This is sad common-place trifling, and quite unworthy of a veteran writer like Mr. Godwin of much acknowledged ability and matured acquirements. But this idle and pompous repetition of truisms is not the only peculiarity of his manner. He has formally recorded his universal contempt of the spirit in which history has usually been composed; but his own elevated conceptions of the dignity of the historical style he has left us to infer only from the example of his pages. The conclusion might safely be rested on a single such passage as the following notable illustration of the art of sinking:

From the scene of these momentous changes, and these heroic proceedings, it is not unnatural to look back to John Lilburne. While all this was doing, he sat in his corner, and could think of nothing but the impropriety of answering interrogatories. Such is the true picture of a vulgar patriot narrow of comprehension, impassioned, stiff in opinion. -seeing nothing but what he can discern through one small window, and sitting at a distance from that. so that the entire field of his observation, his universe, in the wide landscape of the world, and the immense city of mankind, with all its lanes, its alleys, its streets, and its squares, is twelve inches by twelve.' —pp. 43, 44.

But the bathos is yet more conspicuous in the elaborated absurdity of passages like this:

There have been men, who could see every thing, and from whom no secret of the human heart has been hid, to whom the faculty of exciting sympathy has been denied, who could not emit a spark from their own bosoms, that should light up a kindred fire in the breasts of others, who could not utter a sound which should instantly string the nerves, and brace the arm of every one whose assistance they desired. Such persons live, as it were, in a field of dead men's bones: the light of heaven is upon every object around them: nothing escapes their observation : but all this is to no purpose: they do not possess the transcendant power of saying to those dry bones, Live.',- p. 408.

In truth it would be difficult to say whether Mr. Godwin's style is most remarkable for the absurd and overstrained application, or for the confusion and vulgarity of his metaphors. Thus, for examples of mixed metaphor: (p. 75.) the elected are the heart, the electors the body politic, and the circulation between the one and the other should be free as air? Again, (p. 638.) Hollis and others are introduced, resolving to embark their character in this bottom, and to set up a standard, &c. to which all might resort.' And in another place we are affectedly told, that Cromwel used in the erection of his edifice whatever natural appeared most promising; but the plan, or ichnography, by which he proceeded, the constitution of a commonwealth, appears to have been always the same. Among vulgar and colloquial images, we hear (p. 140.) of splitting hairs; of the real objects of certain patriots being (p. 502.) the loaves and fishes;' and of fearing to mount from the im-.

pulse of feeling, lest (p. 221.) we should break our necks by the fall.'

Mr. Godwin's use of simple expressions is often as inaccurate as his complex images are faulty. Thus we have to fight perpetually employed in a transitive sense, as to fight one party against another.' (pp. 81. 226. 316, &c.) Again we hear (p. 80.) of bringing a just army into the field; meaning, we presume, a sufficient army; and of the Scotch obeying a summons promptly, though somewhat of the latest. Nor has Mr. Godwin's language always even the poor merit of being grammatical. Thus of Cromwell (p. 520.): 'He left the metropolis entrusted with an important command; but if he were not successful in his enterprise, he would probably never have seen [never see] London more, unless as a state-priSometimes we really are at a loss to comprehend the meaning of passages: as when, (p. 272.) in recording some vote hostile to Cromwel and the Independents, Mr. Godwin finds it a some→ what singular coincidence (why?) that just at this period Ireton married the eldest daughter of Cromwel;' or when he comments (p. 201.) in the following sublimated nonsense, on the submission of Cromwel to Ireton's patriotic influence: This stooping of a mind of the highest class to another which, in magnitude of spirit, could scarcely be said to equal his own, and which yet is worthily submitted to, is one of the most beautiful spectacles that this globe of earth has to offer.'

