Pym "rode about the country to
promote elections of the Puritanical brethren to serve in Par-
liament; wasted his body much in carrying-on the cause, and
was himself," as we well know, " elected a Burgess.
promote elections of the Puritanical brethren to serve in Par-
liament; wasted his body much in carrying-on the cause, and
was himself," as we well know, " elected a Burgess.
Thomas Carlyle
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? 90
Carlyle's Essays
is the inspiration of a Prophet, yet in one or the other degree
must inspire every true Singer, were his theme never so
humble. We should see by what steps men had ascended
to the Temple; how near they had approached; by what ill
hap they had, for long periods, turned away from it, and
grovelled on the plain with no music in the air, or blindly
struggled towards other heights. That among all oui
Eichhorns and Wartons there is no such Historian, must be
too clear to every one. Nevertheless let us not despair o<
far nearer approaches to that excellence. Above all, let us
keep the Ideal of it ever in our eye; for thereby alone have
we even a chance to reach it.
Our histories of Laws and Constitutions, wherein manj
a Montesquieu and Hallam has laboured with acceptance,
are of a much simpler nature; yet deep enough if thoroughly
investigated; and useful, when authentic, even with little
depth. Then we have Histories of Medicine, of Mathematics;
of Astronomy, Commerce, Chivalry, Monkery; and Goguets
and Beckmanns have come forward with what might be the
most bountiful contribution of all, a History of Inventions.
Of all which sorts, and many more not here enumerated, not
yet devised, and put in practice, the merit and the proper
scheme may, in our present limits, require no exposition.
In this manner, though, as above remarked, all Action is
extended three ways, and the general sum of human Action
is a whole Universe, with all limits of it unknown, does
History strive by ninning path after path, through the
Impassable, in manifold directions and intersections, tc
secure for us some oversight of the Whole; in which en-
deavour, if each Historian look well around him from hr<
path, tracking it out with the eye, not, as is more common,
with the nose, she may at last prove not altogether unsuccess-
ful. Praying only that increased division of labour do not
here, as elsewhere, aggravate our already strong Mechanical
tendencies, so that in the manual dexterity for parts we lose
all command over the whole, and the hope of any Philosophy
of History be farther off than ever,--let us all wish her grea'
and greater success.
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? , ON HISTORY AGAIN1
[1833]
[The following singular Fragment on History forms part, as may
be recognised, of the Inaugural Discourse delivered by our
assiduous " D. T. " at the opening of the Society for the Diffu-
sion of Common Honesty. The Discourse, if one may credit the
Morning Papers, "touched in the most wonderful manner,
* didactically, poetically, almost prophetically, on all things in
this world and the next, in a strain of sustained or rather of
suppressed passionate eloquence rarely witnessed in Parlia-
ment or out of it: the chief bursts were received with profound
silence,"--interrupted, we fear, by snuff-taking. As will be
seen, it is one of the didactic passages that we introduce here.
The Editor of this Magazine is responsible for its accuracy, and
publishes, if not with leave given, then with leave taken. --O. Y. ]
. . . History recommends itself as the most profitable of
all studies: and truly, for such a being as Man, who is born,
and has to learn and work, and then after a measured term
of years to depart, leaving descendants and performances,
and so, in all ways, to vindicate himself as vital portion of a
Mankind, no study could be fitter. History is the Letter of
Instructions, which the old generations write and posthu-
mously transmit to the new; nay it may be called, more
generally still, the Message, verbal or written, which all
Mankind delivers to every man; it is the only articulate
communication (when the inarticulate and mute, intelligible
or not, lie round us and in us, so strangely through every
fibre of our being, every step of our activity) which the Past
can have with the Present, the Distant with what is Here.
All Books, therefore, were they but Song-books or treatises
on Mathematics, are in the long-run historical documents--
as indeed all Speech itself is: thus might we say, History is
not only the fittest study, but the only study, and includes
all others whatsoever. The Perfect in History, he who
understood, and saw and knew within himself, all that the
whole Family of Adam had hitherto been and hitherto done,
1 Fraser's Magazine, No. 41.
91
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? 92 Carlyle's Essays
were perfect in all learning extant or possible; needed not
thenceforth to study any more; had thenceforth nothing
left but to be and to do something himself, that others might
make History of it, and learn of him.
Perfection in any kind is well known not to be the lot of
man: but of all supernatural perfect-characters this of the
Perfect in History (so easily conceivable, too) were perhaps
the most miraculous. Clearly a faultless monster which
the world is not to see, not even on paper. Had the
Wandering Jew, indeed, begun to wander at Eden, and
with a Fortunatus's Hat on his head! Nanac Shah too,
we remember, steeped himself three days in some sacred
Well; and there learnt all things: Nanac's was a far easier
method; but unhappily not practicable--in this climate.
Consider, however, at what immeasurable distance from this
perfect Nanac your highest imperfect Gibbons play their
part! Were there no brave men, thinkest thou, before
Agamemnon? Beyond the Thracian Bosphorus, was all
dead and void; from Cape Horn to Nova Zembla, round the
whole habitable Globe, not a mouse stirring? Or, again, in
reference to Time:--the Creation of the World is indeed old,
compare it to the Year One; yet young, of yesterday, com-
pare it to Eternity! Alas, all Universal History is but a
sort of Parish History; which the "P. P. Clerk of this
Parish," member of "our Alehouse Club" (instituted for
what "Psalmody" is in request there) puts together,--in
such sort as his fellow-members will praise. Of the thing
now gone silent, named Past, which was once Present, and
loud enough, how much do we know? Our "Letter of
Instructions" comes to us in the saddest state; falsified,
blotted out, torn, lost and but a shred of it in existence; this
too so difficult to read or spell.
Unspeakably precious meanwhile is our shred of a Letter,
is our written or spoken Message, such as we have it. Only
he who understands what has been, can know what should
be and will be. It is of the last importance that the individual
have ascertained his relation to the whole; "an individual
helps not," it has been written; "only he who unites with
many at the proper hour. " How easy, in a sense, for your
all-instructed Nanac to work without waste or force (or
what we call fault); and, in practice, act new History, as
perfectly as, in theory, he knew the old! Comprehending
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? On History Again
93
what the given world was, what it had and what it wanted,
how might his clear effort strike-in at the right time and the
right point; wholly increasing the true current and tendency,
nowhere cancelling itself in opposition thereto! Unhappily,
$uch smooth-running, ever-accelerated course is nowise the
one appointed us; cross-currents we have, perplexed back-
floods; innumerable efforts (every new man is a new effort)
consume themselves in aimless eddies: thus is the River of
? Existence so wild-flowing, wasteful; and whole multitudes,
and whole generations, in painful unreason, spend and are
spent on what can never profit. Of all which, does not one-
half originate in this which we have named want of Perfec-
tion in History;--the other half, indeed, in another want
still deeper, still more irremediable?
Here, however, let us grant that Nature, in regard to such
historic want, is nowise blamable: taking up the other face
of the matter, let us rather admire the pains she has been at,
the truly magnificent provision she has made, that this same
Message of Instructions might reach us in boundless pleni-
tude. Endowments, faculties enough, we have: it is her
wise will too that no faculty of Speech, once given, becomes
not more a gift than a necessity; the Tongue, with or without
much meaning, will keep in motion; and only in some La
Trappe by unspeakable self-restraint forbear wagging. As
little can the fingers that have learned the miracle of Writing
lie idle; if there is a rage of speaking, we know also there is a
rage of writing, perhaps the more furious of the two. It is
said, "so eager are men to speak, they will not let one
another get to speech;" but, on the other hand, writing is
usually transacted in private, and every man has his own
desk and inkstand, and sits independent and unrestrainable
there. Lastly, multiply this power of the Pen some ten-
thousandfold: that is to say, invent the Printing-Press, with
its Printer's Devils, with its Editors, Contributors, Book-
sellers, Billstickers, and see what it will do! Such are the
means wherewith Nature, and Art the daughter of Nature,
have equipped their favourite Man, for publishing himself
to man.
Consider, now, two things: first, that one Tongue, of
average velocity, will publish at the rate of a thick octavo
volume per day; and then how many nimble-enough Tongues
may be supposed to be at work on this Planet Earth, in this
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? 94 Carlyle's Essays
City London, at this hour! Secondly, that a Literary Con-
tributor, if in good heart and urged by hunger, will many
times, as we are credibly informed, accomplish his two
Magazine sheets within the four-and-twenty hours; such
Contributors being now numerable not by the thousand, but.
by the million. Nay, taking History, in its narrower, vulgar
sense, as the mere chronicle of " occurrences," of things that
can be, as we say, " narrated," our calculation is still but a
little altered. Simple Narrative, it will be observed, is the
grand staple of Speech; "the common man," says Jean
Paul, " is copious in Narrative, exiguous in Reflection; only
with the cultivated man is it otherwise, reversewise. " Allow
even the thousandth part of human publishing for the emis-
sion of Thought, though perhaps the millionth were enough,
we have still the nine hundred and ninety-nine employed in
History proper, in relating occurrences, or conjecturing pro-
babilities of such; that is to say, either in History or Pro-
phecy, which is a new form of History:--and so the reader
can judge with what abundance this life-breath of the human
intellect is furnished in our world; whether Nature has been.
stingy to him or munificent. Courage, reader! Never can
the historical inquirer want pabulum, better or worse: are
there not forty-eight longitudinal feet of small-printed
History in thy Daily Newspaper?
