the anonymous author of the play, pretends to be displeased; we see him put out a hand toward the sceptre, then draw it back; by a devious path he draws near the throne from which he has swept the legitimate dynasty.  At last he makes up his mind, suddenly; by his command Westminster is decked with flags, the dais is built, the crown is ordered from the jewelers, the day is appointed for the ceremony.—­Strange denouement!  On that very day, in presence of the populace, the troops, the House of Commons, in the great hall of Westminster, on that dais from which he expected to descend as king, suddenly, as if aroused by a shock, he seems to awaken at the sight of the crown, asks if he is dreaming, and what the meaning is of all this regal pomp, and in a speech that lasts three hours declines the kingly title.

Was it because his spies had warned him of two conspiracies formed by Cavaliers and Puritans in concert, which were intended, taking advantage of this misstep, to break out on the same day?  Was it an inward revolution caused by the silence or the murmurs of the populace, discomposed to see their regicide ascend the throne?  Or was it simply the sagacity of genius, the instinct of a far-seeing, albeit unbridled ambition, which realizes how one step forward changes a man’s position and attitude, and which dares not expose its plebeian structure to the wind of unpopularity?  Was it all these at once?  This is a question which no contemporaneous document answers satisfactorily.  So much the better:  the poet’s liberty is the more complete, and the drama is the gainer by the latitude which history affords it.  It will be seen that here the latitude is ample and unique; this is, in truth, the decisive hour, the turning-point in Cromwell’s life.  It is the moment when his chimera escapes from him, when the present kills the future, when, to use an expressive colloquialism, his destiny misses fire.  All of Cromwell is at stake in the comedy being played between England and himself.

Such then is the man and such the period of which we have tried to give an idea in this book.

The author has allowed himself to be seduced by the childlike diversion of touching the keys of that great harpsichord.  Unquestionably, more skillful hands might have evoked a thrilling and profound melody—­not of those which simply caress the ear—­but of those intimate harmonies which stir the whole man to the depths of his being, as if each key of the key-board were connected with a fibre of the heart.  He has surrendered to the desire to depict all those fanaticisms, all those superstitions—­maladies to which religion is subject at certain epochs; to the longing to “make playthings of all these men,” as Hamlet says.  To set in array about and below Cromwell, himself the centre and pivot of that court, of that people, of that little world, which attracts all to his cause and inspires all with his vigour, that twofold conspiracy devised by two