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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/20164-8.txt b/20164-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1252ad3 --- /dev/null +++ b/20164-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1381 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3), by +John Morley + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) + Essay 4: Macaulay + + +Author: John Morley + + + +Release Date: December 22, 2006 [eBook #20164] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRITICAL MISCELLANIES, VOLUME I +(OF 3)*** + + +E-text prepared by Paul Murray, Graeme Mackreth, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/c/) + + + +CRITICAL MISCELLANIES + +by + +JOHN MORLEY + +VOL. I. + +ESSAY 4: MACAULAY + + + + + + + +London +MacMillan and Co., Limited +New York: The MacMillan Company +1904 + + + + +MACAULAY. + +The Life of Macaulay 253 + +Macaulay's vast popularity 254 + +He and Mill, the two masters of the modern journalist 256 + +His marked quality 259 + +Set his stamp on style 260 + +His genius for narration 262 + +His copiousness of illustration 264 + +Macaulay's, the style of literary knowledge 266 + +His use of generous commonplace 267 + +Perfect accord with his audience 271 + +Dislike of analysis 272 + +Not meditative 273 + +Macaulay's is the prose of spoken deliverance 276 + +Character of his geniality 278 + +Metallic hardness and brightness 279 + +Compared with Carlyle 281 + +Harsh modulations and shallow cadences 283 + +Compared with Burke 283 + +Or with Southey 285 + +Faults of intellectual conscience 286 + +Vulgarity of thought 289 + +Conclusion 290 + + + + +MACAULAY. + + +'After glancing my eye over the design and order of a new book,' says +Gibbon, 'I suspended the perusal till I had finished the task of +self-examination, till I had revolved in a solitary walk all that I knew +or believed or had thought on the subject of the whole work or of some +particular chapter; I was then qualified to discern how much the author +added to my original stock; and if I was sometimes satisfied by the +agreement, I was sometimes warned by the opposition of our ideas.' It is +also told of Strafford that before reading any book for the first time, +he would call for a sheet of paper, and then proceed to write down upon +it some sketch of the ideas that he already had upon the subject of the +book, and of the questions that he expected to find answered. No one who +has been at the pains to try the experiment, will doubt the usefulness +of this practice: it gives to our acquisitions from books clearness and +reality, a right place and an independent shape. At this moment we are +all looking for the biography of an illustrious man of letters, written +by a near kinsman, who is himself naturally endowed with keen literary +interests, and who has invigorated his academic cultivation by +practical engagement in considerable affairs of public business. Before +taking up Mr. Trevelyan's two volumes, it is perhaps worth while, on +Strafford's plan, to ask ourselves shortly what kind of significance or +value belongs to Lord Macaulay's achievements, and to what place he has +a claim among the forces of English literature. It is seventeen years +since he died, and those of us who never knew him nor ever saw him, may +now think about his work with that perfect detachment which is +impossible in the case of actual contemporaries.[1] + +[Footnote 1: Since the following piece was written, Mr. Trevelyan's +biography of Lord Macaulay has appeared, and has enjoyed the great +popularity to which its careful execution, its brightness of style, its +good taste, its sound judgment, so richly entitle it. If Mr. Trevelyan's +course in politics were not so useful as it is, one might be tempted to +regret that he had not chosen literature for the main field of his +career. The portrait which he draws of Lord Macaulay is so irresistibly +attractive in many ways, that a critic may be glad to have delivered his +soul before his judgment was subject to a dangerous bias, by the picture +of Macaulay's personal character--its domestic amiability, its +benevolence to unlucky followers of letters, its manliness, its high +public spirit and generous patriotism. On reading my criticism over +again, I am well pleased to find that not an epithet needs to be +altered,--so independent is opinion as to this strong man's work, of our +esteem for his loyal and upright character.] + +That Macaulay comes in the very front rank in the mind of the ordinary +bookbuyer of our day is quite certain. It is an amusement with some +people to put an imaginary case of banishment to a desert island, with +the privilege of choosing the works of one author, and no more than one, +to furnish literary companionship and refreshment for the rest of a +lifetime. Whom would one select for this momentous post? Clearly the +author must be voluminous, for days on desert islands are many and long; +he must be varied in his moods, his topics, and his interests; he must +have a great deal to say, and must have a power of saying it that shall +arrest a depressed and dolorous spirit. Englishmen, of course, would +with mechanical unanimity call for Shakespeare; Germans could hardly +hesitate about Goethe; and a sensible Frenchman would pack up the ninety +volumes of Voltaire. It would be at least as interesting to know the +object of a second choice, supposing the tyrant in his clemency to give +us two authors. In the case of Englishmen there is some evidence as to a +popular preference. A recent traveller in Australia informs us that the +three books which he found on every squatter's shelf, and which at last +he knew before he crossed the threshold that he should be sure to find, +were Shakespeare, the Bible, and Macaulay's Essays. This is only an +illustration of a feeling about Macaulay that has been almost universal +among the English-speaking peoples. + +We may safely say that no man obtains and keeps for a great many years +such a position as this, unless he is possessed of some very +extraordinary qualities, or else of common qualities in a very uncommon +and extraordinary degree. The world, says Goethe, is more willing to +endure the Incongruous than to be patient under the Insignificant. Even +those who set least value on what Macaulay does for his readers, may +still feel bound to distinguish the elements that have given him his +vast popularity. The inquiry is not a piece of merely literary +criticism, for it is impossible that the work of so imposing a writer +should have passed through the hands of every man and woman of his time +who has even the humblest pretensions to cultivation, without leaving a +very decided mark on their habits both of thought and expression. As a +plain matter of observation, it is impossible to take up a newspaper or +a review, for instance, without perceiving Macaulay's influence both in +the style and the temper of modern journalism, and journalism in its +turn acts upon the style and temper of its enormous uncounted public. +The man who now succeeds in catching the ear of the writers of leading +articles, is in the position that used to be held by the head of some +great theological school, whence disciples swarmed forth to reproduce in +ten thousand pulpits the arguments, the opinions, the images, the +tricks, the postures, and the mannerisms of a single master. + +Two men of very different kinds have thoroughly impressed the +journalists of our time, Macaulay and Mr. Mill. Mr. Carlyle we do not +add to them; he is, as the Germans call Jean Paul, _der Einzige_. And he +is a poet, while the other two are in their degrees serious and +argumentative writers, dealing in different ways with the great topics +that constitute the matter and business of daily discussion. They are +both of them practical enough to interest men handling real affairs, and +yet they are general or theoretical enough to supply such men with the +large and ready commonplaces which are so useful to a profession that +has to produce literary graces and philosophical decorations at an +hour's notice. It might perhaps be said of these two distinguished men +that our public writers owe most of their virtues to the one, and most +of their vices to the other. If Mill taught some of them to reason, +Macaulay tempted more of them to declaim: if Mill set an example of +patience, tolerance, and fair examination of hostile opinions, Macaulay +did much to encourage oracular arrogance, and a rather too thrasonical +complacency; if Mill sowed ideas of the great economic, political, and +moral bearings of the forces of society, Macaulay trained a taste for +superficial particularities, trivial circumstantialities of local +colour, and all the paraphernalia of the pseudo-picturesque. + +Of course nothing so obviously untrue is meant as that this is an +account of Macaulay's own quality. What is empty pretension in the +leading article, was often a warranted self-assertion in Macaulay; what +in it is little more than testiness, is in him often a generous +indignation. What became and still remain in those who have made him +their model, substantive and organic vices, the foundation of literary +character and intellectual temper, were in him the incidental defects +of a vigorous genius. And we have to take a man of his power and vigour +with all his drawbacks, for the one are wrapped up in the other. Charles +Fox used to apply to Burke a passage that Quintilian wrote about Ovid. +'Si animi sui affectibus temperare quam indulgere maluisset,' quoted +Fox, 'quid vir iste pręstare non potuerit!' But this is really not at +all certain either of Ovid, or Burke, or any one else. It suits +moralists to tell us that excellence lies in the happy mean and nice +balance of our faculties and impulses, and perhaps in so far as our own +contentment and an easy passage through life are involved, what they +tell us is true. But for making a mark in the world, for rising to +supremacy in art or thought or affairs--whatever those aims may be +worth--a man possibly does better to indulge, rather than to chide or +grudge, his genius, and to pay the penalties for his weakness, rather +than run any risk of mutilating those strong faculties of which they +happen to be an inseparable accident. Versatility is not a universal +gift among the able men of the world; not many of them have so many +gifts of the spirit, as to be free to choose by what pass they will +climb 'the steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar.' If Macaulay had +applied himself to the cultivation of a balanced judgment, of tempered +phrases, and of relative propositions, he would probably have sunk into +an impotent tameness. A great pugilist has sometimes been converted from +the error of his ways, and been led zealously to cherish gospel graces, +but the hero's discourses have seldom had the notes of unction and +edification. Macaulay, divested of all the exorbitancies of his spirit +and his style, would have been a Samson shorn of the locks of his +strength. + +Although, however, a writer of marked quality may do well to let his +genius develop its spontaneous forces without too assiduous or vigilant +repression, trusting to other writers of equal strength in other +directions, and to the general fitness of things and operation of time, +to redress the balance, still it is the task of criticism in counting up +the contributions of one of these strong men to examine the mischiefs no +less than the benefits incident to their work. There is no puny carping +nor cavilling in the process. It is because such men are strong that +they are able to do harm; they may injure the taste and judgment of a +whole generation, just because they are never mediocre. That is implied +in strength. Macaulay is not to be measured now merely as if he were the +author of a new book. His influence has been a distinct literary force, +and in an age of reading, this is to be a distinct force in deciding the +temper, the process, the breadth, of men's opinions, no less than the +manner of expressing them. It is no new observation that the influence +of an author becomes in time something apart from his books: a certain +generalised or abstract personality impresses itself on our minds, long +after we have forgotten the details of his opinions, the arguments by +which he enforced them, and even, what are usually the last to escape +us, the images by which he illustrated them. Phrases and sentences are a +mask: but we detect the features of the man behind the mask. This +personality of a favourite author is a real and powerful agency. +Unconsciously we are infected with his humours; we apply his methods; we +find ourselves copying the rhythm and measure of his periods; we wonder +how he would have acted, or thought, or spoken in our circumstances. +Usually a strong writer leaves a special mark in some particular region +of mental activity: the final product of him is to fix some persistent +religious mood, or some decisive intellectual bias, or else some trick +of the tongue. Now Macaulay has contributed no philosophic ideas to the +speculative stock, nor has he developed any one great historic or social +truth. His work is always full of a high spirit of manliness, probity, +and honour; but he is not of that small band to whom we may apply +Mackintosh's thrice and four times enviable panegyric on the eloquence +of Dugald Stewart, that its peculiar glory consisted in having 'breathed +the love of virtue into whole generations of pupils.' He has painted +many striking pictures, and imparted a certain reality to our conception +of many great scenes of the past. He did good service in banishing once +for all those sentimental Jacobite leanings and prejudices which had +been kept alive by the sophistry of the most popular of historians, and +the imagination of the most popular of romance writers. But where he set +his stamp has been upon style; style in its widest sense, not merely on +the grammar and mechanism of writing, but on what De Quincey described +as its _organology_; style, that is to say, in its relation to ideas and +feelings, its commerce with thought, and its reaction on what one may +call the temper or conscience of the intellect. + +Let no man suppose that it matters little whether the most universally +popular of the serious authors of a generation--and Macaulay was nothing +less than this--affects _style coupé_ or _style soutenu_. The critic of +style is not the dancing-master, declaiming on the deep ineffable things +that lie in a minuet. He is not the virtuoso of supines and gerundives. +The morality of style goes deeper 'than dull fools suppose.' When Comte +took pains to prevent any sentence from exceeding two lines of his +manuscript or five of print; to restrict every paragraph to seven +sentences; to exclude every hiatus between two sentences, or even +between two paragraphs; and never to reproduce any word, except the +auxiliary monosyllables, in two consecutive sentences; he justified his +literary solicitude by insisting on the wholesomeness alike to heart and +intelligence of submission to artificial institutions. He felt, after he +had once mastered the habit of the new yoke, that it became the source +of continual and unforeseeable improvements even in thought, and he +perceived that the reason why verse is a higher kind of literary +perfection than prose, is that verse imposes a greater number of +rigorous forms. We may add that verse itself is perfected, in the hands +of men of poetic genius, in proportion to the severity of this +mechanical regulation. Where Pope or Racine had one rule of metre, +Victor Hugo has twenty, and he observes them as rigorously as an +algebraist or an astronomer observes the rules of calculation or +demonstration. One, then, who touches the style of a generation acquires +no trifling authority over its thought and temper, as well as over the +length of its sentences. + + * * * * * + +The first and most obvious secret of Macaulay's place on popular +bookshelves is that he has a true genius for narration, and narration +will always in the eyes, not only of our squatters in the Australian +bush, but of the many all over the world, stand first among literary +gifts. The common run of plain men, as has been noticed since the +beginning of the world, are as eager as children for a story, and like +children they will embrace the man who will tell them a story, with +abundance of details and plenty of colour, and a realistic assurance +that it is no mere make-believe. Macaulay never stops to brood over an +incident or a character, with an inner eye intent on penetrating to the +lowest depth of motive and cause, to the furthest complexity of impulse, +calculation, and subtle incentive. The spirit of analysis is not in him, +and the divine spirit of meditation is not in him. His whole mind runs +in action and movement; it busies itself with eager interest in all +objective particulars. He is seized by the external and the superficial, +and revels in every detail that appeals to the five senses. 'The +brilliant Macaulay,' said Emerson, with slight exaggeration, 'who +expresses the tone of the English governing classes of the day, +explicitly teaches that _good_ means good to eat, good to wear, material +commodity.' So ready a faculty of exultation in the exceeding great +glories of taste and touch, of loud sound and glittering spectacle, is a +gift of the utmost service to the narrator who craves immense audiences. +Let it be said that if Macaulay exults in the details that go to our +five senses, his sensuousness is always clean, manly, and fit for honest +daylight and the summer sun. There is none of that curious odour of +autumnal decay that clings to the passion of a more modern school for +colour and flavour and the enumerated treasures of subtle indulgence. + +Mere picturesqueness, however, is a minor qualification compared with +another quality which everybody assumes himself to have, but which is in +reality extremely uncommon; the quality, I mean, of telling a tale +directly and in straightforward order. In speaking of Hallam, Macaulay +complained that Gibbon had brought into fashion an unpleasant trick of +telling a story by implication and allusion. This provoking obliquity +has certainly increased rather than declined since Hallam's day. Mr. +Froude, it is true, whatever may be his shortcomings on the side of +sound moral and political judgment, has admirable gifts in the way of +straightforward narration, and Mr. Freeman, when he does not press too +hotly after emphasis, and abstains from overloading his account with +super-abundance of detail, is usually excellent in the way of direct +description. Still, it is not merely because these two writers are alive +and Macaulay is not, that most people would say of him that he is +unequalled in our time in his mastery of the art of letting us know in +an express and unmistakable way exactly what it was that happened; +though it is quite true that in many portions of his too elaborated +History of William the Third he describes a large number of events about +which, I think, no sensible man can in the least care either how they +happened, or whether indeed they happened at all or not. + +Another reason why people have sought Macaulay is, that he has in one +way or another something to tell them about many of the most striking +personages and interesting events in the history of mankind. And he does +really tell them something. If any one will be at the trouble to count +up the number of those names that belong to the world and time, about +which Macaulay has found not merely something, but something definite +and pointed to say, he will be astonished to see how large a portion of +the wide historic realm is traversed in that ample flight of reference, +allusion, and illustration, and what unsparing copiousness of knowledge +gives substance, meaning, and attraction to that resplendent blaze of +rhetoric. + +Macaulay came upon the world of letters just as the middle classes were +expanding into enormous prosperity, were vastly increasing in numbers, +and were becoming more alive than they had ever been before to literary +interests. His Essays are as good as a library: they make an +incomparable manual and vade-mecum for a busy uneducated man, who has +curiosity and enlightenment enough to wish to know a little about the +great lives and great thoughts, the shining words and many-coloured +complexities of action, that have marked the journey of man through the +ages. Macaulay had an intimate acquaintance both with the imaginative +literature and the history of Greece and Rome, with the literature and +the history of modern Italy, of France, and of England. Whatever his +special subject, he contrives to pour into it with singular dexterity a +stream of rich, graphic, and telling illustrations from all these widely +diversified sources. Figures from history, ancient and modern, sacred +and secular; characters from plays and novels from Plautus down to +Walter Scott and Jane Austen; images and similes from poets of every age +and every nation, 'pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, +tragical-historical;' shrewd thrusts from satirists, wise saws from +sages, pleasantries caustic or pathetic from humorists; all these throng +Macaulay's pages with the bustle and variety and animation of some +glittering masque and cosmoramic revel of great books and heroical men. +Hence, though Macaulay was in mental constitution one of the very least +Shakesperean writers that ever lived, yet he has the Shakesperean +quality of taking his reader through an immense gallery of interesting +characters and striking situations. No writer can now expect to attain +the widest popularity as a man of letters unless he gives to the world +_multa_ as well as _multum_. Sainte-Beuve, the most eminent man of +letters in France in our generation, wrote no less than twenty-seven +volumes of his incomparable _Causeries_. Mr. Carlyle, the most eminent +man of letters in England in our generation, has taught us that silence +is golden in thirty volumes. Macaulay was not so exuberantly copious as +these two illustrious writers, but he had the art of being as various +without being so voluminous. + +There has been a great deal of deliberate and systematic imitation of +Macaulay's style, often by clever men who might well have trusted to +their own resources. Its most conspicuous vices are very easy to +imitate, but it is impossible for any one who is less familiar with +literature than Macaulay was, to reproduce his style effectively, for +the reason that it is before all else the style of great literary +knowledge. Nor is that all. Macaulay's knowledge was not only very wide; +it was both thoroughly accurate and instantly ready. For this stream of +apt illustrations he was indebted to his extraordinary memory, and his +rapid eye for contrasts and analogies. They come to the end of his pen +as he writes; they are not laboriously hunted out in indexes, and then +added by way of afterthought and extraneous interpolation. Hence +quotations and references that in a writer even of equal knowledge, but +with his wits less promptly about him, would seem mechanical and +awkward, find their place in a page of Macaulay as if by a delightful +process of complete assimilation and spontaneous fusion. + + * * * * * + +We may be sure that no author could have achieved Macaulay's boundless +popularity among his contemporaries, unless his work had abounded in +what is substantially Commonplace. Addison puts fine writing in +sentiments that are natural without being obvious, and this is a true +account of the 'law' of the exquisite literature of the Queen Anne men. +We may perhaps add to Addison's definition, that the great secret