Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924087992669 LEIPSIC EDITION OF THE LIFE AND LETTERS LORD MACAULAY BY HIS NEPHEW GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN, M.P. MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT FOR HAWICK, DISTRICT OF BURV. IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. 11. DETROIT : BELFOED BROTHERS. MI?CCCLX2fVII. A. ^^3Sy, //CORNELL^ UNIVERSITY OF THE SECOND VOLUME. CHAPTER VII. 1838-39. Death of Zachary Macaulay^Mr. Wallace and Mackintosh— Letters to Mr, Napier and Mr, Ellis— Sir Walter Scott— Lord Brougham — First mention of the History— Ma- caulay goes abroad — His way of regarding scenery— ChAlons-sur-Mame-Lyons — Marseilles— Genoa— Pisa — Florence— Macaulay refuses the Judge Advocateship- Florence to Rome— Thrasymene — St. Peter's— The New Zealander— The Vatican — The Temporal Power^-The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception — Letter to Lord Lansdowne — ^The Canadian Insurrection — Gibbon — Rome to Naples — Bulwer's novels — Impressions of Naples — Virgil's tomb — Macaulay sets out homewards — Mr Goul- bnm — Versailles i CHAPTER VIII, 183^41. Macaulay returns to London — He meets Lord Brougham — Letters to Mr. Napier and Mrs. Trevelyan — Correspondence with Mr. Gladstone — Heated state of politics — The hostility of the Peers to Lord Melbourne's Government — Macaulay^s view of the situation — Verses by Praed — ^The Bed-chamber question — Macaulay is elected for Edinburgh — Debate on the Ballot — Macaulay becomes a Cabinet Minister — The Times — Windsor Castle — Vote of Want of Confidence — The Chinese War — Irish Registra- tion ; scene in the House of Commons — Letters to Napier — Religious Difficulties in Scotland — Lord Cardigan — The Com Laws — ^The Sugar Duties — Defeat of the Minis- try, and Dissolution of Parliament — Macaulay is re-elected for Edinburgh — His love for street-ballads — The change of Government 32 CHAPTER IX. 1841—44. / Macaulay setdes in the Albany— Letters to Mr. Napier— Warren HastingSi and the Vicar of Wakefield— Leigh Hunt — Macaulay's doubts about the wisdom of publishing his Essays — Lord PalraerstPn 95? writer — The La^sof Rome — Hand^^me coud^ict of T» CONTENTS OF THE Professor Wilson — Republication of the Essays— Miss Aikin's Life of Addison— Macaulay in Opposition-*-The Copjright question — Recall of Lord Ellenborough— Macaulay as a public speaker : opinions of the Reporters' Gallery — Tour on the Loire -Letters to Mr. Napier— Payment of the Irish Roman Catholic Clergy— Barfcre 64 CHAPTER X. iS44-iS47> Letters to Mr. Napier — Macaulay modifies his design for an article on Burke and his Times, into a sketch of Lord Chatham's later years — Tour in Holland — Scene off Dordrecht — Macaulay on the Irish Church — Maynooth — ^The Ministeral crisis of December 1845 : letters to Lady Trevelyan — Letter to Mr. Macfarlan — Fall of Sir Robert Peel — Macaulay becomes Paymaster-General — His re-pelg cnon at Edinburgh — His position in the House of Commons — General election of 1847 — MacaWa^.^e- fcat at "Edinburgh 99' CHAPTER XL 1848-1849. Macaulay retires into private life — Extracts from Lord Carlisle's journal — T\t-ac?"|,<).^ conversation — His memory — His distaste for general society — His ways with children- Letters to his niece Margaret — The judicious poet — Valentines — Sight-seeing — Eastern tours — Macaulay's method of work — His diligence in collecting his materials — Glencoe — Londonderry — Macaulay's accuracy — Qpiiiions of Mr. Bagehot and Mr. Buckle — Macaulay's industry at the desk — His love for his tapk — Extracts from his diary — His attention to the details of the press — The History appears — Congratula- tions — Lord Halifax ; Lord Jeffrey ; Lord Auckland ; Miss Edgeworth — The popu- larity of the work — Extract from "Punch" — ^Macaulay's attitude in relation to his critics— The Quarterly Review — The sacrifices which Macaulay made to literature 135 CHAPTER XII. 1849-1852. Extracts from Macaulay's diary — Herodotus — ^Mr. Roebuck — ^Anticipations of failure and success — Appearance of the History — Progress of the sale — The Duke of Wellington — Lord Palmerston — Letters to Mr. Ellis — Lord Brougham .Qn-Euri^d^«==iSf acau- lay is elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University — His inaugural address — Good resolutions— Croker — Dr. Parr — The Historical Professorship at Cambridge — Byron- Tour in Ireland — Althorp — Lord Sidmouth — LordThurlow — Death of Jeffrey — Mr. - Richmond's portrait of Macaulay — Dinner at the Palace — Robert Montgomery — Death of Sir Robert Peel— The Prelude— Ventnor— Letters to Mr. Ellis— Plautus— Fra Paolo — Gibbon— The Papal Bull— Death of Henry Hallam — Porson's Letters to Archdeacon Travis — Charles Mathews — Windsor Castle — Macaulay sets up his carriage — Opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851 — Cobbett — Malvern — Letters to Mr. Ellis — ^Wilhelm Meister — The battle of Worcester — Palmerston leaves the Toreign Office — Macaulay refuses an offer of the Cabinet — Windsor Castle — King John— Scene of the Assassination Plot — Royal Academy dinner 158 CHAPTER XIII. 1852-1856. The magnetoscope, and table-tuming^Macaulay's re-election for Edinburgh, and the . general satisfaction which it occasioned— - 62 LIFE AND LETTERS OF dH. YIII. remote reference to the subjects which they are supposed to illustrate. Among the gems of his collection he counted " Plato, a favorite song," commencing with a series of questions in which it certainly is not easy ta detect traces of the literary style employed by the great dialectician : Says Plato, '* Why should man be vain. Since bounteous Heaven has made him great ? Why look with insolent disdain On those not decked with pomp or state ? " It is not too much to say that Macaulay knew the locality, and, at this period of his life, the stock in trade, of every book-stall in London. " After office hours," says his brother Charles, " his principal relaxation was rambling about with me in the back lanes of the City. It was then that he began to talk of his idea of restoringxto poetry the legends of which poetry had been robbed by history; and it was in these walks that I heard for the first time from his lips the Lays of Rome, which were not published until some time afterwards. In fact, I hekrd them in the making, I never saw the hidden mechanism of his mind so clearly as in the course of these walks. He was very fond of discussing psychological and ethical questions ; and sometimes, but more rarely, would lift the veil behind which he habitually kept his religious opinions." On the 19th of August Parliament met, to give effect to the verdict of the polling-booths. An amendment on the Address, half as long as the Address itself, the gist of which lay in a respectful representation to. Her Majesty that her present advisers did not possess the confidence of the country, was moved simultaneously in both Houses. It was carried on the first night of the debate by a majority of seventy-two in the Lords, and on the fourth night by a majority of ninety-one in the Commons. Macaulay of course voted with his colleagues ; but he did not raise his voice to deprecate a consummation which on public grotinds he could not desire to see postponed, and which as far as his private inclinations were concerned he had for some time past anticipated with unfeigned, and all but unmixed delight. London : July 27, 1841. Dear Napier, — I am truly glad that you are satisfied. I do not know what Brougham means by objecting to what I have said of the first Lord Holland. I will engage to find chapter and verse for it all. Lady Hol- land told me that she could hardly conceive where I got so correct a notion of him. I am not at all disappointed by the elections. They have, indeed, gone very nearly as I expected. Perhaps I counted on seven or eight votes more ; and even these we may get on petition. I can truly say that I have not, for many years, been so happy as I am at present. Before I went to India, I Jiad no prospect in. the event ol a change of government, except that, of 1839-41- LORD MACAULAY. 6$. living by my pen, and seeing ray sisters governesses. In India I was an exile. When I came back, I was for a time at liberty ; but I had before me the prospect of parting in a few months, probably for ever, with my dearest sister and her children. That misery was removed ; but I found myself in office, a member of a Government wretchedly weak, and strug- gling for existence. Now I am free. I am independent. I am in Par- liament, as honorably seated as man can be. My family is comfortably off. J have leisure for literature ; yet I am not reduced to the necessity of writing for money. If I had to choose a lot from all that there are in human life, I am not sure that I should prefer any to that which has fallen to me. I am sincerely and thorpughly contented. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. 64 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. IX. CHAPTER IX. 1841-44 Macaulay settles in the Albany— Letters to Mr. Napier — Warren Hastings, and the Vicar of Wakefield — Leigh Hunt — Macaulay's doubts about the wisdom of publishing his Essays — Lord Palmerston as a writer — The Lays of Rome — Handsome conduct of Professor Wilson — Re-publication of the" Essays — Miss Aikin's Life of Addison — Macaulay in Opposition — The Copyright question — Recall of Lord Ellenborough — Macaulay as a public speaker : opinions of the Reporters' Gallery — Tour on the Loire — Letters to Mr. Napier — Payment of the Irish Roman Catholic Clergy — Barfere. THE change of Government was anything but a misfortune to Macau- lay. He lost nothing but an income, which lie could well do with- ' out, and the value of which he was erelong to replace many times over by his pen ; and he gained his time, his liberty, the power of speaking what he thought, writing when he would, and living as he chose. The plan of life which he selected was one eminently suited to the bent of his tastes, and the nature of his avocations. Towards the end of the year 1840, Mr. arid Mrs. Trevelyan removed to Clapham ; and, on their departure, Macaulay broke up his establishment in Great George Street, and quar- tered himself in a commodious set of rooms on a second floor in the Albany; that luxurious cloister, whose inviolable tranquillity affords so agreeable a relief from the roar and flood of tlie Piccadilly traffic. His. chambers, every corner of which was library, were comfortably, though not very brightly furnished. The ornaments were few, but choice : — half a dozen fine Italian engravings from his favorite great masters ; a handsome French clock, provided with a singularly melodious set of chimes, the gift of his friend and publisher, Mr. Thomas Longrrian ; and the well-known bronze statuettes of Voltaire and Rousseau (neither of them heroes of his own),* which had been presented to him by Lady Holland as a remembrance of her husband. * Macaulay says in a letter to Lord Stanhope : " I have not made up my mind about John, Duke of Bedford. Hot-headed he certainly was. That is a quality which lies on the surface of a character, and about which there can be no mistake . Whether a man is cold-hearted, or not, is a much more dif&cult question. Strong emotions may be hid by a 1841-44- LORD MACAULAV. 65 The first use which Macaulay made of his freedom was in the capacity of a reviewer. Mr. Gleig, who had served with distinction during the last years of the' great French war as a regimental officer, after having been five times wounded in action, had carried his merit into the Church, and liis campaigning experiences into military literature. The author of one boolc which is good, and of several which are not amiss, he flew at too high game when he undertook to compile the Memoirs of Warren Hastings. In January, 1841, Macaulay, who was then still at the War Office, wrote to the editor of the Edinburgh Review in these terms : " I think the new Life of Hastings the worst book that I ever saw. I should be inclined to treat it mercilessly, were it not that the writer, though I never saw him, is, as an Army chaplain, in some sense placed officially under me ; and I think that there would be something like tyranny and insolence in pouring contempt on a person who has a situation from which I could, for aught I know, have him dismissed, and in which I certainly could make him very uneasy. It would be far too Crokerish a proceeding for me to strike a man who would find some difficulty in retaliating. I shall therefore speak of him much less sharply than he deserves ; unless, indeed, we should be out, which is not improbable. In that case I should, of course, be quite at liberty." Unfortunately for Mr. Gleig, the Whigs were relegated to private life in time to set Macaulay at liberty to make certain strictures ; which, in- deed, he was under an absolute obligation to make if there was any mean- ing in the motto of the Edinburgh Review.* The first two paragraphs of the Essay on Warren Hastings originally ran as follows : stoical deportment. Kind and caressing manners may conceal an unfeeling disposition. Romilly, whose sensibility was morbidly strong and who died a martyr to it, was by many thought to be incapable of affection. Rousseau, who was always soaking people's waist- coats with his tears, betrayed and slandered all his benefactors in turn, and sent his chil- dren to the Enfans Trouv^s." Macaulay's sentiments with regard to Voltaire are pretty fully expressed in his essay on Frederic the Great. In 1853 he visited Ferney- " The cabinet where Voltaire used to write looked, not towards Mont Blanc, of which he might have had a noble view, but towards a terrace and a grove of trees. Perh.ips he wished to spare his eyes. He used to complain that the snow hurt them. I was glad to have seen a place about which I had read, and dreamed, so much ; a place which, eighty years ago, was regarded with the deepest interest all over Europe, and visited by pilgrims of the highest rank and greatest genius. I suppose that no private house ever received such a number of illustrious guests during the same time as were entertained m Femey between 1768 and 1778. I thought of Marmontel, and his * ombre chevalier ; ' of La Harpe, and his quarrel with the Patri- arch ; of Madame de Genlis, and of all the tattle which fills Grimm's Correspondence. Lord Lansdowne was much pleased. Ellis less so. He is no Voltairian ; nor am I, ex- actly ; but I take a great interest in the literary history of the last century." In his diary of the 28th of December, 1850, he writes : " Read the ' Physiology of Monkeys,' and Collin's account of Voltaire ; — as mischievous a monkey as any of them." * " Judex damna^r cum nocens absolvitur." Vol. II,— 5 66 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. IX. " This book seems to have been manufactured in pursuance of a contract, by which the representatives of Warren Hastings, on the one part, bound themselves to furnish papers, and Mr. Gleig, on the other part, bound himself to furnish praise. It is but just to say that the covenants on both sides have been most faithfully kept ; and the result is before us in the form of three big bad volumes, full of undigested correspondence and undiscerning panegyric. " If it were worth while to examine this performance in detail, we could easily make a long article by merely pointing out inaccurate statements, inelegant expres- sions, and immoral doctrines. But it would be idle to waste criticism on a book- maker ; and, whatever credit Mr. Gleig may have justly earned by former works, it is as a bookmaker, and nothing more, that he now comes before us. More eminent men than Mr. Gleig have written nearly as ill as he, when they have stooped to amilar drudgery. It would be unjust to estimate Goldsmith by the Vicar of Wake- field, or Scott by the Life of Napoleon. Mr. Gleig is neither a Goldsmith nor a Scott ; but it would be unjust to deny that he is capable of something better than these Memoirs. It would also, we hope and believe, be unjust to charge any Chris- tian minister with the guilt of deliberately maintaining some of the propositions which we find in this book. It is not too much to say, that Mr. Gleig has written several passages which bear the same relation to the ' Prince ' of Machiavelli that the * Prince ' of Machiavelli bears to the * Whole Duty of Man,' and which would excite admiration in a den of robbers, or on board of a schooner of pirates. But we are willing to attribute these offences to haste, to thoughtlessness, and to that disease of the understanding which may be called the Furor BiographicuSy and which is to writers of lives what the goitre is to an Alpine shepherd, or dirt-eating to a negro slave." If this passage was unduly harsh, the punishment which overtook its author was instant and terrible. It is difScult to conceive any calamity which Macaulay would regard with greater consternation than that, in the opening sentences of an article which was sure to be read by everybody who read anything, he should pose before the world for three mortal months in the character of a critic who thought the Vicar of Wakefield a bad book. ^ ^ Albany, London : October 26, 1841. Dear Napier, — I write chiefly to point out, what I dare say you have already observed, the absurd blunder in the first page of my article. I have not, I am sorry to say, the consolation of being able to blame either you or the printers : for it must have been a slip of my own pen. I have put the "Vicar of Wakefield" instead of the " History of Greece." Pray be so kind as to correct this in the errata of the next number. I am, indeed, so much vexed by it that I could wish that the correction were made a little more prominent than usual, and introduced with two or three words of preface. But this I leave absolutely to your taste and judgment. Ever yours truly, T. B. Macaulay. 1841-44- LORD MACAULAY. 6j Albany, London : October 30, 1841. Dear Napier, — I have received your letter, and am truly glad to find that you are satisfied with the effect of my article. As to the pecuniary part of the matter, I am satisfied, and more than satisfied. Indeed, as you well know, money has never been my chief object in writing. It was not so even when I was very poor ; and at present I consider myself as one of the richest men of my acquaintance ; for I can well afford to spend a thousand a year, and I can enjoy every comfort on eight hundred. I own, however, that your supply comes agreeably enough to assist me in furnish- ing my rooms, which I have made, unless I am mistaken, into a very pleasant student's cell. And now a few words about Leigh Hunt. He wrote to me yesterday in great distress, and enclosed a letter which he had received from you, and which had much agitated him. In truth, lie misunderstood you ; and you had used an expression which was open to some little misconstruction. You told him that you should be glad to have a "gentlemanlike " article from him, and Hunt took this for a reflection on his birth. He implored me to tell him candidly whether he had given you any offence, and to advise him as to his course. I replied that he had utterly misunderstood you ; that I was sure you meant merely a literary criticism ; that your taste in composition was more severe than his, more indeed than mine ; that you were less tolerant than myself of little mannerisms springing from pecu- liarities of temper and training ; that his style seemed to you too collo- quial ; that I myself thought that he was in danger of excess in that direction ; and that, when you received a letter from him promising a very " chatty " article, I was not surprised that you should caution him against his besetting sin. I said that I was sure that you wished him well, and would be glad of his assistance ; but that he could not expect a person in your situation to pick his words very nicely ; that you had dur- ing many years superintended great literary undertakings ; that you had been under the necessity of collecting contributions from great numbers of writers, and that you were responsible to the public for the whole. Your credit was so deeply concerned that you must be allowed to speak plainly. I knew that you had spoken to men of the first consideration quite as plainly as to him. I knew that you had refused to insert pas- sages written by so great a man as Lord Brougham. I knew that you had not scrupled to hack and hew articles on foreign politics which had been concocted in the Hotels of Ambassadors, and had received the imprimatur of Secretaries of State. I said that therefore he must, as a man of sense, suffer you to tell him what you might think, whether rightly or wrongly, to be the faults of his style. As to the sense which he had put on one or two of your expressions, I took it on myself, as your friend, to affirm that he had mistaken their meaning, and that you would never 68 l^iHH. AND LETTERS OF CH. IX. have used .those words if you had foreseen that they would have been so understood. Between ourselves, the word " gentlemanlike " was used in rather a harsh way.* Now I have told you what has passed between him and me ; and I leave you to act as you think fit. I am sure that you will act properly and humanely. But I must add that I think you are too hard on his article. As to the Vicar of Wakefield, the correction must be .deferred, I think, till the appearance of the next Number. I am utterly unable to conceive how I can have committed such a. blunder, and failed to notice it in the proofs. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. Albany, London : November 5, 1841. Dear Napier, — Leigh Hunt has sent me a most generous and amiable letter, which he has received from you. He seems much touched by it, and more than satisfied, as he ought to be. I have at last begun my historical labors ; I can hardly say with how much interest and delight. I really do not think that there is in our literature so great a void as that which I am trying to supply. English history, from 1688 to the French Revolution, is even to educated people almost a terra incognita. I will venture to say that it is quite an even chance whether even such a man as Empson, or Senior, can repeat ac- curately the names of the Prime Ministers of that time in order. The materials for an amusing narrative are immense. I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies. I should be very much obliged to you to tell me what are the best sources of information about the Scotch Revolution in 1688, the campaign of. Dundee, the massacre of Glencoe, and the Darien scheme. I mean to visit the scenes of all the principal events both in Great Britain and Ireland, and also on the Continent Would it be worth my while to pass a fortnight in one of the Edinburgh Libraries next summer ? Or do you im- agine that the necessary information is to be got at the British Museum ? By the bye, a lively picture of the state of the Kirk is indispensable. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. Albany, Londoiv : December 1, 1841. Dear Napier, — You do not seem to like what I suggested about Henry the Fifth.t Nor do I, on full consideration. What do you say to an * It is worth notice that " gentlemanlike " is the precise epithet which Macaulay ap- plied to his own article on Gladstone's " Church and State." See page 32. t Macaulay had written on the loth of November : " If Longman will send me Mr. Tyler's book on Henry the Fifth, I will see whether I cannot, with the help o{ Froissart and Monstrelet, furnish a spirited sketch of that short and most brilliant life," 1841-44- LORD MACAULAY. 69 article on Frederic the Great ? Tom Campbell is bringing out a book about His Majesty. Now that I am seriously engaged in an extensive work, which will probably be the chief employment of the years of health and vigor which remain to me, it is necessary that I should choose my subjects for reviews with some reference to that work. I should not choose to write an article on some point which I should have to treat again as a historian ; for, if I did, I should be in danger of repeating myself. I assure you that I a little grudge you Westminster Hall, in the paper on Hastings. On the other hand, there are many characters and events which will occupy little or no space in my History, yet with which, in the course of my historical researches, I shall necessarily become familiar. There cannot be ^ better instance than Frederic the Great. His personal character, manners, studies, literary associates ; his quarrels with Voltaire, his friendship for Maupertuis, and his own unhappy mitramanie will be very slightly, if at all, alluded to in a History of England.* Yet in order to write the His- tory of England it willjje necessary to turn over all the Memoirs, and all the writings, of Frederic, connected with us, as he was, in a most impor- tant war. In this way my reviews would benefit by my historical re- searches, and yet would not forestall my history, or materially impede its progress. I should not like to engage in any researches altogether alien from what is now my main object. Still less should I like to tell the same story over and over again, which I must do if I were to write on such a subject as the Vernon Correspondence, or Trevor's History of William the Third. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. In January,i842, Macaulay writes to Mr. Napier: "As to Frederic, I do not see that I can deal with him well under seventy pages. I shall try to give a life of him after the manner of Plutarch. That, I think, is my forte. The paper on Clive took greatly. That on Hastings, though in my own opinion by no means equal to that on Clive, has been even more successful. I ought to produce something much better than either of those articles with so excellent a subject as Frederic. Keep the last place for me if you can. I greatly regret ray never having seen Berlin and Potsdam." Albany, London : April rS. 1842. My dear Napier, — I am much obliged to you for your criticisms on my article on Frederic. My copy of the Review I have lent, and cannot therefore refer to it. I have, however, thought over what you say, and * At this period of his career Macaulay still purpose, and hoped, to write the history of England ^' down to a time wliich is ^vithin the meis^piy o^ ijneu still living." 70 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. IX. should be disposed to admit part of it to be just. But I have several distinctions and limitations to suggest. The charge to which I am most sensible is that of interlarding my sentences viith French terms. I will not positively affirm that no such expression may have dropped from my pen, in writing hurriedly on a subject so very French. It is, however, a practice to which I am extremely averse, and into which I could fall only by inadvertence. I do not really know to what you allude ; for as to the words " Abbe " and " Parc-aux- Cerfs," which I recollect, those surely are not open to objection. I re- member that I carried my love of English in one or two places almost to the length of affectation. For example I called the " Place des Victories,'' the " place of Victories ; " and the " P'ermier General " D'Etioles, a " publican.'' I will look over the article again, when I get it into my hands, and try to discover to what you allude. The other charge, I confess, does not appear to me to be equally serious. I certainly should not, in regular history, use some of the phrases which you censure. But I do not consider a review of this sort as regular history, and I really think that, from the highest and most unquestionable authority, I could vindicate my practice. Take Addison, the model of pure and graceful writing. In his Spectators I find " wench," " baggage," " queer old put," " prig," " fearing that they should smoke the Knight." All these expressions I met this morning, in turning over two or three of his papers at breakfast. I would no more use the word " bore " or " awk- ward squad " in a composition meant to be uniformly serious and earnest, than Addison would in a State paper have called Louis an " old put," or have described Shrewsbury and Argyle as " smoking " the design to bring in the Pretender. But I did not mean my article to be uniformly serious and earnest. If you judge of it as you would judge of a regular history, your censure ought to go very much deeper than it does, and to be directed against the substance as well as against the diction. The tone of many passages, nay of whole pages, would justly be called flippant in a regular history. But I conceive that this sort of composition has its own char- acter, and its own laws. I do not claim the honor of having invented it ; that praise belongs to Southey ; but I may say that I have in some points . improved upon his design. The manner of these little historical essays bears, I think, the same analogy to the manner of Tacitus or Gibbon which the manner of Ariosto bears to the manner of Tasso, or the manner of Shakespeare's historical plays to the manner of Sophocles. Ariosto, when he is grave and pathetic, is as grave and pathetic as Tasso ; but he often takes a light fleeting tone which suits him admirably, but which in Tasso would be quite out of place. The despair of Constance in Shake- speare is as lofty as that of CEdipus in Sophocles ; but the levities of the 841-44- LORD MACAULAY. 7 1 bastard Faulconbridge would be utterly out of, place in Sophocles. Yet we feel that they are not out of place in Shakespeare. So with these historical articles. Where the subject requires it, they may rise, if the author can manage it, to the highest altitudes of Thucyd- ides. Then, again, they may without impropriety sink to the levity and colloquial ease of Horace Walpole's Letters. This is my theory. Whether I have succeeded in the execution is quite another question. You will, however, perceive that I am in no danger of taking similar liberties in my History. I do, indeed, greatly disapprove of those notions which some writers have of the dignity of history. For fear of alluding to the vulgar concerns of private life, they take no notice of the circumstances which deeply affect the happiness of nations. But I never thought of denying that the language of history ought to preserve a certain dignity. I would, however, no more attempt to preserve that dignity in a paper like this on Frederic than I would exclude from such a poem as Don Juan slang terms, because such terms would be out of place in Paradise Lost, or Hudibrastic rhymes, because such rhymes would be shocking in Pope's Iliad. As to the particular criticisms which you have made, I willingly sub- mit my judgment to yours, though I think that I could say something on the other side. The first rule of all writing, — that rule to which every other is subordinate, — is that the words used by the writer shall be such as most fully and precisely convey his meaning to the great body of his readers. All considerations about the purity and dignity of style ought to bend to this consideration. To write what is not understood in its whole force for fear of using some word which was unknown to Swift or Dryden, would be, I think, as absurd as to build an Observatory like that at Oxford, from which it is impossible to observe, only for the purpose of exactly preserving the proportions of the Temple of the Winds at Athens. That a word which is appropriate to a particular idea, which everybody high and low uses to express that i4ea, ^nd which exptesses that idea with a completeness which is not equallecl by any other single word, and scarcely by any circumlocution, should be banished from writing, seems to be a mere throwing away of power. Such a word as " talented " it is proper to avoid ; first, because it is not wanted ; secondly, because you never hear it from those who speak very good English. But the word "shirk" as applied to military duty is a word which everybody uses; which is the word, and the only word, for the thing ; which in every regi- ment, and in every ship, belonging to our country is employed fen times a day ; which the Duke of Wellington, or Admiral Stopford, would use in reprimanding an oflScer. To interdict it, therefore, in what is meant to be familiar, and almost jocose, narrative seems to me rather rigid. But I will not go on. I will only repeat that I am truly grateful for >]2 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. IX. your advice, and that if you will, on future occasions, mark with an as- terisk any words in my proof sheets which you think open to objection, I will try to meet your wishes, though it may sometimes be at the expense of my own. Ever yours most truly, T. B. Macaulay. Albany, London : April 25, 1842. Dear Napier, — Thank you for your letter. We shall have no disputes about diction. The English language is not so poor but that I may very well find in it the means of contenting both you and myself. I have no objection to try Madame D'Arblay for the October Num- ber. I have only one scruple, — that some months ago Leigh Hunt told me that he thought of proposing that subject to you, and I approved of his doing so. Now, I should have no scruple in taking a subject out of Brougham's hands, because he can take care of himself, if he thinks him- self ill-used. But I would not do anything that could hurt the feelings of a man whose spirit seems to be quite broken by adversity, and who lies under some obligations to me. By the way, a word on a subject which I should be much obliged to you to consider, and advise me upon. I find that the American pub- lishers have thought it worth while to put fprth two, if not three, editions of my reviews ; and I receive letters from them, saying that the sale is considerable. I have heard that several people here have ordered them from America. Others have cut them out of old numbers of the Edin- burgh Review, and have bound them up in volumes. Now, I know that these pieces are full of faults, and that their popularity has been very far beyond their merit ; but, if they are to be republished, it would be better that they should be republished under the eye of the author, and with his corrections, than that they should retain all the blemishes inseparable from hasty writing and hasty printing. Longman proposed something of the kind to me three years ago ; but at that time the American publica- tion had not taken place, which makes a great difference. Give me your council on the subject. Ever yours truly, T. B. Macaulay. Albany, London : June 24, 1842. . Dear Napier, — I have thought a good deal about republishing my articles, and have made up my mind not to do so. It is rather provok- ing, to be sure, to learn that a third edition is coniing out in America, and to meet constantly with smuggled copies, It is still more provoking to see trsBh, of which I am perfectly guiltless, inserted among my writ- ings. But, on the whole, I think it best that things should remain as they are. The public judges, and ought to judge, ii)4ylgen[tly of periodical 1841-44- ^°^^ MACAULAY. 73 works. They are not expected to be highly finished. Their natural life is only six weeks. Sometimes their writer is at a distance from the books to which he wants to refer. Sometimes he is forced to hurry through his task in order to catch the post He may blunder ; he may contradict himself ; he may break off in the middle of a story ; he may give an immoderate extension to one part of his subject, and dismiss an equally important part in a few words. All this is readily forgiven if there be a certain spirit and vivacity in his style. But, as soon as he re- publishes, he challenges a comparison with all the most symmetrical and polished of human compositions. A painter, who has a picture in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, would act very unwisely if he took it down, and carried it over to the National Gallery. Where it now hangs, surrounded by a crowd of daubs which are only once seen, and then for- gotten, it may pass for a fine piece. He is a fool if he places it side by side with the master-pieces of Titian and Claude. My reviews are gener- ally thought to be better written, and they certainly live longer, than the reviews of most other people ; and this ought to content me. The moment I come forward to demand a higher rank, I must expect to be judged by a higher standard. Fonblanque may serve for a beacon. His leading articles in the Examiner were extolled to the skies, while they were con- sidered merely as leading articles ; for they were, in style and manner, incomparably superior to anything in the Courier, or Globe, or Standard; nay, to anything in the Times. People said that it was a pity that such admirable compositions should perish; so Fonblanque determined to republish them in a book. He never considered that in that form they would be compared, not with the rant and twaddle of the daily and weekly press, but with Burke's pamphlets, with Pascal's letters, with Addison's Spectators and Freeholders^ They would not stand this new test a moment. I shall profit by the warning. What the Yankees may do I cannot help ; but I will not found my pretensions to the rank of a classic on my reviews. I will remain, according to the excellent precept in the Gospel, at the lower end of the table, where I am constantly accosted with " Friend, go up higher," and not push my way to the top at the risk of being compelled with shame to take the lowest room. If I live twelve or fifteen years, I may perhaps produce something which.' I may not be afraid to exhibit side by side with the performance of the old masters. Ever yours truly, T. B. Macaulay. Albany, London : July 14, 1842. Dear Napier, — As to the next Number, I must beg you to excuse me. I am exceedingly desirous to get on with my History, which is really in a fair train. I must go down into Somersetshire and Devonshire to see the scene of Monmouth's campaign, and to follow th? line of Wil!)»n»'s march 74 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. IX. from Torquay. I have also another plan of no great importance, but one which will occupy me during some days. You are acquainted, no doubt, with Perizonius's theory about the early Roman history ; — a theory which Niebuhr revived, and which Arnold has adopted as fully established. I have myself not the smallest doubt of its truth. It is, that' the stories of the birth of Romulus and Remus, the fight of the Horatii and Curatii, and all the other romantic tales which fill the first three or four books of Livy, came from the lost ballads of the early Romans. I amused myself in India with trying to restore some of these long-perished poems. Arnold saw two of them,* and wrote to me in such terms of eulogy that I have been induced to correct and complete them. There are four of them, and I think that, though they are but trifles, they may pass for scholar- like and-not inelegant trifles. I must prefix short prefaces to them, and I think of publishing them next November in a small volume. I fear, therefore, that just at present I can be of no use to you. Nor, indeed, should I find it easy to select a subject. Romilly's Life is a little stale. Lord Cornwallis is not an attractive subject. Clive and Hastings were great men, and their history is full of great events. Cornwallis was a respectable specimen of mediocrity. His wars were not brilliantly suc- cessful ; fiscal reforms were his principal measures ; and to interest English readers in questions of Indian finance is quite impossible. I am a little startled by the very careless way in which the review on Duelling has been executed. In the historical part there are really as many errors as assertions. Look at page 439. Ossory never called out Clar- endon. The Peer whom he called out, on the Irish Cattle Bill, was Buck- ingham. The provocation was Buckingham's remark that whoever op- posed the Bill had an Irish interest, or an Irish understanding. It is Clarendon who tells the whole story. Then, as to the scufile between Buckingham and a free-trading Lord Dorchester in the lobby, the scuffle was not in the lobby, but at a Conference in the Painted Chamber ; nor had it anything to do with free-trade ; for at a Conference all the Lords are on one side. It was the effect of an old quarrel, and of an accidental jostling for seats. Then, a few lines lower, it is said that Lady Shrews- bury dissipated all her son's estate, which is certainly not true ; for, soon after he came of age, he raised 40,000/. by mortgage, which at the then rate of interest he never could have done unless he had a good estate. Then, in the next page, it is said that Mohun murdered rather than killed the Duke of Hamilton, — a gross blunder. Those who thought that the * Dr. Arnold never saw the Lays in print. Just a month previous to the date of this letter Macaulay wrote to his sister Fanny : " But poor Arnold 1 I am deeply grieved for him and for the public. It is really a great calamity, and will be felt as such by hundreds of families. There was no such school : and from the character of the Trustees, who almost all are strong, and even bitter, Tories, I ^ear Craig, 1,854 ; Macaulay, 1,477 i Blackburn, 98a" 122 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. X. Edinburgh : July 30, 1847. Pearest Hannah, — I hope that you will not be much vexeil ; for I am not vexed, but as cheerful as ever I was in my life. I have been com- pletely beaten. The poll has not closed ; but there is no chance that I shall retrieve the lost ground. Radicals, Tories, Dissenters, Voluntaries, Free Churchmen, spirit drinkers who are angry because I will not pledge myself to repeal all taxes on whiskey, and great numbers of persons who are jealous of my chief supporters here, and think that the patronage of Edinburgh has been too exclusively distributed among a clique, have united to bear me down. I will make no hasty resolutions ; but every- thing seems to indicate that I ought to take this opportunity of retiring from public life Ever yours, T. B. M. Edinburgh ! July 30, 1847. Dear Ellis, — I am beaten, but not at all the less happy for being so. I think that having once been manumitted, after the old fashion, by a slap in the face, I shall not take to bondage again. But there is time to consider that matter. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay, - That same night, while the town was still alive with jubilation over a triumph that soon lost its gloss even in the eyes of those who won it, Macaulay, in the grateful silence of his chamber, was weaving his per- turbed thoughts into those exquisite lines which tell within the compass of a score of stanzas the essential secret of the life whose outward aspect these volumes have endeavored to portray : — The day of tumult, strife, defeat, was o'er. Worn out with toil, and noise, and scorn, and spleen, I slumbered, and in slumber saw once more A room in an old mansion, long unseen. That room, methought, was curtained from the light j Yet through the curtains shone the moon's cold ray Full on a cradle, where, in linen white, Sleeping life's first soft sleep, an infant lay. « « * « And lo I the fairy queens who rule our birth Drew nigh to speak the new-born baby's doom : With noiseless step, which left no trace on earth> From gloom they came, and vanished into gloom. Not deigning on the boy a glance to cast Swept careless by the gorgeous Queen of Gain. More scornful still, the Queen of Fashion passed, With mincing gait and sneer of cold disdain. 