The truth is, if Universal History is such a miserable de-
fective " shred" as we have named it, the fault lies not in
our historic organs, but wholly in our misuse of these; say
rather, in so many wants and obstructions, varying with the
various age, that pervert our right use of them; especially
two wants that press heavily in all ages: want of Honesty,
want of Understanding. If the thing published is not true,
is only a supposition, or even a wilful invention, what can be
done with it, except abolish it and annihilate it? But again,
Truth, says Home Tooke, means simply the thing trowed, the
thing believed; and now, from this to the thing itself, what
a new fatal deduction have we to suffer! Without Under-
standing, Belief itself will profit little: and how can your
publishing avail, when there was no vision in it, but mere
blindness? For as in political appointments, the man you
appoint is not he who was ablest to discharge the duty, but
only he who was ablest to be appointed; so too, in all historic
elections and selections, the maddest work goes on. The
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? On History Again 95
event worthiest to be known is perhaps of all others the least
spoken of: nay, some say, it lies in the very nature of such
events to be so. Thus, in those same forty-eight longitudinal
feet of History, or even when they have stretched out into
forty-eight longitudinal miles, of the like quality, there may
"hot be the forty-eighth part of a hairsbreadth that will turn
to anything. Truly, in these times, the quantity of printed
Publication that will need to be consumed with fire, before
,the smallest permanent advantage can be drawn from it,
might fill us with astonishment, almost with apprehension.
Where, alas, is the intrepid Herculean Dr. Wagtail, that will
reduce all these paper-mountains into tinder, and extract
-therefrom the three drops of Tinder-water Elixir?
For indeed, looking at the activity of the historic Pen and
Press through this last half-century, and what bulk of His-
tory it yields for that period alone, and how it is henceforth
like to increase in decimal or vigesimal geometric progression,
--one might feel as if a day were not distant, when perceiv-
ing that the whole Earth would not now contain those writ-
ings of what was done in the Earth, the human memory must
needs sink confounded, and cease remembering! --To some
the reflection may be new and consolatory, that this state of
ours is not so unexampled as it seems; that with memory and
things memorable the case was always intrinsically similar.
The Life of Nero occupies some diamond pages of our Tacitus:
I but in the parchment and papyrus archives of Nero's genera-
tion how many did it fill? The author of the Vie de Seneque,
at this distance, picking-up a few residuary snips, has with
ease made two octavos of it. On the other hand, were the
contents of the then extant Roman memories, or, going to the
utmost length, were all that was then spoken on it, put in
types, how many " longitudinal feet " of small-pica had we,
--in belts that would go round the Globe!
History, then, before it can become Universal History,
needs of all things to be compressed. Were there no epito-
mising of History, one could not remember beyond a week.
Nay, go to that with it, and exclude compression altogether,
we could not remember an hour, or at all: for Time, like^
Space, is infinitely divisible; and an hour with its events,
with its sensations and emotions, might be diffused to such
expansion as should cover the whole field of memory, and
push all else over the limits. Habit, however, and the
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? 9 6 Carlyle's Essays
natural constitution of man, do themselves prescribe service-
able rules for remembering; and keep at a safe distance from
us all such fantastic possibilities;--into which only some
foolish Mahomedan Caliph, ducking his head in a bucket of
enchanted water, and so beating-out one wet minute into
seven long years of servitude and hardship, could fall. The
rudest peasant has his complete set of Annual Registers
legibly printed in his brain; and, without the smallest train-
ing in Mnemonics, the proper pauses, subdivisions and sub-
ordinations of the little to the great, all introduced there.
Memory and Oblivion, like Day and Night, and indeed like
all other Contradictions in this strange dualistic Life of ours,
are necessary for each other's existence: Oblivion is the dark
page, whereon Memory writes her light-beam characters, and
makes them legible; were it all light, nothing could be read
there, any more than if it were all darkness.
As with man and these autobiographic Annual-Registers
of his, so goes it with Mankind and its Universal History,
which also is its Autobiography: a like unconscious talent of
remembering and of forgetting again does the work here.
The transactions of the day, were they never so noisy,
cannot remain loud forever; the morrow comes with its
new noises, claiming also to be registered: in the im-
measurable conflict and concert of this chaos of existence,
figure after figure sinks, as all that has emerged must one
day sink: what cannot be kept in mind will even go out of
/ mind; History contracts itself into readable extent; and at
last, in the hands of some Bossuet or Muller, the whole printed
History of the World, from the Creation downwards, has
grown shorter than that of the Ward of Portsoken for one
solar day.
Whether such contraction and epitome is always wisely
formed, might admit of question; or rather, as we say, admits
of no question. Scandalous Cleopatras and Messalinas, Cali-
gulas and Commoduses, in unprofitable proportion, survive
for memory; while a scientific Pancirollus has to write his
Book of Arts Lost; and a moral Pancirollus, were the vision
lent him, might write a still more mournful Book of Virtues
Lost; of noble men, doing and daring and enduring, whose
heroic life, as a new revelation and development of Life
itself, were a possession for all, but is now lost and forgotten,
History having otherwise filled her page. In fact, here as
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? On History Again
97
elsewhere, what we call Accident governs much; in any case,
History must come together not as it should, but as it can
and will.
Remark nevertheless how, by natural tendency alone, and
as it were without man's forethought, a certain fitness of
selection, and this even to a high degree, becomes inevitable.
Wholly worthless the selection could not be, were there no
better rule than this to guide it: that men permanently
speak only of what is extant and actively alive beside them.
Thus do the things that have produced fruit, nay whose
fruit still grows, turn out to be the things chosen for record
and writing of; which things alone were great, and worth re-
- cording. The Battle of Chalons, where Hunland met Rome,
and the Earth was played for, at sword-fence, by two earth-
bestriding giants, the sweep of whose swords cut kingdoms
in pieces, hovers dim in the languid remembrance of a few;
while the poor police-court Treachery of a wretched Iscariot,
transacted in the wretched land of Palestine, centuries
earlier, for " thirty pieces of silver," lives clear in the heads,
in the hearts of all men. Nay moreover, as only that which
bore fruit was great; so of all things, that whose fruit is
still here and growing must be the greatest, the best worth
remembering; which again, as we see, by the very nature of
the case, is mainly the thing remembered. Observe, too,
how this "mainly" tends always to become a "solely,"
? and the approximate continually approaches nearer: for
triviality after triviality, as it perishes from the living ac-
tivity of men, drops away from their speech and memory,
and the great and vital more and more exclusively survive
there. Thus does Accident correct Accident; and in the
wondrous boundless jostle of things (an aimful Power pre-
siding over it, say rather, dwelling in it), a result comes out
that may be put-up with.
Curious, at all events, and worth looking at once in our life,
is this same compressure of History, be the process thereof
what it may. How the "forty-eight longitudinal feet"
have shrunk together after a century, after ten centuries t
Look back from end to beginning, over any History; over
our own England: how, in rapidest law of perspective, it
dwindles from the canvas! An unhappy Sybarite, if we
stand within two centuries of him and name him Charles
Second, shall have twelve times the space of a heroic Alfred;
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? 98 Carlyle's Essays
two or three thousand times, if we name him George the
Fourth. The whole Saxon Heptarchy, though events, to
which Magna Charta, and the world-famous Third Reading,
are as dust in the balance, took place then,--for did not
England, to mention nothing else, get itself, if not represented
in Parliament, yet converted to Christianity? --the whole
Saxon Heptarchy, I say, is summed-up practically in that
one sentence of Milton's, the only one succeeding writers
have copied, or readers remembered, of the "fighting and
flocking of kites and crows. " Neither was that an unim-
portant wassail-night, when the two black-browed Brothers,
strongheaded, headstrong, Hengst and Horsa (Stallion and
Horse), determined on a man-hunt in Britain, the boar-
hunt at home having got overcrowded; and so, of a few
hungry Angles made an English Nation, and planted it here,
and--produced thee, O Reader! Of Hengst's campaignings
scarcely half a page of good Narrative can now be written;
the Lord Mayor's Visit to Oxford standing, meanwhile,
revealed to mankind in a respectable volume. Nay what of
this? Does not the Destruction of a Brunswick Theatre
take above a million times as much telling as the Creation of
a World?
