ing St.
Paul's, and for obeying some orders of council, by which he was directed
to pull down houses, in order to make room for that edifice. Laws, who
had not been surpassed by any musician before him, was much beloved by
the king, who called him the father of music. Charles was a good judge
of writing, and was thought by some more anxious with regard to purity
of style than became a monarch.[****]

* Anderson, vol. ii. p. 111.

** Anderson, vol. ii. p. 111.

*** British Empire in America, vol. i. p. 372.

**** Purnet.

Notwithstanding his narrow revenue, and his freedom from all vanity, he
lived in such magnificence, that he possessed four and twenty palaces,
all of them elegantly and completely furnished; insomuch that, when he
removed from one to another, he was not obliged to transport any thing
along with him.

Cromwell, though himself a barbarian was not insensible to literary
merit. Usher, notwithstanding his being a bishop, received a pension
from him. Marvel and Milton were in his service. Waller, who was his
relation, was caressed by him. That poet always said, that the protector
himself was not so wholly illiterate as was commonly imagined. He gave
a hundred pounds a year to the divinity professor at Oxford; and
an historian mentions this bounty as an instance of his love of
literature.[*] He intended to have erected a college at Durham for the
benefit of the northern counties.

Civil wars, especially when founded on principles of liberty are not
commonly unfavorable to the arts of elocution and composition; or
rather, by presenting nobler and more interesting objects, they amply
compensate that tranquillity of which they bereave the muses. The
speeches of the parliamentary orators, during this period, are of a
strain much superior to what any former age had produced in England;
and the force and compass of our tongue were then first put to trial. It
must, however, be confessed, that the wretched fanaticism, which so much
infected the parliamentary party, was no less destructive of taste and
science, than of all law and order. Gayety and wit were proscribed;
human learning despised; freedom of inquiry detested; cant and hypocrisy
alone encouraged. It was an article positively insisted on in the
preliminaries to the treaty of Uxbridge, that all play-houses should
forever be abolished. Sir John Davenant, says Whitlocke,[**] speaking
of the year 1658, published an opera, notwithstan