HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. BY SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. CHARACTER OF BUNYAN. THE history and genius of Bunyan were as much more extraordinary than those of Baxter, as his station and attainments were inferior. He is probably at the head of unlettered men of genius, and perhaps there is no other instance of any man reaching fame from so abject an origin: for the other extraordinary men who have become famous without education, though they were without what is called learning, have had much reading and knowledge; and though they were repressed by poverty, were not, like him, sullied by a vagrant and disreputable occupation. By his trade of a travelling tinker, he was from his earliest years placed in the midst of profligacy, and on the verge of dishonesty. He was for a time a private in the Parliamentary army, the only military service which was likely to tolerate his sentiments, and amend his life. Having embraced the opinions of the Baptists, he was soon admitted to preach in a community which did not recognize the distinction between the Clergy and the Laity.* Even under the Protectorate he was harassed by some busy magistrates, who took advantage of a Parliamentary ordinance, excluding from toleration those who maintained the unlawfulness of infant baptism. But this officiousness was checked by the spirit of the government; and it was not till the return of intolerance with Charles II., that the sufferings of Bunyan began. Within five months after the restoration, he was apprehended under the statute of the 35th of Elizabeth, and was thrown into prison, or rather into a dungeon at Bedford, where he remained for 12 years. The narratives of his life exhibit remarkable specimens of the acuteness and fortitude with which he withstood the threats and snares of the magistrates and clergymen, and attorneys, who beset him. He foiled them in every contest of argument, especially in that which relates to the independence of religion and civil authority, which he expounded with clearness and exactness, for it was a subject on which his naturally vigorous mind was better educated, by his habitual meditations, than it could have been by the most skilful instructor. In the year after his apprehension, he made some informal applications for relief to the Judges of Assize, to whom his petition was presented by his wife, who was treated by one of them (Twisden) with brutal insolence. His colleague, Sir Matthew Hale, listened to her with patience and goodness, and with consolatory compassion pointed out to her the only legal means of obtaining redress. It is a singular gratification thus to find a human character, which, if it be met in the most obscure recess of the history of a bad time, is seen to display some new excellence. The conduct of Hale on this occasion can be ascribed only to strong and pure benevolence, for he was unconscious of Bunyan's genius, he disliked preaching mechanics, and he partook the general prejudice against Anabaptists. In the long years which followed, the time of Bunyan was divided between the manufacture of lace, which he learned in order to support his family, and the composition of those works which have given celebrity to his sufferings. He was at length released in 1672 by Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, but not till the timid prelate had received an injunction from the Lord Chancellor to that effect. Ivimy's Life of Bunyan. + Schobell's Ordinances, cap. 114, 22d April, 1648. Probably Lord Shaftesbury, who received the Great Seal in Nov. 1672. He availed himself of the indulgence of James II., without trusting it, aad died unmolested in the last year of that Prince's government. His Pilgrim's Progress, an allegorical representation of the Calvinistic theology, at first found readers only among those of that persuasion, gradually emerged from this narrow circle, and by the natural power of imagination over the uncorrupted feelings of the majority of mankind, at length rivalled Robinson Crusoe in popularity. The bigots and persecutors sunk into oblivion; the scoffs of wits* and worldlings were unavailing; while, after the lapse of a century, the object of their cruelty and scorn touched the poetical sympathy, as well as the piety, of Cowper.† His genius subdued the opposite prejudices of Johnson and of Franklin, and his name has been uttered in the same breath with those of Spenser and Dante. BARCLAY. Of those who first systematized, and perhaps insensibly softened the Quaker Creed, was Barclay, a gentleman of Scotland, in his Apology for the Quakers. A masterpiece of ingenious reasoning, and a model of argumentative composition, which extorted praise from Boyle, one of the most acute and least fanatical of men. PENN. The most distinguished of their (the Quakers) converts was William Penn, whose father, Admiral Sir William Penn, had been a personal friend of the King, and one of his instructors in naval affairs. This admirable person had employed his great abilities in support of civil as well as religious liberty, and had both acted and suffered for them under Charles II. Even if he had not founded the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as an everlasting memorial of his love of freedom, his actions and writings in England would have been enough to absolve him from the charge of intending to betray the rights of his countrymen. But though the friend of Algernon Sidney,|| he had never ceased to intercede, through his friends at Court, for the persecuted. An absence of two years in America, and the occupation of his mind, had probably loosened his connection with English politicians, and rendered him less acquainted with the principles of the government. On the accession of James, he was received by that Prince with favour, and hopes of indulgence to his suffering brethren were early held out to him. He was soon admitted to terms of apparent intimacy, and was believed to possess such influence, that two hundred supplicants were often seen at his gates, imploring his intercession with the King. That it really was great, appears from his obtaining a promise of pardon for his friend Mr. Locke, which that illustrious man declined, because he thought the acceptance would be a confession of criminality. He appears in 1679, by his influence on James, when in Scotland, to have obtained the release of all the Scottish Quakers who were imprisoned; and he obtained the release of many hundred Quaker prisoners in England, as well as letters from Lord Sunderland to the Lord Lieutenants in England for favour to his persuasion, several months before the declaration of indulgence. It was no * Hudibras. Part I. canto ii. p. 409, &c. "Oh! thou, who borne on Fancy's eager wing," &c. See Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres. Avril, 1684. § See