earth; to call together
Parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with the
breath of his mouth; to be humbly and daily petitioned that he would
please to be hired, at the rate of two millions a year, to be the master
of those who had hired him before to be their servant; to have the
estates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal as was the
little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in the
spending of them; and lastly (for there is no end of all the particulars
of his glory), to bequeath all this with one word to his posterity; to
die with peace at home, and triumph abroad; to be buried among kings,
and with more than regal solemnity; and to leave a name behind him, not
to be extinguished but with the whole world; which as it is now too
little for his praises, so might have been too for his conquests, if the
short line of his human life could have been stretched out to the extent
of his immortal designs!'

Cromwell was a bad speaker and a worse writer. Milton wrote his
despatches for him in elegant and erudite Latin; and the pen of the one,
like the sword of the other, was 'sharp and sweet.' We have not that
union in modern times of the heroic and literary character which was
common among the ancients. Julius Caesar and Xenophon recorded their own
acts with equal clearness of style and modesty of temper. The Duke of
Wellington (worse off than Cromwell) is obliged to get Mr. Mudford to
write the History of his Life. Sophocles, AEschylus, and Socrates were
distinguished for their military prowess among their contemporaries,
though now only remembered for what they did in poetry and philosophy.
Cicero and Demosthenes, the two greatest orators of antiquity, appear
to have been cowards: nor does Horace seem to give a very favourable
picture of his martial achievements. But in general there was not that
division in the labours of the mind and body among the Greeks and Romans
that has been introduced among us either by the progress of civilisation
or by a greater slowness and inaptitude of parts. The French, for
instance, appear to unite a number of accomplishments, the literary
character and the man of the world, better than we do. Among us, a
scholar is almost another name for a pedant or a clown: it is not so
with them. Their philosophers and wits went into the world and mingled
in the society of the fair. Of this there needs no other proof than the
spirited print of most o