dence. Why not? Andrew Marvell was one of the most honest and uncompromising of men, and making all reasonable allowances for the biliousness of satire, we know of no more trustworthy witness. He was at least sincere and in earnest, and his satires differ from mere political pasquinades in this essential characteristic, that they are distin fluence of personal jealousies and party de- 1 traction, we are compelled to suppose that they must have some foundation in truth. The abuse of patronage is more likely to generate unanimous vituperation than the exercise of a lofty and fearless impartiality. We must not overlook the probabilities on that side of the question, and out of our eagerness to vindicate an historical reputa-guished by the impress of a deep and tion, set down all asperities and attacks to the score of venal disappointment, and the alternate hatreds of opposing factions sacrificed in turn to severe and dispassionate jus tice. Lady Theresa Lewis has undertaken in the introduction to her Lives of Clarendon's Friends and Contemporaries, to rescue the Lord Chancellor Clarendon from the charges of bribery and corruption that were bruited against him in his lifetime, and which it is only fair to say have never been either satisfactorily proved, or conclusively rebutted. That she should take this view of his character is natural enough; nor do we object, as far as the interests of truth are concerned, to see the old discussion re-opened in so frank and generous a spirit. But it appears to us, that she would have better served the reputation of her hero if she had left such doubtful matters in abeyance, seeing that it was by no means possible to disprove assertions which, although they are sustained only by a train of circumstantial conjectures, are yet justified to a considerable extent by suspicious appearances and the absence of exculpatory evidence. The sum of all we know of Lord Clarendon is certainly not in favor of Lady Theresa's vindication. He was a man of great ambition, with "a sharp and luxuriant fancy." These are his own words. Originally of a proud and impetuous temper, he learned to subdue his humors in high company, and by the force of the strict restraint he put upon himself, became courteous and affable to all manner of people. This is his own account of himself, and we presume it may be relied upon. Now, when an ambitious man, with a passionate temper, brings himself down to this universal affability, the inference is obvious that he does so to subserve his own aspiring ends. It is not to be denied that he was studious of his aggrandizement and his mode of life; and the grandeurs he collected about him show with what success he cultivated that object. Turning to his accusers, Lady Theresa sets aside the testimony of Andrew Marvell's poems as not being legitimate historical evi I thoughtful conviction. No doubt he felt strongly, and judged harshly; but he was in the midst of the strife, and knew what was going forward, and entertained such a loathing of corruption in his own person as to place his testimony above the suspicion of being actuated by interested motives. On the other hand, it is little to the purpose that Pepys says nothing against the Lord Chancellor. This kind of negative defence is a remarkably slight reed to lean upon. Pepys visited Lord Clarendon's house in Piccadilly, and is content to tell us that it was a very noble house, full of brave pictures and no more. Pepys, as all the world knows, was a courtier in his own way, and a cautious and time-serving courtier to boot, and would be much more likely, on a calculation of chances, to speak flatteringly than disparagingly of so powerful a man as Lord Clarendon. It was not for the Secretary of the Admiralty to let loose his humors on the Lord Chancellor. Pepys had an apt genius for gossip and scandal, but it was not indulged at the expense of such men as Clarendon; it flew at the players, and the idle hangers-on of the state, and the people that stood in his way, or that borrowed money from him and didn't return it, or that expected favors from him without being ready to pay for them. ready to pay for them. Of all sins, that of official corruption was about the last that Pepys would have found fault with. He had too much sympathy with itching palms to affect a virtuous indignation about bribes. Yet, for all that, there is a passage in his Diary which openly asserts that Lord Clarendon "never did nor never will do anything but for money." This unequivocal statement occurs in the report of a conversation Pepys had with Mr. Evelyn, and from the structure of the passage some doubt arises as to which of them is responsible for it. Lady Theresa is at considerable pains to show, from the general turn of Mr. Evelyn's opinions respecting the Chancellor, that it could not have been uttered by him, and that, therefore, it must be ascribed to Pepys himself. It is of little moment to which of them it