of his life to combine literary pursuits with the discharge of his ecclesiastical duties; and in times of public distress he dispensed his bounty with unsparing hand, without distinction of religious parties, to all. He died at Montpellier, 16th February, 1710, at the age of seventy-eight years. The most famous of his funeral orations was that which he pronounced on Marshal Turenne in 1676, which was judged by many of his contemporaries of such transcendant merit, as to entitle him to take rank with Bossuet himself. This judgment, however, was abandoned in the next age; and men came to see that with all his excellence Fléchier was far inferior to Bossuet. "At the present day," as the French critics remark, "Fléchier is appreciated at his just value; and the place which has been definitively assigned to him, though more modest, is still sufficiently honourable—encore assez belle.'" His "Œuvres complètes" were published at Nismes in 1782, in 10 vols. 8vo, and include several historical works—one of which, "La Vie de Théodore le Grand," was written for the use of the dauphin. A new edition of the whole works appeared at Paris in 1825, 10 vols.—P. L.
FLECKNOE, Richard, an Irish author, born in the first half of the seventeenth century, obtained from the pen of Dryden an immortality as undeserved in its character as it is unenviable. His fate is the more singular, inasmuch as the direct object of the satirical poem of Mac Flecknoe was to assail Shadwell, by calling him the son of one whom the satirist gibbets for some paltry pique in the memorable lines, as one who—
" In prose and verse was owned without dispute,
Through all the realms of Nonsense, absolute."
Of Flecknoe we do not know much. He was a Roman catholic priest and, as some say, a jesuit, and resided for a time in Rome. On his return to England he doffed the ecclesiastical habit, and lived as a layman; nevertheless, he maintained extensive connections with the Roman catholic nobility and gentry in London. He wrote several works, and many short pieces in rhyme. Host of these have become so scarce that few have an opportunity of forming an independent judgment on the merits of the author, and are therefore contented to take at second-hand the opinions of others, and to follow the unfavourable criticisms of some of his contemporaries, especially those of Andrew Marvel. It is little to the credit of such a man as Marvel, who experimentally knew what it was to be poor and that poverty is no disgrace, that he should prostitute his powers of keen and witty irony in assailing a man, whom he admits to be poet and musician, in bitter verses, which, after all, lay nothing to Flecknoe's charge save that he was poor, thin, ill-clad, and lived up three-pair stairs in a small, wretched room in Rome. From such portions of Flecknoe's writings as are accessible, we are led to form a better opinion of his ability than has been pronounced by the thoughtless verdict of the world. One of his works, published in 1665, entitled "Sixty-nine Enigmatical Characters all drawn to the life, from several persons, humours, dispositions; pleasant and full of delight," were dedicated to Beatrix, duchess of Lorraine, and were highly praised by the duke of Newcastle. Flecknoe wrote some verses that may be placed in competition with those of many a bard who has chanced upon a happier immortality. The lines "Of a natural beauty" are full of point and grace, without a thought that is inappropriate, or a word that is too much. He wrote four plays, to one of which, "Love's Kingdom," he subjoined a discourse upon the English stage. "It is, says Mr. M'Carthy, "one of the earliest and most valuable essays of the kind in the English language," and was considered by Langbaine to have been the best thing Flecknoe ever wrote. Flecknoe appears to have been a man of high moral feeling, and everywhere expressed his abhorrence of the immorality of the times; and it has been suggested that Dryden's dislike to him arose from his invectives against the obscenity of the stage, for which the great poet was largely answerable. Scott speaks contemptuously of Flecknoe, without appearing to have qualified himself to pass a judgment; but Southey, who read his works, gives a more favourable estimate, and quotes passages to support his opinion. Flecknoe died in 1678.—J. F. W.
