HISTORY OF THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY;-JOANNES ERI- GENA; ABELARD'S LIFE AND WORKS; THE MOST FAMOUS HISTORY OF ENGLAND. BOOK V. CHAP. I. Review of the Character, Laws, Causes of Unpopularity, THE RICH. III. HE confession of our old chroniclers, who so REIGN OF little favor Richard, that if he had continued to be lord protector only, and to have suffered his nephew to have lived and reigned, "the realm would have prospered; and he would have been as much praised and beloved, as he is now abhorred and despised;" and the declaration of lord Bacon, who has adopted every prejudice against him, that he was yet a king jealous for the honor of the English nation," are expressive panegyrics, which imply that he must have had some merits, that are inconsistent with that general abuse, by which our elder historians, and their modern copyists, have uniformly defamed him. 2 Bacon's Hist. Henry VII. p. 2. B V. REIGN OF BOOK Even the philosopher of Verulam, instead of calmly stating to us his laudable qualities and actions, has contented himself with declaring, that " his cruelties and parricides, in the opinion of all men, weighed down his virtues; "3 thus admitting the existence of what he will not particularize; and he is even so unkind to his memory, as to give the king no credit for the reality of what he felt that he possessed; for he adds, that wise men thought these virtues not to be ingenerate," but "forced and affected." So that whatever worth Richard possessed or displayed, he is the only king of England, of whom we are to believe, that nothing which seemed good in him could be genuine; but that he must have been altogether and unceasingly that "malicious, envious, and deep dissembling" demon, which More and Polydore Virgil' have, rather passionately, depicted. Even the little habit of " biting continually his under lip when in deep thought," " is considered by the latter, to be the mark of a ferocious nature, a human wild beast; as if some of the most harmless and best-principled of men have not had the same habit, or customs as terrific, of knitting, unconsciously, the brow into stern frowns; or of cutting or biting their nails, till the blood has issued, while absorbed in profound and interesting contemplation. Bacon himself lived to know and prove, that a great and noble mind may, by circumstances, be led to commit some obnoxious deeds, without lessening the merit and utility of many virtues, and of a beneficial life. And Richard may justly complain, if his voice could be heard from his bespattered tomb, that his good actions were 3 Bacon's Hist. Henry VII. p. 2, More, p. 154. Pol. V. 565. • Pol. V. 565. |