of the +best kind of popularity is always the noble or imaginative handling of +Commonplace. Shakespeare may at first seem an example to the contrary; +and indeed is it not a standing marvel that the greatest writer of a +nation that is distinguished among all nations for the pharisaism, +puritanism, and unimaginative narrowness of its judgments on conduct and +type of character, should be paramount over all writers for the breadth, +maturity, fulness, subtlety, and infinite variousness of his conception +of human life and nature? One possible answer to the perplexity is that +the puritanism does not go below the surface in us, and that Englishmen +are not really limited in their view by the too strait formulas that are +supposed to contain their explanations of the moral universe. On this +theory the popular appreciation of Shakespeare is the irrepressible +response of the hearty inner man to a voice, in which he recognises the +full note of human nature, and those wonders of the world which are not +dreamt of in his professed philosophy. A more obvious answer than this +is that Shakespeare's popularity with the many is not due to those finer +glimpses that are the very essence of all poetic delight to the few, but +to his thousand other magnificent attractions, and above all, after his +skill as a pure dramatist and master of scenic interest and situation, +to the lofty or pathetic setting with which he vivifies, not the +subtleties or refinements, but the commonest and most elementary traits +of the commonest and most elementary human moods. The few with minds +touched by nature or right cultivation to the finer issues, admire the +supreme genius which takes some poor Italian tale, with its coarse plot +and gross personages, and shooting it through with threads of variegated +meditation, produces a masterpiece of penetrative reflection and high +pensive suggestion as to the deepest things and most secret parts of the +life of men. But to the general these finer threads are indiscernible. +What touches them in the Shakesperean poetry, and most rightly touches +them and us all, are topics eternally old, yet of eternal freshness, the +perennial truisms of the grave and the bride-chamber, of shifting +fortune, of the surprises of destiny, and the emptiness of the answered +vow. This is the region in which the poet wins his widest if not his +hardest triumphs, the region of the noble Commonplace. + +A writer dealing with such matters as principally occupied Macaulay, +has not the privilege of resort to these great poetic inspirations. Yet +history, too, has its generous commonplaces, its plausibilities of +emotion, and no one has ever delighted more than Macaulay did, to appeal +to the fine truisms that cluster round love of freedom and love of +native land. The high rhetorical topics of liberty and patriotism are +his readiest instruments for kindling a glowing reflection of these +magnanimous passions in the breasts of his readers. That Englishman is +hardly to be envied who can read without a glow such passages as that in +the History, about Turenne being startled by the shout of stern +exultation with which his English allies advanced to the combat, and +expressing the delight of a true soldier when he learned that it was +ever the fashion of Cromwell's pikemen to rejoice greatly when they +beheld the enemy; while even the banished cavaliers felt an emotion of +national pride when they saw a brigade of their countrymen, outnumbered +by foes and abandoned by friends, drive before it in headlong rout the +finest infantry of Spain, and force a passage into a counterscarp which +had just been pronounced impregnable by the ablest of the marshals of +France. Such prose as this is not less thrilling to a man who loves his +country, than the spirited verse of the Lays of Ancient Rome. And the +commonplaces of patriotism and freedom would never have been so powerful +in Macaulay's hands, if they had not been inspired by a sincere and +hearty faith in them in the soul of the writer. His unanalytical turn +of mind kept him free of any temptation to think of love of country as a +prejudice, or a passion for freedom as an illusion. The cosmopolitan or +international idea which such teachers as Cobden have tried to impress +on our stubborn islanders, would have found in Macaulay not lukewarm or +sceptical adherence, but point-blank opposition and denial. He believed +as stoutly in the supremacy of Great Britain in the history of the good +causes of Europe, as M. Thiers believes in the supremacy of France, or +Mazzini believed in that of Italy. The thought of the prodigious +industry, the inventiveness, the stout enterprise, the free government, +the wise and equal laws, the noble literature, of this fortunate island +and its majestic empire beyond the seas, and the discretion, valour, and +tenacity by which all these great material and still greater intangible +possessions had been first won, and then kept, against every hostile +comer whether domestic or foreign, sent through Macaulay a thrill, like +that which the thought of Paris and its heroisms moves in the great poet +of France, or sight of the dear city of the Violet Crown moved in an +Athenian of old. Thus habitually, with all sincerity of heart, to offer +to one of the greater popular prepossessions the incense due to any +other idol of superstition, sacred and of indisputable authority, and to +let this adoration be seen shining in every page, is one of the keys +that every man must find, who would make a quick and sure way into the +temple of contemporary fame. + +It is one of the first things to be said about Macaulay, that he was in +exact accord with the common average sentiment of his day on every +subject on which he spoke. His superiority was not of that highest kind +which leads a man to march in thought on the outside margin of the +crowd, watching them, sympathising with them, hoping for them, but +apart. Macaulay was one of the middle-class crowd in his heart, and only +rose above it by splendid attainments and extraordinary gifts of +expression. He had none of that ambition which inflames some hardy men, +to make new beliefs and new passions enter the minds of their +neighbours; his ascendency is due to literary pomp, not to fecundity of +spirit. No one has ever surpassed him in the art of combining resolute +and ostentatious common sense of a slightly coarse sort in choosing his +point of view, with so considerable an appearance of dignity and +elevation in setting it forth and impressing it upon others. The +elaborateness of his style is very likely to mislead people into +imagining for him a corresponding elaborateness of thought and +sentiment. On the contrary, Macaulay's mind was really very simple, +strait, and with as few notes in its register, to borrow a phrase from +the language of vocal compass, as there are few notes, though they are +very loud, in the register of his written prose. When we look more +closely into it, what at first wore the air of dignity and elevation, in +truth rather disagreeably resembles the narrow assurance of a man who +knows that he has with him the great battalions of public opinion. We +are always quite sure that if Macaulay had been an Athenian citizen +towards the ninety-fifth Olympiad, he would have taken sides with Anytus +and Meletus in the impeachment of Socrates. A popular author must, in a +thorough-going way, take the accepted maxims for granted. He must +suppress any whimsical fancy for applying the Socratic elenchus, or any +other engine of criticism, scepticism, or verification, to those +sentiments or current precepts of morals, which may in truth be very +equivocal and may be much neglected in practice, but which the public +opinion of his time requires to be treated in theory and in literature +as if they had been cherished and held sacred _semper, ubique, et ab +omnibus_. + +This is just what Macaulay does, and it is commonly supposed to be no +heavy fault in him or any other writer for the common public. Man cannot +live by analysis alone, nor nourish himself on the secret delights of +irony. And if Macaulay had only reflected the more generous of the +prejudices of mankind, it would have been well enough. Burke, for +instance, was a writer who revered the prejudices of a modern society as +deeply as Macaulay did; he believed society to be founded on prejudices +and held compact by them. Yet what size there is in Burke, what fine +perspective, what momentum, what edification! It may be pleaded that +there is the literature of edification, and there is the literature of +knowledge, and that the qualities proper to the one cannot lawfully be +expected from the other, and would only be very much out of place if +they should happen to be found there. But there are two answers to this. +First, Macaulay in the course of his varied writings discusses all sorts +of ethical and other matters, and is not simply a chronicler of party +and intrigue, of dynasties and campaigns. Second, and more than this, +even if he had never travelled beyond the composition of historical +record, he could still have sown his pages, as does every truly great +writer, no matter what his subject may be, with those significant images +or far-reaching suggestions, which suddenly light up a whole range of +distant thoughts and sympathies within us; which in an instant affect +the sensibilities of men with a something new and unforeseen; and which +awaken, if only for a passing moment, the faculty and response of the +diviner mind. Tacitus does all this, and Burke does it, and that is why +men who care nothing for Roman despots or for Jacobin despots, will +still perpetually turn to those writers almost as if they were on the +level of great poets or very excellent spiritual teachers. + +One secret is that they, and all such men as they were, had that of +which Macaulay can hardly have had the rudimentary germ, the faculty of +deep abstract meditation and surrender to the fruitful 'leisures of the +spirit.' We can picture Macaulay talking, or making a speech in the +House of Commons, or buried in a book, or scouring his library for +references, or covering his blue foolscap with dashing periods, or +accentuating his sentences and barbing his phrases; but can anybody +think of him as meditating, as modestly pondering and wondering, as +possessed for so much as ten minutes by that spirit of inwardness, which +has never been wholly wanting in any of those kings and princes of +literature, with whom it is good for men to sit in counsel? He seeks +Truth, not as she should be sought, devoutly, tentatively, and with the +air of one touching the hem of a sacred garment, but clutching her by +the hair of the head and dragging her after him in a kind of boisterous +triumph, a prisoner of war and not a goddess. + +All this finds itself reflected, as the inner temper of a man always is +reflected, in his style of written prose. The merits of Macaulay's prose +are obvious enough. It naturally reproduces the good qualities I of his +understanding, its strength, manliness, and directness. That exultation +in material goods and glories of which we have already spoken, makes his +pages rich in colour, and gives them the effect of a sumptuous +gala-suit. Certainly the brocade is too brand-new, and has none of the +delicate charm that comes to such finery when it is a little faded. +Again, nobody can have any excuse for not knowing exactly what it is +that Macaulay means. We may assuredly say of his prose what Boileau says +of his own poetry--'Et mon vers, bien ou mal, dit toujours quelque +chose.' This is a prodigious merit, when we reflect with what fatal +alacrity human language lends itself in the hands of so many performers +upon the pliant instrument, to all sorts of obscurity, ambiguity, +disguise, and pretentious mystification. Scaliger is supposed to have +remarked of the Basques and their desperate tongue: ''Tis said the +Basques understand one another; for my part, I will never believe it.' +The same pungent doubt might apply to loftier members of the hierarchy +of speech than that forlorn dialect, but never to English as handled by +Macaulay. He never wrote an obscure sentence in his life, and this may +seem a small merit, until we remember of how few writers we could say +the same. + +Macaulay is of those who think prose as susceptible of polished and +definite form as verse, and he was, we should suppose, of those also who +hold the type and mould of all written language to be spoken language. +There are more reasons for demurring to the soundness of the latter +doctrine, than can conveniently be made to fill a digression here. For +one thing, spoken language necessarily implies one or more listeners, +whereas written language may often have to express meditative moods and +trains of inward reflection that move through the mind without trace of +external reference, and that would lose their special traits by the +introduction of any suspicion that they were to be overheard. Again, +even granting that all composition must be supposed to be meant, by the +fact of its existence, to be addressed to a body of readers, it still +remains to be shown that indirect address to the inner ear should follow +the same method and rhythm as address directly through impressions on +the outer organ. The attitude of the recipient mind is different, and +there is the symbolism of a new medium between it and the speaker. The +writer, being cut off from all those effects which are producible by the +physical intonations of the voice, has to find substitutes for them by +other means, by subtler cadences, by a more varied modulation, by firmer +notes, by more complex circuits, than suffice for the utmost perfection +of spoken language, which has all the potent and manifold aids of +personality. In writing, whether it be prose or verse, you are free to +produce effects whose peculiarity one can only define vaguely, by saying +that the senses have one part less in them than in any other of the +forms and effects of art, and the imaginary voice one part more. But the +question need not be laboured here, because there can be no dispute as +to the quality of Macaulay's prose. Its measures are emphatically the +measures of spoken deliverance. Those who have made the experiment, +pronounce him to be one of the authors whose works are most admirably +fitted for reading aloud. His firmness and directness of statement, his +spiritedness, his art of selecting salient and highly coloured detail, +and all his other merits as a narrator, keep the listener's attention, +and make him the easiest of writers to follow. + +Although, however, clearness, directness, and positiveness are master +qualities and the indispensable foundations of all good style, yet does +the matter plainly by no means end with them. And it is even possible +to have these virtues so unhappily proportioned and inauspiciously mixed +with other turns and casts of mind, as to end in work with little grace +or harmony or fine tracery about it, but only overweening purpose and +vehement will. And it is overweeningness and self-confident will that +are the chief notes of Macaulay's style. It has no benignity. Energy is +doubtless a delightful quality, but then Macaulay's energy is perhaps +energy without momentum, and he impresses us more by a strong volubility +than by volume. It is the energy of interests and intuitions, which +though they are profoundly sincere if ever they were sincere in any man, +are yet in the relations which they comprehend, essentially superficial. + +Still, trenchancy whether in speaker or writer is a most effective tone +for a large public. It gives them confidence in their man, and prevents +tediousness--except to those who reflect how delicate is the poise of +truth, and what steeps and pits encompass the dealer in unqualified +propositions. To such persons, a writer who is trenchant in every +sentence of every page, who never lapses for a line into the contingent, +who marches through the intricacies of things in a blaze of certainty, +is not only a writer to be distrusted, but the owner of a doubtful and +displeasing style. It is a great test of style to watch how an author +disposes of the qualifications, limitations, and exceptions that clog +the wings of his main proposition. The grave and conscientious men of +the seventeenth century insisted on packing them all honestly along with +the main proposition itself, within the bounds of a single period. +Burke arranges them in tolerably close order in the paragraph. Dr. +Newmann, that winning writer, disperses them lightly over his page. Of +Macaulay it is hardly unfair to say that he despatches all +qualifications into outer space before he begins to write, or if he +magnanimously admits one or two here and there, it is only to bring them +the more imposingly to the same murderous end. + +We have spoken of Macaulay's interests and intuitions wearing a certain +air of superficiality; there is a feeling of the same kind about his +attempts to be genial. It is not truly festive. There is no abandonment +in it. It has no deep root in moral humour, and is merely a literary +form, resembling nothing so much as the hard geniality of some clever +college tutor of stiff manners, entertaining undergraduates at an +official breakfast-party. This is not because his tone is bookish; on +the contrary, his tone and level are distinctly those of the man of the +world. But one always seems to find that neither a wide range of +cultivation, nor familiar access to the best Whig circles, had quite +removed the stiffness and self-conscious precision of the Clapham Sect. +We would give much for a little more flexibility, and would welcome ever +so slight a consciousness of infirmity. As has been said, the only +people whom men cannot pardon are the perfect. Macaulay is like the +military king who never suffered himself to be seen, even by the +attendants in his bed-chamber, until he had had time to put on his +uniform and jack-boots. His severity of eye is very wholesome; it makes +his writing firm, and firmness is certainly one of the first qualities +that good writing must have. But there is such a thing as soft and +considerate precision, as well as hard and scolding precision. Those +most interesting English critics of the generation slightly anterior to +Macaulay,--Hazlitt, Lamb, De Quincey, Leigh Hunt,--were fully his equals +in precision, and yet they knew how to be clear, acute, and definite, +without that edginess and inelasticity which is so conspicuous in +Macaulay's criticisms, alike in their matter and their form. + +To borrow the figure of an old writer, Macaulay's prose is not like a +flowing vestment to his thought, but like a suit of armour. It is often +splendid and glittering, and the movement of the opening pages of his +History is superb in its dignity. But that movement is exceptional. As a +rule there is the hardness, if there is also often the sheen, of +highly-wrought metal. Or, to change our figure, his pages are composed +as a handsome edifice is reared, not as a fine statue or a frieze 'with +bossy sculptures graven' grows up in the imaginative mind of the +statuary. There is no liquid continuity, such as indicates a writer +possessed by his subject and not merely possessing it. The periods are +marshalled in due order of procession, bright and high-stepping; they +never escape under an impulse of emotion into the full current of a +brimming stream. What is curious is that though Macaulay seems ever to +be brandishing a two-edged gleaming sword, and though he steeps us in an +atmosphere of belligerency, yet we are never conscious of inward +agitation in him, and perhaps this alone would debar him from a place +among the greatest writers. For they, under that reserve, suppression, +or management, which is an indispensable condition of the finest +rhetorical art, even when aiming at the most passionate effects, still +succeed in conveying to their readers a thrilling sense of the strong +fires that are glowing underneath. Now when Macaulay advances with his +hectoring sentences and his rough pistolling ways, we feel all the time +that his pulse is as steady as that of the most practised duellist who +ever ate fire. He is too cool to be betrayed into a single phrase of +happy improvisation. His pictures glare, but are seldom warm. Those +strokes of minute circumstantiality which he loved so dearly, show that +even in moments when his imagination might seem to be moving both +spontaneously and ardently, it was really only a literary instrument, a +fashioning tool and not a melting flame. Let us take a single example. +He is describing the trial of Warren Hastings. 