on the canvass of Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke and the tall thin form of Langton; the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and the beaming smile of Garrick; Gibbon tapping his snuff-box, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we have been brought up-the gigantic body, the huge massy face, seamed with the scars of disease; the brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the gray wig with a scorched foretop; the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form rolling; we hear it puffing; and then comes the "Why, sir!" and the "What then, sir?" and the "No, sir!" and the "You dont see your way through the question, sir!”

What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion-to receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity-to be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries! That kind of fame which is commonly the most transient, is, in his case, the most durable. The reputation of those writings, which he probably expected to be immortal, is every day fading; while those peculiarities of manner, and that careless table-talk, the memory of which, he probably thought, would die with him, are likely to be remembered as long as the English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe.

2

LORD NUGENT'S MEMORIALS OF HAMPDEN.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1831.]

moirs must be considered as Memoirs of the history of England; and, as such, they well deserve to be attentively perused. They contain some curious facts, which, to us at least, are new, much spirited narrative, many judicious remarks, and much eloquent declamation.

We have read this book with great pleasure, though not exactly with that kind of pleasure which we had expected. We had hoped that Lord Nugent would have been able to collect, from family papers and local traditions, much new and interesting information respecting the life and character of the renowned leader of the Long Parliament, the first of those great We are not sure that even the want of inEnglish commoners, whose plain addition of formation respecting the private character of Mister, has, to our ears, a more majestic sound | Hampden is not in itself a circumstance as than the proudest of the feudal titles. In this strikingly characteristic as any which the hope we have been disappointed; but assuredly most minute chronicler-O'Meara, Las Cases, not from any want of zeal or diligence on the Mrs. Thrale, or Boswell himself-ever recordpart of the noble biographer. Even at Hamp-ed concerning their heroes. The celebrated den, there are, it seems, no important papers relative to the most illustrious proprietor of that ancient domain. The most valuable memorials of him which still exist, belong to the family of his friend, Sir John Eliot. Lord Eliot has furnished the portrait which is engraved for this work, together with some very interesting letters. The portrait is undoubtedly an original, and probably the only original now in existence. The intellectual forehead, the mild penetration of the eye, and the inflexible resolution expressed by the lines of the mouth, sufficiently guaranty the likeness. We shall probably make some extracts from the letters. They contain almost all the new information that Lord Nugent has been able to procure, respecting the private pursuits of the great man whose memory he worships with an enthusiastic, but not an extravagant,

veneration.

The public life of Hampden is surrounded by no obscurity. His history, more particularly from the beginning of the year 1640 to his death, is the history of England. These me

Some Memorials of John Hampden, his Party, and his Times. By LORD NUGENT. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1831.

Puritan leader is an almost solitary instance of a great man who neither sought nor shunned greatness; who found glory only because glory lay in the plain path of duty. During more than forty years, he was known to his country neighbours as a gentleman of cultivated mind, of high principles, of polished address, happy in his family, and active in the discharge of local duties; to political men, as an honest, industrious, and sensible member of Parlia ment, not eager to display his talents, stanch to his party, and attentive to the interests of his constituents. A great and terrible crisis came. A direct attack was made, by an arbitrary government, on a sacred right of Englishmen, on a right which was the chief secu rity for all their other rights. The nation looked round for a defender. Calmly and unostentatiously the plain Buckinghamshire Es quire placed himself at the head of his countrymen, and right before the face, and across the path of tyranny. The times grew darker and more troubled. Public service, perilous, arduous, delicate, was required; and to every service, the intellect and the courage of this wonderful man were found fully equal. He became a debater of the first order, a most