To use a ready-made similitude, we might liken Universal
History to a magic web; and consider with astonishment
how, by philosophic insight and indolent neglect, the ever-
growing fabric wove itself forward, out of that ravelled
immeasurable mass of threads and thrums, which we name
Memoirs; nay, at each new lengthening, at each new epoch,
changed its whole proportions, its hue and structure to the
very origin. Thus, do not the records of a Tacitus acquire
new meaning, after seventeen hundred years, in the hands
of a Montesquieu? Niebuhr has to reinterpret for us, at
a still greater distance, the writings of a Titus Livius: nay,
the religious archaic chronicles of a Hebrew Prophet and
Lawgiver escape not the like fortune; and many a ponderous
Eichhorn scans, with new-ground philosophic spectacles,
the revelation of a Moses, and strives to reproduce for this
century what, thirty centuries ago, was of plainly infinite
significance to all. Consider History with the beginnings of
it stretching dimly into the remote Time; emerging darkly
out of the mysterious Eternity: the ends of it enveloping us
at this hour, whereof we at this hour, both as actors and
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? On History Again
99
relators, form part! In shape we might mathematically
name it Hyperbolic-Asymptotic; ever of infinite breadth
around us; soon shrinking within narrow limits: ever narrow-
ing more and more into the infinite depth behind us. In
essence and significance it has been called "the true Epic
Poem, and universal Divine Scripture, whose 'plenary
inspiration' no man, out of Bedlam or in it, shall bring in
question. "
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? AN ELECTION TO THE LONG
PARLIAMENT1
[1844]
Anthony Wood, a man to be depended on for accuracy,
states as a fact that John Pym, Clerk of the Exchequer, and
others, did, during the autumn of 1640, ride to and fro over
England, inciting the people to choose members of their fac-
tion. Pym and others.
Pym "rode about the country to
promote elections of the Puritanical brethren to serve in Par-
liament; wasted his body much in carrying-on the cause, and
was himself," as we well know, " elected a Burgess. " As for
Hampden, he had long been accustomed to ride: "being a
person of antimonarchical principles," says Anthony, "he
did not only ride, for several years before the Grand Re-
bellion broke out, into Scotland, to keep consults with the
Covenanting brethren there; but kept his circuits to several
Puritanical houses in England; particularly to that of
Knightley in Northamptonshire," to Fawsley Park, then and
now the house of the Knightleys," and also to that of William
Lord Say at Broughton near Banbury in Oxfordshire: " 2--
Mr. Hampden might well be on horseback in election-time.
These Pyms, these Hampdens, Knightleys were busy riding
over England in those months: it is a little fact which Anthony
Wood has seen fit to preserve for us.
A little fact, which, if we meditate it, and picture in any
measure the general humour and condition of the England
that then was, will spread itself into great expanse in our
imagination! What did they say, do, think, these patriotic
missionaries, "as they rode about the country"? What
did they propose, advise, in the successive Townhalls,
Country-houses, and "Places of Consult"? John Pym,
Clerk of the Exchequer, Mr. Hampden of Great Hampden,
1 Fraser's Magazine, No. 178.
*Wood's Athena (Bliss's edition), iii. 73, 59; Nugent's Hampden,
i. 327.
IOO
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? An Election to the Long Parliament 101
riding to and fro, lodging with the Puritan Squires of
this English Nation, must have had notable colloquies!
What did the Townspeople say in reply to them? We have
a great curiosity to know about it: how this momentous
General Election, of autumn 1640, went on; what the
physiognomy or figure of it was; how "the remarkablest
Parliament that ever sat, the father of all Free British
Parliaments, American Congresses and French Conventions,
that have sat since in this world," was got together!
To all which curiosities and inquiries, meanwhile, there
is as good as no answer whatever. Wood's fact, such as it
is, has to twinkle for us like one star in a heaven otherwise
all dark, and shed what light it can. There is nothing known
of this great business, what it was, what it seemed to be, how
in the least it transacted itself, in any town, or county, or
locality. James Heath, "Carrion Heath" as Smelfungus
calls him, does, in his Flagellum (or Flagitium1 as it properly
is), write some stuff about Oliver Cromwell and Cambridge
Election; concerning which latter and Cleaveland the Poet
there is also another blockheadism on record:--but these,
and the like, mere blockheadisms, pitch-dark stupidities and
palpable falsities,--what can we do with these? Forget
them, as soon as possible, to all eternity;--that is the evident
rule: Admit that we do honestly know nothing, instead of
misknowing several things, and in some sense all things, which
is a great misfortune in comparison!
Contemporary men had no notion, as indeed they seldom
have in such cases, what an enormous work they were going-
on with; and nobody took note of this election more than
any former one. Besides, if they had known, they had
other business than to write accounts of it for us. But how
could anybody know that this was to be the Long Parliament,
and to cut his Majesty's head off, among other feats? A very
"spirited election," I dare believe:--but there had been
another election that same year, equally spirited, which had
issued in a Short Parliament, and mere "second Episcopal
War. " There had been three prior elections, sufficiently
spirited; and had issued, each of them, in what we may call
a futile shriek; their Parliaments swiftly vanishing again.
1Or, Life of Oliver Cromwell (London, 1663): probably, all things
considered, the brutalest Platitude this English Nation has to show
for itself in writing.
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? io2 Carlyle's Essays
Sure enough, from whatever cause it be, the world, as we
said, knows not anywhere of the smallest authentic notice
concerning this matter, which is now so curious to us, and is
partly becoming ever more curious. In the old Memoirs, not
entirely so dull when once we understand them; in the multi-
tudinous rubbish-mountains of old Civil-War Pamphlets
(some thirty or fifty thousand of them in the British Museum
alone, unread, unsorted, unappointed, unannealed! ), which
will continue dull till, by real labour and insight, of which
there is at present little hope, the ten-thousandth part of
them be extracted; and the nine-thousand nine-hundred and
ninety-nine parts of them be eaten by moths, or employed
in domestic cookery when fuel grows scarce;-- in these
chaotic masses of old dull printing there is not to be met with,
in long years of manipulation, one solitary trait of any
election, in any point of English land, to this same Long
Parliament, the remarkablest that ever sat in the world.
England was clearly all alive then,--with a moderate crop
of corn just reaped from it; and other things not just ready
for reaping yet. In Newcastle, in "the Bishoprick" and
that region, a Scotch Army, bristling with pike and musket,
sonorous with drum and psalm-book, all snugly garrisoned
and billeted " with ? 850 a-day; " over in Yorkshire an English
Army, not quite so snugly; and a " Treaty of Ripon " going
on; and immense things in the wind, and Pym and Hampden
riding to and fro to hold " consults:" it must have been an
election worth looking at! But none of us will see it; the
Opacities have been pleased to suppress this election, con-
sidering it of no interest. It is erased from English and from
human Memory, or was never recorded there,--(owing to
the stupor and dark nature of that faculty, we may well say).
It is a lost election; swallowed in the dark deeps: premit
atra Nox. Black Night; and this one fact of Anthony
Wood's more or less faintly twinkling there!
In such entire darkness, it was a welcome discovery which
the present Editor made, of certain official or semi-official
Documents, legal testimonies and signed affidavits, relative to
the Election for Suffolk, such as it actually showed itself to
men's observation in the Town of Ipswich on that occasion:
Documents drawn-up under the exact eye of Sir Simonds
D'Ewes, High-Sheriff of Suffolk; all carefully preserved these
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? An Election to the Long Parliament 103
two centuries, and still lying safe for the inspection of the
curious among the Harley Manuscripts in the British Museum.
Sir Simonds, as will be gradually seen, had his reasons for
getting these Documents drawn-up; and luckily, when the
main use of them was over, his thrifty historical turn of mind
induced him to preserve them for us. A man of sublime
Antiquarian researches, Law-learning, human and divine
accomplishments, and generally somewhat Grandisonian in
his ways; a man of scrupulous Puritan integrity, of high-
flown conscientiousness, exactitude and distinguished perfec-
tion; ambitious to be the pink of Christian country-gentlemen
and magistrates of counties; really a most spotless man and
High-Sheriff: how shall he suffer, in Parliament or out of it,
to the latest posterity, any shadow from election-brabbles or
the like indecorous confusion to rest on his clear-polished
character? Hence these Documents;--for there had an un-
seemly brabble, and altercation from unreasonable persons,
fallen-out at this Election, which "might have ended in
blood," from the nose or much deeper, had Sir Simonds been
a less perfect High-Sheriff! Hence these Documents, we
say; and they are preserved to us.
The Documents, it must be at once owned, are somewhat
of the wateriest: but the reader may assure himself they are
of a condensed, emphatic, and very potent nature, in compari-
son with the generality of Civil-War documents and records!
Of which latter indeed, and what quality they are of, the
human mind, till once it has earnestly tried them, can form
no manner of idea. We had long heard of Dulness, and
thought we knew it a little; but here first is the right dead
Dulness, Dulness its very self! Ditch-water, fetid bilge-
water, ponds of it and oceans of it; wide-spread genuine
Dulness, without parallel in this world: such is the element
in which that history of our Heroic Seventeenth Century
as yet rots and swims! The hapless inquirer swashes to and
fro, in the sorrow of his heart: if in an acre of stagnant water
he can pick-up half a peascod, let him thank his stars!
