tful period. He who had borne
from the archbishop and the lords in the Star Chamber the most
virulent invectives, wishing them at that instant seriously to
consider that some who sat there on the bench might yet stand
prisoners at the bar, and need the favour they now denied, at length
saw the prediction completely verified. What were the feelings of
Laud, when Prynne, returning from his prison of Mount Orgueil in
triumph, the road strewed with boughs, amid the acclamations of the
people, entered the apartment in the Tower which the venerable Laud
now in his turn occupied. The unsparing Puritan sternly performed the
office of rifling his papers,[104] and persecuted the helpless prelate
till he led him to the block. Prynne, to use his own words, for he
could be eloquent when moved by passion, "had struck proud Canterbury
to the heart; and had undermined all his prelatical designs to advance
the bishops' pomp and power;"[105] Prynne triumphed--but, even this
austere Puritan soon grieved over the calamities he had contributed to
inflict on the nation; and, with a humane feeling, he once wished,
that "when they had cut off his ears, they had cut off his head." He
closed his political existence by becoming an advocate for the
Restoration; but, with his accustomed want of judgment and intemperate
zeal, had nearly injured the cause by his premature activity. At the
Restoration some difficulty occurred to dispose of "busie Mr. Pryn,"
as Whitelocke calls him. It is said he wished to be one of the Barons
of the Exchequer, but he was made the Keeper of the Records in the
Tower, "purposely to employ his head from scribbling against the state
and bishops;" where they put him to clear the Augean stable of our
national antiquities, and see whether they could weary out his
restless vigour. Prynne had, indeed, written till he found no
antagonist would reply; and now he rioted in leafy folios, and proved
himself to be one of the greatest paper-worms which ever crept into
old books and mouldy records.[106]

The literary character of Prynne is described by the happy epithet which
Anthony Wood applies to him, "Voluminous Prynne." His great
characteristic is opposed to that axiom of Hesiod so often quoted, that
"half is better than the whole;" a secret which the matter-of-fact
men rarely discover. Wanting judgment, and the tact of good sense,
these detailers have no power of selection from their stores, to make
one prominent fact represent