dexterous manager of the House of Commons, that hatred itself could find no blemish on his a negotiator, a soldier. He governed a fierce memory. and turbulent assembly, abounding in able The story of his early life is soon told. He men, as easily as he had governed his family. was the head of a family which had been setHe showed himself as competent to direct a tled in Buckinghamshire before the Conquest. campaign as to conduct the business of the Part of the estate which he inherited had been petty sessions. We can scarcely express the bestowed by Edward the Confessor on Baldadmiration which we feel for a mind so great, wyn de Hampden, whose name seems to indiand, at the same time, so healthful and so well cate that he was one of the Norman favourites proportioned; so willingly contracting itself of the last Saxon king. During the contest to the humblest duties; so easily expanding between the houses of York and Lancaster, itself to the highest; so contented in repose; the Hampdens adhered to the party of the Red so powerful in action. Almost every part of Rose, and were consequently persecuted by this virtuous and blameless life, which is not Edward the Fourth, and favoured by Henry hidden from us in modest privacy, is a pre- the Seventh. Under the Tudors, the family cious and splendid portion of our national his- was great and flourishing. Griffith Hampden, tory. Had the private conduct of Hampden high sheriff of Buckinghamshire, entertained afforded the slightest pretence for censure, he Elizabeth with great magnificence at his seat. would have been assailed by the same blind His son, William Hampden, sate in the Parliamalevolence which, in defiance of the clearest ment which that queen summoned in the year proofs, still continues to call Sir John Eliot an 1593. William married Elizabeth Cromwell, assassin. Had there been even any weak part | aunt of the celebrated man who afterwards in the character of Hampden, had his manners governed the British islands with more than been in any respect open to ridicule, we may regal power; and from this marriage sprang be sure that no mercy would have been shown John Hampden. to him by the writers of Charles's faction. He was born in 1594. In 1597 his father Those writers have carefully preserved every died, and left him heir to a very large estate. little circumstance which could tend to make After passing some years at the grammar their opponents cdious or contemptible. They school of Thame, young Hampden was sent, have told us that Pym broke down in a speech, at fifteen, to Magdalen College, in the Univerthat Ireton had his nose pulled by Hollis, that sity of Oxford. At nineteen, he was admitted the Earl of Northumberland cudgelled Henry a student of the Inner Temple, where he made Martin, that St. John's manners were sullcu, himself master of the principles of the English that Vane had an ugly face, that Cromwell law. In 1619 he married Elizabeth Symeon, had a red nose. They have made themselves a lady to whom he appears to have been fondmerry with the canting phrases of injudiciously attached. In the following year he was zealots. But neither the artful Clarendon nor the scurrilous Denham could venture to throw the slightest imputation on the morals or the manners of Hampden. What was the opinion Of his private life during his early years, entertained respecting him by the best men of little is known beyond what Clarendon has his time, we learn from Baxter. That eminent told us. "In his entrance into the world," person-eminent not only for his piety and his says that great historian, "he indulged himfervid devotional eloquence, but for his mode-self in all the license in sports, and exercises, ration, his knowledge of political affairs, and and company, which were used by men of his skill in judging of characters-declared in the most jolly conversation." A remarkable the Saint's Rest, that one of the pleasures which change, however, passed in his character. he hoped to enjoy in Heaven was the society" On a sudden," says Clarendon, "from a life of Hampden. In the editions printed after the of great pleasure and license, he retired to exrestoration, the name of Hampden was omit-traordinary sobriety and strictness, to a more ted. "But I must tell the reader," says Baxter, reserved and melancholy society." It is proba"that I did blot it out, not as changing my ble that this change took place when Hamp opinion of the person. Mr. John den was about twenty-five years old. At that Hampden was one that friends and enemies age he was united to a woman whom he loved acknowledged to be most eminent for pru- and esteemed. At that age he entered into dence, piety, and peaceable counsels, having political life. A mind so happily constituted the most universal praise of any gentleman as his, would naturally, under such circumthat I remember of that age. I remember a stances, relinquish the pleasures of dissipation moderate, prudent, aged gentleman, far from for domestic enjoyments and public duties. him, but acquainted with him, whom I have heard saying, that if he might choose what person he would be then in the world, he would be John Hampden." We cannot but regret that we have not fuller memorials of a man, who, after passing through the most severe temptations by which human virtue can be tried, after acting a most conspicuous part in a revolution and a civil war, could yet deserve such praise as this from such authority. Yet the want of memorials is surely the best proof

returned to Parliament by a borough which has in our time obtained a miserable celebrity, the borough of Grampound.