Nor are all these the only weak points in Mr. Godwin's manner of composition. This second volume bears marks of more hasty and slovenly execution than should have been betrayed in a work of so much gravity and such pompous pretensions. At least the narrative is full of needless repetitions, for the existence of which we can no otherwise account than by the suspicion that the work has undergone no revision. Thus, in the character of Ireton, it is three times repeated to us in three successive pages (200, 201, 202.) that Ireton was a man of the sternest integrity.' • Ireton was a man of inflexible integrity.' Ireton was a man of stern integrity.' In the same manner we find reiterated the well-known and hacknied quotation from Shakspeare,

"There's a divinity doth hedge a king,

And treason can but peep to what it would;"

-a quotation of which Mr. Godwin is marvellously fond, considering that he cannot be suspected of sharing in the toryism of the sentiment. So also, in the first half of the volume, we have the narrative three several times interrupted (pp. 48. 149. 174.) to listen to repetitions of the characters and views of the two rival parties, (Presbyterians and Independents,) where a single well digested, clear, and concise notice of their opposition in principles and objects might once for all have sufficed to familiarise the reader with the motives of their struggle. Nay, so curious would appear to

an octavo

have been Mr. Godwin's repugnance to the revision of his narrative, that, upon one occasion (p. 219.), we have first a statement by the author himself in the text, and then a note in contradiction of it, beginning This is not the exactly correct statement:' as if the alteration of the original passage were not the obvious remedy for its errors. It is probably to such needless repetitions that we are to attribute the unwieldy bulk of this second part, volume of seven hundred pages: for even here the literary tact and judgment of an experienced writer must have deserted him, before he ventured to concoct a volume of such cumbrous form and appalling dimensions, to fatigue the languid attention and offend the fastidious taste of the degenerate students of these latter times. The numerous blemishes to which we have here pointed, and this volume is disfigured by many more, would alone be fatal to the credit of a younger and less practised author; and they are certainly not calculated to augment the literary reputation of the well-known writer before us. If Mr. Godwin were disposed to apply the austerity of his political maxims to the formation of his style, he might be free to reject all extraneous ornament for a severe simplicity both of thought and expression. He might disdain to model the narrative of his republican theme after the polished periods and various graces of a Hume, a Robertson, or a Gibbon. But if he discarded the refinements of elegant composition, he was at least bound to exhibit correctness and purity of diction. His style is neither brilliant nor elegant: but still less is it distinguished either by dignity, terseness, or simplicity. When he would be forcible, it is often merely vulgar; when he would rise to the ele vation of sentiment, it is always vitiated by incongruous images, laboured, obscure, and bombastic. But enough of criticism upon the singularities and inaccuracies of Mr. Godwin's composition: much as such faults of manner and language must necessarily detract from the value and charm of any work, we should have been less disposed to lay particular stress upon them here, if Mr. Godwin had been more cautious in his self-complacency, and more indulgent in his estimate of former labourers. But he has offered a challenge of superiority in his vocation, and he cannot complain if this pretension be encountered by a rigid enquiry into the real value of his own qualifications.

We pass, however, from considering the literary merits of Mr. Godwin's second volume to the more interesting task of giving some statement of its historical contents. The first volume closed with an account of the military transactions which immediately followed the battle of Naseby: this second portion is occupied with the momentous history of the next three years, from the ruin of the royal cause in that fatal field, to the trial and execution of the King. In the whole range and compass of our annals there is no epoch more deeply interesting, more pregnant with great events, and altogether more worthy of repeated study and

close investigation than these three years. Over the busy narrative of the stormy and incessant intrigues, and the thick-coming political events by which they were filled, we feel that we can never tire: the discussions which the magnitude and questionable character of these transactions may provoke, it is equally impossible to exhaust and to terminate. These three years involve the consideration of almost as many practical and important cases as there are settled and unsettled problems in the theory of public principles, free government, and political right. Every feature in this brief and vitally interesting epoch deserves to be studied over and over again, to be viewed under every possible aspect and bearing; and if Mr. Godwin's pages had not one half of the originality of thought which they really possess, and if they contained twice as many erroneous and distorted conclusions as they will be found to offer, the subject would still invest his labours with an enduring and inevitable attraction.

