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magical or more. beams into order.

Hume's Cromwell.

63

Fiat lux, says Carlyle, and the chaos

What Carlyle did for that passage he did, more or less, for all the extant letters and speeches of Cromwell. The toil of brain, and even of body, involved in the enterprise was enormous, but the reward was great-a consciousness, namely, of having made the voice of one of the most remarkable men that ever lived, after it had been all but dumb for two hundred years, once more, and now for evermore, audible to mankind. Any reward in the way of fame and reputation, compared with this consciousness, was as the fine dust of the balance; but if anything could add piquancy to such a triumph, if any splendour of blazoning could enhance such a victory, it would be the prediction by Hume that Cromwell's letters and speeches would form one of the most nonsensical books in the world.

There were some indications in the History of the French Revolution that Carlyle had a special gift for military description, but it was in this book on Cromwell that he fairly proved himself the rival of Homer in delineating battles. I shall quote part of his picture of the Battle of Dunbar. The moment at which the extract commences is when, on the night of the second of September, 1650, David Lesley, commander of the Scots, is bringing his men down from their unassailable position on the heights above Dunbar, to the level ground on which they will be exposed to the attack of Cromwell.

THE BATTLE OF DUNBAR.

At sight of this movement, Oliver suggests to Lambert standing by him, Does it not give us an advantage, if we, instead of him, like to begin the attack? Here is the enemy's right wing coming out to the open space, free to be attacked on any side; and the main-battle hampered in narrow sloping ground between Doon Hill and the brook, has no room to manoeuvre or assist: beat this right wing where it now stands; take it in flank and front with an overpowering force, it is driven upon

its own main-battle, the whole army is beaten ? Lambert eagerly assents, "had meant to say the same thing." Monk, who comes up at the moment, likewise assents; as the other officers do, when the case is set before them. It is the plan resolved upon for battle. The attack shall begin to-morrow before dawn. And so the soldiers stand to their arms, or lie within instant reach of their arms, all night; being upon an engagement very difficult indeed. The night is wild and wet;-2nd of September means 12th by our calendar; the harvest moon wades deep among clouds of sleet and hail. Whoever has a heart for prayer, let him pray now, for the wrestle of death is at hand. Pray,—and withal keep his powder dry! And be ready for extremities, and quit himself like a man! Thus they pass the night, making that Dunbar Peninsula and Brock rivulet long memorable to me. We English have some tents; the Scots have none. The hoarse sea moans bodeful, swinging low and heavy against those whinstone bays; the sea and the tempests are abroad, all else asleep but we, and there is One that rides on the wings of the wind. Towards three in the morning, the Scotch foot, by order of a majorgeneral, say some, extinguish their matches, all but two in a company; cower under the corn-shocks, seeking some imperfect shelter and sleep. Be wakeful, ye English; watch, and pray, and keep your powder dry. About four o'clock comes order to my pudding-headed Yorkshire friend that his regiment must mount and march straightway; his and various other regiments march, pouring swiftly to the left to Brocksmouth House, to the Pass over the Brock. With overpowering force let us storm the Scots' right wing there; beat that, and all is beaten. Major Hodgson, giving his charge to a brother officer, turned aside to listen for a minute, and worship and pray along with them; haply his last prayer on this earth, as it might prove to be. But no: this cornet prayed with such effusion as was wonderful; and imparted strength to my Yorkshire friend, who strengthened his men by telling them of it. And the heavens, in their mercy, I think, have opened us a way of deliverance !-The moon gleams out, hard and blue, riding among hail-clouds; and over St. Abb's Head a streak of dawn is rising.

And now is the hour when the attack should be, and no Lambert is yet here, he is ordering the line far to the right yet; and Oliver occasionally, in Hodgson's hearing, is impatient for him. The Scots, too, on this wing are awake, thinking to surprise us; there is their trumpet sounding, we heard it once; and Lambert, who is to lead the attack, is not here. The Lord General is impatient ;-behold Lambert at last! The trumpets peal, shattering with fierce clangour night's silence; the cannons awaken along all the line: "The Lord of Hosts! the Lord of Hosts! brave ones, on!

