OLIVER CROMWELL.*

In one of the notes to Hume's History of England, there is the following passage relating to Oliver Cromwell: The sagacity of his actions, and the absurdity of his discourse, form the most prodigious contrast that ever was known. The collection of all his speeches, letters, sermons, would make a great curiosity, and, with a few exceptions, might justly pass for one of the most nonsensical books in the world." Little did Hume think, when he penned these sentences, that the project he mentions would ever be undertaken. Still less could he have anticipated that any sane man would undertake it, for the purpose of vindicating Cromwell's fame against such judgments as Hume himself has thought proper to pass upon the case. Nevertheless, this has happened. Mr. Carlyle, a man incomparably superior to Hume in that philosophical sagacity upon which Hume prided himself, has carefully collected and published whatever of Cromwell's written or spoken words he could find. He has done this with the express design of defending and elevating Cromwell's character by that means, regarding it as the means of all others most likely to exhibit in their true light the principles and purposes of his hero. It is here, as he conceives, that not only the most favourable, but the clearest view of Cromwell is to be discovered. The result is very different from what Hume conjectured it would be. The book thus produced is not at all a nonsensical book. On the contrary, one of its most striking characteristics is the plain, strong sense which it every where develops. It is not even a dull book. We have read every word of its two bulky volumes with deep, unflagging interest; never having felt a disposition to put it down, and being exceedingly sorry when we arrived at the last page. We think that David himself, phlegmatic as he was, would have been considerably surprised at it. We hope it might have done him some good. Even he could scarcely have resisted the influence of Mr. Carlyle's enthusiasm; and, with that aid, he might have been brought dimly to perceive, that there was something true and noble in the sincere and earnest piety of Cromwell, which his own frigid scepticism had failed to take account of. Such terms as hypocrisy, vulgarity and absurdity, must have seemed to him not entirely fitted to the case; and he might have felt that there was a higher and better condition attainable by man, than that paradise in which the proprieties of a genteel selfishness constitute the purest and most exalted rules of life. Let that be as it may, however, there is one thing which this "most nonsensical of books" will certainly accomplish. It will fix the character of nonsensical upon all such histories of the Commonwealth as that to which the name of Hume is attached. Their heartless want of sympathy with what is best and greatest in the persons and events they pretend to describe, will henceforth be proved to have been connected with the most ridiculous mistakes and perversions as to the facts with which they concern themselves. It is always so. Kind and generous

feeling is as wise as it is beautiful.

Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations by Thomas Carlyle. In Two Vols. 8vo. Pp. 522 and 692. London-Chapman and Hall.

Mr. Carlyle has done good service to the cause of historical literature by this work. The letters and speeches are most carefully edited. The labour spent upon them, in that form, must have been immense. We have compared his version of some of the darker passages with former reprints of them, and, in every instance of such comparison, have had occasion to admire both his acuteness and fidelity. He has succeeded wonderfully in casting light upon what was previously obscure. His diligence and antiquarian research would put to shame his own Dryasdust. He has suffered no name or date to pass by him without attempting to verify or explain or correct it, as the case might require. Nor has he contented himself with undergoing such labour as he could perform in the study. We can perceive that he has, in numerous instances, actually visited the towns and battle-fields he describes. The accuracy of a topographer is frequently united to the artistic talent of a painter in the representations he gives. Were we to define what seems to us to be the most remarkable characteristic of the elucidations with which he has thickly strewed these volumes, it would be by the word painting. They are pictures, and those of the most life-like kind. The individuals and circumstances to which they relate are grouped, not consecutively treated of; and, partly by the assumption of a humorous familiarity, partly by treating things past as though they were present, Mr. Carlyle brings his reader into as near a correspondence as possible with the situations on which he desires to fix attention. It is quite unnecessary for us to descant upon his power as a writer. His vigorous thought, his deep sympathy with all human emotion, his directness and earnestness of purpose,-all these qualities, native to the man, are here sufficiently displayed. They are brought to bear, with equal force, upon matters of domestic privacy and upon public enterprizes of the highest achievement. The description of the battle of Dunbar, for instance, is one to which very few parallels indeed could be found; but there are scattered up and down the work, estimates of the great moral struggle of human life, which, in the profound feeling with which they touch the heart, throw all descriptions of physical strife into the shade. There is, moreover, a singularly acute perception of the truth of character continually manifested. The book abounds with indications of what Mr. Carlyle calls insight.

