Extraordinary men Author:William Russell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Carlyle, was a born dullard, as well as villain and buffoon, whose history, from the cradle to the grave, was unredeemed by the faintest indication of genius, in... more »tellect, or humanity! The coarse daubing of those mercenary limners, exposed of late years to the keen atmosphere of a searching criticism, has fallen off in flakes, and if the image of the boy-Cromwell in the national mind is still somewhat smirched and stained by the impressions left by the crumbling lamp-black with which it was so lavishly encrusted, its true lineaments and character can now be discerned with sufficient accuracy to satisfy us that it is at all events no vulgar, merely brutal spirit, that gleams forth from beneath the massive forehead— that speaks more clearly than in words, by the firmly-closed, flexile lips; and we are enabled at once to recognise one of those faces upon which a great life early dawns and glasses itself. The birth and lineage of Oliver Cromwell have taxed the ingenuity of both eulogists and detractors. According to the latter gentlemen he was simply a brewer, and descended from a blacksmith. Others, and amongst them, the author of Paradise Lost, run riot in a contrary direction. " Cromwell," writes Milton, "was of noble and illustrious family. The name was formerly famous in the state when well governed by kings, and more famous for orthodox religion, then first restored or established amongst us." This passage refers, of course, to Thomas Cromwell, son of Walter Cromwell, a blacksmith of Putney, the successor of Wolsey in ministerial power, enriched and created Earl of Essex, by Henry the Eighth, for his zeal in the destruction of monasteries, and finally beheaded by that amiable monarch. A sister of this Earl of Essex, handsomely dowered with church-lands, married one Morgan Willi...« less