The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 28

James I was no fool, and though through weakness of character an unwise master, yet not an unthinking statesman; and I still want a satisfactory solution of the acc.u.mulation of offices on Buckingham.

Ib. s. 212.

Prudent men will continue the oblations of their forefathers' piety.

The danger and mischief of going far back, and yet not half far enough!

Thus Hacket refers to the piety of individuals our forefathers as the origin of Church property. Had he gone further back, and traced to the source, he would have found these partial benefactions to have been mere rest.i.tutions of rights co-original with their own property, and as a national reserve for the purposes of national existence--the condition 'sine qua non' of the equity of their proprieties; for without civilization a people cannot be, or continue to be, a nation. But, alas!

the ignorance of the essential distinction of a national clerisy, the 'Ecclesia', from the Christian Church. The 'Ecclesia' has been an eclipse to the intellect of both Churchmen and Sectarians, even from Elizabeth to the present day, 1833.

Ib. s. 214.

And being threatened, his best mitigation was, that perhaps it was not safe for him to deny so great a lord; yet it was safest for his lordship to be denied. ... The king heard the noise of these crashes, and was so pleased, that he thanked G.o.d, before many witnesses, that he had put the Keeper into that place: 'For,' says he, 'he that will not wrest justice for Buckingham's sake, whom I know he loves, will never be corrupted with money, which he never loved.'

Strange it must seem to us; yet it is evident that Hacket thought it necessary to make a mid something, half apology and half eulogy, for the Lord Keeper's timid half resistance to the insolence and iniquitous interference of the minion Duke. What a portrait of the times! But the dotage of the King in the maintenance of the man, whose insolence in wresting justice he himself admits! Yet how many points, both of the times and of the King's personal character, must be brought together before we can fairly solve the intensity of James's minionism, his kingly egotism, his weak kindheartedness, his vulgar coa.r.s.eness of temper, his systematic jealousy of the ancient n.o.bles, his timidity, and the like!

Ib.

'Sir,' says the Lord Keeper, 'will you be pleased to listen to me, taking in the Prince's consent, of which I make no doubt, and I will shew how you shall furnish the second and third brothers with preferments sufficient to maintain them, that shall cost you nothing.

... If they fall to their studies, design them to the bishoprics of Durham and Winchester, when they become void. If that happen in their nonage, which is probable, appoint commendatories to discharge the duty for them for a laudable allowance, but gathering the fruits for the support of your grandchildren, till they come to virility to be consecrated,' &c.

Williams could not have been in earnest in this villanous counsel, but he knew his man. This conceit of dignifying dignities by the Simoniacal prost.i.tution of them to blood-royal was just suited to James's fool-cunningness.

Part II. s. 74.

... To yield not only pa.s.sive obedience (which is due) but active also, &c.

'Which is due.' What in the name of common sense can this mean, that is, speculatively? Practically, the meaning is clear enough, namely, that we should do what we can to escape hanging; but the distinction is for decorum, and so let it pa.s.s.

Ib. s. 75.

This is the venom of this new doctrine, that by making us the King's creatures, and in the state of minors or children, to take away all our property; which would leave us nothing of our own, and lead us (but that G.o.d hath given us just and gracious Princes) into slavery.

And yet this just and gracious Prince prompts, sanctions, supports, and openly rewards this envenomer, in flat contempt of both Houses of Parliament,--protects and prefers him and others of the same principles and professions on account of these professions! And the Parliament and nation were inexcusable, forsooth, in not trusting to Charles's a.s.surances, or rather the a.s.surances put in his mouth by Hyde, Falkland, and others, that he had always abhorred these principles.

Ib. s. 136.

When they saw he was not 'selfish' (it is a word of their own new mint), &c.

Singular! From this pa.s.sage it would seem that our so very common word 'selfish' is no older than the latter part of the reign of Charles I.

Ib. s. 137.

Their political aphorisms are far more dangerous, that His Majesty is not the highest power in his realms; that he hath not absolute sovereignty; and that a Parliament sitting is co-ordinate with him in it.