The light in which Mr. Carlyle views the character of Cromwell is that of unqualified admiration; and it is on this principle that all he has written about the transactions of the Commonwealth is composed. He adopts Cromwell's own explanations of the circumstances with which he had to do, as the standard by which other accounts are to be judged; and he never seems to lose sight of the purpose of subordinating every thing else to the greatness of the main figure in his representation. This is not always done with perfect fairness. characters and proceedings of those with whom Cromwell acted, or to whom he was opposed, are sometimes unjustly depreciated; and events are made violently to square with the hypothesis most favourable to his reputation.

The

With Mr. Carlyle's strong conviction of Cromwell's truth and virtue, it was but natural that he should have interpreted to his honour all that otherwise appeared doubtful. But he has carried this rule much too far. He himself could scarcely hesitate to allow, that if similar

We

liberties were taken with the evidence on which he relies, to those he frequently takes with evidence inconsistent with his conclusions, a very different result from his might be produced. This should not be. would particularly refer to the manner in which he deals with the proof there is of the existence, previously to the dissolution of the Long Parliament, of an intention on Cromwell's part to grasp at kingly power. Such an intention, to say the least of it, affords, in various ways, a much lower view of his conduct than Mr. Carlyle chooses to take, and he therefore treats the testimony in its favour with contempt. That testimony, however, remains, in spite of the contempt, and cannot be shaken by a mere implicit reliance upon Cromwell's honesty.

It was but natural also that Mr. Carlyle, in consistency with the object he proposed to himself, should have given continual prominence to what related to Cromwell as distinguished from others. But he has done much more than this. He has undervalued others in order to exalt him. This he has especially done in the case of the members of the Long Parliament. The general merit and influence of that body are not fairly stated by him; and to particular individuals of it he has done palpable injustice. In the instance of Sir Harry Vane, he has not only abstained from exercising the same generous judgment which he applies elsewhere, but has taken occasion to injure his character by means of mere insinuation. He more than once intimates that Vane broke faith with Cromwell, by urging forward the Bill for a new representation, contrary to a pledge which had been given, that its consideration should be suspended. To that pledge he represents Vane as being the chief party. We know of no evidence that Vane was at the meeting where the pledge is stated to have been given. Mr. Carlyle does not even hint at the existence of such evidence. The probabilities are altogether against his being there. If it could be proved that he was present, the circumstance of his having concurred in the pledge, much less of his having been the principal person responsible for it, would still remain unproved. And yet the insinuation thus made is, under all the facts of the case, not only exceedingly detrimental to Sir Harry Vane's reputation, but the only excuse offered for Cromwell's barbarous treatment of him when he dispersed the Parliament. A matter upon which such important consequences hang, should not have been left in the form of a mere insinuation. We think, if Mr. Carlyle had permitted his sympathy for what is good and great to have exercised itself as freely upon what remains of Vane's sentiments, as he has done upon what remains of Cromwell's, he would have shrunk somewhat indignantly from the temptation of making the kind of insinuation to which we have referred.

While we freely acknowledge that the work under our notice possesses very high merit, and cordially recommend it to the study of our readers, we must express our fear that the relation in which it stands to the period of history with which it concerns itself. will, in all probability, be mistaken. Mr. Carlyle himself much underrates the value of his own labours; but his admirers are likely to overrate the value of them. For their benefit, we would say, that they will not find here either a satisfactory history of the Commonwealth, or a complete biography of Cromwell. Every thing is done which, with Mr. Carlyle's views, was necessary to be done, in order to illustrate these letters and

speeches; much more than that, indeed, is done; but there is still a great deal wanting to the accomplishment of either of the objects we have just mentioned. There are facts to be examined, and questions to be discussed, of which these volumes take little or no notice, but which have an important bearing both upon Cromwell's character and the character of his times; and they who are desirous of forming a correct judgment on these points, should be reminded that these omissions must be carefully supplied by them before such a judgment can be attained.

