Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), January 3, 1846, vol. 2, no. 26, p. ???-???

[page 404, column 1, continued:]

Critical Notices.

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Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. By THOMAS CARLYLE. In 2 vols. New York: Wiley & Putnam.

A most valuable work this is — from the intrinsic merit of the letters and speeches it contains, and not from the rhapsodical, really run-mad comments of Carlyle. Yet, even with this addition, the work is a desirable one. No published memoirs, that we have yet seen, so clearly exhibit the man Cromwell, the bold, iron-willed ruler, as these transcripts of his inner soul. Now, that attention is called to the man and his times, by the discussion concerning the propriety or impropriety of placing his statue in the new Parliament House of England, his letters and speeches become of a double interest.

The character and purposes of Cromwell seem to have been as singularly misunderstood as those of the third Richard. Cromwell was an ambitious, bold and unscrupulous man, who changed through circumstances. At first he was a republican, and bent his whole energies and his giant intellect — giant even among the intellectual Anakims of that day — to achieve a model commonwealth. But, once obtaining power, he naturally grew to be a tyrant. He was, for all that, a good king, so far as the external interests of the country were concerned; and his politic administration of public affairs contrasts favorably with that of any king who preceded or followed him on the English throne. We call him “king,” for, lord protector only in name, he was monarch in fact.

We always esteemed Cromwell the more for the manner in which he routed that scum of hypocritical rascals, the Rump Parliament. It is a pity for his memory that a man like Carlyle should have engaged in the edition of his letters and speeches, and we recommend readers to note only the text of the book before us, and let the comments alone.

The volume is very neatly got up, as all of the series — Library of Choice Reading — of which it forms a part, are.