Hacket himself repeatedly implies as much; for would he deny that the King with the Lords and Commons is not more than the King without them?

or that an act of Parliament is not more than a proclamation?

Ib. s.154.

What a venomous spirit is in that serpent Milton, that black-mouthed Zoilus, that blows his viper's breath upon those immortal devotions from the beginning to the end! This is he that wrote with all irreverence against the Fathers of our Church, and showed as little duty to the father that begat him: the same that wrote for the Pharisees, that it was lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause,--and against Christ, for not allowing divorces: the same, O horrid! that defended the lawfulness of the greatest crime that ever was committed, to put our thrice-excellent King to death: a petty schoolboy scribbler, that durst grapple in such a cause with the prince of the learned men of his age, Salmasius, [Greek: philosophias pasaes aphroditae ka lyra], as Eunapius says of Ammonius, Plutarch's scholar in Egypt, the delight, the music of all knowledge, who would have scorned to drop a pen-full of ink against so base an adversary, but to maintain the honor of so good a King ... Get thee behind me, Milton! Thou savourest not the things that be of truth and loyalty, but of pride, bitterness, and falsehood. There will be a time, though such a Shimei, a dead dog in Abishai's phrase, escape for a while ...

It is no marvel if this canker-worm Milton, &c.

A contemporary of Bishop Racket's designates Milton as the author of a profane and lascivious poem ent.i.tled Paradise Lost. The biographer of our divine bard ought to have made a collection of all such pa.s.sages. A German writer of a Life of Salmasius acknowledges that Milton had the better in the conflict in these words: 'Hans (Jack) von Milton--not to be compared in learning and genius with the incomparable Salmasius, yet a shrewd and cunning lawyer,' &c. 'O sana posteritas!'

Ib. s. 178.

Dare they not trust him that never broke with them? And I have heard his nearest servants say, that no man could ever challenge him of the least lie.

What! this after the publication of Charles's letters to the Queen! Did he not within a few months before his death enter into correspondence with, and sign contradictory offers to, three different parties, not meaning to keep any one of them; and at length did he not die with something very like a falsehood in his mouth in allowing himself to be represented as the author of the Icon Basilike?

Ib. s. 180.

If an under-sheriff had arrested Harry Martin for debt, and pleaded that he did not imprison his membership, but his Martinship, would the Committee for privileges be fobbed off with that distinction?

To make this good in a.n.a.logy, we must suppose that Harry Martin had notoriously neglected all the duties, while he perverted and abused all the privileges, of membership: and then I answer, that the Committee of privileges would have done well and wisely in accepting the under-sheriff's distinction, and, out of respect for the membership, consigning the Martinship to the due course of law.

Ib.

'That every soul should be subject to the higher powers.' The higher power under which they lived was the mere power and will of Caesar, bridled in by no law.

False, if meant 'de jure'; and if 'de facto', the plural 'powers' would apply to the Parliament far better than to the King, and to Cromwell as well as to Nero. Every even decently good Emperor professed himself the servant of the Roman Senate. The very term 'Imperator', as Gravina observes, implies it; for it expresses a delegated and instrumental power. Before the a.s.sumption of the Tribunitial character by Augustus, by which he became the representative of the majority of the people,--'majestatem indutus est,--Senatus consulit, Populus jubet, imperent Consules', was the const.i.tutional language.

Ib. s. 190.

Yet so much dissonancy there was between his tongue and his heart, that he triumphed in the murder of Caesar, the only Roman that exceeded all their race in n.o.bleness, and was next to Tully in eloquence.

There is something so shameless in this self-contradiction as of itself almost to extinguish the belief that the prelatic royalists were conscientious in their conclusions. For if the Senate of Rome were not a lawful power, what could be? And if Caesar, the thrice perjured traitor, was neither perjured nor traitor, only because he by his Gaulish troops turned a republic into a monarchy,--with what face, under what pretext, could Hacket abuse 'Sultan Cromwell?'

[Footnote 1: By Thomas Plume. Folio, 1676.--Ed.]

[Footnote 2: