and the heart of serious men once again brought into approximation, to write some ‘History’ of it may be a little easier,—for my impatient friend or another
To dwell on or criticise the particular Biographies of Cromwell, after what was so emphatically said above on the general subject, would profit us but little. Criticism of these poor Books cannot express itself except in language that is painful. They far surpass in ‘stupidity’ all the celebrations any Hero ever had in this world before. They are in fact worthy of oblivion,—of charitable Christian burial.
Mark Noble reckons up some half-dozen ‘Original Biographies of Cromwell’;[1] all of which and some more I have examined; but cannot advise any other man to examine. There are several laudatory, worth nothing; which ceased to be read when Charles ii. came back, and the tables were turned. The vituperative are many: but the origin of them all, the chief fountain indeed of all the foolish lies that have circulated about Oliver since, is the mournful brown little Book called Flagellum, or the Life and Death of O. Cromwell, the late Usurper, by James Heath; which was got ready so soon as possible on the back of the Annus Mirabilis or Glorious Restoration,[2] and is written in such spirit as we may fancy. When restored potentates and high dignitaries had dug up ‘above a hundred buried corpses, and flung them in a heap in St. Margaret’s Churchyard,’ the corpse of Admiral Blake among them, and Oliver’s old mother’s corpse; and were hanging on Tyburn gallows, as some small satisfaction to themselves, the dead clay of Oliver, of Ireton, and Bradshaw;—when high dignitaries and potentates were in such a humour, what could be expected of poor pamphleteers and garreteers? Heath’s poor little brown lying Flagellum is described by one of the moderns as a ‘Flagitium’; and
