fanatic. All his own intellectual culture he throws down and abandons.
Such dire transformation ensues as reminds us of a certain hero-worship
which Milton has celebrated:

"Horror on him falls,
_And horrid sympathy_; for what he sees
He feels himself, now changing; down his arms,
Down falls the spear and shield; down he as fast;
And the dire hiss renews, and the dire form,
Catched by contagion."

But to our task--which is no light one; for in our survey of this book
we have to keep in view both hero and hero-worshipper, Cromwell and
Carlyle, both somewhat slippery personages, abnormal, enigmatical.

The speeches of Oliver Cromwell have a formidable reputation for
prolixity, confusion, and excessive tediousness; yet we have not, for
our own part, found these volumes to be of the dry and scarce readable
description which their title foreboded; and we would caution others not
to be deterred by any fears of this nature from their perusal. They will
find an interest grow upon them as they proceed, and the last volume to
be more attractive than the first. As the work advances, the letters and
speeches of Cromwell become more intimately connected with the great
transactions of the period, and the editor himself more frequently
favours us with some specimen of his happier manner, where concentration
of style, a spirit of humour and reflection, and a power of vivid
portraiture, have _not_ degenerated into mere quaintness, into a species
of slang, into _Carlylisms_, into vague generalities about infinitudes
and eternities. At all times the interspersed commentary--written in
that peculiar, fantastic, jingling manner which, illegitimate as it is,
disorderly and scandalous to all lovers of propriety in style and
diction, is at all events the very opposite to dulness--forms perhaps
the most fortunate contrast that could have been devised with the
Cromwellian period, so arid and colourless, so lengthy and so tortuous,
tinged often with such a dismal obscurity, and valuable in fact only as
showing _the man_, utterly valueless as an exposition of thought.
Perhaps, as models of style, a critic would be as little disposed to
applaud the writing of Mr Carlyle as the compositions of Cromwell, but
they form here all admirable relief the one to the other; taken
together, one can consume a considerable quantity of both. Your dry
bread is weary mastication, and your potted anchovies have a somewhat