His enemies have allowed that he was a man in whom virtue showed itself in its mildest and least austere form. With the morals of a Puritan, he had the manners of an accomplished courtier. Even after the change in his habits, "he preserved," says Clarendon, "his own natural cheerfulness and vivacity, and, above all, a flowing courtesy to all men." These qualities distinguished hiin from most of the members of his sect and his party; and, in the great crisis in which he afterwards took

a principal part, were of scarcely less service to the country than his keen sagacity and his dauntless courage.

On the 30th of January, 1621, Hampden took his seat in the House of Commons. His mother was exceedingly desirous that her son should obtain a peerage. His family, his possessions, and his personal accomplishments were such as would, in any age, have justified him in pretending to that honour. But, in the reign of James the First, there was one short cut to the House of Lords. It was but to ask, to pay, and to have. The sale of titles was carried on as openly as the sale of boroughs in our times. Hampden turned away with contempt from the degrading honours with which his family desired to see him invested, and attached himself to the party which was in opposition to the court.

the Bold. Comines, who had lived amidst th wealthy cities of Flanders, and who had visited Florence and Venice, had never seen a peopl so well governed as the English. "Or selon mon advis," says he, "entre toutes les seigneu ries du monde, dont j'ay connoissance, ou la chose publique est mieux traitée, et ou regne moins de violence sur le peuple, et ou il n'y a nuls édifices abbatus n'y demolis pour guerre, c'est Angleterre; et tombe le sort et le malheur sur ceux qui font la guerre."

About the close of the fifteenth and the commencement of the sixteenth century, a great portion of the influence which the aristocracy had possessed passed to the crown. No English king has ever enjoyed such absolute power as Henry the Eighth. But while the royal prerogatives were acquiring strength at the expense of the nobility, two great revolutions took place, destined to be the parents of many revolutions-the discovery of printing and the reformation of the Church.