belongs. If it be simply a report of Evelyn's words-which, taking the sentence | sonal enmity be supposed to have actuated as it stands, is the more probable interpreta- its author, who was only two years old when tion-then it goes a great way to stultify the Clarendon died. We must look for better encomiums which Evelyn elsewhere lavishes reasons for discrediting this ugly little note. on the Chancellor; and if, on the other The arguments raised against its reception hand, it emanated from Pepys himself, it de- by our author are not of much validity. prives her ladyship of the advantages which, First: Lord Dartmouth was not a contemin another place, she draws from his silence. porary of Lord Clarendon, and must have One thing is quite clear, that either Evelyn received his information at second-hand; and or Pepys distinctly avers that Lord Clarendon as he has not given us the names of his innever extended his patronage to any body formants, it is impossible to form any judg"but for money." Whether the charge was ment of their impartiality or means of knowltrue or not, this is a sufficient proof that at edge. Now, it is an admitted axiom in all all events it was current at the time, and questions of historical evidence, that the that there were people of no mean authority nearer we can get to contemporaneous testiwho believed it to be true. mony, the more likely we are to get at the truth. Lord Dartmouth lived near enough to Clarendon's time to have received his information direct from men who might have been personally cognizant of the facts; and if he has not given us their names, to enable us to judge of what credit might be reposed in their veracity, we have the current rumors of Lord Clarendon's own day in corroboration of the probable truth of their statements. If Lord Dartmouth had been the first person who made this charge, we should be quite willing to give Lord Clarendon the advantage of that fact; but it must not be forgotten (to say nothing of other vouchers) that the cautious Pepys or the religious Evelyn (no great matter which) avers that Lord Clarendon never did anything "but for money." The gallery of portraits and the luxurious property of various kinds which Clarendon accumulated at his house, afforded warrant for these accusations of venality. It was sufficiently notorious, that in the disposal of patronage he chiefly favored those who had formerly been opposed to the king's cause; and it was said, that he promoted them in preference to the members of his own party because they had carried off all the spoils of war, and could afford to purchase his protection, while the cavaliers, stripped of their possessions, had no bribe to offer but their loyalty. These accusations were reduced to a distinct shape by Lord Dartmouth, in a note on Burnet's History, quoted by Mr. Agar Ellis, in his Historical Inquiries. Lord Dartmouth openly asserts that Lord Clarendon "depressed every one's merits to advance his own," alleges that he resorted to "other means than the Crown could afford to increase his fortune," and that it was in pursuance of this self-aggrandizing policy he took under his protection "those who had plundered and sequestered the others," and who were "not wanting in their acknowledgments in the manner he expected, which produced the great house in the Piccadilly, furnished chiefly with cavaliers' goods, brought thither for peace-offerings, which the right owners durst not claim when they were in his possession." Lady Theresa observes upon this note, that it is "written in a tone of hostility and insinuation that betokens rather personal enmity (though Lord Dartmouth was born too late for personal acquaintance) than honest reprobation of public misconduct." We confess, we do not read the note in this spirit. We see nothing in it inconsistent with the honest reprobation of public corruption; nor can it be fairly charged with insinuating an accusation which it enunciates so explicitly. Neither can per Second Lord Dartmouth's note was not published till nearly a century after it was written, and therefore did not pass the ordeal of contemporary criticism. The greater the reason for subjecting it to such other tests as we possess-but no reason whatever for rejecting it. Third: It was written from loose impressions, without any view to publication, and its grounds were not organized with care. If the fact of not having been written for publication is to invalidate testimonies of this kind, we should be compelled to surrender some of the most valuable memorabilia we possess, and to extinguish the lights that have been thrown on our literary and social history by such men as Henslowe, Pepys, and Spence, whose authority nobody thinks of calling into question merely because they never intended to print their pocket-books. And so far from being written from loose impressions without due examination, Lord Dartmouth's note, for whatever it may be otherwise worth, appears