This Editor, in such circumstances, read the D'Ewes Docu-
ments, and re-read them, not without some feeling of satisfac-
tion. Such as they are, they bring one face to face with
an actual election, at Ipswich, "in Mr. Hambie's field, on
Monday the 19th of October 1640, an extreme windy day. "
There is the concrete figure of that extreme windy Monday,
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? 104 Carlyle's Essays
Monday gone Two-hundred and odd years: the express image
of Old Ipswich, and Old England, and that Day; exact to
Nature herself,--though in a most dark glass, the more is
the pity! But it is a glass; it is the authentic mind, namely,
or seeing-facuity, of Sir Simonds D'Ewes and his Affidavit-
makers, who did look on the thing with eyes and minds, and
got a real picture of it for themselves. Alas, we too could
see it, the very thing as it then and there was, through these
men's poor limited authentic picture of it here preserved for
us, had we eyesight enough;--a consideration almost of a
desperate nature! Eyesight enough, 0 reader: a man in
that case were a god, and could do various things! --
We will not overload these poor Documents with com-
mentary. Let the public, as we have done, look with its own
eyes. To the commonest eyesight a markworthy old fact
or two may visibly disclose itself; and in shadowy outline
and sequence, to the interior regions of the seeing-faculty, if
the eyesight be beyond common, a whole world of old facts,--
an old contemporary England at large, as it stood and lived,
on that "extreme windy day,"--may more or less dimly
suggest themselves. The reader is to transport himself to
Ipswich; and, remembering always that it is two centuries
and four years ago, look about him there as he can. Some
opportunity for getting these poor old Documents copied
into modern hand has chanced to arise; and here, with an
entire welcome to all faithful persons who are sufficiently
patient of dulness for the sake of direct historical knowledge,
they are given forth in print.
It is to be premised that the Candidates in this Election
are Three: Sir Nathaniel Barnardiston and Sir Philip Parker
on the Puritan side; and Mr. Henry North, son of Sir
Roger North, on the Court or Royalist side. Sir Roger is
himself already elected, or about to be elected, for the borough
of Eye;--and now Mr. Henry, heir-apparent, is ambitious
to be Knight of the Shire. He, if he can, will oust one of the
two Puritans, he cares little which, and it shall be tried on
Monday.
To most readers these Candidates are dark and inane, mere
Outlines of Candidates: but Suffolk readers, in a certain dim
way, recognise something of them. "The Parkers still
continue in due brilliancy, in that shire: a fine old place,
at Long. Melford, near Bury:--but this Parker," says our
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? An Election to the Long Parliament 105
Suffolk monitor,1 "is of another family, the family of Lord
Morley-and-Monteagle, otherwise not unknown in English
History. 2 The Barnardistons too," it would appear, "had
a noble mansion in the east side of the county, though it has
. quite vanished now, and corn is growing on the site of it,"
and the family is somewhat eclipsed. The Norths are from
Mildenhall, from Finborough, Laxfield; the whole world
knows the North kindred, Lord Keeper Norths, Lord Guild-
ford Norths, of which these Norths of ours are a junior twig.
Six lines are devoted by Collins Dryasdust3 to our Candidate
Mr. Henry, of Mildenhall, and to our Candidate's Father and
Uncle; testifying indisputably that they lived, and that they
died.
Let the reader look in the dim faces, Royalist and Puritan,
of these respectable Vanished Gentlemen; let him fancy their
old Great Houses, in this side of the county or that other,
standing all young, firm, fresh-pargeted, and warm with
breakfast-fire, on that "extreme windy morning," which
have fallen into such a state of dimness now! Let the
reader, we say, look about him in that old Ipswich; in that
old vanished population: perhaps he may recognise a thing
or two. There is the old "Market Cross," for one thing;
"an old Grecian circular building, of considerable diameter;
a dome raised on distinct pillars, so that you could go freely
in and out between them; a figure of Justice on the top;"
1 which the elderly men in Ipswich can still recollect, for it
did not vanish till some thirty years ago. The " Corn Hill"
again, being better rooted, has not vanished hitherto, but is
still extant as a Street and Hill; and the Townhall stands
on one side of it.
Samuel Duncon, the Town-constable, shall speak first.
"The Duncons were a leading family in the Corporation of
Ipswich; Robert Duncon was patron of the," etc. etc. : so it
would appear; but this Samuel, Town-constable, must have
been of the more decayed branches, poor fellow! What most
concerns us is, that he seems to do his constabling in a really
1 D. E. Davy, Esq. , of Ufford, in that County, whose learning in
Suffolk History is understood to be supreme, and whose obliging dis-
position we have ourselves experienced.
* " It was to William Parker, Lord Monteagle, ancestor of this Sir
Philip, that the Letter was addressed which saved the King and Parlia-
ment from the Gunpowder Plot. Sir Philip had been High-Sheriff in
1637; he died in 1675. "--Dryasdust MSS.
'Peerage, iv. 62, 63 (London, 1741).
II 704 H
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? io6 Carlyle's Essays
judicious manner, with unspeakable reverence to the High-
Sheriff; that he expresses himself like a veracious person, and
writes a remarkably distinct hand. We have sometimes, for
light's sake, slightly modified Mr. Duncon's punctuation;
but have respected his and the High - Sheriff's spelling,
though it deserves little respect,--and have in no case, never
so slightly, meddled with his sense. The questionable italic
letters in brackets are evident interpolations;--omissible, if
need be.
SUFFOLKE ELECTION1
No. I
[Samuel Duncon testifieth]
"Memorandum, That upon Monday the 19th day of October
this present year 1640, the election of two Knights for the
Shire was at Ipswich in Suffolke; the Writt being read about
eight of the clocke in the morning; and in the Markett
Crosse where the County Court is generally kept, Mr. Henry
North sonne of Sir Roger North was there at the reading of
the said Writt. All this time the other two, namely, Sir
Nathaniel Barnardiston and Sir Philip Parker, were at the
King's Head; and Mr. North was carried about neare halfe
an houre before the other two came [Carried about in his
chair by the jubilant people: Let all men see, and come and
vote for him. The chairing was then the first step, it would
seem]; and after the other two were taken there, Mr. North
was carried into the field neare the said towne, called Mr.
Hambie's feild:2 and the said High-Sherriffe was there
polling, about halfe an houre before the other two Knights
knewe either of his being polling, or of the High-Sherriff's
intention to take the Poll in that place. But at length the
two Knights were carried into the said feild; and before they
came there, the tables which were sett for them, the said
Sir Nathaniel and Sir Philip, were thrust downe, and troaden
under foot [Such a pressure and crowding was there f]; and
they both caused but one table to bee sett there,--till about
1 From Harlrian MSS. , British Museum (Parliamentary Affairs col-
lected by Sir S. D'Ewes), No. 165, foL 5-8.
'Or, " Hanbie's field," as the Duncon MS. has it: he probably means
Hamby. "A family of the latter name had property at Ipswich and
about it, in those times. "--Dryasdust MSS.
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? An Election to the Long Parliament 107
three of the clocke of the afternoone, the said day, about
which time Sir Nathaniel had another table sett there, a
little remote from the other. And when they went about to
poll, they wanted a clarke. I, Samuel! Duncon, standing
by, some requested mee; and upon the Under-Sherriff's
'allowance, I did take names, and one Mr. Fishar with mee,
Jhe for Sir Nathaniel, and myselfe for Sir Philip; although
many that came for the one, came for the other; and if any
, came for Mr. North (as there did some), wee tooke them like-
wise for him. And Mr. John Clinch of Creting,1 Sir Roger
North's brother-in-law, or some other of Mr. North his
[' North his' means North's] friends, stoode by all the time.
-And after the space of one quarter of an houre, came Sir
Robert Crane,2 and did oppose against Mr. Fishar; and then
came the said High-Sherriffe himselfe to the table, wheere
wee weere writing, and discharged Mr. Fishar, and tooke his
papers of him; and at the request of Sir Rpger North did
appoint one Mr. John Sheppard to write in his place, who
then tooke names for Sir Nathaniel, and myselfe for Sir
Philip. About one houre after, Sir Robert Crane and the
rest of Mr. North his friends moved Sir Nathaniel that wee
. ~ight leave off polling for him and Sir Philip, and take the
Poll only for Mr. North; for, they said, Mr. North's table
was much pestred, and many of his men would be gone out
of towne, being neare night,--and the like reasons. Which
reasons might as well have been alledged in the behalfe
of Sir Nathaniel and Sir Philip: but without reasoning, Sir
Nathaniel did grant them their desire; and presently Sir
Robert Crane went and called all that were for Mr. North
to come to that table; and soe Mr. Sheppard and myselfe
tooke for Mr. North as long as wee could well see; which I
think was about one houre. Having done, wee gave upp our
Bookes, and did goe to Mrs. Penning's house in Ipswich, where
Sir Roger North was then with the said High-Sherriffe: and
I heard no oppositions at that time taken against any thing
1 " The family of Clinch, or Clench as it should be spelt, were of note
in Suffolk. They descended from John Clench of," etc. etc. , " buried
in 1607, with a handsome monument to his memory. He was one of the
I Justices of the King's Bench. His Grandson, John Clench, Esq. , was
High-Sheriff of the County in 1639. "--Dryasdust MSS. This, I think,
is our and Samuel Duncon's Clench.
