on record, whose name is frequent in books, or who has written a book himself, far more might be known than is related, and far more, too, worth knowing. More might be gleaned even out of the wits and poets, than cursory readers have any notion of.

How many circumstances, for instance, are related of Charles that do not convey a twentieth part of the information respecting his character, and that of his queen, Henrietta Maria, as that single one mentioned by Swift, in his instances of "Mean and Great Figures,"-of his making a present to her of a buckle before all the court, and unfortunately fixing it awkwardly in her bosom, so as to scratch her : upon which she tore it out in a passion, and trampled it under foot !

Milton has been unjustly accused of taunting Charles with being a lover of Shakspeare. He taunts him in the passage where the mention is made, but not with the circumstance itself. Strange taunt, indeed, it would have been from Milton-making allowance for party exasperation, which certainly had not always the best effect on the taste of the great poet. Think, for a moment, of these two men, Milton and Charles the First, so different in their opinions, their position, and the whole. public course of their lives; and yet consider how much they would have had, and did have in common, if you take away the circumstances of rank, and leave them their humanity alone. I will not swear that Milton was not a greater royalist at heart than the king. He came of a severer stock (his grandfather disinherited his father for differing with him in religion)-he had the most royal, and dominant, and even military notions of heaven-his domestic government, I fear, was arbitrary and unconciliating, certainly did not render him beloved; and though his principles tended to republicanism and to puritanism (so much so to the latter as to injure the universality of his love of the beautiful, and make him intolerant even to the painted church-windows which he described so exquisitely in his youth), yet he always takes care, not merely to intimate his approbation of "orders and degrees," but to show the highest possible sense of his own claims to distinction, and of the segregation of such men from the " herd" and the "vulgar." And when circumstances led him to inquire into the doctrines of divorce, nay, of polygamy, his puritanism did not at all stand in the way of his patriarchal will and pleasure. His sympathy with his fellow-creatures was not as thorough-going and unrestricted as his will; nor did he pretend that it was. You might as soon fancy him "waking the nightowl in a catch" in propriâ persona, as writing the account of those who did in the comedy. What then? Am I blind to the merits of the great poet, because he was not so great a one as Shakspeare? Or am I insensible to his dignity as a man and a lover of his country? Not so; but I would have fair-play to all, that no human being may unhandsomely remain angry with his fellow-creatures, for not appearing to be so good or great as himself—that he may know them to be all more or less the creatures of circumstance, and engaged in an affecting struggle to see what they can make of this earth they inhabit. If they struggle for themselves only, they fail somehow, either in their cause, or their personal consolations; if they struggle for all, they are sure to realize some comfort. I am thankful for Milton's breeding, inasmuch as it helped to make him a man of principle and an immortal writer; but I am bound also to take into consideration that part of Charles's breeding

which rendered him a victim to his father's king-craft, and disturbed the better part of his nature; nor can I help thinking that, if that nature had been left to itself, it would have appeared to be of a less arbitrary kind than Milton's-less exacting and self-sufficing-more sociable. Charles would have been more of what is called the "good fellow." Whether this, in private life, would have left him any eminence, is another question. He would probably have been a respectable countrygentleman-a little wilful or so, a little angry and amazed when matters went against him in the vestry or on the magistrate's bench; but not foolish otherwise, nor given to inelegant pleasures. It is rare, even for the rarest men, to be at once hearty, unassuming good-fellows and great serious thinkers, as Shakspeare was.

Look at the men thus, on both sides, during this great period, and consider, from what has transpired of their private characters, which among them you would have chosen as a select body for the final judges of your political destiny, the object being to settle what was most avowable, best-natured, and least egotistical, for the whole world. If this be the test (and I, for one, though as hearty a lover of freedom as any man, know of no better), I think it is pretty clear what sort of persons they were whom an unprejudiced yet cordial reader of history would not choose, and who are those that he would. The former would be those least respected or most hated by the opposite party, and least beloved by their own. The latter, the reverse in all instances. Among the former would be Laud, Prynne, Strafford, Harrison, Cromwell, Haslerigg, and Hyde (at least after he had become "Clarendon," and showed himself confirmed in his pride, luxury, and insincerity). Among the latter I should name Selden, Hutchinson, Godolphin, Marvell, Cowley, Sunderland, perhaps Henry Cromwell, certainly the admirable Falkland, and (according to my own convictions) Hampden, whose memory it is high time to rescue from the gratuitous obloquy of Clarendon's assertion about his having "a heart to conceive, and a hand to execute, any mischief;" a charge which has been solely kept alive by partyspirit, by the classical elegance of its phraseology, and the commonplace and envious foundation of it upon Hampden's "courtesy to all men." Clarendon's manners were hot and imperious; he felt that more courteous manners on his own part would have been a violence done to his nature, and hypocritical; and he therefore assumed that such was the case with Hampden-a non sequitur equally vain and foolish. Clarendon's faults have at length transpired in their true colours to posterity, in the pages of Pepys, Ellis, and others. His talents remain great and admirable; but he saw the faults of his own party far better than those of his own character, and must often have excited the contempt as well as anger of the very debauchees of the court. What must Charles the Second, while his minister was ventur ing to lecture him on his women and his expenses, have thought of his expenses, of his corrupt meaus of recruiting them, and, above all, of his fat and corpulence, and great eating, and gout ?-evidences of sensuality, which the peripatetic and well-shaped king must have looked upon as far less pardonable in a gentleman, than the attendance he danced upon the Clevelands and Portsmouths.

