a circle than forwards. He minces his precepts for children to swallow, hanging clogs on the nimbleness of his own soul, that his scholars may go along with him. He is and will be known to be an absolute monarch in his school. If cockering mothers proffer him money to purchase their son's exemption from his rod, (to live, as it were, in a peculiar, out of their maste's jurisdiction,) with disdain he refuseth it, and scorns the late custom in some places of commuting whipping into money, and ransoming boys from the rod at a set price. If he hath a stubborn youth, correction-proof, he debaseth not his authority by contesting with him, but fairly, if he can, puts him away before his obstinacy hath infected others.

He is moderate in inflicting deserved correction. Many a schoolmaster better answereth the name paidotribes then paidagogos, rather tearing his scholars' flesh with whipping than giving them good education. No wonder if his scholars hate the muses, being presented unto them in the shapes of fiends and furies.

Such an Orbilius mars more scholars than he makes. Their tyranny hath caused many tongues to stammer which spake plain by nature, and whose stuttering at first was nothing else but fears quavering on their speech at their master's presence. And whose mauling them about their heads hath dulled those who in quickness exceeded their master.

He makes his school free to him who sues to him in forma pauperi. And surely learning is the greatest alms that can be given. But he is a beast who, because the poor scholar can not pay him his wages, pays the scholar in his whipping; rather are diligent lads to be encouraged with all excitements to learning. This minds me of what I have heard concerning Mr. Bust, that worthy late schoolmaster of Eton, who would not suffer any wandering begging scholar (such as justly the statute hath ranked in the forefront of rogues), to come into his school, but would thrust him out with earnestness (however privately charitable unto him), lest his schoolboys should be disheartened from their books, by seeing some scholars, after their studying in the university, preferred to beggary.

He spoils not a good school to make whereof a bad college, therein to teach his scholars logic. For, besides that, logic may have an action of trespass against grammar, for encroaching on her liberties, syllogisms are solecisms taught in the school and oftentimes they are forced afterward into the university to unlearn the fumbling skill they had before. Out of his school he is in no way pedantical in carriage or discourse; contenting himself to be rich in Latin, though he doth not jingle with it in every company wherein he comes.

To conclude, let this, amongst other motives, make schoolmasters careful in their place, that the eminences of their scholars have commended the memories of their schoolmasters to posterity, who, otherwise in obscurity, had altogether been forgotten. Who had ever heard of R. Bond, in Lancashire, but for the breeding of learned Ascham, his scholar? or of Hartgrave, in Brundly school, in the same county, but because he was the first did teach worthy Dr. Whitaker? Nor do I honour the memory of Mulcaster for any thing so much as his scholar, that gulf of learning, Bishop Andrews. This made the Athenians, the day before the great feast of Theseus, their founder, to sacrifice a ram to the memory of Conidas, his schoolmaster, that first instructed him.

EDWARD HYDE, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, and Lord High Chancellor of England, was one of the most remarkable personages of this or any other period of English literature. Descended from an ancient family in Cheshire, and born at Dinton, in Wiltshire, on the sixteenth of February, 1608, he entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford, at the early age of fourteen, whence he was graduated with the degree of bachelor of arts, in 1625, not yet having attained the seventeenth year of his age. From the university, Hyde reVOL. II.-I

moved to London, entered the Middle Temple, and there, for a number of years, pursued the study of the law with the greatest diligence and success. While thus employed, he associated much with some of the most eminent of his contemporaries, among whom were Selden, Waller, Hales, and Chillingworth. From the conversation of these and other distinguished individuals, the characters of some of whom he has admirably drawn in his works, he considered himself to have derived a great portion of his knowledge; and he declared that he never was so proud, or thought himself so good a man, as when he was the worst man in the company.' In the practice of the law he made so creditable a figure as to attract the attention of the most eminent of the profession; but being in easy circumstances, and having entered parliament, in 1640, he soon afterwards quitted the bar, and devoted himself, thenceforth, to public affairs. At first he abstained from connecting himself with any political party; but eventually he joined the royalists, to whose principles he was naturally inclined, though not in a violent degree. In the struggles between Charles the First, and the people, he was much consulted by the king, who, however, sometimes gave him great offence by disregarding his advice. Many of the papers issued in the royal cause during the civil war, were the productions of Hyde's pen. Charles, while holding his court at Oxford, nominated him chancellor of the exchequer, and conferred upon him the honor of knighthood.

