magnanimous resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon pride, and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible perpetuity, unto which all others must diminish their diameters, and be poorly seen in angles of contingency, 23

Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while they lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution," liquefaction, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation 2 of God, and ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them.

25

To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to exist in their names and predicament of chimeras, was large satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their Elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphysicks of true belief. To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only an hope, but an evidence in noble believers, 'tis all one to lie in St. Innocent's churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt. Ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.26

28 the least of angles.

tabesne cadavera solvat An rogus, haud refert.2

24 dissolution.

25 tasting, or enjoyment.

26 The Mausoleum of Hadrian at Rome, the modern Castle of St. Angelo. 27 Whether corruption or the funeral pyre destroys corpses, makes no difference. — LUCAN, Pharsalia, VII. 809-10.

X.

ABRAHAM COWLEY.

(1618-1667.)

1. A DISCOURSE, BY WAY OF VISION, CONCERNING THE GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL.

[Written about 1660.]

Ir was the funeral day of the late man who made himself to be called protector. And though I bore but little affection, either to the memory of him, or to the trouble and folly of all public pageantry, yet I was forced by the importunity of my company to go along with them, and be a spectator of that solemnity, the expectation of which had been so great that it was said to have brought some very curious persons (and no doubt singular virtuosos) as far as from the Mount in Cornwall, and from the Orcades. I found there had been much more cost bestowed than either the dead man, or indeed death itself, could deserve. There was a mighty train of black assistants, among which, too, divers princes in the persons of their ambassadors (being infinitely afflicted for the loss of their brother) were pleased to attend; the hearse was magnificent, the idol crowned, and (not to mention all other ceremonies which are practised at royal interments, and therefore by no means could be omitted here) the vast multitude of spectators made up, as it uses to do, no small part of the spectacle itself. But yet, I know not how, the whole was so managed, that, methought, it somewhat represented the life of him for whom it was made; much noise, much tumult, much expense, much magnificence, much vain-glory; briefly, a great show, and yet, after all this, but an ill sight. At last (for it seemed long to me, and, like

1 HURD calls this "the best of our author's prose works."

his short reign too, very tedious) the whole scene passed by; and I retired back to my chamber, weary, and I think more melancholy than any of the mourners; where I began to reflect on the whole life of this prodigious man: and sometimes I was filled with horror and detestation of his actions, and sometimes I inclined a little to reverence and admiration of his courage, conduct, and success; till, by these different motions and agitations of mind, rocked, as it were asleep, I fell at last into this vision; or if you please to call it but a dream, I shall not take it ill, because the father of poets tells us, even dreams, too, are from God.

But sure it was no dream; for I was suddenly transported afar off (whether in the body, or out of the body, like St. Paul, I know not) and found myself on the top of that famous hill in the island Mona, which has the prospect of three great, and not-long-since most happy, kingdoms. As soon as ever I looked on them, the not-long-since struck upon my memory, and called forth the sad representation of all the sins, and all the miseries, that had overwhelmed them these twenty years. And I wept bitterly for two or three hours; and, when my present stock of moisture was all wasted, I fell a sighing for an hour or more; and, as soon as I recovered from my passion the use of speech and reason, I broke forth, as I remember (looking upon England) into this complaint: '

2

I think I should have gone on, but that I was interrupted by a strange and terrible apparition; for there appeared to me (arising out of the earth as I conceived) the figure of a man, taller than a giant, or indeed than the shadow of any giant in the evening. His body was naked; but that nakedness adorned, or rather deformed all over, with several figures, after the manner of the antient Britons, painted upon it and I perceived that most of them were the representation of the late battles in our civil wars, and (if I be not much mistaken) it was the battle of Naseby that was drawn upon his breast. His eyes were like burning brass;

2 Here follow eight stanzas of poetry.

and there were three crowns of the same metal (as I guessed) and that looked as red-hot too, upon his head. He held in his right hand a sword, that was yet bloody, and nevertheless the motto of it was, Pax quæritur bello;3 and in his left hand a thick book, upon the back of which was written in letters of gold, Acts, Ordinances, Protestations, Covenants, Engagements, Declarations, Remonstrances, &c.

:

Though this sudden, unusual, and dreadful object might have quelled a greater courage than mine, yet so it pleased God (for there is nothing bolder than a man in a vision) that I was not at all daunted, but asked him resolutely and briefly, "What art thou?" And he said, "I am called the north-west principality, his highness, the protector of the common-wealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions belonging thereunto; for I am that angel, to whom the Almighty has committed the government of those three kingdoms, which thou seest from this place." And I answered and said, "If it be so, Sir, it seems to me that for almost these twenty years past, your highness has been absent from your charge for not only if any angel, but if any wise and honest. man had since that time been our governor, we should not have wandered thus long in these laborious and endless labyrinths of confusion, but either not have entered at all into them, or at least have returned back ere we had absolutely lost our way; but, instead of your highness, we have had since such a protector, as was his predecessor Richard the third to the king his nephew; for he presently slew the commonwealth, which he pretended to protect, and set up himself in the place of it; a little less guilty indeed in one respect, because the other slew an innocent, and this man did but murder a murderer. Such a protector we have had, as we would have been glad to have changed for an enemy, and rather received a constant Turk, than this every month's apostate; such a protector, as man is to his flocks, which he sheers, and sells, or devours himself, and I would fain know what the wolf, which he

3 Peace is sought through war.

protects him from, could do more. Such a protector—" and as I was proceeding, me-thoughts, his highness began to put on a displeased and threatening countenance, as men use to do when their dearest friends happen to be traduced in their company; which gave me the first rise of jealousy against him, for I did not believe that Cromwell among all his foreign correspondences had ever held any with angels. However I was not hardened enough yet to venture a quarrel with him then; and therefore (as if I had spoken to the protector himself in Whitehall) I desired him "that his highness would please to pardon me, if I had unwittingly spoken anything to the disparagement of a person, whose relations to his highness I had not the honour to know."

At which he told me "that he had no other concernment for his late highness, than as he took him to be the greatest man that ever was of the English nation, if not (said he) of the whole world; which gives me a just title to the defence of his reputation, since I now account myself, as it were, a naturalized English angel, by having had so long the management of the affairs of that country. And pray, countryman, (said he, very kindly and very flatteringly) for I would not have you fall into the general error of the world, that detests and decries so extraordinary a virtue, What can be more extraordinary than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have often raised men to the highest dignities, should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so improbable a design as the destruction of one of the most antient, and most solidly founded monarchies upon the earth? that he should have the power or boldness to put his prince and master to an open and infamous death; to banish that numerous and strongly-allied family; to do all this under the name and wages of a parliament; to trample upon them too as he pleased, and spurn them out of doors, when he grew weary of them; to raise up a new and unheard of monster out of their

So HURD's text, but the form is incorrect.