fm, 
 
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Cornell University Library 
 PR 4963.A79 1907 
 
 Marginal notes by Lord Macaulay, 
 
 3 1924 013 519 685 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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MARGINAL NOTES BY 
 LORD MACAULAY 
 
MARGINAL NOTES 
 
 BY 
 
 LORD MACAULAY 
 
 SELECTED AND ARRANGED BY 
 
 SIR GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN 
 
 AUTHOE OF 
 "THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF LORD MAOAULAT" 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 
 LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 
 
 1907 
 
 3) 
 
\^(oQ) X 
 
 V 
 
 OOPTMSH* IflOr BT 
 LONGMANS, GBEEN, AND CO. 
 
 ALL KIGEIS BXSEIinS 
 
MARGINAL NOTES BY 
 LORD MACAULAY 
 
 Macatjlay's library contained many books, of no 
 great intrinsic value in themselves, which are read- 
 able, from the first page to the last, for the sake of his 
 manuscript notes inscribed in immense profusion 
 down their margins. He was contented, when the 
 humour took him, to amuse his solitary hours with 
 such productions as Percival Stockdale's memoirs, 
 and the six volumes of Miss Anna Seward's Letters. 
 His running commentary on those trivial and preten- 
 tious authors was as the breaking of a butterfly be- 
 neath the impact of a cheerful steam-hammer. "In- 
 genious," (so Miss Seward wrote to a correspondent,) 
 "is your parallel between the elder and the modem 
 Erasmus." "The modern Erasmus," said Macaulay, 
 "is Darwin. That anybody should have thought of 
 making a parallel between him and the elder Erasmus 
 is odd indeed. They had nothing but the name in 
 common. One might as well make a parallel between 
 Caesar and Sir Caesar Hawkins." "The chief amuse- 
 ment," wrote Miss Seward, "that the Inferno gives 
 
6 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 me is from tracing the plagiarisms which have been 
 made from it by more interesting and pleasing bards 
 than Dante; since there is little for the heart, or even ' 
 for the curiosity as to story, in this poem. Then the 
 plan is most clumsily arranged: — Virgil, and the three 
 talking quadrupeds, as guides! An odd association!" 
 "What can she mean?" said Macaulay. "She must 
 allude to the panther, the lion, and the she-wolf in the 
 First Canto. But they are not guides; and they do 
 not talk." , 
 
 The lady, who claimed rank as a Lyric poet, had 
 published what she called a paraphrase of Horace's 
 Odes without knowing a word of Horace's native 
 language. Her version, which is inconceivably bad, 
 was based upon an EngKsh translation by the Rev- 
 erend Philip Francis; and from that time forward she 
 always considered herself entitled to lay down the 
 law on classical questions. "Pleasant Mrs. Piozzi," 
 she said, "is somewhat ignorant upon poetic subjects. 
 She speaks of ode-writing as an inferior species of 
 composition, which can place no man on a level with 
 the epic, the dramatic, or the didactic bard. Now 
 the rank of the lyric poet, as settled by the ancients, 
 succeeds immediately to that of the epic. She ought 
 to know that the Latins place their lyric Horace next 
 
LORD MACAULAY 7 
 
 to their epic Virgil, much more on account of his odes 
 than of his satires." "What Latins?" asked Ma- 
 caulay. "There is not a word of the sort in any 
 Latin writer." Macaulay, who was a purist in spell- 
 ing, took exception to Miss Seward calling a speech a 
 "Phillipic," and seldom speaking of a pretty girl 
 except as a "Syren;" and he was always greatly puz- 
 zled by the references in her letters to her collection 
 of "centennial" sonnets. At length he caught her 
 meaning. "Now I understand. She calls her son- 
 nets 'centennial' because there were a hundred of 
 them. Was ever such pedantry found in company 
 with such ignorance?" 
 
 It was worse with French than with Greek and 
 Latin; and worst of all with Enghsh. "My convic- 
 tion was perfect," (Miss Seward wrote to a lady friend,) 
 "that you would all four be delightful acquisitions to 
 each other. I might travel far ere I should find so 
 interesting a parte quarr^." "What language is that ?" 
 said Macaulay. He was soon to know. A year later 
 Miss Seward received from her friend what she praises 
 as a graceful and sparkling epistle. "It speaks of a 
 plan in agitation to visit me, accompanied by Helen 
 Williams, the poetic; Albinia Mathias, the musical; 
 and Miss Maylin, the beauteous." "So this," ex- 
 
8 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 claimed Macaulay, "is the parU quarrS. She did not 
 know that a partie carHe means a party of two gentle- 
 men and two ladies." Macaulay was at some pains 
 to correct Miss Seward's grammar. "Come, my dear 
 Lady, let you and I attend these gentlemen in the 
 study!" That was Miss Seward's report of Doc- 
 tor Johnson's words. "Nay:" observed Macaulay; 
 "Johnson said me, I will be sworn." Miss Seward 
 characterised some sonnets, in the style of Petrarch, 
 as "Avignon little gems." "Little Avignon gems, if 
 you please. Miss Seward!" is the comment in the mar- 
 gin. "So the briUiant Sophia," remarked the lady, 
 "has commenced Babylonian!" "That is to say," 
 explained Macaulay, "she has taken a house in town." 
 "Taste," said Miss Seward on one occasion, "is ex- 
 tremely various. Where good sense, metaphoric con- 
 sistency, or the rules of grammar are accused of hav- 
 ing suflEered violation, the cause may not be tried at 
 her arbitrary tribunal." "A most striking instance," 
 wrote Macaulay, "of metaphoric inconsistency. You 
 may accuse a bad writer of violating good sense and 
 grammar; but who can accuse good sense and gram- 
 mar of having suffered violation?" * 
 
 'Macaulay was never implacable when a woman was concerned, — even 
 % woman who could describe a country-house as an "Edenic villa in a 
 bloomy garden." Miss Seward, after her father's death, gave a friend an 
 
LORD MACAULAY 9 
 
 That will serve for a specimen of the manner in 
 which Macaulay diverted himself with the follies of a 
 silly author. A good book was very differently han- 
 dled. It is a rare privilege to journey in his track 
 through the higher regions of literature. His favour- 
 ite volumes are illustrated and enlivened by innumer- 
 able entries, of which none are prolix, pointless, or 
 dull; while interest and admiration are expressed by 
 lines drawn down the sides of the text, — and even by 
 double lines, for whole pages together, in the case 
 of Shakspeare and Aristophanes, Demosthenes and 
 Plato, Paul Louis Courier and Jonathan Swift. His 
 standard of excellence was always at the same level, 
 his mind always on the alert, and his sense of enjoy- 
 ment always keen. Frederic Myers, himself a fine 
 scholar and an eager student, once said to me: "He 
 seems habitually to have read as I read only during 
 my first half -hour with a great author." Macaulay 
 began with the frontispiece, if the book possessed one. 
 "Said to be very like, and certainly full of the charac- 
 ter. Energy, acuteness, tyranny, and audacity in 
 
 account of his long illness. "The pleasure he took in my attendance and 
 caresses survived till within the last three months. His reply to my in- 
 quiries after his health was always 'Pretty well, my darling;' and, — when 
 I gave him his food and his wine, — 'That's my darling!' with a smile of 
 comfort and delight inexpressibly dear to my heart. I often used to ask 
 bim if he loved me. His almost constant answer was, 'Do I love my own 
 eyes?' " "Why," (asked Macaulay,) "could she not always write thus?" 
 
lo THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 every line of the face." Those words are written 
 above the portrait of Richard Bentley, in Bishop 
 Monk's biography of that famous writer. The blank 
 spaces are frequently covered with little spurts of criti- 
 cism, and outbursts of warm appreciation. "This is 
 a very good Idyll. Indeed it is more pleasing to me 
 than almost any other pastoral poem in any language. 
 It was my favourite at College. There is a rich pro- 
 fusion of rustic imagery about it which I find nowhere 
 else. It opens a scene of rural plenty and comfort 
 which quite fills the imagination, — flowers, fruits, 
 leaves, fountains, soft goatskins, old wine, singing 
 birds, joyous friendly companions. The whole has 
 an air of reality which is more interesting than the 
 conventional world which Virgil has placed in Arca- 
 dia." So Macaulay characterises the Seventh Idyll of 
 Theocritus. Of Ben Jonson's Alchemist he writes: 
 "It is very happily managed indeed to make Subtle 
 use so many terms of alchemy, and talk with such 
 fanatical warmth about his 'great art,' even to his 
 accomplice. As Hume says, roguery and enthusiasm 
 run into each other. I admire this play very much. 
 The plot would have been more agreeable, and more 
 rational, if Surly had married the widow whose honour 
 he has preserved. Lovewit is as contemptible as 
 
LORD MACAULAY ii 
 
 Subtle himself. The whole of the trick about the 
 Queen of Fairy is improbable in the highest degree. 
 But, after all, the play is as good as any in our lan- 
 guage out of Shakspeare." Ben Jonson, in the pref- 
 ace to his [Catiline, appeals from "the reader in or- 
 dinary" to "the reader extraordinary" against the 
 charge of having borrowed too largely and undis- 
 guisedly from Cicero's speeches. "I," said Macaulay, 
 "am a reader in ordinary, and I cannot defend the 
 introduction of the First CatUinarian oration, at full 
 length, into a play. CatiHne is a very middling play. 
 The characters are certainly discriminated, but with 
 no deUcacy. Jonson makes Cethegus a mere vulgar 
 ruflEian. He qioite forgets that all the conspira- 
 tors were gentlemen, noblemen, pohticians, probably 
 scholars. He has seized only the coarsest pecuhar- 
 ities of character. As to the conduct of the piece, 
 nothing can be worse than the long debates and narra- 
 tives which make up half of it." 
 
