EVERYBODY is grateful to Charles Dickens; bas never had a sobriquet. At first he was Boz,

but that soon passed.

but Harper's Monthly has a delightful sense of proprietorship in him, because it is in these Yet it was still Boz who, on the morning of pages that his stories now for many years have the 3d of January, eighteen-hundred-and-fortybeen first introduced to American readers. And two, according to his own report, opened the this has been done, in the absence of an interna- | door of, and put my head into, a state-room' on tional copyright, upon terms mutually agreeable. board the Britannia steam-packet, twelve hunMr. Dickens is now coming to meet a new gen-dred tons burden per register, bound for Halifax eration of friends face to face as he met their fathers. He is coming, still comparatively a young man, with his genius in full flower, to make still more real to us, if that were possible, the characters which have become an essential part of literature and life. The three English authors who have enriched daily experience with the most living and real creations are Shakes-worthy and courteous gentlemen. But if any peare, Scott, and Dickens.

and Boston, and carrying her Majesty's mails." It was on Saturday, the 22d of January, at dusk, that the famous Mr. Dickens landed in Boston, and was immensely impressed by the attention, politeness, and good-humor of the Custom-house officers. Certainly, and the Easy Chair wishes also to offer its tribute of admiration to the same

one of them should chance to honor this page with a perusal the Easy Chair would like very respectfully to whisper the following question,

He

The audiences that he will meet here will be as large as the largest halls any where can hold. But think of his audience in the world of read-or interrogatory, as the beloved reader prefers: ers! With the exception of Bulwer he is the old- Does the nameless Mr. Smith encounter the same est of living story-tellers in the English language politeness, attention, and good-humor, or were who are really popular, and his popularity is im- they due in part-in part, mind you, Mr. Inmense and permanent. There are constant new spector-to the fact that the traveler who reeditions and series of his works issued in En-cords the flattering observation was known to be gland, and after the million readers of this Mag- the celebrated Mr. Dickens? azine have consumed them in this country they At the second coming we naturally recall the are republished in more varieties and editions first, and especially as a most ludicrous little efthan any other author has ever known. The fort has been made in advance to prejudice pubdelight in him is perennial. People quarrel with lic opinion against Mr. Dickens. When he was his extravagance, as they call it, with his carica-in this country twenty-five years ago he was very ture, with his sentimentality, with his burlesque much feasted and flattered, and there were foolof fine society; but the whole world devours ish people who undertook to be very severe upon him; and if the lumps of citron are large, and him because he neither stuffed the pudding into the frosting is very thick, and the plums are his ears nor poured the gravy into his eyes. On abundant, and the slices are huge, the good, the contrary, he kept them both wide open, and hungry world knows that for all that the cake in the best hearing and seeing condition. is delicious, and the master's genial magic makes did not hesitate to say frankly what he thought it a great, good-natured Oliver asking for more. of every thing he saw and heard; and nobody Those who were bred upon Walter Scott have can turn back to that much-maligned little book, always been a little distrustful of this young re- the "American Notes," without conceding its porter, who, at Sir Walter's death, came quietly great truthfulness. Undoubtedly he touched us into the hall of renown, tumbled all the aspiring upon the raw in many places. But it was our princes over, and seated himself, crowned, upon business and our shame that we had the raw to the royal throne. Some years since, when the touch. He pricked the huge bubble of our vanEasy Chair had been saying some crude things ity, and did us a great service, for which every about Dickens to an audience in a dusky hall, man who understood what base things were done one of the most scholarly and accomplished of by appeals to that vanity must forever thank him. his hearers, who might have been supposed to Then came Martin Chuzzlewit," with Elijah keep himself familiar with all new fames in lit-Pogram, Jefferson Brick, and the New York erature, said, sententiously, "Well, really, I must Sewer. They were scarcely caricatures, and look up this Dickens!" Upon further conver-perfectly easy to recognize. The New York sation, however, it was evident that he had al-Sewer, indeed, was indignant; it was furious, ready conceived a grudge against him for supplanting Sir Walter in the regard of the younger generation. But Sir Walter still holds his own. There are not only gentlemen and ladies who were young thirty years ago who still read Scott, belligerently, as it were, and defiantly toward all later literary comers and their abettors, but there are the most marvelously cheap editions of his works issued in England and sold there for a sixpence or a shilling a volume, and at a very cheap rate here. This shows how large the market must be, and how potent is still the wand of the wizard. The Wizard of the North Sir Walter used to be called, in the fine, high- | stepping phrase of the time; but his successor

