The life and letters of George William Frederick, fourth earl of Clarendon, K.G., G.C.B.

  • Maxwell, Herbert, Sir, 1845-1937.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The life and letters of George William Frederick, fourth earl of Clarendon, K.G., G.C.B. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.

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    Ac a F PREFACE Diligent hands have dealt pretty thoroughly with the annals of the nineteenth century, and the reading pubhc are in possession of memoirs of nearly all the outstanding figures in that age. The question has often been asked why none has been midertaken of the fourth Earl of Clarendon, to whom was entrusted the conduct of foreign affairs at very critical periods in the vicissitudes of Empire. To that question I am unable to supply an answer ; and, while feeling that it is most meet that there should no longer be this blank in the written memorials of Victorian statesmen, it has not been without misgiving that I have accepted the invitation to fill it. I was confronted by the limit which Dr. Johnson sought to impose upon biographers (which, however, he himself overstepped as author of The Lives of the Poets). ' Nobody,' he told Boswell, ' can write the life of a man but those who have eat [sic] and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.' Two circumstances have greatly tended to mitigate the difficulties to be encountered by one who, like myself, had not the privilege of acquaintance with Lord Clarendon: first, the generous confidence reposed in me by the present Lord Clarendon in placing the whole of his father's corre- spondence at my disposal; and second, the abundance of that correspondence and the frank revelation of character which it contains. Let me take this opportunity, also, for expressing my gratitude to the representatives of many of the late Lord Clarendon's correspondents for permission granted me to quote from their letters.