* " Sir Robert Crane was descended from a Norfolk family, which
migrated," etc. "He was created a Baronet in May 1627. He was
of Chilton Hall, near Sudbury; he died in 1642. "--Ibid.
? 90
Carlyle's Essays
is the inspiration of a Prophet, yet in one or the other degree
must inspire every true Singer, were his theme never so
humble. We should see by what steps men had ascended
to the Temple; how near they had approached; by what ill
hap they had, for long periods, turned away from it, and
grovelled on the plain with no music in the air, or blindly
struggled towards other heights. That among all oui
Eichhorns and Wartons there is no such Historian, must be
too clear to every one. Nevertheless let us not despair o<
far nearer approaches to that excellence. Above all, let us
keep the Ideal of it ever in our eye; for thereby alone have
we even a chance to reach it.
Our histories of Laws and Constitutions, wherein manj
a Montesquieu and Hallam has laboured with acceptance,
are of a much simpler nature; yet deep enough if thoroughly
investigated; and useful, when authentic, even with little
depth. Then we have Histories of Medicine, of Mathematics;
of Astronomy, Commerce, Chivalry, Monkery; and Goguets
and Beckmanns have come forward with what might be the
most bountiful contribution of all, a History of Inventions.
Of all which sorts, and many more not here enumerated, not
yet devised, and put in practice, the merit and the proper
scheme may, in our present limits, require no exposition.
In this manner, though, as above remarked, all Action is
extended three ways, and the general sum of human Action
is a whole Universe, with all limits of it unknown, does
History strive by ninning path after path, through the
Impassable, in manifold directions and intersections, tc
secure for us some oversight of the Whole; in which en-
deavour, if each Historian look well around him from hr<
path, tracking it out with the eye, not, as is more common,
with the nose, she may at last prove not altogether unsuccess-
ful. Praying only that increased division of labour do not
here, as elsewhere, aggravate our already strong Mechanical
tendencies, so that in the manual dexterity for parts we lose
all command over the whole, and the hope of any Philosophy
of History be farther off than ever,--let us all wish her grea'
and greater success.
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? , ON HISTORY AGAIN1
[1833]
[The following singular Fragment on History forms part, as may
be recognised, of the Inaugural Discourse delivered by our
assiduous " D. T. " at the opening of the Society for the Diffu-
sion of Common Honesty. The Discourse, if one may credit the
Morning Papers, "touched in the most wonderful manner,
* didactically, poetically, almost prophetically, on all things in
this world and the next, in a strain of sustained or rather of
suppressed passionate eloquence rarely witnessed in Parlia-
ment or out of it: the chief bursts were received with profound
silence,"--interrupted, we fear, by snuff-taking. As will be
seen, it is one of the didactic passages that we introduce here.
The Editor of this Magazine is responsible for its accuracy, and
publishes, if not with leave given, then with leave taken. --O. Y. ]
. . . History recommends itself as the most profitable of
all studies: and truly, for such a being as Man, who is born,
and has to learn and work, and then after a measured term
of years to depart, leaving descendants and performances,
and so, in all ways, to vindicate himself as vital portion of a
Mankind, no study could be fitter. History is the Letter of
Instructions, which the old generations write and posthu-
mously transmit to the new; nay it may be called, more
generally still, the Message, verbal or written, which all
Mankind delivers to every man; it is the only articulate
communication (when the inarticulate and mute, intelligible
or not, lie round us and in us, so strangely through every
fibre of our being, every step of our activity) which the Past
can have with the Present, the Distant with what is Here.
All Books, therefore, were they but Song-books or treatises
on Mathematics, are in the long-run historical documents--
as indeed all Speech itself is: thus might we say, History is
not only the fittest study, but the only study, and includes
all others whatsoever. The Perfect in History, he who
understood, and saw and knew within himself, all that the
whole Family of Adam had hitherto been and hitherto done,
1 Fraser's Magazine, No. 41.
91
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? 92 Carlyle's Essays
were perfect in all learning extant or possible; needed not
thenceforth to study any more; had thenceforth nothing
left but to be and to do something himself, that others might
make History of it, and learn of him.
Perfection in any kind is well known not to be the lot of
man: but of all supernatural perfect-characters this of the
Perfect in History (so easily conceivable, too) were perhaps
the most miraculous. Clearly a faultless monster which
the world is not to see, not even on paper. Had the
Wandering Jew, indeed, begun to wander at Eden, and
with a Fortunatus's Hat on his head! Nanac Shah too,
we remember, steeped himself three days in some sacred
Well; and there learnt all things: Nanac's was a far easier
method; but unhappily not practicable--in this climate.
Consider, however, at what immeasurable distance from this
perfect Nanac your highest imperfect Gibbons play their
part! Were there no brave men, thinkest thou, before
Agamemnon? Beyond the Thracian Bosphorus, was all
dead and void; from Cape Horn to Nova Zembla, round the
whole habitable Globe, not a mouse stirring? Or, again, in
reference to Time:--the Creation of the World is indeed old,
compare it to the Year One; yet young, of yesterday, com-
pare it to Eternity! Alas, all Universal History is but a
sort of Parish History; which the "P. P. Clerk of this
Parish," member of "our Alehouse Club" (instituted for
what "Psalmody" is in request there) puts together,--in
such sort as his fellow-members will praise. Of the thing
now gone silent, named Past, which was once Present, and
loud enough, how much do we know? Our "Letter of
Instructions" comes to us in the saddest state; falsified,
blotted out, torn, lost and but a shred of it in existence; this
too so difficult to read or spell.
Unspeakably precious meanwhile is our shred of a Letter,
is our written or spoken Message, such as we have it. Only
he who understands what has been, can know what should
be and will be. It is of the last importance that the individual
have ascertained his relation to the whole; "an individual
helps not," it has been written; "only he who unites with
many at the proper hour. " How easy, in a sense, for your
all-instructed Nanac to work without waste or force (or
what we call fault); and, in practice, act new History, as
perfectly as, in theory, he knew the old! Comprehending
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? On History Again
93
what the given world was, what it had and what it wanted,
how might his clear effort strike-in at the right time and the
right point; wholly increasing the true current and tendency,
nowhere cancelling itself in opposition thereto! Unhappily,
$uch smooth-running, ever-accelerated course is nowise the
one appointed us; cross-currents we have, perplexed back-
floods; innumerable efforts (every new man is a new effort)
consume themselves in aimless eddies: thus is the River of
? Existence so wild-flowing, wasteful; and whole multitudes,
and whole generations, in painful unreason, spend and are
spent on what can never profit. Of all which, does not one-
half originate in this which we have named want of Perfec-
tion in History;--the other half, indeed, in another want
still deeper, still more irremediable?
Here, however, let us grant that Nature, in regard to such
historic want, is nowise blamable: taking up the other face
of the matter, let us rather admire the pains she has been at,
the truly magnificent provision she has made, that this same
Message of Instructions might reach us in boundless pleni-
tude. Endowments, faculties enough, we have: it is her
wise will too that no faculty of Speech, once given, becomes
not more a gift than a necessity; the Tongue, with or without
much meaning, will keep in motion; and only in some La
Trappe by unspeakable self-restraint forbear wagging. As
little can the fingers that have learned the miracle of Writing
lie idle; if there is a rage of speaking, we know also there is a
rage of writing, perhaps the more furious of the two. It is
said, "so eager are men to speak, they will not let one
another get to speech;" but, on the other hand, writing is
usually transacted in private, and every man has his own
desk and inkstand, and sits independent and unrestrainable
there. Lastly, multiply this power of the Pen some ten-
thousandfold: that is to say, invent the Printing-Press, with
its Printer's Devils, with its Editors, Contributors, Book-
sellers, Billstickers, and see what it will do! Such are the
means wherewith Nature, and Art the daughter of Nature,
have equipped their favourite Man, for publishing himself
to man.
Consider, now, two things: first, that one Tongue, of
average velocity, will publish at the rate of a thick octavo
volume per day; and then how many nimble-enough Tongues
may be supposed to be at work on this Planet Earth, in this
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? 94 Carlyle's Essays
City London, at this hour! Secondly, that a Literary Con-
tributor, if in good heart and urged by hunger, will many
times, as we are credibly informed, accomplish his two
Magazine sheets within the four-and-twenty hours; such
Contributors being now numerable not by the thousand, but.
by the million. Nay, taking History, in its narrower, vulgar
sense, as the mere chronicle of " occurrences," of things that
can be, as we say, " narrated," our calculation is still but a
little altered. Simple Narrative, it will be observed, is the
grand staple of Speech; "the common man," says Jean
Paul, " is copious in Narrative, exiguous in Reflection; only
with the cultivated man is it otherwise, reversewise. " Allow
even the thousandth part of human publishing for the emis-
sion of Thought, though perhaps the millionth were enough,
we have still the nine hundred and ninety-nine employed in
History proper, in relating occurrences, or conjecturing pro-
babilities of such; that is to say, either in History or Pro-
phecy, which is a new form of History:--and so the reader
can judge with what abundance this life-breath of the human
intellect is furnished in our world; whether Nature has been.
stingy to him or munificent. Courage, reader! Never can
the historical inquirer want pabulum, better or worse: are
there not forty-eight longitudinal feet of small-printed
History in thy Daily Newspaper?
