character. They are characters rather than portraits.

But portraiture was one of his passions, though he left its practice
to the painters. He adorned his houses with the likenesses of his
friends. It was fitting that our greatest character writer should
have formed one of the great collections of pictures of 'wits, poets,
philosophers, famous and learned Englishmen'.[15] To describe them
on paper, and to contrive that they should look down on him from his
walls, were different ways of indulging the same keen and tireless
interest in the life amid which he moved.

[Footnote 1: For a detailed examination of the composition and value
of Clarendon's _History_ see the three articles by Professor C.H.
Firth in _The English Historical Review_ for 1904. No student of
Clarendon can ever afford to neglect them.]

[Footnote 2: See No. 33, introductory note.]

[Footnote 3: See No. 6, introductory note, and No. 36, p. 140, II.
17-22 note.]

[Footnote 4: Contractions have been expanded. The punctuation of the
original is slight, and it has been found desirable occasionally to
insert commas, where seventeenth century printers would have inserted
them; but the run of the sentences has not been disturbed. In
modernized versions Clarendon's long sentences are sometimes
needlessly subdivided.]

[Footnote 5: _State Papers_, 1773, vol. ii, pp. 288-9.]