ildering concatenation of inextricable entanglement. Sometimes, of
course, the difficulty is more apparent than real, and by simply
substituting full stops and capitals for his colons and conjunctions, one
may, to some extent, simplify the chaos. But it is seldom that this is
really effective: it never produces really well balanced sentences and
really well constructed paragraphs; and there are constant instances in
which it is not applicable at all. It is not that the jostling and confused
relatives are as a rule grammatically wrong, like the common blunder of
putting an "and which" where there is no previous "which" expressed or
implied. They, simply, put as they are, bewilder and muddle the reader
because the writer has not taken the trouble to break up his sentence into
two or three. This is, of course, a very gross abuse, and except when the
talents above noticed either fuse his style into something better, or by
the interest they excite divert the attention of the reader, it constantly
makes Clarendon anything but agreeable reading, and produces an impression
of dryness and prolixity with which he is not quite justly chargeable. The
plain truth is that, as has been said often before, and may have to be said
more than once again, the sense of proportion and order in prose
composition was not born. The famous example--the awful example--of Oliver
Cromwell's speeches shows the worst-known instance of this; but the best
writers of Cromwell's own generation--far better educated than he,
professed men of letters after a fashion, and without the excuse of
impromptu, or of the scurry of unnoted, speech--sometimes came not far
behind him.

Against one great writer of the time, however, no such charge can be justly
brought. Although much attention has recently been given to the
philosophical opinions of Hobbes, since the unjust prejudice against his
religious and political ideas wore away, and since the complete edition of
his writings published at last in 1843 by Sir William Molesworth made him
accessible, the extraordinary merits of his style have on the whole had
rather less than justice done to them. He was in many ways a very singular
person. Born at Malmesbury in the year of the Armada, he was educated at
Oxford, and early in the seventeenth century was appointed tutor to the
eldest son of Lord Hardwick, afterwards Earl of Devonshire. For full
seventy years he was on and off in the service of the Cavendish family; but