'Every step in the +proceedings,' he says, 'carried the mind either backward through many +troubled centuries to the days when the foundations of our constitution +were laid; or far away over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations +living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing +strange characters from right to left. The odd triviality of the last +detail, its unworthiness of the sentiment of the passage, leaves the +reader checked, what sets out as a fine stroke of imagination dwindles +down to a sort of literary conceit. And this puerile twist, by the way, +is all the poorer, when it is considered that the native writing is +really from left to right, and only takes the other direction in a +foreign, that is to say, a Persian alphabet. And so in other places, +even where the writer is most deservedly admired for gorgeous +picturesque effect, we feel that it is only the literary picturesque, a +kind of infinitely glorified newspaper-reporting. Compare, for instance, +the most imaginative piece to be found in any part of Macaulay's +writings with that sudden and lovely apostrophe in Carlyle, after +describing the bloody horrors that followed the fall of the Bastille in +1789:--'O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant +on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in +cottages; on ships far out in the silent main; on balls at the Orangerie +at Versailles, where high-rouged dames of the Palace are even now +dancing with double-jacketed Hussar officers;--and also on this roaring +Hell-porch of a Hōtel de Ville!' Who does not feel in this the breath of +poetic inspiration, and how different it is from the mere composite of +the rhetorician's imagination, assiduously working to order? + +This remark is no disparagement of Macaulay's genius, but a +classification of it. We are interrogating our own impressions, and +asking ourselves among what kind of writers he ought to be placed. +Rhetoric is a good and worthy art, and rhetorical authors are often more +useful, more instructive, more really respectable than poetical authors. +But it is to be said that Macaulay as a rhetorician will hardly be +placed in the first rank, by those who have studied both him and the +great masters. Once more, no amount of embellishment or emphasis or +brilliant figure suffices to produce this intense effect of agitation +rigorously restrained; nor can any beauty of decoration be in the least +a substitute for that touching and penetrative music, which is made in +prose by the repressed trouble of grave and high souls. There is a +certain music, we do not deny, in Macaulay, but it is the music of a man +everlastingly playing for us rapid solos on a silver trumpet, never the +swelling diapasons of the organ, and never the deep ecstasies of the +four magic strings. That so sensible a man as Macaulay should keep clear +of the modern abomination of dithyrambic prose, that rank and sprawling +weed of speech, was natural enough; but then the effects which we miss +in him, and which, considering how strong the literary faculty in him +really was, we are almost astonished to miss, are not produced by +dithyramb but by repression. Of course the answer has been already +given; Macaulay, powerful and vigorous as he was, had no agitation, no +wonder, no tumult of spirit to repress. The world was spread out clear +before him; he read it as plainly and as certainly as he read his books; +life was all an affair of direct categoricals. + +This was at least one secret of those hard modulations and shallow +cadences. How poor is the rhythm of Macaulay's prose we only realise by +going with his periods fresh in our ear to some true master of harmony. +It is not worth while to quote passages from an author who is in +everybody's library, and Macaulay is always so much like himself that +almost any one page will serve for an illustration exactly as well as +any other. Let any one turn to his character of Somers, for whom he had +so much admiration, and then turn to Clarendon's character of +Falkland;--'a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, +of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing +and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive +simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon +this odious and accursed civil war than that single loss, it must be +most infamous and execrable to all posterity.' Now Clarendon is not a +great writer, not even a good writer, for he is prolix and involved, yet +we see that even Clarendon, when he comes to a matter in which his heart +is engaged, becomes sweet and harmonious in his rhythm. If we turn to a +prose-writer of the very first place, we are instantly conscious of a +still greater difference. How flashy and shallow Macaulay's periods +seem, as we listen to the fine ground-base that rolls in the melody of +the following passage of Burke's, and it is taken from one of the least +ornate of all his pieces:-- + + You will not, we trust, believe that, born in a civilised country, + formed to gentle manners, trained in a merciful religion, and living + in enlightened and polished times, where even foreign hostility is + softened from its original sternness, we could have thought of + letting loose upon you, our late beloved brethren, these fierce + tribes of savages and cannibals, in whom the traces of human nature + are effaced by ignorance and barbarity. We rather wished to have + joined with you in bringing gradually that unhappy part of mankind + into civility, order, piety, and virtuous discipline, than to have + confirmed their evil habits and increased their natural ferocity by + fleshing them in the slaughter of you, whom our wiser and better + ancestors had sent into the wilderness with the express view of + introducing, along with our holy religion, its humane and charitable + manners. We do not hold that all things are lawful in war. We should + think every barbarity, in fire, in wasting, in murders, in tortures, + and other cruelties, too horrible and too full of turpitude for + Christian mouths to utter or ears to hear, if done at our + instigation, by those who we know will make war thus if they make it + at all, to be, to all intents and purposes, as if done by ourselves. + We clear ourselves to you our brethren, to the present age, and to + future generations, to our king and our country, and to Europe, which + as a spectator, beholds this tragic scene, of every part or share in + adding this last and worst of evils to the inevitable mischiefs of a + civil war. + + We do not call you rebels and traitors. We do not call for the + vengeance of the crown against you. We do not know how to qualify + millions of our countrymen, contending with one heart for an + admission to privileges which we have ever thought our own happiness + and honour, by odious and unworthy names. On the contrary, we highly + revere the principles on which you act, though we lament some of + their effects. Armed as you are, we embrace you, as our friends and + as our brethren by the best and dearest ties of relation. + +It may be said that there is a patent injustice in comparing the prose +of a historian criticising or describing great events at second hand, +with the prose of a statesman taking active part in great events, fired +by the passion of a present conflict, and stimulated by the vivid +interest of undetermined issues. If this be a well-grounded plea, and it +may be so, then of course it excludes a contrast not only with Burke, +but also with Bolingbroke, whose fine manners and polished gaiety give +us a keen sense of the grievous garishness of Macaulay. If we may not +institute a comparison between Macaulay and great actors on the stage of +affairs, at least there can be no objection to the introduction of +Southey as a standard of comparison. Southey was a man of letters pure +and simple, and it is worth remarking that Macaulay himself admitted +that he found so great a charm in Southey's style, as nearly always to +read it with pleasure, even when Southey was talking nonsense. Now, take +any page of the Life of Nelson or the Life of Wesley; consider how easy, +smooth, natural, and winning is the diction and the rise and fall of the +sentence, and yet how varied the rhythm and how nervous the phrases; and +then turn to a page of Macaulay, and wince under its stamping emphasis, +its over-coloured tropes, its exaggerated expressions, its unlovely +staccato. Southey's History of the Peninsular War is now dead, but if +any of my readers has a copy on his highest shelves, I would venture to +ask him to take down the third volume, and read the concluding pages, +of which Coleridge used to say that they were the finest specimen of +historic eulogy he had ever read in English, adding with forgivable +hyperbole, that they were more to the Duke's fame and glory than a +campaign. 'Foresight and enterprise with our commander went hand in +hand; he never advanced but so as to be sure of his retreat; and never +retreated but in such an attitude as to impose upon a superior enemy,' +and so on through the sum of Wellington's achievements. 'There was +something more precious than these, more to be desired than the high and +enduring fame which he had secured by his military achievements, the +satisfaction of thinking to what end those achievements had been +directed; that they were for the deliverance of two most injured and +grievously oppressed nations; for the safety, honour, and welfare of his +own country; and for the general interests of Europe and of the +civilised world. His campaigns were sanctified by the cause; they were +sullied by no cruelties, no crimes; the chariot-wheels of his triumphs +have been followed by no curses; his laurels are entwined with the +amaranths of righteousness, and upon his death-bed he might remember his +victories among his good works.' + +What is worse than want of depth and fineness of intonation in a period, +is all gross excess of colour, because excess of colour is connected +with graver faults in the region of the intellectual conscience. +Macaulay is a constant sinner in this respect. The wine of truth is in +his cup a brandied draught, a hundred degrees above proof, and he too +often replenishes the lamp of knowledge with naphtha instead of fine +oil. It is not that he has a spontaneous passion for exuberant +decoration, which he would have shared with more than one of the +greatest names in literature. On the contrary, we feel that the +exaggerated words and dashing sentences are the fruit of deliberate +travail, and the petulance or the irony of his speech is mostly due to a +driving predilection for strong effects. His memory, his directness, his +aptitude for forcing things into firm outline, and giving them a sharply +defined edge,--these and other singular talents of his all lent +themselves to this intrepid and indefatigable pursuit of effect. And the +most disagreeable feature is that Macaulay was so often content with an +effect of an essentially vulgar kind, offensive to taste, discordant to +the fastidious ear, and worst of all, at enmity with the whole spirit of +truth. By vulgar we certainly do not mean homely, which marks a wholly +different quality. No writer can be more homely than Mr. Carlyle, alike +in his choice of particulars to dwell upon, and in the terms or images +in which he describes or illustrates them, but there is also no writer +further removed from vulgarity. Nor do we mean that Macaulay too +copiously enriches the tongue with infusion from any Doric dialect. For +such raciness he had little taste. What we find in him is that quality +which the French call brutal. The description, for instance, in the +essay on Hallam, of the licence of the Restoration, seems to us a coarse +and vulgar picture, whose painter took the most garish colours he could +find on his palette, and then laid them on in untempered crudity. And +who is not sensible of the vulgarity and coarseness of the account of +Boswell? 'If he had not been a great fool he would not have been a great +writer ... he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb,' and so forth, in +which the shallowness of the analysis of Boswell's character matches the +puerile rudeness of the terms. Here again, is a sentence about +Montesquieu. 'The English at that time,' Macaulay says of the middle of +the eighteenth century, 'considered a Frenchman who talked about +constitutional checks and fundamental laws as a prodigy not less +astonishing than the learned pig or musical infant.' And he then goes on +to describe the author of one of the most important books that ever were +written, as 'specious but shallow, studious of effect, indifferent to +truth--the lively President,' and so forth, stirring in any reader who +happens to know Montesquieu's influence, a singular amazement. We are +not concerned with the judgment upon Montesquieu, nor with the truth as +to contemporary English opinion about him, but a writer who devises an +antithesis to such a man as Montesquieu in learned pigs and musical +infants, deliberately condescends not merely to triviality or levity, +but to flat vulgarity of thought, to something of mean and ignoble +association. Though one of the most common, this is not Macaulay's only +sin in the same unfortunate direction. He too frequently resorts to +vulgar gaudiness. For example, there is in one place a certain +description of an alleged practice of Addison's. Swift had said of +Esther Johnson that 'whether from easiness in general, or from her +indifference to persons, or from her despair of mending them, or from +the same practice which she most liked in Mr. Addison, I cannot +determine; but when she saw any of the company very warm in a wrong +opinion, she was more inclined to confirm them in it than to oppose +them. It prevented noise, she said, and saved time.'[2] Let us behold +what a picture Macaulay draws on the strength of this passage. 'If his +first attempts to set a presuming dunce right were ill-received,' +Macaulay says of Addison, 'he changed his tone, "assented with civil +leer," and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and deeper into +absurdity.' To compare this transformation of the simplicity of the +original into the grotesque heat and overcharged violence of the copy, +is to see the homely maiden of a country village transformed into the +painted flaunter of the city. + +One more instance. We should be sorry to violate any sentiment of +[Greek: to semnon] about a man of Macaulay's genius, but what is a +decorous term for a description of the doctrine of Lucretius's great +poem, thrown in parenthetically, as the 'silliest and meanest system of +natural and moral philosophy!' Even disagreeable artifices of +composition may be forgiven, when they serve to vivify truth, to +quicken or to widen the moral judgment, but Macaulay's hardy and +habitual recourse to strenuous superlatives is fundamentally +unscientific and untrue. There is no more instructive example in our +literature than he, of the saying that the adjective is the enemy of the +substantive. + +[Footnote 2: Forster's _Swift_, i. 265.] + + * * * * * + +In 1837 Jeffrey saw a letter written by Macaulay to a common friend, and +stating the reasons for preferring a literary to a political life. +Jeffrey thought that his illustrious ally was wrong in the conclusion to +which he came. 'As to the tranquillity of an author's life,' he said, 'I +have no sort of faith in it. And as to fame, if an author's is now and +then more lasting, it is generally longer withheld, and except in a few +rare cases it is of a less pervading or elevating description. A great +poet or a great _original_ writer is above all other glory. But who +would give much for such a glory as Gibbon's? Besides, I believe it is +in the inward glow and pride of consciously influencing the destinies of +mankind, much more than in the sense of personal reputation, that the +delight of either poet or statesman chiefly consists.' And Gibbon had at +least the advantage of throwing himself into a religious controversy +that is destined to endure for centuries. He, moreover, was specifically +a historian, while Macaulay has been prized less as a historian proper +than as a master of literary art. Now a man of letters, in an age of +battle and transition like our own, fades into an ever-deepening +distance, unless he has while he writes that touching and impressive +quality,--the presentiment of the eve; a feeling of the difficulties and +interests that will engage and distract mankind on the morrow. Nor can +it be enough for enduring fame in any age merely to throw a golden halo +round the secularity of the hour, or to make glorious the narrowest +limitations of the passing day. If we think what a changed sense is +already given to criticism, what a different conception now presides +over history, how many problems on which Macaulay was silent are now the +familiar puzzles of even superficial readers, we cannot help feeling +that the eminent man whose life we are all about to read, is the hero of +a past which is already remote, and that he did little to make men +better fitted to face a present of which, close as it was to him, he +seems hardly to have dreamed. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRITICAL MISCELLANIES, VOLUME I (OF +3)*** + + +******* This file should be named 20164-8.txt or 20164-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/1/6/20164 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3)</p> +<p> Essay 4: Macaulay</p> +<p>Author: John Morley</p> +<p>Release Date: December 22, 2006 [eBook #20164]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRITICAL MISCELLANIES, VOLUNME I (OF 3)***</p> +<p> </p> +<h4>E-text prepared by Paul Murray, Graeme Mackreth,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (http://www.pgdp.net/c/)</h4> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h1>CRITICAL<br /> +MISCELLANIES</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>JOHN MORLEY</h2> + +<h3>VOL. I.<br /> + +Essay 4: Macaulay</h3> + +<p class='center' style="margin-top: 15em;margin-bottom: 5em;"><small>London<br /> +MACMILLAN AND CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span><br /> +NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> +1904</small> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3 style="text-align: left;">MACAULAY.</h3> + +<p> +The Life of Macaulay <span style="margin-left: 20em;"> <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Macaulay's vast popularity<span style="margin-left: 18em;"> <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br /></span> +<br /> +He and Mill, the two masters of the modern journalist<span style="margin-left: 8em;"> <a href="#Page_256">256</a><br /></span> +<br /> +His marked quality <span style="margin-left: 21em;"> <a href="#Page_259">259</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Set his stamp on style <span style="margin-left: 20em;"> <a href="#Page_260">260</a><br /></span> +<br /> +His genius for narration <span style="margin-left: 19.5em;"> <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br /></span> +<br /> +His copiousness of illustration <span style="margin-left: 17em;"> <a href="#Page_264">264</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Macaulay's, the style of literary knowledge<span style="margin-left: 12em;"> <a href="#Page_266">266</a><br /></span> +<br /> +His use of generous commonplace <span style="margin-left: 15.25em;"> <a href="#Page_267">267</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Perfect accord with his audience <span style="margin-left: 16em;"> <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Dislike of analysis <span style="margin-left: 21.5em;"> <a href="#Page_272">272</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Not meditative <span style="margin-left: 22.75em;"> <a href="#Page_273">273</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Macaulay's is the prose of spoken deliverance<span style="margin-left: 11em;"> <a href="#Page_276">276</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Character of his geniality <span style="margin-left: 19em;"> <a href="#Page_278">278</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Metallic hardness and brightness<span style="margin-left: 16em;"> <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Compared with Carlyle <span style="margin-left: 19.5em;"> <a href="#Page_281">281</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Harsh modulations and shallow cadences<span style="margin-left: 13em;"> <a href="#Page_283">283</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Compared with Burke <span style="margin-left: 20em;"> <a href="#Page_283">283</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Or with Southey <span style="margin-left: 22.25em;"> <a href="#Page_285">285</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Faults of intellectual conscience <span style="margin-left: 16.75em;"> <a href="#Page_286">286</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Vulgarity of thought <span style="margin-left: 21em;"> <a href="#Page_289">289</a><br /></span> +<br /> +Conclusion <span style="margin-left: 24.25em;"> <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>MACAULAY.</h2> + + +<p>'After glancing my eye over the design and order of a new book,' says +Gibbon, 'I suspended the perusal till I had finished the task of +self-examination, till I had revolved in a solitary walk all that I knew +or believed or had thought on the subject of the whole work or of some +particular chapter; I was then qualified to discern how much the author +added to my original stock; and if I was sometimes satisfied by the +agreement, I was sometimes warned by the opposition of our ideas.' It is +also told of Strafford that before reading any book for the first time, +he would call for a sheet of paper, and then proceed to write down upon +it some sketch of the ideas that he already had upon the subject of the +book, and of the questions that he expected to find answered. No one who +has been at the pains to try the experiment, will doubt the usefulness +of this practice: it gives to our acquisitions from books clearness and +reality, a right place and an independent shape. At this moment we are +all looking for the biography of an illustrious man of letters, written +by a near kinsman, who is himself naturally endowed with keen literary +interests, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> who has invigorated his academic cultivation by +practical engagement in considerable affairs of public business. Before +taking up Mr. Trevelyan's two volumes, it is perhaps worth while, on +Strafford's plan, to ask ourselves shortly what kind of significance or +value belongs to Lord Macaulay's achievements, and to what place he has +a claim among the forces of English literature. It is seventeen years +since he died, and those of us who never knew him nor ever saw him, may +now think about his work with that perfect detachment which is +impossible in the case of actual contemporaries.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>That Macaulay comes in the very front rank in the mind of the ordinary +bookbuyer of our day is quite certain. It is an amusement with some +people to put an imaginary case of banishment to a desert<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> island, with +the privilege of choosing the works of one author, and no more than one, +to furnish literary companionship and refreshment for the rest of a +lifetime. Whom would one select for this momentous post? Clearly the +author must be voluminous, for days on desert islands are many and long; +he must be varied in his moods, his topics, and his interests; he must +have a great deal to say, and must have a power of saying it that shall +arrest a depressed and dolorous spirit. Englishmen, of course, would +with mechanical unanimity call for Shakespeare; Germans could hardly +hesitate about Goethe; and a sensible Frenchman would pack up the ninety +volumes of Voltaire. It would be at least as interesting to know the +object of a second choice, supposing the tyrant in his clemency to give +us two authors. In the case of Englishmen there is some evidence as to a +popular preference. A recent traveller in Australia informs us that the +three books which he found on every squatter's shelf, and which at last +he knew before he crossed the threshold that he should be sure to find, +were Shakespeare, the Bible, and Macaulay's Essays. This is only an +illustration of a feeling about Macaulay that has been almost universal +among the English-speaking peoples.</p> + +<p>We may safely say that no man obtains and keeps for a great many years +such a position as this, unless he is possessed of some very +extraordinary qualities, or else of common qualities in a very uncommon +and extraordinary degree. The world, says Goethe, is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> more willing to +endure the Incongruous than to be patient under the Insignificant. Even +those who set least value on what Macaulay does for his readers, may +still feel bound to distinguish the elements that have given him his +vast popularity. The inquiry is not a piece of merely literary +criticism, for it is impossible that the work of so imposing a writer +should have passed through the hands of every man and woman of his time +who has even the humblest pretensions to cultivation, without leaving a +very decided mark on their habits both of thought and expression. As a +plain matter of observation, it is impossible to take up a newspaper or +a review, for instance, without perceiving Macaulay's influence both in +the style and the temper of modern journalism, and journalism in its +turn acts upon the style and temper of its enormous uncounted public. +The man who now succeeds in catching the ear of the writers of leading +articles, is in the position that used to be held by the head of some +great theological school, whence disciples swarmed forth to reproduce in +ten thousand pulpits the arguments, the opinions, the images, the +tricks, the postures, and the mannerisms of a single master.