 Of Pope's Rape of the" Lock, Macaulay says: 
 "Admirable indeed! The fight towards the begin- 
 ning of the last book is very extravagant and foolish. 
 It is the blemish of a poem which, but for this blemish, 
 would be as near perfection in its own class as any 
 work in the world." He thus remarks on the Imita- 
 
12 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 tions of Horace's Satires: "Horace had perhaps less 
 wit than Pope, but far more humour, far more variety, 
 more sentiment, more thought. But that to which 
 Horace chiefly owes his reputation, is his perfect good 
 sense and self-knowledge, in which he exceeded all 
 men. He never has attempted anything for which 
 his powers did not quaUfy him. There is not one 
 disgraceful failure in aU his poems. The case with 
 Pope was widely different. He wrote a moral didac- 
 tic poem. He wrote odes. He tried his hand at 
 comedy. He meditated an epic. AU these were fail- 
 ures. Horace never would have fallen into such mis- 
 takes." That view is enforced in Macaulay's remarks 
 on Pope's paraphrase of the Ninth Ode in the Fourth 
 Book of Horace. 
 
 "Sages and Chiefs long since had birth 
 Ere Caesar was, or Newton named. 
 
 These raised new Empires o'er the Earth; 
 And those new Heavens and Systems framed. 
 
 Vain was the Chief's, the Sage's, pride! 
 
 They had no Poet, and they died. 
 
 In vain they schemed, in vain they bled! 
 
 They had no poet, and are dead." 
 
 "I do not see," writes Macaulay, "the smallest merit 
 in this affected verse, which I suppose was meant 
 to be very striking and sublime. Besides, what in 
 
LORD MACAULAY 13 
 
 Horace, like everything in his works, is excellent 
 sense, is false and ridiculous in the imitation. It is 
 true that the warriors who lived before Agamemnon 
 are almost utterly forgotten, and excite no interest, 
 while Agamemnon is remembered as Homer's hero. 
 But it is not true that the Chiefs who preceded Caesar, 
 or the Sages who preceded Newton, are forgotten. 
 Nor is it true that either Caesar or Newton owes his 
 fame to poetry. Every verse, in which either of them 
 is mentioned, might be burned without any diminu- 
 tion of their fame." Horace, again, made a fine and 
 apt allusion to the old song, which Curius and Camil- 
 lus used to sing as boys in the streets of Rome, telling 
 each other that, if they did right, they would all be kings 
 together. This was how Pope translated the passage: 
 
 "Yet every child another song will sing; 
 'Virtue, brave boys! 'Tis Virtue makes a king.' 
 * * * * 
 
 And say, to which shall our applause belong, 
 \ This new Court jargon, or the good old song? 
 The modem language of corrupted Peers, 
 Or what was spoke at Cressy and Poitiers?" 
 
 Bishop Warburton, with the partiaUty of an editor, 
 thought Pope's version superior to the Latin original. 
 "Why so?" asked Macaulay. "Horace refers to a 
 real old Roman song which boys sang at play. Pope's 
 
14 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 imitation is only an imaginary allusion. Who ever 
 heard an Enghsh boy sing that Virtue made kings? 
 And what song to that effect existed at the time of 
 Cressy and Poitiers?" 
 
 Macaulay was fond of inditing observations on 
 human character, and on the conduct of life, which 
 have about them a perceptible flavour of autobiogra- 
 phy. Swift had pronounced that discretion in states- 
 men was "usually attended with a strong desire for 
 money, with a want of pubhc spirit and principle, 
 with servile flattery and submission, and with a per- 
 petual wrong judgment, when the owners came into 
 power and high place, how to dispose of favour 
 and preferment." "I doubt this," said Macaulay. 
 "Swift wrote with all the spleen of a man of genius, 
 who had been outstripped by dunces in the career of 
 preferment. Neither my own experience, nor his- 
 tory, leads me to think that the discretion which so 
 often raises men of mediocrity to high posts is neces- 
 sarily, or generally, connected with avarice, want of 
 principle, or servility. Take as instances Cardinal 
 Fleury, Pelham, the late Lord Liverpool, and the 
 present Lord Spencer."' In the "Essay on the Fates 
 
 1 These words were written in July 1835, not many months after the 
 time when Lord Althorp, — in the course of nature, and to the infinite dis- 
 
LORD MACAULAY 15 
 
 of Clergymen," Swift related the disappointments of 
 his own career imder the transparent mask of the 
 brilliant and unsuccessful Eugenio. "People," wrote 
 Macaulay, "speak of the world as they find it. I 
 have been more fortunate or prudent than Swift or 
 Eugenio." What business, (he then asked, in lan- 
 guage of unusual, and quite unproducible, emphasis,) 
 had such men in such a profession ? 
 
 Edward Gibbon, on an early page of his thrice 
 admirable "Vindication," explains his reason for con- 
 descending to notice the attacks upon his History. 
 "Fame," he says, "is the motive, it is the reward, of 
 our labours: nor can I easily comprehend how it is 
 possible that we should remain cold and indifferent 
 with regard to the attempts which are made to de- 
 prive us of the most valuable object of our possessions, 
 or, at least, of our hopes." "But what," wrote Ma- 
 caulay, "if you are confident that these attempts will 
 be vain, and that your book will fix its own place?" 
 Conyers Middleton, in the later editions of his "Free 
 Enquiry into the Miraculous Powers of the Christian 
 Church," remonstrated somewhat querulously with a 
 clerical opponent who had called him an apostate 
 
 tress of the Whigs, — ^was removed from the leadership of the Commont, 
 and translated, as Earl Spencer, into the House of Lords. 
 
1 6 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 priest. "I do not at all admire this letter," said Ma- 
 caulay. "Indeed Middleton should have counted the 
 cost before he took his part. He never appears to so 
 little advantage as when he complains in this way of 
 the calumnies and invectives of the orthodox. The 
 only language for a philosopher in his circumstances 
 is that of the first great type of all reformers, Prome- 
 theus: * or, in Milton's words: 
 
 'To suflFer, as to do, 
 Our strength is equal, nor the law unjust 
 That so ordains. This was at first resolved, 
 If we were wise, against so great a foe contending.' " 
 
 Macaulay invariably marked his books in pencil, 
 except four plays of Shakspeare, — Romeo and JuHet, 
 King Lear, Midsummer Night's Dream, and Hamlet, 
 — ^where ever)i:hing is written with ink, in a neat and 
 most legible hand. He used the twelve volume edition 
 of 1778, illustrated with copious notes by Doctor 
 Johnson, Bishop Warburton, Steevens, and other com- 
 mentators, whose emendations and criticisms are 
 treated by Macaulay with discriminating, but uncom- 
 promising, vigour. On the first page of his Romeo 
 and Juliet he writes: "An admirable opening scene, 
 
 • "I knew beforehand the penalty which awaited me; for it is in nature 
 that an enemy should suffer at an enemy's hands." — Prometheus Vinctus : 
 lines 1040-3. 
 
LORD MACAULAY 17 
 
 whatever the French critics may say. It at once puts 
 us thoroughly in possession of the state of the two 
 families. We have an infinitely more vivid notion of 
 their feud from the conduct of their servants than we 
 should have obtained from a long story told by old 
 Capulet to his confidant, A la Frangaise. It is bad 
 joking, but in character. The puns are not Shak- 
 speare's, but Sampson's and Gregory's." Opposite 
 the passage about the biting of thumbs is written: 
 "This is not what would be commonly called fine; 
 but I would give any six plays of Rowe for it." Of 
 the scene in the street which begins with Mercutio 
 asking, 
 
 "Where the devil should this Romeo be? 
 Came he not home to-night?" — 
 
 Macaulay says, "This the free conversation of Uvely, 
 high-spirited young gentlemen;" and, with referrence 
 to the quarrel at the commencement of the Third Act, 
 he writes: "Mercutio, here, is beyond the reach of 
 anybody but Shakspeare."' When, on his way to the 
 
 * The poet, (wrote Steevens,) appeared to have taken the suggestion of 
 Mercutio from a single sentence in the old stoiy of the Painter's Palace of 
 Pleasure. "Another gentleman called Mercutio, which was a couitlilce 
 gentleman, very well beloved of all men, and, hy reason of his pleasant 
 and courteous behaviour, in all companies well entertained." "Shak- 
 speare," said Macaulay, "was just the man to expand a hint like this. 
 How much he has made of Thersites, who is nothing in Homer!" 
 
1 8 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 ball-room, Romeo tells Benvolio that his mind misgives 
 
 "Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars, 
 Shall bitterly begin his fearful date 
 With this night's revels," 
 
 Macaulay writes: "This as fine an instance of pre- 
 sentiment as I remember in poetry. It throws a sad- 
 ness over all the gaiety that follows, and prepares us 
 for the catastrophe." At the close of the Third Act 
 he says: "Very fine is the way in which JuUet at once 
 withdraws her whole confidence from the nurse with- 
 out disclosing her feelings;" and when, in the ensu- 
 ing scene, the poor child commits her hfe to the hands 
 of Friar Lawrence, Macaulay remarks on the wonder- 
 ful genius with which the poet delineates a timid, deli- 
 cate, girl of fourteen excited and exalted to an act of 
 desperate courage. The respect which he paid to 
 Shakspeare, and to Shakspeare's creations, was very 
 seldom extended to Shakspeare's commei;itators. 
 
 "Now, afore God, this reverend holy friar 
 All our whole city is much bound to him." 
 
 "Warburton," writes Macaulay, "proposed to read 
 'hymn' for 'him'; — the most ludicrous emendation 
 ever suggested." 
 
