Mr Carlyle's services to history in collecting and editing these
letters[1] and speeches of Cromwell, all men will readily and gratefully
acknowledge. A work more valuable as a guide to the study of the
singular and complex character of our pious revolutionist, our religious
demagogue, our preaching and praying warrior and usurper, has not been
produced. There is another portion of Mr Carlyle's labours which will
not meet so unanimous an approbation. As _editor_, Mr Carlyle has given
us a valuable work; as _commentator_, the view which he would teach us
to take of English Puritanism is, to our thinking, simply the most
paradoxical, absurd, unintelligible, mad business we ever encountered in
our lives.
Our Hero-worshipper, it must be allowed, has been more fortunate this
time in the selection of his object of devotion than when he shouted to
the skies his Mirabeaus and Dantons. But he makes an unfortunate species
of compensation. In proportion as his hero is more within the bounds of
humanity has his worship become more extravagant and outrageous. He
out-puritans the Puritans; he is more fanatic than his idol; he has
chosen to express himself with such a righteous truculence, such a
sanguinary zeal, such a pious contempt for human virtue and human
sympathies, as would have startled Old Noll himself. It is a bad
religion this hero-worship--at least as practised by Mr Carlyle. Here is
our amiable countryman rendered by it, in turn, a terrorist and a
fanatic. All his own intellectual culture he throws down and abandons.
Such dire transformation ensues as reminds us of a certain hero-worship
which Milton has celebrated:
"Horror on him falls,
_And horrid sympathy_; for what he sees
He feels himself, now changing; down his arms,
Down falls the spear and shield; down he as fast;
And the dire hiss renews, and the dire form,
Catched by contagion."
But to our task--which is no light one; for in our survey of this book
we have to keep in view both hero and hero-worshipper, Cromwell and
Carlyle, both somewhat slippery personages, abnormal, enigmatical.
The speeches of Oliver Cromwell have a formidable reputation for
prolixity, confusion, and excessive tediousness; yet we have not, for
our own part, found these volumes to be of the dry and scarce readable
description which their title foreboded; and we would caution others not
to be deterred by any fears of this nature from their perusal. They will
find an interest grow upon them as they proceed, and the last volume to
be more attractive than the first. As the work advances, the letters and
speeches of Cromwell become more intimately connected with the great
transactions of the period, and the editor himself more frequently
favours us with some specimen of his happier manner, where concentration
of style, a spirit of humour and reflection, and a power of vivid
portraiture, have _not_ degenerated into mere quaintness, into a species
of slang, into _Carlylisms_, into vague generalities about infinitudes
and eternities. At all times the interspersed commentary--written in
that peculiar, fantastic, jingling manner which, illegitimate as it is,
disorderly and scandalous to all lovers of propriety in style and
diction, is at all events the very opposite to dulness--forms perhaps
the most fortunate contrast that could have been devised with the
Cromwellian period, so arid and colourless, so lengthy and so tortuous,
tinged often with such a dismal obscurity, and valuable in fact only as
showing _the man_, utterly valueless as an exposition of thought.
Perhaps, as models of style, a critic would be as little disposed to
applaud the writing of Mr Carlyle as the compositions of Cromwell, but
they form here all admirable relief the one to the other; taken
together, one can consume a considerable quantity of both. Your dry
bread is weary mastication, and your potted anchovies have a somewhat
too stinging flavour; but taken together, sandwich-fashion, as they are
here, the consumption may go on rapidly enough.
But, whether dry or not, the letters and speeches of Cromwell should be
read by every one desirous of obtaining an insight into the character of
not the least extraordinary, nor the least misrepresented personage in
history. If there is any one who still believes that Cromwell was a
thorough hypocrite, that his religion was a systematic feint to cover
his ambitious designs, the perusal of these volumes will entirely
undeceive him. We look upon this hypothesis, this Machiavelian
explanation of Cromwell's character, as henceforth entirely dismissed
from all candid and intelligent minds. It was quite natural that such a
view should be taken of their terrible enemy by the royalists of the
Restoration, hating his memory with a most cordial hatred, and
accustomed, in their blinding licentiousness, to look upon _all_
religion as little better than cant and hypocrisy. It was quite natural
that such a portrait of him should be drawn by the men who unearthed his
bones, and vented their rage upon a senseless corpse. We see it was
quite inevitable that some such coarse caricature should be thus limned
and transmitted to us. But it has lasted long enough. We believe,
indeed, that by most persons it has already been dismissed and disowned.
It may now be torn into shreds, and cast aside as utterly faithless.
Cromwell was a _genuine Puritan_. There is no doubt of that. He was no
youth when the war broke out, nor a man who had yet to seek his
religious party or principles. As the farmer of St Ives, we see him, as
distinctly as if he still lived upon the earth, the man of fierce
sectarian piety, in natural temper not unamiable, somewhat gloomy and
hypochondriacal, but, above all, distinguished by whatsoever of good or
ill the sort of Calvinistic divinity prevalent at the time could infuse
into its professors. Such the war found him, and such he continued to
be; throughout his whole career we never for a moment lose sight of "the
saint," the title which, then as now, the profane world gave to this
class of men.
Was Cromwell, then, always sincere in his utterances? was there no cant,
_no_ hypocrisy? Did he never conceal the ambition and domineering spirit
of the soldier under the humility of the saint? Another matter quite.
Because a man is religious in the main, it follows not that he is
incapable of occasionally practising hypocrisy: he may lapse as well
into this, as into any crime of the decalogue. Although we might find it
difficult to put our finger exactly upon the spot, and say, Here speaks
the hypocrite, we are not without suspicion that Cromwell was at times
practising dissimulation. But if he dissembled, if he used with artifice
the language of religion, it was no new and foreign disguise that he
put on. He had but to draw the folds a little higher over his face of a
robe that he had long worn in all times and seasons, and which was
verily his own.