Those who wish to see some new passages in the histories of the great men of this period, will do well to read a volume just pub

lished by Dr. Lardner in his " Cabinet Cyclopædia," containing the "Lives of Sir John Eliot and Lord Strafford."* On the face of it it possesses more than the usual attractions of the series, for one of ts, most interesting anecdotes (Pyrn's formidable non-farewell to Strafford), is told on the very title-page in the shape of an excellent engraving after a curious and expressive design by Mr. Cattermole; and in the course of it we are presented with another literal evidence of the author's having done his work con amore, in a fac-simile of the elaborate manuscript title-page of a treatise written by Sir John Eliot during his imprisonment, an analysis and ample specimens of which treatise are for the first time given to the world. The book contains also several passages from letters of Eliot and Hampden, now for the first time published; in the life of Wentworth, the question of his " apostacy" is satisfactorily concluded in the negative, and a number of interesting quotations given us from letters of his; and what is most curious of all, here, for the first time, is presented to the world a life of Eliot himself, who, though one of the most remarkable and influential of the great spirits that commenced the revolution of that age, has not yet made his appearance in any of our general Biographies, not even in Chalmers or Gorton.

It will be as well on this account to give a brief sketch of his' story here: He was of an old West of England family, ancestor of the present Earl of St. Germains; and became the most prominent, earnest, eloquent, and appalling denouncer of the favourite Buckingham, and of those arbitrary measures which led to the civil war. He had such passionate influence on the House of Commons, and so annoyed and irritated the king, that the first moment Charles thought he could dispense with a Parliament, he had him brought before the Council-table for "words spoken in the House." Eliot denied his right to bring him to the account; but as the Parliament was now dissolved, and his own formidable "words" could no longer defend him, the upshot was that he was imprisoned in the Tower, and died there after an imprisonment of upwards of three years. His comforts were not much consulted in his imprisonment, and he attributed the first cause of his death to a cold. He was told several times that his condition might be lightened, if he would submit himself and beg pardon, which he refused to do; and though latterly persuaded to petition the king for a temporary change of air, he did it in so cold a manner that it did not succeed, and he declined to make it humbler, The king refused even to let his body be taken into Cornwall to be buried; but we do not think with his biographer that this was done out of spite. Eliot was very popular in Cornwall. The whole county had petitioned for his release, and most likely it was apprehended that there would be such an ostentatious welcome given to his body as might have told against the Court. In short, the struggle between Eliot and Charles was between two obstinate men, both of whom thought themselves in the right; and as one would not give in, neither would the other. Eliot was a man of principle; but it seems clear that his temperament had in it a violence which, though admirably modified by his understanding and his good intentions, naturally diminishes something of our sympathy by the strength and selfLives of Eminent British Statesmen, Vol. II. By John Forster, Esq., of the Inner Temple.

sufficiency of its resentment; though, on the other hand, its struggle with itself was the foundation of the most affecting part of the patriot's philosophy, and manifestly produced the treatise, in the publication of which Mr. Forster has obliged the world. This treatise is entitled "The Monarchy of Man, written by Sir John Eliot during his last imprisonment;" and is an eloquent and exalted attempt to show that it is in a man's power, however situated, to be lord of himself, and of the infinite regions of thought and will. The idea of still ruling somehow or other, might have shown the gallant sufferer which way his nature inveterately tended, had he looked into it still closer; for it is plain enough that he does not write thus stoically, as Marcus Antonius did, out of a sense of the necessity of counteracting any softness in his disposition, so much as to vindicate its unyielding dignity and to keep himself on a level with those who fancied they had subdued him. Poor, high-minded Sir John Eliot! and so he died out of inability to fit his "Monarchy" to the throne of a prison!-nobly, however, and all the better for his aspirations.

