though it should be remembered that their opinions must have been influenced by the knowledge of many circumstances which are now passed away and lost, the judgment they displayed in the exercise of so large a discretion is a fair subject for discussion and difference of opinion; but it is hardly fair to question the good faith with which they performed their task; nor is it very just to say that the loss of a MS. "is owing, on "the most candid hypothesis, to the not very filial 66 negligence of Lord Clarendon's sons." The fire at New Park, and the dispersion of the Chancellor Clarendon's MSS. subsequent to the death of his sons, show at once that there were more ways than filial negligence by which one of his MSS. might be lost. Sir James Mackintosh appears also to lay much stress upon the supposed obscurity of Mr. Shaw, in his estimate of the value of the MS. from which the first edition was taken :-"The copy made for the press by Wogan "and Low was not, however," he remarks, "taken from "the original MSS. . . . but from an intermediate one, "written (as is said) under the superintendence of the "noble historian by one Shaw, of whom nothing is "known; when, or how, or where it was written, is "also unknown to us." Mr. Shaw's name and character were, however, very well known to Lord Clarendon's family, and to his descendants; and he is mentioned frequently in the diaries and letters of the Earl of Clarendon and Rochester. He acted as private 1 See the Catalogue of Portraits at the Grove, portrait of Mr. Shaw, vol. iii. secretary to Lord Clarendon, and accompanied him in his banishment; and the fact of a MS. being in his hand carried with it the weight of highest probability that it was written," as it is said," under the superintendence of the author, whose fortunes he faithfully followed in the days of adversity. The whole of the History, as first published, has been carefully collated with the MSS. from which the first edition was printed, now in the Bodleian Library, by Dr. Bandinel; and great respect is certainly due to an opinion founded on such careful labour, and which he expresses in the advertisement to the edition of 1826, "that Lord Clarendon's sons were justified in with"holding some parts of the History, which for many "reasons were at that moment unfit for publication; "and that they had in no one instance added, sup"pressed, or altered any historical fact." The following copy of verses, addressed by Lord Hampden in 1777 to Thomas Villiers, Earl of Clarendon, is inserted as containing an allusion to the collection of pictures at the Grove: Description of the Grove, 1777. Hydiaci toties frueris quibus otia luci Quotque nec invitâ sophiam coluere Minervâ. Extra compta nitet, sed rustica villa; nec omnem Ut facis, hæc gnavus vectare uberrima circum Rura diu, fructuque operum lætare tuorum, Hyde, nec hoc spernas veteris rude carmen amici! "But fools the good alone unhappy call, For ills or accidents that chance to all. Was this their virtue, or contempt of life ?" POPE, Essay on Man, Ep. iv. "If the celebrating the memory of eminent and extraordinary persons, and transmitting their great virtues for the imitation of posterity, be one of the principal ends and duties of history, it will not be thought impertinent, in this place, to remember a loss which no time will suffer to be forgotten, and no success or good fortune could repair." CLARENDON'S Hist. of the Reb., vol. iv. p. 240. "Non hæc, o Palla, dederas promissa parenti, Cautius ut sævo velles te credere Marti. Haud ignarus eram, quantum nova gloria in armis, VIRGIL, En. xi. 152-157. |