66

-loquia menfalia, or table talk, a fort of Lutheriana had been consumed, called to mind how he poffeffed a small edition of it, and thinking much upon the fubject, dreamed, how an old man ftanding near his bedfide, lugged him by the ear, crying, "Sirrah, go now and tranflate that little. "book you brought from Germany, I'll find you place and leifure to perform it in." And fo fure enough he did, fays Bell, " for I was "committed prifoner to the gatehouse, and worked upon it there—my "fole amusement, for five years at leaft; Archbishop Laud fending me "before his death forty pounds in gold." Such was the prelate condemned to fuffer decapitation under pretence that he favoured popery. But Luther was no more efteemed than was Urban the eighth, by these extraordinary perfons, among whom a clafs of people in process of time fprung up, who firmly expected our blessed Saviour's instant appearance on earth, Antinomians, fifth monarchy men, who proclaiming themselves incapable of error, calmly proposed to suppress all clergy, all schools, and all courts of judicature-and thus did they behave, who had so justly protested, so loudly exclaimed against papal infallibility. When their enthusiastick phrenzy came to its height indeed, and they ran through the affrighted streets, faying that Jefus was their leader, and knocking down all they met: force was applied, and after fome lives loft, a temporary quiet from thefe turbulent faints was obtained. The year 1653, however, faw Cromwell at length peacefully feated upon his felf-created eminence: the only man in all the world, perhaps, who could have ruled fuch mortals in such times. His high, his fingularly-constructed fpirit, pervaded the whole heterogeneous mass he had to manage; levigated, restrained, and gave formation to its fighting elements. Stern in his counfels, confused in his harangues, he awed the feeble and perplexed the ignorant. A ruggedness of manners too, ferved happily the useful purpose of keeping distant all ideas of royalty, while his affectedly uninviting countenance, kept even his firmest friends from clofe approach, or undue familiarity. Skilled in the canting language of the day, he executed the most daring projects

with the most steady hand, while his tongue talked of " waiting upon “Providence," "wrestling with the Lord," and fuch strange phrafes, not then by any fect I fuppofe confidered as now by all, egregiously abfurd but coming juft fo near to unintelligibility, that they carried as it appears, to his auditors' minds, the cuftomary effects of obfcure verbosenefs uttered with gravity and fervor; a steady veneration, a fource of the fublime. As for the wretched remnant of a parliament, when they began to prate of their pretended power from on high, he troubled not himself even to pretend regard; but starting up one morning from the council board, fuddenly exclaimed that he felt himself compelled to do an act which made his very hair ftand up an end. Then hasting to the house of commons, three hundred chofen foldiers following his steps," and how long fit ye here?" he cried aloud; "Begone, for fhame! give place to honefter men: you are no longer a parliament-the "Lord has done with you; I tell you, you are no longer a parliament." Sir Harry Vane alone tried at a reply, but the general's jeering voice drowned his in exclamations of " Sir Harry Vane! Sir Harry Vane! "the Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!" Then looking con, temptuously at their mace, "Take me away that fool's bauble," faid he, while Harrison, by his command, dragged the speaker from his chair. Such was the conduct and behaviour of the man who first buckled on armour because king Charles had violated the privileges of parliament, by endeavouring to feize five feditious members on their feats. And from the terrors of his eye, which filenced even thofe follies he had foftered, and controlled thofe abilities which other men had feared; our Retrospection haftily turns away, and seeks a softer scene.

CHAP.

CHAP. XII.

FRANCE, SPAIN, SWEDEN, ITALY, FROM 1650, TO 1700.

NOT

OT only a new chapter of our book begins here, but if we believe Voltaire, a new age too, a new æra is commenced. He divides the world's duration like a man of genius, as he undoubtedly was, by the men of genius who have lived in it. The first worth his notice as a wit, was the age of Pericles Demofthenes, Phidias and Praxiteles; with an immenfe, &c. containing names never to be effaced by the brushing of time's wing, never to be overlaid and smothered by newer claimants on our attention. The second was the age of Horace, Virgil, Ovid, whofe praifes, cut in the rock of ever-during fame, are pushed out, not funk in by lapse of days, but stand forward like cameos perpetuating the excellence they record,-" Et quantum trunci, tantum "mea nomina crefcunt," fays Enone.* The third period graced by Raphael, Titian, Taffo, Ariofto, may be called, il fecolo di Lorenzo di Medici, on the fame principle; and the fourth, beginning in 1650, will for ever remain acknowledged now as le fiecle de Louis quatorze, who, when he received into his youthful hand the reins of government, was heard to remark he had no foes to fight with, and 'twas true for at that moment newly born, and rocked in a cradle at an English gentleman's country feat, flept the most dangerous of his future opponents, John duke of Marlborough. Prefent enemies had he

