Note 272 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 2)
Reading edition
To this threat of writing his life, we have already noticed the noble apology he has drawn up for the versatility of his opinions. See p. 347. At the moment of the Restoration it was unwise for any of the parties to reproach another for their opinions or their actions. In a national revolution, most men are implicated in the general reproach; and Stubbe said, on this occasion, that “he had observed worse faces in the society than his own.” Waller, and Sprat, and Cowley had equally commemorated the protectorship of Cromwell and the restoration of Charles. Our satirist insidiously congratulates himself that “he had never compared Oliver the regicide to Moses, or his son to Joshua;” nor that he had ever written any Pindaric ode, “dedicated to the happy memory of the most renowned Prince Oliver, Lord Protector:” nothing to recommend “the sacred urn” of that blessed spirit to the veneration of posterity; as if
“His fame, like men, the elder it doth grow, Will of itself turn whiter too, Without what needless art can do.”
These lines were, I think, taken from Sprat himself! Stubbe adds, it would be “imprudent in them to look beyond the act of indemnity and oblivion, which was more necessary to the Royal Society than to me, who joined with no party, &c.”—Preface to “Legends no Histories.”