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Gallegallo Revbrandia Sectory 03
Page 11
Some of Charles's counselors and ministers of state were disposed at first to remonstrate with him for laying commands on his wife, with which, as they expressed it, flesh and blood could not comply. He, however, peremptorily silenced all their expostulations, and required them, as they valued his favor, to aid him in effecting his purposes. Good natured as he was, his determination was fully aroused, and he was now resolved to compel the queen to submit. He wrote a letter to Lord Clarendon, in which he declared his absolute and unalterable determination to make Lady Castlemaine "of the queen's bed chamber," and hoped he might be miserable in this world and in the world to come if he failed in the least degree in what he had undertaken; and if any one of his friends attempted to thwart or impede him in it in any way, he would make him repent of it as long as he lived. The king concluded his letter with asking Clarendon to show it to some others concerned, that they might all understand distinctly what they were to expect.
He met, however, with very partial success. His soldiers became entangled in bogs and morasses; they fell into ambuscades; they suffered every degree of privation and hardship for want of water and of food, and were continually entrapped by their enemies in situations where they had to fight in small numbers and at a great disadvantage. Then, too, the aged and feeble general was kept in a continual fever of anxiety and trouble by Bassianus, the son whom he had brought with him to the north. The dissoluteness and violence of his character were not changed by the change of scene. He formed plots and conspiracies against his father's authority; he raised mutinies in the army; he headed riots; and he was finally detected in a plan for actually assassinating his father. Severus, when he discovered this last enormity of wickedness, sent for his son to come to his imperial tent. He laid a naked sword before him, and then, after bitterly reproaching him with his undutiful and ungrateful conduct, he said, "If you wish to kill me, do it now. Here I stand, old, infirm, and helpless. You are young and strong, and can do it easily. I am ready. Strike the blow."
And yet if, on the other hand, one compares the subsequent fame of men of action with the fame of men of letters, the contrast is indeed bewildering. Who attaches the smallest idea to the personality of the Lord Lichfield whom Dr. Johnson envied? Who that adores the memory of Wordsworth knows anything about Lord Goderich, a contemporary prime minister? The world reads and re-reads the memoirs of dead poets, goes on pilgrimage to the tiny cottages where they lived in poverty, cherishes the smallest records and souvenirs of them. The names of statesmen and generals become dim except to professed historians, while the memories of great romancers and lyrists, and even of lesser writers still, go on being revived and redecorated. What would Keats have thought, as he lay dying in his high, hot, noisy room at Rome, if he had known that a century later every smallest detail of his life, his most careless letters, would be scanned by eager eyes, when few save historians would be able to name a single member of the cabinet in power at the time of his death?
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