1844-47- LORD MACAULAY. 123 The Queen of Power tossed high her jewelled head. And o'er her shoulder threw a wrathful frown. The Queen of Pleasure on the pillow shed Scarce one stray rose-leaf from her fragrant crown. Still fay in long procession followed fay ; And still the little couch remained unblest : But, when those wayward sprites had passed away, Game One, the last, the mightiest, and the best Oh I glorious lady, with the eyes of light, And laurels clustering round thy lofty brow, Who by the cradle's side didst watch that night, Warbling a sweet strange music, who wast thou ? " Yes, darling ; let them go," so ran the strain : " Yes ; let them go, gain, fashion, pleasure, power, And all the busy elves to whose domain Belongs the nether sphere, the fleeting hoiu*. " Without one envious sigh, one anxious scheme, The nether sphere, the fleeting hour resign. Mine is the world of thought, the world of dream, Mine all the past, and all the future mine. « « « « "Of the fair brotherhood who share my grace, I, from thy natal day, pronounce thee free ; And, if for some I keep a nobler place, I keep for none a happier than for thee. " There are who, while to vulgar eyes they seem Of all my bounties largely to partake, Of me as of some rival's handmaid deem, And court me but for gain's, power's, fashion's sake. " To such, though deep their lore, though wide their fame^ Shall my great mysteries be all unknown : But thou, through good and evil, praise and blame. Wilt not thou love me for myself alone ? " Yes ; thou wilt love me with exceeding love ; And I will tenfold all that love repay : Still smiling, though the tender may reprove; Still faithful, though the trusted may betray. * * * m " In the dark hour of shame, I deigned to stand Before the frowning peers at Bacon's side ; On a far shore I smoothed with tender hand, Through months of pain, the sleepless bed of Hyde. 124 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. X " I brought the wise and brave of ancient days To cheer the cell where Raleigh pined alone. I lighted Milton's darkness with the blaze Of the bright ranks that guard the eternal throne. " And even so, my child, it is my pleasure That thou not then alone shouldst feel me nigh, When in domestic bliss and studious leisure, Thy weeks uncounted come, uncounted fly. " No ; when on restless night dawns cheerless morrow, When weary Soul and wasting body pine, Thine am I still, in danger, sickness, sorrow, In conflict, obloquy, want, exile, thine ; " Thine where on mountain waves the snowbirds scream, Where more than Thule's winter barbs the breeze. Where scarce, through lowering clouds, one sickly gleam Lights the drear May-day of Antarctic seas ; " Thine, when around thy litter's track all day White sandhills shall reflect the blinding glare ; Thine, when, through forests breathing death, thy way All night shall wind by many a tiger's lair ; " Thine most, when friends turn pale, when traitors fly, When, hard beset, thy spirit, justly proud, For truth, peace, freedom, mercy, dares defy A sullen priesthood and a raving crowd. " Amidst the din of all things fell and vile, Hate's yell, and envy's hiss, and folly's bray, Remember me ; and with an unforced smile See riches, baubles, flatterers, pass away. ** Yes ; they will pass away ; nor deem it strange ; They come and go, as comes and goes the sea j And let them come and go ; thou, through all changei Fix thy firm gaze on virtue and on me." 1847-49- LORD MACAULAY 12 5 CHAPTER XI. 1847-1849. Macaulay retires into private life — Extracts from Lord Carlisle's journal — Macaula;** conversation — His memory — His distaste for general society — His ways with children — Letters to his niece Margaret — The judicious poet — Valentines — Sight-seeing — Eastern tours— Macaulay's method of work — His diligence in collecting his materials — Glencoe — Londonderry — Macaulay's accuracy — Opinions of Mr. Bagehot and Mr. Buckle— Macaulay's industry at the desk— His love for his task— Extracts from his diary— His attention to the details of the press-^The History appears — Congratula- tions — Lord Halifax ; Lord Jeffrey ; Lord Auckland ; Miss Edgeworth — The popu- larity of the work — Extract from *' Punch '* — Macaulay's attitude in relation to his critics — The Quarterly Review— The sacrifices which Macaulay made to literature. AFTER a few nights of sound sleep, and a few days of quiet among his books, Macaulay had recovered both from the fatigues of the contest and the vexation of the defeat. On the 6th of August 1847, he writes to his sister Fanny ; " I am here in solitude, reading and working with great satisfaction to myself. My table is covered with letters of condolence, and with invitations from half the places which have not yet choosen members. I have been asked to stand for Ayr, for Wigton, and for Ox- fordshire. At Wigton and in Oxfordshire I was actually put in nomina- tion without my permission, and my supporters were with diflSculty pre- vented from going to the poll. From the Sheffield Iris, which was sent me to-day, I see that a party wishes to put me up for the West Riding. Craig tells me that there is a violent reaction at Edinburgh, and that those who voted against me are very generally ashamed of themselves and wish to have me back again. I did not know how great a politician I was till my Edinburgh friends chose to dismiss me from politics. I never can leave public life with more dignity and grace than at present." Such consolations as private life had to offer, Macaulay possessed in abundance. He enjoyed the pleasures of society in their most delightful shape ; for he was one of a circle of eminent and gifted men w^ho were the warm friends of himself and of each other. How brilliantly these men talked is already a matter of traditioit. No report of their conversa- 126., LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XL tion has been published, and in all probability none exists. Scattered and meagre notices in the leaves of private diaries form the sole surviving record of many an Attic night and still more agreeable morning. Happily Lord Carlisle's journal has preserved for us, (as may be seen in the ex- tracts which follow,) at least the names of those with whom Macaulay lived, the houses which he frequented, and some few of the topics which he discussed. That journal proves, by many an affectionate and admiring expression, how highly my uncle was esteemed by one whose approba- tion and regard were never lightly given.* " June 27, 1843. — I breakfasted with Hallam, John Russell, Macaulay, Everett, Van de Weyer, Mr. Hamilton, U.S., and Mahon. Never were such torrents of good talk as burst and sputtered over from Macaulay and Hallam. A great deal about Latin and Greek inscriptions. They think the first unrivalled for that purpose; so free from articles and particles. Hallam read some wondrous extracts from the Lives of the Saints f now being edited by Newman. Macaulay repeated, after the Yankees were gone, an egregious 'extract from a Natchez repudiation Paper, mak- ing out our Saviour to be the first great repudia!or, when he overthrew the seats of the money-changers." " March 4, 1848. — ^Macaulay says that they " (the Parisian republicans) " are refuting the doctrines of political economy in the way a man would refute the doc- trine of gravitation by jumping off the Monument." ' "January 6, T84g. — Finished Macaulay's two volumes. How admirable they are, full of generous impulse, judicial impartiality, wide research, deep thought, pic- turesque description, and sustained eloquence I Was history ever better written ? * Macaulay's acquaintance with the Howard family was of old standing, as may be gathered from a passage in a letter of the year 1833. This exceedingly droll production, is too thickly strewn with personal allusions to admit of its being published except in a fragmentary condition which would be unjust to the writer, and not very interesting to the reader. " I dined at Holland House yesterday. Dramatis Persona. Lord Holland A fine old gentleman, very gouty and good-natured. Earl Grey Prime Minister ; a proud and majestic, yet polite and affable person. The Rev. Sydney Smith A holy and venerable ecclesiastic, director of the consciences of the above-named lords. * « * « Lady Dover A charming woman, like all the Howards of Car- lisle." t About this period Macaulay writes to Mr. Napier : " Newman announces an English Hagiology in numbers, which is to contain the lives of such blessed saints as Thomas & Becket and Dunstan. I should not dislike to be the Awocato del Diavolo on such an oc- casion." And again : " I hear much of the miracles of the third and fourth centuries by Newman . I think that I could treat that subject without giving scandal to any rational person, and I should like it much. The times require a Middleton." 1847-49- LORD MACAULAY. 12/ Guizot * praises Macaulay. He says that he has truly hit the ruling passion of William the Third : his hatred for Louis the Fourteenth. ^^ February t2. — Breakfasted with Macaulay. There were Van de Weyer, Hal- lam, Charles Austin, Panizzi, Colonel Mure, and Dicky Milnes, but he went to York- shire after the first cup. The conversation ranged the world; art, ancient and modern ; the Greek tragedians ; characters of the orators, hcjw Philip and Alexander probably felt towards them as we do towards a scurrilous newspaper editor. It is a refreshing break in common-place life. I stayed till past twelve. His rooms at the top of the Albany are very liveable and studious-looking." "May 25, — Breakfasted with Rogers. It was a beautiful morning, and his hoifsc, view, and garden looked lovely. It was extremely pleasant. Mahon tried to defend Clarendon, but was put down by Hallam and Macaulay. Macaulay was very severe on Cranmer. Then we all quoted a good deal ; Macaulay, (as I had heard him before,) four very fine lines from the Tristia, as being so contrary to their usual whining tone, and of even a Miltonic loftiness of sentiment. £n ego, quum patrid caream, vobisque, domoque ; Raptaque sint, adimi quas potuere, mihi ; Ingenio tamen ipse meo comitorque, fruorque. Caesar in hoc potuit juris habere nihil. I think we must have rather shot beyond Rogers sometimes." " October ii. — (Dinner at Lord Carlisle's.) The evening went off very cosily and pleasantly, as must almost always happen with Macaulay. He was rather para- doxical, as is apt to be his manner, and almost his only social fault. The greatest marvel about him is the quantity of trash he remembers. He went off at a score with Lord Thurlow's poetry." " March j, i8so. — Dined at the Club. Dr. Holland in the chair. Lord Lans- downe, Bishop of London, Lord Mahon, Macaulay. Milman, Van de Weyer, I, David Dundas, Lord Harry Vane, Stafford O'Brien. The Bishop talked of the wit rf Rowland Hill. One day his chapel, with a thinner attendance than usual, sud- denly filled during a shower of rain. He said : * I have often heard of religion being used as a cloak, but never before as an umbrella.' In his later hfe he used to come to bib chapel in a carriage. He got an anonymous letter rebuking him for this, be- cause it was not the way his heavenly Master travelled. He read the letter from the pulpit, said it was quite true, and that if the writer would come to the vestry afterwards with a saddle'and bridle he would ride him home. They talked a good deal of French authors. The Tartuffe was thought Molifere's best play ; then the Misanthrope. Macaulay prefers L' Avare. We recited Johnson's beautiful epitaphs on Philips and Levinge. Macaulay's flow never ceased once during the four hours, but it is never overbearing." * Guizot was then a refugee in England. Shortly before this date Macaulay writes to his sister Selina : *' I left a card with Guizot, but did not ask to see him. I purposely avoided meeting him on Friday at Lord Holland's. The truth is that I like and esteem the man : but I think the policy of the Minister both at home and abroad detestable. At home it was all corruption, and abroad all treachery. I could not hold to him the language of entire respect and complacency without a violation of truth ; and, in his present circum- stances, I could not bear to show the least disapprobation." 128 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XL *^ March 5^.— Breakfast with Macaulay. On being challenged, he repeated the ngpes of the owners of the several carriages that went to Clarissa's funeral. We chiefly talked of Junius, and the irresistible proofs for Sir Philip Francis." * " May 9. — Breakfast with Macaulay. We talked of Thiers and Lamartine as his- torians ; Thiers not having any moral principle ; Lamartine a great artist, but with- out the least care for truth . They were just passing to the Jesuits and Pascal when I thought it right {and I must claim some merit in this) to go to the Ascension morning service at St. James's. After I went, the conversation got upon moral obligations, and was so eagprly carried ob by Hallam, Whewell, and Macaulay, though without the slightest loss of temper, that not one sentence could any of them finish." " November iz. — Breakfasted with Macaulay, Charles Greville, Hobhouse, Sir R. Murchison, and Charles (Howard). The talk was even more than usually agree able and interesting, and it got on very high themes. Macaulay argued very forci- bly against Hobhouse and Charles, Greville for the difference between the evidence of Christ's miracles and of the truth of transubstantiation. To put them on a level, Lazarus ought to have remained inanimate, colorless, and decomposing in the grave, while we should be called upon to believe that he had at the word of Christ become alive. He does not consider the doctrine of the Trinity opposed to reason. He was rather less opposed to the No Popery cry, so rife at present, than I might have expected. He f thinks the nonsense of people may be advantageously made use of to set them against the real mischief of Popish interference." * Two days previously Macaulay and Carlyle had met at Lord Ashburton*s house. It was perhaps on this occasion that Carlyle was woefully bored by the irresistible proofs for Sir Philip Francis. " As if it could matter the value of a brass farthing to any living hu- man being who was the author of Junius! ** t Four days after this breakfast Macaulay wrote to his sister Fanny : " If I told you all that I think about these disputes I should write a volume. The Pope hates the Eng- lish nation and government. He meant, I am convinced, to insult and annoy the Queen and her Ministers. His whole conduct in Ireland has evidently been directed to that end. Nevertheless the reasons popularly urged against this Bull seem to me absurd. We always knew that the Pope claimed spiritual jurisdiction, and I do not see that he now claims temporal jurisdiction. I could wish that Lord John had written more guardedly ; and that, I plainly see, is the wish of some of his colleagues, and probably by this time is also his own. He has got much applause in England : but when he was writing, he should have remembered that he had to govern several millians of Roman Catholics in Ireland ; that to govern them at all is no easy task ; and that anything which looks like an affront to their religion is certain to call forth very dangerous passions. In the meantime these things keep London all alive. Yesterday the ballad-singers were entertaining a great crowd under my window with bawling : ( ' Now all the old women are crying for fear V^ The Pope is a-coming : oh dear I oh dear 1' The wall of Burlington Gardens is covered with ' No Popery,' * No Wafer Gods.* I can- not help enjoying the rage and terror of the Puseyites, who are utterly prostrated by this ' outbreak of popular feeling." And again some days later, he says : "A deputation of my parish, St. James's, came to me yesterday to ask me to move a Resolution at a public meeting. I refused, took their 1847-49- LORD MACAULAY. 129 « May I J,— Dined at the club. Bishop of Oxford, Dean of St. Paul's, Whe- well, Macaulay, Ix)rd Overstone, Dr. Holland, Sir J. Staunton, George Lewis. A good company, and it was most agreeable. They were very droll about Sir John Sinclair ; — ^his writing to Pitt that it was very desirable that the President of the Scotch Agricultutal Society " (which office he then held) " should be a Peer." Pitt answered that he quite agreed with him ; accepted his resignation, and appointed Lord Somerville. The Bishop said he remembered his complaining of it at his father's, at Kensington Gore;— it had been "such a wilful misunderstanding." Macaulay said that there are in his works two distinctions, the one the most com- plete, the other the most incomplete, that he remembers. The first is : ' There are two kinds of sleep: one with yoiu: night-cap, and the other without it.' The second : ' There are three kinds of bread : white bread, brown bread, and rolls.' At the end the Bishop and I fought a mesmeric and electro-biological battle against the scornful opposition of all the rest." * ** May IS- — Breakfasted with the Bishop of Oxford. It was remarkably pleas- ant ; a little on derivations, f As an instance of unlucky quotation I gave Lord Fitzwilliam's, when calling on the Dissenters to join the EstabHshed Clergy in sub- scribing for the rebuilding of York Minster, Flectere si nequeo superos Acheroata movebo. Van de Weyer remarked on the English horror of false quantities, which Macaulay defended justly on the plea that no one is bound to quote. No one resents the Duke of Wellington, in the theatre at Oxford, having called it Carolus, after being correct- ed for saying JacSbus. It was the Duke's advice to Sir George Murray, when he said he never should be able to get on with speaking in the Commons, * Say what you have to say, don't quote Latin, and sit down.' " ^^ May 27. — Dined at the Club. The talk ran for some time on whether the north or south of different countries had contrib\ited most to their literature. I re- mained on with Macaulay and Milman. The first gave a list of six poets, whom he places above all others, in the order of his jwef erence : Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, jEschylus, Milton, Sophocles. Milman, on the whole, acquiesced. I fought some battle for Virgil coming before Sophocles : but * What,' said Macaulay, ' did Virgil ever write like the Philoctetes ? ' He would place Lucretius and Ariosto before him. He thinks the first part of Henry the Fourth, Shakespeare's best comic play ; then the second part ; then Twelfth Night : but Shakespeare's plays are not to be classed into Tragedy and Comedy. It was the object of the Elizabethan drama, the high- est form of composition he can conceive, to represent life as it is." Resolutions in my hand, and criticized them in such a way as, for the time at least, con- verted the delegates. They told me, at parting, that the whole should be recast ; that in- tolerant sentiments should be expunged; and that, instead of calling for laws to punish avowed Roman Catholics, the parish would express its dislike of the concealed Roman Catholics who hold benefices in the Established Church.** * Macaulay's account of the evening is : " Pleasant party at the Club : but we got a little too disputatious at last about Mesmerism and Clairvoyance. It is diflScult to discuss such matters without using language which seems to reflect on the understanding of those who believe what you think absurd. However, we kept within tolerable bounds." ,t Lord Carlisle elsewhere says : " The conversation rather etymological, as perhaps it is too apt to be in this society." Vol. IL— 9 130 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XI, "February 14, iSjs. — Dined at Mrs. Dnimmond's. Trevelyans, Strutts, Fords, Merivales, Macaulay. It was very pleasant. Macaulay and Mrs. Strutt both own to the feeling Doctor Johnson had, of thinking oneself bound sometimes to touch a particular rail or post, and to ti-ead always in the middle of the paving-stone. I certainly have had this very strongly. Macaulay wished that he could spend a day of every century in London since the Romans ; though of the two he would rath- er spend a day in it 1800 years hence, than 1800 years ago, as he* can less easily conceive it. We agreed there can never have been thirty years in which all mechan- ical improvements have made so much progress as in the last thirty, but he looks on printing as a greater discovery than steam, but not near so rapid in its obvious re- sults. He told us of two letters he had received from America : one from a Mr. Crump, offering him 500 dollai-s if he could introduce the name of Crump into his History : another from a Young Men's Philosophical Society in New York, begin- ning, * Possibly our fanie'has not pinioned the Atlantic' " "May ^.