Yet is the tale, true though it be, as strange,
As full, methinks, of wild and wondrous change,
As any that the wandering tribes require,
Stretched in the desert round their evening fire;
As any sung of old in hall or bower

To minstrel-harps at midnight's witching hour.

ROGERS's Poems.

IN THREE VOLUM ES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER,

GREAT MARLBOROUGH Street.

740.

WHITING, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND,

THE

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

Ir is no slight evidence of the superior portance attached to the life and times of Cromwell, that while most of our legitimate sovereigns are allowed to repose quietly in their coffins, undisturbed by any other inquest than that of the general historian, the Lord Protector is constantly finding new and special biographers and it is not less honourable to the character of that illustrious man, than to the candour of his recent chroniclers, that they nearly all concur in vindicating his just fame, by removing some portion of the unmeasured calumny and wrong which party rancour and religious intolerance had combined to heap upon his memory. Dr. Vaughan's "Protectorate" had hardly issued from the press when Mr. Forster's work was announced, almost simul

Oliver Cromwell. Lives of eminent British Statesmen, Vol. VI., of which there is an elaborate and vigorously written notice in the London and Westminster Review for October, 1839.

taneously with the following Historical Novel, which takes the same pre-eminent person for its hero. Dr. Vaughan justly observes, that History has hardly another man of whom so much has been written, and so little in a friendly spirit," nor can we wonder at this when we recollect that the rival factions of the royalists, the presbyterians, and the republicans, opposite as were the objects for which they severally contended, all agreed in the bitterest hatred of that master-spirit by whom they were coerced and overawed, and who made their animosities, in spite of themselves, conducive to his own aggrandizement as well as to that of the empire. Echard, the historian, scruples not to affirm that he obtained his prodigious authority by a contract with the Devil, of which Colonel Lindsay was an eye and ear witness! Lord Hollis and Ludlow, in their respective " Memoirs," denying him almost every good quality, depict him as one of the basest of men; Cardinal Mazarine styles him "a fortunate madman," for which Father Orleans would substitute "a judicious villain." Burnet and Clarendon have little mercy upon him; and we must wade through a deep and extensive slough of blind prejudice and vituperation, before we arrive at Bishop