to us to carry internal evidence of a fixed conviction. The suspicious circumstances which at tach likelihood to the charges it contains, | in return for such gifts, would be to give an are found in that extraordinary assemblage interpretation to Evelyn's words wholly inof portraits, embracing nearly all the con- consistent with the opinion which, in the very spicuous families on the king's side in the same letter, he expresses of the Chancellor's civil wars, which formed the Clarendon Gal- worth." Why, if there be any one circumlery. Mr. Agar Ellis wants to know how stance which, more than another, gives a fatal the Chancellor came to be possessed of such weight to this revelation, it is that it proceeds a number of portraits of distinguished people, from Evelyn himself, who is known to have with whom he was unconnected "either by been the panegyrist of Clarendon, and who relationship, connexion, or even friendship." would have been one of the last men in the He could not have bought them, for surely, world to breathe a gratuitous slander against adds Mr. Ellis, if they had been for sale, his reputation. If we are to ignore Marvell's "the families to which they originally be- testimony because he was the enemy of longed would have managed to purchase Clarendon, must we deprive Evelyn's of its them." Lady Theresa's answer to these un- obvious meaning because he was his friend? easy doubts is, that the Chancellor did buy some of them, that others were given to him, and some might be accounted for on the ground of family and personal connexion. That some of these pictures were purchased from the collections thrown upon the market by plunder and necessity is not improbable. Portraits by great artists will always sell on their own merit, without reference to the subject; therefore, when a Vandyck or a Jansen turned up on these occasions, the people employed by Lord Clarendon to buy for him may be presumed to have been on the alert. But giving the fullest latitude to this supposition, it will not account for a great gallery of portraits, in which the remarkable feature was not excellence in art, but the concentration of the family pictures of the principal houses in the kingdom under the roof of the Chancellor. How did they get there? The history of a portrait is generally very easily traced; here we can trace nothing; and the apparent suppression of that kind of information which usually accompanies portraits as evidence of their authenticity is not in favor of the conjecture that the pictures were collected at sales. We must be permitted also to doubt that pictures of this class found their way to any great extent into the auction-rooms. However shattered in fortune the Royalists were, they would have contrived by some means to have saved their family portraits from the wreck. Lady Theresa, however, thinks that if they could have afforded to re-purchase their pictures, they could have bribed the Lord Chancellor. This does not follow. A Chancellor may not perhaps consent to be bribed by the price of a portrait, although he is ready to lower his dignity by accepting the portrait itself. Besides, the bulk of these portraits were intrinsically of little value in money compared with the value they represented in the families to which they originally belonged. The vindication, if it be not entirely satisfactory, is at least plausible and ingenious. Out of a gallery containing an unprecedented number of portraits, Lady Theresa enumerates some twenty, exclusive of a small batch of the Hydes, that might be supposed to have come into Lord Clarendon's hands as presents. It was known that he was a collector of portraits; and it is therefore highly probable that his friends, with or without personal objects to serve, might have contributed to enrich his gallery. A passage from Evelyn, which is much relied upon in Lord Clarendon's defence, as showing that he came honestly by these presents, is nevertheless open to a damaging construction. He says that, vast as the Chancellor's collection was, it did not cost him any extraordinary expense, "because, when his design was once made known, anybody who either had them of their own, or could purchase them at any price, strove to make their court by these presents, by which means he got many excellent pieces of Vandyck and the originals of Lely and the best of our modern masters' hands." It is evident from this statement that the presents were not always made by friends, that the Chancellor was open to receive them from any body who had them, or who could purchase them at any price, that he accepted them as the offerings of people who wanted to make court to him, and thus far committed himself clearly to the suspicion of prostituting his influence for bribes. Lady Theresa Lewis sees nothing to blame in these transactions, except the meanness of the people who flattered the Chancellor in this servile manner; but to suppose, Their subsequent