ower and boldness to put his
prince and master to an open and infamous death? Should banish that
numerous and strongly allied family? Cover all these temerities under a
seeming obedience to a parliament, in whose service he pretended to
be retained? Trample, too, upon that parliament in their turn,
and scornfully expel them as soon as they gave him ground of
dissatisfaction? Erect in their place the dominion of the saints, and
give reality to the most visionary idea which the heated imagination of
any fanatic was ever able to entertain? Suppress again that monster in
its infancy, and openly set up himself above all things that ever were
called sovereign in England? Overcome first all his enemies by arms, and
all his friends afterwards by artifice? Serve all parties patiently for
a while, and command them victoriously at last? Overrun each corner of
the three nations, and subdue, with equal facility, both the riches of
the south and the poverty of the north? Be feared and courted by all
foreign princes, and be adopted a brother to the gods of the earth? Call
together parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with
the breath of his mouth? Reduce to subjection a warlike and discontented
nation, by means of a mutinous army? Command a mutinous army by means of
seditious and factious officers? Be humbly and daily petitioned, that he
would be pleased, at the rate of millions a year, to be hired as master
of those who had hired him before to be their servant? Have the estates
and lives of three nations as much at his disposal as was once the
little inheritance of his father, and be as noble and liberal in the
spending of them? And lastly, (for there is no end of enumerating every
particular of his glory,) with one word bequeath all this power and
splendor to his posterity? He possessed of peace at home and triumph
abroad? Be buried among kings, and with more than regal solemnity; and
leave a name behind him not to be extinguished but with the whole world;
which as it was too little for his praise, so might it have been for his
conquests, if the short line of his mortal life could have stretched out
to the extent of his immortal designs?"

* Cowley's Discourses. This passage is altered in some
particulars from the original.

My intention is not to disfigure this picture, drawn by so masterly
a hand: I shall only endeavor to remove from it somewhat of the
marvellous; a circumstance which, on all occasi