portraits sont difficiles, et
demandent un esprit profond: vous en verrez de ma maniere qui ne vous
deplairont pas.']

[Footnote 15: Joseph Hall's _Characters of Vertues and Vices_ appeared
in 1608 Overbury's _Characters_ 1614-22. For Earle, see pp. 168-70.]

III. Clarendon.

Clarendon's _History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England_
is made up of two works composed with different purposes and at
a distance of twenty years. The first, which may be called the
'Manuscript History', belongs to 1646-8; the second, the 'Manuscript
Life', to 1668-70. They were combined to form the _History_ as we
now read it in 1671, when new sections were added to give continuity
and to complete the narrative. On Clarendon's death in 1674 the
manuscripts passed to his two sons, Henry Hyde, second Earl of
Clarendon, and Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester; and under the
supervision of the latter a transcript of the _History_ was made for
the printers. The work was published at Oxford in three handsome
folio volumes in 1702, 1703, and 1704, and became the property of the
University. The portions of the 'Manuscript Life' which Clarendon
had not incorporated in the _History_ as being too personal, were
published by the University in 1759, under the title _The Life
of Edward Earl of Clarendon_, and were likewise printed from a
transcript.[1]

The original manuscripts, now also in the possession of the University
of which Clarendon's family were such generous benefactors, enable
us to fix the dates of composition. We know whether a part belongs
originally to the 'Manuscript History' or the 'Manuscript Life', or
whether it was pieced in later. More than this, Clarendon every now
and again inserts the month and the day on which he began or ended
a section. We can thus trace the stages by which his great work was
built up, and learn how his art developed. We can also judge how
closely the printed texts represent what Clarendon had written. The
old controversy on the authenticity of the first edition has long been
settled.[2] The original editors did their work faithfully according
to the editorial standards of their day; and they were well within the
latitude allowed them by the terms of Clarendon's instructions when
they occasionally omitted a passage, or when they exercised their
somewhat prim and cautious taste in altering and polishing phrases
that Clarendon had dashed down as quickly as his pen could move.[3]
Later editors have