history has a sort of she adds, that "he misused his influence, or moral in it. Lord Clarendon's heir was a was corrupt in the administration of justice, I man of profligate habits, and, under writs of Lewis, who chivalrously casts her shield over the assailed on most occasions, comes to the rescue of the editors. She defends them on the ground that a discretionary power over the MS. was vested in their hands by Lord Clarendon's will, and that they were therefore justified in exercising their own judgment in its publication. Two questions arise execution, many of the pictures were sacrificed to his creditors. A large collection, however, still remained, which, after sundry vicissitudes, was finally contended for and partitioned between different members of the family; and of all that now survives of the great Clarendon Gallery, one portion, we believe by far the more important, is preserved at the Grove, Watford, the seat of the pres-out of this defence-What was the nature of ent Earl of Clarendon, and the remainder at the discretionary power? and whether it was Bothwell Castle in Scotland, the seat of Lord exercised soundly? Douglas. It is by no means clear from Lord ClarenThe Clarendon MSS., which passed through don's will (which refers to the whole of his still more perilous adventures than the pic- papers) that he intended to repose in his sons tures, were luckier in the care by which they any further discretion than that of choosing were ultimately preserved. The Chancellor the time of publication, or of not publishing left a prodigious quantity of papers behind at all, if they thought fit and were so advised. him, letters from cavaliers and puritans, from He bequeaths his papers and writings of all ambassadors, ministers, secret agents, and kinds, and leaves them to the "entire dispartizans of all creeds and colors; corre- posal" of his sons, as they shall be advised, spondence connected with all the depart- either by suppressing or publishing." These ments of the state; and such a mass of mis- papers, as we have seen, were voluminous cellaneous public documents as could not and related to an infinite variety of subjects; have been accumulated by any man except and the discretion here confided to his sons one in the position Clarendon occupied; nor seems to contemplate entire suppression or would that in itself have been sufficient, un- entire publication, rather than the arbitrary less he had also Clarendon's genius for mak- suppression of particular words, sentences, ing collections of this kind. After the Chan- and passages, by which the spirit and intencellor's death, the MSS. became dispersed tion of the original might be materially peramongst different hands. Mr. Bryan Rich-verted. A discretion of so large and responards, to whom Lord Clarendon's son was sible a kind would require a more explicit under pecuniary obligations, got a large por- declaration; and it is scarcely to be believed tion of them; Mr. Joseph Radcliffe, one of that if Lord Clarendon really meant that his Lord Clarendon's executors, got more, but sons should exercise such a power, he would how he got them does not appear; an anony- have distinctly expressed himself to that mous lady also came in for a share; and it is effect. supposed that some were destroyed by fire in 1721. Ultimately, the scattered reliques were gathered together, and secured to the University of Oxford by the exertions of Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury; and the subsequent publication of three volumes of the Clarendon State Papers, and also of Lord Rochester's papers, may be presumed to have exhausted the chief interest of the collection. The papers which have been left inedited at Oxford are probably of little historical value, and the MSS. still preserved unpublished at the Grove are neither numer-suppressed, or altered, any historical fact," ous nor important. The controversy raised by Oldmixon on the first edition of the History of the Rebellion, published in 1702, is a matter of bookhistory well-known to all readers. He accused the editors and the University of interpolations and omissions tending to falsify the text. From that charge the University redeemed itself by republishing the work entire from the original MS. in 1826. Lady Theresa Granting, however, that the terms of the bequest are susceptible of a wider interpretation than we are disposed to put upon them, the question still remains, whether the editors exhibited sound judgment in the use of the powers confided to them. A comparison of the two editions will show to what extent and in what direction they mutilated the text; and notwithstanding the statement of Dr. Bandinel, that the editors were "justified in withholding some parts of the history," and that "they had in no one instance added, the verdict of the public accords fully with tance of time are ignorant, may have actuated them; but we are not the less satisfied that their