It was about this time, as Lord Nugent has justly remarked, that parliamentary opposition began to take a regular form. From a very early age, the English had enjoyed a far larger The immediate effect of the Reformation in share of liberty than had fallen to the lot of England was by no means favourable to poliany neighbouring people. How it chanced tical liberty. The authority which had been that a country conquered and enslaved by in-exercised by the Popes was transferred almost vaders, a country of which the soil had been entire to the king. Two formidable powers portioned out among foreign adventurers, and which had often served to check each other, of which the laws were written in a foreign were united in a single despot. If the system tongue, a country given over to that worst ty- on which the founders of the Church of Engranny, the tyranny of caste over caste, should land acted could have been permanent, the Rehave become the seat of civil liberty, the object formation would have been, in a political of the admiration and envy of surrounding sense, the greatest curse that ever fell on our states, is one of the most obscure problems in country. But that system carried within it the the philosophy of history. But the fact is cer- seeds of its own death. It was possible to transtain. Within a century and a half after the fer the name of Head of the Church from Norman Conquest, the Great Charter was con- Clement to Henry; but it was impossible to ceded. Within two centuries after the Con- transfer to the new establishment the veneraquest, the first House of Commons met. Frois- tion which the old establishment had inspired. sart tells us, what indeed his whole narrative Mankind had not broken one yoke in pieces sufficiently proves, that of all the nations of the only in order to put on another. The supre fourteenth century, the English were the least macy of the Bishop of Rome had been for disposed to endure oppression. "C'est le plus ages considered as a fundamental principle of perilleux peuple qui soit au monde, et plus Christianity. It had for it every thing that outrageux et orgueilleux." The good Canon could make a prejudice deep and strongprobably did not perceive that all the prospe- venerable antiquity, high authority, general rity and internal peace which this dangerous consent. It had been taught in the first lessons people enjoyed were the fruits of the spirit of the nurse. It was taken for granted in all which he designates as proud and outrageous. the exhortations of the priest. To remove it He has, however, borne ample testimony to the was to break innumerable associations, and to effect, though he was not sagacious enough to give a great and perilous shock to the mind. trace it to its cause. "En le royaume d'An- Yet this prejudice, strong as it was, could gleterre," says he, "toutes gens, laboureurs et not stand in the great day of the deliverance marchands, ont appris de vivre en pays, et à of the human reason. And as it was not to be mener leurs marchandises paisiblement, et les expected that the public mind, just after free laboureurs labourer." In the fifteenth century, ing itself, by an unexampled effort, from a though England was convulsed by the struggle bondage which it had endured for ages, would between the two branches of the royal family, patiently submit to a tyranny which could the physical and moral condition of the people plead no ancient title. Rome had at least pre continued to improve. Villanage almost wholly scription on its side. But Protestant intole disappeared. The calamities of war were little rance, despotism in an upstart sect, infallibility felt, except by those who bore arms. The claimed by guides who acknowledged that they oppressions of the government were little felt, had passed the greater part of their lives in except by the aristocracy. The institutions of error, restraints imposed on the liberty of prithe country, when compared with the institu- vate judgment by rulers who could vindicate tions of the neighbouring kingdoms, seem to their own proceedings only by asserting the have been not undeserving of the praises of liberty of private judgment-hese things could Fortescue. The government of Edward the not long be borne. Those who had pulled Fourth, though we call it cruel and arbitrary, down the crucifix could not long continue to was humane and liberal, when compared with persecute for the surplice. It required no great that of Louis the Eleventh, or that of Charles sagacity to perceive the inconsistency and dis VOL. II.-20

honesty of men who, dissenting from almost all Christendom, would suffer none to dissent from themselves; who demanded freedom of conscience, yet refused to grant it; who execrated persecution, yet persecuted; who urged reason against the authority of one opponent, and authority against the reasons of another. Bonner at least acted in accordance with his own principles. Cranmer could vindicate himself from the charge of being a heretic, only by arguments which made him out to be a murderer.

She died; and the kingdom passed to one who was, in his own opinion, the greatest master of kingcraft that ever lived; who was, in truth, one of those kings whom God seems to send for the express purpose of hastening revolutions. Of all the enemies of liberty whom Britain has produced, he was at once the most harmless and the most provoking. His office resembled that of the man who, in a Spanish bull-fight, goads the torpid savage to fury, by shaking a red rag in the air, and now and then throwing a dart, sharp enough to sting, but too Thus the system on which the English small to injure. The policy of wise tyrants princes acted with respect to ecclesiastical af- has always been to cover their violent acts fairs for some time after the Reformation, was with popular forms. James was always oba system too obviously unreasonable to be truding his despotic theories on his subjects lasting. The public mind moved while the without the slightest necessity. His foolish government moved; but would not stop where talk exasperated them infinitely more than the government stopped. The same impulse forced loans or benevolences would have done. which had carried millions away from the Yet, in practice, no king ever held his prerogaChurch of Rome, continued to carry them for- tives less tenaciously. He neither gave way ward in the same direction. As Catholics had gracefully to the advancing spirit of liberty, become Protestants, Protestants became Puri- nor took vigorous measures to stop it, but tans; and the Tudors and Stuarts were as un-retreated before it with ludicrous haste, blusable to avert the latter change as the Popes tering and insulting as he retreated. The had been to avert the former. The dissenting party increased, and became strong under every kind of discouragement and oppression. They were a sect. The government persecuted them, and they became an opposition. The old constitution of England furnished to them the means of resisting the sovereign without breaking the laws. They were the majority of the House of Commons. They had the power of giving or withholding supplies; and, by a judicious exercise of this power, they might hope to take from the Church its usurped authority over the consciences of men; and from the Crown some part of the vast prerogative which it had recently acquired at the expense of the nobles and of the Pope.