In 1644, Hyde left the king, and accompanied Prince Charles to the west, and subsequently to Jersey, where he remained two years after the prince's departure from that island, engaged in tranquil literary pursuits, and especially in writing a history of the stormy events in which he had so lately been an actor. In 1648 he joined the prince in Holland, and the next year went as one of his ambassadors to Madrid, having previously settled his family at Antwerp. In Spain, the ambassadors were coldly received; and after suffering much from poverty and neglect, they were at length, in 1651, ordered to quit the kingdom. Hyde retired to his family at Antwerp, but in the autumn of the same year, joined the exiled prince in Paris. Thenceforth he continued to be of great service in managing the embarrassed pecuniary affairs of the court, in giving counsel to the king, and in preserving harmony among his adherents. At the same time his own poverty was such, that he remarks in one of his letters, written in 1652, 'I have neither clothes nor fire to preserve me from the sharpness of the season;' and in the following year he says, 'I have not had a livre of my own for three months.'

Hyde was a man of activity, integrity, and strict economy; and, therefore, Charles's indolent and extravagant habits greatly annoyed him. The prince, however, had the discernment to perceive the value of such a friend, and, therefore, expressed his approbation of his conduct, by raising him to the dignity of lord chancellor. The appointment by a king, without a kingdom, besides serving to testify royal favor, enabled the easy and indolent monarch to rid himself of clamorous applicants for future lucrative offices in

England, by referring them to one who had greater ability to resist solicitation with firmness. Of the four confidential counsellors by whose advice Charles was almost exclusively directed after the death of Oliver Cromwell, Hyde 'bore the greatest share of business, and was believed to possess the greatest influence. The measures he recommended were tempered with sagacity, prudence, and moderation.' The chancellor was a witness of the Restoration; he was with Charles at Canterbury, in his progress to London, followed his triumphal entry into the capitol, and took his seat on the first of June, 1660, as speaker of the House of Lords: he also sat on the same day in the Court of Chancery. In the same year his daughter became the wife of the Duke of York; and by this marriage Hyde was rendered the progenitor of two queens of England, Mary and Anne. At the coronation, in 1661, the earldom of Clarendon was conferred upon him, accompanied with a present from the king of twenty thousand pounds.

Clarendon enjoyed the office of chancellor till 1665, when, having incurred the popular displeasure by some of his measures, and raised up many bitter enemies in the court by his opposition to the dissoluteness and extravagance which there prevailed, he resigned the great seal at his majesty's command, and was soon after compelled to withdraw from the kingdom. He retired into France, where he occupied several years in completing his History of the Rebellion, and died at Rouen, on the ninth of December, 1673. His remains were afterwards brought to England and interred on the north side of King Henry the Seventh's chapel, in Westminster Abbey.

The History of the Rebellion,' Clarendon's great work, is not written in the studied manner usually observed in historical compositions, but in an easy flowing conversational style; and it is generally esteemed for the lively descriptions which the author gives, from his own knowledge and observations, of his most eminent contemporaries. The events are narrated with that freshness and minuteness which no writer but one concerned in them could have attained; but in judging of the characters and transactions described, some allowance must be made for the political prejudices of the author, which, as we have already observed, were those of a moderate and virtuous royalist. The principal faults of his style are prolixity and want of clearness the narrative is also frequently interrupted by the introduction of minute discussions of accessory matters.

Lord Clarendon wrote also a variety of shorter works, among which are a life of himself, a reply to the 'Leviathan' of Hobbes, and an admirable Essay on an Active and Contemplative Life, and why the One should be preferred before the Other. This last work is peculiarly valuable, as the production of a man who, to a sound and vigorous understanding, added rare knowledge of the world, and much experience of life, both active and retired. He strongly maintains the superiority of an active course, as having the greater tendency to promote, not only the happiness and usefulness, but also the virtue of the individual. In the year 1811, a work of Lord Clarendon's, which had till that time remained in manuscript, was published under the

title of Religion and Policy, and the Countenance and Assistance they should give to each other; with a Survey of the Power and Jurisdiction of the Pope in the Dominions of other Princes. The principal object of the work is to show the injury that religion has sustained by the pope's assumption of temporal authority, and that it is incumbent on Catholics living under Protestant governments to pay no regard to papal authority, in opposition to their own sovereigns. The following sketches of Charles the First and of Oliver Cromwell show Clarendon's style to great advantage :—

CHARACTER OF CHARLES I.