and lashed Mr. Dickens with its most stinging whips of ribaldry. Indeed, if there were a New York Sewer at this moment, and the author of "Martin Chuzzlewit" were to propose to come to this country to read from his stories, nothing is more likely than that it would do its little best to excite bad feeling, and scorch him with that withering derision of which it is so tremendous a master. There were others, too, besides the Sewer, very wroth with what they called the abominable caricature of American society contained in "Martin Chuzzlewit.' But they were even more astonished by Mr. Dickens's ingratitude.

"Good Heavens! what can you expect of an

Englishman?" quoth the Honorable Elijah Pogram. "Here is a man to whom the young men of Boston gave a dinner, and the best society of New York a ball at the Park Theatre; of whom the first ladies in the land requested locks of hair, and all our ingenuous youth besought an autograph; and after all this hearty hospitality and generous friendship he goes home and says that slavery is a hideous blot, that the city prisons of New York are not models, and that our politics are not pure! What truly British ingratitude!"

he has done for various abuses in his own country what Mrs. Stowe did for slavery in hers. If he did not flatter the United States he certainly has never spared England. When an author in this country writes a sketch or an article like that of Mr. Parton's upon the misgovernment of the city of New York, those who think that the true way to cure a cancer is to cover it with an embroidered shirt-bosom instantly exclaim, "Why do you wash your dirty linen in public? What do you think Europe will say if you make such an exposure as that?" But Mr. Dickens has done nothing else but turn the full splendor of his genius upon the sins and follies of England. He knows very well that if the preacher would convert souls he must speak loud enough to be heard. The Methodist does not spare his voice, his entreaty, his reproof, his denunciation of the Methodist brethren lest the Baptist in the next street should think, "Good lack! what a set of sinners these Methodists are!" The man called of God to call men into the straight and narrow way does not daintily whisper his exhortations and shrug his summons. His voice is the voice of one crying in the wilderness. The great author, the poet, the storyteller, the historian, the humorist, the satirist, the editor, deals with the life around him, and his own times, his own country, feel the force of his blow and its purification.

Mr. Pogram never took the trouble to ask himself if what Mr. Dickens said were true; he was only indignant that, as we had done him the honor to admire him and welcome him heartily, he should not have seen the propriety of saying nothing about us that was not flattering and pleasant. It was the same shameful poltroonery of soul that exclaimed against those who, having] been in the Southern States in the days of slavery, did not suppose that, because they had been kindly and hospitably received, they were therefore pledged to silence and secrecy upon the subject that was most vital to every American. Why, what is the genius of Dickens? It is an eye which Nature lends us to see ourselves. And because we praise its brilliancy, we think that it is its duty to shut itself up! The great novelists are men commissioned to see human life, and the infinite play of human character, and write reports upon them. If Cervantes goes to La Mancha, according to the Honorable Elijah Pogram, he may describe the charming scenery, but he must not see Don Quixote. If Thack-created. Indescribably he impersonates the chareray is invited to May Fair, or dines in Belgravia acters of the story he reads. The impression is with Lady Kew, he must not allude to the Mar- indelible; and, like the singing of Jenny Lind, it quis of Steyne except as a heaven-born legisla- will be a fond tradition in a thousand American tor of the British nation. If Dickens comes to homes. Let us remember that the great author America, and Mr. Pogram does him the exceed- is a great benefactor of mankind. His service is ing honor to invite him to Mrs. Pogram's tea- immeasurable and immortal. No king of Entable, he must record that nothing is so merry, gland was ever so dear to the English people as so Arcadian, as the blithe slave-life on the plant- Sir Walter Scott; no king's death ever touched ations. "I protest," as the people say in the them so tenderly. And how truly and generous English drama, it is reason enough for the com-ly one great author may estimate another, and do ing of Dickens into the world that he showed up the Honorable Elijah Pogram. It is to shame such solemn humbugs, to shrivel such wind-bags, to expose such shams, that Divine Providence provides the satirists, and humorists, and storytellers.