English people had been governed for nearly a hundred and fifty years by princes who, whatever might be their frailties or their vices, had all possessed great force of character, and who, whether beloved or hated, had always been feared. Now, at length, for the first time since the day when the sceptre of Henry the Fourth dropped from the hand of his lethargic grandson, England had a king whom she despised.

The follies and vices of the man increased the contempt which was produced by the feeble policy of the sovereign. The indecorous gallantries of the Court, the habits of gross intoxication in which even the ladies indulged, were alone sufficient to disgust a The faint beginnings of this memorable con- people whose manners were beginning to be test may be discerned early in the reign of strongly tinctured with austerity. But these Elizabeth. The conduct of her last Parliament were trifles. Crimes of the most frightful made it clear that one of those great revolutions kind had been discovered; others were suswhich policy may guide, but cannot stop, was pected. The strange story of the Gowries was in progress. It was on the question of Mono- not forgotten. The ignominious fondness of polies that the House of Commons gained its the king for his minions, the perjuries, the sorfirst great victory over the throne. The con- ceries, the poisonings, which his chief favourduct of the extraordinary woman who then ites had planned within the walls of his palace, governed England is an admirable study for the pardon which, in direct violation of his politicians who live in unquiet times. It shows duty, and of his word, he had granted to the how thoroughly she understood the people mysterious threats of a murderer, made him an whom she ruled, and the crisis in which she object of loathing to many of his subjects. was called to act. What she held, she held What opinion grave and moral persons refirmly. What she gave, she gave graciously. siding at a distance from the court entertained She saw that it was necessary to make a con- respecting him, we learn from Mrs. Hutchincession to the nation: and she made it, not son's Memoirs. England was no place, the grudgingly, not tardily, not as a matter of bar-seventeenth century no time, for Sporus and Igain and sale, not, in a word, as Charles the First would have made it, but promptly and cordially. Before a bill could be framed or an address presented, she applied a remedy to the evil of which the nation complained. She expressed in the warmest terms her gratitude to her faithful Commons for detecting abuses which interested persons had concealed from her If her successors had inherited her wisdom with her crown, Charles the First might nave died of old age, and James the Second would never have seen St. Germains.

Locusta.

This was not all. The most ridiculous weaknesses seemed to meet in the wretched Solomon of Whitehall; pedantry, buffoonery, garrulity, low curiosity, the most contemptible personal cowardice. Nature and education. had done their best to produce a finished spe cimen of all that a king ought not to be. His awkward figure, his rolling eye, his rickety walk, his nervous tremblings, his slobbering mouth, his broad Scotch accent, were impe fections which might have been found in the

After redressing internal grievances, the Commons proceeded to take into consideration the state of Europe. The king flew into a rage with them for meddling with such matters, and, with characteristic judgment, drew them into a controversy about the origin of the House and of its privileges. When he found that he could not convince them, he dissolved them in a passion, and sent some of the leaders of the Opposition to ruminate on his logic in prison.

