ger were but to act our antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America,
and they are already past their first sleep in Persia." A fancy so
whimsical as this, and yet so admirable in its whimsies, requires a style
in accordance; and the very sentence quoted, though one of the plainest of
Browne's, and showing clearly that he does not always abuse Latinising,
would hardly be what it is without the word "antipodes." So again in the
_Christian Morals_, "Be not stoically mistaken in the quality of sins, nor
commutatively iniquitous in the valuation of transgressions." No expression
so terse and yet so striking could dispense with the classicism and the
catachresis of "stoically." And so it is everywhere with Browne. His
manner is exactly proportioned to his matter; his exotic and unfamiliar
vocabulary to the strangeness and novelty of his thoughts. He can never be
really popular; but for the meditative reading of instructed persons he is
perhaps the most delightful of English prosemen.

There are probably few English writers in regard to whom the judgment of
critics, usually ranked as competent, has varied more than in regard to
Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. To some extent this is easily intelligible
to any one who, with some equipment, reads any considerable quantity of his
work; but it would be idle to pretend that the great stumbling-block of all
criticism--the attention to matter rather than to form--has had nothing to
do with it. Clarendon, at first not a very zealous Royalist, was the only
man of decided literary genius who, with contemporary knowledge, wrote the
history of the great debate between king and commonwealth. The effect of
his history in deciding the question on the Royalist side was felt in
England for more than a century; and since popular judgment has somewhat
veered round to the other side, its chief exponents have found it necessary
either to say as little as possible about Clarendon or to depreciate him.
His interesting political history cannot be detailed here. Of a good
Cheshire family, but not originally wealthy, he was educated as a lawyer,
was early adopted into the "tribe of Ben," and was among the first to take
advantage of the opening which the disputes between king and parliament
gave to men of his birth, education, and gifts. At first he was a moderate
opponent of the king's attempts to dispense with parliament; but the
growing evidence that the House of Commons was seeking to increase its own
co