</p> + +<p>Two men of very different kinds have thoroughly impressed the +journalists of our time, Macaulay and Mr. Mill. Mr. Carlyle we do not +add to them; he is, as the Germans call Jean Paul, <i>der Einzige</i>. And he +is a poet, while the other two are in their degrees serious and +argumentative writers, dealing in different<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> ways with the great topics +that constitute the matter and business of daily discussion. They are +both of them practical enough to interest men handling real affairs, and +yet they are general or theoretical enough to supply such men with the +large and ready commonplaces which are so useful to a profession that +has to produce literary graces and philosophical decorations at an +hour's notice. It might perhaps be said of these two distinguished men +that our public writers owe most of their virtues to the one, and most +of their vices to the other. If Mill taught some of them to reason, +Macaulay tempted more of them to declaim: if Mill set an example of +patience, tolerance, and fair examination of hostile opinions, Macaulay +did much to encourage oracular arrogance, and a rather too thrasonical +complacency; if Mill sowed ideas of the great economic, political, and +moral bearings of the forces of society, Macaulay trained a taste for +superficial particularities, trivial circumstantialities of local +colour, and all the paraphernalia of the pseudo-picturesque.</p> + +<p>Of course nothing so obviously untrue is meant as that this is an +account of Macaulay's own quality. What is empty pretension in the +leading article, was often a warranted self-assertion in Macaulay; what +in it is little more than testiness, is in him often a generous +indignation. What became and still remain in those who have made him +their model, substantive and organic vices, the foundation of literary +character and intellectual temper, were in him the incidental<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> defects +of a vigorous genius. And we have to take a man of his power and vigour +with all his drawbacks, for the one are wrapped up in the other. Charles +Fox used to apply to Burke a passage that Quintilian wrote about Ovid. +'Si animi sui affectibus temperare quam indulgere maluisset,' quoted +Fox, 'quid vir iste præstare non potuerit!' But this is really not at +all certain either of Ovid, or Burke, or any one else. It suits +moralists to tell us that excellence lies in the happy mean and nice +balance of our faculties and impulses, and perhaps in so far as our own +contentment and an easy passage through life are involved, what they +tell us is true. But for making a mark in the world, for rising to +supremacy in art or thought or affairs—whatever those aims may be +worth—a man possibly does better to indulge, rather than to chide or +grudge, his genius, and to pay the penalties for his weakness, rather +than run any risk of mutilating those strong faculties of which they +happen to be an inseparable accident. Versatility is not a universal +gift among the able men of the world; not many of them have so many +gifts of the spirit, as to be free to choose by what pass they will +climb 'the steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar.' If Macaulay had +applied himself to the cultivation of a balanced judgment, of tempered +phrases, and of relative propositions, he would probably have sunk into +an impotent tameness. A great pugilist has sometimes been converted from +the error of his ways, and been led zealously to cherish gospel graces, +but the hero's discourses have seldom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> had the notes of unction and +edification. Macaulay, divested of all the exorbitancies of his spirit +and his style, would have been a Samson shorn of the locks of his +strength.</p> + +<p>Although, however, a writer of marked quality may do well to let his +genius develop its spontaneous forces without too assiduous or vigilant +repression, trusting to other writers of equal strength in other +directions, and to the general fitness of things and operation of time, +to redress the balance, still it is the task of criticism in counting up +the contributions of one of these strong men to examine the mischiefs no +less than the benefits incident to their work. There is no puny carping +nor cavilling in the process. It is because such men are strong that +they are able to do harm; they may injure the taste and judgment of a +whole generation, just because they are never mediocre. That is implied +in strength. Macaulay is not to be measured now merely as if he were the +author of a new book. His influence has been a distinct literary force, +and in an age of reading, this is to be a distinct force in deciding the +temper, the process, the breadth, of men's opinions, no less than the +manner of expressing them. It is no new observation that the influence +of an author becomes in time something apart from his books: a certain +generalised or abstract personality impresses itself on our minds, long +after we have forgotten the details of his opinions, the arguments by +which he enforced them, and even, what are usually the last to escape<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> +us, the images by which he illustrated them. Phrases and sentences are a +mask: but we detect the features of the man behind the mask. This +personality of a favourite author is a real and powerful agency. +Unconsciously we are infected with his humours; we apply his methods; we +find ourselves copying the rhythm and measure of his periods; we wonder +how he would have acted, or thought, or spoken in our circumstances. +Usually a strong writer leaves a special mark in some particular region +of mental activity: the final product of him is to fix some persistent +religious mood, or some decisive intellectual bias, or else some trick +of the tongue. Now Macaulay has contributed no philosophic ideas to the +speculative stock, nor has he developed any one great historic or social +truth. His work is always full of a high spirit of manliness, probity, +and honour; but he is not of that small band to whom we may apply +Mackintosh's thrice and four times enviable panegyric on the eloquence +of Dugald Stewart, that its peculiar glory consisted in having 'breathed +the love of virtue into whole generations of pupils.' He has painted +many striking pictures, and imparted a certain reality to our conception +of many great scenes of the past. He did good service in banishing once +for all those sentimental Jacobite leanings and prejudices which had +been kept alive by the sophistry of the most popular of historians, and +the imagination of the most popular of romance writers. But where he set +his stamp has been upon style; style in its widest sense, not merely on +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> grammar and mechanism of writing, but on what De Quincey described +as its <i>organology</i>; style, that is to say, in its relation to ideas and +feelings, its commerce with thought, and its reaction on what one may +call the temper or conscience of the intellect.</p> + +<p>Let no man suppose that it matters little whether the most universally +popular of the serious authors of a generation—and Macaulay was nothing +less than this—affects <i>style coupé</i> or <i>style soutenu</i>. The critic of +style is not the dancing-master, declaiming on the deep ineffable things +that lie in a minuet. He is not the virtuoso of supines and gerundives. +The morality of style goes deeper 'than dull fools suppose.' When Comte +took pains to prevent any sentence from exceeding two lines of his +manuscript or five of print; to restrict every paragraph to seven +sentences; to exclude every hiatus between two sentences, or even +between two paragraphs; and never to reproduce any word, except the +auxiliary monosyllables, in two consecutive sentences; he justified his +literary solicitude by insisting on the wholesomeness alike to heart and +intelligence of submission to artificial institutions. He felt, after he +had once mastered the habit of the new yoke, that it became the source +of continual and unforeseeable improvements even in thought, and he +perceived that the reason why verse is a higher kind of literary +perfection than prose, is that verse imposes a greater number of +rigorous forms. We may add that verse itself is perfected, in the hands +of men of poetic genius, in proportion to the severity of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> +mechanical regulation. Where Pope or Racine had one rule of metre, +Victor Hugo has twenty, and he observes them as rigorously as an +algebraist or an astronomer observes the rules of calculation or +demonstration. One, then, who touches the style of a generation acquires +no trifling authority over its thought and temper, as well as over the +length of its sentences.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The first and most obvious secret of Macaulay's place on popular +bookshelves is that he has a true genius for narration, and narration +will always in the eyes, not only of our squatters in the Australian +bush, but of the many all over the world, stand first among literary +gifts. The common run of plain men, as has been noticed since the +beginning of the world, are as eager as children for a story, and like +children they will embrace the man who will tell them a story, with +abundance of details and plenty of colour, and a realistic assurance +that it is no mere make-believe. Macaulay never stops to brood over an +incident or a character, with an inner eye intent on penetrating to the +lowest depth of motive and cause, to the furthest complexity of impulse, +calculation, and subtle incentive. The spirit of analysis is not in him, +and the divine spirit of meditation is not in him. His whole mind runs +in action and movement; it busies itself with eager interest in all +objective particulars. He is seized by the external and the superficial, +and revels in every detail that appeals to the five senses. 'The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> +brilliant Macaulay,' said Emerson, with slight exaggeration, 'who +expresses the tone of the English governing classes of the day, +explicitly teaches that <i>good</i> means good to eat, good to wear, material +commodity.' So ready a faculty of exultation in the exceeding great +glories of taste and touch, of loud sound and glittering spectacle, is a +gift of the utmost service to the narrator who craves immense audiences. +Let it be said that if Macaulay exults in the details that go to our +five senses, his sensuousness is always clean, manly, and fit for honest +daylight and the summer sun. There is none of that curious odour of +autumnal decay that clings to the passion of a more modern school for +colour and flavour and the enumerated treasures of subtle indulgence.</p> + +<p>Mere picturesqueness, however, is a minor qualification compared with +another quality which everybody assumes himself to have, but which is in +reality extremely uncommon; the quality, I mean, of telling a tale +directly and in straightforward order. In speaking of Hallam, Macaulay +complained that Gibbon had brought into fashion an unpleasant trick of +telling a story by implication and allusion. This provoking obliquity +has certainly increased rather than declined since Hallam's day. Mr. +Froude, it is true, whatever may be his shortcomings on the side of +sound moral and political judgment, has admirable gifts in the way of +straightforward narration, and Mr. Freeman, when he does not press too +hotly after emphasis, and abstains from overloading his account with +super-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>abundance of detail, is usually excellent in the way of direct +description. Still, it is not merely because these two writers are alive +and Macaulay is not, that most people would say of him that he is +unequalled in our time in his mastery of the art of letting us know in +an express and unmistakable way exactly what it was that happened; +though it is quite true that in many portions of his too elaborated +History of William the Third he describes a large number of events about +which, I think, no sensible man can in the least care either how they +happened, or whether indeed they happened at all or not.</p> + +<p>Another reason why people have sought Macaulay is, that he has in one +way or another something to tell them about many of the most striking +personages and interesting events in the history of mankind. And he does +really tell them something. If any one will be at the trouble to count +up the number of those names that belong to the world and time, about +which Macaulay has found not merely something, but something definite +and pointed to say, he will be astonished to see how large a portion of +the wide historic realm is traversed in that ample flight of reference, +allusion, and illustration, and what unsparing copiousness of knowledge +gives substance, meaning, and attraction to that resplendent blaze of +rhetoric.</p> + +<p>Macaulay came upon the world of letters just as the middle classes were +expanding into enormous prosperity, were vastly increasing in numbers, +and were becoming more alive than they had ever been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> before to literary +interests. His Essays are as good as a library: they make an +incomparable manual and vade-mecum for a busy uneducated man, who has +curiosity and enlightenment enough to wish to know a little about the +great lives and great thoughts, the shining words and many-coloured +complexities of action, that have marked the journey of man through the +ages. Macaulay had an intimate acquaintance both with the imaginative +literature and the history of Greece and Rome, with the literature and +the history of modern Italy, of France, and of England. Whatever his +special subject, he contrives to pour into it with singular dexterity a +stream of rich, graphic, and telling illustrations from all these widely +diversified sources. Figures from history, ancient and modern, sacred +and secular; characters from plays and novels from Plautus down to +Walter Scott and Jane Austen; images and similes from poets of every age +and every nation, 'pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, +tragical-historical;' shrewd thrusts from satirists, wise saws from +sages, pleasantries caustic or pathetic from humorists; all these throng +Macaulay's pages with the bustle and variety and animation of some +glittering masque and cosmoramic revel of great books and heroical men. +Hence, though Macaulay was in mental constitution one of the very least +Shakesperean writers that ever lived, yet he has the Shakesperean +quality of taking his reader through an immense gallery of interesting +characters and striking situations. No writer can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> now expect to attain +the widest popularity as a man of letters unless he gives to the world +<i>multa</i> as well as <i>multum</i>. Sainte-Beuve, the most eminent man of +letters in France in our generation, wrote no less than twenty-seven +volumes of his incomparable <i>Causeries</i>. Mr. Carlyle, the most eminent +man of letters in England in our generation, has taught us that silence +is golden in thirty volumes. Macaulay was not so exuberantly copious as +these two illustrious writers, but he had the art of being as various +without being so voluminous.</p> + +<p>There has been a great deal of deliberate and systematic imitation of +Macaulay's style, often by clever men who might well have trusted to +their own resources. Its most conspicuous vices are very easy to +imitate, but it is impossible for any one who is less familiar with +literature than Macaulay was, to reproduce his style effectively, for +the reason that it is before all else the style of great literary +knowledge. Nor is that all. Macaulay's knowledge was not only very wide; +it was both thoroughly accurate and instantly ready. For this stream of +apt illustrations he was indebted to his extraordinary memory, and his +rapid eye for contrasts and analogies. They come to the end of his pen +as he writes; they are not laboriously hunted out in indexes, and then +added by way of afterthought and extraneous interpolation. Hence +quotations and references that in a writer even of equal knowledge, but +with his wits less promptly about him, would seem mechanical and +awkward, find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> their place in a page of Macaulay as if by a delightful +process of complete assimilation and spontaneous fusion.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>We may be sure that no author could have achieved Macaulay's boundless +popularity among his contemporaries, unless his work had abounded in +what is substantially Commonplace. Addison puts fine writing in +sentiments that are natural without being obvious, and this is a true +account of the 'law' of the exquisite literature of the Queen Anne men. +We may perhaps add to Addison's definition, that the great secret of the +best kind of popularity is always the noble or imaginative handling of +Commonplace. Shakespeare may at first seem an example to the contrary; +and indeed is it not a standing marvel that the greatest writer of a +nation that is distinguished among all nations for the pharisaism, +puritanism, and unimaginative narrowness of its judgments on conduct and +type of character, should be paramount over all writers for the breadth, +maturity, fulness, subtlety, and infinite variousness of his conception +of human life and nature? One possible answer to the perplexity is that +the puritanism does not go below the surface in us, and that Englishmen +are not really limited in their view by the too strait formulas that are +supposed to contain their explanations of the moral universe. On this +theory the popular appreciation of Shakespeare is the irrepressible +response of the hearty inner man to a voice, in which he recognises the +full note of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> human nature, and those wonders of the world which are not +dreamt of in his professed philosophy. A more obvious answer than this +is that Shakespeare's popularity with the many is not due to those finer +glimpses that are the very essence of all poetic delight to the few, but +to his thousand other magnificent attractions, and above all, after his +skill as a pure dramatist and master of scenic interest and situation, +to the lofty or pathetic setting with which he vivifies, not the +subtleties or refinements, but the commonest and most elementary traits +of the commonest and most elementary human moods. The few with minds +touched by nature or right cultivation to the finer issues, admire the +supreme genius which takes some poor Italian tale, with its coarse plot +and gross personages, and shooting it through with threads of variegated +meditation, produces a masterpiece of penetrative reflection and high +pensive suggestion as to the deepest things and most secret parts of the +life of men. But to the general these finer threads are indiscernible. +What touches them in the Shakesperean poetry, and most rightly touches +them and us all, are topics eternally old, yet of eternal freshness, the +perennial truisms of the grave and the bride-chamber, of shifting +fortune, of the surprises of destiny, and the emptiness of the answered +vow. This is the region in which the poet wins his widest if not his +hardest triumphs, the region of the noble Commonplace.</p> + +<p>A writer dealing with such matters as principally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> occupied Macaulay, +has not the privilege of resort to these great poetic inspirations. Yet +history, too, has its generous commonplaces, its plausibilities of +emotion, and no one has ever delighted more than Macaulay did, to appeal +to the fine truisms that cluster round love of freedom and love of +native land. The high rhetorical topics of liberty and patriotism are +his readiest instruments for kindling a glowing reflection of these +magnanimous passions in the breasts of his readers. That Englishman is +hardly to be envied who can read without a glow such passages as that in +the History, about Turenne being startled by the shout of stern +exultation with which his English allies advanced to the combat, and +expressing the delight of a true soldier when he learned that it was +ever the fashion of Cromwell's pikemen to rejoice greatly when they +beheld the enemy; while even the banished cavaliers felt an emotion of +national pride when they saw a brigade of their countrymen, outnumbered +by foes and abandoned by friends, drive before it in headlong rout the +finest infantry of Spain, and force a passage into a counterscarp which +had just been pronounced impregnable by the ablest of the marshals of +France. Such prose as this is not less thrilling to a man who loves his +country, than the spirited verse of the Lays of Ancient Rome. And the +commonplaces of patriotism and freedom would never have been so powerful +in Macaulay's hands, if they had not been inspired by a sincere and +hearty faith in them in the soul of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> writer. His unanalytical turn +of mind kept him free of any temptation to think of love of country as a +prejudice, or a passion for freedom as an illusion. The cosmopolitan or +international idea which such teachers as Cobden have tried to impress +on our stubborn islanders, would have found in Macaulay not lukewarm or +sceptical adherence, but point-blank opposition and denial. He believed +as stoutly in the supremacy of Great Britain in the history of the good +causes of Europe, as M. Thiers believes in the supremacy of France, or +Mazzini believed in that of Italy. The thought of the prodigious +industry, the inventiveness, the stout enterprise, the free government, +the wise and equal laws, the noble literature, of this fortunate island +and its majestic empire beyond the seas, and the discretion, valour, and +tenacity by which all these great material and still greater intangible +possessions had been first won, and then kept, against every hostile +comer whether domestic or foreign, sent through Macaulay a thrill, like +that which the thought of Paris and its heroisms moves in the great poet +of France, or sight of the dear city of the Violet Crown moved in an +Athenian of old. Thus habitually, with all sincerity of heart, to offer +to one of the greater popular prepossessions the incense due to any +other idol of superstition, sacred and of indisputable authority, and to +let this adoration be seen shining in every page, is one of the keys +that every man must find, who would make a quick and sure way into the +temple of contemporary fame.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p> + +<p>It is one of the first things to be said about Macaulay, that he was in +exact accord with the common average sentiment of his day on every +subject on which he spoke. His superiority was not of that highest kind +which leads a man to march in thought on the outside margin of the +crowd, watching them, sympathising with them, hoping for them, but +apart. Macaulay was one of the middle-class crowd in his heart, and only +rose above it by splendid attainments and extraordinary gifts of +expression. He had none of that ambition which inflames some hardy men, +to make new beliefs and new passions enter the minds of their +neighbours; his ascendency is due to literary pomp, not to fecundity of +spirit. No one has ever surpassed him in the art of combining resolute +and ostentatious common sense of a slightly coarse sort in choosing his +point of view, with so considerable an appearance of dignity and +elevation in setting it forth and impressing it upon others. The +elaborateness of his style is very likely to mislead people into +imagining for him a corresponding elaborateness of thought and +sentiment. On the contrary, Macaulay's mind was really very simple, +strait, and with as few notes in its register, to borrow a phrase from +the language of vocal compass, as there are few notes, though they are +very loud, in the register of his written prose. When we look more +closely into it, what at first wore the air of dignity and elevation, in +truth rather disagreeably resembles the narrow assurance of a man who +knows that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> has with him the great battalions of public opinion. We +are always quite sure that if Macaulay had been an Athenian citizen +towards the ninety-fifth Olympiad, he would have taken sides with Anytus +and Meletus in the impeachment of Socrates. A popular author must, in a +thorough-going way, take the accepted maxims for granted. He must +suppress any whimsical fancy for applying the Socratic elenchus, or any +other engine of criticism, scepticism, or verification, to those +sentiments or current precepts of morals, which may in truth be very +equivocal and may be much neglected in practice, but which the public +opinion of his time requires to be treated in theory and in literature +as if they had been cherished and held sacred <i>semper, ubique, et ab +omnibus</i>.