That poet always said, that the protector himself was not so wholly illiterate as was commonly imagined.

He gave a hundred pounds a year to the divinity professor at Oxford; and an historian mentions this bounty as an instance of his love of literature.[*] He intended to have erected a college at Durham for the benefit of the northern counties.
Civil wars, especially when founded on principles of liberty are not commonly unfavorable to the arts of elocution and composition; or rather, by presenting nobler and more interesting objects, they amply compensate that tranquillity of which they bereave the muses.

The speeches of the parliamentary orators, during this period, are of a strain much superior to what any former age had produced in England; and the force and compass of our tongue were then first put to trial.

It must, however, be confessed, that the wretched fanaticism, which so much infected the parliamentary party, was no less destructive of taste and science, than of all law and order.

Gayety and wit were proscribed; human learning despised; freedom of inquiry detested; cant and hypocrisy alone encouraged.