On, my

The dispute on this right wing was hot and stiff for three-quarters of an hour! Plenty of fire from field-pieces, snaphances, match-locks, entertains the Scotch main-battle across the Brock ;-poor stiffened men, roused from the corn-shocks with their matches all out! But here on the right, their horse, "with lancers in the front rank," charge desperately;

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The Battle of Dunbar.

65

drive us back across the hollow of the rivulet; back a little; but the Lord
gives us courage, and we storm home again, horse and foot, upon them,
with a shock like tornado tempests; break them, beat them, drive them
all adrift. Some fled across Copperspath, but most across their own
foot." Their own poor foot, whose matches were hardly well alight yet!
Poor men,
it was a terrible awakening for them: field-pieces and charge
of foot across the Brocksburn; and now here is their own horse in mad
panic trampling them to death. Above three thousand killed upon the
place: "I never saw such a charge of foot and horse,” says one; nor did
I. Oliver was still near to Yorkshire Hodgson when the shock succeeded;
Hodgson heard him say, "They run! I profess they run!" And over
St. Abb's Head and the German Ocean, just then, bursts the first gleam
of the level sun upon us, and I heard Noll say, in the words of the
Psalmist, "Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered,"- -or in Rous's

metre

Let God arise, and scattered

Let all His enemies be;

And let all those that do Him hate

Before His presence flee!

Even so. The Scotch army is shivered to utter ruin; rushes in tumultuous wreck, hither, thither; to Belhaven, or, in their distraction, even to Dunbar; the chase goes as far as Haddington; led by Hacker. "The Lord General made a halt," says Hodgson, "and sang the hundred-andseventeenth psalm," till our horse could gather for the chase. Hundredand-seventeenth psalm, at the foot of the Doon Hill; there we uplift it to the tune of Bangor, or some still higher score, and roll it strong and great against the sky :

O give ye praise unto the Lord,

All nati-ons that be:
Likewise ye people all, accord
His name to magnify!

For great to-us-ward ever are

His loving-kindnesses;

His truth endures for ever more:
The Lord O do ye bless.

And now to the chase again.

Carlyle regards universal history as, in the widest and deepest sense, a Bible,-the record of what has been in God's world; and as we read a passage like this, we cannot refuse to acknowledge that he has made his contribution to the Bible of England's history with the earnestness of a Hebrew seer. The sublime chapter on the death of Oliver is, if possible, still more Biblical in its tone; and I must

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confess that it seems to me sheer superstition to impute infallible inspiration to every page in the annals and chronicles of the kings of Israel and Judah, and to refuse to admit the existence of any inspiration at all in that soulthrilling account of the last hours of the greatest and godliest Prince that ever reigned in England. If any man tells me that he can read that chapter with sneering indifference, I shall be unable to believe him if he adds that he feels his heart glow within him while he reads the prophecies of Isaiah or the letters of Paul.

RETROSPECT.

CHAPTER VIII.

HIS WORK BEFORE

FIFTY.

CHANGE IN HIS MOOD. THE LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS.

WE

E are now in a position to appreciate the justice of Professor Masson's remark, referred to in the outset, that there has been an element of military arrangement in the life of Carlyle. As a general plans a great campaign-as a true man, to use Milton's image, makes his whole life an epic poem-so did Carlyle lay out his life, so, at least, are we, as we look along it, almost constrained to believe that he arranged and planned it. Of course any express or literal planning is out of the question, and all the unity of his life has been derived from elevation of principle and fortitude of will. His career has been an exact antithesis to what he declares that of the German literary man, Hoffmann, to have been. "Hoffmann belongs to that too numerous class of vivid and gifted literary men, whose genius, never cultured or elaborated into purity, finds loud and sudden, rather than judicious or permanent admiration; and whose history, full of error and perplexed vicissitude, excites sympathising regret in a few, and unwise wonder in many."

It has been a prevailing and most pernicious idea that this character belongs by some natural fitness to the man of letters. He has from time immemorial been regarded as

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