In common with almost all men who in times of civil broil have risen
from a lowly station to great power, Cromwell had occasion, no doubt, at
times for dissimulation. His religion, genuine as it was, would no more
prevent him from the practice of this necessary craft than from the
sanguinary deeds not more necessary to the triumph of his cause. Nay, it
was precisely of that enthusiastic order which, in the most liberal
manner, justifies the means for the end. Now, at a period when the
saints were in the ascendant, dissimulation would unavoidably take a
religious form, and when most deceiving men, or most faithfully
addressing them, he would still colour all his language with the same
hue of piety. As, in an age of chivalry, the dissembler would have the
boast of honour and the parade of knightly courtesy for ever on his
lips, so in these times of saintship he would lull the suspicions of men
by a gross emblazonry of religion. It might well happen, therefore, that
such a man as Cromwell, working his way upward to the highest post of
authority, would deal in much insincerity of phrase, and yet have "the
root of the matter" in him. Indeed, nothing is more common in the world
than this combination of genuine feelings of piety with a great
abundance of cant, habitual or designed. It would betray a very slender
knowledge of mankind, and none at all of what is called the religious
world, to conclude that a man is destitute of sincere piety because he
sometimes makes use of the language of religion for ulterior purposes
not peculiarly pious.
It is to be observed, moreover, that to readers unfamiliar with the
peculiarities of _professing_ Christians, whether Puritans or of other
denomination, the expressions of humility and self-abasement which
Cromwell frequently makes use of have appeared to be plain symptoms of
hypocrisy. They are nothing but the habits of the sect. Such expressions
are supposed to have been employed to blind men to his ambitious
projects, to shelter him from the jealous scrutiny of rivals and
superiors. Such a purpose they may have sometimes answered, and been
intended to answer; but in the main they are nothing more nor less than
the dialect of the tribe. Because is a Christian virtue, certain
religious people have thought fit to indulge in a false vituperation of
themselves. Striving avariciously after _all_ virtues, however
incompatible the one with the other, they counterfeit vice and meanness,
that, good men as they are, they may have abundance of contrition. How
far there can be Christianity or piety in an abuse and degradation of
ourselves, when that abuse and degradation must be felt all along to be
untrue--if any reflection whatever accompanies such language--we leave
such people to settle amongst themselves. Certain it is that the
Puritans excelled in this as in every other kindred extravagance. The
elect of the Lord were fond of describing themselves as the most
contemptible of sinners; the salt of the earth as being rottenness and
corruption. It is to this habit of unmeaning self-disparagement that we
are to attribute many of those phrases which have been thought in
Cromwell to be studied artifices to cloak ambitious designs.
They are rife on all occasions, and their frequency and energy bear no
relation to the supposed exigencies of his political career. Take the
following instance. No man surely knew better than he, that at the
conclusion of the civil war the army had become paramount. He could
sometimes speak of this army with the natural pride of a soldier, with
the full consciousness of the power it possessed, and had conferred on
him; and yet, at other times, he would talk of this terrible force in
the puling strain, in more than the drawl and drivel of the conventicle.
As Lord High Protector, addressing his first parliament, he says:--"I
had the approbation of the officers of the army, in the three nations of
England, Scotland, and Ireland. I say of the officers: I had that by
their express remonstrances, and under signature. But there went along
with that express consent of theirs, an implied consent also of a body
of persons who had had somewhat to do in the world; who had been
instrumental, by God, to fight down the enemies of God, and his people,
in the three nations. And truly, until my hands were bound, and I was
limited, (to my own great satisfaction, as many can bear me witness,)
while I had in my hands so great a power and arbitrariness--the soldiery
were a very considerable part of these nations, especially all
government being dissolved. I say, when all government was thus
dissolved, and nothing to keep things in order but the sword!" There can
be no doubt of it--the soldiery were a very considerable part of the
nation. But the Lord High Protector, in a speech he makes to his second
parliament, referring to the very same period, narrating the very same
events, can talk of this army as "a company of poor men," "your poor
army," "those poor contemptible men." To attempt to detect any political
motive for this absurd phraseology, would be a very idle speculation,
mere waste of ingenuity: he was simply more in the puritanic vein in the
one case than the other.
In his letters to the parliament, giving an account of his successes in
the war, he generally concludes with some expression of this strained
evangelical modesty, and seems very much afraid lest Speaker Lenthall
and other honourable members should attribute the victories he
announces, in any measure to the army and the general who won them. He
might be very sure, however, that, notwithstanding these
self-renunciations, the parliament knew very well who was fighting their
battles. Such a mode of speech would not endanger his reputation, nor
diminish from his claims; might perhaps--though we will not say this was
present to his thoughts--induce the parliament to presume that _he_
would not insist on any very egregious reward for services he was so
anxious to disclaim. We will quote one instance of this self-denying
style; and perhaps the following passage contains altogether as much of
a certain fanatical mode of reasoning as could be well found in so short
a compass. Prince Rupert, then at Worcester, had sent two thousand men
across the country, to his majesty at Oxford, to convoy his majesty's
person and the artillery over to him at Worcester. Cromwell attacked and
routed this convoy; he also took Bletchington House. After giving an
account of the transaction, he continues:--"This was the mercy of God;
and nothing is more due than a real acknowledgment. And though I have
had greater mercies, yet none clearer: because, in the first place, God
brought them to our hands when we looked not for them; and delivered
them out of our hands, when we laid a reasonable design to surprise
them, and which we carefully endeavoured. His mercy appears in this
also, that I did much doubt the storming of the house, it being strong
and well manned, and I having few dragoons, and this being not my
business; and yet we got it. I hope you will pardon me if I say, God is
not enough owned. _We look too much to men and visible helps_: this hath
much hindered our success." This from Oliver, who so well knew how "to
keep his powder dry!" from Oliver, who, enthusiast himself, could yet
shrewdly calculate on the military efficacy of enthusiasm, and set it
down amongst the ways and means! Cant or not, it is sad stuff.
But, Puritan as he was, we can admire Cromwell. Every great man, in
whatever times, or in whatever part of the world he has made his
appearance, has earned his title to fame and distinction, not by
qualities peculiar to the sect or religion to which he may have
belonged, but qualities which, though connected with his own especial
faith or tenets, are recognised as the common property of mankind; he
has been great not as Catholic, as Puritan, as Pagan, as Mahometan, but
as _man_; he has been great, because he was pious, brave, patriotic,
sagacious, resolute, and has achieved great enterprises on the theatre
of life. The greatness of Cromwell was indeed allied to Puritanism,
inasmuch as his mind grew up under this peculiar form of religion; but
what we, and all posterity must admire in Cromwell, is by no means the
puritan. His steadiness of purpose, his unshaken resolution, his
military prowess, his eminent talent to govern and command, and his
religious sense of duty to the Supreme, might all have existed under
other modes of religion. In our admiration we entirely separate these
qualities from that least gainly and least wholesome of the forms of
Christian piety with which they are here found connected. History gives
us examples of every kind of virtue, and every kind of talent, united
with every species of fanaticism that has afflicted civilised life. It
follows not that we applaud the fanaticism. The early caliphs were
several of them distinguished by exalted virtues, temperance,
self-denial, justice, patriotism: we praise these virtues, we
acknowledge, too, that they are here linked with the profession of the
faith of Islam; but for all this we do not admire the religion of
Mahomet, nor that fanaticism which writ its texts upon the sword.
