hall) I desired him that his highness would please to pardon me, if I had unwittingly spoken anything to the disparagement of a person whose relations to his highness I had not the honour to know.' At which he told me, 'that he had no other concernment for his late highness than as he took him to be the greatest man that ever was of the English nation, if not (said he) of the whole world; which gives me a just title to the defence of his reputation, since I now account myself, as it were, a naturalised English angel, by having had so long the management of the affairs of that country. And pray, countryman, (said he, very kindly and very flatteringly), for I would not have you fall into the general error of the world, that detests and decries so extraordinary a virtue, what can be more extraordinary than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so improbable a design as the destruction of one of the most ancient and most solidly founded monarchies upon the earth? that he should have the power or boldness to put his prince and master to an open and infamous death? to banish that numerous and strongly-allied family? to do all this under the name and wages of a parliament? to trample upon them too as he pleased, and spurn them out of doors when he grew weary of them? to raise up a new and unheard-of monster out of their ashes? to stifle that in the very infancy, and set up himself above all things that ever were called sovereign in England? to oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice? to serve all parties patiently for a while, and to command them victoriously at last? to overrun each corner of the three nations, and overcome with equal facility both the riches of the south and the poverty of the north? to be feared and courted by all foreign princes, and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth? to call together parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with the breath of his mouth? to be humbly and daily petitioned that he would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions a year, to be the master of those who had hired him before to be their servant? to have the estates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal as was the little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in the spending of them? and lastly, (for there is no end of all the particulars of his glory), to bequeath all this with one word to his posterity? to die with peace at home, and triumph abroad? to be buried among kings, and with more than regal solemnity? and to leave a name behind him, not to be extinguished but with the whole world; which, as it is now too little for his praises, so might have been too for his conquests, if the short line of his human life could have been stretched out to the extent of his immortal designs?' [The author supposed that his highness' commended Cromwell 'by irony;' and 'having fortified himself privately with a short mental prayer and with the sign of the cross,' boldly proceeded to state the opposite view.] 'There would be no end to instance in the particulars of all his wickedness; but to sum up a part of it briefly: What can be more extraordinarily wicked than for a person such as yourself qualify him rightly, to endeavour not only to exalt himself above, but to trample upon all his equals and betters? to pretend freedom for all men, and under the help of that pretence to make all men his servants? to take arms against taxes of scarce two hundred thousand pounds a year, and to raise them himself to above two millions? to quarrel for the loss of three or four ears, and strike off three or four hundred heads? to fight against an imaginary suspicion of I know not what two thousand guards to be fetched for the king, I know not from whence, and to keep up for himself no less than forty thousand? to pretend the defence of parliaments, and violently to dissolve all even of his own calling, and almost choosing? to undertake the reformation of religion, to rob it even to the very skin, and then to expose it naked to the rage of all sects and heresies? to set up counsels of rapine and courts of murder? to fight against the king under a commission for him, to take him forcibly out of the hands of those for whom he had conquered him, to draw him into his net with protestations and vows of fidelity, and, when he had caught him in it, to butcher him, with as little shame as conscience or humanity, in the open face of the whole world? to receive a commission for king and parliament, to murder (as I said) the one, and destroy no less impudently the other? to fight against monarchy when he declared for it, and declare against it when he contrived for it in his own person? to abase perfidiously and supplant ingratefully his own general first, and afterwards most of those officers who, with the loss of their honour and hazard of their souls, had lifted him up to the top of his unreasonable ambitions? to break his faith with all enemies, and with all friends equally? and to make no less frequent use of the most solemn perjuries than the looser sort of people do of customary oaths? to usurp three kingdoms without any shadow of the least pretensions, and to govern them as unjustly as he got them? to set himself up as an idol (which we know, as St Paul says, in itself is nothing), and make the very streets of London like the valley of Hinnon, by burning the bowels of men as a sacrifice to his Molochship? to seek to entail this usurpation upon his posterity, and with it an endless war upon the nation? and lastly, by the severest judgment of Almighty God, to die hardened, and mad, and unrepentant, with the curses of the present age, and the detestation of all to succeed?' NOTES. The late man... Protector. Why does Cowley use such a roundabout expression ? Little affection'. . . him. Naturally, considering the