do what with conveniency may be done for the poor Cousin I did solicit him about.
Once more farewell. The Lord be with you: so prayeth your truly loving Cousin,
There are two or perhaps three sons of Cromwell’s at Felsted School by this time: a likely enough guess is, that he might have been taking Dick over to Felsted on that occasion when he came round by Otes, and gave such comfort by his speech to the pious Mashams, and to the young Cousin, now on a summer visit at Otes. What glimpses of long-gone summers; of long-gone human beings in fringed trouser-breeches, in starched ruff, in hood and fardingale;—alive they, within their antiquarian costumes, living men and women; instructive, very interesting to one another! Mrs. St. John came down to breakfast every morning in that summer visit of the year 1638, and Sir William said grave grace, and they spake polite devout things to one another; and they are vanished, they and their things and speeches,—all silent, like the echoes of the old nightingales that sang that season, like the blossoms of the old roses. O Death, O Time!—
For the soul’s furniture of these brave people is grown not less unintelligible, antiquarian, than their spanish boots and lappet caps. Reverend Mark Noble, my reverend imbecile friend, discovers in this Letter evidence that Oliver was once a very dissolute man; that Carrion Heath spake truth in that Flagellum Balderdash of his. O my reverend imbecile friend, hadst thou thyself never any moral life, but only a sensitive and digestive? Thy soul never longed towards the serene heights, all hidden from thee; and thirsted as the hart in dry places wherein no waters be? It was never a sorrow for thee that the eternal pole-star had gone out, veiled itself in dark clouds;—a sorrow only that this or the other noble Patron
- ↑ Thurloe’s State Papers (London, 1742), i. 1.