best and greatest man. Their effect, however, | convenient to leave England. A greater name was to make James and his office objects of is to be added to the ignominious list. By this contempt; and to dissolve those associations Parliament was brought to justice that illuswhich had been created by the noble bearing trious philosopher, whose memory genius has of preceding monarchs, and which were in half redeemed from the infamy due to servility, themselves no inconsiderable fence to royalty. to ingratitude, and to corruption. The sovereign whom James most resembled was, we think, Claudius Cæsar. Both had the same feeble and vacillating temper, the same childishness, the same coarseness, the same poltroonery. Both were men of learning; both wrote and spoke-not, indeed, well-but still in a manner in which it seems almost incredible that men so foolish should have written or spoken. The follies and indecencies of James are well described in the words which Suetonius uses respecting Claudius: "Multa talia, etiam privatis deformia, necdum principi, neque infacundo, neque indocto, immo etiam pertinaciter liberalibus studiis dedito." The description given by Suetonius of the manner in which the Roman prince transacted business, exactly suits the Briton. "In cognoscendo ac decernendo mira varietate animi fuit, modo circumspectus et sagax, modo inconsultus ac præceps, non nunquam frivolus amentique similis." Claudius was ruled successively by two bad women; James successively by two bad men. Even the description of the person of Claudius, which we find in the ancient memoirs, might, in many points, serve for that of James. "Ceterum et ingredientem destituebant poplites minus firmi, et remisse quid vel serio agentem multa dehonestabant: risus indecens; ira turpior, spumante ictu, præterea linguæ titubantia."

The Parliament which James had called con after his accession had been refractory. His second Parliament, called in the spring of 1814, had been more refractory still. It had been dissolved after a session of two months; and during six years the king had governed without having recourse to the legislature. During those six years, melancholy and disgraceful events, at home and abroad, had followed one another in rapid succession;-the divorce of Lady Essex, the murder of Overbury, the elevation of Villiers, the pardon of Somerset, the disgrace of Coke, the execution of Raleigh, the battle of Prague, the invasion of the Palatinate by Spinoia, the ignominicus flight of the son-in-law of the English king, the depression of the Protestant interest all over the Continent. All the extraordinary modes by which James could venture to raise money had been tried. His necessities were greater than ever; and he was compelled to summon the Parliament in which Hampden made his first appearance as a public man.

This Parliament lasted about twelve months. During that time it visited with deserved punishment several of those who, during the preceding six years, had enriched themselves by peculation and monopoly. Michell, one of those grasping patentees, who had purchased of the favourite the power of robbing, the nation, was fined and imprisoned for life. Mompesson, the original, it is said, of Massinger's Overreach," was outlawed and deprived of his ill-gotten wealth. Even Sir Edward Viliers, the brother of Buckingham, found it

During the time which elapsed between this dissolution and the meeting of the next Parliament, took place the celebrated negotiation respecting the Infanta. The would-be despot was unmercifully browbeaten. The would-be Solomon was ridiculously overreached. "Steenie," in spite of the begging and sobbing of his dear "dad and gossip," carried off "baby Charles" in triumph to Madrid. The sweet lads, as James called them, came back safe, but without their errand. The great master of kingcraft, in looking for a Spanish match, found a Spanish war. In February, 1624, a Parlia ment met, during the whole sitting of which James was a mere puppet in the hands of his "baby," and of his "poor slave and dog." The Commons were disposed to support the king in the vigorous policy which his son and his favourite urged him to adopt. But they were not disposed to place any confidence in their feeble sovereign and his dissolute courtiers, or to relax in their efforts to remove public grievances. They therefore lodged the money which they voted for the war in the hands of parliamentary commissioners. They impeached the treasurer, Lord Middlesex, for corruption, and they passed a bill by which patents of monopoly were declared illegal.

Hampden did not, during the reign of James, take any prominent part in public affairs. It is certain, however, that he paid great attention to the details of parliamentary business, and to the local interests of his own county. It was in a great measure owing to his exertions, that Wendover and some other boroughs, on which the popular party could depend, recovered the elective franchise, in spite of the opposition of the court.

The health of the king had for some tinie been declining. On the 27th of March, 1625, he expired. Under his weak rule, the spirit of liberty had grown strong, and had become equal to the great contest. The contest was brought on by the policy of his successor. Charles bore no resemblance to his father He was not a driveller, or a pedant, or a buf foon, or a coward. It would be absurd to deny that he was a scholar and a gentleman, a man of exquisite taste in the fine arts, a man of strict morals in private life. His talents for business were respectable; his demeanour was kingly. But he was false, imperious, ovstinate, narrowminded, ignorant of the temper of his people, unobservant of the signs of his