rapid transport of despatches, "when gentlemen undertook the service, which they were willing enough to do," between London and York. Letters went out at twelve on Saturday night and the answer returned at ten on Monday morning. Clarendon, too, gives us the first notice of newspapers:—

After he [the King] had read his several letters of intelligence, he took out the prints of diurnals, and speeches, and the like, which were every day printed at London.

the bookseller's calling from its condition in his younger days. "Then," he says, "Little Britain was a plentiful and perpetual emporium of learned authors, and men went thither as to a market, where they seldom failed to meet with a greater conversation. And the booksellers themselves were knowing and conversible men, with whom, for the sake of bookish knowledge, the greatest wits were pleased to converse." Thomas Guy, with whose memoir Mr. Knight's book opens, was not one of these. His life, however, was well worth telling. The son of a Thames lighterman who died when he was eight years old, he was ap

After the Restoration, he speaks of bank-prenticed in 1660 to a bookseller in Cheap

ers as

A tribe that had risen and grown up in Cromwell's time, and never were heard of before the late troubles, till when the whole trade of money had passed through the hands of the scriveners.

side. In 1668, just after the Great Fire, master of a little shop "near Stocks Marhe began business on his own account as ket," at the corner of Cornhill and Lombard street. The office of King's printer, carrying with it a monoply in the printing of Bibles, having continued in one careless family for more than a century, the volumes had come to be so "very bad, both in letter and in paper," that they were hardly legible. Guy was the most enterprising of several booksellers who started a profitable trade in Bibles, printed in Holland. "But this trade," says Maitland, "proving not only very detrimental to the public revenue, but likewise to the King's printer, all ways and means were devised to quash the same; which, being vigorously put in execution, the

He thinks it necessary to explain the word "million" as often as he uses it, by adding, in a parenthesis, "Ten hundred thousand." In concluding a notice of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, some time ago, we gave a specimen of his occasional eloquence. We will conclude this notice of his Life, which is far from being an eloquent book, with a specimen of the wonderful clumsiness into which he habitually allowed himself to slide when he wrote under no special excitement. As a clue to the laby-booksellers, by frequent seizures and prosrinth, we may observe that Clarendon meant that Lord Falmouth despised Pen, and that Mr. Coventry supported him :

ecutions, became so great sufferers that they judged a further pursuit thereof inconsistent with their interest." Guy found it his interest to abandon the trade very early. He made a compromise with the monopolists and obtained leave to print Bibles in London, with types imported from Holland. Thereby he soon grew rich. Mr. Knight mistrusts the common stories of his stinginess, and finds him guilty of nothing but ly denies the other stories to the effect that "the most scrupulous frugality." He boldbuying as cheaply as he could the paper he made a great part of his wealth by with which it was the custom to pay sailors, and then converting them into money at something like their real value. That, says Mr. Knight, was a practice of Charles the Second's day, but not of Queen Anne's. Guy doubtless enriched himself partly by the sale of Bibles, and yet more

Shadows of the Old Booksellers. By Charles by investing the profits of that sale in the Knight. Bell and Daldy.

In his Lives of his three famous brothers, Roger North deplores the degradation of

buying of Government stock and other lawful ways of making money on 'Change. In 1720 he spent 45,500l. in buying South Sea stock at 120l. for the 100l. share. He

in my good conscience. My frank harsh- disposal." Clarendon would, no doubt, ness of manner was the cause of all my have liked the Parliament to have greater misfortunes." The slyness which lurks purity and less power. Charles felt that under this sort of roughness is the syest the Parliament could never again recede to thing in the whole world. the position which it had occupied in the early part of the century, and that the only chance of maintaining his power was by the use of influence. The honester man of the two was less favourable to freedom than the other. A remarkable summary of Clarendon's own views is given in the latter part of the book:

The general view which the latter part of the Lito affords of the state of the country at the Restoration is exceedingly interesting. When attentively read, it shows what an immense change had been made by the civil war in the position of Royalty, notwithstanding the eagerness with which Charles was welcomed back in the first instance. It has been usual to represent Clarendon as the grave Mentor, the partisan of decency and order, who was driven no exile by the gross ingratitude and wickedness of a king who could not bear vices to be reproved, and of a Court winch was the natural enemy of all rey und gravi. u all this there is a we truth, but it is not quite the There are many indications sapossible to mistake, though it in out to exhibit them at full ere compass, that, apart vene offence given is well-served rebukes of

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He did never dissemble from the time of his return with the King, whom he had likewise prepared and disposed to the same sentiments, whilst His Majesty was abroad, that his opinion was that the late rebellion never could be exKing's regal and inherent power and prerogatirpated and pulled up by the roots till the tive should be fully avowed and vindicated, and till the usurpations in both Houses of Parliament, since the year 1640, were disclaimed and made odious; and many other excesses which had been affected by both before that time, under the name of Privileges, should be restrained or explained.

This was the leading idea of all his policy, and it is to be traced, in a variety of minute ways, in all that he has to say on the subject of the management of public affairs. He could not forgive Charles for being less of a Tory than himself:

The King had in his nature so little reverso much contemn old orders, f ence or esteem for antiquity and tutions, that the objections advanced than obstructed

Charles perceived CARE a the spirit of the ged to a different age. one whore of his book he speaks soyterian party in a tone of rous moral condemnation. They had, Sa in one place, no title to their lives the King's mercy. All his policy the same direction. He never could any of the doings of the Long Te with toleration. For instance, mal Act was then as much a part There the land as any other; yet marks i it so many words, apparently light o urrence of his Chancellor, descri permit a Parliament stan is provisions, because whe to the Royal power.