We insist upon this obvious distinction, because, whilst agreeing--_to a
certain extent_--in Mr Carlyle's view of the character of Cromwell, we
beg not to be implicated in that esteem and reverence which he professes
to entertain for Puritanism, or the Puritans as a body. And this brings
us to the extraordinary part of Mr Carlyle's performance--his ardent
sympathy, nay his acquiescence with, and adherence to the Puritans, to
that point that he adopts their convictions, their feelings, and even
some of their most grotesque reasonings. Their violence and ferocity, we
were prepared to see Mr Carlyle, in his own sardonic fashion, abet and
encourage; his sympathy is always with the party _who strikes_; but that
he should identify himself with their mumming thoughts, their "plentiful
reasons," their gloomiest superstitions, was what no one could have
anticipated. On this subject we must quote his own words; our own would
not be credited; they would seem to any one who had not read his work to
be scandalous misrepresentations. The extravagance runs through the
whole book, but we have it perhaps more concentrated in the
Introduction.
This Introduction, which we sat down to with keen expectations,
disappointed us extremely, at least in those parts where any general
views are taken. We feel, and have elsewhere ungrudgingly expressed, a
certain admiration for the talents of Mr Carlyle. We shall never forget
the surprise and pleasure with which we read the "Sartor Resartus," as
it one day burst suddenly and accidentally upon us; and no one who has
once read his graphic and passionate history of the French Revolution,
can ever forget the vivid pictures that were there presented to him. We
opened this book, therefore, with a sort of anticipatory relish. But we
found very little of his genius, and very much of his extravagance; less
of the one and more of the other, than we thought could possibly have
been brought together. Metaphors and allusions, already worn
thread-bare, are introduced as stock phrases, as if he had inserted them
in his dictionary of the English language. All his vices of manner are
exaggerated, while the freshness of thought, which half excused them, is
departed. These strange metaphors, these glaring colours, which are
ready spread out upon his palette, he transfers with hasty profusion to
his canvass, till--(as it has been said of Mr Turner's, pictures)--the
canvass and the palette-plate very nearly resemble. But were it
otherwise, were there all and more than the wit, and humour, and
sarcasm, and pungent phrase, and graphic power, which may be found
scattered through Mr Carlyle's best performances, there is here a
substratum of sheer and violent absurdity, which all these together
would fail to disguise or compensate. Certainly there are pages of
writing in this Introduction which contain such an amount of extravagant
assertion, uttered in such fantastic jargon, as we think could nowhere
be paralleled. Dulness could never have attained to any thing so
extraordinary; and surely genius never before condescended to such
workmanship.
"What and how great," thus commences the book, "are the interests which
connect themselves with the hope that England may yet attain to some,
practical belief and understanding of its history during the seventeenth
century, need not be insisted on at present, such hope being still very
distant, very uncertain. We have wandered far away from the ideas which
guided us in that century, _and indeed which had guided us in all
preceding centuries, but of which that century was the ultimate
manifestation_. We have wandered very far, and must endeavour to return
and connect ourselves therewith again! It is with other feelings than
those of poor peddling dilettantism, other aims than the writing of
successful or unsuccessful publications, that an earnest man occupies
himself in those dreary provinces of the dead and buried. The _last
glimpse of the godlike_ vanishing from this England; conviction and
veracity giving place to hollow cant and formalism--antique 'Reign of
God,' which all true men in their several dialects and modes have always
striven for, giving place to the modern reign of the No-God, whom men
name devil; this, in its multitudinous meanings and results, is a sight
to create reflections in the earnest man! One wishes there were a
history of English Puritanism, _the last of all our heroisms_, but sees
small prospect of such a thing at present."
Then, beginning to quote himself, as his manner is, changing his voice
and adopting another key, as if by this thin disguise to obtain somewhat
more license for the wildness and vehemence of his speech--an artifice
surely not necessary here--he thus continues:--
"'Few nobler heroisms,' says a well-known writer, long occupied on this
subject, 'at bottom, perhaps, _no nobler heroism_, ever transacted
itself on this earth; and it lies as good as lost to us, overwhelmed
under such an avalanche of human stupidities as no heroism before ever
did. Intrinsically and extrinsically it may be considered inaccessible
to these generations. Intrinsically, the spiritual purport of it has
become inconceivable, incredible to the modern mind. Extrinsically, the
documents and records of it, scattered waste as a shoreless chaos, are
not legible. They lie there printed, written, to the extent of tons of
square miles, as shot-rubbish; unedited, unsorted, not so much as
indexed; full of every conceivable confusion; yielding light to very
few; yielding darkness, in several sorts, to very many.' ...
"'This, then,' continues our impatient friend, 'is the Elysium we
English have provided for our heroes! The Rushworthian Elysium.
Dreariest continent of shot-rubbish the eye ever saw. Confusion piled on
confusion to your utmost horizon's edge; obscure in lurid twilight as of
the shadow of death; trackless, without index, without finger-post, or
mark of any human foregoer; where your human footstep, if you are still
human, echoes bodeful through the gaunt solitude, peopled only by
somnambulant pedants, dilettants, and doleful creatures, by phantasms,
errors, inconceivabilities, by nightmares, pasteboard norroys, griffins,
wiverns, and chimeras dire! There, all vanquished, overwhelmed under
such waste lumber mountains, the wreck and dead ashes of some six
unbelieving generations, does the age of Cromwell and his Puritans lie
hidden from us. This is what we, for our share, have been able to
accomplish towards keeping _our heroic ones_ in memory.'"
