ost clear and keen temper, and so far from
fear, that he seemed not without some appetite of danger; and therefore,
upon any occasion of action, he always engaged his person in those
troops which he thought, by the forwardness of the commanders, to be
most like to be farthest engaged; and in all such encounters, he had
about him an extraordinary cheerfulness, without at all affecting the
execution that usually attended them; in which he took no delight, but
took pains to prevent it, where it was not by resistance made necessary:
insomuch that at Edge-hill, when the enemy was routed, he was like to
have incurred great peril, by interposing to save those who had thrown
away their arms, and against whom, it may be, others were more fierce
for their having thrown them away: so that a man might think he came
into the field chiefly out of curiosity to see the face of danger, and
charity to prevent the shedding of blood. Yet, in his natural
inclination, he acknowledged he was addicted to the profession of a
soldier; and shortly after he came to his fortune, before he was of
age, he went into the Low Countries, with a resolution of procuring
command, and to give himself up to it; from which he was diverted by the
complete inactivity of that summer; so he returned into England, and
shortly after entered upon that vehement course of study we mentioned
before, till the first alarm from the north; then again he made ready
for the field, and though he received some repulse in the command of a
troop of horse, of which he had a promise, he went a volunteer with the
earl of Essex.

From the entrance into this unnatural war, his natural cheerfulness and
vivacity grew clouded, and a kind of sadness and dejection of spirit
stole upon him, which he had never been used to; yet being one of those
who believed that one battle would end all differences, and that there
would be so great a victory on one side, that the other would be
compelled to submit to any conditions from the victor--which supposition
and conclusion generally sunk into the minds of most men, and prevented
the looking after many advantages that might then have been laid hold
of--he resisted those indispositions. But after the king's return from
Brentford, and the furious resolution of the two Houses not to admit any
treaty for peace, those indispositions, which had before touched him,
grew into a perfect habit of uncheerfulness; and he, who had been so
exactly unreserved and