 Of the actor's favourite passage, about Queen 
 
LORD MACAULAY 19 
 
 Mab and her doings, Macaulay says: "This speech, 
 — full of matter, of thought, of fancy, as it is, — seems 
 to me, like much of this play, to be not in Shakspeare's 
 very best manner. It is stuck on like one of Horace's 
 'purple patches.' It does not seem to spring natu- 
 rally out of the conversation. This is a fault which, 
 in his finest works, Shakspeare never commits." "I 
 think Romeo and Juliet," (such was Macaulay's ulti- 
 mate conclusion,) "is the play in which Shakspeare's 
 best and worst modes of writing are exhibited in the 
 closest juxtaposition. If we knew the precise order 
 in which his pieces followed each other, I am per- 
 suaded that we should find that this play was the turn- 
 ing point in the history of that most wonderful and 
 sublime genius. The comic part is almost uniformly 
 good. His comic manner attained perfection earlier 
 than his tragic manner. There are passages in Romeo 
 and Juliet equal to anything in Lear or Othello; but 
 there are also very many passages as poor as an)rthing 
 in Love's Labour Lost. Arimanes and Oromasdes 
 were fighting for him. At last Oromasdes had him all 
 to himself." I well remember how my uncle, in one 
 of his very few conversations which I can clearly re- 
 call, bade me observe the contrast between Juliet's 
 reception of what she supposes to be Romeo's death, 
 
20 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 and Romeo's reception of the report of the death of 
 Juliet. He quoted to me, in something of a disparag- 
 ing and ironical tone, the lines: 
 
 "Hath Rotneo slain himself? Say thou but 'I,' 
 And that bare vowel 'I' shall poison more 
 Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice. 
 I am not I, if there be such an I; 
 Or those eyes shut, that make thee answer * I.' " 
 
 Opposite these five lines I now find written: "If this 
 had been in Gibber, Gibber would never have heard 
 the last of it." And then he recited, with energy and 
 solemn feeling, the First Scene of the Fifth Act. I 
 can still hear his voice as he pronounced the words: 
 
 "Is it even so? Then I defy you, stars! — 
 Thou know'st my lodging. Get me ink and paper, 
 And hire post-horses. I will hence to-night." 
 
 At the point where Balthazar brings the evil tidings 
 to Mantua, Macaulay has written: "Here begins a 
 noble series of scenes. I know nothing grander than 
 the way in which Romeo hears the, news. It moves 
 me even more than Lear's Agonies." Of the closing 
 passage in the vault of death he says: "The desperate 
 calmness of Romeo is sublime beyond expression; and 
 the manner in which he is softened into tenderness 
 
LORD MACAULAY 21 
 
 when he sees the body of Juliet is perhaps the most 
 affecting touch in all poetry."* 
 
 "I believe," said Macaulay, "that Hamlet was the 
 only play on which Shakspeare really bestowed much 
 care and attention." Macaulay himself devoted to 
 the examination of that drama as .much time and 
 thought as if it had been his intention to edit it. It 
 would be superfluous to re-produce the eloquent ex- 
 pressions of unreserved admiration with which the 
 margin of almost every page is thickly studded. They 
 were written for Macaulay's own satisfaction, and the 
 world can appreciate Hamlet without their aid; but it 
 may not be amiss to present a few specimens of his 
 literary and ethical comments. He regarded the 
 dramatic style of the opening dialogue as "beyond 
 praise;" and he applied the unwonted epithet of 
 "sweet writing" to the passage describing the peace 
 and calm in .which the natural world is steeped when 
 
 1 "O, my lovel my wife! 
 Death, that bath sucked the honey of thy bieolh. 
 Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty. 
 Thou art not conquered. Beauty's ensign yet 
 Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks; 
 And death's pale flag is not advanced there." 
 
 "His comic scenes," (so Johnson wrote in his review of Komeo and JuHet,) 
 "are happily wrought; but his pathetic strains are always polluted by some 
 unexpected depravation." "Surely not always!" said Macaulay. "The 
 first scenes of the fifth act are as near perfection as any ever written." 
 
22 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 "that season comes 
 Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated." 
 
 In the middle of the same scene came something 
 which pleased him less. "The long story," he said, 
 "about Fortinbras, and all that follows from it, seems 
 to me to be a clumsy addition to the plot." Of the 
 royal audience in the room of state, which immedi- 
 ately follows, Macaulay writes: "The silence of Ham- 
 let during the earlier part of this scene is very fine, but 
 not equal to the silence of Prometheus and Cassandra 
 in the Prometheus and Agamemnon of .^Eschylus." 
 In the Third scene of the same Act, "There is," he 
 says, "perhaps a little too much extension given to 
 the talk of Laertes and Ophelia, though many lines 
 have great merit. But Shakspeare meant to exhibit 
 them in the free intercourse of perfect confidence and 
 affection, in order that the subsequent distress of 
 Laertes might be more fully comprehended. This is 
 a common practice with him, and explains many pas- 
 sages which seem, at first sight, incongruous addi- 
 tions to his best plays." With regard to the strolling 
 player's declamation about Pyrrhus, Macaulay holds 
 that "the only thing deserving of much admiration in 
 the speech is the manner in which it is raised above 
 the ordinary diction which surrounds it. It is poetry 
 
LORD MACAULAY 23 
 
 within poetry, — a play within a play. It was therefore 
 proper to make its language bear the same relation to 
 the language, in which Hamlet and Horatio talk, which 
 the language of Hamlet and Horatio bears to the com- 
 mon style of conversation among gentlemen. This is 
 a sufficient defence of the style, which is undoubtedly 
 in itself far too turgid for dramatic, or even for lyric, 
 composition." 
 
 The opening of the Fourth Scene in the First Act, 
 on the platform of the Castle at Elsinore, suggests these 
 reflections to Macaulay. "Nothing can be finer than 
 this specimen of Hamlet's peculiar character. His 
 intellect is out of all proportion to his will or his pas- 
 sions. Under the most exciting circumstances, while 
 expecting every moment to see the ghost of his father 
 rise before him, he goes on discussing questions of 
 morals, manners, or politics, as if he were in the schools 
 of Wittenberg." Of the address to Horatio, in the 
 Third Act,— 
 
 "Dost thou hear? 
 Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, 
 And could of men distingmsh, her election 
 Hath sealed thee for herself," — 
 
 Macaulay writes: "An exquisitely beautiful scene. 
 It always moved me more than any other in the play. 
 
24 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 There is something very striking in the way in which 
 Hamlet, — a man of a gentle nature, quick in specula- 
 tion, morbidly sluggish in action, unfit to struggle with 
 the real evils of hfe, and finding himself plunged into 
 the midst of them, — delights to repose on the strong 
 mind of a man who had been severely tried, and who 
 had learned stoicism from experience. There is won- 
 derful truth in this." The marginal note about the 
 conversation between Hamlet and the courtier, in the 
 Fifth Act, runs as follows: "This is a most admirable 
 scene. The fooUng of Osric is nothing; but it is most 
 striking to see how completely Hamlet forgets his 
 father, his mistress, the terrible duty imposed upon 
 him, the imminent danger which he has to run, as 
 soon as a subject of observation comes before him; — 
 as soon as a good butt is offered to his wit. The 
 ghost of his father finds him speculating on the causes 
 of the decline of the fame of Denmark. Immediately 
 before he puts his uncle's conscience to the decisive 
 test, he reads a lecture on the principles of dramatic 
 composition and representation. And now, just after 
 Ophelia's burial, he is analysing and describing the 
 fashionable follies of the age, with as much apparent 
 ease of heart as if he had never known sorrow." 
 
 Macaulay had much to say about the editors of 
 
LORD MACAULAY 25 
 
 Hamlet. Two lines of the most famous soliloquy in 
 the world were printed thus in his copy of Shakspeare: 
 
 "Who would fardels bear, 
 To groan and sweat under a weary life?" 
 
 To this passage Doctor Johnson had appended the 
 following note. "All the old copies have to 'grunt 
 and sweat.' It is undoubtedly the true reading, but 
 can scarcely be borne by modem ears." "We want 
 Shakspeare," said Macaulay, "not your fine modem 
 English." Warburton had amended the words of 
 Hamlet, "For if the sun breeds maggots in a dead dog, 
 being a good kissing carrion," — by substituting "god" 
 for "good." "This," said Doctor Johnson, "is a 
 noble emendation which almost sets the critic above 
 the author." "It is," wrote Macaulay, "a noble 
 emendation. Had Warburton often hit off such cor- 
 rections, he would be entitled to the first place among 
 critics." When Hamlet declined to kill his uncle in 
 the act of pra3dng, on the ground that he would go 
 straight to heaven. Doctor Johnson pronounced that 
 the speech in which "not content with taking blood 
 for blood, he contrived damnation for his enemy, was 
 too horrible to be read or uttered." "Johnson," said 
 Macaulay, "does not understand the character. 
 Hamlet is irresolute; and he makes the first excuse 
 
26 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 that suggests itself for not striking. If he had met the 
 King drunk, he would have refrained from avenging 
 himself lest he should kill both soul and body." 
 
 Macaulay gave to King Lear as close a study as to 
 Hamlet, and he was moved by it even more profoundly. 
 Before the Third Scene of the First Act he writes: 
 "Here begins the finest of all human performances." 
 He judged Shakspeare's Lear by what to him was a 
 very high standard of comparison, — the masterpieces 
 of that Attic Tragedy which, for several years together, 
 he used to read through, from end to end, yearly. In 
 the Second Scene of the Second Act, opposite Corn- 
 wall's description of the fellow who has been praised 
 for bluntness, he writes: "Excellent! It is worth 
 while to compare these moral speeches of Shakspeare 
 with those which are so much admired in Euripides. 
 The superiority of Shakspeare's observations is im- 
 mense. But the dramatic art with which they are 
 introduced, — always in the right place, — always from 
 the right person, — is still more admirable." When 
 Lear despatches Gloucester on a second message to 
 Regan and her husband, — 
 
 "The King would speak with Cornwall. The dear 
 father 
 
LORD MACAULAY 27 
 
 Would with his daughter speak; commands her 
 
 service. 
 Are they informed of this?"— 
 
 Macaulay pronounces the passage superior to any 
 speech of passion in the Greek Drama. He observes 
 how the nonsense of the poor fool about the eels and 
 the buttered hay, "coming in between the bursts of the 
 King's agony, heightens the eflfect beyond description." 
 And of the appeal to Goneril in the same scene, — 
 
 "Now I pr'ythee, daughter, do not make me mad! 
 I will not trouble thee, my child; farewell!" 
 
 he says, "This last struggle between rage and tender- 
 ness is, I think, unequalled in poetry." When the 
 outraged father breaks forth into the terrible apos- 
 trophe commencing 
 
 "O, let not women's weapons, water-drops. 
 Stain my man's cheeks!" 
 