The truth is, if Universal History is such a miserable de-
fective " shred" as we have named it, the fault lies not in
our historic organs, but wholly in our misuse of these; say
rather, in so many wants and obstructions, varying with the
various age, that pervert our right use of them; especially
two wants that press heavily in all ages: want of Honesty,
want of Understanding. If the thing published is not true,
is only a supposition, or even a wilful invention, what can be
done with it, except abolish it and annihilate it? But again,
Truth, says Home Tooke, means simply the thing trowed, the
thing believed; and now, from this to the thing itself, what
a new fatal deduction have we to suffer! Without Under-
standing, Belief itself will profit little: and how can your
publishing avail, when there was no vision in it, but mere
blindness? For as in political appointments, the man you
appoint is not he who was ablest to discharge the duty, but
only he who was ablest to be appointed; so too, in all historic
elections and selections, the maddest work goes on. The
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? On History Again 95
event worthiest to be known is perhaps of all others the least
spoken of: nay, some say, it lies in the very nature of such
events to be so. Thus, in those same forty-eight longitudinal
feet of History, or even when they have stretched out into
forty-eight longitudinal miles, of the like quality, there may
"hot be the forty-eighth part of a hairsbreadth that will turn
to anything. Truly, in these times, the quantity of printed
Publication that will need to be consumed with fire, before
,the smallest permanent advantage can be drawn from it,
might fill us with astonishment, almost with apprehension.
Where, alas, is the intrepid Herculean Dr. Wagtail, that will
reduce all these paper-mountains into tinder, and extract
-therefrom the three drops of Tinder-water Elixir?
For indeed, looking at the activity of the historic Pen and
Press through this last half-century, and what bulk of His-
tory it yields for that period alone, and how it is henceforth
like to increase in decimal or vigesimal geometric progression,
--one might feel as if a day were not distant, when perceiv-
ing that the whole Earth would not now contain those writ-
ings of what was done in the Earth, the human memory must
needs sink confounded, and cease remembering! --To some
the reflection may be new and consolatory, that this state of
ours is not so unexampled as it seems; that with memory and
things memorable the case was always intrinsically similar.
The Life of Nero occupies some diamond pages of our Tacitus:
I but in the parchment and papyrus archives of Nero's genera-
tion how many did it fill? The author of the Vie de Seneque,
at this distance, picking-up a few residuary snips, has with
ease made two octavos of it. On the other hand, were the
contents of the then extant Roman memories, or, going to the
utmost length, were all that was then spoken on it, put in
types, how many " longitudinal feet " of small-pica had we,
--in belts that would go round the Globe!
History, then, before it can become Universal History,
needs of all things to be compressed. Were there no epito-
mising of History, one could not remember beyond a week.
Nay, go to that with it, and exclude compression altogether,
we could not remember an hour, or at all: for Time, like^
Space, is infinitely divisible; and an hour with its events,
with its sensations and emotions, might be diffused to such
expansion as should cover the whole field of memory, and
push all else over the limits. Habit, however, and the
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? 9 6 Carlyle's Essays
natural constitution of man, do themselves prescribe service-
able rules for remembering; and keep at a safe distance from
us all such fantastic possibilities;--into which only some
foolish Mahomedan Caliph, ducking his head in a bucket of
enchanted water, and so beating-out one wet minute into
seven long years of servitude and hardship, could fall. The
rudest peasant has his complete set of Annual Registers
legibly printed in his brain; and, without the smallest train-
ing in Mnemonics, the proper pauses, subdivisions and sub-
ordinations of the little to the great, all introduced there.
Memory and Oblivion, like Day and Night, and indeed like
all other Contradictions in this strange dualistic Life of ours,
are necessary for each other's existence: Oblivion is the dark
page, whereon Memory writes her light-beam characters, and
makes them legible; were it all light, nothing could be read
there, any more than if it were all darkness.
As with man and these autobiographic Annual-Registers
of his, so goes it with Mankind and its Universal History,
which also is its Autobiography: a like unconscious talent of
remembering and of forgetting again does the work here.
The transactions of the day, were they never so noisy,
cannot remain loud forever; the morrow comes with its
new noises, claiming also to be registered: in the im-
measurable conflict and concert of this chaos of existence,
figure after figure sinks, as all that has emerged must one
day sink: what cannot be kept in mind will even go out of
/ mind; History contracts itself into readable extent; and at
last, in the hands of some Bossuet or Muller, the whole printed
History of the World, from the Creation downwards, has
grown shorter than that of the Ward of Portsoken for one
solar day.
Whether such contraction and epitome is always wisely
formed, might admit of question; or rather, as we say, admits
of no question. Scandalous Cleopatras and Messalinas, Cali-
gulas and Commoduses, in unprofitable proportion, survive
for memory; while a scientific Pancirollus has to write his
Book of Arts Lost; and a moral Pancirollus, were the vision
lent him, might write a still more mournful Book of Virtues
Lost; of noble men, doing and daring and enduring, whose
heroic life, as a new revelation and development of Life
itself, were a possession for all, but is now lost and forgotten,
History having otherwise filled her page. In fact, here as
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? On History Again
97
elsewhere, what we call Accident governs much; in any case,
History must come together not as it should, but as it can
and will.
Remark nevertheless how, by natural tendency alone, and
as it were without man's forethought, a certain fitness of
selection, and this even to a high degree, becomes inevitable.
Wholly worthless the selection could not be, were there no
better rule than this to guide it: that men permanently
speak only of what is extant and actively alive beside them.
Thus do the things that have produced fruit, nay whose
fruit still grows, turn out to be the things chosen for record
and writing of; which things alone were great, and worth re-
- cording. The Battle of Chalons, where Hunland met Rome,
and the Earth was played for, at sword-fence, by two earth-
bestriding giants, the sweep of whose swords cut kingdoms
in pieces, hovers dim in the languid remembrance of a few;
while the poor police-court Treachery of a wretched Iscariot,
transacted in the wretched land of Palestine, centuries
earlier, for " thirty pieces of silver," lives clear in the heads,
in the hearts of all men. Nay moreover, as only that which
bore fruit was great; so of all things, that whose fruit is
still here and growing must be the greatest, the best worth
remembering; which again, as we see, by the very nature of
the case, is mainly the thing remembered. Observe, too,
how this "mainly" tends always to become a "solely,"
? and the approximate continually approaches nearer: for
triviality after triviality, as it perishes from the living ac-
tivity of men, drops away from their speech and memory,
and the great and vital more and more exclusively survive
there. Thus does Accident correct Accident; and in the
wondrous boundless jostle of things (an aimful Power pre-
siding over it, say rather, dwelling in it), a result comes out
that may be put-up with.
Curious, at all events, and worth looking at once in our life,
is this same compressure of History, be the process thereof
what it may. How the "forty-eight longitudinal feet"
have shrunk together after a century, after ten centuries t
Look back from end to beginning, over any History; over
our own England: how, in rapidest law of perspective, it
dwindles from the canvas! An unhappy Sybarite, if we
stand within two centuries of him and name him Charles
Second, shall have twelve times the space of a heroic Alfred;
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? 98 Carlyle's Essays
two or three thousand times, if we name him George the
Fourth. The whole Saxon Heptarchy, though events, to
which Magna Charta, and the world-famous Third Reading,
are as dust in the balance, took place then,--for did not
England, to mention nothing else, get itself, if not represented
in Parliament, yet converted to Christianity? --the whole
Saxon Heptarchy, I say, is summed-up practically in that
one sentence of Milton's, the only one succeeding writers
have copied, or readers remembered, of the "fighting and
flocking of kites and crows. " Neither was that an unim-
portant wassail-night, when the two black-browed Brothers,
strongheaded, headstrong, Hengst and Horsa (Stallion and
Horse), determined on a man-hunt in Britain, the boar-
hunt at home having got overcrowded; and so, of a few
hungry Angles made an English Nation, and planted it here,
and--produced thee, O Reader! Of Hengst's campaignings
scarcely half a page of good Narrative can now be written;
the Lord Mayor's Visit to Oxford standing, meanwhile,
revealed to mankind in a respectable volume. Nay what of
this? Does not the Destruction of a Brunswick Theatre
take above a million times as much telling as the Creation of
a World?
