the abbey lands, of which, at the
Reformation, the Church had so zealously been plundered. He
was still further alarmed that the _virtuosi_ would influence
the education of our youth to these purposes; "an evil," says
he, "which has been guarded against by our ancestors in
founding _free-schools_, by uniformity of instruction
cementing men's minds." We now smile at these terrors; perhaps
they were sometimes real. The absolute necessity of strict
conformity to the prevalent religion of Europe was avowed in
that unrivalled scheme of despotism, which menaced to efface
every trace of popular freedom, and the independence of
nations, under the dominion of Napoleon.

[272] 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."_

[273] He has described this intercourse of his enemies at court with
the king, where, when this punishment was suggested, "a
generous personage, altogether unknown to me