Two of these are by so much preferable before the other Two, that the first may worthily stand by the Sides of the best of the Ancients, whilst both the others must be placed under them; and a Man, without knowing more of them, may by reading their Books find the Difference between their Extractions, their Educations, their Conversations, and their Judgment.  The first Two are Henry D’Avila and Cardinal Bentivoglio, both Italians of illustrious Birth; ... they often set forth and describe the same Actions with very pleasant and delightful Variety; and commonly the greatest Persons they have occasion to mention were very well known to them both, which makes their Characters always very lively.  Both their Histories are excellent, and will instruct the ablest and wisest Men how to write, and terrify them from writing.  The other Two were Hugo Grotius and Famianus Strada, who both wrote in Latin upon the same Argument, and of the same Time, of the Wars of Flanders, and of the Low-Countries.

He proceeds to show that Grotius, with all his learning and abilities, and with all his careful revisions, had not been able to give his narrative enough life and spirit; it was deficient in ’a lively Representation of Persons and Actions, which makes the Reader present at all they say or do’.  The whole passage, which is too long to be quoted in full, is not more valuable as a criticism than as an indication of his own aims, and of his equipment to realize them.  Some years earlier, when he was still thinking ‘with much agony’ about the method he was to employ in his own history, he had cited the methods of Davila, ‘who’, he added, ’I think hath written as ours should be written.’[7]

One of Clarendon’s tests of a good history, it will be noted, is the ‘lively representation of persons’; the better writers are distinguished by making ‘their characters always very lively’.  In his own hands, and in Burnet’s, the character assumes even greater importance than the continental historians had given it.  At every opportunity Clarendon leaves off his narrative of events to describe the actors in the great drama, and Burnet introduces his main subject with what is in effect an account of his dramatis personae.  They excel in the range and variety of their characters.  But they had studied the continental historians, and the encouragement of example must not be forgotten.

* * * * *

The debt to French literature can easily be overstated.  No French influence is discoverable in the origin and rise of the English character, nor in its form or manner; but its later development may have been hastened by French example, especially during the third quarter of the seventeenth century.