The truth is that Mr. Dickens touched us very mildly. We undoubtedly seemed to him a great deal more ridiculous than he reported us. There never was known in any humane, civilized, Christian society such a spectacle as the social circles of this country offered twenty years ago upon that very subject of slavery. American society was morally emasculated. We put honor, conscience, decency, common-sense in our pockets. We called filth cleanly, and a sow divine. And sharp as were the occasional scourgings we received from candid and humane foreigners, it was fortunately reserved for an American and a woman to reveal to the full perception of mankind the thing which swayed our politics and corrupted the national soul. And to-day, when we are free of the accursed incubus, the Honorable Elijah Pogram and Jefferson Brick, Esquire, speak of the time when we were ridden with it as the "palmy days of the country."

Mr. Dickens, we say, touched us lightly. But

-There are not many in this country who have heard Mr. Dickens read. Those who have speak of it as a pleasure not less in its kind than that of the first introduction to the world he has

homage to a kindred genius, we may see in the words in which Thackeray speaks of Dickens. Let us make them our own:

"I may quarrel with Mr. Dickens's art a thousand and a thousand times, I delight and wonder at his genius. I recognize in it-I speak with awe and revwhose blessed task it will one day be to wipe every erence-a commission from that Divine Beneficence tear from every eye. Thankfully I take my share of the feast of love and kindness which this gentle, and happiness of the world. I take and enjoy my share, generous, and charitable soul has contributed to the and say a benediction for the meal."

SOMEBODY having written to the New York Tribune a series of falsehoods about a conversation of Mr. Dickens, in which he was made to say a great many disagreeable things of American publishers, he wrote a letter to a friend absolutely denying the whole story. The Tribune then alludes to the letter of its correspondent, remarking that "it seems that the tone of the letter, as well as its statements, were unpleasant to Mr. Dickens and his friends," and as it thinks any such injustice would be peculiarly cruel, now that Mr. Dickens is about coming to the country, "cheerfully" prints an extract from the letter which Mr. Dickens "has seen fit to write upon the subject." The extract is as follows:

ing and judgment of no people are ever wholly unanimous. Yet, if a nation were ever agreed, this nation was agreed in sorrow for the death of Lincoln. His character and temperament were guarantees of sagacious statesmanship in reconstruction. Even those who had cherished party differences with him did not-certainly, not all-carry them to his grave. He died the President of the whole people in a peculiar sense, and their representatives should have secured a proper competence to his widow.

"Not only is there not a word of truth in the pretended conversation, but it is so absurdly unlike me that I can not suppose it to be even invented by any one who ever heard me exchange a word with mortal creature. For twenty years I am perfectly certain that I have never made any other allusion to the republication of my books in America than the goodhumored remark, that if there had been international copyright between England and the States I should have been a man of very large fortune instead of a man of moderate savings. Nor have I ever been such a fool as to charge the absence of international copyright upon individuals. Nor have I been so ungenerous as to disguise or suppress the fact that I have received handsome sums from the Harpers for The splendid system of national rewards for advance sheets. When I was in the States I said what I had to say, and there was an end. I am absolutely great national services which prevails in England certain that I have never since expressed myself even is unknown to us. Parliament gives Blenheim with soreness on the subject. Reverting to the pre- to Marlborough, and a dukedom to Wellingposterous fabrication of the London Correspondent, the statement that I ever talked about those fellowston, and makes Nelson a viscount, and so honwho republished my books, or pretended to know ors and enriches their descendants. Much no(what I don't know at this instant) who made how bler is the system which raises Washington to much out of them, or ever talked of their sending the Presidency of the nation he has helped to me 'conscience-money,' is as grossly and completely false as the statement that I ever said any thing to the effect that I could not be expected to have an interest in the American people. And nothing can by any possibility be falser than that. Again and again have I expressed my interest in them. Every Anierican who has ever spoken with me in London, Paris, or where not, knows whether I have frankly said: 'You could have no better introduction to me than your country. And for years and years, when I have been asked about reading in America, my invariable reply has been, 'I have so many friends there, and constantly receive so many earnest letters from personally-unknown readers there, that but for domestic reasons I would go to-morrow.'

NOTHING could be more unpleasant and unfortunate than the publicity recently given to some transactions of Mrs. Lincoln, the widow of the late President. It was very natural and very proper that in the changed circumstances of her life she should wish to dispose of a costly wardrobe. Had this been done quietly nobody could have objected. It was purely a private matter, with which public interference in any manner was mere impertinence.

