of the Civil Wars, bears a high price in the Dilettante Salecatalogues; and has, as that Flagellum too has, here and there a credible trait not met with elsewhere: but in fact, to the ingenuous inquirer, this too is little other than a tenebrific Book; cannot be read except with sorrow, with torpor and disgust,—and in fine, if you be of healthy memory, with oblivion. The latter end of Heath has been worse than the beginning was! From him, and his Flagellums and scandalous Human Platitudes, let no rational soul seek knowledge.

Among modern Biographies, the great original is that of Mark Noble above cited ;* such 'original' as there is: a Book, if we must call it a Book, abounding in facts and pretended-facts more than any other on this subject. Poor Noble has gone into much research of old leases, marriage-contracts, deeds of sale and such like he is learned in parish-registers and genealogies, has consulted pedigrees 'measuring eight feet by two feet four;' goes much upon heraldry ;-in fact, has amassed a large heap of evidences and assertions, worthless and of worth, respecting Cromwell and his connexions; from which the reader, by his own judgment, is to extract what he can. For Noble himself is a man of extreme imbecility; his judgment, for most part, seeming to lie dead asleep; and indeed it is worth little when broadest awake. He falls into manifold mistakes, commits and omits in all ways; plods along contented, in an element of perennial dimness, purblindness; has occasionally a helpless broad innocence of platitude which is almost interesting. A man indeed of extreme imbecility; to whom nevertheless let due gratitude be borne.

His Book, in fact, is not properly a Book, but rather an Aggregate of bewildered jottings; a kind of Cromwellian Biographical Dictionary, wanting the alphabetical, or any other arrangement or index: which latter want, much more remediable than the want of judgment, is itself a great sorrow to the reader. Such as it is, this same Dictionary without judgment and without arrangement, bad Dictionary gone to pi,' as we may call it, is the storehouse from which subsequent Biographies have all furnished themselves. The reader,

* Memoirs of the Protectoral House of Cromwell, by the Rev. Mark Noble. 2 vols., London, 1787.

with continual vigilance of suspicion, once knowing what man he has to do with, digs through it, and again through it; covers the margins of it with notes and contradictions, with references, deductions, rectifications, execrations,-in a sorrowful, but not entirely unprofitable manner. Another Book of Noble's, called Lives of the Regicides, written some years afterwards, during the French Jacobin time, is of much more stupid character; nearly meaningless indeed; mere water bewitched; which no man need buy or read: and it is said he has a third Book, on some other subject, stupider still, which latter point, however, may be considered questionable.

For the rest, this poor Noble is of very impartial mind respecting Cromwell; open to receive good of him, and to receive evil, even inconsistent evil the helpless, incoherent, but placid and favorable notion he has of Cromwell in 1787, contrasts notably with that which Carrion Heath had gathered of him in 1663. For, in spite of the stupor of Histories, it is beautiful, once more, to see how the Memory of Cromwell, in its huge inarticulate significance, not able to speak a wise word for itself to any one, has nevertheless been steadily growing clearer and clearer in the popu lar English mind; how from the day when high dignitaries and pamphleteers of the Carrion species did their ever-memorable feat at Tyburn, onwards to this day, the progress does not stop. In 1698,* one of the earliest works expressly in favor of Cromwell was written by a Critic of Ludlow's Memoirs. The anonymous Critic explains to solid Ludlow that he, in that solid but somewhat wooden head of his, had not perhaps seen entirely into the centre of the Universe, and workshop of the Destinies; that, in fact, Oliver was a questionable uncommon man, and he Ludlow a common hand fast, honest, dull and indeed partly wooden man,— in whom it might be wise to form no theory at all of Cromwell. By and by, a certain 'Mr. Banks,' a kind of Lawyer and Playwright, if 1 mistake not, produced a still more favorable view of Cromwell, but in a work otherwise of no moment; the exact

So dated in Somers' Tracts (London, 1811), vi., 416,-but liable to correction if needful. Poor Noble (i. 297) gives the same date, and then placidly, in the next line, subjoins a fact inconsistent with it. As his man

ner is!

date, and indeed the whole substance of which is hardly worth remembering.* The Letter of 'John Maidston to Governor Winthrop,'-Winthrop Governor of Connecticut, a Suffolk man, of much American celebrity,—is dated 1659; but did not come into print till 1742, along with Thurloe's other Papers.† Maidston had been an officer in Oliver's Household, a Member of his Parliaments, and knew him well. An Essex man he; probably an old acquaintance of Winthrop's; visibly a man of honest affections, of piety, decorum, and good sense. Whose loyalty to Oliver is of a genuine and altogether manful nature,-mostly silent, as we can discern. He had already published a credible and still interesting little Pamphlet, Passages concerning his late Highness's last Sickness; to which, if space permit, we shall elsewhere refer. In these two little off-hand bits of writing there is a clear credibility for the reader; and more insight obtainable as to Oliver and his ways than in any of his express Biographies.

