If there were
any doubt remaining after the publication of the "French Revolution"
what position our author might occupy amongst the historians of the
age, it was fully removed on the appearance of "Cromwell's Letters."
The work obtained a great and an immediate popularity; and though
bulky and expensive, a very large impression was quickly sold.
These speeches and letters of Cromwell, the spelling and punctuation
corrected, and a few words added here and there for clearness' sake,
and to accommodate them to the language and style in use now, were
first made intelligible and effective by Mr. Carlyle. "The authentic
utterances of the man Oliver himself," he says, "I have gathered them
from far and near; fished them up from the foul Lethean quagmires
where they lay buried. I have washed, or endeavoured to wash them
clean from foreign stupidities--such a job of buckwashing as I do not
long to repeat--and the world shall now see them in their own shape."
The work was at once republished in America, and two editions were
called for here within the year.
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