writer's relation to the royal family. Trouble &c. Cowley dearly loved his ease. Folly &c. Especial folly,' when honour was done to a man that he was bound to dislike. Curious persons, persons greatly caring (Lat. curiosus, from cura, care) for these things, interested. The Mount, St Michael's Mount. Cost. The funeral was arranged on Sarcastic. Uses to do. We have dropt this employment of the present tense; while we freely employ the past, 'used.' Cf. (below) as men use to do.' Sometimes... sometimes.. . success. "Though no man can justify or approve the actions of Cromwell, without having all the seeds and principles of wickedness in his heart; yet many there are, even honest and wellmeaning people, who (without wading into any depth of consideration in the matter, and purely deceived by splendid works, and the outward appearances of vanity) are apt to admire him as a great and eminent person.' (Advertisement to Vision.) This is not far from Cowley's own state of mind. He was the too easy-going a man to be a thoroughly good hater. Tells us. In Homer, dreams are sent mostly by Zeus (Jupiter). Like St Paul. See 2 Cor. xii. 2, 3'Very injudicious, on such an occasion, to use the language of St Paul' (Hurd). Mona, the Isle of Man, lies almost equidistant from England, Scotland, and Ireland. The view from Snaefell, the highest hill in [Man (fully 2000 feet), is very imposing. These twenty years. The troubles of 1641 culminated in civil war (1642), in the course of which the monarch was beheaded, and monarchy abolished in favour of a Commonwealth or free state. Cowley is writing in 1661, the year after the Restoration. Passion, lit. suffering, high state of feeling. Arising out of the earth: 'i.e. from a low and plebeian original' (Hurd). The battle of Naseby, in Northamptonshire, June 14, 1645. 'The king and the kingdom were lost in it' (Clarendon). Three crowns. Why 'three?' The North-west Principality. The principality lying in the north-west of Europe; the British Islands. His Highness, the Protector &c. The title of king was not revived: but the kingly prerogatives were intrusted to a Lord High Protector. The sovereign was called, not His Majesty, but His Highness' (Macaulay, Hist., chap. i.). Richard III the king his nephew. See More, King Richard III. (pages 53-6). Set up himself in the place of it. 'His wish seems to have been to govern constitutionally, and to substitute the empire of the laws for that of the sword. But he soon found that, hated as he was both by Royalists and Presbyterians, he could be safe only by being absolute' (Macaulay). A murderer. The commonwealth, which had put to death the king. We would &c. Remark on 'would.' To have changed. To change' (simple infin. indef.) is enough. Cf. note to 'to have preached' (page 68). And rather received &c. Improper ellipsis. Disentangle the clauses. Apostate, one that forsakes his principles or his party. Gr. apostātēs (runaway slave, deserter, renegade), from apo (away), and the root sta (stand). cen Whitehall, a palace in Westminster, originally built by Hubert de Burgh, the Justiciary, in the first half of the 13th century. Hubert bequeathed it (1243) to the Black Friars, who sold it (1248) to the Archbishop of York. It was now called York Place, and continued the residence of the York primates for nearly three turies (1248-1530), the last that held it being Wolsey. Wolsey resigned it to Henry VIII., who made it a royal palace, and called it Whitehall. It was rebuilt by James I. It was accidentally burnt to the ground in 1698, the Banqueting-house being the only important part that escaped. The general error &c. 'He had kept the hearts of his soldiers, and had broken with almost every other class of his fellow-citizens.' 'While he lived, his power stood firm, an object of mingled aversion, admiration, and dread to his subjects. Few, indeed, loved his government; but those who hated it most hated it less than they feared it' (Macaulay). What can be &c. Remarkable contrast and enumeration of particulars up to a climax. Cf. (below) Cowley's reply to the angel. In some remarks upon the Davideis, he presents the fortunes of David in the same striking form, though the contrasts are not portrayed at the same length: "What worthier subject could have been chosen, among all the treasuries of past times, than the life of this young prince, who from so small beginnings, through such infinite troubles and oppositions, by such miraculous virtues and excellencies, and with such incomparable variety of wonderful actions and accidents, became the greatest monarch that ever sat on the most famous throne of the whole earth?"" (Minto, Engl. Prose Lit., page 340.) Mean birth, no fortune. Cf. (above) 'arising out of the earth;' and (below) the little inheritance of his father.' 'A private and obscure birth (though of a good family)' (Clarendon). His father was Robert Cromwell, younger son of Sir Henry Cromwell, and younger brother of Sir Oliver Cromwell, knights both; who dwelt successively in rather sumptuous fashion, at the mansion of Hinchinbrook hard by [Huntingdon]. Elizabeth Steward, who had now become Mrs Robert Cromwell, was, say the genealogists, "indubitably descended from the royal Stuart family of Scotland;" and could still count kindred with them. Certain lands and messuages [dwelling-houses, with outhouses and grounds about them], round and in that town of Huntingdon. . . . These lands he himself farmed: the income in all is guessed or computed to have been about £300 a year; a tolerable fortune in those times; perhaps somewhat like £1000 now.. In short the stories of Oliver's "poverty". are all false. . . . The family was of the rank of substantial gentry, and duly connected with such in the counties round, for three generations back' (Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, Introduction, chap. iii.). ... ... |