No doubt, however, he is the man of all others in our civil war who is most generally supposed to have represented the monarchical principle in the conflict; and upon this ground his statue was among those voted earliest for the historical adornment of the new Palace at Westminster. But the real truth we suspect to be, that Falkland was far more of an apostate than Strafford, for his heart was really with the Parliament from the first, which Strafford's never was; and never, to the very end, did he sincerely embrace the cause with which his gallant and mournful death at the age of thirty-four' has eternally connected him. We have no wish to say anything to unsettle the admiring thoughts which must always cluster round the memory of one whom Lord Clarendon has celebrated not simply as a statesman and soldier, but as a patriot, poet,'

1 "Thus fell that incomparable "young man, in the four-and-thirtieth "year of his age, having so much dis"patched the business of life, that the "oldest rarely attain to that immense "knowledge, and the youngest enter "not into the world with more inno

cence. Whosoever leads such a life, "need not care upon how short a "warning it be taken from him.”. Hist. iv. 257. For "need not care" the first editors had substituted "needs be the less anxious."

2 To the gratitude of the poets themselves, to the eternal remembrance with which such men as Ben Jonson, Suckling, Waller, and Cowley, can pay richly back in their loving verse all kinds and degrees of loving service,-he rather owes this title than to any achievements of his own. But there are yet a sufficient number of good lines in his occasional poetical pieces to justify Suckling's having placed him in his 'Session of the Poets.' There are many manly verses in his Eclogue on Jonson's death.

"Alas! that bard, that glorious bard

is dead,

Who, when I whilome cities visited,

and philosopher, in sentences that will be immortal. But it is impossible to become familiar with the details of that period of our history, and with Falkland's share in what preceded the outbreak into open hostilities, and to doubt in what spirit alone he could have taken part in them. Over and over again does Clarendon himself find it necessary to remark of him, that he never had any veneration for the Court, but only such a loyalty to the King as the law required from him; and as often is he constrained to admit, on the other hand, that he had naturally a wonderful reverence for Parliaments, as believing them most solicitous for justice, the violation whereof, in the least degree, he could not forgive any mortal power.'

But the friend who has done so much to preserve and endear his fame since his death, had unhappily influence

Whose Politicks no less the mind

direct

Than those the Manners, nor with

less effect,

When his majestic Tragedies relate All the disorders of a tottering state."

It was to be remembered also, Melybous adds, that of all this old Ben was himself "sole workman "and sole architect," as to which he concludes:

"And surely what my friend did daily tell,

If he but acted his own part as well As he writ those of others, he may boast

The happy fields hold not a happier ghost!"

These are not only good lines, but very valuable notices of rare old Jonson.

1 This passage is of course meant to convey, as Bishop Warburton has remarked, that Falkland thought resistance lawful, which Hyde himself did not. And the same feeling is expressed in other passages, as ii. 94; iv. 244, &c.

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enough, while he lived, to lead him into a position which made the exact reverse of those opinions an official necessity; and Falkland was eminently a man who, finding himself so placed, however unexpectedly, was ready at once to sacrifice everything to the punctilio of honour. In his opinions, if not in his personal antecedents, he was like the old cavalier Sir Edmund Verney, whose doubts were expressed to Hyde, the tempter of all these men. "I have eaten the king's bread, and served “him near thirty years, and I will not do so base a thing as to forsake him. I choose rather to lose my life (which "I am sure I shall do) to preserve and defend those 'things which are against my conscience to preserve and "defend; for, I will deal freely with you, I have no reverence for the bishops for whom this quarrel sub"sists." There was only this important difference in Falkland, that the bread which he had eaten, and the service to which he was vowed, before he made his final election, was that of the Parliament and not of the King. And it is not difficult to discern that his strongest feeling remained in this direction throughout: even when he seemed, as in the party struggle of the Remonstrance, most deeply to have committed himself against its leaders. His convictions never ceased to be with the opinions which the Parliament represented, though his personal habits, his elegant pursuits, his fastidious tastes, his thorough-going sense of friendship, and even his shyness. of manner and impatient impulsiveness of temper, made him an easy prey to the persuasive arts that seduced him to the service of the King. Nor will it be unjust to add that it is the admiration thus attracted to his personal character and habits, rather than any sense of his public services, which constitutes the interest of his name. It is not therefore in parliament, nor on the field of battle, that they should seek for Falkland who would cherish him most, but rather in that private home to which his love and patronage of letters lent infinite graces and enjoyments, and where the man of wit and learning found himself