After some further diatribe against all preceding historians,
collectors, and editors, he drops his ventriloquism, and, resuming a
somewhat more natural voice, he proceeds:--
"Nay, in addition to the sad state of our historical books, and what
indeed is fundamentally the cause and origin of that, our common
spiritual notions, if any notion of ours may still deserve to be called
spiritual, are fatal to a right understanding of that seventeenth
century. _The Christian doctrines, which then dwelt alive in every
heart, have now in a manner died out of all hearts_--very mournful to
behold--and are not the guidance of this world any more. Nay, worse
still, the cant of them does yet dwell alive with us, little doubting
that it is cant, in which fatal intermediate state the eternal
sacredness of this universe itself, of this human life itself, has
fallen dark to the most of us, and we think that, too, a cant and a
creed."
So!--as our honest German friend would exclaim, puffing from his mouth
at the same time a huge volume of symbolic smoke. We have withdrawn it
seems, from the path of light ever since the reign of the army and its
godly officers established A.D. 1649. We must return and connect
ourselves therewith; it is our only salvation; though, indeed, if
Puritanism was the manifestation of the ideas of all preceding
centuries--if the same current of thought can be traced from William the
Conqueror to Oliver the conqueror--a very little ingenuity would suffice
to trace the same ideas, the same current of thought, somewhat farther
still. But this reign of the puritanical army was really "the last
glimpse of the godlike!"--it was "the reign of God!" and we live under
the reign of ----, psha! Why, he does not even give us a substantial
devil, but coins a strange personification of a negative. Such was not
the devil, by the way, at the time of "the noblest heroism ever
transacted on the earth." Such a definition of the "roaring lion,"
would, in those days of light and happiness, have procured its author,
at the very least, a trip to Barbadoes. Even Cromwell himself would have
_Barbadoesed_ him.
"This last of our heroisms!" God grant it is the last! It is only out of
another religious war that another such heroism can arise. If church and
dissent should take up arms, and, instead of controversies carried on in
pamphlets, upon tradition and white surplices, should blow out each
other's brains with gunpowder, then Mr Carlyle would see his "heroic
ones" revive upon the earth.
"The Christian doctrines which then dwelt alive in every heart, have now
in a manner died out of all hearts." Only the cant of them dwells alive
with us. The same clear-sighted author, who sees the Christian doctrines
so beautifully and pre-eminently developed in the Ironsides of Cromwell,
in the troopers of Lambert and Harrison, sacking, pillaging,
slaughtering, and in all that tribe of men who ever shed blood the
readier after prayer-time--men who had dropped from their memory
Christ's own preaching, to fill their mouths with the curses which the
Hebrew prophets had been permitted, under a past dispensation, to
denounce against the enemies of Judea, who had constructed their
theology out of the darkest parts of the New, and the most fearful
portion of the Old Testament;--this same author, opening his eyes and
ears upon his own day and generation, finds that Christianity has died
out of all hearts, and its phraseology, as he expresses himself
elsewhere, "become mournful to him when spouted as frothy cant from
Exeter Hall." If Mr Carlyle would visit Exeter Hall, and carry there one
tithe of the determination to approve, that he exhibits in favour of the
Puritan, he would find a Christian piety as sincere, as genuine, and far
more humane, than his heroes of Naseby, or Dunbar, or Drogheda were
acquainted with. He would see the descendants of his Puritans, relieved,
at least we may say, from the necessity of raising their psalm on the
battle-field, indulging in none of the ferocities of our nature,
assembling in numerous but peaceful meetings, raising annually, by a
quiet but no contemptible sacrifice, their millions for the
dissemination of Gospel truth. But Mr Carlyle would call this cant; he
sees nothing good, or generous, or high-minded in any portion of the
world in which he lives; he reserves his sympathies for the past--for
the men of buckram and broad-sword, who, on a question of church
government, were always ready "to hew Agag to pieces," let Agag stand
for who, or what number it might.
If there is one spectacle more odious than another of all which history
presents to us, whether it take place amongst Mahometan or Christian,
Catholic or Protestant, it is this:--to see men practising all the
terrible brutalities of war, treading down their enemies, doing all that
rage and the worst passions prompt, and doing all amidst exclamations of
piety, devout acknowledgments of submission to Divine will, and
professions of gratitude to God. Other religious factions have committed
far greater atrocities than the Puritans, but nowhere in history is this
same spectacle exhibited with more distasteful and sickening
accompaniments. The Moslem thanked God upon his sword in at least a
somewhat soldierly manner; and the Catholic, by the very pomp with which
he chants his _Te Deum_, somewhat conceals the meaning of his act, and,
keeping God a little out of sight, makes his mass express the natural
feeling of a human triumph. But the sleek Puritan, at once grovelling
and presumptuous, mingles with his sanguinary mood all the morbid
sickly conceit, all the crawling affected humility of the conventicle.
All his bloodsheds are "mercies," and they are granted in answer to his
long and miserable prayers--prayers which, to a man of rational piety,
sound very much like blasphemies. He carries with him to the
battle-field, to the siege, to the massacre, not one even of those
generous feelings which war itself permits towards a foe. He chooses to
call his enemy the enemy of God, and kneels before he fights, that the
inexpressible _mercy_ may be granted of cutting his throat!
"That the sense of difference between right and wrong," says Mr Carlyle,
"had filled all time and all space for man, and bodied itself forth into
a heaven and hell for him,--this constitutes the grand feature of those
Puritan, old-Christian ages; this is the element which stamps them as
heroic, and has rendered their works great, manlike, fruitful to all
generations." Quite on the contrary. The sense of right and wrong was
obscured, confused, lost sight of, in the promptings of a presumptuous
enthusiasm; and it is exactly _this_ which constitutes the perilous
characteristic of such men as the Puritans and Cameronians, and similar
sectaries. How can the sense of right and wrong keep its footing in an
enthusiasm which has brought itself to believe that all its successes
are a direct answer to its prayers? Success becomes the very measure of
right and wrong. The two extremes of Atheism and Fanaticism have met;
they may both dispense with conscience, and make the event the criterion
of the deed. Hear how the pious heroes of Mr Carlyle reason on one of
the most solemn occasions of the civil war. The army is remonstrating
with the Parliament because it appeared slow to shed the blood of their
conquered and captured King, and it actually speaks of the death of
Charles "as appeasing the wrath of God" against that sovereign! and bids
the Parliament "sadly to consider, as men accountable to the Highest,"
how far an accommodation with the King, "when God hath given him so
clearly into your power to do justice, can be just before God or good
men." The _power_ to do the act is full authority, is absolute command
to do it. What other doctrine could a Caesar Borgia, or an Eccelino, the
tyrant of Padua, desire to be governed, or rather to be manumitted by
from all government?