— Dined with the Club. .Very pleasant, though select. Something led to my reminding. Lord Aberdeen that we both put Macbeth the first of Shakespeare's great plays. Lord Lansdowne quite concurred. Macaulay thinks it may be a little owing to our recollections of Mrs. Siddons. He is much inclined to rank them thus : Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet." * " November 2q. — BrcaMasted with Macaulay. He thinks that, though the last eight books of Paradise Lost contain incomparable beauties, Milton's fame would have stood higher if only the first four had been preserved. He would then have been placed above Homer." There is nothing very attractive in a memorandum which baldly chroni- cles the fact that on a certain day, five-and-twenty years ago, Hallam, and Milman, and Macaulay undertook to classify in order of excellence the Greek Tragedians or the Elizabethan Dramatists. But it must be re- membered that every one of these entries represents an hour of glowing declamation and sparkling repartee, interspersed with choice passages from the writer whose merits were in question, recited as poetry is recited by men who learn without effort and- admire- without affectation. "When I praise an author," iVUcaulay used to say, " I love to give a sample of his wares." That sample was sometimes only too favorable. He had so quick an eye for literary effect, — so grateful was he to any book which had pleased him even for a moment, — ^that oe would pick out from such a book, and retain for ever in his memory, what was perhaps the single telling anecdote or well-turned couplet which could be discovered in its * In the course of the next month there was a breakfast at the Bishop of Oxford's. '* Extremely agreeable," writes Lord Carlisle, " and would have been still more so, but there was a tendency to talk very loud, and all at once." On this occasion Macaulay told a story about one of the French prophets of the seventeenth century, who came into the court of Queen's Bencb,and announced that the Hol^ Ghost had sent him to command Lord Holt to enter a nolle prosequi. " If," said Lord Holt, " the Holy Ghost had wanted a nolle prosequi he would have bade you apply to the Attorney-General. The Holy Ghost knows that I cannot enter a nolle prosequi. But there is one thing which I can do. I can lay a lying knave by the heels-; " and thereupon he commited him to prison. 1847-49 LORD MACAULAY. I3I pages.* A pointed story, extracted from some trumpery memoir of the last century, and retold in his own words, — a purple patch fro'.i some third-rate sermon or political treatise, woven into the glittering fabric of his talk with that art which in his case was a second nature, — have often and often tempted his younger hearers into toiling through volume after volume of prosy or flippant trash, in which a good paragraph was as rare as a silver spoon in a dust-heap. Whatever fault might be found with Macaulay's gestures as an orator, his appearance and bearing in conversation were singularly effective. Sitting bolt upright, his hands resting on the arms of his chair or folded over the, handle of his walking-stick ; — knitting his great eyebrows if the subject was one which had to be thought out as he went along, or bright- ening from the forehead downwards when a burst of humor was coming ; — his massive features and honest glance suited well with the manly sagacious sentiments which he set forth in his pleasant. sonorous voice, and in his racy and admirably intelligible language. To get at his mean- ing people had never the need to think twice, and they certainly had seldom the time. And with all his ardor, and all his strength and energy of conviction, he was so truly considerate towards others, so delicately courteous with the courtesy which is of the essence and not only in the manner I However eager had been the debate, and however prolonged the sitting, no one in the company ever had personal reasons for wishing a word of his unsaid, or a look or a tone recalled. His good things were never long in the making. During the Caffre war, at a time when we were getting rather the worse of it, he opened the stftet door for a walk down Westbourne Terrace. " The blacks are flying," said his compan- ion. " I wish they were in South Africa," was the instant reply. His quotations were always ready, and never off the mark. On a Sunday afternoon, when the family were engaged in discussing a new curate, one of the children, with true Clapham instinct, asked whether the reverend gentleman had ever received a testimonial. " I am glad, my boy," said Macaulay, " that you would not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.'' Sometimes he would recast his thoughts, and give them over again in the shape of an epigram. " You call me a Liberal," he said ; " but I don't know that in these days I deserve the name. I am opposed to the aboli- tion of standing armies. I am opposed to the abrogation of capital pun- * " My father,'' says Sara Coleridge, " had a way of seizing upon the one bright thing out of long tracts of dull and tedious matter. I remember a great campanula which grew in a wood at Keswick. Two or three such I found in my native vale during the course of my flowei^seeking days. As well might we present one of these as a sample of the blue- bells of bonny Cumberland, or the one or two oxlips which may be found among a multi- tude of cowslips in a Somersetshire meadow, as specimens of the flowerhood of the field, — as give these extracts for proof of what the writer was generally wont to produce." 132 LIFE AND LKTTERS OF CH. XI. ishment. I am opposed to the destruction of the National Church. In short, I am in favor of war, hanging, and Church Establishments." He was always willing to accept a friendly challenge, to a feat of memo- ry. One day, in the Board-room of the British Museum, Sir David Dun- das saw him hand to Lord Aberdeen a sheet of foolscap covered with writing arranged in three parallel columns down each of the four pages. This document of which the ink was still wet, proved to be' a full list of the Senior Wranglers at Cambridge with their dates and colleges, for the hundred years during which the names of Senior Wranglers had been re- corded in the University Calendar. On another occasion Sir David asked : " Macaulay, do you know your Popes ? " " No," was the answer ; " I always get wrong among the Innocents." " But can you say your Archbishops of Canterbury ? " "Any fool," said Macaulay, "could say his Archbishops of Canterbury backwards : " and he went off at score, drawing breath only once in order to remark on the oddity of there having been both an Archbishop Bancroft and an Archbishop Bancroft, until Sir David stopped him at Cranmer.* Macaulay could seldom be tempted to step outside his own immediate circle of friends and relations. His distaste for the chance society of a London drawing-room increased as years went on. Like Casaubon of old, he was well aware that a man cannot live with the idlers, and with the Muses too. " He was peculiarly susceptible," says Lady Trevelyan, " of the feeling of ennui when in company. He really hated staying out even in the best and most agreeable houses. It was with an effort that he even dined out, and few of those who met him, and enjoyed his animated con- versation, could guess how much rather he would have remained at home, and how much difficulty I had to force him to accept invitations and pre- vent his growing a recluse. But, though he was very easily bored in gen- eral society, I think he never felt ennui when he was alone, or when he was with those he loved. Many people are very fond of children, but he was the only person I ever knew who never tired of being with them. Often has he come to our house, at Clapham or in Westbourne Terrace directly after breakfast and finding me out, has dawdled away the whole morning with the children ; and then, after sitting with me at lunch, has taken Margaret a long walk through the City which lasted the whole after- noon. Such days are always noted in his journals as especially happy." It is impossible to exaggerate the pleasure which Macaulay took in children, or the delight which he gave them. He was beyond all compar- ison the best of playfellows ; unrivalled in the invention of games, and * Macaulay was proud of his good memory, and had little sympathy with people who affected to have a bad one. In a note on the margin of one of his books he reflects upon this not uncommon form of self-depreciation : " They appear to reason thus : The more memory, the less invention." 1847-49- LORD MACAULAY. 133 never wearied of repeating them. He had an an inexhaustible repertory of small dramas for the benefit of his nieces, in which he sustained an end- less variety of parts with a skill that at any rate was sufficient for his au- dience. An old friend of the family writes to my sister, Lady Holland : " I well remember that there was one never-failing game of building up a den with newspapers behind the sofa, and of enacting robbers and tigers ; you shrieking with terror, but always fascinated and begging him to begin again : and there was a daily recurring observation from him, that after all, children were the only true poets." Whenever he was at a distance from his little companions he consoled himself and them by the exchange of long and frequent letters. The ear- liest in date of those which he wrote in prose begins as follows : ' September 15, 1842. My dear Baba,* — Thank you for your very pretty letter. I am always glad to make my little girl happy, and nothing pleases me so much as to see that she likes books. For when she is as old as I am she will find that they are better than all the tarts, and cakes, and toys, and plays, and sights in the world. If anybody would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces, and gardens, and fine dinners, and wine, and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servents, on condition that I would not read books, I would not be a king. I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love read- ing- Five years later on he writes : — " I must begin sooner or later to call you ' Margaret ; ' and I am always making good resolutions to do so, and then breaking them. But I will procrastinate no longer. Procrastination is the thief of time, says Dr. Young. He also says, Be wise to day. 'Tis madness to defer, and, Next day the fatal precedent will plead. That is to say, if I do not take care, I shall go on calling my darling ' Baba ' till she is as old as her mamma, and has a dozen Babas of her own. Therefore I will be wise to day and call her ' Margaret.' I should very much like to see you and Aunt Fanny at Broadstairs : but I fear, I fear, that it cannot be. Your Aunt asks me to shirk the Chelsea Board. I am staying in England chiefly in order to attend it. When Parliament is not sitting, my duty there is all that I do for two thousand four hundred pounds a year. We must have some conscience. " Michaelmas will, I hope, find us all at Clapham over a noble goose Do you remember the beautiful Puseyite hymn on Michaelmas day ? It is • Baba was apet name for his niece Margaret, derivedirom ih? In#an nvirsery. 134 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XI. a great favorite with all the Tractarians. You and Alice should learn it It begins : Though Quakers scowl, though Baptists howli* Though Plymouth Brethren rage, We Churchmen gay will wallow to-day In apple sauce, onions, and sage. Ply knife and fork, and draw the cork, And have the bottle handy : For each slice of goose will introduce A thimbleful of brandy. Is it not good ? I wonder who the author can be. Not Newman, I think. It is above him. Perhaps it is Bishop Wilberforce." The following letter is in a graver tone, as befits the correspondent of a young lady who has only two years of the schoolroom still before her. October 14, 1851. Dear Margaret, — Tell me how you like Schiller's Mary Stuart. It is not one of my favorite pieces. I should put it fourth among his plays. I arrange them thus : Wallenstein, William Tell, Don Carlos, Mary Stuart, the Maid of Orleans. At a great interval comes the Bride of Messina ; and then, at another great interval, Fieschi. Cabal and Love 1 never could get through. The Robbers is a mere schoolboy rant below serious criticism, but not without indications of mental vigor which re- quired to be disciplined by much thought and study. But though I do not put Mary Stuart very high among Schiller's works, I think the Foth eringay scenes in the fifth act equal to anything that he ever wrote, — in- • deed equal to ariything dramatic that has been produced in Europe since Shakespeare. I hope that you will feel the wonderful truth and beauty of that part of the play. I cannot agree with you in admiring Sintram. There is an age at which we are disposed to think that whatever is odd and extravagant is great. At that age we are liable to be taken in by such orators as Irving, such painters as Fuseli, such plays as the Robbers, such romances as Sintram. A better time comes, when we would give all Fuseli's hobgob- lins for one of Reynolds's little children, and all Sintram's dialogues with Death and the Devil for one speech of "Mrs. Norris or Miss Bates. Tell me however, as of course you will, quite truly, what you think of Sin- tram. I saw a description of myself yesterday in a New York paper. The writer says that I am a stout man with hazel eyes ; that I always walk with an umbrella ; that I sometimes bang the umbrella against the ground ; that I often dine in the Coffee-room of the Trafalgar on fish ; that once he saw me break a decanter there, but that I did not appear to be at all ashamed of my awkwardness, b\it failed for my bill as coolly as if nothing 1847-49- LORD MACAULAY. I3S had happened. I have no recollection of such an occurrence ; but, if it did take place, I do not think that it would have deprived me of my self- possession. This is fame. This is the advantage of making a figure in the world. This has been the last week of the Great Exhibition. It makes me quite sad to think of our many, many happy walks there. To-morrow I shall go to the final ceremony, and try to hear the Bishop of London's thanksgiving, in which I shall very cordially join. This will long be re- membered as a singularly happy year^ of peace, plenty, good feeling, in- nocent pleasure, national glory of the best and purest sort. I have bespoken a Schiller for you. It is in the binder's hands, and will be ready, I hope, before your return. Ever yours, T. B. MacaulayIII His poetical, no less than his epistolary, style was carefully adapted to the age and understanding of those whom he was addressing. Some of his pieces of verse are almost perfect specimens of the nursery lyric. From five to ten stanzas in length, and with each word carefully formed in capitals, — most comforting to the eyes of a student who is not very sure of his small letters, — they are real children's poems, and they profess to be nothing more. They contain none of those strokes of satire, and allusions to the topics and personages of the day, by which the authors of what is now called Juvenile Literature so often attempt to prove that they are fit for something better than the task on which they are engaged. But this very absence of pretension, which is the special merit of these trifles, renders them unworthy of a place in a book intended for grown-up readers. There are, however, few little people between three and five years old who would not care to hear how There once was a nice little girl, With a nice little rosy face. She always said " Our Father," And she always said her grace : and how as the reward of her good behavior They brought the browned potatoeSi And minced veal, nice and hot, And such a good bread-pudding All smoking from the pot t And there are still fewer who would be indifferent to the fate Tyhich befell the two boys who talked in church, when The Beadle got a good big stick, Thicker than uncle's thumb. Oh, what a fright those boys were in To see the Beadle come I 13^ LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XI. And they were turned out of the church And they were soundly beat : And both those wicked, naughty bOys Went bawling down the street. All his rhymes, whether written or improvized, he put down to the credit of the Judicious Poe^: The gravity with which he maintained the innocent delusion was too much for children, who more than half believed in the existence of a writer for whose collected works they searched the library in vain ; though their faith was from time to time shaken by the almost miraculous applicability of a quotation to the most unexpected circumstances of the moment. St. Valentine's Day brought Macaulay's nieces a yearly offering of rhyme, until he thought them too old to care for verses which he himself pronounced to be on a level with the bellman's, but which are certainly as good, and probably as sincere, as nine-tenths of the pastoral poetry that has been written during the last two centuries. In 1847 the annual effusion ran as follows : — And canst thou spurn a kneeling bard. Mine own, mine only Valentine? The heart of beauty still is hard ; But ne'er was heart so hard as thine. Each year a shepherd sings thy praise, And sings it in no vulgar strain. Each year a shepherd ends his days, A victim to thy cold disdain. In forty-five, relentless maid, For thee melodious Strephon died. For thee was gentle Thyrsis laid, In forty-six, by Strephon's side. The swain who to thy footstool bears Neitt spring the tribute of his verses Will tell thee that poor Damon shares The grave of Strephon and of Thyrsis. Then will the whole Arcadian quire Their sweetest songster's fate bemoan, Hang o'er his tomb his crook and lyre, And carve this ditty on the stofle: " Stop, passenger. Here Damon lies, Bel&ved of all the tuneful nine ; The third who perished by the eyes Of one too charming Valentine." The Brokhn-hhartbd Damoh. The longest and the most elaborate of these little compositions was addressed to the daughter of Earl Stanhope, now the Countess Beau- champ. The allusion to the statue of Mr. Pitt in Hanover Square is one of the happiest touches that can be found in Macaulay's writings. 1847-49- LORD MACAULAY. 137 Good morrow, gentle Child, and then Again good morrow, and again, Good morrow following still good morrow, Without one cloud of strife or sorrow. And when the god to whom we pay In jest our homages to-day Sliall come to claim, no more in jest^ His rightful empire o^er thy breast, Benignant may his aspect be, His yoke the truest liberty : And if a tear his power confess, Be it a tear of happiness I It shall be so. The Muse displays The future to her votary*s gaze- Prophetic rage my bosom swells. I taste the cake ! I hear the bells I From Conduit Street the close array Of chariots barricades the way To where I see, with outstretched hand. Majestic, thy great kinsman stand. And half imbend his brow of pride, As welcoming so fair a bride- The feelings with which Macaulay regarded children were near akin to those of the great writer to whom we owe the death of little Paul, and the meeting between the schoolboy and his mother in the eighth chapter of David Copperfield. " Have you seen the first number of Dombey ?" he writes. " There is not much in it : but there is one passage which made me cry as if my heart would break. It is the description of a little girl who has lost an affectionate mother, and is unkindly treated by every- body. Images of that sort always overpower me, even when the artist is less skilful than Dickens." In truth, Macaulay's extreme sensibility to all which appealed to the sentiment of pity, whether in art or in nature, was nothing short of a positive inconvenience to him.* He was so moved by the visible representation of distressing scenes that he went most unwill- ingly to the theatre, for which, during his Cambridge days, he had enter- tained a passionate, though passing, fondness.t I remember well how, during the performance of Masks and Faces, the sorrows of the broken- down author and his starving family in their Grub Street garret entirely destroyed the pleasure which he otherwise would have taken in Mrs. * ^^ April 17, 1858. — In the Times of this morning there was an account of a suicide of a poor girl which quite broke my heart. I cannot get it out of my thoughts, or help crying when I think of it." t I recollect hearing Macaulay describe the wonder and delight with which, during a long vacation spent at the University, he saw his first play acted by a istrolling company in the Barnwell Theatre. *' Did you, then, never go to the play as a boy?" asked some one who was present. " No," said he ; " after the straitesj gect of our religion I was bred a Pharisee." 138 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XI. Stirling's admirable acting. And he was hardly less easily aflfected to tears by that which was sublime and stirring in literature, than by that which was melancholy and pathetic. In August, 1851, he writes from Malvern to his niece Margaret : " I finished the Iliad to-day. I had not read it through since the end of 1837, when I was at Calcutta, and when you often called me away from my studies to show you pictures and to feed the crows. I never admired the old fellow so much, or was so strongly moved by him. What a privilege genius like his enjoys ! I could not tear myself away. I read the last five books at a stretch during my walk to-day, and was at last forced to turn into a by-path, lest the parties of walkers should see me blubbering for imaginary beings, the creations of a ballad-maker who has been dead two thousand seven hun- dred years. What is the power and glory of Csesar and Alexander to that ? Think what it- would be to be assured that the inhabitants of Monomotapa would weep over one's writings Anno Domini 4551 ! " Macaulay was so devoid of egotism, and exacted so little deference and attention from those with whom he lived, that the young people around hira were under an illusion which to this day it is. pleasant to recall. It was long, very long, before we guessed that the world thought much of one who appeared to think so little of himself. (I remember telling my schoolfellows that I had an uncle who was about to publish a History of England in two volums, each containing 650 pages ; but it never crossed my mind that the work in question would have anything- to distinguish it except its length.