</p> + +<p>This is just what Macaulay does, and it is commonly supposed to be no +heavy fault in him or any other writer for the common public. Man cannot +live by analysis alone, nor nourish himself on the secret delights of +irony. And if Macaulay had only reflected the more generous of the +prejudices of mankind, it would have been well enough. Burke, for +instance, was a writer who revered the prejudices of a modern society as +deeply as Macaulay did; he believed society to be founded on prejudices +and held compact by them. Yet what size there is in Burke, what fine +perspective, what momentum, what edification! It may be pleaded that +there is the literature of edification, and there is the literature of +knowledge, and that the qualities proper to the one cannot law<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>fully be +expected from the other, and would only be very much out of place if +they should happen to be found there. But there are two answers to this. +First, Macaulay in the course of his varied writings discusses all sorts +of ethical and other matters, and is not simply a chronicler of party +and intrigue, of dynasties and campaigns. Second, and more than this, +even if he had never travelled beyond the composition of historical +record, he could still have sown his pages, as does every truly great +writer, no matter what his subject may be, with those significant images +or far-reaching suggestions, which suddenly light up a whole range of +distant thoughts and sympathies within us; which in an instant affect +the sensibilities of men with a something new and unforeseen; and which +awaken, if only for a passing moment, the faculty and response of the +diviner mind. Tacitus does all this, and Burke does it, and that is why +men who care nothing for Roman despots or for Jacobin despots, will +still perpetually turn to those writers almost as if they were on the +level of great poets or very excellent spiritual teachers.</p> + +<p>One secret is that they, and all such men as they were, had that of +which Macaulay can hardly have had the rudimentary germ, the faculty of +deep abstract meditation and surrender to the fruitful 'leisures of the +spirit.' We can picture Macaulay talking, or making a speech in the +House of Commons, or buried in a book, or scouring his library for +references, or covering his blue foolscap with dashing periods, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> +accentuating his sentences and barbing his phrases; but can anybody +think of him as meditating, as modestly pondering and wondering, as +possessed for so much as ten minutes by that spirit of inwardness, which +has never been wholly wanting in any of those kings and princes of +literature, with whom it is good for men to sit in counsel? He seeks +Truth, not as she should be sought, devoutly, tentatively, and with the +air of one touching the hem of a sacred garment, but clutching her by +the hair of the head and dragging her after him in a kind of boisterous +triumph, a prisoner of war and not a goddess.</p> + +<p>All this finds itself reflected, as the inner temper of a man always is +reflected, in his style of written prose. The merits of Macaulay's prose +are obvious enough. It naturally reproduces the good qualities I of his +understanding, its strength, manliness, and directness. That exultation +in material goods and glories of which we have already spoken, makes his +pages rich in colour, and gives them the effect of a sumptuous +gala-suit. Certainly the brocade is too brand-new, and has none of the +delicate charm that comes to such finery when it is a little faded. +Again, nobody can have any excuse for not knowing exactly what it is +that Macaulay means. We may assuredly say of his prose what Boileau says +of his own poetry—'Et mon vers, bien ou mal, dit toujours quelque +chose.' This is a prodigious merit, when we reflect with what fatal +alacrity human language lends itself in the hands of so many performers +upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> pliant instrument, to all sorts of obscurity, ambiguity, +disguise, and pretentious mystification. Scaliger is supposed to have +remarked of the Basques and their desperate tongue: ''Tis said the +Basques understand one another; for my part, I will never believe it.' +The same pungent doubt might apply to loftier members of the hierarchy +of speech than that forlorn dialect, but never to English as handled by +Macaulay. He never wrote an obscure sentence in his life, and this may +seem a small merit, until we remember of how few writers we could say +the same.</p> + +<p>Macaulay is of those who think prose as susceptible of polished and +definite form as verse, and he was, we should suppose, of those also who +hold the type and mould of all written language to be spoken language. +There are more reasons for demurring to the soundness of the latter +doctrine, than can conveniently be made to fill a digression here. For +one thing, spoken language necessarily implies one or more listeners, +whereas written language may often have to express meditative moods and +trains of inward reflection that move through the mind without trace of +external reference, and that would lose their special traits by the +introduction of any suspicion that they were to be overheard. Again, +even granting that all composition must be supposed to be meant, by the +fact of its existence, to be addressed to a body of readers, it still +remains to be shown that indirect address to the inner ear should follow +the same method and rhythm as address directly through im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>pressions on +the outer organ. The attitude of the recipient mind is different, and +there is the symbolism of a new medium between it and the speaker. The +writer, being cut off from all those effects which are producible by the +physical intonations of the voice, has to find substitutes for them by +other means, by subtler cadences, by a more varied modulation, by firmer +notes, by more complex circuits, than suffice for the utmost perfection +of spoken language, which has all the potent and manifold aids of +personality. In writing, whether it be prose or verse, you are free to +produce effects whose peculiarity one can only define vaguely, by saying +that the senses have one part less in them than in any other of the +forms and effects of art, and the imaginary voice one part more. But the +question need not be laboured here, because there can be no dispute as +to the quality of Macaulay's prose. Its measures are emphatically the +measures of spoken deliverance. Those who have made the experiment, +pronounce him to be one of the authors whose works are most admirably +fitted for reading aloud. His firmness and directness of statement, his +spiritedness, his art of selecting salient and highly coloured detail, +and all his other merits as a narrator, keep the listener's attention, +and make him the easiest of writers to follow.</p> + +<p>Although, however, clearness, directness, and positiveness are master +qualities and the indispensable foundations of all good style, yet does +the matter plainly by no means end with them. And it is even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> possible +to have these virtues so unhappily proportioned and inauspiciously mixed +with other turns and casts of mind, as to end in work with little grace +or harmony or fine tracery about it, but only overweening purpose and +vehement will. And it is overweeningness and self-confident will that +are the chief notes of Macaulay's style. It has no benignity. Energy is +doubtless a delightful quality, but then Macaulay's energy is perhaps +energy without momentum, and he impresses us more by a strong volubility +than by volume. It is the energy of interests and intuitions, which +though they are profoundly sincere if ever they were sincere in any man, +are yet in the relations which they comprehend, essentially superficial.</p> + +<p>Still, trenchancy whether in speaker or writer is a most effective tone +for a large public. It gives them confidence in their man, and prevents +tediousness—except to those who reflect how delicate is the poise of +truth, and what steeps and pits encompass the dealer in unqualified +propositions. To such persons, a writer who is trenchant in every +sentence of every page, who never lapses for a line into the contingent, +who marches through the intricacies of things in a blaze of certainty, +is not only a writer to be distrusted, but the owner of a doubtful and +displeasing style. It is a great test of style to watch how an author +disposes of the qualifications, limitations, and exceptions that clog +the wings of his main proposition. The grave and conscientious men of +the seventeenth century insisted on packing them all honestly along with +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> main proposition itself, within the bounds of a single period. +Burke arranges them in tolerably close order in the paragraph. Dr. +Newmann, that winning writer, disperses them lightly over his page. Of +Macaulay it is hardly unfair to say that he despatches all +qualifications into outer space before he begins to write, or if he +magnanimously admits one or two here and there, it is only to bring them +the more imposingly to the same murderous end.</p> + +<p>We have spoken of Macaulay's interests and intuitions wearing a certain +air of superficiality; there is a feeling of the same kind about his +attempts to be genial. It is not truly festive. There is no abandonment +in it. It has no deep root in moral humour, and is merely a literary +form, resembling nothing so much as the hard geniality of some clever +college tutor of stiff manners, entertaining undergraduates at an +official breakfast-party. This is not because his tone is bookish; on +the contrary, his tone and level are distinctly those of the man of the +world. But one always seems to find that neither a wide range of +cultivation, nor familiar access to the best Whig circles, had quite +removed the stiffness and self-conscious precision of the Clapham Sect. +We would give much for a little more flexibility, and would welcome ever +so slight a consciousness of infirmity. As has been said, the only +people whom men cannot pardon are the perfect. Macaulay is like the +military king who never suffered himself to be seen, even by the +attendants in his bed-chamber, until he had had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> time to put on his +uniform and jack-boots. His severity of eye is very wholesome; it makes +his writing firm, and firmness is certainly one of the first qualities +that good writing must have. But there is such a thing as soft and +considerate precision, as well as hard and scolding precision. Those +most interesting English critics of the generation slightly anterior to +Macaulay,—Hazlitt, Lamb, De Quincey, Leigh Hunt,—were fully his equals +in precision, and yet they knew how to be clear, acute, and definite, +without that edginess and inelasticity which is so conspicuous in +Macaulay's criticisms, alike in their matter and their form.</p> + +<p>To borrow the figure of an old writer, Macaulay's prose is not like a +flowing vestment to his thought, but like a suit of armour. It is often +splendid and glittering, and the movement of the opening pages of his +History is superb in its dignity. But that movement is exceptional. As a +rule there is the hardness, if there is also often the sheen, of +highly-wrought metal. Or, to change our figure, his pages are composed +as a handsome edifice is reared, not as a fine statue or a frieze 'with +bossy sculptures graven' grows up in the imaginative mind of the +statuary. There is no liquid continuity, such as indicates a writer +possessed by his subject and not merely possessing it. The periods are +marshalled in due order of procession, bright and high-stepping; they +never escape under an impulse of emotion into the full current of a +brimming stream. What is curious is that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> though Macaulay seems ever to +be brandishing a two-edged gleaming sword, and though he steeps us in an +atmosphere of belligerency, yet we are never conscious of inward +agitation in him, and perhaps this alone would debar him from a place +among the greatest writers. For they, under that reserve, suppression, +or management, which is an indispensable condition of the finest +rhetorical art, even when aiming at the most passionate effects, still +succeed in conveying to their readers a thrilling sense of the strong +fires that are glowing underneath. Now when Macaulay advances with his +hectoring sentences and his rough pistolling ways, we feel all the time +that his pulse is as steady as that of the most practised duellist who +ever ate fire. He is too cool to be betrayed into a single phrase of +happy improvisation. His pictures glare, but are seldom warm. Those +strokes of minute circumstantiality which he loved so dearly, show that +even in moments when his imagination might seem to be moving both +spontaneously and ardently, it was really only a literary instrument, a +fashioning tool and not a melting flame. Let us take a single example. +He is describing the trial of Warren Hastings. 'Every step in the +proceedings,' he says, 'carried the mind either backward through many +troubled centuries to the days when the foundations of our constitution +were laid; or far away over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations +living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing +strange characters from right to left.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> The odd triviality of the last +detail, its unworthiness of the sentiment of the passage, leaves the +reader checked, what sets out as a fine stroke of imagination dwindles +down to a sort of literary conceit. And this puerile twist, by the way, +is all the poorer, when it is considered that the native writing is +really from left to right, and only takes the other direction in a +foreign, that is to say, a Persian alphabet. And so in other places, +even where the writer is most deservedly admired for gorgeous +picturesque effect, we feel that it is only the literary picturesque, a +kind of infinitely glorified newspaper-reporting. Compare, for instance, +the most imaginative piece to be found in any part of Macaulay's +writings with that sudden and lovely apostrophe in Carlyle, after +describing the bloody horrors that followed the fall of the Bastille in +1789:—'O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant +on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in +cottages; on ships far out in the silent main; on balls at the Orangerie +at Versailles, where high-rouged dames of the Palace are even now +dancing with double-jacketed Hussar officers;—and also on this roaring +Hell-porch of a Hôtel de Ville!' Who does not feel in this the breath of +poetic inspiration, and how different it is from the mere composite of +the rhetorician's imagination, assiduously working to order?</p> + +<p>This remark is no disparagement of Macaulay's genius, but a +classification of it. We are interrogating our own impressions, and +asking ourselves among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> what kind of writers he ought to be placed. +Rhetoric is a good and worthy art, and rhetorical authors are often more +useful, more instructive, more really respectable than poetical authors. +But it is to be said that Macaulay as a rhetorician will hardly be +placed in the first rank, by those who have studied both him and the +great masters. Once more, no amount of embellishment or emphasis or +brilliant figure suffices to produce this intense effect of agitation +rigorously restrained; nor can any beauty of decoration be in the least +a substitute for that touching and penetrative music, which is made in +prose by the repressed trouble of grave and high souls. There is a +certain music, we do not deny, in Macaulay, but it is the music of a man +everlastingly playing for us rapid solos on a silver trumpet, never the +swelling diapasons of the organ, and never the deep ecstasies of the +four magic strings. That so sensible a man as Macaulay should keep clear +of the modern abomination of dithyrambic prose, that rank and sprawling +weed of speech, was natural enough; but then the effects which we miss +in him, and which, considering how strong the literary faculty in him +really was, we are almost astonished to miss, are not produced by +dithyramb but by repression. Of course the answer has been already +given; Macaulay, powerful and vigorous as he was, had no agitation, no +wonder, no tumult of spirit to repress. The world was spread out clear +before him; he read it as plainly and as certainly as he read his books; +life was all an affair of direct categoricals.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p> + +<p>This was at least one secret of those hard modulations and shallow +cadences. How poor is the rhythm of Macaulay's prose we only realise by +going with his periods fresh in our ear to some true master of harmony. +It is not worth while to quote passages from an author who is in +everybody's library, and Macaulay is always so much like himself that +almost any one page will serve for an illustration exactly as well as +any other. Let any one turn to his character of Somers, for whom he had +so much admiration, and then turn to Clarendon's character of +Falkland;—'a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, +of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing +and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive +simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon +this odious and accursed civil war than that single loss, it must be +most infamous and execrable to all posterity.' Now Clarendon is not a +great writer, not even a good writer, for he is prolix and involved, yet +we see that even Clarendon, when he comes to a matter in which his heart +is engaged, becomes sweet and harmonious in his rhythm. If we turn to a +prose-writer of the very first place, we are instantly conscious of a +still greater difference. How flashy and shallow Macaulay's periods +seem, as we listen to the fine ground-base that rolls in the melody of +the following passage of Burke's, and it is taken from one of the least +ornate of all his pieces:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>You will not, we trust, believe that, born in a civilised country, +formed to gentle manners, trained in a merciful religion, and living +in enlightened and polished times, where even foreign hostility is +softened from its original sternness, we could have thought of +letting loose upon you, our late beloved brethren, these fierce +tribes of savages and cannibals, in whom the traces of human nature +are effaced by ignorance and barbarity. We rather wished to have +joined with you in bringing gradually that unhappy part of mankind +into civility, order, piety, and virtuous discipline, than to have +confirmed their evil habits and increased their natural ferocity by +fleshing them in the slaughter of you, whom our wiser and better +ancestors had sent into the wilderness with the express view of +introducing, along with our holy religion, its humane and charitable +manners. We do not hold that all things are lawful in war. We should +think every barbarity, in fire, in wasting, in murders, in tortures, +and other cruelties, too horrible and too full of turpitude for +Christian mouths to utter or ears to hear, if done at our +instigation, by those who we know will make war thus if they make it +at all, to be, to all intents and purposes, as if done by ourselves. +We clear ourselves to you our brethren, to the present age, and to +future generations, to our king and our country, and to Europe, which +as a spectator, beholds this tragic scene, of every part or share in +adding this last and worst of evils to the inevitable mischiefs of a +civil war.</p> + +<p>We do not call you rebels and traitors. We do not call for the +vengeance of the crown against you. We do not know how to qualify +millions of our countrymen, contending with one heart for an +admission to privileges which we have ever thought our own happiness +and honour, by odious and unworthy names. On the contrary, we highly +revere the principles on which you act, though we lament some of +their effects. Armed as you are, we embrace you, as our friends and +as our brethren by the best and dearest ties of relation.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p> + +<p>It may be said that there is a patent injustice in comparing the prose +of a historian criticising or describing great events at second hand, +with the prose of a statesman taking active part in great events, fired +by the passion of a present conflict, and stimulated by the vivid +interest of undetermined issues. If this be a well-grounded plea, and it +may be so, then of course it excludes a contrast not only with Burke, +but also with Bolingbroke, whose fine manners and polished gaiety give +us a keen sense of the grievous garishness of Macaulay. If we may not +institute a comparison between Macaulay and great actors on the stage of +affairs, at least there can be no objection to the introduction of +Southey as a standard of comparison. Southey was a man of letters pure +and simple, and it is worth remarking that Macaulay himself admitted +that he found so great a charm in Southey's style, as nearly always to +read it with pleasure, even when Southey was talking nonsense. Now, take +any page of the Life of Nelson or the Life of Wesley; consider how easy, +smooth, natural, and winning is the diction and the rise and fall of the +sentence, and yet how varied the rhythm and how nervous the phrases; and +then turn to a page of Macaulay, and wince under its stamping emphasis, +its over-coloured tropes, its exaggerated expressions, its unlovely +staccato. Southey's History of the Peninsular War is now dead, but if +any of my readers has a copy on his highest shelves, I would venture to +ask him to take down the third volume,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> and read the concluding pages, +of which Coleridge used to say that they were the finest specimen of +historic eulogy he had ever read in English, adding with forgivable +hyperbole, that they were more to the Duke's fame and glory than a +campaign. 'Foresight and enterprise with our commander went hand in +hand; he never advanced but so as to be sure of his retreat; and never +retreated but in such an attitude as to impose upon a superior enemy,' +and so on through the sum of Wellington's achievements. 