 Macaulay writes, "Where is there anything Hke this 
 in the world?" 
 
 If my uncle had been composing literary criticism 
 for the Edinburgh Review he would have been more 
 frugal of his superlatives. But these spontaneous and 
 unstudied expressions of admiration will have a valua 
 of their own for those who love great poetry, as indi- 
 
28 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 eating the awe and emotion produced upon an im- 
 pressionable mind, of exceptional power, by the loftiest 
 work of mankind's finest genius. There is ample 
 proof in every act and scene of King Lear that Macau- 
 lay's judgment was not asleep, and that his praise was 
 guided by discrimination. With regard to the open- 
 ing of the play he writes: "Idolising Shakspeare as I 
 do, I cannot but feel that the whole scene is very un- 
 natural. He took it, to be sure, from an old story. 
 What miracles his genius has brought out from mate- 
 rials so unpromising!" Of the quarrel between Kent 
 apd Cornwall's steward he says: "It is rather a fault 
 in the play, to my thinking, that Kent should behave 
 so very insolently in this scene. A man of his rank and 
 sense should have had more self-command and dig- 
 nity even in his anger. One can hardly blame Corn- 
 wall for putting him in the stocks." "Albany," said 
 Macaulay, "is very shghtly touched; yet, with an art 
 peculiar to Shakspeare, quite enough to give us a 
 very good idea of the man; — amiable, and not deficient 
 in spirit, but borne down by the violent temper of a 
 wife who has brought him an immense dowry. Corn- 
 wall is, like Albany, slightly touched, but with wonder- 
 ful skill. No poet ever made such strong likenesses 
 with so few strokes." In the Fourth Scene of the 
 
LORD MACAULAY 29 
 
 Third Act, where Lear insists that his two followers 
 should seek cover from the storm, Macaulay writes: 
 "The softening of Lear's nature and manners, under 
 the discipline of severe sorrow, is most happily marked 
 in several places;" and, where Edgar issues from the 
 hovel, attention is called to the wonderful contrast 
 between the feigned madman, and the King whose 
 brain is beginning to turn in earnest. Doctor John- 
 son, at the end of the play, made a solemn protest 
 against the unpleasing character of a story, "in which 
 the wicked prosper, and the virtuous miscarry." Ma- 
 caulay did not concur in the verdict. "There is 
 nothing," he wrote, "like this last scene in the world. 
 Johnson talks nonsense. Tom to pieces as Lear's 
 heart had been, was he to live happily ever after, as 
 the story-books say? Wonderful as the whole play 
 is, this last passage is the triumph of Shakspeare's 
 genius. Every character is perfectly supported." 
 
 Macaulay reckoned Othello the best play extant 
 in any language; but it shows none of his pencil marks. 
 It may well be that he had ceased reading it, because 
 he knew the whole of it by heart.' The specimens 
 
 'Macaulay did not affect to underrate the extraordinary strength of 
 his memory. Bishop Monk wrote of Dr. Bentley: "In the faculty of 
 memory he has himself candidly declared that he was not particularly 
 gifted." "I do not think much of this declaration," said Macaulay. "It 
 
30 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 which have already been given of his annotations suf- 
 ficiently illustrate the spirit in which he always read 
 his poet. Everywhere may be found the same rever- 
 ential delight in Shakspeare, and the same disrespect- 
 ful attitude towards Shakspeare's commentators. 
 When, in Antony and Cleopatra, a cloud is hkened to 
 a bear or a lion, a castle or a mountain, Steevens con- 
 sidered himself bound to make this observation. 
 "Perhaps Shakspeare received the thought from the 
 Second Book of Holland's translation of PHny's Nat- 
 ural History: 'In one place there appeareth the re- 
 semblance of a waine or a chariot; in another of 
 a beare.'" "Solemn nonsense!" said Macaulay. 
 "Had Shakspeare no eyes to see the sky with?" 
 When the poet, in the Prologue to Henry the Fifth, 
 asks: 
 
 "Can this cock-pit hold 
 The vasty field of France ? Or may we cram 
 Within this wooden O the very casques 
 That did affright the air at Agincourt?" 
 
 shows no candour, for people are rather vain than ashamed of the badness 
 of their memories. I have known people, who had excellent memories; 
 use the same sort of language. They reason thus, The less memory, the 
 more invention. Congreve makes Mirabell say something of this sort." 
 The passage which was in Macaulay's mind may be found in the Way of 
 the World, Act 1., Scene 6. 
 
 " Witwoud. No, but prithee excuse me. My memory is such a memory. 
 
 Mirabell. Have a care of such apologies, Witwoud; for I never knew 
 a fool but he afifected to complain, either of the spleen or his memory." 
 
LORD MACAULAY 31 
 
 Johnson remarks that to call a circle an O was a very 
 mean metaphor. "Surely," wrote Macaulay, "if O 
 were really the usual name of a circle there would be 
 nothing mean in it any more than in the Delta of the 
 Nile." The talk at the Boar's Head Tavern between 
 Prince Hal, and Francis the drawer, according to 
 Doctor Johnson, "may entertain on the stage, but 
 affords not much delight to the reader." "It is an 
 excellent scene, by your leave. Doctor:" is Macaulay's 
 rejoinder. Warburton pronounced the first line of 
 the Fool's prophecy, in the Third Act of King Lear, 
 to be corrupt. "Or ere I go," he says, "is not Eng- 
 lish." "Warburton," (wrote Macaulay,) "had for- 
 gotten his Psalter, 'Or ever your pots be made hot 
 with thorns.' And in the Book of Daniel, 'Or ever 
 they came at the bottom of the den.' " Where Lear 
 prays that "cadent tears" may fret his daughter's 
 cheeks, Steevens appends the following note. "Co- 
 deni tears ; that is, falling tears. Doctor Warburton 
 would read candent." "More fool Warburton;" said 
 Macaulay. 
 
 In the Second Act of Midsummer Night's Dream 
 Oberon bids Puck remember — 
 
 "Since once I sat upon a promontory. 
 And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, 
 
32 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath 
 That the rude sea grew civU at her song; 
 And certain stars shot madly from their spheres 
 To hear the sea-maid's musick." 
 
 Warburton maintained that Mary Queen of Scots was 
 the mermaid, "to denote her beauty, and intemperate 
 lust;" that the dolphin was Mary's husband the 
 Dauphin of France; that the rude sea was "Scotland, 
 encircled by the ocean;" and that the stars, which 
 shot from their spheres, were those great Enghsh 
 noblemen who had espoused Mary's quarrel. "I do 
 not," wrote Macaulay, "believe that Shakspeare 
 meant any allusion to Mary Queen of Scots. If he 
 did, he was a very bad courtier; for he has alluded 
 only to her charms, and suppressed aU allusion to her 
 vices. Who ever heard of the Hcentiousness of mer- 
 maids? And, as to the dolphin, the Dauphin had 
 been king of France, and had been dead, many years 
 before any of the stars shot from their spheres in con- 
 sequence of Mary's fascinations. I allow that War- 
 burton's theory is ingenious." Later on in Midsum- 
 mer Night's Dream, in an ironical mood, he directed 
 the attention of the commentators to an historical 
 blunder on the part of the poet. When Hippolyta re- 
 lates how she had once been out hunting with Hercules 
 
LORD MACAULAY 33 
 
 and Cadmus, Macaulay says: "Cadmus had been 
 turned into a snake some generations before Hercules 
 was bom. This may be added to the list of Shak- 
 speare's anachronisms." In the Fifth Act of the play 
 he made some amends to Warburton. 
 
 "Now the hungry hon roars, 
 And the wolf beholds the moon." 
 
 "As 'tis the design of these Unes," wrote Warburton, 
 "to characterise the animals, as they present them- 
 selves at the hour of midnight; and as the wolf is not 
 justly characterised by sa)dng that he beholds the 
 moon, which other beasts of prey, then awake, do; 
 and as the sounds, which these animals make at that 
 season, seem also intended to be represented, I make 
 no question but the poet wrote: 
 
 'And the wolf behowls the moon.' " 
 
 "In my opinion," said Macaulay, "this is one of War- 
 burton's very best corrections." The passage in the 
 same play, where Theseus describes how even "great 
 clerks" sometimes break down over their orations in 
 the presence of their sovereign, and how their confu- 
 sion affords a more flattering proof of loyalty than 
 
 "the rattling tongue 
 Of saucy and audacious eloquence," 
 
34 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 pleased Macaulay as much as it pleases every true 
 Shaksperean. "This," he wrote, "is Shakspeare's 
 manly sense, and knowledge of the world, introduced 
 with perfect dramatic propriety. How different from 
 Euripides's lectures on such subjects!" The verses in 
 the Fourth Act, 
 
 "Be, as thou wast wont to be. 
 See, as thou wast wont to see. 
 Dian's bud o'er Cupid's flower 
 Hath such force and blessed power," 
 
 he calls "beautiful and easy beyond expression." 
 And on the last page he writes: "A glorious play. 
 The love-scenes Fletcher might perhaps have written. 
 The fairy scenes no man but one since the world began 
 could have written." 
 