The argument drawn from the success given to their cause, is perpetually
in the mouth of Cromwell and of his Puritans. It establishes, without a
doubt, that they have used the sword justly, and are still further to
use it. Every "mercy" of this kind is in answer to prayer. Basing-House,
a private residence, cannot be sacked and plundered, and the inhabitants
put to the sword, but the pious historian of the feat, Mr Peters, adds,
that it, and the like triumphs, were "answers to the prayers and
trophies of the faith of some of God's servants." When Greek meets
Greek, when the Scottish Covenanter encounters the English Puritan, and
the former, being worsted, finds out "that he had not so learned Christ
as to hang the equity of a cause upon events," Cromwell answers, "Did
not you solemnly appeal and pray? Did not we do so too? And ought not
you and we to think, with fear and trembling, of the hand of the Great
God, in this mighty and strange appearance of His, instead of slightly
calling it an 'event'? Were not both your and our expectations renewed
from time to time, whilst we waited upon God, to see which way He would
manifest himself upon our appeals? And shall we, after all these our
prayers, fastings, tears, expectations, and solemn appeals, call these
bare 'events'? The Lord pity you."
Men prayed in those days! says Mr Carlyle, "actually prayed! It was a
capability old London and its preachers and populations had; to us the
incredibilest." Beyond a doubt the Puritans and the Covenanters prayed,
and in such a manner and at such a length, that the strange doctrine on
which Southey has founded his "Curse of Kehama," of the essential and
irresistible force of prayer, seems to have got mixed up with their
Christianity.[2] But we do not think that the voice of prayer has quite
died out amongst us. It is curious to observe what a vivid perception
this author has for the historical past, and what a voluntary blindness
and deafness for the actually present. It is a fact! he frequently
exclaims, with all the energy of a discoverer,--a fact! that men in
these ages prayed, and had a religious faith. Our churches and chapels
are not facts. The control--none the worse for being exercised without
pike or musket--which the religious public, meeting in that very Exeter
Hall, have over the measures of government, and all political
transactions,--is not a fact. Were he writing, some centuries hence, the
history of this our age, he would detect these facts. What facts,
indeed, might he not detect, and what exaggerated significance might he
not give to them! Why, in those days, he might exclaim, in his
enthusiasm, the very beggars in the street, in asking charity, poured
God's blessing on you! It was a credible thing, in those days, God's
blessing!--and men gave their money for it!
A passage in one of Cromwell's letters instances, in rather a touching
manner, what school of piety this army of saints must have proved. At
the battle of Marston Moor a Colonel Walton had lost his son. "He was a
gallant young man, exceedingly gracious," and Cromwell, giving an
account of his death, in his consolatory letter to the father, writes
thus,--"A little after, he said, one thing lay upon his spirit. I asked
him what that was. He told me it was that God had not suffered him to be
any more _the executioner of his enemies!_"
But nothing disturbs the equanimity of our editor, or interrupts his
flow of rapture over the fanaticism of these times, especially when
expressed in the letters of Cromwell. Over the theological effusions
which the general of the Puritan army addresses, from his camp, to the
Edinburgh clergy, Mr Carlyle thus expatiates:--"Dryasdust, carrying his
learned eye over these, and the like letters, finds them, of course,
full of 'hypocrisy,' &c. Unfortunate Dryasdust! they are corruscations
terrible as lightning, and beautiful as lightning, from the innermost
temple of the human soul; intimations, still credible, of what a human
soul does mean when it _believes_ in the Highest--a thing poor Dryasdust
never did, nor will do. The hapless generation that now reads these
words ought to hold its peace when it has read them, and sink into
unutterable reflections, not unmixed with tears, and some substitute for
'sackcloth and ashes,' if it liked. In its poor canting, sniffling,
flimsy vocabulary, there is no word that can make any response to them.
This man has a living God-inspired soul in him, not an enchanted
artificial 'substitute for salt,' as our fashion is. They that have
human eyes can look at him; they that have only owl-eyes need not."
And then follows something upon _light_ and _lightning_. "As lightning
is to light, so is a Cromwell to a Shakspere. The light is beautifuller.
Ah, yes; but, until by lightning and other fierce labour your foul chaos
has become a world, you cannot have any light, or the smallest chance
for any!... The melodious speaker is great, but the melodious worker is
greater than he. Our Time cannot speak at all, but only cant and sneer,
and argumentatively jargon and recite the multiplication-table:
neither, as yet, can it work, except at mere railroads and
cotton-spinning. It will, apparently, return to chaos soon, and then
more lightnings will be needed, lightning enough,--to which Cromwell's
was but a mild matter,--to be followed by light, we may hope!"--by
another Shakspeare, as the tenor of the passage would imply.
Strange jumble this of Cromwell and Shakspeare, of light and lightning!
There is one species of light which we are often reminded of here; a
certain fitful, flickering beam, which partakes indeed of a luminous
nature, but which chooses its path for ever over bottomless bog.
The sincerity of Oliver Cromwell, in these his letters and speeches, has
been questioned and discussed; the sincerity of their present editor may
become a question at least as difficult and perplexing. Is there any
genuine conviction at the bottom of all this rant and raving? Our
extravagant worshipper of the "old heathen" Goethe, stands forth the
champion and admirer of certain harsh, narrow-thoughted, impetuous
sectaries, proclaims _them_ the only "Reformers" of the world; descends
to their lowest prejudices, to their saddest bigotries, to their gloomy
puerilities; arguing with them solemnly against the sinfulness of
drinking healths, and quite fraternising with them in all their
animosity against Popery and Prelacy. What does he mean? Is it a case of
conversion? Is it an outpouring merely, by a strange vent, of certain
acrid humours? Is he honest, and in earnest? or is he making sport of
those hapless Englishmen whom he pronounces "in human stupidity to have
no fellow?"