judgment was unequal to the task they undertook, and that they sacrificed to temporary and inferior considerations what was due to the integrity of history. Turning from the chief personage in these volumes to his contemporaries, whose biographies Lady Theresa Lewis has collected into narratives of considerable interest, a field of more diversified materials opens upon us. These biographies embrace the lives of Lord Falkland, Lord Capell, and the Marquis of Hertford, afterwards Duke of Somerset. The selection is judicious; and although the writer is compelled unavoidably to traverse ground that has been often ploughed before, and is placed under the necessity of occasionally generalizing her statements, at some sacrifice of accuracy and fullness of detail, she has produced upon the whole a work that is highly creditable to her talents, and that may be considered as a graceful contribution to the history of the period. When a lady enters the arena of historical disquisition, she cannot be expected to treat the great political problems that come before her with the boldness and decision we are accustomed to look for elsewhere on such subjects; and if we say that the accomplished authoress is more successful in the delineation of the characters and lives of her heroes than in the discussion of the political difficulties and military achievements in which they were engaged, we shall have discharged in full our critical obligations on that score. Actuated by an equitable disposition to do justice on all sides, she endeavors to balance the scales so nicely, that we feel the delicacy rather than the firmness of her hand, and are more tempted to admire the disposition to distribute praise and blame impartially, than the judicial capacity to apportion the award strictly. other. The argument of necessity deprives them of the merit of the courage, energy, and penetration they exhibited all throughout, and reduces to a mere matter of expediency the whole course of that skillful and decisive policy through which they vindicated the rights of the people against the usurpations of the throne. We must look back on these events from this point of sight, or we shall miss both the justice of the case and the moral it has bequeathed to us. Again, when Pym opposed the proposition for a committee to sit upon the charges against Strafford, before the House proceeded to his impeachment, under the reasonable apprehension that, in the delay which would. be thus incurred, the course of justice might be frustrated by a dissolution, Lady Theresa cites his advocacy of prompt measures as an example of "hasty legislation." It is in words like these that we get the color of that timidity which weakens the political power of the book. Had Pym's views on this subject been called "imperative legislation," it would have been nearer to the mark; and truth would have been still better served had the resolution to bring Strafford at once to an open trial been described as an example of legislation distinguished by its wisdom. These slight passages will sufficiently indicate the spirit of deprecation in which Lady Theresa treats the extreme acts that were adopted by both parties; a spirit honorable to a nature which shrinks from violence and hostility, but hardly rigorous enough to deal with the exigencies of a struggle so exceptional in its character. In the first of these biographies, Lady Theresa Lewis has thrown some new light on the early life of Lord Falkland, and has traced him in his public career with as much minuteness as existing materials would permit. His life was short; and the facts that have come down to us concerning him are Thus, at the beginning of the breach be- scanty; nor do we think that his historical tween the king and the parliament, she finds reputation will be improved by the frequent equal fault with both parties. "A period," extenuations and defences of his conduct she observes, "was soon to arise when nei- which the examination of it appears to renther the conscientious royalist nor the honest der necessary. Embalmed in the admiration patriot could have trod with unmixed satis- of posterity by a line of Pope, and enjoying faction the path that he had chosen, or rather a sort of romantic fame founded upon the the path which events had forced upon his general tradition of a reckless gallantry sinchoice." Now, the question is not whether gulary united to a persevering love of peace, patriots or royalists could feel unmixed sat- and of an unhappy attachment which Claisfaction in the course they had chosen, but rendon gravely discredits, and which Lady whether any other course could have been Theresa dismisses as irreconcilable with his taken by the patriots with safety to the lib-conjugal fidelity, we have hitherto regarded erties of the country. It is not enough to say that they could not have taken any him from a distance as one of the noblest and most spotless spirits of his time. But |