 Shakspeare's Roman dramas had an especial at- 
 traction for Macaulay. Never was a great scholar so 
 little of a pedant. He knew that what Shakspeare 
 could teach him about human nature was worth a 
 great deal more than he himself could have taught 
 Shakspeare about Roman history and Roman institu- 
 tions. He was well aware how very scanty a stock of 
 erudition will quaUfy a transcendent genius to pro- 
 duce admirable literary effects; and he infinitely pre- 
 ferred Shakspeare's Romans, and even his Greeks, to 
 
LORD MACAULAY 35 
 
 the classical heroes of Ben Jonson, and Addison, and 
 Racine, and Comeille, and Voltaire. Of the conver- 
 sation in the street between Brutus and Cassius, in 
 the First Act of Juhus Csesar, Macaulay says: "These 
 two or three pages are worth the whole French drama 
 ten times over;" and, in his little essay at the end of 
 the play, he writes, "The last scenes are huddled up, 
 and affect me less than Plutarch's narrative. But the 
 working up of Brutus by Cassius, the meeting of the 
 conspirators, the stirring of the mob by Antony, and, 
 (above all,) the dispute and reconciliation of the two 
 generals, are things far beyond the reach of any other 
 poet that ever lived." He frequently notices the art 
 with which the dramatist turned to account the most 
 slender materials. When Julius Caesar expressed his 
 preference for having those about him 
 
 "That are fat; 
 Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights;" 
 
 "Plutarch's hint," (said Macaulay,) "is admirably 
 expanded here." When Steevens reminds the reader 
 that Cleopatra's story of the salt fish on Antony's 
 hook was taken from North's Plutarch, "Yes," says 
 Macaulay, "but how happily introduced, and with 
 what skill and spirit worked up by Shakspeare!" He 
 
36 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 keenly appreciated the unerring literary instinct which 
 detected, and exhibited in enduring colours, the true 
 character of young Octavius Caesar. "It is most re- • 
 markable," he writes, "that Shakspeare's portrait of 
 Augustus should be so correct. Through all the flat- 
 tery of his eulogists, it is easy to see that he was exactly 
 the crafty, timid, cold-blooded man that he is repre- 
 sented here." 
 
 Coriolanus was a favourite play with Macaulay; 
 and all the more because it related to a period of his- 
 tory about which, in his view, Shakspeare knew just 
 as much, and as Httle, as his learned commentators. 
 With reference to the passage where the Tribune 
 Sicinius spoke of the Senate as "our assembly," War- 
 burton wrote: "He should have said your assembly. 
 For till the Lex Attinia, — the author of which is sup- 
 posed by Sigonius, (De Vetere Italiae Jure,) to have 
 been contemporary with Quintus Metellus Macedoni- 
 cus, — the Tribunes had not the privilege of entering 
 the Senate, but had seats placed near the door on the 
 outside of the house." "Absurd!" said Macaulay. 
 "Who knows anything about the usages of the Senate, 
 and the privileges of the Tribunes, in Coriolanus's 
 time?" Warburton took still greater exception to the 
 speech of Coriolanus as reported by the Third Citizen. 
 
LORD MACAULAY 37 
 
 " 'I would be Consul,' (says he,) 'Aged custom, 
 But by your voices, will not so permit me. 
 Your voices therefore! " 
 
 "This," observed the Bishop, "was a strange inatten- 
 tion. The Romans at this time had but lately changed 
 the Regal for the Consular Government; for Corio- 
 lanus was banished the eighteenth year after the ex- 
 pulsion of the kings." "Well!" wrote Macaulay; 
 "but there had certainly been elective magistracies in 
 Rome before the expulsion of the kings, and there 
 might have been canvassing. Shakspeare cared so 
 little about historical accuracy that an editor who 
 notices expressions, which really are not grossly inac- 
 curate, is unpardonable." In the same scene Brutus 
 says of Coriolanus 
 
 "Censorinus, darling of the people, 
 And nobly named so, twice being Censor, 
 Was his great ancestor." 
 
 Warburton justly remarks that the first Censor was 
 created half a century after the days of Coriolanus. 
 Shakspeare, (he explains,) had misread his author- 
 ities, and had confounded the ancestors of Coriolanus 
 with his posterity. "This undoubtedly was a mis- 
 take," said Macaulay; "and what does it matter?" 
 On the last page he writes: "A noble play. As usual, 
 
38 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 Shakspeare had thumbed his translation of Plutarch 
 to rags," 
 
 "With regard to Cicero as an author," (so Nie- 
 buhr wrote,) "I cannot say anything better than was 
 said by Quintilian, — that the pleasure which a man 
 takes in the works of Cicero is the standard by which 
 we may estimate his own intellectual culture." It 
 was a test which Macaulay was qualified to pass; for 
 he read Cicero's works twice during those three years 
 at Calcutta when he was reading Plautus four times, 
 and Demosthenes thrice. It was all a labour of love. 
 Macaulay read Greek and Latin for their own sake, 
 and not in order to use them for purposes of literary 
 copy. He has left us eight pages, as fascinating as 
 any that he ever penned, about the Phalaris contro- 
 versy in the Essay on Sir William Temple; and six 
 pages, on the same topic, in the short article on Bishop 
 Atterbury. These twelve or fifteen paragraphs, and 
 the prefaces to the Lays of Ancient Rome, are the sole 
 visible fruit of the thousands of hours which he spent 
 over the classical writers during the last thirty years 
 of his life. His manuscript notes extend through the 
 long range of Greek authors from Hesiod to Athenaeus, 
 and of Latin authors from Cato the Censor, — through 
 
LORD MACAULAY 39 
 
 Livy, and Sallust, and Tacitus, and Aulus Gellius, 
 and Suetonius, — down to the very latest Augustan 
 histories. They testify to his vivid and comprehen- 
 sive knowledge of the facts, dates, and personages of 
 the ancient world. That knowledge was acquired, 
 not at second hand from the dissertations of other 
 scholars, but by strenuous and enraptured study of 
 the original books themselves. Macaulay had always 
 in his head the materials, and the thoughts, for an 
 Essay on Greek and Roman history which might have 
 ranked with the Essay on Clive, and with the article 
 in the Encyclopaedia Britannica on William Pitt. But 
 it was not so to be; and a Life of Pericles, or a Life of 
 Cicero, are among the unwritten biographies which 
 were buried with him under the pavement of Poet's 
 Comer in the transept of the Abbey. 
 
 Cicero's philosophical writings were among the 
 productions of their own class which Macaulay read 
 with the greatest profit to himself. He was favour- 
 ably disposed towards Cicero's viewa on the crucial 
 problem of the foundations of morahty; for he was 
 an Academician so far as he was anything. Those 
 two parallel lines in pencil, which were his highest 
 form of compliment, are scored down page after page 
 of the De Finibus, the Academic Questions, and the 
 
40 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 Tusculan Disputations. "Exquisitely written, grace- 
 ful, calm, luminous, and full of interest; but the Epi- 
 curean theory of morals is hardly deserving of refu- 
 tation." That sentence relates to the first book of 
 the De Finibus; and for Cicero's exposition of the 
 Stoic theory, as apart from the theory itself, he has 
 nothing but commendation. It is "Trashy sophistry, 
 admirably explained;" or "Beautifully lucid, though 
 the system is excessively absurd." "Fine anointing 
 for broken bones!" he writes, when we are told that 
 the sage, whose child has died, grieves for the possi- 
 bilities of happiness which his child has missed, and 
 not for his own loss. "Does not a man feel grief," 
 (Macaulay asked,) "when he sends his favourite son 
 to India?" He placed Cicero's treatises on oratory 
 altogether above anything that ever had been writ- 
 ten in that department of literature. He greatly ad- 
 mired the theological disputations, and the discussions 
 on omens, prodigies, and oracles. He pronounced the 
 first book of the De Natura Deorum "Equal to any- 
 thing that Cicero ever did;" and he esteemed the De 
 Divinatione, (and how could he do otherwise?) as 
 among the most curiously interesting of human com- 
 positions. Cicero's argument against the credibility 
 of visions and prophecies, in the Second Book of the 
 
LORD MACAULAY 41 
 
 De Divinatione, is double-lined in Macaulay's copy. 
 
 That eloquent display of scepticism, on the part of 
 
 the most famous and learned professional soothsayer 
 
 that ever lived, was in his mind when he read Ben 
 
 Jonson's Catiline. 
 
 "Lentulus. The Augurs all are constant I am meant. 
 Catiline. They had lost their science else." 
 
 "The dialogue here," wrote Macaulay, "is good and 
 natural. But it is strange that so excellent a scholar 
 as Jonson should represent the Augurs as giving any 
 encouragement to Lentulus's dreams. The Augurs 
 were the first nobles of Rome. In this generation 
 Pompey, Hortensius, Cicero, and other men of the 
 same class, belonged to the college." 
 
 Macaulay had a special liking for the De Officiis, ' 
 arid was in general agreement with Cicero's doctrine 
 of duty; although he protested vehemently whenever 
 the author thought fit to draw his examples of the just 
 man made perfect from Scipio Nasica and Lucius 
 Opimius, — the pair of worthies who murdered the 
 brothers Gracchi.* My uncle regarded the De Officiis 
 
 * That was after Cicero had becotae a partisan of the aiistocraqr. As 
 late in the day as his oration on the Agrarian Law he spoke of Tiberius 
 and Caius Gracchus as "two most illustrious men of genius, who were 
 among the very best friends of the Roman people." "I believe,'' wrote 
 Macaulay, "that when Cicero was adopted into the class of nobles, his 
 tastes and opinions underwent a change, like those of many other poli- 
 ticians." 
 
42 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 as a young man's model for Latin prose composition. 
 When I first went to Cambridge he solemnly enjoined 
 me to read it during mathematical lecture, and thereby 
 involved me in a scrape which I had long reason to 
 remember. Even for Cicero's poetry Macaulay had 
 enough respect to distinguish carefully between the 
 bad, and the less bad. Whatever that praise may be 
 worth, he characterises the translations from ^schylus 
 and Sophocles in the Second Book of the Tusculan 
 Disputations as "Cicero's best." He enjoyed and 
 valued Cicero's Letters to a degree that he found dif- 
 ficult to express. The document which he most ad- 
 mired, in the whole collection of the correspondence, 
 was Caesar's answer to Cicero's message of gratitude 
 for the humanity which the conqueror had displayed 
 towards those political adversaries who had fallen into 
 his power at the surrender of Corfinium. It con- 
 tained, (so Macaulay used to say,) the finest sentence 
 ever written. "Meum factum probari abs te, trium- 
 pho, gaudeo. Neque illud me movet quod it, qui me 
 dimissi sunt, discessisse dicuntur ut mihi rursus helium 
 inferrent ; nihil enim malo quam et me mei similem 
 esse, et illos sui." * Opposite that sentence appear the 
 words: "Noble feUow!" 
 
