nstitutional power at the expense of the prerogative, and especially the
anti-Church tendencies of the parliamentary leaders, converted him at first
into a moderate and then into a strong Royalist. One of the chief of the
king's constitutional advisers, he was after the Restoration the most
distinguished by far of those Cavaliers who had parliamentary and
constitutional experience; and with the title and office of Chancellor, he
exercised a practical premiership during the first seven years of the
Restoration. But ill-fortune, and it must be confessed some unwisdom,
marked his government. He has been often and truly said to have been a
statesman of Elizabeth, born three-quarters of a century too late. He was
thought by the public to be arbitrary, a courtier, and even to some extent
corrupt. He seemed to the king to be a tiresome formalist and censor, who
was only scrupulous in resisting the royal will. So he was impeached; and,
being compelled to quit the kingdom, spent the last seven years of his life
in France. His great works, begun during his first exile and completed
during his second, are the _History of the Rebellion_ and his own _Life_,
the former being by much the more important though the latter (divided into
a "Life" and a "Continuation," the last of which starts from the
Restoration) contains much interesting and important biographical and
historical matter. The text of these works was conveyed by his heirs to the
University of Oxford, and long remained an exception to the general rule of
the terminableness of copyright.

Clarendon is a very striking example of the hackneyed remark, that in some
cases at any rate men's merits are their own and their faults those of
their time. His literary merits are, looked at by themselves, of nearly the
highest kind. He is certainly the best English writer (and may challenge
any foreigner without much fear of the result) in the great, difficult, and
now almost lost art of character-(or, as it was called in his time,
portrait-) drawing--that is to say, sketching in words the physical, moral,
and mental, but especially the moral and mental, peculiarities of a given
person. Not a few of these characters of his are among the well-known
"beauties" justified in selection by the endorsement of half a dozen
generations. They are all full of life; and even where it may be thought
that prejudice has had something to do with the picture, still the subject
lives, and is not a mere bund