'There was +something more precious than these, more to be desired than the high and +enduring fame which he had secured by his military achievements, the +satisfaction of thinking to what end those achievements had been +directed; that they were for the deliverance of two most injured and +grievously oppressed nations; for the safety, honour, and welfare of his +own country; and for the general interests of Europe and of the +civilised world. His campaigns were sanctified by the cause; they were +sullied by no cruelties, no crimes; the chariot-wheels of his triumphs +have been followed by no curses; his laurels are entwined with the +amaranths of righteousness, and upon his death-bed he might remember his +victories among his good works.'</p> + +<p>What is worse than want of depth and fineness of intonation in a period, +is all gross excess of colour, because excess of colour is connected +with graver faults in the region of the intellectual conscience. +Macaulay is a constant sinner in this respect. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> wine of truth is in +his cup a brandied draught, a hundred degrees above proof, and he too +often replenishes the lamp of knowledge with naphtha instead of fine +oil. It is not that he has a spontaneous passion for exuberant +decoration, which he would have shared with more than one of the +greatest names in literature. On the contrary, we feel that the +exaggerated words and dashing sentences are the fruit of deliberate +travail, and the petulance or the irony of his speech is mostly due to a +driving predilection for strong effects. His memory, his directness, his +aptitude for forcing things into firm outline, and giving them a sharply +defined edge,—these and other singular talents of his all lent +themselves to this intrepid and indefatigable pursuit of effect. And the +most disagreeable feature is that Macaulay was so often content with an +effect of an essentially vulgar kind, offensive to taste, discordant to +the fastidious ear, and worst of all, at enmity with the whole spirit of +truth. By vulgar we certainly do not mean homely, which marks a wholly +different quality. No writer can be more homely than Mr. Carlyle, alike +in his choice of particulars to dwell upon, and in the terms or images +in which he describes or illustrates them, but there is also no writer +further removed from vulgarity. Nor do we mean that Macaulay too +copiously enriches the tongue with infusion from any Doric dialect. For +such raciness he had little taste. What we find in him is that quality +which the French call brutal. The description, for instance, in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> +essay on Hallam, of the licence of the Restoration, seems to us a coarse +and vulgar picture, whose painter took the most garish colours he could +find on his palette, and then laid them on in untempered crudity. And +who is not sensible of the vulgarity and coarseness of the account of +Boswell? 'If he had not been a great fool he would not have been a great +writer ... he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb,' and so forth, in +which the shallowness of the analysis of Boswell's character matches the +puerile rudeness of the terms. Here again, is a sentence about +Montesquieu. 'The English at that time,' Macaulay says of the middle of +the eighteenth century, 'considered a Frenchman who talked about +constitutional checks and fundamental laws as a prodigy not less +astonishing than the learned pig or musical infant.' And he then goes on +to describe the author of one of the most important books that ever were +written, as 'specious but shallow, studious of effect, indifferent to +truth—the lively President,' and so forth, stirring in any reader who +happens to know Montesquieu's influence, a singular amazement. We are +not concerned with the judgment upon Montesquieu, nor with the truth as +to contemporary English opinion about him, but a writer who devises an +antithesis to such a man as Montesquieu in learned pigs and musical +infants, deliberately condescends not merely to triviality or levity, +but to flat vulgarity of thought, to something of mean and ignoble +association. Though one of the most common, this is not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> Macaulay's only +sin in the same unfortunate direction. He too frequently resorts to +vulgar gaudiness. For example, there is in one place a certain +description of an alleged practice of Addison's. Swift had said of +Esther Johnson that 'whether from easiness in general, or from her +indifference to persons, or from her despair of mending them, or from +the same practice which she most liked in Mr. Addison, I cannot +determine; but when she saw any of the company very warm in a wrong +opinion, she was more inclined to confirm them in it than to oppose +them. It prevented noise, she said, and saved time.'<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Let us behold +what a picture Macaulay draws on the strength of this passage. 'If his +first attempts to set a presuming dunce right were ill-received,' +Macaulay says of Addison, 'he changed his tone, "assented with civil +leer," and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and deeper into +absurdity.' To compare this transformation of the simplicity of the +original into the grotesque heat and overcharged violence of the copy, +is to see the homely maiden of a country village transformed into the +painted flaunter of the city.</p> + +<p>One more instance. We should be sorry to violate any sentiment of +το σεμνον about a man of Macaulay's genius, but what is a +decorous term for a description of the doctrine of Lucretius's great +poem, thrown in parenthetically, as the 'silliest and meanest system of +natural and moral philosophy!' Even disagreeable artifices of +composition may be forgiven, when they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> serve to vivify truth, to +quicken or to widen the moral judgment, but Macaulay's hardy and +habitual recourse to strenuous superlatives is fundamentally +unscientific and untrue. There is no more instructive example in our +literature than he, of the saying that the adjective is the enemy of the +substantive.</p> + + + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>In 1837 Jeffrey saw a letter written by Macaulay to a common friend, and +stating the reasons for preferring a literary to a political life. +Jeffrey thought that his illustrious ally was wrong in the conclusion to +which he came. 'As to the tranquillity of an author's life,' he said, 'I +have no sort of faith in it. And as to fame, if an author's is now and +then more lasting, it is generally longer withheld, and except in a few +rare cases it is of a less pervading or elevating description. A great +poet or a great <i>original</i> writer is above all other glory. But who +would give much for such a glory as Gibbon's? Besides, I believe it is +in the inward glow and pride of consciously influencing the destinies of +mankind, much more than in the sense of personal reputation, that the +delight of either poet or statesman chiefly consists.' And Gibbon had at +least the advantage of throwing himself into a religious controversy +that is destined to endure for centuries. He, moreover, was specifically +a historian, while Macaulay has been prized less as a historian proper +than as a master of literary art. Now a man of letters, in an age of +battle and transition like our own, fades into an ever-deepening +dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>tance, unless he has while he writes that touching and impressive +quality,—the presentiment of the eve; a feeling of the difficulties and +interests that will engage and distract mankind on the morrow. Nor can +it be enough for enduring fame in any age merely to throw a golden halo +round the secularity of the hour, or to make glorious the narrowest +limitations of the passing day. If we think what a changed sense is +already given to criticism, what a different conception now presides +over history, how many problems on which Macaulay was silent are now the +familiar puzzles of even superficial readers, we cannot help feeling +that the eminent man whose life we are all about to read, is the hero of +a past which is already remote, and that he did little to make men +better fitted to face a present of which, close as it was to him, he +seems hardly to have dreamed.</p> + +<div class='footnotes'> +<p class='center'>FOOTNOTES</p> +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Since the following piece was written, Mr. Trevelyan's +biography of Lord Macaulay has appeared, and has enjoyed the great +popularity to which its careful execution, its brightness of style, its +good taste, its sound judgment, so richly entitle it. If Mr. Trevelyan's +course in politics were not so useful as it is, one might be tempted to +regret that he had not chosen literature for the main field of his +career. The portrait which he draws of Lord Macaulay is so irresistibly +attractive in many ways, that a critic may be glad to have delivered his +soul before his judgment was subject to a dangerous bias, by the picture +of Macaulay's personal character—its domestic amiability, its +benevolence to unlucky followers of letters, its manliness, its high +public spirit and generous patriotism. On reading my criticism over +again, I am well pleased to find that not an epithet needs to be +altered,—so independent is opinion as to this strong man's work, of our +esteem for his loyal and upright character.</p></div> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Forster's <i>Swift</i>, i. 265.</p></div> +</div> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRITICAL MISCELLANIES, VOLUNME I (OF 3)***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 20164-h.txt or 20164-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/1/6/20164">http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/1/6/20164</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) + Essay 4: Macaulay + + +Author: John Morley + + + +Release Date: December 22, 2006 [eBook #20164] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRITICAL MISCELLANIES, VOLUME I +(OF 3)*** + + +E-text prepared by Paul Murray, Graeme Mackreth, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/c/) + + + +CRITICAL MISCELLANIES + +by + +JOHN MORLEY + +VOL. I. + +ESSAY 4: MACAULAY + + + + + + + +London +MacMillan and Co., Limited +New York: The MacMillan Company +1904 + + + + +MACAULAY. + +The Life of Macaulay 253 + +Macaulay's vast popularity 254 + +He and Mill, the two masters of the modern journalist 256 + +His marked quality 259 + +Set his stamp on style 260 + +His genius for narration 262 + +His copiousness of illustration 264 + +Macaulay's, the style of literary knowledge 266 + +His use of generous commonplace 267 + +Perfect accord with his audience 271 + +Dislike of analysis 272 + +Not meditative 273 + +Macaulay's is the prose of spoken deliverance 276 + +Character of his geniality 278 + +Metallic hardness and brightness 279 + +Compared with Carlyle 281 + +Harsh modulations and shallow cadences 283 + +Compared with Burke 283 + +Or with Southey 285 + +Faults of intellectual conscience 286 + +Vulgarity of thought 289 + +Conclusion 290 + + + + +MACAULAY. + + +'After glancing my eye over the design and order of a new book,' says +Gibbon, 'I suspended the perusal till I had finished the task of +self-examination, till I had revolved in a solitary walk all that I knew +or believed or had thought on the subject of the whole work or of some +particular chapter; I was then qualified to discern how much the author +added to my original stock; and if I was sometimes satisfied by the +agreement, I was sometimes warned by the opposition of our ideas.' It is +also told of Strafford that before reading any book for the first time, +he would call for a sheet of paper, and then proceed to write down upon +it some sketch of the ideas that he already had upon the subject of the +book, and of the questions that he expected to find answered. No one who +has been at the pains to try the experiment, will doubt the usefulness +of this practice: it gives to our acquisitions from books clearness and +reality, a right place and an independent shape. At this moment we are +all looking for the biography of an illustrious man of letters, written +by a near kinsman, who is himself naturally endowed with keen literary +interests, and who has invigorated his academic cultivation by +practical engagement in considerable affairs of public business. Before +taking up Mr. Trevelyan's two volumes, it is perhaps worth while, on +Strafford's plan, to ask ourselves shortly what kind of significance or +value belongs to Lord Macaulay's achievements, and to what place he has +a claim among the forces of English literature. It is seventeen years +since he died, and those of us who never knew him nor ever saw him, may +now think about his work with that perfect detachment which is +impossible in the case of actual contemporaries.[1] + +[Footnote 1: Since the following piece was written, Mr. Trevelyan's +biography of Lord Macaulay has appeared, and has enjoyed the great +popularity to which its careful execution, its brightness of style, its +good taste, its sound judgment, so richly entitle it. If Mr. Trevelyan's +course in politics were not so useful as it is, one might be tempted to +regret that he had not chosen literature for the main field of his +career. The portrait which he draws of Lord Macaulay is so irresistibly +attractive in many ways, that a critic may be glad to have delivered his +soul before his judgment was subject to a dangerous bias, by the picture +of Macaulay's personal character--its domestic amiability, its +benevolence to unlucky followers of letters, its manliness, its high +public spirit and generous patriotism. On reading my criticism over +again, I am well pleased to find that not an epithet needs to be +altered,--so independent is opinion as to this strong man's work, of our +esteem for his loyal and upright character.] + +That Macaulay comes in the very front rank in the mind of the ordinary +bookbuyer of our day is quite certain. It is an amusement with some +people to put an imaginary case of banishment to a desert island, with +the privilege of choosing the works of one author, and no more than one, +to furnish literary companionship and refreshment for the rest of a +lifetime. Whom would one select for this momentous post? Clearly the +author must be voluminous, for days on desert islands are many and long; +he must be varied in his moods, his topics, and his interests; he must +have a great deal to say, and must have a power of saying it that shall +arrest a depressed and dolorous spirit. Englishmen, of course, would +with mechanical unanimity call for Shakespeare; Germans could hardly +hesitate about Goethe; and a sensible Frenchman would pack up the ninety +volumes of Voltaire. It would be at least as interesting to know the +object of a second choice, supposing the tyrant in his clemency to give +us two authors. In the case of Englishmen there is some evidence as to a +popular preference. A recent traveller in Australia informs us that the +three books which he found on every squatter's shelf, and which at last +he knew before he crossed the threshold that he should be sure to find, +were Shakespeare, the Bible, and Macaulay's Essays. This is only an +illustration of a feeling about Macaulay that has been almost universal +among the English-speaking peoples. + +We may safely say that no man obtains and keeps for a great many years +such a position as this, unless he is possessed of some very +extraordinary qualities, or else of common qualities in a very uncommon +and extraordinary degree. The world, says Goethe, is more willing to +endure the Incongruous than to be patient under the Insignificant. Even +those who set least value on what Macaulay does for his readers, may +still feel bound to distinguish the elements that have given him his +vast popularity. The inquiry is not a piece of merely literary +criticism, for it is impossible that the work of so imposing a writer +should have passed through the hands of every man and woman of his time +who has even the humblest pretensions to cultivation, without leaving a +very decided mark on their habits both of thought and expression. As a +plain matter of observation, it is impossible to take up a newspaper or +a review, for instance, without perceiving Macaulay's influence both in +the style and the temper of modern journalism, and journalism in its +turn acts upon the style and temper of its enormous uncounted public. +The man who now succeeds in catching the ear of the writers of leading +articles, is in the position that used to be held by the head of some +great theological school, whence disciples swarmed forth to reproduce in +ten thousand pulpits the arguments, the opinions, the images, the +tricks, the postures, and the mannerisms of a single master. + +Two men of very different kinds have thoroughly impressed the +journalists of our time, Macaulay and Mr. Mill. Mr. Carlyle we do not +add to them; he is, as the Germans call Jean Paul, _der Einzige_. And he +is a poet, while the other two are in their degrees serious and +argumentative writers, dealing in different ways with the great topics +that constitute the matter and business of daily discussion. They are +both of them practical enough to interest men handling real affairs, and +yet they are general or theoretical enough to supply such men with the +large and ready commonplaces which are so useful to a profession that +has to produce literary graces and philosophical decorations at an +hour's notice. It might perhaps be said of these two distinguished men +that our public writers owe most of their virtues to the one, and most +of their vices to the other. If Mill taught some of them to reason, +Macaulay tempted more of them to declaim: if Mill set an example of +patience, tolerance, and fair examination of hostile opinions, Macaulay +did much to encourage oracular arrogance, and a rather too thrasonical +complacency; if Mill sowed ideas of the great economic, political, and +moral bearings of the forces of society, Macaulay trained a taste for +superficial particularities, trivial circumstantialities of local +colour, and all the paraphernalia of the pseudo-picturesque. + +Of course nothing so obviously untrue is meant as that this is an +account of Macaulay's own quality. What is empty pretension in the +leading article, was often a warranted self-assertion in Macaulay; what +in it is little more than testiness, is in him often a generous +indignation. What became and still remain in those who have made him +their model, substantive and organic vices, the foundation of literary +character and intellectual temper, were in him the incidental defects +of a vigorous genius. And we have to take a man of his power and vigour +with all his drawbacks, for the one are wrapped up in the other. Charles +Fox used to apply to Burke a passage that Quintilian wrote about Ovid. +'Si animi sui affectibus temperare quam indulgere maluisset,' quoted +Fox, 'quid vir iste praestare non potuerit!' But this is really not at +all certain either of Ovid, or Burke, or any one else. It suits +moralists to tell us that excellence lies in the happy mean and nice +balance of our faculties and impulses, and perhaps in so far as our own +contentment and an easy passage through life are involved, what they +tell us is true. But for making a mark in the world, for rising to +supremacy in art or thought or affairs--whatever those aims may be +worth--a man possibly does better to indulge, rather than to chide or +grudge, his genius, and to pay the penalties for his weakness, rather +than run any risk of mutilating those strong faculties of which they +happen to be an inseparable accident. Versatility is not a universal +gift among the able men of the world; not many of them have so many +gifts of the spirit, as to be free to choose by what pass they will +climb 'the steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar.' If Macaulay had +applied himself to the cultivation of a balanced judgment, of tempered +phrases, and of relative propositions, he would probably have sunk into +an impotent tameness. A great pugilist has sometimes been converted from +the error of his ways, and been led zealously to cherish gospel graces, +but the hero's discourses have seldom had the notes of unction and +edification. Macaulay, divested of all the exorbitancies of his spirit +and his style, would have been a Samson shorn of the locks of his +strength. + +Although, however, a writer of marked quality may do well to let his +genius develop its spontaneous forces without too assiduous or vigilant +repression, trusting to other writers of equal strength in other +directions, and to the general fitness of things and operation of time, +to redress the balance, still it is the task of criticism in counting up +the contributions of one of these strong men to examine the mischiefs no +less than the benefits incident to their work. There is no puny carping +nor cavilling in the process. It is because such men are strong that +they are able to do harm; they may injure the taste and judgment of a +whole generation, just because they are never mediocre. That is implied +in strength. Macaulay is not to be measured now merely as if he were the +author of a new book. His influence has been a distinct literary force, +and in an age of reading, this is to be a distinct force in deciding the +temper, the process, the breadth, of men's opinions, no less than the +manner of expressing them. It is no new observation that the influence +of an author becomes in time something apart from his books: a certain +generalised or abstract personality impresses itself on our minds, long +after we have forgotten the details of his opinions, the arguments by +which he enforced them, and even, what are usually the last to escape +us, the images by which he illustrated them. Phrases and sentences are a +mask: but we detect the features of the man behind the mask. This +personality of a favourite author is a real and powerful agency. +Unconsciously we are infected with his humours; we apply his methods; we +find ourselves copying the rhythm and measure of his periods; we wonder +how he would have acted, or thought, or spoken in our circumstances. +Usually a strong writer leaves a special mark in some particular region +of mental activity: the final product of him is to fix some persistent +religious mood, or some decisive intellectual bias, or else some trick +of the tongue. Now Macaulay has contributed no philosophic ideas to the +speculative stock, nor has he developed any one great historic or social +truth. His work is always full of a high spirit of manliness, probity, +and honour; but he is not of that small band to whom we may apply +Mackintosh's thrice and four times enviable panegyric on the eloquence +of Dugald Stewart, that its peculiar glory consisted in having 'breathed +the love of virtue into whole generations of pupils.' He has painted +many striking pictures, and imparted a certain reality to our conception +of many great scenes of the past. He did good service in banishing once +for all those sentimental Jacobite leanings and prejudices which had +been kept alive by the sophistry of the most popular of historians, and +the imagination of the most popular of romance writers. But where he set +his stamp has been upon style; style in its widest sense, not merely on +the grammar and mechanism of writing, but on what De Quincey described +as its _organology_; style, that is to say, in its relation to ideas and +feelings, its commerce with thought, and its reaction on what one may +call the temper or conscience of the intellect. + +Let no man suppose that it matters little whether the most universally +popular of the serious authors of a generation--and Macaulay was nothing +less than this--affects _style coupe_ or _style soutenu_. The critic of +style is not the dancing-master, declaiming on the deep ineffable things +that lie in a minuet. He is not the virtuoso of supines and gerundives. +The morality of style goes deeper 'than dull fools suppose.' When Comte +took pains to prevent any sentence from exceeding two lines of his +manuscript or five of print; to restrict every paragraph to seven +sentences; to exclude every hiatus between two sentences, or even +between two paragraphs; and never to reproduce any word, except the +auxiliary monosyllables, in two consecutive sentences; he justified his +literary solicitude by insisting on the wholesomeness alike to heart and +intelligence of submission to artificial institutions. He felt, after he +had once mastered the habit of the new yoke, that it became the source +of continual and unforeseeable improvements even in thought, and he +perceived that the reason why verse is a higher kind of literary +perfection than prose, is that verse imposes a greater number of +rigorous forms. We may add that verse itself is perfected, in the hands +of men of poetic genius, in proportion to the severity of this +mechanical regulation. Where Pope or Racine had one rule of metre, +Victor Hugo has twenty, and he observes them as rigorously as an +algebraist or an astronomer observes the rules of calculation or +demonstration. One, then, who touches the style of a generation acquires +no trifling authority over its thought and temper, as well as over the +length of its sentences. + + * * * * * + +The first and most obvious secret of Macaulay's place on popular +bookshelves is that he has a true genius for narration, and narration +will always in the eyes, not only of our squatters in the Australian +bush, but of the many all over the world, stand first among literary +gifts. The common run of plain men, as has been noticed since the +beginning of the world, are as eager as children for a story, and like +children they will embrace the man who will tell them a story, with +abundance of details and plenty of colour, and a realistic assurance +that it is no mere make-believe. Macaulay never stops to brood over an +incident or a character, with an inner eye intent on penetrating to the +lowest depth of motive and cause, to the furthest complexity of impulse, +calculation, and subtle incentive. The spirit of analysis is not in him, +and the divine spirit of meditation is not in him. His whole mind runs +in action and movement; it busies itself with eager interest in all +objective particulars. He is seized by the external and the superficial, +and revels in every detail that appeals to the five senses. 