invariably welcomed as to "a college situated in a "purer air."

Mr. Macaulay has remarked that he was too fastidious for public life, and never embarked in a cause that he did not speedily discover some reason for growing indifferent or hostile to. There is something in this; but we should prefer to say that his spirit in all things was too much on the surface-too quick, impetuous, and impatient; and hence both his strength in friendly impulses, and his weakness in statesmanlike action. He carried about with him a painful and uneasy sense of personal disadvantages which he was always eager to overcome, and his very impetuosity was often but another form of shyness and diffidence. But to whatever cause attributable, it is certain that what he would do in public life, he was apt to overdo; and there cannot be a greater mistake than that which so often represents him, and which voted him the first statue among English worthies in the palace at Westminster, as the incarnate spirit of the moderation of our struggle in the seventeenth century. His temperament had as little as possible of calmness or moderation in it. He fought a duel before he was nineteen; and while yet in his minority, had defied his father's authority and made a runaway match. What his friend Hyde calls a "notable vivacity" was always expressing itself in him, by words or deeds; whether the matter was great enough to impel him suddenly into the allegiance for which he died, or only small enough to bring down "his clasped hands tightly on the crown of his hat" where another man would have thought it enough quietly to sit covered. Mentioning a vote of the Commons for some certain special service, by which the Speaker was instructed in the name of the whole house to give thanks to him who had rendered it, and every member was also desired as a testimony of his particular acknowledgment "to stir or move his hat," Hyde tells us that, believing the service itself not to be of that moment, and that an honourable and generous person would not have stooped to it for any recompense," instead

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"of moving his hat, he stretched both his arms out and "clasped his hands together upon the crown of his hat, and "held it close down to his head, that all men might see how "odious that flattery was to him, and the very approbation "of the person though at that time most popular." The action might for once have excused Mr. Bankes in his perpetual desire to compare his countrymen in these wars to very different actors in a very different revolution. “Firm "as the hat of Servandony!" shouted Danton, with happy allusion to one of the towers of St. Sulpice so named, as he crushed down and held his hat immovably over his great broad face, when threatened with chastisement if he would not uncover while he sat in the pit of the Français on the eve of the Convocation of the States-General. And certainly, however unlike the men, a sudden, indignant, too impatient spirit, was common to both. It largely contributed, indeed, as well to what was right as to what was wrong in Falkland, and might equally have justified his selection as the representative, not of the moderation of the struggle, but of either of its extremes. The artist who received the commission for his statue might have sculptured him as on the 8th of February (1640-1), the vehement assailant of the Bishops, or as on the 25th of October in the same year the vehement supporter of the Church. He might have been taken in 1640 as eager for Strafford's life, as in 1643 he had become reckless of his own in the same ill-fated service as Strafford's.

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Very certain it is, at any rate, that he is the last person to take for a model of devotion to the cause he was last engaged in. Hyde expressly tells us that "from the "entrance into this unnatural war his natural cheerfulness "and vivacity grew clouded;" that only "when there was any overture or hope of peace, he would be more erect " and vigorous;" and that, in short, such was his friend's dislike of the war that he invited and sought death just to get himself fairly out of it. Before the war was actually entered on, indeed, we have proof that this dejection and sadness of spirit had stolen upon him. When, for instance,