Mr. Carlyle is more than justified in treating Cromwell as a hero. He was not only the great hero of his own day, but he is the great hero of English history. All the world has heard of a ridiculous dispute as to whether a statue of him should be placed among the statues of English Kings. The bare possibility of such a dispute being raised, affords but a mean idea of our national intelligence and feeling. He was the most kingly of our kings. We may well be proud of him, not only as a great monarch, but as one the peculiarities of whose greatness are more honourable to the character of his country than those of any monarch besides. He possessed, in the highest conceivable degree, that strength of will which forms the main element of greatness. He never seemed to submit to the control of events, but always acted in the confidence that he could control them to his own purposes. His sway over the minds of men was so complete, that those with whom he came into contact appear, in most instances, to have been animated by his spirit, rather than by their own. Ambitious he was; but his ambition was of that noble sort which is a virtue and not a fault. It is, at least, our firm persuasion, that ambition in him was not directed by selfish aims, but by the highest considerations of public welfare to which he was capable of attaining. The good of his country, in his best conception of it, was the purpose to which he entirely devoted himself; and whether we approve or disapprove of his conduct, we are equally disposed to give him credit not only for purity of motive, but for intentions the most exalted.

The opinions we thus express have not been hastily or carelessly formed on our part. They are the deliberate result of much reading and reflection, and were formed quite independently of any thing which this work contains. We are, indeed, somewhat surprised that Mr. Carlyle should regard himself as standing so much alone in his admiration of Cromwell as he represents. There is an exaggeration in what he says on that point, which it might have been better for him to have suppressed. There are, indeed, views of the nature of Cromwell's work, in the holding of which we hope he does stand alone; but, in spite of the degeneracy he so scornfully attributes to this age, a far higher appreciation of Cromwell's character prevails among thinking men than he seems to suppose. Nor have the grounds on which he builds his favourable judgment escaped attention to the extent he describes.

The period of Cromwell's life to which the greatest glory attaches was that during which he acted as an officer under the Parliament. His course was a series of uninterrupted victories. His military talents would have been, under any circumstances, extraordinary; but when viewed in connection with the late time of life at which he turned his

attention to military affairs, and the habits he had previously formed, they excite our greatest surprise and wonder. He was not, indeed, at all the ignorant boor which it was, at one time, the fashion to represent him. The family from which he descended was highly respectable, and he always occupied the rank of a gentleman, in consistency with which situation he had been educated. The accusation preferred against him, of immorality in the early part of his life, seems to be without foundation. He married young, and, from the first, attached himself, decidedly and earnestly, to the Puritan party. His natural temperament was both melancholy and enthusiastic. Till he was forty years of age, he principally employed himself in farming; and while thus engaged, he appears to have united the strong common sense of an English yeoman with the fervent piety of a Hebrew saint. It is not probable that any weaker motives than those supplied by powerful religious feeling would have been sufficient to induce him to mingle in the political strife of his time. To such feeling he was, however, entirely obedient, and as it supplied his first impulse to public exertion, so it continued to be, throughout his course, the grand moving spring of his conduct. His character was fully formed before he stepped upon the stage of Parliament; and, to our apprehension, it underwent no change afterwards. He appears always to have exercised the same kind of influence in the circles where he moved. His mind was eminently of a practical cast. It fitted him immediately to seize the view of a subject in which it lay open to action; and to that view he invariably adhered, with unrelaxing tenacity and perseverance. This appears in all his battles. From the skirmish at Grantham to the final fight at Worcester, he clearly saw what was to be done, and unhesitatingly did it; and thus he beat every enemy to whom he was opposed, and accomplished every purpose he undertook. Doubts and scruples he was not troubled with; speculation and sophistry he was not open to; and he was not restrained in his projects by any consciousness of weakness. He went directly onward to his object, whether that object were to spread Calvinistic doctrine in the neighbourhood where he dwelt-to oppose the King's commissioners for the draining of the fens-to organize a force whose religious principle might contend with the sense of honour possessed by the Cavaliers to overpower his adversaries in the field-or to take into his own hands the government of his country. He always knew what he meant to do, and never lacked the courage to attempt it and carry it out. This was the kind of man upon whom, in seasons of difficulty, others would lean as upon a rock.

The most striking and important peculiarity in the character of Cromwell, as the chief agent in a great political revolution, was the religious principle upon which it turned. To say that his religion was sincere and earnest, is but partially to express the truth on the subject. Religion was the element in which he lived and moved and had his being. Its interests, faithfully pursued according to his light, constituted the one great object to whose advancement he consecrated himself; and its spirit modified every opinion he entertained and every action in which he engaged. He who, on reading Cromwell's own utterances of religious feeling, is not so far touched by their truth and power as to concede to him all honour on their account, must be unfitted by his own religious deficiencies for forming a correct judg