Sixthly, they did, indeed, with great earnestness and severity, inveigh often against two sins, carnal lusts and vain swearing; which, without question, was very well done. But the common people were thereby inclined to believe, that nothing else was sin, but that which was forbidden in the third and seventh commandments (for few men do understand by the name of lust any other concupiscence, than that which is forbidden in that seventh commandment; for men are not ordinarily said to lust after another man's cattle, or other goods or possessions): and therefore never made much scruple of the acts of fraud and malice, but endeavoured to keep themselves from uncleanness only, or at least from the scandal of it. And, whereas they did, both in their sermons and writings, maintain and inculcate, that the very first motions of the mind, that is to say, the delight men and women took in the sight of one another's form, though they checked the proceeding thereof so that it never grew up to be a design, was nevertheless a sin, they brought young men into desperation and to think themselves damned, because they could not (which no man can, and is contrary to the constitution of nature) behold a delightful object without delight. And by this means they became confessors to such as were thus troubled in conscience, and were obeyed by them as their spiritual doctors in all cases of conscience. (From Behemoth.)

THOMAS MAY

[He was the son of Sir Thomas May of Mayfield, Sussex, and was born in I594. A Fellow-commoner of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, a student at Gray's Inn, and a courtier, he occupied his leisure in penning tragedies, comedies, descriptive poems, and translations from Virgil and Lucan. During the Civil Wars he was employed as secretary and historiographer to the Long Parliament. In this capacity he published in 1647 his History of the Parliament of England, which began 3rd Nov. 1640. This work however only extends to the battle of Newbury in 1643. In a Breviary of the same history, published in 1650, he carries the story some years further. May's History was reprinted by Baron Maseres in 1812, and by the Clarendon Press in 1854; his Breviary is included in Maseres' Select Tracts relating to the Civil Wars (1815). His comedies are, The Heir and The Old Couple: his tragedies, Cleopatra, Agrippina, and Antigone. To these Mr. Fleay would add the anonymous play of Nero, and if this be really May's it is his masterpiece. There exists a rare book entitled An Epitome of the English History by Thomas May, Esq., a late Member of Parliament, 3rd ed. 1690; but as this is written in an anti-Cromwellian vein, and as the events narrated go down to 1660, it can hardly be the work of our author, who died in 1650.]

He flaunts you

MAY is a man of letters playing the historian. his Latin at every turn, decking his narrative with quotations from Claudian, Petronius, Lucan, and stopping to translate them with superfluous nicety. He conceives of history rather as an art than a science; his object is to instruct ignorance, not to assist investigation; he will insert a document here and there, but for the most part you must take his word for his authorities. And, as is the wont of literary men, it is the personal note that attracts him most, not as with the modern school, analysis of hidden cause and obvious effect; so that the best part of his book is to be found in the touches of characterisation, in the sketches of Pym, of Strafford. As a describer of battles he is hardly vigorous or picturesque enough. Indeed to style in writing he never attains. He has not the gift of the paragraph; page after page is a string of disconnected notes. And his diction is so far Latinised as to become bald, without catching the felicities which Latinisms some

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times convey. A recent essayist writes "that to possess that half of the language within which Latin heredities lurk and Romanesque allusions are at play, is to possess the state and security of a dead tongue without the death." And this is true for the geniuses, for Shakespeare with his "extravagant and erring spirit," for Sir Thomas Browne and a few others, but for the rest, for such as May, it is only a pitfall, a short cut to tediousness and the easy commonplace. Against this it must be set that May is not pretentious, that his judgment is sober, and his temper just. Such praises one may bestow on the journeymen of literature.

EDMUND K. CHAMBERS.

THE ARGUMENT OF HIS HISTORY

THE subject of this work is a civil war; a war indeed as much more than civil, and as full of miracle, both in the causes and effects of it, as was ever observed in any age; a war as cruel as unnatural, that has produced as much rage of swords, as much bitterness of pens, both public and private, as was ever known; and has divided the understandings of men, as well as their affections, in so high a degree, that scarce could any virtue gain due applause, any reason give satisfaction, or any relation obtain credit, unless amongst men of the same side. It were therefore a presumptuous madness to think that this poor and weak discourse, which can deserve no applause from either side, should obtain from both so much as pardon; or that those persons should agree in the judgment they will form of it who could never agree in anything else.

I cannot therefore be so stupid as not to be fully sensible of the difficulty of the task imposed on me, or the great envy which attends it; which other men who have written histories, upon far less occasion, have discoursed of at large in their prefaces. And Tacitus himself, complaining of those ill times which were the unhappy subject of his Annals (though he wrote not in the time of the same princes under whom those things were acted), yet (because the families of many men who had then been ignominious were yet in being) could not but discourse how much happier those writers had been, who had taken more ancient and prosperous times for their argument; such (as he there expresses it) as those times in which the great and glorious actions of the old Romans, their honourable achievements, and exemplary virtues, are recorded.

And I could have wished more than my life (being myself inconsiderable) that, for the sake of the public, my theme could rather have been the prosperity of these nations, the honour and happiness of the king, and such a blessed condition of both, as might have reached all the ends for which government was first

ordained in the world, than the description of shipwrecks, ruin, and desolations. Yet these things, truly recorded and observed, may be of good use, and may benefit posterity in divers kinds. For though the present actions, or rather sufferings, of these (once happy) nations, are of so high a mark and consideration, as might, perchance, throw themselves into the knowledge of posterity by tradition and the weight of their own fame, yet it may much conduce to the benefit that may arise from that knowledge, to have the true causes, original, and growth of them represented by an honest pen.

For the truth of this plain and naked discourse, which is here presented to the public view, containing a brief narration of those distractions which have fallen amongst us during the sitting of this present parliament, as also some passages and visible actions of the former government (whether probably conducing to these present calamities or not, of which let the reader judge), I appeal only to the memory of any Englishman, whose years have been enough to make him know the actions that were done, and whose conversation has been enough public to let him hear the common voice and discourses of people upon those actions; to his memory, I say, do I appeal, whether such actions were not done and such judgments made upon them as are here related. In which, perchance, some readers may be put in mind of their own thoughts heretofore, which thoughts have since, like Nebuchadnezzar's dream, departed from them. An English gentleman, who went to travel when this parliament was called, and returned when these differences were grown among us, hearing what discourses were daily made, affirmed that the parliament of England (in his opinion) was more misunderstood in England than at Rome; and that there was a greater need to remind our own countrymen than to inform strangers of what was past; so much, said he, have they seemed to forget both the things themselves and their own former notions concerning them.

(From The History of the Long Parliament.)

STRAFFORD

BUT now a greater actor is brought upon the stage, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, Lieutenant of Ireland, a man too great