 *"I triumph and rejoice that my action should have obtained your 
 
LORD MACAULAY 43 
 
 Macaulay's pencilled observations upon each suc- 
 cessive speech of Cicero form a continuous history of 
 the great orator's public career, and a far from un- 
 sympathetic analysis of his mobile, and singularly 
 interesting, character. The early efforts of the young 
 advocate were mainly directed to the defence and 
 rescue of quiet citizens from the rapacity and cruelty 
 of Sulla's partisans. Of the oration on behalf of 
 Quintius, delivered when Cicero was only six and 
 twenty, Macaulay writes: "I like this speech better 
 than any of the Greek speeches in mere private cases. 
 It would in any age produce a prodigious effect on any 
 tribunal. It would seem that the confusion of the 
 times, and the speedy ways of getting rich which the 
 proscriptions had opened to cupidity, had destroyed 
 all feeling of honour and honesty in many minds." 
 He considered the oration for Roscius of Ameria, 
 with its exposure of the villanies perpetrated by Sulla's 
 freedman, the infamous Chrysogonus, as more credit- 
 able to Cicero's heart than any that he ever made. 
 "I cannot," he said, "help thinking that he strength- 
 ened the language after Sulla's resignation. But, 
 
 approval. Nor am I disturbed when I hear it said that those, whom I have 
 sent of alive and free, will again bear arms against me ; for there is noth- 
 ing which I so much covet as that I should be like myself and they like 
 themselves.'' 
 
44 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 after making full allowance for re-touching, it is im- 
 possible to deny that he performed a bold service to 
 humanity and to his country. Si sic omnia!" With 
 regard to the first, and shorter, oration against VerreSy 
 Macaulay remarks: "There is great force about this 
 speech. Cicero had not attained that perfect mastery 
 of the whole art of rhetoric which he possessed at a 
 later period. But on the other hand there is a free- 
 dom, a boldness, a zeal for popular rights, a scorn of 
 the vicious and insolent gang whom he afterwards 
 called the boni, which makes these early speeches more 
 pleasing than the later. Flattery, — and, after his 
 exile, cowardice, — destroyed all that was generous 
 and elevated in his mind." Of the Third Section of 
 the Second Oration he says: "A very powerful speech 
 indeed. It makes my blood boil, less against Verres 
 than against thp detestable system of govermaent] 
 which Cicero was so desirous to uphold, though he; 
 himself was not an accomplice in the crimes whidi 
 were inseparable from it." 
 
 It was Macaulay's fixed belief that the debate on 
 the punishment of the CatiUnarian conspirators was a 
 fateful crisis in Cicero's history. Caesar had almost 
 persuaded the Senate to refrain from sending Roman 
 citizens to a violent and illegal death, when Cicero the 
 
LORD MACAULAY 45 
 
 Consul, — ^in an evil hour for his fame, and still more 
 for his happiness, — raised his voice against the policy 
 of clemency and self-control. "Fine declamation:" 
 said Macaulay. "But it is no answer to Caesar's ad- 
 mirable speech. This was the turning point of Cicero's 
 life. He was a new man, and a popular man. Till 
 his Consulship he had always leaned against the Op- 
 timates. He had defended Sulla's victims. He had 
 brought Verres to justice in spite of strong aristocrat- 
 ical protection. He had always spoken handsomely 
 of the Gracchi, and other heroes of the democratic 
 party. He appears, when he became Consul, to have 
 been very much liked by the multitude, and much 
 distrusted by the nobles. But the peculiar circum- 
 stances in which he now was placed rendered it his 
 duty to take the side of the aristocracy on some im- 
 portant questions. He supported them on the Agra- 
 rian Law. He also took vigorous measures against 
 Catiline. They began to coax and flatter him. He 
 went further. He was hurried by adulation, vanity, 
 and vindictive feeling into a highly unconstitutional 
 act in favour of the nobles. He followed, with more 
 excuse indeed, the odious example set by Scipio Nasica 
 and by Opimius. From that time he was an instru- 
 ment in the hands of the grandees, whom he hated 
 
46 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 and despised: and who fully returned his hatred, and 
 despised, not his talents indeed, but his character." 
 Cicero, and his new political allies, had very little in 
 common. At a serious crisis in Roman history he 
 told Atticus that the leaders of the aristocratic party 
 cared nothing about the ruin of the Republic as long 
 as their fish-ponds were safe, and beUeved themselves 
 to have attained celestial honours if they had great 
 mullets which came up to be fed by hand. "These," 
 said Macaulay, "are your boni !" and on a later occa- 
 sion my uncle remarks, in caustic language, on the 
 circumstance that the most creditable act of Cicero's 
 oflBlcial career was his effort to protect the miserable 
 provincials of Cyprus from the cruelty and rapacity 
 of no less a Senator than Marcus Brutus. Cicero's 
 opinion of the nobles went steadily down as his expe- 
 rience of them grew more intimate. The time came 
 when he confided to Atticus that they were altogether 
 insupportable, "I cannot endure," he said, "to be 
 the object of their sneering talk. They certainly do 
 not merit their name of boni" "You have found it 
 out at last!" wrote Macaulay.* 
 
 That was the precise point at which Cicero's use- 
 fulness as a statesman and a patriot declined, and his 
 
 * Cicero to Atticus; Book II. Letter i; VI. i; IX. 2. 
 
LORD MACAULAY 47 
 
 misfortunes began. His nerve and courage were im- 
 paired, and he surrendered his political independence 
 to bolder and stronger men. "Caesar and Pompey," 
 said Macaulay, "liked Cicero personally, it should 
 seem; but they saw that he was inclined to disturb 
 their coahtion. Accordingly they let Clodius loose 
 upon him; connived at his being banished; fairly 
 frightened him; and when they now saw that he had 
 been rendered thoroughly tractable, they recalled him 
 home. The struggle in poor Cicero's mind between 
 fear and self-importance is one which all his great 
 powers are quite unable to disguise." Under cruel 
 pressure, from both Pompey and Caesar, Cicero was 
 reluctantly induced to appear in court on behalf of 
 Gabinius — a man, (so he complained to Atticus,) 
 whose presence in the Roman Senate was a personal 
 disgrace to all his colleagues.' "After having stooped 
 to defend Gabinius," wrote Macaulay, "he might well 
 bear to sit with him." "My motive," (Cicero once 
 said in public,) "for defending Gabinius was the de- 
 sire to make up the quarrel between us; for I never 
 repent of behaving as if my enmities were transient, 
 and my friendships eternal." "A fine sentence," 
 (said Macaulay,) "quoted very happily by Fox. But 
 
 ' Cicero to Atticus, X. 8. 
 
48 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 poor Cicero was ready to sink into the earth with 
 shame, though he tried to put a good face on the mat- 
 ter." "Meanwhile," said Macaulay, "it is easy to 
 perceive that the vice of egotism was now rapidly 
 growing on Cicero. He had attained the highest 
 point of power which he ever reached, and his head 
 was undoubtedly a little turned by his elevation. 
 Afterwards this vile habit tainted his speaking and 
 writing, so as to make much of his finest rhetoric 
 almost disgusting. He gave himself airs, on all occa- 
 sions, which, as Plutarch tells us, made him generally 
 odious, and were the real cause of his exile." My 
 uncle describes the speech for the poet Archias, with 
 its exquisitely worded encomium on the delights of 
 literature, as a magnificent composition, blemished as 
 usual by insufferable egotism. "What unhappy mad- 
 ness," he says, "led Cicero always Jo talk of himself?" 
 And of the attack of Piso in the Senate he writes, "A 
 splendid invective certainly, but he was really mad 
 with vanity." "The defence of Sextius is very inter- 
 esting. Indeed those parts of the speech, which seem 
 most out of place in a forensic address, are historically 
 the most valuable. Cicero doubtless knew that his client 
 was safe, and that the judges were all Optimates; and 
 so he ventured to luxuriate in narratives and disquisi- 
 
LORD MACAULAY 49 
 
 tions not very closely connected with the subject." 
 The tribute of adulation which, in the course of that 
 speech, the orator paid to the degenerate aristocracy 
 of the later Republic angered his reader as he seldom 
 had been angered by any passage in literature. When 
 Cicero asked what sort of men were these Optitnates, 
 who so well deserved their honourable title, Macatday 
 replied that they were "the murderers of the Gracchi, 
 the hirelings of Jugurtha, the butchers of Sulla, the 
 plunderers of the provinces, the buyers and sellers of 
 magistracies, — such men as Opimius, and Scaurus, 
 Domitius Ahenobarbus and Caius Verres."' 
 
 In his comments on the Epistles to Atticus Ma- 
 caulay's S)mapathy with their author is more conspicu- 
 ous than in his comments on the Speeches. When 
 Cicero confesses, at the end of a letter the contents of 
 which otherwise do him little credit, that the loss of 
 his reader Sositheus, whom he calls a charming lad, 
 had distressed him more than the death of a slave 
 
 1 While Macaiilay was severe upon these andent Romans, he did not 
 spare himself whenever he had been betrayed into an error of literary 
 judgment. He makes these two successive entries with reference to the 
 oration for Marcus Marcellus. 
 
 "A splendid and highly finished declamation; but, taken in connection 
 irith Cicero's letters written at the time, it does little honour to his charac- 
 ttr. September 27, 1835." 
 
 "It does him neither honour nor dishonour. For it is not bis. Match 
 17, 1856." 
 