Observers of a curious and speculative turn might, perhaps, explain it
thus:--Mr Carlyle is evidently a writer of strong religious feelings.
Marry, when he would exhibit them to the world, he is under the
necessity of borrowing a creed from some one else. His own philosophy
has nothing palpable enough for ordinary vision; nothing, as we
remember, but vague infinities and eternities, with an "everlasting
_yes_," and an "everlasting _no_." As the choice lay quite open to him,
there was no reason why he should not select the very hottest creed he
could any where find lying about in our history. From contemporaries it
was not likely that he should borrow: he loves nothing, praises nothing,
esteems nothing of this poor visible present; but it was an additional
recommendation to the Puritanic piety, that it had left a detestable
memory behind it, and was in declared hostility with all contemporaneous
ways of thinking. What could he better do, therefore, than borrow this
old volcanic crater of Puritanism, and pour out from it his religion and
his anger upon a graceless world?
Others, not given to such refinements, would explain the phenomenon upon
more ordinary principles, and reduce the enigma to a case merely of
literary monomania. Mr Carlyle, they would say, has been striving to
understand these Puritans till he has grown, for the time, to resemble
them. In the effort to project his mind into their mind, he has overshot
the mark; he has not been able yet to get his own mind back again. It is
a case, they would say, of mere imagination. Could you bring Mr Carlyle
into contact with a live Puritan, the charm would be instantly
dispelled. If one of Harrison's troopers would but ask him to step aside
with him, under a hedge, to wrestle for a blessing, or would kindly
undertake to catechise him on some point of divinity,--on that notion of
his, for instance, of "Right and Wrong bodying themselves into Hell and
Heaven,"--the alliance would be dissolved, not, perhaps, without violent
rupture.
For ourselves, we sometimes think that Mr Carlyle is in earnest. Men
should be honest. One who talks so loudly about _faith_, ought to be
sincere in his utterances to the public. At other times, the mummery
becomes too violent, grows too "fast and furious," to permit us to
believe that what we witness is the sane carriage of a sane man. At all
events, we can but look on with calm surprise. If our philosopher will
tuck his robe high up about his loins, and play the merry-andrew, if he
will grimace, and paint thick, and hold dialogue with himself, who shall
hinder him?--only we would rather not wear, on such an occasion, the
docile aspect of admiring pupils; we prefer to stand aside, and look on
with Mr Dryasdust.
It is worthy of note, that however Mr Carlyle extols his "Heroic Ones"
in a body, Cromwell is the only individual that finds a good word
throughout the work. Every one else, Hampden not excepted, is spoken of
with slight and disparagement. Amongst all the "godlike," there is but
one who finds favour in his sight,--him, however, he never deserts,--and
the very parties who have before been applauded, in general terms,
become the subjects of ridicule or castigation the moment they are seen
in opposition to Cromwell.
To Cromwell, then, let us turn our attention. Him we also can admire. We
admire his great practical sagacity, his eminent talents for war and for
government, the moderation and the conscientiousness which, though a
usurper and a zealot, he displayed in the use of power. He was, as we
have said, a genuine Puritan. This must be understood, or no
intelligible view of his character can be taken. It is not only
hostility to his memory which has attributed to him a studied hypocrisy;
the love of the marvellous has lent its aid. Such a supposition was
thought to magnify his talents and his genius. It was more dramatic to
make him the "honest Iago" of the piece. A French writer, M. Villemain,
in his History of Cromwell, expresses this feeling very naively, and
speaks of an hypocrisy "que l'histoire atteste, et qu'on ne saurait
mettre en doute sans oter quelque chose a l'idee de son genie; car les
hommes verront toujours moins de grandeur dans un fanatique de bonne
foi, que dans une ambition qui fait des enthusiastes. Cromwell mena les
hommes par la prise qu'ils lui donnaient sur eux. _L'ambition seule lui
inspira des crimes, qu'il fit executer par le fanatisme des autres._"
That he thus employed the spirit of the age without sharing it, is a
theory which will not stand the light for a moment. Besides, it is not
in this manner that history is transacted: we may all be puppets, if you
will, upon the scene, but it is not in this fashion that any one man
gets hold of the wires. The supposition, whatever honour it may do the
genius of Cromwell, will do very little honour to the speculative genius
of any writer who adopts it. But this is evident, that to whatever
extent Cromwell shared the distempered feelings of a sectarian party,
nothing ever clouded his penetration upon any affair of conduct, any
question of means to an end. The hour never came that found him wanting.
At every phase of the revolution he is there to lead, or control, or
predominate over it.
Starting from this point of view--understanding him, in the first place,
as the conscientious zealous Puritan, and endeavouring to estimate, as
the history proceeds, the modifications which the soldier and the
general, and finally the Protector, would induce upon this original
substratum--the character of Cromwell becomes intelligible, and his
conduct, in a measure, consistent. Whilst yet a private man, he had
warmly espoused the extreme opinions of that religious party who looked
on Popery as antichrist, and the Church of England as little better than
Popery in disguise, as the same scarlet lady in a somewhat more modest
attire. He was one of a class occasionally met with in the most quiet
walks of life, men who torment their spirit on some public question till
it becomes a personal grievance, or rather a corroding passion. What
were bishops personally to him? He might have prayed, and expounded, and
walked meditative in his fields, and left a public question to be
decided by the movements, necessarily slow, of public opinion. But no;
he was constituted quite otherwise. From a spiritual jurisdiction,
claimed though not exercised over him, his soul revolted. And this
hatred to prelacy, to any spiritual authority over him or his--this
determination to be his own priest--is, if not the strongest, certainly
the steadiest and most constant feeling that he manifests. We trace it
throughout his whole career. The first thing we hear of him in the House
of Commons is a protest, a sort of ominous growl, against the promotion
of some Arminian or semi-Popish divine. "If these are the steps to
church preferment, what are we to expect!" Almost the first glimpse we
catch of him when he has taken arms, is as the captain of a troop
entering some cathedral church, and bidding the surpliced priest, who
was reading the liturgy, "to cease his fooling, and come down!" And
throughout the letters which he addresses to the Speaker from the seat
of war, he rarely omits the opportunity of hinting, that the soldiers
are worthy of that religious liberty for which they have fought so well.
"We pray you, own His people more and more; for they are the chariots
and horsemen of Israel." And in one of his latest speeches, he describes
it as the great "extremity" of past times, that men were not permitted
to preach in public unless they were ordained.