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But it will not be unnecessary to add a short character of his person, that posterity may know the inestimable loss which the nation then underwent, in being deprived of a prince whose example would have had a greater influence upon the manners and piety of the nation, than the most strict laws can have. To speak first of his private qualifications as a man, before the mention of his princely and royal virtues; he was, if ever any, the most worthy of the title of an honest man; so great a lover of justice, that no temptation could dispose him to a wrongful action, except it was so disguised to him that he believed it to be just. He had a tenderness and compassion of nature which restrained him from ever doing a hard-hearted thing; and, therefore, he was so apt to grant pardon to malefactors, that the judges of the land represented to him the damage and insecurity to the public that flowed from such his indulgence. And then he restrained himself from pardoning either murders or highway robberies, and quickly discerned the fruits of his severity by a wonderful reformation of those enormities. He was very punctual and regular in his devotions; he was never known to enter upon his recreations or sports, though never so early in the morning, before he had been at public prayers; so that on hunting days, his chaplains were bound to a very early attendance. He was likewise very strict in observing the hours of his private cabinet devotions, and was so severe an exacter of gravity and reverence in all mention of religion, that he could never endure any light or profane word, with what sharpness of wit soever it was covered; and though he was well pleased and delighted with reading verses made upon any occasion, no man durst bring before him any thing that was profane or unclean. That kind of wit had never any countenance then. He was so great an example of conjugal affection, that they who did not imitate him in that particular, durst not brag of their liberty; and he did not only permit, but direct his bishops to prosecute those scandalous vices, in the ecclesiastical courts, against persons of eminence, and near relation to his service.

His kingly virtues had some mixture and allay that hindered them from shining in full lustre, and from producing those fruits they should have been attended with. He was not in his nature very bountiful, though he gave very much. This appeared more after the Duke of Buckingham's death, after which those showers fell very rarely; and he paused too long in giving, which made those to whom he gave less sensible of the benefit. He kept state to the full, which made his court very orderly, no man presuming to be seen in a place where he had no pretence to be. He saw and observed men long before he received them about his person; and did not love strangers, nor very confident men. He was a patient hearer of causes, which he frequently accustomed himself to at the council board, and judged very well, and was dexterous in the mediating part; so that he often put an end to causes by persuasion, which the stubbornness of men's humours made dilatory in courts of justice. He was very fearless in his person; but, in his riper years, not very enterprising. He had an excellent understanding, but was not confident enough of it; which made him oftentimes change his opinion for a worse, and follow the advice of men that

did not judge so well as himself. This made him more irresolute than the conjuncture of his affairs would admit; if he had been of a rougher and more imperious nature, he would have found more respect and duty. And his not applying some severe cures to approaching evils proceeded from the lenity of his nature, and the tenderness of his conscience, which, in all cases of blood, made him choose the softer way, and not hearken to severe counsels, how reasonably soever urged. This only restrained him from pursuing his advantage in the first Scottish expedition, when, humanly speaking, he might have reduced that nation to the most entire obedience that could have been wished. But no man can say he had then many who advised him to it, but the contrary, by a wonderful indisposition all his council had to the war or any other fatigue. He was always a great lover of the Scottish nation, having not only been born there, but educated by that people, and besieged by them always, having few English about him till he was king; and the major number of his servants being still of that nation, who he thought could never fail him. And among these, no man had such an ascendant over him, by the humblest insinuations, as Duke Hamilton had.

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As he excelled in all other virtues, so in temperance he was so strict, that he abhorred all debauchery to that degree, that, at a great festival solemnity, where he once was, when very many of the nobility of the English and Scots were entertained, being told by one who withdrew from thence, what vast draughts of wine they drank, and, that there was one earl who had drank most of the rest down, and was not himself moved or altered,' the king said, ‘that he deserved to be hanged;' and that earl coming shortly after into the room where his majesty was, in some gayety, to show how unhurt he was from that battle, the king sent one to bid him withdraw from his majesty's presence; nor did he in some days after appear before him.

So many miraculous circumstances contributed to his ruin, that men might well think that heaven and earth conspired it. Though he was, from the first declension of his power, so much betrayed by his own servants, that there were very few who remained faithful to him, yet that treachery proceeded not always from any treasonable purpose to do him any harm, but from particular and personal animosities against other men. And afterward, the terror all men were under of the parliament, and the guilt they were conscious of themselves, made them watch all opportunities to make themselves gracious to those who could do them good; and so they became spies upon their master, and from one piece of knavery were hardened and confirmed to undertake another, till at last they had no hope of preservation but by the destruction of their master. And after all this, when a man might reasonably believe that less than a universal defection of three nations could not have reduced a great king to so ugly a fate, it is most certain that, in that very hour, when he was thus wickedly murdered in the sight of the sun, he had as great a share in the hearts and affections of his subjects in general, was as much beloved, esteemed, and longed for by the people in general of the three nations, as any of his predecessors had ever been. To conclude, he was the worthiest gentleman, the best master, the best friend, the best husband, the best father, and the best Christian, that the age in which he lived produced. And if he were not the greatest king, if he were without some parts and qualities which have made some kings great and happy, no other prince was ever unhappy who was possessed of half his virtues and endowments, and so much without any kind of vice.

CHARACTER OF OLIVER CROMWELL.

He was one of those men, quos vituperare ne inimici quidem possunt, nisi ut simul laudent, whom his very enemies could not condemn without commending him at the same time; for he could never have done half that mischief without great parts of courage, industry, and judgment. He must have had a wonderful understanding in the natures and humours of men, and as great a dexterity in applying