50 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 might be thought to justify, Macaulay writes: "A 
 kind-hearted man, with all his faults." "When the 
 unhappy ex-Consul complained that he had been 
 rudely expelled from on board the ship of state, and 
 relegated against his will, and before his time, to the 
 haven of Uterary leisure; "Poor fellow!" said Ma- 
 caulay. "He had not the firmness to do what he 
 felt to be necessary for his peace." And when the 
 darkness gathered round Cicero, and a sense of im- 
 pending danger filled the air; — when Atticus was ab- 
 sent from Rome, and amidst a crowd of flatterers and 
 clients he had not a single friend with whom he could 
 exchange a word of confidence; and when he found 
 comfort nowhere except in the privacy of family life, 
 with his darling TuUiola, and his "sweet Uttle Cicero"; 
 — the narrative of his sorrows and anxieties seemed 
 to Macaulay "As exquisitely beautiful a passage as 
 ever was written." The melancholy letters sent home 
 to Atticus from lUyria and Macedonia during the 
 period of Cicero's banishment suggested the following 
 reflections to the English statesman at Calcutta. 
 "Poor fellow! He makes a pitiful figure. But it is 
 impossible not to feel for him. Since I left England 
 I have not despised Cicero and Ovid for their lamen- 
 tations in exile as much as I did." That was a curi- 
 
LORD MACAULAY 51 
 
 ous illustration of character in the case of a brilliant 
 and successful man of four and thirty, who had gone 
 to India for a very few years in order to secure a com- 
 petence, and fill a most important and dignified oflS.ce. 
 When Cicero tells his friend how, on his return from 
 exile, he was welcomed home by the entire population 
 of the city, "That day," said Macaulay, "was indeed 
 worth a life to a man so sensitive, and so passionately 
 fond of glory." In the Twelfth Letter of the Ninth 
 Book is the passage commencing, "Cneius Pompeius 
 is blockaded by a Roman army. He is enclosed, and 
 held captive, within a wall of circumvallation built by 
 Roman hands. And I Uve, and the city stands! And 
 the Praetors deliver their judgments, and the ^Ediles 
 prepare to hold the pubUc games, and wealthy men 
 calmly reckon up the value of their investments!" 
 "Very fine writing, certainly;" Macaulay says. "I 
 hke some of the letters in this book as much as any of 
 Cicero's compositions." ' 
 
 After Caesar's death Cicero emerged from a period 
 of retirement and irksome silence; and the third and 
 last phase of his oratory commenced. Macaulay 
 styles the Second Philippic "a most wonderful dis- 
 play of rhetorical talent, worthy of all its fame." 
 
 1 Cicero to Atticus, I. 12; II. 7; I. 18; III. 13; IV. i. 
 
52 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 With regard to the Third Philippic he writes: "The 
 close of this speech is very fine. His later and earlier 
 speeches have a freedom and an air of sincerity about 
 them which, in the interval between his Consulship 
 and Caesar's death, I do not find. During that inter- 
 val he was mixed up with the aristocratical party, and 
 yet afraid of the Triumvirate. When all the great 
 party-leaders were dead, he found himself at the head 
 of the state, and spoke with a boldness and energy 
 which he had not shown since his youthful days." 
 Macaulay did full justice to Cicero's vigour and elo- 
 quence at this grave poHtical conjuncture; but he con- 
 demned his course of action, and deeply disapproved 
 his motives. "His whole conduct," he writes, "was 
 as bad as possible. His love of peace, the best part 
 of his public character, was overcome by personal 
 animosity and wounded vanity." At the end of the 
 last Philippic Macaulay compares him with Demos- 
 thenes, whom he ranks above him as an orator. "As 
 a man," he writes, "I think of Cicero much as I al- 
 ways did, except that I am more disgusted with his 
 conduct after Caesar's death. I really think that he 
 met with little more than his deserts from the Trium- 
 virs. It is quite certain, as Livy says, that he suffered 
 nothing more than he would have inflicted. There is 
 
LORD MACAULAY 53 
 
 an impatience of peaceful counsels, a shrinking from 
 all plans of conciliation, a thirst for blood, in all the 
 Philippics, which, (whatever he may say,) can be at- 
 tributed only to personal hatred, and is particularly 
 odious in a timid man." 
 
 That TuUy met with his deserts at the hands of 
 the Triumvirs is a hard sa)dng; but his actions and 
 his utterances, during the last years of his life, were 
 repugnant, and sometimes even shocking, to Macaulay. 
 Caesar had shown himself a kind and considerate 
 friend to Cicero, and Cicero had professed gratitude 
 and esteem for Caesar; but, after Caesar's murder in 
 the Senate-house, Cicero exulted over his fate in 
 words as sharp and cruel as the dagger of Cassius. 
 Antony, again, had urged Cicero to lay aside ancient 
 enmities, and secure for himself a tranquil and hon- 
 ourable old age as the crown of his splendid career. 
 "I only wish," answered Cicero, "that you had ad- 
 dressed me face to face, instead of by writing; for you 
 might then have perceived not by my words alone, but 
 by my coimtenance, my eyes, and my forehead, the 
 aflEection that I bear to you. For, — as I always loved 
 you for the attentions you have shown me, and the 
 services you have done me, — so, in these later days, 
 your public conduct has been such that I hold no one 
 
54 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 dearer than you." That was how Cicero wrote to 
 Antony; but, before a year was over, he thus wrote 
 about Antony to one of Caesar's assassins: "Would to 
 heaven you had invited me to that noble feast which 
 you made on the Ides of March! No remnants, most 
 assuredly, would have been left behind. * * * I have 
 a grudge even against so good a man as yourself when 
 I reflect that it was through your intervention that this 
 pest of humanity is still among the living." "Infa- 
 mous!" wrote Macaulay. "Compare this with his 
 language about Antony before their quarrel." 
 
 None the less did Macaulay regard Cicero as 
 among the foremost men of aU the ages. I remember 
 pa}dng him a visit in his rose-garden at Campden HDl, 
 — as pleasant a comer of the earth as any that Marcus 
 TuUius himself possessed at Tusculum, or Antium, or 
 Arpinum. I was in a hurry to communicate to him 
 my discovery of the magnificent verses in which Ju- 
 venal bids observe how the world's two mightiest 
 orators were brought by their genius and eloquence 
 to a violent and tragic death. I can almost repeat 
 Macaulay's exact words. "It is," he said, "very fine 
 satire; but there is another aspect of the question. A 
 man cannot expect to win great fame without running 
 great risks and perils. In spite of all that Juvenal 
 
LORD MACAULAY 55 
 
 says, Cicero and Demosthenes would never have con- 
 sented to renounce their place in history in order to 
 be sure of djong quietly in their beds. " * 
 
 Macaulay read Plato in a ponderous folio, sixteen 
 inches long by ten broad, and weighing within half an 
 ounce of twelve pounds; — ^which was very near the 
 weight of a regulation musket at the period when he 
 himself was Secretary of War. Published by Mar- 
 silius Ficinus at Frankfort in the year 1602, it con- 
 tained nearly fourteen hundred closely printed pages 
 of antique Greek type, bristling with those contrac- 
 tions which are a terror to the luxurious modern 
 scholar. The Latin translation, arranged in parallel 
 columns by the side of the original text, presents an 
 aspect of positively revolting dullness. The blank 
 spaces of this grim volume are lit up by Macaulay's 
 comments, sparkling with vitality and fire, but some- 
 times softened and awed into a strain of touching 
 beauty. The Timaeus, the Parmenides, and others of 
 the more abstruse dialogues, appear to have interested 
 
 'Macaulay read Latin authors in the Bipontine edition of 1781, and 
 Greek authors in Dindorf's collection. His books contained nothing 
 except the text; for, on whatever language he was engaged, whether ancient 
 or modem, he had a profound aversion to explanatory notes. I cannot 
 tell how much use he had made of a Lexicon. At that period of his life 
 when he read with me the Plutus of Aristophanes, the Midias of Demos- 
 thenes and the Gorgias of Plato, he knew the meaning of every word. 
 
56 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 him little; for, greatly as he loved Plato, it was not 
 chiefly for the sake of Plato's metaphysics. But at 
 any pitched battle between Socrates, and a tough op- 
 ponent, Macaulay assisted in a spirit of joyous exhil- 
 aration which people seldom bring to the perusal of a 
 philosophical treatise. The Euthydemus, in particu- 
 lar, is enHvened throughout by Ms exclamations of 
 amusement and delight. "It seems incredible that 
 these absurdities of Dionysodorus and Euthydemus 
 should have been mistaken for wisdom, even by the 
 weakest of mankind. I can hardly help thinking that 
 Plato has overcharged the portrait. But the humour 
 of the dialogue is admirable." "Glorious irony!" 
 "Incomparably ludicrous!" "No writer, not even 
 Cervantes, was so great a master of this solemn ridi- 
 cule as Plato." "There is hardly any comedy, in any 
 language, more diverting than this dialogue. It is 
 not only richly homourous. The characters are most 
 happily sustained and discriminated. The contrast 
 between the youthful petulance of Ctesippus, and the 
 sly, sarcastic mock humility of Socrates is admirable." 
 There are personal touches among the annotations on 
 the Euthydemus. To Plato's rather grudging de- 
 scription of the man of the world, who is likewise a 
 man of the study, and who divides his time between 
 
LORD MACAULAY S7 
 
 philosophy and politics, Macaulay appends the re- 
 mark: "Dulcissima hercle, eademque nobiHssima 
 vita." And, below the last Hne of the dialogue, there 
 occurs the following entry: "Calcutta, May 1835. 
 Yesterday the London News of the 2nd of March 
 arrived by steamer from Bombay. Peel beaten in 
 
 two divisions. Suave mari magno " 
 
 Macaulay read the Republic with the eyes of a 
 Whig and an Englishman; but, whatever he might 
 think of Plato's political and social ideals, he had a 
 deep and abiding 'admiration for Plato himself. 
 "Plato," Macaulay wrote, "has been censured with 
 great justice for his doctrine about the community of 
 women and the exposure of children. But nobody, 
 as far as I remember, has done justice to him on one 
 important point. No ancient politician appears to 
 have thought so highly of the capacity of women, and 
 to have been inclined to make them so important. He 
 was to blame for wishing to divest them of all their 
 characteristic attractions; but, in return, he proposed 
 to admit them to a full participation in the power and 
 honour enjoyed by men." When the philosopher 
 enjoins the inhabitants of his Utopia to treat a great 
 poet with profound reverence, but to get him outside 
 their community at all hazards, — to anoint his head 
 
58 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 with precious unguents, and crown him with garlands, 
 ■and then pass him on as soon as possible to some 
 neighbouring city, — Macaulay remarks: "You may 
 see that Plato was passionately fond of poetry, even 
 when arguing against it." Where Plato recommends 
 a broader patriotism as a corrective to the fierce and 
 narrow municipal sentiment of the small Greek states, 
 "this passage," he writes, "does Plato great honour. 
 Philhellenism is a step towards philanthropy. There 
 is an enlargement of mind in this work which I do not 
 remember to have found in any earlier composition, 
 and in very few ancient works, either earlier or later." 
 There was, (said Macaulay,) something far beyond 
 the ordinary political philosophy of Greece in that 
 fine definition of the object for which civil government 
 should exist, — "the relief and respite of mankind 
 from misfortune." Of the striking conception of ab- 
 stract justice, in the Second Book of the Republic, he 
 writes: "This is indeed a noble dream. Pity that it 
 should come through the gate of ivory!" The Eighth 
 Book, in the judgment of the great critic, was above 
 and beyond all detailed criticism. "I remember," he 
 says, "nothing in Greek philosophy superior to this 
 in profundity, ingenuity, and eloquence." 
 
