3 JULY 1847, Page 17

MERLE D'AUBIGNE'S PROTECTOR, A VINDICATION. STRUCK with the light which

various documents lately published have thrown upon the character of Cromwell, the Protestant historian of the Reformation determined to give to the world his conclusions from their oramination, in some Continental review. The work, however, grew upon him, and he found that it would far exceed the limits of an article: an idea of translating Carlyle's "Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell" came across him, but it was his own and a general Continental opinion, that "Mr. Carlyle's book possesses so much originality of thought and man- ner as to defy all possibility of rendering them into any of our languages." The consequence was the work before us; in which history, biography, and disquisition are mingled together, disquisition predominating in spirit if not in substance, as might be expected from the original conception. The Protector, a Vindication, is an Evangelical Protestant vie* of Cromwell's character ; in which the author looks upon the great English- man as an instrument called up to withstand Popery and arbitrary power ; and estimates his character more by his sayings or writings under all cir- cumstances and at all times, than by his public acts. Conduct is not in- deed omitted, and the survey includes a continuous and tolerably full notice of Cromwell's public and private ; but his speeches, letters, and sayings, are the leading texts. The object of D'Aubigne's discourses is to disprove the usual charge of Cromwell's hypocrisy and ambition, and to explain the enigma of his character by ascribing his conduct to a strict sense of Protestant religious duty. Omitting the details, even of great events, and passing lightly over many circumstances of historical or bio- graphical importance, the Genevese divine and historian brings together, as into a focus, those utterances of Cromwell which must be supposed to unfold, as far as any external sign can unfold, his real thoughts and feel- ings. The vindicator examines Cromwell's conduct at very critical pe- riods,—such as the negotiations with the King and the trial, the Irish campaign, the victory at Dunbar, the reiterated proposal that Oliver should take the title of King, and his death. He scrutinizes Cromwell's obscure manhood, and his private life, from the first traces of him to his highest greatness; showing that he was the same " God-fearing " speak- ing and writing man throughout; and bringing forward proofs of his affectionate and sportive but pious character in domestic letters, that he never could have expected to pass beyond the family. He ex- hibits the plain simplicity of Oliver's habits and mode of life when he was at the highest point of human power, and, as far as it is possible to judge, of his mind and feelings. He adduces passages from political op- ponents, from Clarendon to Southey, as testimony to his humanity, or natural good qualities ; and concludes from these various evidences, and the consistency traceable throughout, that a deep sense of religious duty was the mainspring of Cromwell's conduct, and the true key by which to un- lock his character. Merle D'Aubigne blames the death of the King, but draws a distinction between the culpability of an act and the character which should attach to the actors ; and, while doing full justice, and perhaps something more than justice, to the sound Protestant views of the Protector, he censures the error by which men are led to look for special directions instead of applying themselves to the revealed word.

"We are approaching a catastrophe which we would willingly avoid; but which we must in justice acknowledge differs essentially from that which startled the world in 1793. If the safety of the nation was incompatible with Charles's remaining on the throne, was it necessary that he should pass from the throne to the scaffold? Most certainly not. To connive at his escape into a foreign country would have been the most befitting course,—an expedient that was afterwards adopted in the case of James IL, and, in our own days, in that of Charles X. It was also that which in all probability, as we have seen, Cromwell once desired to have followed. But the fear of compromising the future tranquillity of the nation now condemned the King to a severer penalty. We mast deplore each times as those, when men were so prodigal of human blood; we must lament that even the majesty of the throne could not protect a guilty prince: but all the documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries attest that men were in

those ages we i t condemned to death as e now condemn them a brief imprisonment.

"The manner in which he [Cromwell] was at length led to sign Charles's death-warrant, has not, perhaps, been sufficiently appretiated. We have already remarked that his great religious error was his assuming for the mainspring of his actions those inward impulses which he ascribed to God, in preference to the explicit commands of the lioly Scriptures. He believed in what has been de- nominated a particular faith: If while engaged in prayer or immediately after he felt a lively conviction in his mind, he thought that this impression proceeded immediately from Heaven, and that he ought to follow it as the very voice of God. If, on the contrary, his devotions remained languid, he concluded that he ought to abstain from the meditated act. This is a common error in pious minds, and we might point to one denomination of Christians, celebrated for their spirit of meek- nen and peace, who partially participate in such sentiments. " It was this which guided him in the sentence passed on Charles, and freed him from all his doubts and scruples. John Cromwell, at that time in the Dutch service, had mane to England with a message from the Princes of Wales and of Orange to endeavour to save the King's life. When introduced to his cousin Oliver, he reminded him of the Royalist opinions he had formerly entertained at Hampton Court. The latter, still uncertain as to the line of conduct which he ought to pursue, replied, that he had often fasted and prayed to know the will of God with respect to the King, but that God had not yet pointed out the way. When John had withdrawn, Cromwell and his friends again sought by prayer the path they ought to follow; and it was then the Parliamentary hero first felt the conviction that Charles's death alone could save England. From that moment all was fixed: God had spoken; Oliver's indecision was at an end; it remained now merely to act and accomplish that will, however appalling it might be. At one o'clock in the morning a messenger from the General knocked at the door of the

tavern where John Cromwell lodged, and informed him that his cousin had at length dismissed his doubts, and that all the arguments so long put forward by the most decided Republicans were now confirmed by the will of the Lord.

