historians of their own time are always liable to attribute to the
personal force of a statesman what is due to general causes of which
he is only the instrument. Of these general causes Clarendon took
little account. 'Motives which influenced masses of men', it has been
said, 'escape his appreciation, and the _History of the Rebellion_
is accordingly an account of the Puritan Revolution which is
unintelligible because the part played by Puritanism is misunderstood
or omitted altogether'.[7] But the _History of the Rebellion_ is a
Stuart portrait gallery, and the greatest portrait gallery in the
English language.

[Footnote 1: Book II, ed. Aldis Wright, pp. 92-5.]

[Footnote 2: 'Historae nostrae particulam quidam non male: sed qui totum
corpus ea fide, eaque dignitate scriptis complexus sit, quam suscepti
operis magnitudo postularet, hactenus plane neminem extitisse
constat.... Nostri ex faece plebis historici, dum maiestatem tanti
operis ornare studuerunt, putidissimis ineptiis contaminarunt. Ita
factum est nescio qua huiusce insulae infoelicitate, ut maiores tui,
(serenissima Regina) viri maximi, qui magnam huius orbis nostri partem
imperio complexi, omnes sui temporis reges rerum gestarum gloria
facile superarunt, magnorum ingeniorum quasi lumine destituti, iaceant
ignoti, & delitescant.']

[Footnote 3: _Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century_, ed.
Spingarn, vol. i, pp. 82-115.]

[Footnote 4: See also Camden Society Publications, No. 7, 1840.]

[Footnote 5: Roger Ascham in his _Scholemaster_ divides History into
'Diaria', 'Annales', 'Commentaries', and 'Iustam Historiam'.]

[Footnote 6: Bacon told Queen Elizabeth that there was no treason in
Hayward's _Henry IV_, but 'very much felony', because Hayward 'had
stolen many of his sentences and conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus'
(_Apophthegms_, 58). Hayward and Bacon had a precursor in the author
of _The History of King Richard the Thirde_, generally attributed to
Sir Thomas More, and printed in the collection of his works published
in 1557. It was known to the chroniclers, but it did not affect the
writing of history. Nor did George Cavendish's _Life and Death of
Thomas Wolsey_, which they likewise used for its facts.]

[Footnote 7: C.H. Firth, 'Burnet as a Historian', in Clarke and
Foxcroft's _Life of Gilbert Burnet_, 1907, pp. xliv, xlv.]

II. The Literary Models.

The authentic models for historical composition were in Greek and
Latin. Much as