} .As years went on, it sfeemed strange and unnatural to hear him more and more frequently talked of as a great man ; and we slowly, and almost reluctantly, awoke to the conviction that " Uncle Tom " was cleverer, as well as more good-natured, than his neighbors. Among other tastes which he had in common with children was an avidity for sight-seeing. " What say you," he asks Mr. Ellis, " to a visit to the Chinese Museum ? It is the most interesting and curious sight that I know. If you like the plan, I will call on you at four. Or will you call on me ? For I am halfway between the Temple and the wonders of the Celestial Empire." And again : " We treated the Clifton Zoo much too contemptuously. I lounged thither, and found more than sixpennyworth of amusement." " After breakfast I went to the Tower," he writes in his journal of 1839. " I found great' changes. The wild beasts were all gone. The Zoological Gardens have driven paved courts and dark nar- row cages quite out of fashion. I was glad for the sake- of the tigers and leopards." He was never so happy as when he could spend an afternoon in taking his nieces and nephews a round of London sights; until, to use his favoi- ite expression, they " could not drag one leg after the other." If he had been abl§ tq l^^ve l)is ai;vn vy^y, the real W9ul4 have r^curre^ at least 1^47-49- LORD MACAULAY. 139 twice a week. On these occasions we drove into London in time for a sumptuous midday meal, at which everything that we liked best was ac- companied by oysters, caviare, and olives, some of which delicacies he in- variably provided with the sole object of seeing us reject them with con- temptuous disgust. Then off we set under his escort, in summer to the bears and lions; in winter to the Panorama of Waterloo, to the CoUosseum in Regent's Park, or to the enjoyment of the delicious terror inspired by Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors. When the more attractive ex- hibitions had been exhausted by too frequent visits, he would enliven with his irrepressible fun the dreary propriety of the Polytechnic, or would lead us through the lofty corridors of the British Museum, making the statues live and the busts speak by the spirit and color of his innumera- ble anecdotes paraphrased off-hand from the pages of Plutarch and Sue- tonius. One of these expeditions is described in a letter to my mother in January, 1845. " Fanny brought George and Margaret, with Charley. Cropper, to the Albany at one, yesterday. I gave them some dinner ; fowl, ham, marrow-bones, tart, ice, olives, and champagne. I found it dif- ficult to think of any sight for the children : however, I took them to the National Gallery, and was excessively amused with the airs of connois- seurship which Charley and Margaret gave themselves, and with Georgy's honestly avowed weariness. ' Let us go. There is nothing here that I care for at all.' When I put him into the carriage, he said, half sulkily : ' I do not call this seeing sights. I have seen no sight to-day.' Many a man who has laid out thirty thousand pounds on paintings would, if he spoke the truth, own that he cared as little for the art as poor Georgy." Regularly every Easter, when the closing of the public .offices drove my father from the Treasury for a brief holiday, Macaulay took our fami- ly on a tour among Cathedral-towns, varied by an occasional visit to the Universities. We started on the Thursday ; spent Good Friday in one city and Easter Sunday in another, and went back to town on the Monday. This vear it was Worcester and Gloucester ; the next, York and Lincoln; then Lichfield and Chester, Norwich and Peterborough, Ely and Cam- bridge, Salisbury and Winchester. Now and then the routine was in- terrupted by a ti'ip to Paris, or to the great churches on the Loire ; but in the course of twenty years we had inspected at least once all the Cathe- drals of England, or indeed of England and Wales, for we carried our researches after ecclesiastical architecture as far down in the list as Ban- gor. " Our party just filled a railway carriage," says Lady Trevelyan. •" and the journey found his flow of spirits unfailing. It was a return to old times ; a running fire of jokes, rhymes, puns, never ceasing. . It was a peculiarity of his that he never got tired on a journey. As the day wore on he did not feel the desire to lie back and be quiet, and he liked to find his companions ready to be entertained to the last." 140 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XI. Any one who reads the account of Norwich and Bristol in the third chapter, or the account of Magdalen College in the eight chapter, of. the History, may form an idea of Macaulay's merits as a Cicerone in an old English provincial capital. To walk with him round the walls of York, or through the Rows of Chester ; to look up at the towers of Lichfield from the spot where Lord Brook received his death-wound, or down upon Durham from the brow of the hill behind Neville's Cross ; to hear him discourse on Monmouth and Bishop Ken beneath the roof of Longleat Hall, or give the rein to all the fancies and reminiscences, political, per- sonal, and historical, which were conjured up by a drive past Old Sarum to Stonehenge, were privileges which a child could appreciate, but which the most learned of scholars might have envied. When we returned to our inn in the evening, it was only an exchange, of pleasures. Sometimes he would translate to us choice morsels from Greek, Latin, Italian, or Spanish writers, with a vigor of language and vivacity of manner which communicated to his impromptu version not a little of the air and the charm of the original. Sometimes he would read from the works of Sterne, or SmoUet, or Fielding those scenes to which ladies might listen, but which they could not well venture to pick out for them- selves. And when we had heard enough of the siege of Carthagena in Roderick Random, or of Lieutenant Le Fevre's death in Tristram Shandy, we would fall to capping verses, or stringing rhymes, or amusing ourselves with some game devised for the occasion which often made a considerable demand upon the memory or invention of the players. Of these games only a single trace remains. One of- his nieces, unable to forecast the future of her sex, had expressed a regret that she could never hope to go in for a college examination. Macaulay thereupon produced what he was pleased to call a paper of questions in divinity, the contents of, which afford a curious proof how constantly the lighter aspects of English, sec- tarianism were present to his thoughts. The first three questions ran as follows : r. " And this is law, I will maintain Until my dying day, Sir, That whatsoever king shall reign, ril be the Vicar of Bray, Sir." " Then read Paul's epistles, You rotten Arminian. You won't find a passage To support your opinion," " When the lads of the village so merrily, ah I Sound their tabors. Til hand thee along. And verily, verijy, verily, ah 1 Thou and I will be first in ttie throng." 1847-49- LORD MACAULAY. I4I To what sects did the three persons belong who express their sentiments in the three passages cited above ? Is there anything in the third passage at variance with the usages of the sect to which it relates ? Which of those three sects do you prefer ? Which of the three bears the closest resemblance to Popery ? Where is Bray ? Through what reigns did the political life of the Vicar of Bray extend ? 2. Define "Jumper," "Shaker," "Ranter," "Dunker." 3. Translate the following passage into the Quakeric dialect : " You and Sir Edward Ryan breakfasted with me on Friday, the eleventh of December." Like all other men vf ho play with a will, and who work to a purpose, Ma- caulay was very well aware of the distinction between work and play. He did not carry on the business of his life by desultory efforts, or in the hap- py moments of an elegant inspiration. Men have disputed, and will long continue to dispute, whether or not his fame was deserved ; but no one who himself has written books will doubt that at any rate it was hardly earned. " Take at hazard," says ThackerayT-*" any three pages of the ■Essays or History: and, glimmering below the stream of the narrative, you, an average reader, see one, two, three, a half-score of allusions to other historic facts, characters, literature, poetry, with which you are ac- quainted. Your neighbor, who, has his reading and his little stock of lit- erature stowed away in his mind, shall detect more points, allusions, happy j touches, indicating, not only the prodigious memory and vast learning of i this master, but the wonderful industry, the honest, humble, previous toil ? of this great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence ; he travels a hundred niiles to make a line of description." That this praise, though high, was not excessive, is amply proved by that portion of Macaulay's papers which extends over the period when his History was in course of preparation. Justice demands that, even at the risk of being tedious, a, specimen should be given of the scrupulous care and the unflagging energy with which he conducted his investiga- tions. July 17, 1848. Dear Ellis, — Many thanks for your kindness. Pray let Dr. Hook know, when- ever you have an opportunity, how much I - am obliged to him.* The information which he has prociured for me, I am sorry to say, is not such as I can use. But you need not tell him so. I feel convinced that he has made some mistake ; for he sends me only a part of the Leeds burials in 1685 j and yet the number is double that of the Manchester burials in the same year. If the ordinary rules of calculation are applied to these data, it will be found th"at Leeds must, in 1685, have contained 16,000 souls or thereabouts. Now at the beginning of the American war Leeds contained only 16,000 souls appears from Dr. Hook's own letter. Nobody can suppose that there had been no increase between 1685 and 1775. Besides, neither York nor Exeter contained 16,000 inhabitants in r685, and nobody who knows the state of things at that time can believe that Leeds was then a greater town than * Mr. Ellis was Recorder of Leeds, and £)r. Hook its Vicar. 142 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XI. York or Exeter. Either some error has been committed, or else there was an extra- ordinary mortality at Leeds in 1685. In either case the numbers are useless for my purpose. Ever yours, T. B. M. July 27, 1848. Dear Ellis, — Many thanks. Wardell * is the man. He gives a much better thing than a list of burials ; a list of the houses returned by the hearthmoney collect- ors. It appears that Leeds contained, in 1663, just 1400 houses. And observe; all the townships are included. The average number of people to a house in a countiy town was, according to the best statistical writers of the seventeenth cen- tury, 4*3. If that estimate be just, Leeds must, in 1663, have contained about 6000 souls. As it increased in trade and wealth during the reign of Charles II., we may well suppose that in 1685 the population was near Sooo ; that is to say about as much as the population of Manchester. I had expected this result from observing that by the writers of that time Manchester and Leeds are always men- tioned as of about the same size. But this evidence proves to demonstration either that there was some mistake about the number of burials, or that the year 1685 was a singularly unhealthy year from which no inference can be drawn. .One person must have died in every third house within twelve months ; a rate of mor tality quite frightfuL Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. It must be remembered that these letters represent only a part of the trouble which Macaulay underwent in order to ensure the correctness of five and a half lines of print. He had a right to the feeling of self-satis- faction which, a month later on, allowed him to say : " I am working in- tensely, and, I hope, not unsuccessfully. My third chapter, which is the most difficult part of my task, is done, and, I think, not ill done." Any one who will turn to the description of the town of Leeds, and will read the six paragraphs that precede it and the three that follow it, may form a conception of the pains which those clear and flowing periods must have cost an author who expended on the pointing of a phrase as much conscientious research as would have provided some writers, who speak of Macaulay as showy and shallow, with at least half a dozen pages of ostentatious statistics. On the 8th of February, 1849, ^f'^r the publication of his first two vol- umes, he writes in his journal : " I have now made up my mind to change my plan about my History. I will first set myself to know the whole sub- ject; to get, by reading and travelling, a full acquaintance with William's reign. I reckon that it will take me eighteen months to do this. I must visit Holland, Belgium, Scotland, Ireland, France. The Dutch archives and French archives must be ransacked. I will see whether anything is •The author of the Municipal History of the Borough of Leeds. 1847-49- LORD MACA0LAY. 143 to be got from other diplomatic collections. I must see Londonderry, the Boyne, Aghrim, Limerick, Kinsale, Namur again, Landen, Steinkirk. I must turn over hundreds, thousands, of pamphlets. Lambeth, the Bod- leian and the other Oxford Libraries, * the Devonshire Papers, the Britisl- Museum, must be explored, and notes made : and then I shall go to work. When the materials are ready, and the History mapped out in my mind, I ought easily to write on an average, two of my pages daily. In two years from the time I begin writing I shall have more than finished my second part. Then I reckon a year for polishing, retouching, and print- ing. This brings me to the autumn of 1853. I like this scheme much. I began to-day with Avaux's despatches from Ireland, abstracted almost a whole thick volume, and compared his narrative with James's. There is much to be said as to these events." This programme was faithfully carried out. He saw Glencoe in rain and in sunshine ; " Yet even in sunshine what a place it is ! the very val- ley of the shadow of death." He paid a second visit to Killiecrankie for the special purpose of walking up' the old road which skirts the Garry, in order to verify the received accounts of the time spent by the English army in mounting the pass which they were to descend at a quicker rate. The notes made during his fortnight's tour through the scenes of the Irish war are equal in bulk to a first-class article in the Edinburgh or Quarterly Re- views. He gives four closely-written folio pages to the Boyne, and six to Londonderry. It ij interesting to compare the shape which each idea took as it arose in his mind with the shape in which he eventually gave it to the world. As he drove up the river from Drogheda he notices tha< * " October 2, 1854. — I called on the Warden of All Souls', who was the only soul in residence. He was most kind : got me the manuscript of Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, — seven thick volumes in cramped writing, — put me into a comfortable room ; and then left me to myself. I worked till past five ; then walked for an hour or so, dined at my inn, reading Cooper's ' Pathfinder.' " October 3. — I went to All Souls' at ten, and worked till five. Narcissus is dreadfully illegible in 1696 \ but that ma[tters the less, as by that time the newspapers had come in. T found some curious things. The Jacobites had a way of drinking treasonable healths Dy limping about the rooms with glasses at their lips. To limp meant L. Lewis XIV. I. James. M. Mary of Modena. P. Prince of Wales. ** October 4. — I have done with All Souls'. At ten I went to the Bodleian. I got out the Tanner MSS., and worked on them two or three hours. Then the Wharton MSS. Then the far more remarkable Nairne MSS. At three they rang me out. I do think that from ten to three is a very short time to keep so noble a library open. " October 5. — Pamphlets in abundance ; but pamphlets I can get elsewhere ; so I fell on the Naime MSS. again. I could amuse myself here ten years without a moment of ennui.'* • 144 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XI. "the country looked like a flourishing part of England. Cornfields, gar-, dens, woods, succeeded each other just as in Kent and Warwickshire." And again : " Handsome seats, fields of wheat and clover, noble trees : — it would be called a fine country even in Somersetshire." In the sixteenth chapter of the History these hasty jottings have been transmuted into the sentences : " Beneath lay a valley now so rich and so cheerful that an Englishman who gazes on it may imagine himself to be in one of the most highly favored parts of his own highly favored country. Fields of wheat, woodlands, meadows bright with daises and clover, slope gently down to the edge of the Boyne." Macaulay passed two days in Londonderry, and made the most of each minute of daylight He penetrated into every corner where there still lurked a vestige of the past, and called upon every inhabitant who was acquainted with any tradition worth the hearing. He drove through the suburbs ; he sketched a ground-plan of the streets ; alone or in company, he walked four times around the walls of the city for which he was to do what Thucydides had done for Platse. A few extracts from the volumin- ous records of those two days will give some notion of what Macaulay meant by saying that he had seen a town. " August 2,1, 1849. — I left a card for Captain Leach of the Ordnance Survey, and then wandered round the walls, and saw the cathedral. It has been spoiled by architects who tried to imitate the Gothic style with- out knowing what they were about.* The choir, however, is neat and in- teresting. Leach came, a sensible, amiable young officer, as far as I could judge. I went again round the walls with him. The circuit is a short one. It may be performed, I should say, in twenty minutes. Then we got into a car, crossed the wooden bridge, and took a view of the city from the opposite bank of the river. Walker's pillar f is well placed, and is not contemptible. The honest divine, in his canonicals, haranguing with vehemence, is at the top, and makes a tolerable figure at some distance. Then we crossed again, and drove to Boom Hall, so called from the mem- orable boom. The mistress of the house, a very civil lady, came out and acted as Cicerone. We walked down to the very spot where the boom was fastened. It was secured by a chain which passed through tlie * " On the highest ground stood tfie Cathedral, a church which, though erected when the secret of Gothic architecture was lost, and though ill qualified to sustain a companion with the awful temples of the middle ages, is not without grace and dignity." — Macau- lay's History of England, Chapter XII. t " A lofty pillar, rising from a bastion which bore during many weeks the heaviest fire of the enemy, is seen far up and far down the Foyle. On the summit is the statue of Walker, such as when, in the last and most terrible emergency, his eloquence roused the fainting courage of his brethren. In one hand he grasps a Bible. The other, pointing down the river, seems to direct the eyes of his famished audience to the English top- masts in the distant bay." 1847-49- LORD MACAULAY. 145 earth of the bank, and was attached to a huge stone. Our hospitable guide would insist that an iron ring fixed in one of the rocks close by had been part of the apparatus to secure the boom. I felt very sceptical and my doubts were soon changed into certainties ; for I lifted up my eyes, and, about fifty yards off, I saw just such another ring fastened to another rock. I did not tell the good lady what I thought, but as soon as we had taken our leave, I told Leach that these rings were evidently put there for the same purpose, that of securing shipping. He quite agreed with me and seemed to admire my sagacious incredulity a great deal more than it at all deserved." "Saturday, September i. — As soon as I had breakfasted, Sir R. Fergu- son came, and walked round the walls with me. Then he took me to the reading-room, where I met Captain Leach, and a Mr. Gilraour, a great man here. They walked with rae round the walls, which I have thus gone over four times. The bastions are planted as gardens. The old pieces of ordnance lie among the flowers and shrubs : strange antique guns of the time of Elizabeth and Charles the first : Roaring Meg, a present of the Fishmongers with the date 1642 ; another piece of the same date given by the Vintners ; and another by the Merchant Tailors. The citizens are to the last degree jealous of the integrity of these walls.* No improvement which would deface them would be proposed without raising a storm : and I do not blame them. Every stone has some fact, or at least some legend connected with it. I found no difficulty, sometimes, in separating the facts from the legends. The picture of the whole is in my mind, and I do not know that there would be any advantge in putting the plan on paper." Put it on paper, however, he did ; and indeed, when employed upon his History, he habitually preserved in writing such materials as were gathered elsewhere than from the shelves of his own library, instead of continuing the facile, though hazardous course, which he had pursued as a Reviewer, and trusting to his memory alone. The fruits of many a long hour passed among the Pepysian bookcases, the manuscripts at Althorp, or the archives of the French War Office, were garnered into a multitude of pocketbooks of every possible shape and color. Of these a dozen still remain, ready to the hands of any among Macaulay's remote heirs who * " The wall is carefully preserved : nor would any plea of health or convenience be held by the inhabitants sufficient to justify the demolition of that sacred enclosure which, in the evil time, gave shelter to their race and their religion. * • * It is impossible not to respect the sentiment which indicates itself by these tokens. It is a sentiment which belongs to the higher and purer part of human nature, and which adds not a little to the strength of States. A people which takes no pride in the noble achievments of remote an- cestors will never achieve anything to be remembered with pride by remote descendants. Vet it is impossible for the moralist or the statesman to look with unmixed complacency on the solemnities with which Londonderry commemorates her deliverance, and on the honors which she pays to those who saved her." Vol. II.