To use a ready-made similitude, we might liken Universal
History to a magic web; and consider with astonishment
how, by philosophic insight and indolent neglect, the ever-
growing fabric wove itself forward, out of that ravelled
immeasurable mass of threads and thrums, which we name
Memoirs; nay, at each new lengthening, at each new epoch,
changed its whole proportions, its hue and structure to the
very origin. Thus, do not the records of a Tacitus acquire
new meaning, after seventeen hundred years, in the hands
of a Montesquieu? Niebuhr has to reinterpret for us, at
a still greater distance, the writings of a Titus Livius: nay,
the religious archaic chronicles of a Hebrew Prophet and
Lawgiver escape not the like fortune; and many a ponderous
Eichhorn scans, with new-ground philosophic spectacles,
the revelation of a Moses, and strives to reproduce for this
century what, thirty centuries ago, was of plainly infinite
significance to all. Consider History with the beginnings of
it stretching dimly into the remote Time; emerging darkly
out of the mysterious Eternity: the ends of it enveloping us
at this hour, whereof we at this hour, both as actors and
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? On History Again
99
relators, form part! In shape we might mathematically
name it Hyperbolic-Asymptotic; ever of infinite breadth
around us; soon shrinking within narrow limits: ever narrow-
ing more and more into the infinite depth behind us. In
essence and significance it has been called "the true Epic
Poem, and universal Divine Scripture, whose 'plenary
inspiration' no man, out of Bedlam or in it, shall bring in
question. "
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? AN ELECTION TO THE LONG
PARLIAMENT1
[1844]
Anthony Wood, a man to be depended on for accuracy,
states as a fact that John Pym, Clerk of the Exchequer, and
others, did, during the autumn of 1640, ride to and fro over
England, inciting the people to choose members of their fac-
tion. Pym and others.
Pym "rode about the country to
promote elections of the Puritanical brethren to serve in Par-
liament; wasted his body much in carrying-on the cause, and
was himself," as we well know, " elected a Burgess. " As for
Hampden, he had long been accustomed to ride: "being a
person of antimonarchical principles," says Anthony, "he
did not only ride, for several years before the Grand Re-
bellion broke out, into Scotland, to keep consults with the
Covenanting brethren there; but kept his circuits to several
Puritanical houses in England; particularly to that of
Knightley in Northamptonshire," to Fawsley Park, then and
now the house of the Knightleys," and also to that of William
Lord Say at Broughton near Banbury in Oxfordshire: " 2--
Mr. Hampden might well be on horseback in election-time.
These Pyms, these Hampdens, Knightleys were busy riding
over England in those months: it is a little fact which Anthony
Wood has seen fit to preserve for us.
A little fact, which, if we meditate it, and picture in any
measure the general humour and condition of the England
that then was, will spread itself into great expanse in our
imagination! What did they say, do, think, these patriotic
missionaries, "as they rode about the country"? What
did they propose, advise, in the successive Townhalls,
Country-houses, and "Places of Consult"? John Pym,
Clerk of the Exchequer, Mr. Hampden of Great Hampden,
1 Fraser's Magazine, No. 178.
*Wood's Athena (Bliss's edition), iii. 73, 59; Nugent's Hampden,
i. 327.
IOO
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? An Election to the Long Parliament 101
riding to and fro, lodging with the Puritan Squires of
this English Nation, must have had notable colloquies!
What did the Townspeople say in reply to them? We have
a great curiosity to know about it: how this momentous
General Election, of autumn 1640, went on; what the
physiognomy or figure of it was; how "the remarkablest
Parliament that ever sat, the father of all Free British
Parliaments, American Congresses and French Conventions,
that have sat since in this world," was got together!
To all which curiosities and inquiries, meanwhile, there
is as good as no answer whatever. Wood's fact, such as it
is, has to twinkle for us like one star in a heaven otherwise
all dark, and shed what light it can. There is nothing known
of this great business, what it was, what it seemed to be, how
in the least it transacted itself, in any town, or county, or
locality. James Heath, "Carrion Heath" as Smelfungus
calls him, does, in his Flagellum (or Flagitium1 as it properly
is), write some stuff about Oliver Cromwell and Cambridge
Election; concerning which latter and Cleaveland the Poet
there is also another blockheadism on record:--but these,
and the like, mere blockheadisms, pitch-dark stupidities and
palpable falsities,--what can we do with these? Forget
them, as soon as possible, to all eternity;--that is the evident
rule: Admit that we do honestly know nothing, instead of
misknowing several things, and in some sense all things, which
is a great misfortune in comparison!
Contemporary men had no notion, as indeed they seldom
have in such cases, what an enormous work they were going-
on with; and nobody took note of this election more than
any former one. Besides, if they had known, they had
other business than to write accounts of it for us. But how
could anybody know that this was to be the Long Parliament,
and to cut his Majesty's head off, among other feats? A very
"spirited election," I dare believe:--but there had been
another election that same year, equally spirited, which had
issued in a Short Parliament, and mere "second Episcopal
War. " There had been three prior elections, sufficiently
spirited; and had issued, each of them, in what we may call
a futile shriek; their Parliaments swiftly vanishing again.
1Or, Life of Oliver Cromwell (London, 1663): probably, all things
considered, the brutalest Platitude this English Nation has to show
for itself in writing.
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? io2 Carlyle's Essays
Sure enough, from whatever cause it be, the world, as we
said, knows not anywhere of the smallest authentic notice
concerning this matter, which is now so curious to us, and is
partly becoming ever more curious. In the old Memoirs, not
entirely so dull when once we understand them; in the multi-
tudinous rubbish-mountains of old Civil-War Pamphlets
(some thirty or fifty thousand of them in the British Museum
alone, unread, unsorted, unappointed, unannealed! ), which
will continue dull till, by real labour and insight, of which
there is at present little hope, the ten-thousandth part of
them be extracted; and the nine-thousand nine-hundred and
ninety-nine parts of them be eaten by moths, or employed
in domestic cookery when fuel grows scarce;-- in these
chaotic masses of old dull printing there is not to be met with,
in long years of manipulation, one solitary trait of any
election, in any point of English land, to this same Long
Parliament, the remarkablest that ever sat in the world.
England was clearly all alive then,--with a moderate crop
of corn just reaped from it; and other things not just ready
for reaping yet. In Newcastle, in "the Bishoprick" and
that region, a Scotch Army, bristling with pike and musket,
sonorous with drum and psalm-book, all snugly garrisoned
and billeted " with ? 850 a-day; " over in Yorkshire an English
Army, not quite so snugly; and a " Treaty of Ripon " going
on; and immense things in the wind, and Pym and Hampden
riding to and fro to hold " consults:" it must have been an
election worth looking at! But none of us will see it; the
Opacities have been pleased to suppress this election, con-
sidering it of no interest. It is erased from English and from
human Memory, or was never recorded there,--(owing to
the stupor and dark nature of that faculty, we may well say).
It is a lost election; swallowed in the dark deeps: premit
atra Nox. Black Night; and this one fact of Anthony
Wood's more or less faintly twinkling there!
In such entire darkness, it was a welcome discovery which
the present Editor made, of certain official or semi-official
Documents, legal testimonies and signed affidavits, relative to
the Election for Suffolk, such as it actually showed itself to
men's observation in the Town of Ipswich on that occasion:
Documents drawn-up under the exact eye of Sir Simonds
D'Ewes, High-Sheriff of Suffolk; all carefully preserved these
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? An Election to the Long Parliament 103
two centuries, and still lying safe for the inspection of the
curious among the Harley Manuscripts in the British Museum.
Sir Simonds, as will be gradually seen, had his reasons for
getting these Documents drawn-up; and luckily, when the
main use of them was over, his thrifty historical turn of mind
induced him to preserve them for us. A man of sublime
Antiquarian researches, Law-learning, human and divine
accomplishments, and generally somewhat Grandisonian in
his ways; a man of scrupulous Puritan integrity, of high-
flown conscientiousness, exactitude and distinguished perfec-
tion; ambitious to be the pink of Christian country-gentlemen
and magistrates of counties; really a most spotless man and
High-Sheriff: how shall he suffer, in Parliament or out of it,
to the latest posterity, any shadow from election-brabbles or
the like indecorous confusion to rest on his clear-polished
character? Hence these Documents;--for there had an un-
seemly brabble, and altercation from unreasonable persons,
fallen-out at this Election, which "might have ended in
blood," from the nose or much deeper, had Sir Simonds been
a less perfect High-Sheriff! Hence these Documents, we
say; and they are preserved to us.
The Documents, it must be at once owned, are somewhat
of the wateriest: but the reader may assure himself they are
of a condensed, emphatic, and very potent nature, in compari-
son with the generality of Civil-War documents and records!
Of which latter indeed, and what quality they are of, the
human mind, till once it has earnestly tried them, can form
no manner of idea. We had long heard of Dulness, and
thought we knew it a little; but here first is the right dead
Dulness, Dulness its very self! Ditch-water, fetid bilge-
water, ponds of it and oceans of it; wide-spread genuine
Dulness, without parallel in this world: such is the element
in which that history of our Heroic Seventeenth Century
as yet rots and swims! The hapless inquirer swashes to and
fro, in the sorrow of his heart: if in an acre of stagnant water
he can pick-up half a peascod, let him thank his stars!