'The +brilliant Macaulay,' said Emerson, with slight exaggeration, 'who +expresses the tone of the English governing classes of the day, +explicitly teaches that _good_ means good to eat, good to wear, material +commodity.' So ready a faculty of exultation in the exceeding great +glories of taste and touch, of loud sound and glittering spectacle, is a +gift of the utmost service to the narrator who craves immense audiences. +Let it be said that if Macaulay exults in the details that go to our +five senses, his sensuousness is always clean, manly, and fit for honest +daylight and the summer sun. There is none of that curious odour of +autumnal decay that clings to the passion of a more modern school for +colour and flavour and the enumerated treasures of subtle indulgence. + +Mere picturesqueness, however, is a minor qualification compared with +another quality which everybody assumes himself to have, but which is in +reality extremely uncommon; the quality, I mean, of telling a tale +directly and in straightforward order. In speaking of Hallam, Macaulay +complained that Gibbon had brought into fashion an unpleasant trick of +telling a story by implication and allusion. This provoking obliquity +has certainly increased rather than declined since Hallam's day. Mr. +Froude, it is true, whatever may be his shortcomings on the side of +sound moral and political judgment, has admirable gifts in the way of +straightforward narration, and Mr. Freeman, when he does not press too +hotly after emphasis, and abstains from overloading his account with +super-abundance of detail, is usually excellent in the way of direct +description. Still, it is not merely because these two writers are alive +and Macaulay is not, that most people would say of him that he is +unequalled in our time in his mastery of the art of letting us know in +an express and unmistakable way exactly what it was that happened; +though it is quite true that in many portions of his too elaborated +History of William the Third he describes a large number of events about +which, I think, no sensible man can in the least care either how they +happened, or whether indeed they happened at all or not. + +Another reason why people have sought Macaulay is, that he has in one +way or another something to tell them about many of the most striking +personages and interesting events in the history of mankind. And he does +really tell them something. If any one will be at the trouble to count +up the number of those names that belong to the world and time, about +which Macaulay has found not merely something, but something definite +and pointed to say, he will be astonished to see how large a portion of +the wide historic realm is traversed in that ample flight of reference, +allusion, and illustration, and what unsparing copiousness of knowledge +gives substance, meaning, and attraction to that resplendent blaze of +rhetoric. + +Macaulay came upon the world of letters just as the middle classes were +expanding into enormous prosperity, were vastly increasing in numbers, +and were becoming more alive than they had ever been before to literary +interests. His Essays are as good as a library: they make an +incomparable manual and vade-mecum for a busy uneducated man, who has +curiosity and enlightenment enough to wish to know a little about the +great lives and great thoughts, the shining words and many-coloured +complexities of action, that have marked the journey of man through the +ages. Macaulay had an intimate acquaintance both with the imaginative +literature and the history of Greece and Rome, with the literature and +the history of modern Italy, of France, and of England. Whatever his +special subject, he contrives to pour into it with singular dexterity a +stream of rich, graphic, and telling illustrations from all these widely +diversified sources. Figures from history, ancient and modern, sacred +and secular; characters from plays and novels from Plautus down to +Walter Scott and Jane Austen; images and similes from poets of every age +and every nation, 'pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, +tragical-historical;' shrewd thrusts from satirists, wise saws from +sages, pleasantries caustic or pathetic from humorists; all these throng +Macaulay's pages with the bustle and variety and animation of some +glittering masque and cosmoramic revel of great books and heroical men. +Hence, though Macaulay was in mental constitution one of the very least +Shakesperean writers that ever lived, yet he has the Shakesperean +quality of taking his reader through an immense gallery of interesting +characters and striking situations. No writer can now expect to attain +the widest popularity as a man of letters unless he gives to the world +_multa_ as well as _multum_. Sainte-Beuve, the most eminent man of +letters in France in our generation, wrote no less than twenty-seven +volumes of his incomparable _Causeries_. Mr. Carlyle, the most eminent +man of letters in England in our generation, has taught us that silence +is golden in thirty volumes. Macaulay was not so exuberantly copious as +these two illustrious writers, but he had the art of being as various +without being so voluminous. + +There has been a great deal of deliberate and systematic imitation of +Macaulay's style, often by clever men who might well have trusted to +their own resources. Its most conspicuous vices are very easy to +imitate, but it is impossible for any one who is less familiar with +literature than Macaulay was, to reproduce his style effectively, for +the reason that it is before all else the style of great literary +knowledge. Nor is that all. Macaulay's knowledge was not only very wide; +it was both thoroughly accurate and instantly ready. For this stream of +apt illustrations he was indebted to his extraordinary memory, and his +rapid eye for contrasts and analogies. They come to the end of his pen +as he writes; they are not laboriously hunted out in indexes, and then +added by way of afterthought and extraneous interpolation. Hence +quotations and references that in a writer even of equal knowledge, but +with his wits less promptly about him, would seem mechanical and +awkward, find their place in a page of Macaulay as if by a delightful +process of complete assimilation and spontaneous fusion. + + * * * * * + +We may be sure that no author could have achieved Macaulay's boundless +popularity among his contemporaries, unless his work had abounded in +what is substantially Commonplace. Addison puts fine writing in +sentiments that are natural without being obvious, and this is a true +account of the 'law' of the exquisite literature of the Queen Anne men. +We may perhaps add to Addison's definition, that the great secret of the +best kind of popularity is always the noble or imaginative handling of +Commonplace. Shakespeare may at first seem an example to the contrary; +and indeed is it not a standing marvel that the greatest writer of a +nation that is distinguished among all nations for the pharisaism, +puritanism, and unimaginative narrowness of its judgments on conduct and +type of character, should be paramount over all writers for the breadth, +maturity, fulness, subtlety, and infinite variousness of his conception +of human life and nature? One possible answer to the perplexity is that +the puritanism does not go below the surface in us, and that Englishmen +are not really limited in their view by the too strait formulas that are +supposed to contain their explanations of the moral universe. On this +theory the popular appreciation of Shakespeare is the irrepressible +response of the hearty inner man to a voice, in which he recognises the +full note of human nature, and those wonders of the world which are not +dreamt of in his professed philosophy. A more obvious answer than this +is that Shakespeare's popularity with the many is not due to those finer +glimpses that are the very essence of all poetic delight to the few, but +to his thousand other magnificent attractions, and above all, after his +skill as a pure dramatist and master of scenic interest and situation, +to the lofty or pathetic setting with which he vivifies, not the +subtleties or refinements, but the commonest and most elementary traits +of the commonest and most elementary human moods. The few with minds +touched by nature or right cultivation to the finer issues, admire the +supreme genius which takes some poor Italian tale, with its coarse plot +and gross personages, and shooting it through with threads of variegated +meditation, produces a masterpiece of penetrative reflection and high +pensive suggestion as to the deepest things and most secret parts of the +life of men. But to the general these finer threads are indiscernible. +What touches them in the Shakesperean poetry, and most rightly touches +them and us all, are topics eternally old, yet of eternal freshness, the +perennial truisms of the grave and the bride-chamber, of shifting +fortune, of the surprises of destiny, and the emptiness of the answered +vow. This is the region in which the poet wins his widest if not his +hardest triumphs, the region of the noble Commonplace. + +A writer dealing with such matters as principally occupied Macaulay, +has not the privilege of resort to these great poetic inspirations. Yet +history, too, has its generous commonplaces, its plausibilities of +emotion, and no one has ever delighted more than Macaulay did, to appeal +to the fine truisms that cluster round love of freedom and love of +native land. The high rhetorical topics of liberty and patriotism are +his readiest instruments for kindling a glowing reflection of these +magnanimous passions in the breasts of his readers. That Englishman is +hardly to be envied who can read without a glow such passages as that in +the History, about Turenne being startled by the shout of stern +exultation with which his English allies advanced to the combat, and +expressing the delight of a true soldier when he learned that it was +ever the fashion of Cromwell's pikemen to rejoice greatly when they +beheld the enemy; while even the banished cavaliers felt an emotion of +national pride when they saw a brigade of their countrymen, outnumbered +by foes and abandoned by friends, drive before it in headlong rout the +finest infantry of Spain, and force a passage into a counterscarp which +had just been pronounced impregnable by the ablest of the marshals of +France. Such prose as this is not less thrilling to a man who loves his +country, than the spirited verse of the Lays of Ancient Rome. And the +commonplaces of patriotism and freedom would never have been so powerful +in Macaulay's hands, if they had not been inspired by a sincere and +hearty faith in them in the soul of the writer. His unanalytical turn +of mind kept him free of any temptation to think of love of country as a +prejudice, or a passion for freedom as an illusion. The cosmopolitan or +international idea which such teachers as Cobden have tried to impress +on our stubborn islanders, would have found in Macaulay not lukewarm or +sceptical adherence, but point-blank opposition and denial. He believed +as stoutly in the supremacy of Great Britain in the history of the good +causes of Europe, as M. Thiers believes in the supremacy of France, or +Mazzini believed in that of Italy. The thought of the prodigious +industry, the inventiveness, the stout enterprise, the free government, +the wise and equal laws, the noble literature, of this fortunate island +and its majestic empire beyond the seas, and the discretion, valour, and +tenacity by which all these great material and still greater intangible +possessions had been first won, and then kept, against every hostile +comer whether domestic or foreign, sent through Macaulay a thrill, like +that which the thought of Paris and its heroisms moves in the great poet +of France, or sight of the dear city of the Violet Crown moved in an +Athenian of old. Thus habitually, with all sincerity of heart, to offer +to one of the greater popular prepossessions the incense due to any +other idol of superstition, sacred and of indisputable authority, and to +let this adoration be seen shining in every page, is one of the keys +that every man must find, who would make a quick and sure way into the +temple of contemporary fame. + +It is one of the first things to be said about Macaulay, that he was in +exact accord with the common average sentiment of his day on every +subject on which he spoke. His superiority was not of that highest kind +which leads a man to march in thought on the outside margin of the +crowd, watching them, sympathising with them, hoping for them, but +apart. Macaulay was one of the middle-class crowd in his heart, and only +rose above it by splendid attainments and extraordinary gifts of +expression. He had none of that ambition which inflames some hardy men, +to make new beliefs and new passions enter the minds of their +neighbours; his ascendency is due to literary pomp, not to fecundity of +spirit. No one has ever surpassed him in the art of combining resolute +and ostentatious common sense of a slightly coarse sort in choosing his +point of view, with so considerable an appearance of dignity and +elevation in setting it forth and impressing it upon others. The +elaborateness of his style is very likely to mislead people into +imagining for him a corresponding elaborateness of thought and +sentiment. On the contrary, Macaulay's mind was really very simple, +strait, and with as few notes in its register, to borrow a phrase from +the language of vocal compass, as there are few notes, though they are +very loud, in the register of his written prose. When we look more +closely into it, what at first wore the air of dignity and elevation, in +truth rather disagreeably resembles the narrow assurance of a man who +knows that he has with him the great battalions of public opinion. We +are always quite sure that if Macaulay had been an Athenian citizen +towards the ninety-fifth Olympiad, he would have taken sides with Anytus +and Meletus in the impeachment of Socrates. A popular author must, in a +thorough-going way, take the accepted maxims for granted. He must +suppress any whimsical fancy for applying the Socratic elenchus, or any +other engine of criticism, scepticism, or verification, to those +sentiments or current precepts of morals, which may in truth be very +equivocal and may be much neglected in practice, but which the public +opinion of his time requires to be treated in theory and in literature +as if they had been cherished and held sacred _semper, ubique, et ab +omnibus_. + +This is just what Macaulay does, and it is commonly supposed to be no +heavy fault in him or any other writer for the common public. Man cannot +live by analysis alone, nor nourish himself on the secret delights of +irony. And if Macaulay had only reflected the more generous of the +prejudices of mankind, it would have been well enough. Burke, for +instance, was a writer who revered the prejudices of a modern society as +deeply as Macaulay did; he believed society to be founded on prejudices +and held compact by them. Yet what size there is in Burke, what fine +perspective, what momentum, what edification! It may be pleaded that +there is the literature of edification, and there is the literature of +knowledge, and that the qualities proper to the one cannot lawfully be +expected from the other, and would only be very much out of place if +they should happen to be found there. But there are two answers to this. +First, Macaulay in the course of his varied writings discusses all sorts +of ethical and other matters, and is not simply a chronicler of party +and intrigue, of dynasties and campaigns. Second, and more than this, +even if he had never travelled beyond the composition of historical +record, he could still have sown his pages, as does every truly great +writer, no matter what his subject may be, with those significant images +or far-reaching suggestions, which suddenly light up a whole range of +distant thoughts and sympathies within us; which in an instant affect +the sensibilities of men with a something new and unforeseen; and which +awaken, if only for a passing moment, the faculty and response of the +diviner mind. Tacitus does all this, and Burke does it, and that is why +men who care nothing for Roman despots or for Jacobin despots, will +still perpetually turn to those writers almost as if they were on the +level of great poets or very excellent spiritual teachers. + +One secret is that they, and all such men as they were, had that of +which Macaulay can hardly have had the rudimentary germ, the faculty of +deep abstract meditation and surrender to the fruitful 'leisures of the +spirit.' We can picture Macaulay talking, or making a speech in the +House of Commons, or buried in a book, or scouring his library for +references, or covering his blue foolscap with dashing periods, or +accentuating his sentences and barbing his phrases; but can anybody +think of him as meditating, as modestly pondering and wondering, as +possessed for so much as ten minutes by that spirit of inwardness, which +has never been wholly wanting in any of those kings and princes of +literature, with whom it is good for men to sit in counsel? He seeks +Truth, not as she should be sought, devoutly, tentatively, and with the +air of one touching the hem of a sacred garment, but clutching her by +the hair of the head and dragging her after him in a kind of boisterous +triumph, a prisoner of war and not a goddess. + +All this finds itself reflected, as the inner temper of a man always is +reflected, in his style of written prose. The merits of Macaulay's prose +are obvious enough. It naturally reproduces the good qualities I of his +understanding, its strength, manliness, and directness. That exultation +in material goods and glories of which we have already spoken, makes his +pages rich in colour, and gives them the effect of a sumptuous +gala-suit. Certainly the brocade is too brand-new, and has none of the +delicate charm that comes to such finery when it is a little faded. +Again, nobody can have any excuse for not knowing exactly what it is +that Macaulay means. We may assuredly say of his prose what Boileau says +of his own poetry--'Et mon vers, bien ou mal, dit toujours quelque +chose.' This is a prodigious merit, when we reflect with what fatal +alacrity human language lends itself in the hands of so many performers +upon the pliant instrument, to all sorts of obscurity, ambiguity, +disguise, and pretentious mystification. Scaliger is supposed to have +remarked of the Basques and their desperate tongue: ''Tis said the +Basques understand one another; for my part, I will never believe it.' +The same pungent doubt might apply to loftier members of the hierarchy +of speech than that forlorn dialect, but never to English as handled by +Macaulay. He never wrote an obscure sentence in his life, and this may +seem a small merit, until we remember of how few writers we could say +the same. + +Macaulay is of those who think prose as susceptible of polished and +definite form as verse, and he was, we should suppose, of those also who +hold the type and mould of all written language to be spoken language. +There are more reasons for demurring to the soundness of the latter +doctrine, than can conveniently be made to fill a digression here. For +one thing, spoken language necessarily implies one or more listeners, +whereas written language may often have to express meditative moods and +trains of inward reflection that move through the mind without trace of +external reference, and that would lose their special traits by the +introduction of any suspicion that they were to be overheard. Again, +even granting that all composition must be supposed to be meant, by the +fact of its existence, to be addressed to a body of readers, it still +remains to be shown that indirect address to the inner ear should follow +the same method and rhythm as address directly through impressions on +the outer organ. The attitude of the recipient mind is different, and +there is the symbolism of a new medium between it and the speaker. The +writer, being cut off from all those effects which are producible by the +physical intonations of the voice, has to find substitutes for them by +other means, by subtler cadences, by a more varied modulation, by firmer +notes, by more complex circuits, than suffice for the utmost perfection +of spoken language, which has all the potent and manifold aids of +personality. In writing, whether it be prose or verse, you are free to +produce effects whose peculiarity one can only define vaguely, by saying +that the senses have one part less in them than in any other of the +forms and effects of art, and the imaginary voice one part more. But the +question need not be laboured here, because there can be no dispute as +to the quality of Macaulay's prose. Its measures are emphatically the +measures of spoken deliverance. Those who have made the experiment, +pronounce him to be one of the authors whose works are most admirably +fitted for reading aloud. His firmness and directness of statement, his +spiritedness, his art