— 10. 146 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XI. may be tempted to commit the posthumous treachery of publishing the commonplace book of a great writer. Hij industry has had its reward. The ejctent and exactness of his knowledge have won him the commendation of learned and candid writers who have travelled over ground which he has trod before. Each, in his own particular field, recognizes the high quality of Macaulay's work ; and there is no testimonial so valuable as the praise of an enlightened spe- cialist. Such praise has been freely given by Mr. Bagehot, the Editor of the Economist, in that delightful treatise which goes by the name of " Lombard Street." He commences one important section of the book with a sentence in which, except for its modesty, I am unwilling to find a fault. " The origin of the Bank of England has been told by Macaulay, and it is never wise for an ordinary writer to tell again what he has told so much better." And Mr. Buckle, who was well acquainted with thfe social manners of our ancestors as is Mr. Bagehot with their finance, appends the following note to what is perhaps the most interesting chapter in his History of Civilization : " Everything Mr. Macaulay has said on the contempt into which the clergy fell in the reign of Charles the Second is perfectly accurate ; * and, from evidence which I have collected, I know that this very able writer, of whose immense research few people are competent judges, has rather under-stated the case than over-stated it. On several subjects I should venture to differ from Mr. Macaulay ; but I cannot refrain from expressing my admiration of his unwearied diligence, of the consummate skill with which he has arranged his materials, and of the noble love of liberty which animates his entire work. These are qualities which will long survive the aspersions of his puny detractors, — men who, in point of knowledge and ability, are unworthy to loosen the' shoe-latchet of him they foolishly attack." The main secret of Macaulay's success lay in this, that to extraordinary fluency and facility he united patient, minute, and persistent diligence. He well knew, as Chaucer knew before him, that There is na workeman Tliat can bothe worken wel and hastilie. This must be done at leisure parfaitlie. If his method of composition ever comes into fashidn, books probably will be better, and undoubtedly will be shorter. As soon as he had got into his head all the information relating to any particular episode in his History (such, for instance, as Argyll's expedition to Scotland, or the * " I shall soon have done this ecclesiastical part of my narrative. Some people may imagine that I infer too much from slight indications ; but no one who has not soaked his mind with the transitory literature of the day is really entitled to judge." — Macaulay's Journal. 1847-49- LORD MACAULAY. attainder of Sir John Fenwick, or the calling in of the dipped c< he would sit down and write off the whole story at a headlongl, sketching in the Outlines under the genial and audacious impulse of a first conception ; and securing in black and white each idea, and epithet, and turn of phrase, as it flowed straight from his busy brain to his rapid fingers. His manuscript, at this stage, to the eyes of any one but him- self, appeared to consist of column after column of dashes and flourishes, in which a straight line, with a half-formed letter at each end, and an- other in the middle, did duty for a word. It was from amidst a chaos of such hieroglyphics that Lady Trevelyan, after her brother's death, deci- phered that account of the last days of William which fitly closes the History.* As soon as Macaulay had finished his rough draft he began to fill it in at the rate of six sides of foolscap every morning ; written in so large a hand, and with such a multitude of erasures, t that the whole six pages were, on an average, compressed into two pages of print This portion he called his " task," and he was never quite easy unless he completed it . daily. More he seldom sought to accomplish ; for he had learned by long experience that this was as much as he could do at his best ; and except when at his best, he never would work at all. " I had no heart to write," he says in his journal of March 6, 1851. "I am too self-indulgent in this matter, it may be : and yet I attribute much of the success which I have had to my habit of writing only when I am in the humor, and of stopping as soon as the thoughts and words cease to flow fast There are therefore few lees in my wine. It is all the cream of the bottle." t * Lord Carlisle relates how Mr. Prescott, as a brother historian, was much interested by the sight of these manuscript sheets, " in which words are as much abbreviated as ' cle for 'castle.'" t Mr. Woodrow, in the preface to his collection of the Indian Education miniites, says : " Scarcely five consecutive lines in any of Macaulay's minutes will be found un- marked by blots or corrections. He himself, in a minute dated November 3, 1835, says, * After blotting a great deal of paper I can recommend nothing but a reference to the Gov- emor^Generai in Council.* My copyist was always able instantly to single out his writing by the multiplicity of corrections and blots which mark the page. These corrections are now exceedingly valuable. When the first master of the English language corrects his own composition, which appeared faultless before, the correction must be based on the highest rules of criticism." t In small things as well as in great, Macaulay held that what was worth doing at all was worth doing welK He had promised to compose an epitaph for his uncle, Mr. Bab- ington. In June, 1851, he writes ; " My delay has not arisen from any want of respect or tenderness for my uncle's memory. I loved and honored him most sincerely. But the truth is, that I have not been able to satisfy myself. People who are not accustomed to this sort of literary exercise often imagine that a man can do it as he can work a sum in rule of three, or answer an invitation to dinner. But these short compositions, in which every word ought to tell strongly, and in which there ought to be at once some point and 148 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XI. Macaulay never allowed a sentence to pass muster until it was as good as he could make it. He thought little of recasting a chapter in order to obtain a more lucid arrangement, and nothing whatever of reconstructing a paragraph for the sake of one happy stroke or apt illustration. What- ever the worth of his labor, at any rate it was a labor of love. Antonio Stradivari has an eye That winces at false work, and loves the true. Leonardo da Vinci would walk the whole length of Milan that he might alter a single tint in his picture of the Last Supper. Napoleon kept the returns of his army under his pillow at night, to refer to in case he was sleepless ; and would set himself problems at the Opera, while the Over- ture was playing. " I have ten thousand men at Strasburg; fifteen thou- sand at Magdeburg ; twenty thousand at Wurtzburg. By what stages must they march so as to arrive at Ratisbon on three successive days ? " What his violins were to Stradivarius, -and his fresco to Leonardo, and his campaigns to Napoleon, that was his History to Macaulay. How fully it occupied his thoughts did not appear in his conversation ; for he steadily and successfully resisted any inclination to that most subtle form of self- ishness, which often renders the period of literary creation one long pen- ance to all the members of an author's family. But none the less his book was always in his mind ; and seldom indeed did he pass a day or turp over a volume without lighting upon a suggestion which could be turned to useful purpose. In May, 1851, he writes : " I went to the Exhi- bition and lounged there during some hours. I never knew' a sight which extorted from all ages, classes, and nations, such unanimous and genuine admiration. I felt a glow of eloquence, or something like it, come on me from the mere effect of the place, and I thought of some touches which will greatly improve my Steinkirk.'' It is curious to trace whence was derived the fire which sparkles through every line of terse and ani- mated narrative, which has preserved from unmerited ' oblivion the story of a defeat more glorious to the British arms than not a few of our vic- tories. Macaulay deserved the compliment which Cecil paid to Sir Walter Raleigh as the supreme of commendations : " I know that he can labor terribly." One example will serve for many in order to attest the pains which were ungrudgingly bestowed upon every section of the History. much feeling, are not to be produced by mere labor. There must be a, concurrence o£ luck with industry. It is natural that' those who have not considered the matter should think that a man, who has sometimes written ten or twelve effective pages in a day, must certainly be able.to write five lines in less than a year. But it is not so ; and if you think over the really good epitaphs which you have read, and consider how small a proportion they bear to the thousands that have been written by clever men, you will own I am right." 1847-49- LORD MACAULAY. 1 49 " March 2z. — To-morrow I must begin upon a difficult and paipful subject, Glencoey " March 23. — I looked at some books about Glencoe. Then to the Athenaeum, and examined the Scotch Acts of Parliament on the same subject. Walked a good "way, meditating. 1 see my line. Home, and wrote a little, but thought and pre- jfered more." '■''March 25. — Wrote a little. Mr. Lovell Reeve, editor of the Literary Ga- zette, called, and offered to defend me about Penn. I gave him some memoranda. Then to Glencoe again, and worked all day with energy, pleasure, and, I think, suc- cess." " March 2b. — Wrote much. I have seldom worked to better purpose than on these three days." '■''March 27. — After breakfast I wrote a little, and then walked through April weather io Westbourne Terrace, and saw my dear little nieces.* Home and wrote more. I am getting on fast with this most horrible story. It is even worse than * I thought. The Master of Stair is a perfect lago." " March 28. — I went to the Museum, and made some extracts afeout Glen- coe." On the 29th, 30th, and 31st of March, and the ist and 2d of April, there is nothing relating to the History except the daily entry, " Wrote." " April 3. — Wrote. This Glencoe business is infernal." " April 4. — Wrote ; walked round by London Bridge, and wrote again. To-day I finished the massacre. This episode will, I hope, be interesting." " April b. — Wrote to good purpose." " April 7. — Wrote and corrected. The account of the massacre is now, I think, finished." " April 8. — I went to the Museum, and turned over the Gazette de Paris, and the Dutch despatches of 1692. I learned much from the errors of the French Ga- zette, and from the profound silence of the Dutch ministers on the subject of Glen- coe. Home, and wrote." " April 9. — A rainy and disagreeable day. ' I read a Life of Romney, which I picked up uncut in Chancery Lane yesterday : a quarto. That there should be two showy quarto lives of a man who did not deserve a duodecimo I Wrote hard, re- writing Glencoe." " April JO. — Finished Don Carlos. I have been long about it ; but twenty pages a day in bed while I am waiting for the newspaper will serve to keep up my German. A fine play, with all its faults. SchillerVgood and evil genius struggled in it ; as Shakespeare's good and evil genius, to compare greater things with small- er, stniggled in Romeo and Juliet. Carlos is half by the author of the Robbers, and half by the author of Wallenstien ; as Romeo and Juliet is half by the author of Love's Labor Lost and half by the author of Othello. After Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare never went back, nor Schiller after Carlos, Wrote all the momuig, ■ and then to Westbourne Terrace. I chatted, played chess and dined there." * In the summer of 1S49 ^y father changed house from Clapha^i C^pmion to 30 West* bourne Terrace. 150 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XT. " April It. — Wrote all the morning. Ellis came to dinner. I read him Glen- coe. He did not seem to like it much, which vexed me though I am not partial to ■ it. It is a good thing to find sincerity." That author must have had a strong head, and no very exaggerated self-esteem, who while fresh from a literary success which had probably never been equalled, and certainly never surpassed, at a time when the book-sellers were waiting with almost feverish eagerness for anything that he chose to give them, — spent nineteen working days over thirty octavo pages, and ended by humbly acknowledging that the result was not to his mind. When at' length, after repeated revisions, Macaulay had satisfied him- self that his writing was as good as he could make it, he would submit it to the severest of all tests, that of being read aloud to others. Though he never ventured on this experiment in the presence of any except his own family, and his friend Mr. Ellis, it may well be believed that even within that restricted circle, he had no difficulty in finding hearers. " I read," he says, in December, 1849, " a portion of ray History to Hannah and Trevelyan with great effect. Hannah cried, and Trevelyan kept awake. I think what I have done as good as any part of the former volumes : and ' so thinks Ellis." Whenever one of his books was passing through the press, Macaulay extended his indefatigable industry and his scrupulous precision to the minutest mechanical drudgery of the literary call ing. There was no end to the trouble that he devoted to matters which most authors are only top glad to leave to the care and experience of their publisher. He could not rest until the lines were level to a hair's breadth, and the punctuation correct to a comma; until every paragraph concluded with a telling sentence, and every sentence flowed like running water.* I remember the pleasure with which he showed us a communication from one of the * Macaulay writes to Mr. Longman about the Edition of 1858 : " I have no more corrections to make at present. I am inclined to hope that the book will be as nearly faultless, as to typographical execution, as any work of equal extent that is to be found in the world." On another occasion he says : "I am very unwilling to seem captious about such a work as an Index. By all means let Mr. go on. But offer him, with all delicacy and courtesy, from me this suggestion. I would advise him to have very few heads, except proper names. A few there must be, such as Convocation, Nonjurors, Bank of England, National Debt. These are heads to which readers who wish for information on those subjects will naturally turn. But I think that Mr. will, on consideration, perceive that such heads as Priestcraft, Priesthood, Party Spirit, Insurrection, War, Bible, Crown, Controversies, Dissent, are quite useless. Nobody will ever look at them ; and, if every passage in which party-spirit, dissent, the art of war, and the power of the Crown are- mentioned is to be noticed in the Index, the size of the volumes will be doubled. The best rule is to keep close to proper names, and never to deviate from that rule without some special occasion. 1847-49- LORD MACAULAY. 151 readers in Mr. Spottiswoode's office, who respectfully informed hitu that there was one expression, and one only, throughout the two volumes of which he did not catch the meaning at a glance. And it must be remem- bered that Macaulay's punctilious attention to details was prompted by an honest wish to increase the enjoyment, and smooth the difficulties, of those who did him the honor to buy his books. His was not the accuracy of those who judge it necessary to keep up a distinction in small matters, between the learned and the unlearned. As little of a purist as it is possible for a scholar to be, his distaste for Mr. Grote's exalted standard of orthography interfered sadly with his admiration for the judgment, the power, and the knowledge of that truly great historian. He never could reconcile himself to seeing the friends of his boyhood figure as Kleon, and Alkibiades, and Poseidon, and Odysseus ; and I tremble to think of the outbursts of indig- nation with which, if he had lived to open some of the more recent editions of the Latin poets, he would have lighted upon the Dialogue with Lydia, or the Ode to Lyce, pirinted with a small letter at the head of each familiar line. Macaulay's correspondence in the summer and autumn of 184S is full of allusions to his great work, the first volumes of which were then in the hands of the publisher. On the 22d of June he writes to Mr. Longman : " If you wish to say, ' History of England from the Accession of James II.,' I have no objection ; but I cannot consent to put in anything about an Introductory Essay. There is no Introductory Essay, unless you call the first Book of Davila, and the first three chapters of Gibbon, Introductory Essays.'' In a letter to his sister Selina he says : " Longman seems content with his bargain. Jeffrey, Ellis, and Hannah all agree in predict- ing that the book will succeed. I ought to add Marian Ellis's judgment ; for her father tells me that he cannot get the proof-sheets out of her hand. These things keep up my spirits : yet I see every day more and more clearly how far my performance is below excellence." On the 24th of October, 1848, he writes to my mother : " I do not know whether you have heard how pleasant a day Margaret passed with me. .We had a long walk, a great deal of chat, a very nice dinner, and a quiet, happy evening. That was my only holiday last week. I work with scarcely any intermis- sion from seven in the morning to seven in the afternoon, and shall pro- bably continue to do so during the next ten days. Then my labors will become lighter, and, in about three weeks, will completely cease. There will still be a fortnight before publication. I have armed myself with all my philosopliy for the event of a failure. Jeffrey, Ellis, Longman; and Mrs. Longman seem to think that there is no chance of such a catastrophe. I might add Macleod, who has read the third chapter, and professes to be on the whole better pleased than with any other history that he has read. The state of my own mind is this : when I compare my book with what Z IS2 LIFK AND LETTERS OF CH. XI. imagine history ouglit to be, I feel dejected and ashamed ; but when I compare it with some_ histories which have a high repute, I feel reassured." • He might have spared his fears. Within three days after its first appearance the fortune of the book was already secure. It was greeted by an ebullition of national pride and satisfaction which delighted Macaulay's ^ friends, and reconciled to him most who remained of his old political adversaries. Other hands than his have copied and preserved the letters of congratulation and approval which for months together flowed in upon him from every quarter of the compass ; but prudence forbids me to admit into these pages more than a very few samples of a species of correspondence which forms the most uninviting portion of only too many literary biographies. It is, however, worth while to reproduce the phrases in which Lord Halifax expressed the general feeling that the History was singularly well timed. "I have finished," he writes, "your second volume, and I cannot tell you how grateful all lovers of truth, all lovers of liberty, all lovers of order and of civilized freedom, ought to be to you for having so set before them the History of our Revolution of 1688. It has come at a moment when the lessons it inculcates ought to produce great practical effects on the conduct of the educated leaders of what is now going on abroad ; but I fear that the long education in the working of a constitution such as ours is not to be supplied by any reading or meditation. Jameses we may find ; but Europe shows no likeness of William." " My dear Macaulay," says Lord Jeffrey, " the mother that bore you, had she been yet alive, could scarcely have felt prouder or happier than I do at this outburst of your graver fame. I have long had a sort of paren- tal ■interest in your glory ; and it is now mingled with a feeling of defer- ence to your intellectual superiority which can only consort, I take it, with the character of a female parent." A still older friend even than Lord Jeffrey, — Lord Auckland, the Bishop of Sodor and Man, — wrote of him in more racy, but not less affectionate, language. " Tom Macaulay should be embalmed and kept. I delight in his book, though luckily I am not half through it, for I have just had an ordination, and my house is pervaded by Butler's Analogy and young priests. Do you think that Tom is not a little hard on old Cranmer ? He certainly brings him down a peg or two in my estimation. I had also hated Cromwell more than I now do ; for I always agree with Tom ; and it saves trouble to agree with him at once, because he is sure to make you do so at last. Since I have had this book I have hated the best Insular friend we haTjg for coming in and breaking up the evening. At any other crisis we should have embraced'him on both sides of his face." Among all the jndclsnts gonn§cted with the publication of his History 1847-49' LORD MACAULAY. 