The truth is that Cromwell's natural character, even on the hypothesis of his sincerity, was arbitrary, and the very opposite of what we look for in the character of a champion of freedom. It seems to us supremely ridiculous to talk of such a man as being capable of having his conduct determined by a parliament or a council. He pretended to look to God, not to human laws or fallible men, for the direction of his actions. In the name of the Deity he charged at the head of his Ironsides. In the name of the Deity he massacred the Irish garrisons. In the name of the Deity he sent dragoons to overturn parliaments. He believed neither in the sovereignty of the people, nor the sovereignty of the laws, and it made little difference whether his opponent was Charles I. or Sir Harry Vane, provided he were an opponent. In regard to the inmost essence of tyranny, that of exalting the individual will over every thing else, and of meeting opposition and obstacles by pure force, Charles I. was a weakling in comparison with Cromwell. Now if, in respect to human governments, democracy and republicanism consist in allowing any great and strong man to assume the supreme power, on his simple assertion that he has a commission from Heaven so to do; if constitutional liberty is a government of will instead of a government of laws, then the partisans of Cromwell are justified in their eulogies. It appears to us that the only ground on which the Protector's tyranny is more endurable than the king's, consists in the fact that from its nature it could not be permanent, and could not establish itself into the dignity of a precedent. It was a power depending neither on the assent of the people, nor on laws and institutions, but simply on the character of one man. As far as it went, it did no good in any way to the cause of freedom, for to Cromwell's government, and to the fanaticism which preceded it, we owe the reaction of Charles the Second's reign, when licentiousness in manners, and servility in politics succeeded in making virtue and freedom synonymous with hypocrisy and cant.
In regard to Cromwell's massacres in Ireland, which even Mr. Headley denounces as uncivilized, a great deal of nonsense has been written by Carlyle. The fact is that Cromwell, in these matters, acted as Cortez did in Mexico, and Pizarro in Peru, and deserves no more charity. If he performed them from policy, as Carlyle intimates, he must be considered a disciple of Machiavelli and the Devil; if he performed them from religious bigotry, he may rank with St. Dominic and Charles the Ninth. We are sick of hearing brutality and wickedness, either in Puritan or Catholic, extenuated on the ground of bigotry. This bigotry which prompts inhuman deeds, is not an excuse for sin, but the greatest of spiritual sins. It indicates a condition of mind in which the individual deifies his malignant passions.
We are sorry that Mr. Headley has written his biography with such a marked leaning to Cromwell. We believe that a large majority of readers will obtain their notions of the Protector from his pages, and that they will be no better republicans thereby. The very brilliancy and ability of his work will only make it more influential upon the popular mind.
A Supplement to the Plays of William Shakspeare. Comprising Seven Dramas which have been ascribed to his Pen but are not included with his Writings in Modern Editions. Edited, with Notes, and an Introduction to each Play, by William Gilmore Simms. New York: Geo. F. Cooledge & Brother. 1 vol. 8vo.
The public are under obligations to Mr. Simms, not only for reprinting a series of dramas which are objects of curiosity from their connection with the name of Shakspeare, but for the elegant and ingenious introductions he has furnished from his own pen. With regard to the question whether Shakspeare did or did not write these plays, our opinion has ever inclined to the negative, and a careful perusal of Mr. Simms's views has rather confirmed than shaken our impression. The internal evidence, with the exception of passages in the Two Noble Kinsmen, is strongly against the hypothesis of Shakspeare's authorship, and the external evidence appears to us unsatisfactory. Mr. Simms's idea is that they were the productions of Shakspeare's youth and apprenticeship, and on this supposition he accounts for their obvious inferiority to the acknowledged plays. Now it seems to us that the juvenile efforts of the world's master-mind would give some evidence of his powers, however imperfect might be the form of their expression; and especially that they would not resemble the matured products of contemporary mediocrity. Of the plays in the present volume, the only one which has the character of youthful genius is the tragedy of Lecrine, and this is the youth of Marlowe rather than of Shakspeare. The London Prodigal and the Puritan, Lord Cromwell and Sir John Oldcastle, have no trace of youthful fire or even rant. They are the offspring of sober, contented, irreclaimable, unimprovable mediocrity, with a decided tendency to the stupid rather than the sublime. They were probably the journey-work of some of the legion playwrights connected with the London theatres, and cannot be compared with the dramas of Jonson, Deckar, Middleton, Fletcher, Marston, Tourneur, Massinger and Ford. They lack the vitality, the vim, which burns and blazes even in the works of the second class dramatists of the time. The Yorkshire Tragedy bears the stamp of Middleton rather than Shakspeare. With regard to the Two Noble Kinsmen, perhaps the greatest play included in the collection of Beaumont and Fletcher, we think that the Shaksperian passages might have been imitations of Shakspeare's manner, and we have a sufficiently high opinion of Fletcher's genius to suppose that this imitation was not beyond his powers. The general character of the play shows that Shakspeare, at any rate, merely contributed to it. It is conceived and developed in the hot and hectic style of Fletcher, and abounds in his strained heroics and gratuitous obscenities. The Jailor's Daughter, a coarse caricature of Ophelia, is one of the greatest crimes against the sacredness of misery which a poet ever perpetrated.
Schlegel said of Thomas Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldcastle, and A Yorkshire Tragedy, that they were not only Shakspeare's, but in his opinion deserved to be classed among his best and maturest works. This is the most ridiculous judgment which a great critic ever made, and coming as it does, after the author's profound view of Shakspeare's genius, is as singular as it is ridiculous.
Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. By Alphonse de Lamartine. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 2 vols. 12mo.
Lamartine is a man of fine genius and great courage, but both as an author and politician is a sentimentalist. His characteristic mental quality, that of seeing all external objects through a luminous mist exhaling from his heart and imagination, is as prominent in the present volume of travels as in his political speeches and state papers. He sees nothing in clear, white light; every thing through a personal medium. To use a distinction of an ingenious analyst, he tells you rather of the beauty and truth of his feelings than the beauty and truth he feels; and accordingly his sentimentality is closely allied to vanity. This absence of clear perception is not the result of his being a poet, but of his being a poet of the second class. Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, even Milton, would not fail in politics from a similar lack of seeing things as they are. We believe that Homer and Shakspeare might have made better statesmen than Pericles and Bacon. The great poet fails in practical life not from seeing things through a distorting medium, but from viewing them in relation to an ideal standard. This was the case with Milton. Now Lamartine is in the habit of Lamartinizing the whole world in his writings. The mirror he holds up to life and nature simply reflects himself. He cannot pass beyond his own individuality—he has no objective insight.
We will guarantee that every reader of the present volumes will rise from their perusal with a knowledge of the author rather than the subject. He will obtain no information of men, scenery, or remarkable places, such as he might receive from a common tourist, deficient equally in sentiment and imagination; neither will he carry away such clear pictures and representations as Scott or Goethe might stamp upon his memory. He will simply be informed of the thoughts, fancies, opinions, and varying moods of Lamartine, as awakened by the objects which met his eye. These objects, which a great poet would consider of the first importance, are with the Frenchman only secondary to the exhibition of himself. If this mingled egotism and vanity were affected, it would disgust the reader, but as it is the natural action of the author's mind, and is accompanied with much eloquence and beauty of composition, it is more likely to fascinate than to offend. At the present moment, when the author is with the public a more important object than Athens or Jerusalem, the present volumes will probably be the more eagerly read on account of their leading defect.
The Falcon Family; or Young Ireland. By the author of the Bachelor of the Albany. Boston: T. Wiley, Jr.