of selecting salient and highly coloured detail, +and all his other merits as a narrator, keep the listener's attention, +and make him the easiest of writers to follow. + +Although, however, clearness, directness, and positiveness are master +qualities and the indispensable foundations of all good style, yet does +the matter plainly by no means end with them. And it is even possible +to have these virtues so unhappily proportioned and inauspiciously mixed +with other turns and casts of mind, as to end in work with little grace +or harmony or fine tracery about it, but only overweening purpose and +vehement will. And it is overweeningness and self-confident will that +are the chief notes of Macaulay's style. It has no benignity. Energy is +doubtless a delightful quality, but then Macaulay's energy is perhaps +energy without momentum, and he impresses us more by a strong volubility +than by volume. It is the energy of interests and intuitions, which +though they are profoundly sincere if ever they were sincere in any man, +are yet in the relations which they comprehend, essentially superficial. + +Still, trenchancy whether in speaker or writer is a most effective tone +for a large public. It gives them confidence in their man, and prevents +tediousness--except to those who reflect how delicate is the poise of +truth, and what steeps and pits encompass the dealer in unqualified +propositions. To such persons, a writer who is trenchant in every +sentence of every page, who never lapses for a line into the contingent, +who marches through the intricacies of things in a blaze of certainty, +is not only a writer to be distrusted, but the owner of a doubtful and +displeasing style. It is a great test of style to watch how an author +disposes of the qualifications, limitations, and exceptions that clog +the wings of his main proposition. The grave and conscientious men of +the seventeenth century insisted on packing them all honestly along with +the main proposition itself, within the bounds of a single period. +Burke arranges them in tolerably close order in the paragraph. Dr. +Newmann, that winning writer, disperses them lightly over his page. Of +Macaulay it is hardly unfair to say that he despatches all +qualifications into outer space before he begins to write, or if he +magnanimously admits one or two here and there, it is only to bring them +the more imposingly to the same murderous end. + +We have spoken of Macaulay's interests and intuitions wearing a certain +air of superficiality; there is a feeling of the same kind about his +attempts to be genial. It is not truly festive. There is no abandonment +in it. It has no deep root in moral humour, and is merely a literary +form, resembling nothing so much as the hard geniality of some clever +college tutor of stiff manners, entertaining undergraduates at an +official breakfast-party. This is not because his tone is bookish; on +the contrary, his tone and level are distinctly those of the man of the +world. But one always seems to find that neither a wide range of +cultivation, nor familiar access to the best Whig circles, had quite +removed the stiffness and self-conscious precision of the Clapham Sect. +We would give much for a little more flexibility, and would welcome ever +so slight a consciousness of infirmity. As has been said, the only +people whom men cannot pardon are the perfect. Macaulay is like the +military king who never suffered himself to be seen, even by the +attendants in his bed-chamber, until he had had time to put on his +uniform and jack-boots. His severity of eye is very wholesome; it makes +his writing firm, and firmness is certainly one of the first qualities +that good writing must have. But there is such a thing as soft and +considerate precision, as well as hard and scolding precision. Those +most interesting English critics of the generation slightly anterior to +Macaulay,--Hazlitt, Lamb, De Quincey, Leigh Hunt,--were fully his equals +in precision, and yet they knew how to be clear, acute, and definite, +without that edginess and inelasticity which is so conspicuous in +Macaulay's criticisms, alike in their matter and their form. + +To borrow the figure of an old writer, Macaulay's prose is not like a +flowing vestment to his thought, but like a suit of armour. It is often +splendid and glittering, and the movement of the opening pages of his +History is superb in its dignity. But that movement is exceptional. As a +rule there is the hardness, if there is also often the sheen, of +highly-wrought metal. Or, to change our figure, his pages are composed +as a handsome edifice is reared, not as a fine statue or a frieze 'with +bossy sculptures graven' grows up in the imaginative mind of the +statuary. There is no liquid continuity, such as indicates a writer +possessed by his subject and not merely possessing it. The periods are +marshalled in due order of procession, bright and high-stepping; they +never escape under an impulse of emotion into the full current of a +brimming stream. What is curious is that though Macaulay seems ever to +be brandishing a two-edged gleaming sword, and though he steeps us in an +atmosphere of belligerency, yet we are never conscious of inward +agitation in him, and perhaps this alone would debar him from a place +among the greatest writers. For they, under that reserve, suppression, +or management, which is an indispensable condition of the finest +rhetorical art, even when aiming at the most passionate effects, still +succeed in conveying to their readers a thrilling sense of the strong +fires that are glowing underneath. Now when Macaulay advances with his +hectoring sentences and his rough pistolling ways, we feel all the time +that his pulse is as steady as that of the most practised duellist who +ever ate fire. He is too cool to be betrayed into a single phrase of +happy improvisation. His pictures glare, but are seldom warm. Those +strokes of minute circumstantiality which he loved so dearly, show that +even in moments when his imagination might seem to be moving both +spontaneously and ardently, it was really only a literary instrument, a +fashioning tool and not a melting flame. Let us take a single example. +He is describing the trial of Warren Hastings. 'Every step in the +proceedings,' he says, 'carried the mind either backward through many +troubled centuries to the days when the foundations of our constitution +were laid; or far away over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations +living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing +strange characters from right to left. The odd triviality of the last +detail, its unworthiness of the sentiment of the passage, leaves the +reader checked, what sets out as a fine stroke of imagination dwindles +down to a sort of literary conceit. And this puerile twist, by the way, +is all the poorer, when it is considered that the native writing is +really from left to right, and only takes the other direction in a +foreign, that is to say, a Persian alphabet. And so in other places, +even where the writer is most deservedly admired for gorgeous +picturesque effect, we feel that it is only the literary picturesque, a +kind of infinitely glorified newspaper-reporting. Compare, for instance, +the most imaginative piece to be found in any part of Macaulay's +writings with that sudden and lovely apostrophe in Carlyle, after +describing the bloody horrors that followed the fall of the Bastille in +1789:--'O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant +on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in +cottages; on ships far out in the silent main; on balls at the Orangerie +at Versailles, where high-rouged dames of the Palace are even now +dancing with double-jacketed Hussar officers;--and also on this roaring +Hell-porch of a Hotel de Ville!' Who does not feel in this the breath of +poetic inspiration, and how different it is from the mere composite of +the rhetorician's imagination, assiduously working to order? + +This remark is no disparagement of Macaulay's genius, but a +classification of it. We are interrogating our own impressions, and +asking ourselves among what kind of writers he ought to be placed. +Rhetoric is a good and worthy art, and rhetorical authors are often more +useful, more instructive, more really respectable than poetical authors. +But it is to be said that Macaulay as a rhetorician will hardly be +placed in the first rank, by those who have studied both him and the +great masters. Once more, no amount of embellishment or emphasis or +brilliant figure suffices to produce this intense effect of agitation +rigorously restrained; nor can any beauty of decoration be in the least +a substitute for that touching and penetrative music, which is made in +prose by the repressed trouble of grave and high souls. There is a +certain music, we do not deny, in Macaulay, but it is the music of a man +everlastingly playing for us rapid solos on a silver trumpet, never the +swelling diapasons of the organ, and never the deep ecstasies of the +four magic strings. That so sensible a man as Macaulay should keep clear +of the modern abomination of dithyrambic prose, that rank and sprawling +weed of speech, was natural enough; but then the effects which we miss +in him, and which, considering how strong the literary faculty in him +really was, we are almost astonished to miss, are not produced by +dithyramb but by repression. Of course the answer has been already +given; Macaulay, powerful and vigorous as he was, had no agitation, no +wonder, no tumult of spirit to repress. The world was spread out clear +before him; he read it as plainly and as certainly as he read his books; +life was all an affair of direct categoricals. + +This was at least one secret of those hard modulations and shallow +cadences. How poor is the rhythm of Macaulay's prose we only realise by +going with his periods fresh in our ear to some true master of harmony. +It is not worth while to quote passages from an author who is in +everybody's library, and Macaulay is always so much like himself that +almost any one page will serve for an illustration exactly as well as +any other. Let any one turn to his character of Somers, for whom he had +so much admiration, and then turn to Clarendon's character of +Falkland;--'a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, +of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing +and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive +simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon +this odious and accursed civil war than that single loss, it must be +most infamous and execrable to all posterity.' Now Clarendon is not a +great writer, not even a good writer, for he is prolix and involved, yet +we see that even Clarendon, when he comes to a matter in which his heart +is engaged, becomes sweet and harmonious in his rhythm. If we turn to a +prose-writer of the very first place, we are instantly conscious of a +still greater difference. How flashy and shallow Macaulay's periods +seem, as we listen to the fine ground-base that rolls in the melody of +the following passage of Burke's, and it is taken from one of the least +ornate of all his pieces:-- + + You will not, we trust, believe that, born in a civilised country, + formed to gentle manners, trained in a merciful religion, and living + in enlightened and polished times, where even foreign hostility is + softened from its original sternness, we could have thought of + letting loose upon you, our late beloved brethren, these fierce + tribes of savages and cannibals, in whom the traces of human nature + are effaced by ignorance and barbarity. We rather wished to have + joined with you in bringing gradually that unhappy part of mankind + into civility, order, piety, and virtuous discipline, than to have + confirmed their evil habits and increased their natural ferocity by + fleshing them in the slaughter of you, whom our wiser and better + ancestors had sent into the wilderness with the express view of + introducing, along with our holy religion, its humane and charitable + manners. We do not hold that all things are lawful in war. We should + think every barbarity, in fire, in wasting, in murders, in tortures, + and other cruelties, too horrible and too full of turpitude for + Christian mouths to utter or ears to hear, if done at our + instigation, by those who we know will make war thus if they make it + at all, to be, to all intents and purposes, as if done by ourselves. + We clear ourselves to you our brethren, to the present age, and to + future generations, to our king and our country, and to Europe, which + as a spectator, beholds this tragic scene, of every part or share in + adding this last and worst of evils to the inevitable mischiefs of a + civil war. + + We do not call you rebels and traitors. We do not call for the + vengeance of the crown against you. We do not know how to qualify + millions of our countrymen, contending with one heart for an + admission to privileges which we have ever thought our own happiness + and honour, by odious and unworthy names. On the contrary, we highly + revere the principles on which you act, though we lament some of + their effects. Armed as you are, we embrace you, as our friends and + as our brethren by the best and dearest ties of relation. + +It may be said that there is a patent injustice in comparing the prose +of a historian criticising or describing great events at second hand, +with the prose of a statesman taking active part in great events, fired +by the passion of a present conflict, and stimulated by the vivid +interest of undetermined issues. If this be a well-grounded plea, and it +may be so, then of course it excludes a contrast not only with Burke, +but also with Bolingbroke, whose fine manners and polished gaiety give +us a keen sense of the grievous garishness of Macaulay. If we may not +institute a comparison between Macaulay and great actors on the stage of +affairs, at least there can be no objection to the introduction of +Southey as a standard of comparison. Southey was a man of letters pure +and simple, and it is worth remarking that Macaulay himself admitted +that he found so great a charm in Southey's style, as nearly always to +read it with pleasure, even when Southey was talking nonsense. Now, take +any page of the Life of Nelson or the Life of Wesley; consider how easy, +smooth, natural, and winning is the diction and the rise and fall of the +sentence, and yet how varied the rhythm and how nervous the phrases; and +then turn to a page of Macaulay, and wince under its stamping emphasis, +its over-coloured tropes, its exaggerated expressions, its unlovely +staccato. Southey's History of the Peninsular War is now dead, but if +any of my readers has a copy on his highest shelves, I would venture to +ask him to take down the third volume, and read the concluding pages, +of which Coleridge used to say that they were the finest specimen of +historic eulogy he had ever read in English, adding with forgivable +hyperbole, that they were more to the Duke's fame and glory than a +campaign. 'Foresight and enterprise with our commander went hand in +hand; he never advanced but so as to be sure of his retreat; and never +retreated but in such an attitude as to impose upon a superior enemy,' +and so on through the sum of Wellington's achievements. 'There was +something more precious than these, more to be desired than the high and +enduring fame which he had secured by his military achievements, the +satisfaction of thinking to what end those achievements had been +directed; that they were for the deliverance of two most injured and +grievously oppressed nations; for the safety, honour, and welfare of his +own country; and for the general interests of Europe and of the +civilised world. His campaigns were sanctified by the cause; they were +sullied by no cruelties, no crimes; the chariot-wheels of his triumphs +have been followed by no curses; his laurels are entwined with the +amaranths of righteousness, and upon his death-bed he might remember his +victories among his good works.' + +What is worse than want of depth and fineness of intonation in a period, +is all gross excess of colour, because excess of colour is connected +with graver faults in the region of the intellectual conscience. +Macaulay is a constant sinner in this respect. The wine of truth is in +his cup a brandied draught, a hundred degrees above proof, and he too +often replenishes the lamp of knowledge with naphtha instead of fine +oil. It is not that he has a spontaneous passion for exuberant +decoration, which he would have shared with more than one of the +greatest names in literature. On the contrary, we feel that the +exaggerated words and dashing sentences are the fruit of deliberate +travail, and the petulance or the irony of his speech is mostly due to a +driving predilection for strong effects. His memory, his directness, his +aptitude for forcing things into firm outline, and giving them a sharply +defined edge,--these and other singular talents of his all lent +themselves to this intrepid and indefatigable pursuit of effect. And the +most disagreeable feature is that Macaulay was so often content with an +effect of an essentially vulgar kind, offensive to taste, discordant to +the fastidious ear, and worst of all, at enmity with the whole spirit of +truth. By vulgar we certainly do not mean homely, which marks a wholly +different quality. No writer can be more homely than Mr. Carlyle, alike +in his choice of particulars to dwell upon, and in the terms or images +in which he describes or illustrates them, but there is also no writer +further removed from vulgarity. Nor do we mean that Macaulay too +copiously enriches the tongue with infusion from any Doric dialect. For +such raciness he had little taste. What we find in him is that quality +which the French call brutal. The description, for instance, in the +essay on Hallam, of the licence of the Restoration, seems to us a coarse +and vulgar picture, whose painter took the most garish colours he could +find on his palette, and then laid them on in untempered crudity. And +who is not sensible of the vulgarity and coarseness of the account of +Boswell? 'If he had not been a great fool he would not have been a great +writer ... he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb,' and so forth, in +which the shallowness of the analysis of Boswell's character matches the +puerile rudeness of the terms. Here again, is a sentence about +Montesquieu. 'The English at that time,' Macaulay says of the middle of +the eighteenth century, 'considered a Frenchman who talked about +constitutional checks and fundamental laws as a prodigy not less +astonishing than the learned pig or musical infant.' And he then goes on +to describe the author of one of the most important books that ever were +written, as 'specious but shallow, studious of effect, indifferent to +truth--the lively President,' and so forth, stirring in any reader who +happens to know Montesquieu's influence, a singular amazement. We are +not concerned with the judgment upon Montesquieu, nor with the truth as +to contemporary English opinion about him, but a writer who devises an +antithesis to such a man as Montesquieu in learned pigs and musical +infants, deliberately condescends not merely to triviality or levity, +but to flat vulgarity of thought, to something of mean and ignoble +association. Though one of the most common, this is not Macaulay's only +sin in the same unfortunate direction. He too frequently resorts to +vulgar gaudiness. For example, there is in one place a certain +description of an alleged practice of Addison's. Swift had said of +Esther Johnson that 'whether from easiness in general, or from her +indifference to persons, or from her despair of mending them, or from +the same practice which she most liked in Mr. Addison, I cannot +determine; but when she saw any of the company very warm in a wrong +opinion, she was more inclined to confirm them in it than to oppose +them. It prevented noise, she said, and saved time.'[2] Let us behold +what a picture Macaulay draws on the strength of this passage. 'If his +first attempts to set a presuming dunce right were ill-received,' +Macaulay says of Addison, 'he changed his tone, "assented with civil +leer," and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and deeper into +absurdity.' To compare this transformation of the simplicity of the +original into the grotesque heat and overcharged violence of the copy, +is to see the homely maiden of a country village transformed into the +painted flaunter of the city. + +One more instance. We should be sorry to violate any sentiment of +[Greek: to semnon] about a man of Macaulay's genius, but what is a +decorous term for a description of the doctrine of Lucretius's great +poem, thrown in parenthetically, as the 'silliest and meanest system of +natural and moral philosophy!' Even disagreeable artifices of +composition may be forgiven, when they serve to vivify truth, to +quicken or to widen the moral judgment, but Macaulay's hardy and +habitual recourse to strenuous superlatives is fundamentally +unscientific and untrue. There is no more instructive example in our +literature than he, of the saying that the adjective is the enemy of the +substantive. + +[Footnote 2: Forster's _Swift_, i. 265.] + + * * * * * + +In 1837 Jeffrey saw a letter written by Macaulay to a common friend, and +stating the reasons for preferring a literary to a political life. +Jeffrey thought that his illustrious ally was wrong in the conclusion to +which he came. 'As to the tranquillity of an author's life,' he said, 'I +have no sort of faith in it. And as to fame, if an author's is now and +then more lasting, it is generally longer withheld, and except in a few +rare cases it is of a less pervading or elevating description. A great +poet or a great _original_ writer is above all other glory. But who +would give much for such a glory as Gibbon's? Besides, I believe it is +in the inward glow and pride of consciously influencing the destinies of +mankind, much more than in the sense of personal reputation, that the +delight of either poet or statesman chiefly consists.' And Gibbon had at +least the advantage of throwing himself into a religious controversy +that is destined to endure for centuries. He, moreover, was specifically +a historian, while Macaulay has been prized less as a historian proper +than as a master of literary art. Now a man of letters, in an age of +battle and transition like our own, fades into an ever-deepening +distance, unless he has while he writes that touching and impressive +quality,--the presentiment of the eve; a feeling of the difficulties and +interests that will engage and distract mankind on the morrow. Nor can +it be enough for enduring fame in any age merely to throw a golden halo +round the secularity of the hour, or to make glorious the narrowest +limitations of the passing day. If we think what a changed sense is +already given to criticism, what a different conception now presides +over history, how many problems on which Macaulay was silent are now the +familiar puzzles of even superficial readers, we cannot help feeling +that the eminent man whose life we are all about to read, is the hero of +a past which is already remote, and that he did little to make men +better fitted to face a present of which, close as it was to him, he +seems hardly to have dreamed. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRITICAL MISCELLANIES, VOLUME I (OF +3)*** + + +******* This file should be named 20164.txt or 20164.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/1/6/20164 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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