153 nothing pleased Macaulay so much as the gratification that he contrived to give to Maria Edgeworth, as a small return for the enjoyment which, during more than forty years, he had derived from her charming writ- ings.* That lady who was then in her eighty-third winter, and within a few months of her death, says, in the course of a letter addressed to Dr. Holland : " And now, my good friend, I require you to believe that all the admiration I have expressed of Macaulay's work is quite uninfluenced by the self-satisfaction, vanity, pride, surprise, I had in finding my own name in a note 1111! I had formed my opinion, and expressed it to my friends who were reading the "book to me, before I came to that note.t Moreover, there was a mixture of shame, and a twinge of pain, with the pleasure and the pride I felt in having a line in this immortal History given to me, when there is no mention of Sir Walter_Scott throughout the work, even in places where it seems impossible that the historian could resist paying the becoming tribute which genius owes, and loves to pay, to genius. Perhaps he reserves himself for the '45 ; and I hope in heaven it is so. Meanwhile be so good as to make my grateful and deeply felt thanks to the great author for the honor which he has done me." Macaulay's journal will relate the phases and gradations which marked the growing popularity of his book, in so far as that popularity could be measured by the figures in a publisher's ledger. But, over and above Mr. Longman's triumphant bulletins, every day brought to his ears a fresh indication of the hold which the work had taken on the public mind. Some of the instances which he has recorded are quaint enough. An officer of good family had been committed for a fortnight to the House of Correction for knoclcing down a policeman. The authorities inter- cepted the prisoner's French novels, but allowed him to have the Bible, and Macaulay's History.}: At Dukinfield, near Manchester, a gentleman who thought that there would be a certain selfishness in keeping so great a pleasure to himself, invited his poorer neighbors to attend every even- ing after their work was finished, and read the History aloud to them * Macaulay on ore occasion pronounces that the scene in the Absentee, where Lord Colambre discovers himself to his tenantry and to their oppressor, is the best thing of the sort since the opening of the Twenty-second book of t]ie Odyssey. t This note is in the sixth chapter, at the bottom of a page describing the habits of the old native Irish proprietors in the seventeenth century. '* Miss Edgeworth's King Corny belongs to a later and much more civilized generation ; but whoever has studied that admirable portrait can form some notion of what King Comy's great-grandfather must have been.'* X London gossip went on to say that the gallant captain preferred picking oakum to reading about the Revolution of 168S : gossip which avenged Guicciardini for -the anec- dote told by Macaulay in the second paragraph of his Essay on Burleigh. *' There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his choice be- tween Guicciardi-ii And the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Fisa nas too much for him. He changed his mind, and went to the oar," 154 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XI. from beginning to end. At the dose of the last meeting, one of the audience rose, and moved, in north-country fashion, a vote of thanks to Mr. Macaulay, "for having written a history which working men can understand." * The people of the United States were even more eager than the peo- ple of the United Kingdom to read about their common ancestors ; with the advantage that, from the absence of an international copyright, they were able to read about them for next to nothing. On the 4th of April, 1849, Messrs. Harper of New York wrote to Macaulay : " We beg you to accept herewith a copy of our cheap edition of your work. There have been three other editions published by different houses, and another is now in preparation ; so there will be six different editions in the market. We have already sold 40,000 copies, and we presume that over 60,000 copies have been disposed of. Probably, within three months of this time, the sale will amount to two hundred thousand copies. No work, of any kind, has ever so completely taken our whole country by storm." An indirect compliment to the celebrity of the book was afforded by a des- perate, and almost internecine, controversy which raged throughout the American newspapers as to whether the Messrs. Harper were justified in having altered Macaulay's spelling to suit the orthographical canons laid down in Noah Webster's dictionary. Nor were the enterprizing publishers of Paris and Brussels behind- hand in catering for readers whose appetite for cheap literature made them less particular than they should have been as to the means by which they gratified it. " Punch " devoted half one of his columns to a serio- comic review of Galignani's edition of the History. " This is an extraordinary work. A miracle of cheapness. A handsomely printed book, in royal octavo (if anything be royal in republican France), and all at the low charge of soma js. 6d. of English money. Many thdusands of this impres- sion of Mr. Macaulay's works — it must delight his amour prop re as an author to know it — have been circulated in England. ' Sir,' said a Boulogne iDookseller, his voice slightly trembling with emotion, * Sir, it is impossible to supply travellers ; but we expect a few thousand kilogrammes more of the work by to-morrow's train, and then, for a week, we may rub on. ' It is cheering to find that French, Bel- gian, and American booksellers are doing their best to scatter abroad, and at home too, the seeds of Englisli literature. ' Sir, ' said the French bookseller, holding up the tome, ' you will smuggle it thus : Divide the book in two ; spread it over your breast ; button your waistcoat close ; and, when you land, look the pitcure of inno- cence in the face of the searchers. ' " It is a characteristic trait in Macaulay that, as soon as his last proof- sheet had been despatched to the printers, he at once fell to reading a course of historians from Herodotus downwards. The sense of his own * Macaulay says in his journal : " I really prjze -this vote.*' 1847-49- LORD MACAULAY. 155 inferiority to Thucydides did more to put him out of conceit witli him- self than all the unfavorable comments which were bestowed upon him (sparingly enough, it must be allowed), by the newspapers and reviews of the day. He was even less thin-skinned as a writer than as a poli- tician. When he felt conscious that he had done his very best, — when all that lay within his own power had been faithfully and diligently performed, — it was not his way to chafe under hostile criticism, or to waste time and temper by engaging in controversies on the subject of his own works. Like Dr. Johnson, " he had learned, both from his own observation, and from literary history, in which he was deeply read, that the place of books in the public estimation is fixed, not by what is written about them, but by what is written in them ; and that an author whose works are likely to live is very unwise if he stoops to wrangle with detractors whose works are certain to die." " I have never been able," Macaulay says in a letter dat- ed December, 1849, " t° discover that a man is at all the worse for being attacked. One foolish line of his own does him more harm than the ablest pamphlets written against him by other people. It must be owned that, as far as his History was concerned, Macaulay had not occasion to draw largely upon his stock of philosophy. Some few notes of disapprobation and detraction might here and there be heard ; but they were for the most part too faint to mar the effect produced by so full a chorus of eulogy; and the only loud one among them was harsh and discordant to that degree that all the bystanders were fain to stop their ears. It was generally believed that Mr. Croker had long been praying** that he might be spared to settle accounts with his old antagonist. His opportunity had now arrived ; and people gave themselves up with a safer conscience to the fascination of the historian's narrative, because the Quarterly Review would be certain to inform them of all that could be said either against the book or against the author. But Macaulay's good for- tune attended him even here. He could not have fared better h^d he been privileged to choose his own adversary, and to select the very wea- pons with which the assault was to be conducted. After spending four most finprofitable months in preparing bis thunder, Mr. Croker discharged it in an article so bitter, so foolish, and, above all, so tedious, that scarce- ly anybody could get through it, and nobody was convinced by it. Many readers, who looked to professional critics for an authoritative opinion on the learning and accuracy of a contemporary writer, came to the not un- reasonable conclusion that the case against Macaulay had irretrievably broken down, when they saw how little had been made of it by so acrim- onious and so long-winded an advocate. Nothing would have opened the pages of the Quarterly Review to that farrago of angry trash except the deference with which its proprietor thought himself bound to treat one, who, forty years before, had assisted Canning to found the periodical. 156 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XI. The sole effect which the article produced upon the public was to set it reading Macaulay's review of Croker's Boswell, in order to learn what the injury might be which, after the lapse of eighteen years, had sting enough left to provoke a veteran writer, politician, and man of the world into such utter oblivion of common sense, common fairness, and common courtesy. The Whig press, headed by the Times and the Scotsman, hastened to defend the historian : and the Tory press was at least equally forward to disown the critic. A subsequent page in this volume will show that Croker's arrow did not go very far home. Indeed, in the whole of Macaulay's journal for the year 1849 there can be detected but one single indication of his having possessed even the germ of an author's sensi- bility. "February 17. — I went to the Athenaeum, and saw in a weakly liter- ary journal a silly, spiteful attack on what I have said about Procopius in the first pages of my first chapter. I was vexed for a moment, but only for a moment. Both Austin and Mahon had looked into Procopius, and were satisfied that I was right ; as I am. I shall take no notice." A year later he wrote to Mr. Longman : " I have looked through the tenth volume of Lingard's History in the new edition. I am not aware that a single error has been pointed out by Lingard in my narrative. His esti- mate of men and of institutions naturally differs from mine. There is no direct reference to me, but much pilfering from me, and a little carping at me. I shall take no notice either of the pilfering or the carping. " After once his judgment had become mature, Macaulay, at all times, and un- der all temptations, acted in strict accordance with Bentley's famous maxim (which, in print and talk alike, he dearly loved to quote), that no man was ever written down, except by himself.* " Lord Macaulay," said an acute observer, who knew him well, " is an almost^ unique instance of a man of transcendant force of character, mighty will, mighty energy, giving all that to literature instead of to practical * Bentley's career was one long exemplification oE his famous saying. In the year 1856 Macaulay writes, after what was perhaps his tenth reperusal of Bishop Monk's life of the great critic : " Bentley seems to me an eminent instance of the extent to which in- tellectual powers of amost rare and admirable kind mavhp impaired by moral defects. It was not on account of any obscuration of his memory, or any of decay in his inventive facul- ties, that he fell from the very first place among critics to the third or fourth rank. It was his insolence, his arrogance, his boundless confidence in himself, and disdain of everybody else, that lowered him. Instead of taking subjects which he thoroughly undei^ stood, and which he would have treated better than all the other scholars in Europe to- gether, he would take subjects which he had but superficially studied. He ceased to give his whole mind to what he wrote. He scribbled a dozen sheets of Latin at a sitting, setit them to the press without reading them over, and then, as was natural, had to bear the baiting of word-catching pedants who were on the watch for all his blunders." 1847-49- LORD MACAULAY. 157 work ; " and it cannot be denied that, in his vocation of historian, he gave proof of qualities which would have commanded success in almost any field. To sacrifice the accessory to the principal ; to plan an extensive and arduous task, and to pursue it without remission and without misgiv- ing ; to withstand resolutely all counter-attractions, whether they come in the shape of distracting pleasures or of competing duties ; — such are the indispensable conditions for attaining to that high and sustained excellence of artistic performance which, in the beautiful words of George Eliot, "must be wooed with industrious thought and patient renunciation of small desires." At a period when the mere rumor of his presence would have made the fortune of an evening in any drawing-room in London, Macaulay consented to see less and less, and at length almost nothing, of general society, in order that he might devote all his energies to the work which he had in hand. He relinquished that House of Commons which the first sentence of his speeches hushed into silence, and the first five minutes filled to overflowing. He watched, without a shade of regret, or a twinge of envy, men, who would never have ventured to set their claims against his, rise one after another to the summit of the State. " I am sincerely glad," said Sir James Graham, " that Macaulay has so greatly succeeded. The sacrifices which he has made to literature, de- serve no ordinary triumph ; and, when the statesmen of the present day are forgotten, the historian of the Revolution will be remembered." Among men of letters there were some who maintained that the fame of Macaulay's volumes exceeded their deserts ; but his former rivals and colleagues in Parliament, one and all, rejoiced in the prosperous issue of an undertaking for the sake of which he had surrendered more than oth- ers could ever hope to win. 158 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XII, CHAPTER XII. 1848-1852 Extracts from Macaulay's diary — Herodotus — Mr, Roebuck — Anticipations of failure and success — Appearance of the History — Progress of the sale — The Duke of Weliingtoa — Lord Palmerston — Letters to Mr. Ellis — Lord Brougham on"^uripides — Macau- lay is elected Lord Ractor of Glasgow University — His inauguraladdress — Good resolutions — Croker — Dr. Parr — The Historical Professorship at Cambridge — Byron- Tour in Ireland — Althorp — Lord Sidmouth — LordThurlow — Death of Jeffrey — Mr. Richmond's portrait of Macaulay — Dinner at the Palate — Robert Montgomery- Death of Sir Robert Peel— The Prelude— Ventnor— Letters to Mr. Ellis— PlautuS— Fra Paolo— Gibbon— The Papal Bull — Death of Henry Hallam— Porson's Letters to Archdeacon Travis — Charles Mathews — Windsor Castle— Macaulay sets up his carriage — Opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851 — Cobbett — Malvern — Letters to Mr. Ellis — Wilhelm Meister — The battle of Worcester— Palmerston leaves the ^ Foreign Office — Macaulay refuses an offer of the Cabinet — Windsor Castle — King John — Scene of the Assassination Plot — Royal Academy dinner. NOVEMBER 18, 1848. A/dany.—Aiter the lapse of more than nine years I begin my journal again.* What a change I I have been, since the last lines were written, a member of two Parliaments, and of two Cabinets. I have published several volumes with success. I Jiave escaped from Parliament, and am living in the way best suited to my temper. I lead a college life in London, with the comforts of domestic life near me ; for Hannah and her children are very dear to me. I have an easy fortune. I have finished the first two volumes of my History. • It must be remembered that whatever was in Macaulay's mind may be found in his diary. That diary was written, throughout, with the unconscious candor of a man who freely and frankly notes down remarks which he expects to be read by himself alone ; and with the copiousness natural to one who, except where it was demanded for the purpose of literary effect, did not willingly compress anything which he had to say. It may, therefore, be hoped that the extracts presented in these volumes possess those qualities in which, as he has himself pronounced, the special merit of a private journal lies. In a letter dated August 4, 1853, he says : " The article on the Life of Moore is spiteful. Moore, however, afforded but too good an opportunity to a malevolent assailant. His diary, it is evident to me, was written to be published, and this destroys the charm proper to diaries." 1848-52. LORD MACAULAY. 1 59 Yesterday the last sheets went to America, and within a fortnight, I hope, the publication will take place in London. I am pretty well satisfied. As compared with excellence, the work is a failure : but as compared with other similar books I cannot think it so. We shall soon know what the world says. To-day I enjoyed my new liberty, after having been most severely worked during three months in finishing my History and correct- ing proofs. I rose at half after nine, read at breakfast Fearon's Sketches of America, and then finished Lucian's critique on the bad historians of his time, and felt my own withers unwrung. Ellis came to dinner at seven. I gave him a lobster curry, woodcock, and macaroni. I think that I will note dinners as honest Pepys did." " Monday^ November 20. — Read Pepys at breakfast, and then sate down to Herodotus, and finished Melpomene at a sitting. I went out, looked into the Athenaeum, and walked about the streets for some time ; came home, and read Terpsichore, and began Erato. I never went through Herodotus at such a pace before. He is an admirable artist in many respects J but undoubtedly his arrangement is faulty." " Nmiember 23. — I received to-day a translation of Kant from Ellis's friend at Liverpool. I tried to read it, but found it utterly unintelligible, just as if it had been written in Sanscrit. Ni>t one word of it gave me anything like an id6a except a Latin quotation from Persius. It seems to me that it ought to be possible to explain a true theory of metaphysics in words which I can understand. I can understand Locke, and Berkeley, and Hume, and Reid, and Stewart. I can understand Cicero's Academies, and most of Plato : and it seems odd that in a book on the elements of metaphysics by a Liverpool merchant I should not be able to comprehend a word. I wrote my acknowledgments with a little touch of the Socratic irony. " Roebuck called and talked to me about the West Riding. He asked me to stand. I told him that it was quite out of the question ; that I had made up my mind never again to make the smallest concession to fanatical clamor on the subject of Papal endowment. I would not certainly advise the Government to propose such endowment, but I would say nothing tending to flatter the absurd prejudices which exist on that subject. I thanked him for his goodwill, and asked him to breakfast on Monday. I find that Macculloch and Hastie have a wager on the sale of my History, Macculloch has betted that it will sell better than Lord Campbell's book. Hastie bets on Lord Campbell. Green of Longman's house is to be arbiter.'' "November 25. — Read my book while dressing, and thought it better than Campbell's, with all deference to Mr. Hastie. But these things are a strange lottery. After breakfast I went to the British Museum. I was in the chair. It is a stupid, useless way of doing business; An l6o LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XII. hour was lost in reading trashy minutes. All boards are bad, and this is the worst of boards. If I live, I will see whether I cannot work a reform here. Home, and read Thucydides. I admire him more than ever. He is the great historian. The others, one may hope to match : him, never." " Nmember 21), 1848, Wednesday. — I was shocked to learn the death of poor Charles BuUer. It took me quite by surprise. I could almost cry for him.