OLIVER CROMWELL. BY THOMAS CARLYLE. [THOMAS CARLYLE, Scotch moralist, essayist, and historian, was born at Ecclefechan, December 4, 1795. He studied for the ministry at Edinburgh University, taught school, studied law, became a hack writer and tutor; in 1826 married Jane Welsh, and in 1828 removed to a farm in Craigenputtoch, where he wrote essays and "Sartor Resartus"; in 1834 removed to his final home in Cheyne Row, Chelsea. His "French Revolution" was issued in 1837. He lectured for three years, "Heroes and Hero Worship" gathering up one course. His chief succeeding works were: "Chartism Past and Present,' Cromwell's Letters," "Latter-day Pamphlets," "Life of Sterling," and "Frederick the Great." He died February 4, 1881.] FROM of old, I will confess, this theory of Cromwell's falsity has been incredible to me. Nay, I cannot believe the like of any Great Man whatever. Multitudes of Great Men figure in History as false selfish men; but if we will consider it, they are but figures for us, unintelligible shadows; we do not see into them as men that could have existed at all. A superficial unbelieving generation only, with no eye but for surfaces and semblances of things, could form such notions of Great Men. Can a great soul be possible without a conscience in it, the essence of all real souls, great or small? No, we cannot figure Cromwell as a Falsity and Fatuity: the longer I study him and his career, I believe this the less. Why should we? There is no evidence of it. Is it not strange that, after all the mountains of calumny this man has been subject to, after being represented as the very prince of liars, who never, or hardly ever, spoke truth, but always some cunning counterfeit of truth, there should not yet have been one falsehood brought clearly home to him? A prince of liars, and no lie spoken by him. Not one that I could yet get sight of. . . . Let us leave all these calumnious chimeras, as chimeras ought to be left. They are not portraits of the man: they are distracted phantasms of him, the joint product of hatred and darkness. Looking at the man's life with our own eyes, it seems to me a very different hypothesis suggests itself. What little we know of his earlier obscure years, distorted as it has come down to us, does it not all betoken an earnest, affectionate, sincere kind of man? His nervous melancholic temperament indicates rather a seriousness too deep for him. .. |