for Clarendon distinctly tells us, that "it was generally spoken of, even from the beginning of the troubles, and when he was not in a posture that promised such exaltation." In the height of his glory, we have also good authority for saying, Cromwell himself mentioned it often; and when the farce of deliberation took place on the offer of the crown to the protector, it is remarked by lord Clarendon, that "they who were very near to him said, that, in this perplexity, he revolved his former dream or apparition, that had. first informed and promised him the high fortune to which he was already arrived, and which was generally spoken of, even from the beginning of the troubles, and when he was not in a posture that promised such exaltation; and that he then observed, that it had only declared that he should be the greatest man in England, and that he should be near to be king, which seemed to imply, that he should be only near, and never actually attain, the crown."

Another incident, not, perhaps, unconnected with the foregoing, and as singular if less awful, connected the childhood of Cromwell with the mighty future that awaited it. I shall detail it in the words of the royalist Heath*, because of the many accounts that exist of this happily undisputed anecdote, they appear to be the most characteristic. "Now," observes that writer, to confirm a royal humour the more in his ambitious and vain glorious brain, it happened (as it was then generally the custome in all great Free Schools) that a play called "The Five Senses" was to be acted by the schollars of this schoolt, and Oliver Cromwell, as a confident youth,

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is, that his father was exceedingly troubled at it; and having angerly rebuked him for the vanity, idleness, and impudence thereof, and seeing him yet persist in the same presumption, caused Dr. Beard to whip him for it; which was done to no more purpose than the rest of his chastisements, his scholar growing insolent and incorrigible from those results and swasions within him, to which all other dictates and instructions were useless, and as a dead letter."

*The author of the Flagellum which I have already quoted-the first biographer of Cromwell after the Restoration. He was, I believe, the son of Charles I.'s cutler, an exiled loyalist, and was, moreover, a needy scribe, who wrote pamphlets of all sorts to order, and corrected manuscripts for a maintenance.

Huntingdon Free School, where Oliver then was.

was named to act the part of Tactus, the sense of feeling; in the personation of which, as he came out of the tyring-room upon the stage, his head encircled with a chaplet of lawrel, he stumbled at a crown, purposely laid there, which stooping down he took up, and crowned himself therewithal, adding, beyond his cue, some majestical mighty words; and with this passage the event of his life held good analogy and proportion, when he changed the lawrel of his victories (in the late unnatural war) to all the power, authority, and splendour, that can be imagined within the compass of a crown."

The extemporisation of the "mighty majestical words" is an addition of the zealous narrator: the reader will observe, when the scene is before him, that the exact speeches of Tactus are mighty and majestical enough to effect the strange coincidences of the story without other aid. The comedy is well known to the lovers of old English dramatic literature, by the name of Lingua, as a highly ingenious and pleasant work, with more than the usual share of that strong good sense which distinguishes its otherwise fantastic author, Anthony Brewer.* It is in the nature of an allegory,

*It contains, among other striking things, that fine enumeration of the characteristics of different languages-"The Chaldee wise, the Arabian physical, &c."-given in Charles Lamb's Specimens, and also the following masterly discrimination of Tragedy and Comedy in all their ornaments and uses, which the reader will not object to my quoting:

"These two, my lord, Comedies and Tragedies,
My fellows both, both twins, but so alike

As birth to death, wedding to funeral.

For this that rears himself in buskins quaint
Is pleasant at the first, proud in the midst,

Stately in all, and bitter death at end.

That in the pumps doth frown at first acquaintance,
Trouble in the midst, but at the end concludes,
Closing up all with a sweet catastrophe.

This grave and sad, distain'd with brinish tears:
That light and quick with wrinkled laughter painted.
This deals with nobles, kings, and emperors,
Full of great hopes, great fears, great enterprizes:
This other trades with men of mean condition,
His projects small, small hopes, and dangers little.
This gorgeous, broider'd with rich sentences:
That fair and purfled round with merriments.
Both vice detect and virtue beautify,

By being death's mirror, and life's looking-glass."

The comedy was first acted, we learn from the preface to its first impression, at Cambridge, and next at this Huntingdon Free School.

celebrating the contention of the five senses for the crown of superiority, and discussing the pretensions of Lingua, or the tongue, to be admitted as a sixth sense; ending, as far as the latter is concerned, with the allotment of" the sense of speaking" to women only.