The

Unfortunately, Mrs. Lincoln hoped by publishing the fact that it was her wardrobe, by the inevitable inference that it consisted of various articles given to her for a political purpose, and by a complaint of ill-treatment from the people and from the leaders of a party, to excite public attention and increase the income of the sale. course of events has not been favorable to her. The publication of her own letters to her agent has excited great ridicule and the severest animadversion, and there is no friend of hers, and no man who honors the memory of Mr. Lincoln, who must not deeply deplore the whole affair.

There is no reason why the United States should not have been generous to the widow of Abraham Lincoln. She may not have been a wise woman, but she was his wife, and they were never parted until his murder in her presence. It would have been merely proper, a grateful tribute to his memory who had been assassinated because he was President, if Congress, in the name of the people, had given to his widow at least the amount of the four years' salary. If any one were afraid of the precedent, let it be understood as exceptional. If any one thought that it was not the duty of nations to grant pensions, let this have been done without any consideration of duty or general principle other than that of gratitude. Doubtless there is such a thing as national gratitude. It exists, although every individual may not be grateful. The feel

create. But there are occasions when there is but one way to make the national regard effective after its immediate object is removed, and that is a grant of money. If it is in itself disagreeable to see a woman selling her wardrobe because, as she alleges, of the ingratitude of others, it is doubly disagreeable when that woman is the widow of a beloved and famous man slain at the post of duty. To avoid the spectacle who would not gladly consent to the grant, not because she for herself has any national claim, but because of the universal feeling for her husband.

It is of course a sentiment. We are afraid that Mr. Herbert Spencer would not smile upon such an act of Congress. There are others, also, who might think it an act transcending the proper functions of a government; who might feel that it was not a sufficient minding of your own business, which is so excellent a rule in public affairs. But if we may, with safety to the state and to the sound principles of government, vote a national benefactor a public funeral, may we not venture upon voting a little money to his widow?

WHEN we read in Du Chaillu's Equatorial Africa of the gigantic Gorilla-the monstrous ape which is nearer to humanity than any other of the brutes; how he smites his breast, which emits a horrible, hollow sound like the tremendous beating of an unimagined bass-drum; how he snaps the trunks of the hugest trees as if they were pipe-stems, and combines the power of the elephant with the agility and intelligence of the monkey-who of us does not tremble and turn pale, and devoutly offer thanks to Heaven that it did not cast our lot in the African woods where the Gorilla bellows and beats his appalling bass-drum?

There were skeptics of M. Du Chaillu's stories. There were people who put their tongues in their cheeks when you alluded to Gorillas. There were scientific men even who pooh-poohed M. Du Chaillu, and said he had been only to some African coast, and bought baboon skins and birds from the interior, and then composed his learned work and brought home his interesting collection, acquired at incredible personal risk. They were people like those who said

After reading this thrilling article in the paper, which further informed him that although the royal scientific societies of Great Britain had offered great sums of money for the Gorilla, and were in despair because they could not have him, Mr. Barnum had imperturbably replied that his Museum, his American Museum, must have the monster at any expense whatever, the

that "Eöthen" was written in a London library and the Great African Lion, whenever the Muby a man who had never put foot beyond Lon-seum is blessed with the presence of such illusdon. It went so far that, at a meeting of the trious strangers. Royal Geographical Society, or some other of the royal societies at which wise men assemble, somebody-some professor or authoritative person of science-insinuated that M. Du Chaillu's theories of natural history were moonshine; that his wonderful discoveries of new animals were fables; that his book was "bosh;" and M. Du Chaillu himself a humbug. Now the traveler was present, and heard these astounding re-exhausted reader, father of a family, perhaps, marks. In his natural indignation he did not, indeed, beat the fearful bass-drum of his bosom, like the celebrated Gorilla, but he did exclaim that his scientific brother was a liar. And then, unable to command himself, or to find sufficient English to express his wrath, he wreaked upon that brother what the Times of the next morning called "the wild justice of expectoration."

whose shuddering little ears had greedily absorbed the story, found that there was to be no peace for him until he had taken the children to see the Gorilla. It was in vain that he wondered audibly whether the iron bars of the cage were very strong. In vain he asked mamma whether she did not think that an animal which could so readily snap the trunks of great trees might also part a chain cable with ease. The Gorilla must be seen, and papa prepared himself for the dread ordeal.