* Tournefort and Savary both bear witnefs to this odd phænomenon, and tell us that the names of their predeceffors in adventure, cut in the fides of that ftrange wall which lines the mazes of the Cretan labyrinth, have been by time pufhed into alto relievo nature's elaborate diligence operating like the hand of a workman enchafing filver plate. They found no names older than the thirteenth century, I think, and the oldest stood most prominent.

none,

none, unless we may confider as fuch the half-warm embers of a halfextinguished aristocracy, which, during a female regency recovered fpirits, but not ftrength. A fruitless attempt of the princes to drive from their fovereign's prefence his favourite Mazarin, proved only that his hold upon the royal heart was a fure one. His niece, Olympia, kept it with true family care fafe for her uncle, and when the found it flipping from her grafp, transferred it quickly to her fifter's hands, who with lefs beauty poffeffed more attractions. Olympia then married the Comte de Soiffons, and was by him parent of prince Eugene. While the fharp thorns doom'd on a diftant day to pierce the fides of Lewis the fourteenth, thus were planting; his youthful unfufpecting foul faw not even those nearer fnares laid for him by Italian fubtlety. Maria Mancini had hope of feducing him to fecret nuptials. To feel the mother's pulfe towards fuch connections, the cunning cardinal required admittance to her majesty's bedfide early one fummer morning. "Oh "Madame! exclaimed he in well-imitated agony, what shall I do? "Louis quatorze will, I fear, marry Maria-What fliall I do ?” "know not," replied Anne of Auftria, "what it is your eminence will "think proper to do; but if the king were capable of fuch a meannefs, "I would fet myself and my second fon against him and against you, "and keep him in confinement for life." This story militates against being the prefent notion of the man in an iron healthier fovereign. Anne of Austria would have brought him forward in fuch a cafe rather than Monfieur; and who knows that she did not mean it, leaving the word fecond unexplained?

"I

mask, between twin to the

'Tis easy to believe that Mazarin never forgave this openly-avowed determination registered in Motteville's memoires: he loved his nieces, and fettled them magnificently in the world, but preferred the conftable, prince Colonna of Rome, for this laft-mentioned lady, to our Charles II. who fougnt her hand after he had miffed that of her own mafter, but was rejected with fcorn by a minifter, who humbly crouching before England's protector (Cromwell) dared not even to advance the daughter of Henri quatre any thing but a moderate pension,

VOL. II.

I i

and

and that fo ill paid, that when Cardinal de Retz called one day to visit them, the princefs Henrietta, afterwards ducheffe d'Orleans, was lying a-bed, because, as her mother told him, fhe was not well, and they could not afford fire to warm her. Mazarin however lived not long, he was content to die, he faid, when he had put into his master's arms a queen worthy France, the pretty Spanish Infanta, whofe brother born fickly, and as the phrase is, kept alive by art, gave the house of Bourbon rational hopes of annexing Spain with all her ill-acquired wealth to their poffeffions; but this hope the king formally renounced, (one fees not why) at his marriage; and Voltaire says, that the Queen's fortune was fo fmall, it coft more than 'twas worth to fetch it from the frontiers. Philip the fourth had indeed fuffered fufficient mortifications; the times were changed in that country fince his immediate grand-father, in piety and pride built the Efcurial, the work of twenty-four years, the expence eight millions fterling, with filver lamps three yards in circumference, and candlesticks of the fame metal fix feet high all this in honour of St. Laurence, whofe fine monaftery he had at St. Quintin, been obliged to batter down, making a vow of compenfation accompanied with oaths, that no time fhould ever see that faint fo venerated as by him; and 'tis therefore that the whole together, palace and convent, form with their courts the figure of a gridiron, emblem of the old martyr's virtue and inftrument of his death: an emblem and inftrument profaned and vilified by Cortez, thirteen centuries after, when Guatimozin, the emperor of Mexico, was ftretched on it, in order by tortures to force from him thofe treasures he had caft into the lake for fecurity: but punishment was coming on apace. Portugal and Holland, now independent powers, enjoyed the humiliation of a country once fo proud and arrogant; but of late constrained by articles in the treaty of Weftphalia, to accept thankfully the friendship of thofe they deemed for many years unworthy pardon. France had not, however, ten fhips that could carry fifty guns in 1653, and while Cromwell's victorious fleets covered the ocean, old Mazarin, wrapt up in that perpetual nepotifin apparently inherent in ecclefiafticks

:

of