"Enthusiasm, then, was the cause of Cromwell's error. This is a serious fault in religion•' but may it not extenuate the fault in morals? Is a man who desires to obey God equally guilty with him who is determined to listen to his passions only? Is not God's will the sovereign rule of good and evil? Chateaubriand, a witness beyond suspicion on this point, speaking of the times at which we have been glancing, if not of the particular act under examination, proceeds thus= At this epoch faith was everywhere, except in a small number of libertines and philosophers; it impressed on the faults, and sometimes even on the crimes, something grave, and even moral, if the expression may be allowed, by giving to the victim of policy the conscience of the martyr, and to error the conviction of truth.' This error in religion is, in our opinion, the only impor- tant blemish to be found in Cromwell. At the same time it is the key which opens and explains his whole life. His piety was sincere, but it was not always sober.

"Yet if this error be a great extenuation of the Protector's fault, the crime to which it led him must ever remain, in history, as a warning to terrify those who may base their conduct on their inward impressions, rather than on the sure, positive, and ever-accessible inspirations of that Word of God which never deceives."

It will be seen from this extract, that Cromwell, a Vindication, par- takes somewhat of the nature of a sermon ; and is not devoid of those pe- culiarities which the application of religious discourse to lay matters gene, rally involves, or of faults almost inseparable from a mode of composition where exhortation or opinion is wont to run beyond the actual matter. In a literary point of view, however, the book is one of much merit; alike close and skilful in the selection of facts, deriving distinctness and unity from the author's object. As a disquisition it is entitled to great praise ; throwing a new light upon an important subject, and establishing a case, if it does not entirely prove it. The day has long since passed when rational men gave heed to the libels of the Cavaliers and their scribes upon the Protector ; and, partly from the softening of prejudices by lapse of time, partly from a closer research and a more critical spirit of inquiry, the severely loyal and political views of such men as Cowley and Clarendon have been much shaken. The philosophical hypothesis of " hypocrisy " has of late been doubted by some, and attacked by Carlyle; but no one, we think, has treated it so successfully as Merle D'Aubigne,— perhaps because he can enter more thoroughly into the religious feeling, and the deep horror of Popery felt by the men of Cromwell's age: he also believes that the Protector was specially raised up to oppose the Papal power. The most telling if not the strongest point, the peculiar phraseology, the religious cant, so to speak, of Cromwell, he meets generally by regarding it as a mere habit and the mode of the• time : but perhaps the best answer is, that it is found in his earliest letters, and always adhered to him. This consistency is the strongest argument in favour of the genuineness of Cromwell's character. It will not, indeed, avail much against the hypothesis of a mixed natural character, where religion, policy, and ambition, were so mingled that the individual himself could not have separated them. The daring, and the apparent recklessness of many of Cromwell's acts and behaviour; is more consistent, perhaps, with the idea of a man who in important matters fancied that he always walked by a special direction; as is the plain naturalness which attended him to the very last. The conduct for which Cowley was unable to find a name, is more reconoileable with either of these suppositions, than with the poet's notion of mere tyranny or wantonness.

" These are great calamities," says Cowley in A Discourse by Way qf Vision concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell, alluding to his alleged tyranny " but even these are not the most insupportable that we have endured : for so It is, that the scorn, and mockery, and insultings of an enemy, are more painful than the deepest wounds of his serious fury. This man was wanton and merry (unwittily and ungracefully merry) with our sufferings: he loved to say and do senseless and fantastical things, only to show his power of doing or saying any- thing. • • • * Today, you should see him ranting so wildly, that nobody durst come near him; the morrow, flinging of cushions and playing at snow- balls with his servants; this month he assembles a Parliament, and professes himself with humble tears to be only their servant and minister ; the next month, he swears by the living God that he will turn them out of doors; and he does so in his princely way of threatening, bidding them 'turn the hackles of their girdles behind them. The representative of a whole, nay, of three whole na- tions, was in his esteem so contemptible a meeting, that he thought the affront- ing and expelling of them to be a thing of so little consequence as not to deserve that he should advise with any mortal man about it. What shall we call this, boldness or brutishness? rashness or frenzy ? There is no name can come up to it ; and therefore we must leave it without one."

Whatever name may be given to Cromwell's conduct, the above pro- ceedings do not savour of hypocritical ambition, which is wont to be more chary of affronting men ; nor is it perhaps consistent with any metaphysical characteristics unless we also take into consideration physi- cal qualities—constitution or temperament.