A rooted animosity to prelatical or other spiritual domination, is the
key-note of this "melodious worker," as Mr Carlyle calls him. Cromwell
entered the civil war provided with no theory or plan of civil
government, animated with no republican zeal; it was not patriotism in
any ordinary sense of the word, it was his controversy with the church
of England that brought him on the field of battle. After fighting
against episcopacy, he fought with equal zeal against presbyterianism;
but against monarchy, or for the republic, he can hardly be said to have
drawn the sword. We all applaud the sagacity which saw at once that the
strongest antagonist to the honour and fidelity of the royalist, was to
be found in the passion of the zealot. He enlisted his praying regiment.
From that time the battle was won. But the cause was lost. What hope
could there be for the cause of civil freedom, of constitutional rights,
when the champion who won its victories was fanatical zeal, and the rage
of theological controversy?
It is the glaring defect in Cromwell--a defect which he had in common
with many others of his time--that he threw himself into a revolution
having for its first object to remodel the civil government, animated
only with the passions of the collateral controversy upon ecclesiastical
government. He fought the battle which was to destroy the monarchy,
without any fixed idea or desire for the republican government which
must be its substitute. This was not the subject that had engaged his
thoughts or inflamed his ardour. When, therefore, the royalists had been
conquered, it is not at all surprising that he should have seen nothing
but the difficulties in the way of forming a republic. At this point of
his history some excuse for him may be drawn from the very defect we are
noticing. His mind had dwelt on no theory of civil government--to the
cause of the commonwealth his heart had never been pledged--and we can
hardly call him, with justice, as Godwin does, a traitor to the
republic. But, on the other hand, what a gap, what a void, does this
disclose in the mind of our hero? What should we say of one who had
plunged heart and soul into the French Revolution, conducted only by his
rage against the Roman Catholic hierarchy? Such a one, had he risen to
take a leading part in that drama, might have acted with greater wisdom
and moderation than ardent and patriotic men; the very absence of any
political opinion or passion might have enabled him to see more clearly
than others the position which they all occupied; but this would not
justify or palliate the original error, the rash, exclusive,
self-blinding zeal which had brought him into that position.
To the ecclesiastical controversy, Cromwell clings throughout with an
utter recklessness of the fate of civil government. When episcopacy had
been vanquished, and presbyterianism threatened to take its place, he
was quite as willing to plunge the whole kingdom into confusion and
anarchy in his opposition to this new enemy, as to the old. Those who
would defend him from the charge of personal ambition--all who excuse
his conduct at this period of the history, put this plea upon
record,--and without a doubt his hostility to presbyterianism was a very
great and leading motive with him in his opposition to the Parliament,
and his determination to prevent a reconciliation between the House and
the King. When Charles was a prisoner at the Isle of Wight, it is well
known that the Parliament were anxious to come to some terms of
reconcilement, and the concessions which he then made were voted to be
"a sufficient ground for the future settlement of the kingdom." Why did
Cromwell interfere at this juncture between the two parties, in such a
way as entirely to destroy both? His best public ground is his hostility
to presbyterianism. And what was the presbytery, that to him it should
be so distasteful, and an object of so great animosity? Its forms of
worship, the doctrines preached by its divines, were exactly those he
himself practised and approved. There were no altars here, no surplices,
no traditions, no sympathies with Rome, no stealthy approximations to
her detested idolatries. But there was a claim put forward to
ecclesiastical supremacy, to ordain, and authorise, and control public
preachers, which he could not tolerate; and if no other motive had
existed, he was ready to oppose every settlement, at every risk, having
for its object to establish a claim of this description.
We will open the Letters and Speeches of Cromwell at this period of the
history, and present our readers with a specimen of his epistolary
style, and one which will go far to show how little his mind was
influenced, even at this great crisis, by any thing which we should
describe as political reasoning. Cromwell was a great _administrator_,
but he had no vocation for speculative politics, and little attachment
to forms of government. Framers of constitutions are not in repute at
present; they have not covered themselves with applause, rather with
confusion; and this defect in Cromwell's mind will probably be looked
upon with great indulgence. Nevertheless, people who go to war to
demolish an existing government, ought to have taken thought for a
substitute; on _them_ it is incumbent to have a political creed, and a
constitution to set up. At this very moment when the question is no
less, than whether the king should be put to death, and monarchy rooted
out of the land--ay, and the Parliament coerced, in order to effect
these objects--our Puritan general reasons--like a Puritan and nothing
better.
The following letter was addressed to Colonel Hammond, then governor of
the Isle of Wight. The colonel had been distressed by his scruples at
the extreme course the army was disposed to take, and had solicited this
appointment to the Isle of Wight as a retreat from the scene of faction
and violence. But it was precisely in this quiet little island that the
king took refuge; his perplexities, therefore, were increased and not
diminished. Cromwell writes to him to remove his scruples, and makes a
characteristic allusion to this circumstance--_improves_ it, as we
should say.
We must apprise the reader, however, that it would be dangerous to form
any opinion upon the religious sincerity or insincerity of Cromwell,
upon extracts from his letters and speeches, or even upon any single
letter or speech. From the incongruity we feel between the solemnity of
the subject of religion, and the manner and occasion in which it is
introduced, and from the use of certain expressions long since
consecrated to ridicule, it is impossible for a modern reader, on
falling upon some isolated passages, not to exclaim, that this is cant
and hypocrisy! But when the whole series, or the greater part of it, is
read--when the same strain of thought and feeling, in season and out of
season, is constantly observed--it is equally impossible not to feel
persuaded that these letters and speeches body forth the genuine
character of the man, and that the writer was verily a solemn and most
serious person, in whom religious zeal was the last quality which needed
reinforcement.
"DEAR ROBIN,--No man rejoiceth more to see a line from thee
than myself. I know thou hast long been under trial. Thou shalt
be no loser by it. All things must work for the best.
"Thou desirest to hear of my experiences. I can tell thee, I am
such a one as thou did formerly know, having a body of sin and
death; but I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, there is
no condemnation though much infirmity; and I wait for the
redemption. And in this poor condition I obtain mercy, and
sweet consolation through the Spirit. And find abundant cause
every day to exalt the Lord and abase flesh--and herein I have
some exercise.
