Grotius or Heinsius1 shall provide to erect some statelier monument in his memory.

5. MARTYRDOM OF RIDLEY.2-(" HOLY STATE.")

Old Hugh Latimer was Ridley's partner at the stake, some time Bishop of Worcester, who crawled thither after him; one who had lost more learning than many ever had who flout at his plain sermons, though his downright style was as necessary in that age as it would be ridiculous in ours. Indeed, he condescended to people's capacity; and many men unjustly count those low in learning who, indeed, do but stoop to their auditors. Let me see any of our sharp wits do that with the edge which his bluntness did with the back of the knife, and persuade so many to restitution of ill-gotten goods. Though he came after Ridley to the stake, he got before him to heaven. His body, made tinder by age, was no sooner touched by the fire but instantly this old Simeon had his nunc dimittis, and brought the news to heaven that his brother was following after. But Ridley suffered with far more pain, the fire about him being not well made; and yet one would think that age should be skilful in making such bonfires, as being much practised in them. The gunpowder that was given him did little service, and his brother-in-law, out of desire to rid him out of pain, increased it (great grief will not give men leave to be wise with it), heaping fuel upon him to no purpose; so that neither the faggots which his enemies' anger nor his brother's good-will cast upon him made the fire to burn kindly.

In like manner, not much before, his dear friend Master Hooper suffered with great torment,-the wind (which too often is the bellows of great fires) blowing it away from him once or twice. Of all the martyrs in those days, these two endured most pain; it being true that each of them had to seek fire in the midst of fire,-both desiring to burn, and yet both their upper parts were but confessors, when their lower parts were martyrs, and burnt to ashes. Thus God, where He hath given the stronger faith, He layeth on the stronger pain; and so we leave them, going up to heaven, like Elijah, in a chariot of fire.

XI. ABRAHAM COWLEY.

ABRAHAM COWLEY was born in 1618, in London, and was educated at Westminster School, from which he afterwards removed to Cambridge University. At the breaking out of the civil wars, the Presby

1 Two famous Dutch scholars, both of whom had been in the service of Gustavus Adolphus.

2 This account may be advantageously compared with the matter-of-fact version already quoted from Fox.

3 The first two words in Latin of Simeon's hymn, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace," &c.

terian visitors removed Cowley from his fellowship, and he ever after remained a firm partizan of the Royalists, in whose service he was constantly employed during the whole course of hostilities. Like many others he was, at the Restoration, disappointed of the reward to which he conceived his services entitled him. He was, however, after some interval, presented with the lease of a small property near Chertsey, on the Thames, where he died in 1667. Cowley's fame, during his lifetime, was founded mainly on his poetry, which is now, however, little esteemed. It is in general stiff and artificial, though some of his shorter poems are natural and pleasing. His largest poetical work, the "Davideis," a heroic poem on the life of David, is, as a whole, heavy and unimpressive, but contains some fine passages, which Milton has imitated and improved in his "Paradise Lost." His prose is a remarkable contrast to his poetry; unaffected, eloquent, and forcible, it will stand comparison with any prose of the age. this department, his writings consist of a "Discourse concerning the Government of Cromwell," and Essays on Liberty, Agriculture, Solitude, &c.

1. CROMWELL'S GOVERNMENT.

In

I was interrupted by a strange and terrible apparition, for there appeared unto me, arising out of the earth, as I conceived, the figure of a man taller than a giant, or, indeed, than the shadow of any giant in the evening. His body was naked, but that nakedness adorned, or rather deformed all over, with several figures, after the manner of the ancient Britons, painted upon it and I perceived that most of them were the representation of the late battles in our civil wars, and (if I be not much mistaken) it was the battle of Naseby that was drawn upon his breast. His eyes were like burning brass; and there were three crowns of the same metal (as I guessed), and that looked as red-hot too upon his head. He held in his right hand a sword that was yet bloody, and, nevertheless, the motto of it was, "Peace is sought by war!" and in his left a thick book, upon the back of which was written in letters of gold, acts, ordinances, protestations, covenants, engagements, declarations, remonstrances, &c. Though this sudden, unusual, and dreadful object might have quelled a greater courage than mine, yet so it pleased God (for there is nothing bolder than a man in a vision), that I was not at all daunted, but asked him resolutely and briefly, What art thou? And he said, I am called the North-West Principality, his Highness, the Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions belonging thereto, for I am that angel to whom the Almighty has committed the government of those three kingdoms which thou seest from this place. And I answered and said, If it be so, sir, it seems to me that for almost these twenty years past your highness has been absent from your charge: for not only if any angel, but if any wise and honest man had since that time been our governor, we should not have wandered thus long in these laborious and endless labyrinths