Now let the reader imagine little master Oliver Cromwell entering, "his head encircled with a chaplet of lawrel," and gazing up so high above him as to be utterly unconscious of the plotter at his side, and, till he stumbles on it, of the crown at his feet.

"TACTUS. The blushing childhood of the chearful morn Is almost grown a youth and overclimbs Yonder gilt eastern hills, about which time Gustus most earnestly importuned me

To meet him hereabouts; what cause I know not. MENDACIO. You shall do shortly, to your cost, I hope. TACT. Sure, by the sun, it should be nine o'clock ! MEN. What a star-gazer! will you ne'er look down? TACT. Clear is the sun, and blue the firmament: Methinks the heavens do smile

MEN.

[TACTUS Sneezeth. At thy mishap,

To look so high, and stumble in a trap!

[TACTUS stumbleth at the robe and crown.

TACT. High thoughts have slippery feet, I had well

nigh fallen.

MEN. Well doth he fall that riseth with a fall.

TACT. What's this?

MEN. O! are you taken? 'tis in vain to strive.
TACT. How now !

MEN. You'll be so entangled straight

TACT. A crown!

TACT. A crown and robe !

MEN. It had been fitter for you to have found a fool's coat and a bauble, — hey! hey!

TACT. Jupiter! Jupiter! how came this here?
MEN. O! Sir, Jupiter is making thunder, he hears
you not; here's one knows better.

TACT. 'Tis wond'rous rich: ha! but sure it is not
so: ho!

Do I not sleep, and dream of this good luck, ha?

No, I am awake, and feel it now.

Whose should it be?

MEN. Set up a si quis for it.

[He takes it up.

TACT. Mercury! all's mine own; here's none to cry

half's mine.

MEN. When I am gone.

TACTUS, alone, soliloquizeth.

[Exit.

TACT. Tactus, thy sneezing somewhat did portend. Was ever man so fortunate as I?

To break his shins at such a stumbling-block!
Roses and bays pack hence: this crown and robe
My brows and body circles and invests!
How gallantly it fits me! sure the slave
Measured my head that wrought this coronet.
They lye that say complexions cannot change;
My blood's ennobled, and I am transform'd
Unto the sacred temper of a king.
Methinks I hear my noble parasites
Stiling me Cæsar or great Alexander,

Licking my feet, and wond'ring where I got
This precious ointment. How my pace is mended!
How princely do I speak! how sharp I threaten !
Peasants, I'll curb your headstrong impudence,
And make you tremble when the Lion roars.
Ye earth-bred worms! O for a looking-glass!
Poets will write whole volumes of this change:
Where's my attendants? Come hither, sirrahs, quickly,
Or by the wings of Hermes

It is not difficult to picture to the imagination the

strut of democratic contempt with which the reckless young actor delivered some of these lines:

"How my pace is mended!

How princely do I speak! How sharp I threaten!"

-

The whole scene is curious, and was, no doubt, remembered with emotion in after years, when state had indeed seemed to ennoble blood when epithets of Cæsar or Alexander were as nothing in the mouths of parasites— when the clownish soldier had been mended into the comely prince and the voice that sounded sharp and untunable through the house of commons in 1640, sent forth accents at Whitehall, some very few years later, of the sweetest grace and majesty.

Such scanty records as may be now collected of young Cromwell's school-days realize what it does not tax the imagination to receive as a not unfair impression of them. He was active and resolute - capable of tremendous study, but by no means always inclined to it— with a vast quantity of youthful energy, which exploded in vast varieties of youthful mischief— and, finally, not at all improved by an unlimited system of flogging adopted by his schoolmaster. How easily, in such cases, are the lessons of tyranny taught; and, when they have failed to subdue, how long and bitterly remembered! Dr. Beard, then at the head of the Huntingdon Freeschool, had made himself notorious for his severity*, even in that age of barbarous discipline; and in young Cromwell he seems to have found a favourite object for its exercise.

A biographer, already quoted, describes these schooldays with characteristic force; and, remembering the writer's prejudice, we have little difficulty in separating false from true. "From A B C discipline," he says, "and the slighted governance of a mistress, his father removed him to the tuition of Dr. Beard, schoolmaster of the free-school of that town, where his book

The frontispiece to a well-known book of the time, "The Theatre of God's Judgments," is said to be a portrait of this pain-inflicting pedagogue. It represents him with a rod in his hand, two scholars standing behind, and As in Præsenti issuing from his mouth.