Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/298

264 How this Quarrel between City and Army, no agreement with the King being for the present possible, went on waxing; developing itself more and more visibly into a Quarrel between Presbyterianism and Independency; attracting to the respective sides of it the two great Parties in Parliament and in England generally: all this the reader must endeavour to imagine for himself,—very dimly, as matters yet stand. In books, in Narratives old or new, he will find little satisfaction in regard to it. The old Narratives, written all by baffled enemies of Cromwell, are full of mere blind rage, distraction and darkness; the new Narratives, believing only in ‘Macchiavelism,’ etc. disfigure the matter still more. Common History, old and new, represents Cromwell as having underhand,—in a most skilful and indeed prophetic manner,—fomented or originated all this commotion of the elements; steered his way through it by ‘hypocrisy,’ by ‘master-strokes of duplicity,’ and suchlike. As is the habit hitherto of History.

‘The fact is,’ says a Manuscript already cited from, ‘poor History, contemporaneous and subsequent, has treated this matter in a very sad way. Mistakes, misdates; exaggerations, unveracities, distractions; all manner of misseeings aud misnotings in regard to it, abound. How many grave historical statements still circulate in the world, accredited by Bishop Burnet and the like, which on examination you will find melt away into after-dinner rumours,—gathered from ancient red-nosed Presbyterian gentlemen, Harbottle Grimston and Company, sitting over claret under a Blessed Restoration, and talking to the loosely recipient Bishop in a very loose way! Statements generally with some grain of harmless truth, misinterpreted by those red-nosed honourable persons; frothed-up into huge bulk by the loquacious Bishop above mentioned, and so set floating on Time’s Stream. Not very lovely to us, they, nor the red-noses they proceeded from! I do not cite them here; I have examined most of them; found