This Editor, in such circumstances, read the D'Ewes Docu-
ments, and re-read them, not without some feeling of satisfac-
tion. Such as they are, they bring one face to face with
an actual election, at Ipswich, "in Mr. Hambie's field, on
Monday the 19th of October 1640, an extreme windy day. "
There is the concrete figure of that extreme windy Monday,
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? 104 Carlyle's Essays
Monday gone Two-hundred and odd years: the express image
of Old Ipswich, and Old England, and that Day; exact to
Nature herself,--though in a most dark glass, the more is
the pity! But it is a glass; it is the authentic mind, namely,
or seeing-facuity, of Sir Simonds D'Ewes and his Affidavit-
makers, who did look on the thing with eyes and minds, and
got a real picture of it for themselves. Alas, we too could
see it, the very thing as it then and there was, through these
men's poor limited authentic picture of it here preserved for
us, had we eyesight enough;--a consideration almost of a
desperate nature! Eyesight enough, 0 reader: a man in
that case were a god, and could do various things! --
We will not overload these poor Documents with com-
mentary. Let the public, as we have done, look with its own
eyes. To the commonest eyesight a markworthy old fact
or two may visibly disclose itself; and in shadowy outline
and sequence, to the interior regions of the seeing-faculty, if
the eyesight be beyond common, a whole world of old facts,--
an old contemporary England at large, as it stood and lived,
on that "extreme windy day,"--may more or less dimly
suggest themselves. The reader is to transport himself to
Ipswich; and, remembering always that it is two centuries
and four years ago, look about him there as he can. Some
opportunity for getting these poor old Documents copied
into modern hand has chanced to arise; and here, with an
entire welcome to all faithful persons who are sufficiently
patient of dulness for the sake of direct historical knowledge,
they are given forth in print.
It is to be premised that the Candidates in this Election
are Three: Sir Nathaniel Barnardiston and Sir Philip Parker
on the Puritan side; and Mr. Henry North, son of Sir
Roger North, on the Court or Royalist side. Sir Roger is
himself already elected, or about to be elected, for the borough
of Eye;--and now Mr. Henry, heir-apparent, is ambitious
to be Knight of the Shire. He, if he can, will oust one of the
two Puritans, he cares little which, and it shall be tried on
Monday.
To most readers these Candidates are dark and inane, mere
Outlines of Candidates: but Suffolk readers, in a certain dim
way, recognise something of them. "The Parkers still
continue in due brilliancy, in that shire: a fine old place,
at Long. Melford, near Bury:--but this Parker," says our
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? An Election to the Long Parliament 105
Suffolk monitor,1 "is of another family, the family of Lord
Morley-and-Monteagle, otherwise not unknown in English
History. 2 The Barnardistons too," it would appear, "had
a noble mansion in the east side of the county, though it has
. quite vanished now, and corn is growing on the site of it,"
and the family is somewhat eclipsed. The Norths are from
Mildenhall, from Finborough, Laxfield; the whole world
knows the North kindred, Lord Keeper Norths, Lord Guild-
ford Norths, of which these Norths of ours are a junior twig.
Six lines are devoted by Collins Dryasdust3 to our Candidate
Mr. Henry, of Mildenhall, and to our Candidate's Father and
Uncle; testifying indisputably that they lived, and that they
died.
Let the reader look in the dim faces, Royalist and Puritan,
of these respectable Vanished Gentlemen; let him fancy their
old Great Houses, in this side of the county or that other,
standing all young, firm, fresh-pargeted, and warm with
breakfast-fire, on that "extreme windy morning," which
have fallen into such a state of dimness now! Let the
reader, we say, look about him in that old Ipswich; in that
old vanished population: perhaps he may recognise a thing
or two. There is the old "Market Cross," for one thing;
"an old Grecian circular building, of considerable diameter;
a dome raised on distinct pillars, so that you could go freely
in and out between them; a figure of Justice on the top;"
1 which the elderly men in Ipswich can still recollect, for it
did not vanish till some thirty years ago. The " Corn Hill"
again, being better rooted, has not vanished hitherto, but is
still extant as a Street and Hill; and the Townhall stands
on one side of it.
Samuel Duncon, the Town-constable, shall speak first.
"The Duncons were a leading family in the Corporation of
Ipswich; Robert Duncon was patron of the," etc. etc. : so it
would appear; but this Samuel, Town-constable, must have
been of the more decayed branches, poor fellow! What most
concerns us is, that he seems to do his constabling in a really
1 D. E. Davy, Esq. , of Ufford, in that County, whose learning in
Suffolk History is understood to be supreme, and whose obliging dis-
position we have ourselves experienced.
* " It was to William Parker, Lord Monteagle, ancestor of this Sir
Philip, that the Letter was addressed which saved the King and Parlia-
ment from the Gunpowder Plot. Sir Philip had been High-Sheriff in
1637; he died in 1675. "--Dryasdust MSS.
'Peerage, iv. 62, 63 (London, 1741).
II 704 H
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? io6 Carlyle's Essays
judicious manner, with unspeakable reverence to the High-
Sheriff; that he expresses himself like a veracious person, and
writes a remarkably distinct hand. We have sometimes, for
light's sake, slightly modified Mr. Duncon's punctuation;
but have respected his and the High - Sheriff's spelling,
though it deserves little respect,--and have in no case, never
so slightly, meddled with his sense. The questionable italic
letters in brackets are evident interpolations;--omissible, if
need be.
SUFFOLKE ELECTION1
No. I
[Samuel Duncon testifieth]
"Memorandum, That upon Monday the 19th day of October
this present year 1640, the election of two Knights for the
Shire was at Ipswich in Suffolke; the Writt being read about
eight of the clocke in the morning; and in the Markett
Crosse where the County Court is generally kept, Mr. Henry
North sonne of Sir Roger North was there at the reading of
the said Writt. All this time the other two, namely, Sir
Nathaniel Barnardiston and Sir Philip Parker, were at the
King's Head; and Mr. North was carried about neare halfe
an houre before the other two came [Carried about in his
chair by the jubilant people: Let all men see, and come and
vote for him. The chairing was then the first step, it would
seem]; and after the other two were taken there, Mr. North
was carried into the field neare the said towne, called Mr.
Hambie's feild:2 and the said High-Sherriffe was there
polling, about halfe an houre before the other two Knights
knewe either of his being polling, or of the High-Sherriff's
intention to take the Poll in that place. But at length the
two Knights were carried into the said feild; and before they
came there, the tables which were sett for them, the said
Sir Nathaniel and Sir Philip, were thrust downe, and troaden
under foot [Such a pressure and crowding was there f]; and
they both caused but one table to bee sett there,--till about
1 From Harlrian MSS. , British Museum (Parliamentary Affairs col-
lected by Sir S. D'Ewes), No. 165, foL 5-8.
'Or, " Hanbie's field," as the Duncon MS. has it: he probably means
Hamby. "A family of the latter name had property at Ipswich and
about it, in those times. "--Dryasdust MSS.
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? An Election to the Long Parliament 107
three of the clocke of the afternoone, the said day, about
which time Sir Nathaniel had another table sett there, a
little remote from the other. And when they went about to
poll, they wanted a clarke. I, Samuel! Duncon, standing
by, some requested mee; and upon the Under-Sherriff's
'allowance, I did take names, and one Mr. Fishar with mee,
Jhe for Sir Nathaniel, and myselfe for Sir Philip; although
many that came for the one, came for the other; and if any
, came for Mr. North (as there did some), wee tooke them like-
wise for him. And Mr. John Clinch of Creting,1 Sir Roger
North's brother-in-law, or some other of Mr. North his
[' North his' means North's] friends, stoode by all the time.
-And after the space of one quarter of an houre, came Sir
Robert Crane,2 and did oppose against Mr. Fishar; and then
came the said High-Sherriffe himselfe to the table, wheere
wee weere writing, and discharged Mr. Fishar, and tooke his
papers of him; and at the request of Sir Rpger North did
appoint one Mr. John Sheppard to write in his place, who
then tooke names for Sir Nathaniel, and myselfe for Sir
Philip. About one houre after, Sir Robert Crane and the
rest of Mr. North his friends moved Sir Nathaniel that wee
. ~ight leave off polling for him and Sir Philip, and take the
Poll only for Mr. North; for, they said, Mr. North's table
was much pestred, and many of his men would be gone out
of towne, being neare night,--and the like reasons. Which
reasons might as well have been alledged in the behalfe
of Sir Nathaniel and Sir Philip: but without reasoning, Sir
Nathaniel did grant them their desire; and presently Sir
Robert Crane went and called all that were for Mr. North
to come to that table; and soe Mr. Sheppard and myselfe
tooke for Mr. North as long as wee could well see; which I
think was about one houre. Having done, wee gave upp our
Bookes, and did goe to Mrs. Penning's house in Ipswich, where
Sir Roger North was then with the said High-Sherriffe: and
I heard no oppositions at that time taken against any thing
1 " The family of Clinch, or Clench as it should be spelt, were of note
in Suffolk. They descended from John Clench of," etc. etc. , " buried
in 1607, with a handsome monument to his memory. He was one of the
I Justices of the King's Bench. His Grandson, John Clench, Esq. , was
High-Sheriff of the County in 1639. "--Dryasdust MSS. This, I think,
is our and Samuel Duncon's Clench.
* " Sir Robert Crane was descended from a Norfolk family, which
migrated," etc. "He was created a Baronet in May 1627. He was
of Chilton Hall, near Sudbury; he died in 1642. "--Ibid.