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of confusion, but either not have entered at all into them, or at least have returned back ere we had absolutely lost our way; but, instead of your highness, we have had since such a protector as was his predecessor, Richard III., to the king his nephew; for he presently slew the commonwealth, which he pretended to protect, and set up himself in the place of it: a little less guilty, indeed, in one respect, because the other slew an innocent, and this man did but murder a murderer. Such a protector we have had as we would have been glad to have changed for an enemy, and rather received a constant Turk than this every month's apostate; such a protector as man is to his flocks, which he shears, and sells, or devours himself; and I would fain know what the wolf, which he protects him from, could do more. Such a protector- -And as I was proceeding, methought his highness began to put on a displeased and threatening countenance, as men used to do when their dearest friends happen to be traduced in their company, which gave me the first rise of jealousy against him; for I did not believe that Cromwell, among all his foreign correspondences, had ever held any with angels. However, I was not hardened enough yet to venture a quarrel with him then; and, therefore (as if I had spoken to the Protector himself in Whitehall), 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 if it were a naturalized 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 infamous death? to banish that numerous and stronglyallied 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 partially for awhile, and to command them victoriously at last; to overrun each corner of the three nations, and overcome with equal felicity 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 be pleased to be hired at the rate of two millions a-year; to be master of those who had hired him before to be their servant; to have 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?

By this speech I began to understand perfectly well what kind of angel his pretended highness was, and having fortified myself privately with a short mental prayer, and with the sign of the cross (not out of any superstition to the sign, but as a recognition of my baptism in Christ), I grew a little bolder, and replied in this manner: I should not venture to oppose what you are pleased to say in commendation of the late great and, I confess, extraordinary person, but that I remember Christ forbids us to give assent to any other doctrine but what Himself has taught us, even though it should be delivered by an angel; and if such you be, sir, it may be you have spoken all this rather to try than to tempt my frailty; for sure I am, that we must renounce or forget all the laws of the New and Old Testament, and those which are the foundation of both, even the laws of moral and natural honesty, if we approve of the actions of that man whom I suppose you commend by irony. 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 to 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 to destroy no less impudently the other? to fight against monarchy when he declared for it, and to declare against it when he contrived for it in his own person? to abuse 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 Moloch-ship? 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.1

2. OF SOLITUDE.-(SECOND ESSAY.)

"Never less alone than when alone" is now become a very vulgar saying. Every man, and almost every boy, for these seventeen hundred years, has had it in his mouth. But it was at first spoken by the excellent Scipio, who was without question a most eloquent and witty person, as well as the most wise, most worthy, most happy, and the greatest of all mankind. His meaning, no doubt, was this, that he found more satisfaction to his mind, and more improvement of it, by solitude than by company; and, to show that he spoke not this loosely or out of vanity, after he had made Rome mistress of almost the whole world, he retired himself from it by a voluntary exile, and at a private house, in the middle of a wood near Linternum; passed the remainder of his glorious life no less gloriously. This house Seneca went to see so long after with so great veneration; and, among other things, describes his baths to have been of so mean a structure, that now, says he, the basest of the people would despise them, and cry out, "Poor Scipio understood not how to live." What an authority is here for the credit of

1 Cowley, it has been already mentioned, was a royalist, and his opinions on Cromwell's character and government would, of course, be materially influenced by his own convictions, and must therefore be taken for what they are worth; this, however, does not render it the less dishonest to quote, as has been sometimes done of late, the first part of the above extract as Cowley's own belief, when it is in fact the very opposite.