Those of us who saw the Du Chaillu collection may recall the skins of that awful animal, the Gorilla, and that we were told no living one had On the appointed day the little family party ever been brought away from Africa, because it descended Broadway. When it had reached the was scarcely possible to take the brute alive, vicinity of Prince Street it paused to hear afar such was its furious ferocity. There was a off the resounding roar of the beast, and to listen story, indeed, that a deceased specimen had been for the hollow beating of the bass-drum of the sent to Professor Owen, and that he had under- bosom. But such was the noise of omnibuses taken to arrange the bones, but that upon open-and carriages and carts that nothing else could ing the case such a desolating effluvium escaped be heard. Across the street, however, in front that the neighboring country was threatened with of the Museum, and high overhead, a truly overpestilence, and the stench of that departed Go-powering picture was swung. There, in great rilla was as appalling as the sound of his dreadful bass-drum when alive.

brilliancy of color, was depicted the celebrated Gorilla, as he appears in his native wilds. About twelve feet high, and proportionately broad, the hideous brute is apparently stepping over the river Niger at one stride, while he brandishes a mighty club with one hand, and with the other grasps a woman of the country, whom he is carrying off for lunch.

"Dear me!" said a thoughtful student of natural history, as he contemplated the picture at a later period than that of which we are now engaged upon the description, “what a curious illustration of the nearness with which this brute comes to mankind! He clothes his female like a woman! What touching modesty, and what respect for the sex!"

Imagine with what a shudder, therefore, the sensitive reader of Du Chaillu lately read in a newspaper that a living Gorilla had arrived in the city of New York straight from the African forest, and consigned to Mr. Barnum. From the internal evidence of the notice an expert might have attributed it to M. Du Chaillu himself. The spell-bound reader saw, with a cold tremor running through his frame, that it had been only with dire struggles, and overwhelming force, and human cunning, and breaking of ropes and chains that the monster had been transported from the ship to the Museum. And if he had escaped! Merciful powers! if the celebrated Gorilla of the African forest had rushed up Broadway bellow- But not taking that view of the picture above ing and beating his horrible bass-drum! The him, the devoted parent turned with his innoimagination droops before the scene. The trav-cent companions into the doorway of the Museeler from New Zealand might have arrived the next day and found but a silent desolation where New York had been, and a great Gorilla ready to welcome him!

um, bought the tickets with true resignation, and as he passed the portal at which the guardian sits, cast one lingering, longing look behind at the cheerful bustle of Broadway, before enNor was the contest over when he had been countering the Gorilla. It was hardly reassurborne into the Museum. The monster pulled ing to observe that every thing was quiet within ropes and chains into his cage, and roared so the building; that there was no distant, earthtremendously that innocent women and children | quaking roar, and no affrighted multitude plungshrieked, and fled, and fainted, while a learned ing down the stairs. The silence itself was op"Professor," whose name the Easy Chair "dis-pressive. Merciful Mercury! could the monster remembers," determined that science and the patrons of Mr. Barnum's moral show should not be deprived of the comfort of a living Gorilla, contending by superior cunning with this colossal brute force, succeeded in confining the raging giant with a chain cable-for so it seemed in the glowing periods of the description-which could easily hold the Great Eastern in a hurricane, and the terrific prize so made fast was further secured in the cage of the Royal Bengal Tiger

have consumed all the previous visitors of the morning, and was he waiting, twelve or more feet high, at the top of the stairs to pounce upon their ill-fated successors? Smitten with such thoughts and awful anticipations, the little family party ascended the stairs, and, oh, bliss! the first object was not the mighty brute, but the benign giantess, playfully conversing with the amiable dwarf, while the benevolent fat child was affably answering the questions of the curi