6

That anonymous Life of Cromwell, which Noble very ignorantly ascribes to Bishop Gibson, which is written in a neutral spirit, as an impartial statement of facts, but not without a secret decided leaning to Cromwell, came out in 1724. It is the Life of Cromwell found commonly in Libraries: it went through several editions in a pure state; and I have seen a 'fifth edition' with foreign intermixtures, printed at Birmingham in 1778,' on grey paper, seemingly as a Book for Hawkers. The Author of it was by no means 'Bishop Gibson,' but one Kimber, a Dissenting Minister of London, known otherwise as a compiler of books. He has diligently gathered from old Newspapers and other such sources; narrates in a dull, steady, concise, but altogether unintelligent manner; can be read without offence, but hardly with any real instruction. Image of Cromwell's self there is none, express or implied, in this Book; for the man himself had none, and did not feel the want of any: nay in regard to external facts

* Short Critical Review of the Life of Oliver Cromwell: By a Gentleman of the Middle Temple. London, 1739.

†Thurloe, i., 763-8.

The Life of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. Impartially collected, &c. London, 1724. Distinguished also by a not intolerable Portrait.

also, there are inaccuracies enough,-here too, what is the general rule in these books, you can find as many inaccuracies as you like: dig where you please, water will come! As a crown to all the modern Biographies of Cromwell, let us note Mr. Forster's late one:* full of interesting original excerpts, and indications of what is notablest in the old books; gathered and set forth with real merit, with energy in abundance and superabundance; amounting in result, we may say, to a vigorous decisive tearing up of all the old hypotheses on the subject, and an opening of the general mind for new.

Of Cromwell's actual biography, from these and from all Books and sources, there is extremely little to be known. It is from his own words, as I have ventured to believe, from his own Letters and Speeches well read, that the world may first obtain some dim glimpse of the actual Cromwell, and see him darkly face to face. What little is otherwise ascertainable, cleared from the circumambient inanity and insanity, may be stated in brief compass. So much as precedes the earliest still extant Letters, I subjoin here in the form most convenient.

Statesmen of the Commonwealth, by John Forster (London, 1840), vols iv. and v.

CHAPTER III.

OF THE CROMWELL KINDRED.

Oliver CromweLL, afterwards Protector of the Commonwealth of England, was born at Huntingdon, in St. John's Parish there, on the 25th of April, 1599. Christened on the 29th of the same month; as the old Parish-registers of that Church still legibly testify.*

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. His Mother was Elizabeth Steward, daughter of William Steward, Esquire, in Ely; an opulent man, a kind of hereditary Farmer of the Cathedral Tithes and Church lands round that city; in which capacity his son, Sir Thomas Steward, Knight, in due time succeeded him, resident also at Ely. Elizabeth was a young widow when Robert Cromwell married her: the first marriage, to one • William Lynne, Esquire, of Bassingbourne in Cambridgeshire,' had lasted but a year; husband and only child are buried in Ely Cathedral, where their monument still stands; the date of their deaths, which followed near on one another, is 1589.† The exact date of the young widow's marriage to Robert Cromwell is nowhere given; but seems to have been in 1591. Our Oliver was their fifth child; their second boy; but the first soon died. They had ten children in all; of whom seven came to maturity, and Oliver was their only son. I may as well print the little Note, smelted long ago out of huge dross-heaps in Noble's Book, that the reader too may have his small benefit of it.§

* Noble, i., 92.

† Noble, ii., 198, and мs. penes me.

‡ Noble, i., S8.

§ OLIVER CROMWELL'S BROTHERS AND SISTERS. Oliver's mother had been a widow (Mrs. Lynne of Bassingbourne) before marrying Robert Cromwell; neither her age nor his is discoverable here.