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

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 31, 1857.

little curious that Lord Macaulay, who has
always so studiously disparaged Dryden,
should have unconsciously repeated the sub-
stance of some of Dryden's lines on " The
Death of Oliver Cromwell." Where in fervent
words Lord Nlacaulay writes of " the greatest
" prince and captain of the age, before whom
" the young pride of Lewis and the veteran
" craft of Mazarin stood rebuked, who had
" humbled Spain on the land and Holland on
" the sea, &c. &c.," it is impossible not to
think of the stanzas by Dryden :
To suppliant Holland he vouchsafd a peace,
Our once bold rival of the British Main,
Now tamely glad her unjust claim to cease,
And buy our friendship with her idol gain.
Fame of the asserted sea through Europe blown
Made France and Spain ambitious of his love;
Each knew that side must conquer he would own,
And for him fiercely as for empire strove.
When Lord Macaulay, writing in 1828, alluded
to Cromwell as " the greatest prince and cap-
" thin of the age," the expression was thought
overstrained and inappropriate. It is curious
that Dryden had used the term. His thirty-
second stanza runs :
Such was our Prince, yet owned a soul above
The highest acts it could produce to show, &c.
And the opening of another stanza might have
been recollected by Lord Macaulay where the
brilliant essayist contrasted the fact of Crom.
well dying in power, with Napoleon lingering
in a remote island :
Nor died he when his ebbing fame went less,
But when fresh laurels wanted him to live, &c.
Those who wish to " write up " the memory
of Cromwell will find in the thirty-seven
stanzas by Dryden an historical epitome and
exact catalogue of the Protector's exploits, in
which the topics chosen for panegyric are
selected with great judgment and care.

It is time, in our opinion, that the memory
of Cromwell should be discussed with more
justice than has been accorded to it. We
concur neither with the damnatory sentence
of Pope (already cited), nor with the excessive
laudation by Lord Macaulay, nor with Mr.
Carlyle's rabid enthusiasm for the Protector.
We believe that the English character would
undergo a change for the worse if a nature so
intensely ambitious and so extremely unscru-
pulous as Cromwell was set up for a great
historical idol, to which the nation should
bow down. The fact is, that no rational Con-
servative nor patriotic Liberal could ever give
his applause to a career like that of Cromwell,
whose system of rule was that of making
" right " and " might " synonymous in poli-
tics. Cromwell had none of the scruples
which troubled and restrained the natures of
Fairfax and Algernon Sidney, both men of no
ordinary spirit, and each endowed with great
though different kinds of ability. The Whig
party, if their great leaders are to be heard on
the point, could never give their approval to
the man who indecently vilified Magna Charta,
and no genuine I,onservative could applaud
Cromwell's dictatorial course, and his over-
throw of all settled government. Neither
could Whig or Tory approve of Mr. Carlyle's
mode of looking at Cromwell as a sort of
Heaven-sent hero. Mr. Carlyle writes :
That this man Oliver Cromwell was, as the popular
fancy represents him, the soul of the Puritan Revolt, with-
out whom it had never been a revolt transcendently
memorable, and an Epoch in the World's History ; that in
fact he, more than is common in such cases, does deserve
to give his name to the Period in question, and have the
Puritan Revolt considered as a "Cromwelliad," which
issue is already very visible tnr it.

The " Cronmeilind" had only a brief suc-
cess ; for, if we were asked to name what was
the most popular event in England for the
last three hundred years, we should answer,
the Restoration. If Cromwell really deserved
all the extravagant praise heaped on him by
Lord Macaulay and Mr. Carlyle, we might
fairly ask why his power had not a longer root
in the nation ; and if he were sent from Hea-
ven to chastise the sins of kingcraft, from
whence did Charles 11. and James 11. come?
There can be no doubt that Oliver Crom-
well was a man of amazing energy, of ruling
instincts, and of raro address. He had, doubt-
less, a master• faculty for subduing other
men, and ho had all, or nearly all, the quali-
ties requisite for heading a party. But the