ous. In the neighboring tank the sagacious seal | Chair spoke of Longfellow's marvelous translahad just pulled out the plug in the bottom of tion of Dante, marvelous for the power and skill his bath, and all the water had flowed away; and with which the very character of the great methe Albino children moved tranquilly about,dieval poem is reproduced to another world and generously giving every spectator the fullest a new epoch. It said that the translation was view of their flaxen polls. Indeed there was an not the poet's unassisted work, for his friends air of serenity and a smell of peanuts which was and neighbors, Charles Eliot Norton and James delightfully consoling. But the great duty of Russell Lowell, who are, with Longfellow, among the day could not be avoided, and the party the very first, it not the chief of our Dantean pushed on, following the sign which, with an scholars, had brought to his work the aid of their outstretched finger painted upon it, said, "To scholarship, taste, and criticism. And now Mr. the Gorilla." Norton's translation of Dante's earlier poem, the Suddenly they were in his presence. The Vita Nuova-the New Life-is published in the cage of the Royal Bengal Tiger and of the king same superb, yet perfectly practicable, form as of beasts was before them. Behind its massive the Divine Comedy. Like the work of Longbars and heavily chained crouched the monster. fellow, this of Mr. Norton's has been a labor of A thick wooden railing, sweeping outward from love. For many years, among his many studthe cage, kept the throng away from the imme-ies, he has been the most faithful and diligent diate danger of his paws, and pasteboard cards student of Dante. Familiar with the history of hung around kindly warned the public that, on the time in its various aspects, surrounding himaccount of the savage ferocity of the Gorilla, he self with the commentaries and illustrations, and must not be excited or disturbed. Savage fe- the whole literature of the subject, he has brought rocity! and with what a shudder the eye of the the patient habit of the trained scholar, the inparent, having at a glance observed all these sight and sympathy of a poetic nature, the disthings, proceeded to scan-a poor, little, meek crimination of the critic, and the skill of the baboon, sitting with rueful eyes and complacent-literary artist to this unique and beautiful work. ly regarding the scene! There was a crowd of It is so excellently done that we are not only five persons, three of whom were the family richer by one of the great and immortal works in party. The two others were youth who poked literature, but we are justly proud of the scholarcanes and threw gingerbread at the appalling ship which introduces it to us. "Living Gorilla," which neither rose to his feet "The Vita Nuova," says Mr. Norton, in one and shook the thin bars of the cage, nor beat his of the essays which follow the translation as bass-drum with resounding roar, but, such was notes, "is the earliest of Dante's writings, and his kin to humanity of the highest kind, that he the most autobiographic of them in form and insubmitted with Christian resignation, and look-tention." It describes his meeting with Beatrice ing quite ready to offer the left cheek should the right be smitten.

Possibly a family party of less correct sentiments and urbane manners than that we are supposing might have "wreaked the wild justice of expectoration" upon the luckless object of their terror. But they forbore, reflecting that if they had not heard the drum of the Gorilla's bosom they had heard the tremendous clatter of that bass-drum of the press which certain persons are skilled to smite. When at length the pacified parent looked at the chains, the cage, and the warnings of "savage ferocity," and recalled his harrowing imagination of the escaping monster devouring Broadway, he turned away with a mild smile of Christian forgiveness, and gave the fat boy a penny cookey.

when they were both scarcely more than children, and traces "the earthly story of this love-its beginning, its irregular course, its hopes and doubts, its exaltations and despairs, its sudden interruption and transformation by death." It is, therefore, really a proper prelude or introduction to the Divine Comedy, and it is pleasant to reflect that we owe to two American scholars this masterly reproduction of both works. Nor ought the singular beauty and propriety of the publisher's part of the enterprise to be forgotten. The books are printed as all the true classics ought to be, the tasteful and noble volumes suggesting the richness and beauty of shrines erected to the best beloved divinities. We have recorded elsewhere, indeed, our satisfaction in the sixpenny-volume edition of the Waverley Novels and in the shilling Shakespeare. But that is not

Is the June Number of the Magazine the Easy to the prejudice of delight in their costlier forms.

Literary Notices.

Three English Statesmen, by GOLDWIN SMITH, Holding the opinions set forth in the lectures upon the "Political History of England," which constitute this volume, one can not wonder that the author should have resigned the Professorship of History in the University of Oxford. "The chiefest authors of revolution," he says, "have not been the chimerical and intemperate friends of progress, but the blind obstructors of progress-those who, in defiance of nature, struggle to avert the inevitable future, to recall the irrevocable past; who chafe to fury by dam

ming up its course the river which would otherwise flow calmly between its banks, which has ever flowed, and, do what they will, must flow forever." These are words pregnant with warning for those who now hold sway in England. The three statesmen whom Mr. Smith selects as types are John Pym, Oliver Cromwell, and William Pitt. Of Pym, "who opened the revolution which was closed by Cromwell, and of which Milton was the apostle and poet," he says: "The greatest member of Parliament that ever lived, the greatest master of the convictions and the