Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

grow fat, and her long confinement, and the coldness of the houses in which she was imprisoned, brought on a rheumatism, which often deprived her of the use of her limbs. No man, says Brantome, ever beheld her person without admiration and love, or will read her history without sorrow. Robertson.

CHARACTER OF JAMES I.

THE principal thing which is made to serve for matter for king James's panegyric, is the constant peace he caused his subjects to enjoy. This cannot be said to be the effect of chance, since it clearly appears, it was his sole, or at least his chief aim, in the whole course of his administration. Nothing, say his friends, is more worthy a great king than such a design. But the same design loses all its merit, if the prince discovers by his conduct, that he preserves peace only out of fear, carelessness, excessive love of ease and repose; and king James's whole behaviour shows he acted from these motives, though he coloured it with the pretence of his affection for the people.

His liberality, which some praise him for, is exclaimed against by others as prodigality. These last pretend he gave without measure and discretion, without any regard to bis own wants, or the merit of those whom he heaped his favours upon.

As to his manners, writers are no less divided: some will have him to be looked on as a very wise and virtuous prince; whilst others speak of him as a prince of a dissolute life, given to drinking, and

a great swearer in common conversation, especially when in a passion. He is likewise taxed with dissolving the earl of Essex's marriage, the pardoning the earl and countess of Somerset, the death of sir Walter Raleigh, and the confidence wherewith in full parliament he called God to witness, that he never had any thoughts of giving the papists a toleration, which he could not affirm but by means of some mental reservation.

But whatever may be said for or against James's person, it is certain England never flourished less than in his reign; the English saw themselves exposed to the insults and jests of other nations, and all the world in general threw the blame on the king. Rapin.

CHARACTER OF CHARLES I.

SUCH was the unworthy and unexampled fate of Charles I. king of England, who fell a sacrifice to the most atrocious insolence of treason, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and in the twentyfourth of his reign. He was a prince of a middling stature, robust, and well-proportioned. His hair was of a dark colour, his forehead high, his complexion pale, his visage long, and his aspect melancholy. He excelled in riding, and other manly exercises; he inherited a good understanding from nature, and had cultivated it with great assiduity. His perception was clear and acute, his judgment solid and decisive; he possessed a refined taste for the liberal arts, and was a munificent patron to those who excelled in painting, sculpture, music

VOL. IV.

and architecture. In his private morals he was altogether unblemished and exemplary. He was merciful, modest, chaste, temperate, religious, personally brave, and we may join the noble historian in saying, 'He was the worthiest gentleman, the best master, the best friend, the best husband, the best father, and the best christian of the age in which he lived.' He had the misfortune to be bred up in high notions of the prerogative which he thought his honour and his duty obliged him to maintain. He lived at a time when the spirit of the people became too mighty for those restraints which the regal power derived from the constitution; and when the tide of fanaticism began to overbear the religion of his country, to which he was conscientiously devoted, he suffered himself to be guided by counsellors, who were not only inferior to himself in knowledge and judgment, but generally proud, partial, and inflexible; and from an excess of conjugal affection, that bordered upon weakness, he paid too much deference to the advice and desires of his consort, who was superstitiously attached to the errours of popery, and importuned him incessantly in favour of the Roman catholics.

Such were the sources of all that misgovernment which was imputed to him during the first fifteen years of his reign. From the beginning of the. civil war to his fatal catastrophe, his conduct seems to have been unexceptionable. His infirmities and imperfections have been candidly owned in the course of his narration. He was not very liberal to his dependants; his conversation was not easy, nor his address pleasing; yet the probity of his heart, and the innocence of his manners, won the

affection of all who attended his person, not even excepting those who had the charge of his confinement. In a word, he certainly deserved the epithet of a virtuous prince, though he wanted some of those shining qualities which constitute the character of a great monarch. Smollett.

CHARACTER OF OLIVER CROMWELL.

OLIVER Cromwell was of a robust make and constitution, his aspect manly though clownish. His education extended no further than a superficial knowledge of the Latin tongue, but he inherited great talents from nature; though they were such as he could not have exerted to advantage at any other juncture than that of a civil war, inflamed by religious contests. His character was formed from an amazing conjuncture of enthusiasm, hypocrisy, and ambition. He was possessed of courage and resolution, that overlooked all dangers, and saw no difficulties. He dived into the characters of mankind with wonderful sagacity, whilst he concealed his own purposes, under the impenetrable shield of dissimulation.

He reconciled the most atrocious crimes to the most rigid notions of religious obligations. From the severest exercise of devotion, he relaxed into the most ridiculous and idle buffoonery: yet he preserved the dignity and distance of his character, in the midst of the coarsest familiarity. He was cruel and tyrannic from policy; just and temperate from inclination; perplexed and despicable in his discourse; clear and consummate in his designs;

ridiculous in his reveries; respectable in his conduct; in a word, the strangest compound of villany and virtue, baseness and magnanimity, absurdity and good sense, that we find on record in the annals of mankind. * Noble.

CHARACTER OF CHARLES II.

THUS lived and died king Charles the Second. He was the greatest instance in history of the various revolutions of which any one man seemed capable. He was bred up the first twelve years of his life, with the splendour that became the heir of so great a crown. After that, he passed through eighteen years in great inequalities, unhappy in the war, in the loss of his father, and of the crown of England. While he was abroad at Paris, Colen, or Brussels, he never seemed to lay any thing to heart. He pursued all his diversions, and irregular pleasures, in a free career; and seemed to be as serene under the loss of a crown, as the greatest philosopher could have been. Nor did he willingly hearken to any of those projects, with which, he complained often, his chancellor persecuted

• Cromwell died more than five millions in debt; though the parliament had left him in the treasury above five hundred thousand pounds, and in stores to the value of seven hundred thousand pounds.

Richard, the son of Cromwell, was proclaimed protector in his room; but Richard, being of a very different disposition to his father, resigned his authority the 22d of April 1659; and soon after signed his abdication in form, and retired to live several years after his resignation, at first on the Continent, and afterwards upon his paternal fortune at home.

« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »