Blackfoot news. (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1891-1902, 1892-01-23
SOME LOST DOCUMENTS.
ANTIQUE WORKS WHOLLY or
PARTLY DESTROYED.
rortla Was a Widow with a Grown soR
Did oliver Cromwell Appoint
HIS Son to Be His Successor
"A Great Man.

us more or less imperfect as ruls
says the Sat Evening Post Thei.
popularity caused many copies to be
made and SO they had great advan-
tage in the struggle for existence.
Yet, in regard 20 this it is strange
that Tacitus has suffered beyond all
others. when, by special decree. each
public library in the Roman empire
was bound to have copy OF his his
tory, and ten transcriptIons were made
every year at the charge of the state.
One alone out OF these thousands sur
yived, and, as every schoolboy knows
in practice, less than a sixth part
could be deciphered. But though the
writings of popular authors have in
measure been preserved, some of US
would exchange an enormous quantity
of the bulk for a selection OF
those less fashionable books which
we know only by tantalizing
glimpses. What a treasure would
be the History Of the Etruscans by
the Emperor Claudius! Or the Anti
Cato written by Julius Cesar, TO
prove t lat the hero of Utica was not
such noble fellow after all Suetonius
refers continually to the published
letters Of Augustus and Tiberlus. and
10 Memoirs, " more or less complete,
which some of the Twelve Caesars had
written. It has been laboriously cal
culated that Plutarch quotes 25I
books; OF more than eighty of them
we know nothing further They were
of the class. too, which we can least
| spare. Plutarch himself wrote four
teen lives that have persisted, those Of
Epaminondas the two Scipios Hesiod,
Pindar, LeonidaS. Metullus. Gratis.
Aristomanet and the first five Caesars
not 10 mention Hercules. Incident
ally he alludes TO the memoirs of Ara
tus, Sylla Pyrrhus TO a history of the
Marsi by Lucullus and TO a work in
defense of Brutus by his step-son,
Bioulus-sentiment persons may be
rather shocked to hear that Portia
was widow with a grown up son, at
the time of the conspiracy These
books were ali extant in Plutarch's
day. To heather barbarism we owe
the most of such losses and amazing
il is that any fragment OF a more en-
lightened age survived after an ignor-
ant priesthood and brutal laity had
been wilfully destroying them for
more than thousand years.
The lost documents OF English his
tory are curious rather than impor-
tant so far as is known. Isaac Dis
raeli made collection Of them, if one
may so speak, for his ''Curiosities of
Literature Ii is not long nor a
very saddening list if regarded dis
passionately. We find continual rea-
son to lament that such and such a
record has vanished, but literature did
not exist until date when its produc-
tons were fairly well protected by the
printing press. Our gravest loss prob
ably is that OF the old ballads and
songs, which never were transcribed.
But there is an exception Of the most
painful class. Very nearly all records
dealing with the private life Of Oliver
Cromwell, and even with transactions
not inseparable from the councils OF
the state, have vanished. Most OF
them were wilfully destroyed in the
savage, stupid, yet most ineligible,
triumph of the exiles. This we know
by evidence beyond question. To cite
one case there is an entry in the Reg
lister of Graces at Cambridge under
the date 1861, ordering that what
sover mandates of missions
can be found sent by the late
Chancellor Oliver Cromwell shall be
burnt Richard Ormston, steward
of Sir Arthur Hazelrig at Newcastle
upon-Tyne begged four of Cromwell S
letters when his correspondence with
Hazelrig was burnt at Naseby Hall;
one of those SO happily rescued was
that referring to the Scotch prisoners
taken at Dunbar;-'I pray you let hui
mainly be exercised towards them.
am persuaded it will be comely.n In
the sad and shameful dearth of evil
dence regaEding the character OF the
greatest man in the island story this
hint is priceless. A lost document OF
the EXTREMIST Importance was that
which nominated divers successor
He wrote it year before his death.
sealed it carefully. and deposited it al
Hampton court with the knowledge
OF all about him; but it does not APP
pear that he ever named the contents
to any. When the hero lay dying and
speechless this paper was sought-in
vain. 1t is not at all certain that the
protector appointed his eldest son.
They took his iuarticulate utterances
for consent when Whitelock suggested
Richard. That the formal instrument
deposited at Hampton court was stolen
can hardly be doubted; and we may
well suspect under all the circum-
stances. that someone who had an op,
portunity made away with it because
it did not nominate Richard, So, per
haps the history of England wa,
changed