To show the truly gallant nature of some of these aspirations, and with what hearty generosity of spirit Eliot waived his right of making out a good case for groaning and lamenting, an extract here follows respecting the indulgence of sorrow-a species of egotism to which he gives no quarter. The reasoning indeed is very just and profound.

"Sorrow approaches next," (we quote from the biographer's analysis,) “and this is described as the worst and least excusable of the impediments yet named (to self-government and happiness)." yet," Eliot says, "fear has some resource of safety, and hope has some desire of happiness." "These," he strikingly continues, "have somewhat for justification and apology, at least for excuse and extenuation of their evils. But sorrow only is inferior to them all. No argument can be made for her defence; she can pretend neither to happiness, nor safety, nor to what might be subvervient to either. As the professed enemy to both, her banners are displayed-she fights against all safety and bids defiance unto happiness; her ends, her arts, are in contestation of them both. Reason has nothing to allege why sorrow should be used; it propounds no advantage in the end, no advantage in the act, but the mere satisfaction of itself, the sole expletion of that humour; therefore it is the most improper of all others, as incomparably the worst, and that likewise the effects and consequence on the body will show." The conclusion of the subject is a subtle treatment of the selfishness of sorrow. "It is not called forth," he says, "by the misfortunes of our friends, for that feeling is pity; nor by the triumphs of our enemies, for that is envy. Sorrow is selfishness." For the privation of whatever we hold dear, of whatever is in a tender estimation, Eliot suggests nobler and better remedies.

It seems a startling thing to pronounce that "sorrow is selfishness," since so many excellent people have been very unhappy; but on reflection it will be seen that our enduring philosopher is right-that unhappiness and sorrow are very different things; and that the one still generously seeks happiness for its own sake and that of others, while sorrow betrays its selfishness by its temper and sullenness. An unhappiness of this kind, it may be added, is a mark of want of ideas and resources; and shows that we should have been ill qualified to please others, had we ourselves been pleased never so much.

Hampden makes a very amiable figure in this Life of Eliot, not by any elaborate attempt of the author to show him in that light, but by the passages now first published from his own letters. They render it still more incumbent upon the ghost of Clarendon, or upon any body who chooses to speak for that ingenious and crafty personage, to shew cause why such amiableness must needs have a bad and mischievous construction put upon it. Clarendon often reminds one of the barrister in the jest-book, who after vainly attempting to browbeat a witness and make him injure his own character, tells him in a significant manner that "he may get down," adding, with a nod to the audience, "a pretty fellow that!" Speaking of Hampden, Mr. Forster justly reckons it as one proof of the virtuous character of this great man having already dawned, that Eliot had intrusted to him the care of his two sons." Both Eliot and Hampden were beautiful letter-writers ; and it is to be much regretted that we have not more of their correspondence. Hampden sent Eliot books for his treatise; and, as Mr. Forster, with delicate perception of his own, says, "delicately rallies him to his labours."

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"Make good use of the bookes you shall receive from mee, and of your time; be sure you shall render a strict account of both to your ever assured friend.”—(p. 118). Hampden knew he could not do better than keep a prisoner's thoughts occupied.

"As the work progressed" (continues Mr. Forster) "it was sent in portions to Hampden, who criticised it, and, as I shall show, gave value to his praise by occasional objection. And that to satisfy you, not myself, but that by obeying you in a command so contrary to my own disposition, you may be sure how large a power you have over John Hampden.""

This indeed is in the best style of that "flowing courtesy" which Clarendon has contrived to turn into matter of reproach! Here is Hampden taking charge of the two sons of an anxious father (a very anxious charge, and one that turned out especially so in this instance), comforting the prisoner with small attentions as well as great, and modestly guarding against the least possible assumption of a right to take the measure of his powers, though he will do so, he says, at his own risk, in order to show his love. Such a man is more like one of" all couscience and tender heart," than of heart and hand for any mischief. Conscience indeed might carry him into the field of battle; but so it did his truly noble opponent, Lord Falkland; and when he was mortally wounded, Charles himself, be it remembered, sent his own surgeon to attend him; which a prince who thought himself so much in the right would certainly have done to no rebellious subject, whom he did not respect as one thinking himself in the right also. At least, if it might be construed into a bit of his "king-craft," I, for one, have enough belief the existence of good among all parties most unaffectedly not to be of that opinion. Charles was a gentleman; and there are moments when the flower of that character rises in triumphant beauty over every other consideration, and rejoices to become visible in the eyes of those that resemble it. The worst action of Charles's life was the forfeiture of his word with Strafford; for as to all his other word-breakings, fatal to him and to so many others as they were, and unbefitting the more advanced ideas of what is right and becoming, unquestionably he was