Clarkson's Life of Penn, I. p. 433-438. wonder that he should be gained over by this power of doing good. The very occupations in which he was engaged, brought daily before his mind the general evils of intolerance, and the sufferings of his own unfortunate brethren. Though well-stored with useful and ornamental knowledge, he was unpractised in the wiles of the court, and his education had not trained bim to dread the violation of principle, so much as to pity the infliction of suffering. It cannot be doubted that he believed the King's object to be universal liberty in religion, and nothing farther. His own sincere piety taught him to consider religious liberty as unspeakably the highest of human privileges, and he was too just not to be desirous of bestowing on all other men that which he most earnestly sought for himself. He, who refused to employ force in the most just defence, felt a singular abhorrence of its existence to prevent good men from following the dictates of their conscience. Such seemed to be the motives which inclined this excellent man to lend himself to the measures of the King. Compassion, friendship, liberality, and tolerance led him to support a system of which the success would have undone his country, and afforded a remarkable proof that in the complicated combinations of political morality, a virtue misplaced may produce as much mischief as a vice. The Dutch Minister represents the arch-Quaker as travelling over the kingdom to gain proselytes to the dispensing power. Duncombe, a banker in London, and (it must in justice, though in sorrow, be added) Penn, were the two Protestant counsellors of Lord Sutherland. Henceforward it became necessary for the friends of liberty to deal with him as an enemy, to be resisted when his associates were in power, and watched after they had lost it. WILLIAM THE FIRST. The House of Nassau stood conspicuous, at the dawn of modern history, among the noblest of the ruling families in Germany. In the 13th century Adolphus of Nassau succeeded Rodolph of Hapsburg in the imperial crown, the highest dignity of the Christian world. A branch of this ancient house acquired ample possessions in the Netherlands, together with the principality of Orange in Provence; and under Charles the Fifth, William of Nassau was the most potent Lord of the Burgundian provinces. Educated in the palace and almost in the chamber of the Emperor, he was nominated in the earliest years of his manhood to the government of Holland and the command of the Imperial Army, by that sagacious monarch, who, in the memorable solemnity of abdication, leant upon his shoulder as the first of his Belgian subjects. The same eminent qualities which recommended him to the confidence of Charles, awaked the jealousy of Philip the Second, whose anger breaking through all the restraints of his wonted simulation, burst into furious reproaches against the Prince of Orange, as the fomenter of the resistance of the Flemings, to the destruction of their privileges. Among the three rulers who perhaps unconsciously were stirred up at the same moment to preserve the civil and religious liberties of mankind, Williain the First must be owned to have wanted the brilliant and attractive qualities of Henry the Fourth, and to have yielded to the commanding genius of Elizabeth; but his principles were inore inflexible than those of the amiable hero, and his mind was undisturbed by the infirmities and passions which lowered the illustrious Queen. Though he performed great actions with weaker means than theirs, his course was more unspotted. Faithful to the King of Spain as long as the preservation of the Commonwealth allowed, he counselled the Duchess of GENT. MAG. VOL. III. 2 I Parma against all the iniquities by which the Netherlands were lost: but faithful also to his country, in his dying instructions he enjoined his son to beware of insidious offers of compromise from the Spaniard, to adhere with his alliance with France and England, to observe the privileges of provinces and towns, and to conduct himself in all things as became the chief magistrate of the Republic. Advancing a century beyond his contemporaries in civilized wisdom, he braved the prejudices of the Calvinistic clergy, by contending for the toleration of Catholics, of whom the chiefs had sworn his destruction.* Thoughtful, of unconquerable spirit, persuasive though taciturn, of simple character, yet maintaining due dignity and becoming magnificence in his public character, an able commander, and a wise statesman, he is perhaps the first of those who have risen by arms from private station to supreme authority, and the greatest of the happy few who have enjoyed the glorious fortune of bestowing liberty upon a people. The whole struggle of this illustrious Prince was against foreign oppression His posterity, less happy, were engaged in domestic broils, partly arising from their undefined authority, and from the very complicated constitution of the Commonwealth. PRINCE MAURICE. Maurice, the eldest Protestant son of William, surpassed his father in military genius, but fell far short of him in that moderation of temper and principle which is the most indispensable virtue of the leader of a free state. The blood of Barnevelt and the dungeon of Grotius have left an indelible stain upon his memory; nor is it without apparent reason that the aristocratical party have charged him with projects of usurpation, natural to a family of republican magistrates, allied by blood to all the kings of Europe, and distinguished by many approaches and pretensions to the kingly power, which they were always tempted, and sometimes provoked to pursue. HENRY FREDerick. Henry Frederick, his successor, was the son of William the First, by Louisse de Caligny, a woman singular in her character, as well as in her destiny, who having seen her father and the husband of her youth murdered at the massacre of St. Bartholomew, was doomed to witness the fall ofa more illustrious husband by the hand of an assassin of the same faction, and who in her last widowhood earned the affections of William's children by former wives, so as to ensure their protection to a son whom she inspired with her own virtues. Having maintained the fame of his family in war, he was happier than his more celebrated brother in a domestic administration, which was moderate, tolerant, and unsuspected. He had lived to see the final recognition of Dutch independence by the Treaty of Munster, and was succeeded by his son William the Second; who, after a short turbulent rule, died in 1653, leaving his widow, the Princess Royal of England, pregnant, who was delivered of her only child William the Third, on the 14th November, 1610, eight days after the death of his father. See Burnet's History, vol. i. p. 547. + Vide Strada de Beler Beleo-Belgico, Dec. 11. lib. v. ann. 1584. |