We need scarcely remind the reader of the outlines of the topics which occupy this volume. The great contest in the field had terminated: the royal party were conquered; and the victors, in the quaint language of that stout cavalier, Sir Jacob Astley, had "done their work and might go play, unless it pleased them to fall out among themselves." They needed only leisure to betray this inclination. The two distinct parties into which the Long Parliament had gradually been separating, had been restrained from open hostility with each other only by the danger of their common cause against the King. The total overthrow of the Royalists left the Presbyterians and Independents no other occupation than that of striving between themselves for the mastery of the King and the kingdom, in the parliament, the army, and the nation. Then came the great crisis of their struggle, the impotent majorities of the Presbyterians in the houses of parliament, the fearful strength of the Independents in the army, and the inevitable consequence, that the swords of Cromwel and his followers were cast into the balance, and ensured the preponderance. The King's surrender to the Scotch; their sale of his person to the Parliament; his subsequent seizure by the army; the continued negociations and intrigues carried on with him by both parties; by the Presbyterian leaders in the name of the Parliament, and by the military leaders of the Independents for themselves: all these important transactions are but so many collateral events of the contest between the two great factions who were now struggling for the dominion. So also their final collision itself; the violent and lawless interference of the army; the momentary and apparent triumph of the Independent minority in the House of Commons; the real and more lasting degradation and servitude of that shadow of a parliament, under a reign of terror and military anarchy; the deposition, the trial, and the execution of the King: all these vicissitudes served only to prepare

the elevation and the despotism of one unscrupulous, daring, and wily spirit.

6

6

The pervading circumstance in the history of the period which fills this second volume of Mr. Godwin's labours, offers a curious opposition to a passage in the former portion of his work. And the contradiction is the more remarkable, because it was in that very passage that Mr. Godwin chose his occasion for evincing his superior accuracy over the careless and imitative set of men that we call historians.' They, he declared, have misrepresented the division which had ensued in the parliamentary party. • They have considered it as a struggle between two sects, the Presbyterians and Independents, and have necessarily led their readers to the enquiry which of these sects was the worthiest.' Yet what has Mr. Godwin himself done in this second volume? He has followed (and necessarily) in the precise steps of these imitative men.' He also has weighed and balanced the principles and virtues of these two sects, and essayed to determine between them which was the worthiest. And he has done this, not once merely, but has, as we before observed, led his readers in three several places to the enquiry into the distinction between the parties, their grounds of dispute, their political tenets, and their motives of action. Thus, then, to this submission to, and agreement in, the views taken by former historians of the same contest, has all Mr. Godwin's boast of novelty and superior acuteness fallen at last! The dissensions among the parliamentary party produced only the two political divisions of Presbyterians and Independents, and no other. Mr. Godwin, indeed, in his former volume, explained correctly that the political party of the Independents was not so confined in numbers as to be identified in signification with the religious sect of the Independents, properly so called. But, in fact, what former historians had ever confounded the small religious community of the Independents with the numerous other sects and classes of men who combined with them to secure, by political union, the toleration necessary for them in common, and which was denied to them all by the Presbyterians? Even Hume, having here no temptation to misrepresent the truth, and needing merely a superficial enquiry to discover so notorious a fact, has (vol. viii. opening of cap. lix.) broadly and briefly noticed the amalgamation of the inferior sectaries with the Independents. And Mrs. Macauley, too, more fully explained (vol. iv. c. iv.) the composition of the latter as a political body.

In the commencement of the civil wars, all other sects of dissenters had joined with the greater mass of the Presbyterians, and were not easily distinguished from them in the common resistance to the persecutions of the established church and the tyranny of the royal government. But the overthrow of an intolerant episcopacy was to be used by the Presbyterians only as a preparation for setting up their own system of uniformity,-a system to the