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SKETCH OF LORD FALKLAND.

CLARENDON'S " HISTORY OF THE REBELLION."

Lord Falkland was one of the most accomplished Englishmen of Charles I's time, a scholar as well as a soldier. The character of the great civil war in which he lost his life has been elsewhere explained.

In this unhappy battle (of Newbury) was slain the Lord Viscount Falkland, a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that, if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity.

Turpe mori, post te, solo non posse dolore.

Before this parliament, his condition of life was so happy that it was hardly capable of improvement. Before he came to be twenty years of age he was master of a noble fortune, which descended to him by the gift of a grandfather, without passing through his father or mother, who were then both alive, and not well enough contented to find themselves passed by in the descent. His education for some years had been in Ireland, where his father was lord-deputy; so that, when he returned into England to the possession of his fortune, he was unentangled with any acquaintance or friends, which usually grow up by the custom of conversation, and, therefore, was to make a pure election of his company, which he chose by other rules than were prescribed to the young nobility of that time. And it can not be denied, though

he admitted some few to his friendship for the agreeableness of their natures, and their undoubted affection to him, that his familiarity and friendship for the most part was with men of the most eminent and sublime parts, and of untouched reputation in point of integrity, and such men had a title to his bosom.

He was a great cherisher of wit, and fancy, and good 3 parts in any man; and if he found them clouded with poverty or want, a most liberal and bountiful patron toward them, even above his fortune, of which, in those administrations, he was such a dispenser as if he had been trusted with it to such uses; and if there had been the least of vice in his expense, he might have been thought too prodigal. He was constant and pertinacious in whatsoever he resolved to do, and not to be wearied by any pains that were necessary to that end. And, therefore, having once resolved not to see London, which he loved above all places, till he had perfectly learned the Greek tongue, he went to his own house in the country and pursued it with that indefatigable industry that it will not be believed in how short a time he was master of it, and accurately read all the Greek historians.

In this time, his house being within little more than 4 ten miles of Oxford, he contracted familiarity and friendship with the most polite and accurate men of that university, who found such an immenseness of wit, and such a solidity of judgment in him, so infinite a fancy bound in by most logical ratiocination, such a vast knowledge, that he was not ignorant in anything, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had known nothing, that they frequently resorted and dwelt with him as in a college situated in a purer air; so that his house was a university in a less volume, whither they came not so much for repose as study, and to examine and refine those grosser

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propositions which laziness and consent made current in vulgar conversation. . . .

He was superior to all those passions and affections which attend vulgar minds, and was guilty of no other ambition than of knowledge, and to be reputed a lover of all good men; and that made him too much a contemner of those arts which must be indulged in the transactions of human affairs. In the last Short Parliament he was a burgess in the House of Commons, and from the debates, which were there managed with all imaginable gravity and sobriety, he contracted such a reverence to parliaments that he thought it really impossible they could ever produce mischief or inconvenience to the kingdom, or that the kingdom could be tolerably happy in the intermission of them. . .

The great opinion he had of the uprightness and integrity of those persons who appeared most active, especially of Mr. Hampden, kept him longer from suspecting any design against the peace of the kingdom; and though he differed from them commonly in conclusions, he believed long their purposes were honest. When he grew better informed what was law, and discerned in them a desire to control that law by a vote of one or both Houses, no man more opposed those attempts, and gave the adverse party more trouble by reason and argumentation; insomuch as he was by degrees looked upon as an advocate for the court, to which he contributed só little that he declined those addresses, and even those invitations which 7 he was obliged almost by civility to entertain. And he was so jealous of the least imagination that he should incline to preferment, that he affected even a moroseness to the court and to the courtiers, and left nothing undone which might prevent and divert the King's or Queen's favor toward him but the deserving it. For when the

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King sent for him once or twice to speak with him, and to give him thanks for his excellent comportment in those councils, which his Majesty graciously termed doing him service," his answers were more negligent and less satisfactory than might be expected; as if he cared only that his actions should be just, not that they should be acceptable; and that his Majesty should think that they proceeded only from the impulsion of conscience, without any sympathy in his affections.

He had a courage of the most clear and keen temper, 8 and so far from fear that he seemed not without some appetite of danger; and, therefore, upon any occasion of action, he always engaged his person in those troops which he thought, by the forwardness of the commanders, to be most like to be farthest engaged; and, in all such encounters, he had about him an extraordinary cheerfulness, without at all affecting the execution that usually attended them; in which he took no delight, but took pains to prevent it, where it was not by resistance made necessary; insomuch that, at Edgehill, when the enemy was routed, he was like to have incurred great peril by interposing to save those who had thrown away their arms, and against whom, it may be, others were more fierce for their having thrown them away; so that a man might think he came into the field chiefly out of curiosity, to see the face of danger, and charity, to prevent the shedding of blood.

Yet, in his natural inclination, he acknowledged he 9 was addicted to the profession of a soldier; and, shortly after he came to his fortune, before he was of age, he went into the Low Countries, with a resolution of procuring command, and to give himself up to it; from which he was diverted by the complete inactivity of that summer; so he returned to England, and shortly after

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entered upon that vehement course of study we mentioned before, till the first alarm from the north; then again he made ready for the field, and, though he received some repulse in the command of a troop of horse, of which he had a promise, he went a volunteer with the Earl of Essex.

From the entrance into this unnatural war his natural cheerfulness and vivacity grew clouded, and a kind of sadness and dejection of spirit stole upon him which he had never been used to; yet, being one of those who believed that one battle would end all differences, and that there would be so great a victory on one side that the other would be compelled to submit to any conditions from the victor-which supposition and conclusion generally sunk into the minds of most men, and prevented the looking after many advantages that might then have been laid hold of-he resisted those indispositions.

But, after the King's return from Brentford, and the furious resolution of the two Houses not to admit any treaty for peace, those indispositions, which had before touched him, grew into a perfect habit of uncheerfulness, and he, who had been so exactly easy and affable to all men, that his face and countenance was always present and vacant to his company, and held any cloudiness and less pleasantness of the visage a kind of rudeness or incivility, became on a sudden less communicable, and thence very sad, pale, and exceedingly affected with the spleen. In his clothes and habit, which he had minded before always with more neatness and industry and expense than is usual to so great a soul, he was not now only incurious, but too negligent; and, in his reception of suitors, and the necessary or casual addresses to his place, so quick and sharp and severe that there wanted not some men-strangers to his nature and disposition