FLEETWOOD, Charles, Lord-deputy of Ireland under Cromwell, belonged to a family anciently settled in Lancashire, and was the fourth son of Sir William Fleetwood of Aldwinkle in Northamptonshire. Noble, in the Life of Fleetwood appended to his inaccurate and tiresome Memoirs of the Cromwell Family, while supplying a number of minute and worthless details concerning all his relations, lineal and collateral, has characteristically omitted to furnish the date either of his birth or death. He was probably born about the year 1620. His father was comptroller of Woodstock Park, and cup-bearer to Charles I.; and when the civil war broke out, he, as well as most of the Fleetwood family, joined the king's party. Charles Fleetwood was intended for the law, and entered at the inns of court. Whether he studied at any university we have not discovered. Like Nathaniel Fiennes, but with more success, he exchanged the gown for the sword, and we find him mentioned as Captain Fleetwood, and commanding a troop of horse in the force employed in garrisoning and fortifying Cambridge in 1643. He was thoroughly possessed by the religious enthusiasm of the puritans, and to this influence must be ascribed his engaging in a cause which his family detested. Through the glimpses afforded in Cromwell's letters, we find that in March, 1644, Fleetwood had risen to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and was an active officer in the Lincolnshire campaign. Noble relates that in the same year he received the lucrative office of receiver of the court of wards, but it seems probable that he is here confounding him with some other member of the family. After the storming of Bristol in September, 1645, Fleetwood was made governor of the place, and in the following month he was returned to parliament as a "recruiter" (that is, one of those elected to fill the vacant seats of the members who had espoused the royal cause) for the borough of Marlborough, or, according to Noble, for the county of Buckingham. Probably he was returned by both constituencies. In June, 1647, he was named one of the parliamentary commissioners to treat with the king, but took no prominent part in the negotiation. Cromwell found in him a useful subordinate; and we meet with him at Dunbar in 1650, now become lieutenant-general of the horse, "giving the onset" with Lambert, Whalley, and Desborow, to the watchword of "the Lord of Hosts." After that signal victory he was made lieutenant-general of foot, and greatly contributed to the "crowning mercy" of Worcester in September, 1651, on which occasion he commanded the left of Cromwell's army, and by his resolute and persevering advance along the left bank of the river, mainly decided the fortune of the day. It does not appear, however, that Fleetwood possessed strategical talent, or was remarkable for great personal bravery; but he had one military quality, which was more highly esteemed than any other by the soldiers of that singular army—he had an eminent gift of extempore prayer, and was distinguished as a fluent field preacher. In the summer of 1652, lord-deputy Ireton having died in the previous winter, Fleetwood was sent over to Ireland by Cromwell with the title of commander-in-chief of the forces. About the same time he married Bridget, Ireton's widow, Cromwell's eldest daughter. He was himself a widower, having married in 1644 Frances Smith of Winstow in Norfolk. He remained in Ireland till near the end of 1655, having been raised to the dignity of lord-deputy at the beginning of 1654, after Cromwell had assumed the protectorate. Several letters to him from Cromwell, written during this period, have been preserved. Addressing himself to a fellow-saint, it is not surprising that the lord-protector enlarges upon spiritual topics with great unction; but there is a little sentence at the end of one of these letters which shows what a keen observer of character Cromwell was in the midst of his religious occupations, and serves as a key to Fleetwood's whole history. It is—"Take heed of your natural inclination to compliance." This fault of irresolution, of leaning to the opinion of the last speaker became conspicuous as soon as Fleetwood was placed in situations where he had to exercise independent authority. Cromwell probably found that the reins of the Irish government were slipping from his grasp; that he was not strong enough to keep down at once the surly obstinacy of honest Ludlow, the intrigues of the royalists, and the heaving disaffection of the oppressed catholics; and in 1655, a few months after the arrival of Henry Cromwell as major-general of the forces, Fleetwood was recalled to England upon some handsome pretence, and although he retained the title of lord-deputy, never afterwards returned to Ireland. He was made one of the ten major-generals among whom England was apportioned, each governing his own district by martial law. In 1657 his declaring himself, with other leading officers, strongly against the project of the kingship, caused Cromwell to abandon the design. After Cromwell's death, Fleet-
