Bates NOTE EVERYBODY who now writes about Cromwell must, apart from old authorities, begin by grateful acknowledgment of his inevitable debt to the devoted labours of Mr. Gardiner, our master historian of the seventeenth century. Hardly less is due in this special province to the industry and discernment of Mr. Firth, whose contributions to the Dictionary of National Biography, as well as his editions of memoirs and papers of that age, show him, besides so much else, to know the actors and the incidents of the Civil Wars with a minute intimacy commonly reserved for the things of the time in which a man actually lives. If I am asked why then need I add a new study of Oliver to the lives of him now existing from those two most eminent hands, my apology must be that I was committed to the enterprise (and I rather think that some chapters had already appeared) before I had any idea that these heroes of research were to be in the biographic field. Finding myself more than half way across the stream, I had nothing for it but to persevere with as stout a stroke as I could to the other shore. V Then there is the brilliant volume of my friend of a lifetime, Mr. Frederic Harrison. By him my trespass will, I know, be forgiven on easy terms; for the wide compass of his attainments as historian and critic, no less than his observation of the living world's affairs, will have long ago discovered to him that any such career and character as Cromwell's, like one of the great stock arguments of old-world drama, must still be capable of an almost endless range of presentment and interpretation. July 1900. In revising this edition, I have added one or two notes on points raised in Mr. Gardiner's generous criticism of my book (Contemporary Review) at the time of its first appearance. April 1904. J. M. |