 Macaulay rated the Protagoras exceedingly high 
 
LORD MACAULAY 59 
 
 as a work of literary art. "A very lively picture," he 
 wrote, "of Athenian manners. There is scarcely any- 
 where so interesting a view of the interior of a Greek 
 house in the most interesting age of Greece."* "Cal- 
 lias seems to have been a munificent and courteous 
 patron of learning. What with sophists, what with 
 pretty women, and what with sycophants, he came to 
 the end of a noble fortune." "Alcibiades is very well 
 represented here. It is plain that he wants only to 
 get up a row among the sophists." "Protagofas 
 seems to deserve the character he gives himself. Noth- 
 ing can be more courteous and generous than his 
 language. Socrates shows abundance of talent and 
 acuteness in this dialogue; but the more I read of his 
 conversation, the less I wonder at the fierce hatred 
 he provoked. He evidently had an ill-natured pleas- 
 ure in making men, — particularly men famed for 
 wisdom and eloquence, — look like fools; and it would 
 not be difficult, even for a person of far inferior powers 
 to his, to draw the ablest speculator into contradic- 
 tions upon questions as subtle as those which he loved 
 to investigate. Protagoras seems to have been a man 
 of great eloquence and accomplishments, though no 
 
 1 When the porter slammed the door in the face of Socrates, -with the 
 observation that his master was busy, "A more sincere, and a less civil, 
 answer," said Macaulay, "than our 'Not at home.'" 
 
6o THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 match for Socrates at Socrates's own weapons. It is 
 plain from many passages that this dialogue, if it be 
 not altogether a fiction, took place about thirty years 
 before the death of Socrates. Pericles seems to have 
 been still living. Alcibiades was hardly arrived at 
 manhood. I should think, from one or two expres- 
 sions, that the Peloponnesian war had not yet begun. 
 I can hardly suppose this, and the other dialogues in 
 which Socrates is introduced, to be purely fictitious. 
 Some such conversation took place, I imagine. Soc- 
 rates had often related in Plato's hearing what had 
 passed; and this most beautiful drama, for such it is, 
 was formed out of those materials." 
 
 At the commencement of the Gorgias is written: 
 "This was my favourite dialogue at College. I do 
 not know whether I shall like it as well now. May 
 I, 1837." Macaulay followed the cut-and-thrust of 
 the controversy with brisk attention. " Polus is much 
 in the right. Socrates abused scandalously the ad- 
 vantages which his wonderful talents, and his com- 
 mand of temper, gave him." "You have made a 
 blunder, and Socrates will have you in an instant." 
 "Hem! Retiarium astutum!" "There you are in the 
 Sophist's net. I think that, if I had been in the place 
 of Polus, Socrates would hardly have had so easy a 
 
LORD MACAULAY 6i 
 
 job of it." When Callicles, the unscrupulous and 
 dexterous votary of politics and pleasure, took up the 
 foil, the exchanges came quick and sharp. "What a 
 command of his temper the old fellow had, and what 
 terrible, though delicate, ridicule! A bitter fellow 
 too, with all his suavity." "This is not pure morality; 
 but there is a good deal of weight in what Callicles 
 says. He is wrong in not perceiving that the real 
 happiness, not only of the weak many, but of the able 
 few, is promoted by virtue. The character of Callicles 
 throws great light on that fine diagnostic of Thucydides 
 on the state of political morality in Greece during the 
 contest between the oligarchical and democratic prin- 
 ciples. When I read this dialogue as a lad at college, 
 I thought Callicles the most wicked wretch that ever 
 lived; and when, about the time of my leaving college, 
 I wrote a trifling piece for Knight's Magazine, in which 
 ,some Athenian characters were introduced, I made 
 this Callicles the villain of the drama.* I now see 
 that he was merely a fair specimen of the public men 
 of Athens in that age. Although his principles were 
 those of aspiring and voluptuous men in unquiet 
 times, his feelings seem to have been friendly and 
 
 * Scenes from " The Athenian Revels," January 1824. The little drama, 
 together with its sister piece, "The Fragments of a Roman Tale," may be 
 foun^ in the Miscellaneous Writings. 
 
62 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 kind." His warning to Socrates, (added Macaulay,) 
 about the perils which, in a city like Athens, beset a 
 man who neglected politics, and devoted himself ex- 
 clusively to philosophical speculation, was well meant, 
 and, as the event proved, only too well founded. 
 
 Macaulay unreservedly admired the glorious rhap- 
 sody which ends the dialogue. "This," he wrote, "is 
 one of the finest passages in Greek literature. Plato 
 is a real poet." "These doctrines of yours," (said 
 Socrates to Gorgias and CaUicles,) "have now been 
 examined and found wanting; and this doctrine alone 
 has stood the test, — that we ought to be more afraid 
 of wronging than of being wronged, and that the prime 
 business of every man is, not to seem good, but to be 
 good, in all his private and pubHc dealings." That 
 sentence was marked by Macaulay with three pencil- 
 lines of assent and admiration. "This just and noble 
 conclusion," he writes, "atones for much fallacy in 
 the reasoning by which Socrates arrived at it. , The 
 Gorgias is certainly a very fine work. It is deformed 
 by a prodigious quantity of sophistry. But the char- 
 acters are so happily supported, the conversations so 
 aftimated and natural, the close so eloquent, and the 
 doctrines inculcated, though over-strained, are so 
 lofty and pure, that it is impossible not to consider it 
 
LORD MACAULAY 63 
 
 as one of the greatest performances which have de- 
 scended to us from that wonderful generation." 
 
 When Socrates was put upon his trial, he reminded 
 the Court, in the course of his celebrated defence, how 
 he had braved the popular fury by refusing to concur 
 in the judicial murder of the Ten Generals; and how, 
 at the peril of his life, he had silently disobeyed the 
 imjust behests of the Thirty Tyrants. Macaulay 
 pronounced that portion of the speech to be as inter- 
 esting and striking a passage as he ever heard or read. 
 When Socrates expressed a serene conviction that to 
 die was gain, even if death were nothing more than an 
 imtroubled and dreamless sleep, "Milton," said Ma- 
 caulay, "thought otherwise. 
 
 'Sad cure! For who would lose 
 Though full of pain, this intellectual being; 
 These thoughts that wander through eternity?' 
 
 I once thought with Milton; but every day brings me 
 nearer and nearer to the doctrine here laid down by 
 Socrates." "And now," said the condemned crim- 
 inal to his judges, "the time has come when we must 
 part, and go our respective ways, — I to die, you to 
 live; and which of us has the happier fortune in store 
 for him is known to none, except to God." "A most 
 
64 THE MARGINAL NOTES OF 
 
 solemn and noble close!" said Macaulay. "Nothing 
 was ever written, or spoken, approaching in sober 
 sublimity to the latter part of the Apology. It is im- 
 possible to read it without feeling one's mind elevated 
 and strengthened." 
 
 Phaedo relates how Socrates, on the last morning 
 of his Kfe, amused himself by recalling his own youth- 
 ful interest in the problems of natural science. " This," 
 said Macaulay, "is what Aristophanes charged Soc- 
 rates with, and what Xenophon most stoutly denied. 
 The truth seems to be that the mind of that wonderful 
 man, as he grew older, gradually turned itself away 
 from physical speculations, and addicted itself more 
 and more to moral philosophy. Aristophanes knew 
 this probably before Xenophon was bom." Macaulay 
 thus remarks on the beautiful legend about the puri- 
 fication of souls in Acheron and Coc3^us, with which 
 Socrates concluded his final talk on earth: "AH this 
 is merely a fine poem, like Dante's. Milton has bor- 
 rowed largely from it; and, considered as an effort of 
 the imagination, it is one from which no poet need be 
 ashamed to borrow." When the master drank the 
 poison, and when ApoUodorus burst into a passion of 
 weeping, and broke down in a moment the composure 
 of the whole company of disciples, Macaulay says, 
 
LORD MACAULAY 65 
 
 "This is the passage, I dare say, which Cicero could 
 never read without tears. I never could. Phaedo 
 tells a noble and most touching story. Addison 
 meant to have written a tragedy on it. He would in- 
 fallibly have spoiled it. The reasonings of Socrates, 
 on his last day, convey no satisfaction to my mind; but 
 the example of benevolence, patience, and self-pos- 
 session, which he exhibited, is incomparable and in- 
 estimable." And again, on the last page of the Crito, 
 he writes: "There is much that may be questioned in 
 the reasoning of Socrates; but it is impossible not to 
 admire the wisdom and virtue which it indicates. 
 When we consider the moral state of Greece in his 
 time, and the revolution which he produced in men's 
 notions of good and evil, we must pronounce him one 
 of the greatest men that ever lived." 
 
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