The Press.
London, England, 1857-10-31 00:00:00

I.literaturt.

Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: with
Elucidations. By Thomas Carlyle. In Three
Vols. London : Chapman and Hall.
As this work now stands in its new form, it is
certainly a most valuable addition to the
Cromwell library. It contains a great portion
of solid materials for the biography of the
Protector. There is an " Introduction" of con-
siderable length, with much condensed detail,
and most of the letters are annotated by Mr.
Carlyle. Not only the private letters of Crom-
well, but also his parliamentary "speeches"
as Protector are given. " The Squire Papers "
are adjoined to the first volume, being reprinted
from Fraser's Magazinf. There are several
interesting documents set forth in this edition,
amongst which we would specially mention
the " List of the Long Parliament ;" and there
is a very fair index at the end of the third
volume.

Mr. Carlyle has not been sparing of his
" elucidations," and his mode of dealing with
Cromwell's character is in his usual style of
panegyric on high, wild, and vehement natures
associated with historical successes. There
is the customary quantity of " coagulated
jargon," to use one of his own expressions ;
and there are several passages of word.paint-
ing, in which effects ate produced that recall
Rembrandt and Cruikshank. The work has an
indisputable value as a copious collection of
authentic " Cromwell Papers," and consider-
able service has been done by Mr. Carlyle in
exposing the n.' -.takes of Noble and preced-
ing coni:nentato. s on Cromwell.
How Englishmen should feel towards the
memory of Oliver Cromwell might be made
an interesting subject for moral disquisition.
The posthumous fame of the Protector has
undergone significant vicissitudes. Between
the Restoration and the Revolution his
name was as anathema, and subsequently to
1688, and for a great part of the eighteenth
century, a pall of oblivion was flung over his
memory. Voltaire, it is true, recounts in his
" Letters on England " that Englishmen
spoke proudly of the " Great Oliver," and he
contrasted the public men of the Walpolian
era with the times of the Commonwealth ;
but Voltaire, though a brilliant writer, was not
a close observer, and his stay in England was
brief. The feeling must hove been strong
against Cromwell when Pope in his "Essay
on Man" could venture on such a couplet
as—

Or ravish'd with the whistling of a name,
See Cromwell damned to everlasting fame.

And in one of the most pointed stanzas of th
" Elegy," Gray, an ardent Whig, " and some-
thing more," has the line, teeming with im-
putation—

Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.
In the parliamentary records of the last cen-
tury we do not now recollect any notable in-
stances in which the memory of Cromwell is
either praised or vilified; and we could quote
anecdotes and facts to show that Cromwell
was not a favourite name amongst the courtiers
of the first and second Georges, although,
oddly enough, a Miss Cromwell, one of the
Protector's family, was a Maid of Honour to
one of the Hanoverian Princesses. In his
" Letter to a Member of the National Assem-
bly," Burke, in later times, gives a skilfully
measured verdict on Cromwell. "Cromwell," he
writes, "knew how to separate the institutions
" expedient to his usurpation from the admi-
" nistration of the public justice of his country.
" For Cromwell was a man in whom ambition
" had not wholly suppressed, but wholly sus-
" pended the sentiments of religion, and the
" low! (a+ fur as it could exist with his designs) of
" fair and honourable reputation, &c. &c."

With the growth of a taste for the study of
the seventeenth century a change about forty
years since occurred. Wiiters attached to the
Liberal connection took the memory of the
Protector under their especial patronage, and
Lord Macaulay, in particular, wrote au elabo-
rate panegyric on Cromwell (" Essay on Hal-
law's Constitutional History"). It is not a