"As to outward dispensations, if we may so call them, we have
not been without our share of beholding some remarkable
providences and appearances of the Lord. His presence hath been
amongst us, and by the light of his countenance we have
prevailed (_alludes to the battle of Preston_.) We are sure the
goodness of Him who dwelt in the bush has shined upon us; and
we can humbly say, we know in whom we have believed; who can
and will perfect what remaineth, and us also in doing what is
well-pleasing in His eye-sight.
"I find some trouble in your spirit, occasioned first not only
by your sad and heavy burden, as you call it, but also by the
dissatisfaction you take at the ways of some good men whom you
love with your heart, who through the principle, that it is
lawful for a lesser part, if in the right, to force a numerical
majority, &c. &c.
"To the first: call not your burden sad or heavy. If your
Father laid it on you, He intended neither. He is the Father of
light, from whom comes every good and perfect gift; who of His
own will begot us.... Dear Robin, our fleshly reasonings
ensnare us. These make us say 'heavy,' 'sad,' 'pleasant,'
'easy.' Was there not a little of this when Robert Hammond,
through dissatisfaction too, desired retirement from the army,
and thought of quiet in the Isle of Wight? Did not God find him
out there? I believe he will never forget this. And now I
perceive he is to seek again; partly through his sad and heavy
burden, and partly through his dissatisfaction with friends'
actings.
"Dear Robin, thou and I were never worthy to be door-keepers in
this service. If thou wilt seek, seek to know the mind of God
in all that chain of providence, whereby God brought thee
thither, and that person (_the king_) to thee; how, before and
since, God hath ordered him, and affairs concerning him; and
then tell me, whether there be not some glorious and high
meaning in all this, above what thou hast yet attained? And,
laying aside thy fleshly reason, seek of the Lord to teach thee
what that is; and He will do it. I dare be positive to say, It
is not that the wicked should be exalted that God should so
appear as indeed He hath done. For there is no peace to _them_.
No; it is set upon the hearts of such as fear the Lord, and we
have witness upon witness, that it shall go ill with them and
their partakers.
"As to thy dissatisfaction with friends' actings upon that
supposed principle--I wonder not at that. If a man take not his
own burden well, he shall hardly others'; especially if
involved by so near a relation of love and Christian
brotherhood as thou art, I shall not take upon me to satisfy;
but I hold myself bound to lay my thoughts before so dear a
friend. The Lord do His own will.
"You say, 'God hath appointed authorities among the nations, to
which active or passive obedience is to be yielded. This
resides, in England, in the Parliament. Therefore, active or
passive resistance,' &c. &c.
"Authorities and powers are the ordinance of God. This or that
species is of human institution, and limited some with larger,
others with stricter bands, each one according to its
constitution. But I do not therefore think that the authorities
may do _any thing_, and yet such obedience be due. All agree
that there are cases in which it is lawful to resist. If so,
your ground fails, and so likewise the inference. Indeed, dear
Robin, not to multiply words, the query is,--Whether ours be
such case? This, ingenuously, is the true question.
"To this I shall say nothing, though I could say very much; but
only desire thee to see what thou findest in thy own heart to
two or three plain considerations. _First_, Whether _Salus
populi_ be a sound position? _Secondly_, Whether, in the way in
hand (_the parliamentary treaty with the king_,) really and
before the Lord, before whom conscience has to stand, this be
provided for--or if the whole fruit of the war is not likely to
be frustrated, and all most like to turn to what it was, and
worse? And this contrary to engagements, explicit covenants
with those who ventured their lives upon those covenants and
engagements, without whom, perhaps in equity, relaxation ought
not to be? _Thirdly_, Whether this army be not a lawful power,
called by God to oppose and fight against the king upon some
stated grounds; and being in power to such ends, may not oppose
one name of authority, for those ends, as well as another
name--since it was not the outward authority summoning them
that by its power made the quarrel lawful, but the quarrel was
lawful in itself? If so, it may be, acting will be justified
_in foro humano_. _But truly this kind of reasoning may be but
fleshly, either with or against: only it is good to try what
truth may be in them. And the Lord teach us._
"My dear friend, let us look into providences; surely they mean
somewhat. They hang so together; have been so constant, so
clear, unclouded. Malice, swoln malice against God's people,
now called 'saints,' to root out their name;--and yet they
these poor saints getting arms and therein blessed with defence
and more! I desire he that is for a principle of suffering
(_passive obedience_) would not too much slight this. I slight
not him who is so minded; but let us beware lest fleshly
reasoning see more safety in making use of this principle than
in acting! Who acts, if he resolve not through God to be
willing to part with all? Our hearts are very deceitful, on the
right and on the left.
"What think you of providence disposing the hearts of so many
of God's people this way--especially in this poor army, wherein
the great God has vouchsafed to appear! I know not one officer
but is on the increasing side (_come over to this opinion_.) ...
"Thou mentionest somewhat as if by acting against such
opposition as is like to be, there will be a tempting of God.
Dear Robin, tempting of God ordinarily is either by acting
presumptuously in carnal confidence, or in unbelief through
diffidence: both these ways Israel tempted God in the
wilderness, and He was grieved by them. Not the encountering of
difficulties, therefore, makes us to tempt God; but the acting
before and without faith. If the Lord have in any measure
persuaded His people, as generally He hath, of the lawfulness,
nay of the _duty_,--this persuasion prevailing upon the heart
is faith; and acting thereupon is acting in faith; and the more
the difficulties are the more the faith. And it is most sweet
that he who is not persuaded have patience towards them that
are, and judge not; and this will free thee from the trouble of
others' actings, which thou sayest adds to thy grief....
"Robin, I have done. Ask we our hearts whether we think that
after all these dispensations, the like to which many
generations cannot afford, should end in so corrupt reasonings
of good men, and should so hit the designings of bad? Thinkest
thou in thy heart that the glorious dispensations of God point
out to this? Or to teach his people to trust in Him and wait
for better things--when, it may be, better are sealed to many
of their spirits (_indubitably sure to many of them_.)
"This trouble I have been at because my soul loves thee, and I
would not have thee swerve or lose any glorious opportunity the
Lord puts into thy hand. The Lord be thy counsellor. Dear
Robin, I rest thine,
"OLIVER CROMWELL."