* I found copies of my History on my table. The suspense must now soon be over. I read my book, and Thucydides's, which, I am sorry to say, I found much better than mine. " Nmember 30. — Tufnell t sent for me, and proposed Liskeard to me. I hesitated; and went home, leaving the matter doubtful. Roebuck called at near seven to ask about my intentions, as he' had also been thought of. This at once decided me ; and I said that I would not stand, and wrote to Tufnell telling him so. Roebuck has on more than one occasion behaved to me with great kindness and generosity ; and I did not choose to stand in his way." " December ^, 1848. Stayed at home all the day, making corrections for the second edition. Shaw, the printer, came to tell me that they are wanted with speed, and that the first edition of 3000 is nearly out Then I read the eighth book of Thucydides. On the whole he is the first of historians. What is good in him is better than anything that can be found elsewhere. But his dry parts are dreadfully dry ; and his arrangement is bad. Mere chronological order is not the order for a complicated narra- tive. " I have felt to-day somewhat anxious about the fate of my book. The sale has surpassed expectation : but that proves only that people have formed a high idea of what they are totliave. .The disapjjointment, if there is disappointment, will be'great. All that I hear is laudatory. But who can trust to praise which is poured into his own ear ? At all events, I have aimed high ; I have tried to do something that maybe remembered; I have had the year 2000, and even the year 3000, often in my mind ; I have sacrificed nothing to temporary fashions of thought and style ; and, if I fail, my failure will be more honorable than nine-tenths of the successes that I have witnessed." "December 12, 1848. — Longman called. A new edition of 3000 • "In Parliament I shall look in vain for virtues which I loved, and for abilities which I admired. Often in debate, and never more than when we discussed those questions of colonial policy which are every day acquiring a new importance, I shall remember with regret how much eloquence and wit, how much acuteness and knowledge, how many engaging qualities, how many fair hopes, are buried in the grave of poor Charles Buller." .— Macaulay's Speech at Edinburgh in 1852. t Mr. Tufnell was theu Patronage Secretary, or, in more familiar parlance, Treasury Whip. ( 184S-52. LORD MACAULAY. 161 copies is preparing as fast as they can work. I have reason to be pleased. Of the Lay of the Last Minstrel two thousand two hundred and fifty copies were sold in the first year ; of Marmion two thousand copies in the first month ; of my book three thousand copies in ten days. Black says that there has been no such sale since the days of Waverley. The success is in every way complete beyond all hope, and is the more agreeable to me because expectation had been wound up so high that disappointment was almost inevitable. I think, though with some misgivings, that the book will live. I put two volumes of Foote into my pockets, and walked to Clapham. They were reading my book again. How happy their praise made me, and how little by comparison I care for any other praise 1 A quiet, happy, affectionate evening. Mr. Conybeare makes a criticism, in which Hannah seems to agree, that I sometimes repeat myself. I suspect there is truth in this. Yet it is very hard to know what to do. If an important principle is laid down only once, it is unnoticed or forgotten by dull readers, who are the majority. If it is inculcated in several places, quick-witted persons think that the writer harps too much on one string. Probably I have erred on the side of repetition. This is really the only important criticism that I have yet heard. " I looked at the life of Campbell by a foolish Dr. Beattie ; a glorious specimen of the book-making of this age. Cartpbell may have written in all his life three hundred good lines, rather less than more. His let- ters, his conversation, were mere trash.* A life such as Johnson has written of Shenstone, or Akenside, would have been quite long enough for the subject ; but here are three mortal volumes. I suppose that, if I die to-morrow, I shall have three volumes. Really, I begin to understand why Coleridge says that Life in Death is more horrible than Death. " I dined with Miss Berry. She and her guests made an idol of me : but I know the value of London idolatry, and how soon these fashions pass away." t » * This was rather ungrateful to Campbell, who had-provided Macaulaywith an anec- dote, which he told well and often, to illustrate the sentiment with which the authors of jotd days regarded tlieir publishers. At a literary dinner Campbell asked leave to propose a toast, and gave the health of N.ipoleon Bonaparte. The war was at its height, and the very mention of Napoleon's name, except in conjunction with some uncomplimentary epithet, was in most circles regarded as an outrage. A storm of groans broke out, and Campbell with difficulty could get a few sentences heard. " Gentlemen," he said, " you must not mistake me. I admit that the French Emperor is a tyrant. I admit that he is a monster. I admit that he is the sworn foe of our own nation, and, if you will, of the whole human race. But, gentlemen, we must be just to our great enemy. We must not forget that he once shot a book-seller." The guests, of whom two out of every three lived by their pens, burst into a roar of laughter, and Campbell sate down in triumph. t "There is nothing," Macaulay says elsewhere, " more pitiable than an ex-lionor ex-lioness. London, I have often thought, is like the sorceress in the Arabian nights, who, by some mysterious law, can love the same object only forty days. During forty Vol. IL— II l62 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CHrxlI. yanuafy li, 1849. — ^ 3™ g'^7S3 1852-56. LORD MACAULAY. 205 M'Laren 1,561 Bruce 1,068 Campbell 625 It is no exaggeration to say that from one end of the island to the other the tidings were received with keen, and all but universal, satisfaction.* Amidst the passions, and ambitions, and jealousies of a General Election that was to decide the fate of a Ministry, the. combatants on both sides found time to rejoice over an event which was regarded, not as a party victory, but as the triumph of intellectual eminence and political integrity. I well remember blushing and trembling with a boy's delight when Albert Smith, in two or three dashing couplets inserted off-hand into the best of his admirable songs, announced that Edinburgh had at last put itself right with Mr. Macaulay ; and I still seem to hear the prolonged and repeated cheering that broke forth from every corner of an audience which, unless it differed from every other London audience of its class, must have been at least three-fourths Tory. But the very same week which honored Macaulay with so marked a proof of the esteem and admiration . of his countrymen, brought with it likewise sad and sure indications that the great labors to which his fame was due had not been undertaken with impunity. " In the midst of my triumphs," he writes, " I am but poorly ; " and he was one who never complained lightly. For some months past such ominous passages as these had been frequent in his journal : " I turned over the new volumes of Thiers' book ; the Austrian campaign of 1809. It is heavy. I hope that my volumes will be more attractive reading. I am out of sorts, however at present ; cannot write. Why ? I cannot tell. I will wait a day or two and then try anew." And again : " I wrote some of my History ; not amiss ; but I am not in the stream yet. I feel quite oppressed by the weight of the task. How odd a thing the human mind is I Mine at least. I could write a queer Montaignish essay on my morbidities. I sometimes lose months, I do not know how ; accusing myself daily, and yet really incapable of vigorous exertion. I seem under a spell of laziness. Then I warm and can go on working twelve hours at a stretch. How I worked a year ago ! And why cannot I work so now ? " He was soon to know. On the 15th of July, two days after the election was decided, he describes himself as extremely languid and op- pressed ; hardly able to walk or breathe. A week later he says : " I was not well to-day ; something the matter with the heart. I feel a load on my * " All over the country the news of his election was received with a burst of joy. Men congratulated each other as if some dear friend or relation of their own had re- ceived so signal an honor. People who had never seen his face shook hands with one another in an unreasoning way on the receipt of such glorious news." — The Public Life of Lord Macaulay. By the Rev. Frederick Arnold, B. A. 2o6 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIII. breast. I was much ujistrung, and could hardly help shedding tears of mere weakness : but I did help it. I shrink from the journey to Edinburgh, and the public appearance. I am sure that, in the state in which I am, I- shall be forced to sit down in five minutes ; if, indeed, I do not faint, which I have repeatedly expected to do of late." The day on which he was to address his constituents was close at hand ajid there was no time to be lost. " I sent for Bright. He came with a stethoscope ; pronounced that the action of the heart was much deranged, and positively forbade me to think of going to Edinburgh. I went out, but could hardly get along with the help of my stick ; so I took a cab to Westbourne Terrace, and returned in the same way. Their society and kindness keep up my spirits, which are but low. I am vexed with myself for having suffered myself to be enticed back to public life. My book seems to me certain to be a failure. Yet when I look up any part, and read it, I cannot but see that it is better than the other works on the same subject. That, to be sure, is not saying much ; for Ralph, SmoUet, Ken- neth, Somerville, Belsham, Lord Dungannon, are all of them wretched writers of history ; and Burnet, who down to the Revolution is most valu- able and amusing, becomes dull as soon as he reaches the reign of Wil- liam. I should be sorry to leave that reign unfinished. For some weeks to come Macaulay was very ill indeed ; and he never recovered the secure and superabundant health which he had hitherto en- joyed. It is needless to say that the affection,which he had passed his life in deserving, did not fail him now. Lady Trevelyan saw Dr. Bright, and learn- ed that the case was more serious than she believed her brother himself to be aware of ; a belief which was quite erroneous, as. his journal proves ; but under which he very willingly allowed her to lie. She took upon herself the arrangements necessary for the postponement of the Edinburgh meet- ing, and then accompanied Macaulay down to Clifton ; where she saw hiitt comfortably settled, and stayed with him until he began to mend. ," Clifton, August 8, 1852.: — I went out, reading Julius Caesar in Sueto- nius, and was overtaken by heavy rain and thunder. I could not get under a tree for fear of lightning, and could not run home for fear of bringing on the palpitation; so I walked through the rain as slowly and gravely as if I had been a mourner in a funeral. The slightest excitement or anxiety affects t^e play of my heart. In spite of myself my spirits are low ; but my reason tells me that hardly any man living has so much to be thankful f jr. And I will be thankful, and firm, as far as I am master of myself. Han- nah and I did not venture out after dinner, but chatted over old times, affec- tionately and very pleasantly.'' " Sunday, August 15. — To Christ church. I got a place among the free seats, and heard not a bad sermon on the word ' Therefore,' The preacher disclaimed all intention of startling us by oddity, after the fash- 1852-56. LORD MACAULAY. 207 ion of the seventeenth century ; but I doubt whether he did not find in St. Paul's ' therefore,' much more than St. Paul thought of. There was a' collection for church-building, and I slipped my sovereign into the plate the more willingly because the preacher asked for our money on sensible grounds, and in a manly manner." " August 16. — The Times brought the news of Sir James Parker's death. He died of heart-complaint. Poor fellow ! I feel for him. , The attack came on just as he was made Vice Chancellor. Mine came on just as I was elected for Edinburgh. Mine may, very likely, end as his has ended ; and it may be for the best that it should do so. My eyes fill with tears when I think of those whom I must leave ; but there is no mix- ture of pusillanimity in my tenderness. I long to see Hannah and Mar- garet. I wish that they were back again from the Continent ; but I do not think that the end is so near. To-day I wrote a pretty fair quantity of His- tory. I should be glad to finish William before I go. But this is like the old excuses that were made to Charon." Some fastidious critics think it proper to deny Macaulay the title of a poet ; and it was a title which he did not claim. No one was more ready than himself to allow that the bay-tree does not grow kindly in- the regions among which his lot had been cast. He had lived in the world, and had held his own there ; and a man who would hold his own in the world must learn betimes to think, as well as write, in prose. Downing Street and Cal- cutta, the Edinburgh Review and the House of Commons, had exercised his judgment and curbed his fancy ; but those who knew his inner mind never doubted that, however much it had been overlaid by the habits and the acquirements cf an active and varied career, the poetic nature was there. If any one will read the story of the copying-clerk who found himself unex- pectedly transformed into a poet, as told in Hans Andersen's exquisite little fairy tale, he will get an exact picture of the manner in which Macaulay's memory and imagination worked during the greater part of his idler hours. He positively, lived upon the associations of his own past. A sixpenny print which had hung in a Clapham nursery or schoolroom gave him more real de- light than any masterpiece of Reynolds. The day on which he detected, in the darkest recesses of a Holborn bookstall, some trumpery romance that had been in the Cambridge circulating libraries of the year 1820, was a date marked with a white stone in his calendar. He exults in his diary over the discovery of a wretched novel called Conscience, which he him- self confesses to be " execrable trash," as triumphantly as if it had been a first folio edition of Shakespeare, with an inch and a half of margin. But nothing caused him so much pleasure (a pleasure which frequent repeti- tion did not perceptibly diminish), as a visit to any scene that he had known in earlier years. It mattered not with what period of his existence that scene was connected, or whether the reminiscences which it conjured 2o8 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIII. up were gay or gloomy, utterly trivial or profoundly interesting The inn at Durham, where he had dined badly when on circuit ; the cirart-house at Lancaster, where as a briefless barrister he had listened to Brougham exchanging retorts with Pollock; the dining-room in Great George Street, in a corner of which he had written his articles on Lord Holland and Warren Hastings ; the church at Cheddar, where as a child he had sate of a Sunday afternoon, longing to get at the great black-letter volume of the Book of Martyrs which was chained to the neighboring reading-desk, while the vicar, whom Mrs. Hannah More had pronounced to be a " poor preacher and not at all a Gospel minister," was droning unheeded over- head ; — these, and others such as these, were localities possessing, in his eyes, a charm far surpassing that which the most stately and famous cities derive from historic tradition or architectural splendor. Never had he a better opportunity of indulging himself in his favorite amusement of hunting up old recollections, than when he was living at Clifton, within a short drive of the cottage which had once been Mrs. Hannah More's, and under the strictest orders from his physicians to do nothing buj amuse himself. "August 21. — A fine day. At eleven, the Harfords of Blaise Castle called in their barouche to take Margaret and me to Barley Wood. The Valley of Wrington was as rich and lovely as ever. The Mendip ridge, the church tower, the islands in tlie distance were what they were forty years ago, and more. But Barley Wood itself is greatly changed. There has been no want of care, or taste, or respect for old recollections ; but the trees would grow, and the summer-houses would decay. The cottage itself, once visible from a considerable distance, is now s8 completely surrounded with wood that you do not see it until you actually drive up to the door. The shrubs, which were not as high as I was at eleven years old, have become great masses of verdure ; and at many points from which there once was an extensive prospect nothing can now be seen. The house, and the esplanade of turf just before it, are the least changed. The dining-room and drawing-room are what they were, the old engravings excepted, the place of almost every one of which I well remembered. The old roses run up the old trellis-work, or up trellis- work very like the old. But the Temple of the Winds is in ruins ; and the root-house, which was called the ' Tecta pauperis Evandri,' has quite disappeared. That was my favorite haunt. The urn of Locke has been moved. The urn of Porteus stands where it did. The place is improved ; but it is not the place 'where I passed so many happy days in my child- hood." " September 14. — A beautiful day. After breakfast Ellis and I drove to Wrington in an open carriage and pair. We first paid a visit to the 1852-56. LORD MACAULAY. 209 church. I recognized the old pew, and one of the epitaphs ; but I missed the pulpit cloth of scarlet velvet, with an inscription in remarkably long gold letters. The sexton recollected it There were the books chaiAed to the desks ; and, to my surprise, the Book of Martyrs was among them. I did not remember that there was one here, though I perfectly remember that at Cheddar. I saw my dear old friend's grave, with a foolish cant- ing inscription. We then walked to Barley Wood. They very kindly asked me to go upstairs. We saw Mrs. Hannah More's room. The bed IS where her sofa and desk used to stand. The old bookcases, some of them at least, remain. I could point out the very place where the Don Quixote, in four volumes, stood, and the very place from which I took down, at ten years old, the Lyrical Ballads. With what delight and horror I read the Ancient Mariner I Home, much pleased with this second visit." "September 16. — A knock, and a carriage. Who should it be but my old Trinity Tutor, Monk, the Bishop of the Diocese ? I was really glad to see him, and to shake hands with him ; for he was kind to me when I was young, and I was ungrateful and impertinent to him. " October 4. — I finished Uncle Tom's Cabin; a powerful and disagree- able book ; too dark and Spagnoletto-like for my taste, when considered as a work of art. But, on the whole, it is the most valuable addition that America has made to English Literature." While in the West of England Macaulay read as much as ever, but he wrote little except his weekly letter to Mr. Ellis. 16 Caledonia Place, Clifton. Here I am ; not the worse, on the whole, for the journey. I already feel the influence of this balmy air. Remember that you are booked for the loth of Septem- ber. You will find a good bedroom ; a great tub ; a toleiably furnished bookcase ; lovely walks ; fine churches ; a dozen of special sherry ; half-a-dozen of special hock ; and a tureen of turtle soup. I read this last paragraph to Hannah, who is writing at the table beside me. She exclaimed against the turtle : " Such gluttons men are ! " " For shame I " I said ; " when a friend comes to us, we ought to kill the fatted calf." " Yes," says she ; " but from the fatted calf you will get only mock turtle." Rely on it that I shall never be in office again. Every motive is against it ; avarice and ambition, as well us the love of ease and the love of liberty. I have been twice a Cabinet Minister, and never made a farthing by being so. I have now been four years out of office ; and I have added ten thousand pounds to my capital. So much for avarice. Then, as for ambition, I should be a far greater man as M. P. for Edinburgh, supporting a Liberal Government cordially, but not servilely, than as Chancellor of the Duchy or Paymaster of the Forces. I receive congratula- tions from all quarters. The most fervent, perhaps, are from Graham. My own feelings are mixed. If 1 analyze them strictly,I find that I am glad and sorry ; glad to have been elected, sorry to have to sit. The election was ct great honor. The sitting will be a great bore. Vol. II.— 14 210 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIIli August 12, 1852. I am better than when I left town, but still far from well. The weather has been against me as yet. During the last forty-eight hours I have been close prison- er to the house. The Deluge, which Lord Maidstone told us was to come after Lord Derby, has come already ; so that we are cursed with Derby and the Deluge too. I have very little to complain of. I suffer no pain. My head is unclouded. My temper is not soured. I sleep sound. I eat and drink heartily. Nothing that care or tenderness can do for me is wanting. Indeed, it would be unjust and in mo selfish to accept all the sacrifices which those whom I love are eager to make. September 25, 1852. On Thmsday I walked to Ldgh Court, on the other side of the Ferry, to see the famous collection of pictures, and found that report had not done them justice. Nothing struck me so much as Rubens's Woman taken in Adultery. The figures have a look of life which I do not know that I ever saw elsewhere on canvas. On the road between Leigh Court and the Ferry, however, I saw a more delightful picture than any in the collection. In a deep shady lane was a donkey-cart driven by a lad ; and in it were four very pretty girls from eleven to six, evidently sisters. They were quite mad with spirits at having so rare a treat as a ride ; and they were laughing, and singing in a way that almost made me cry with mere sense of the beautiful. They saw that I was pleased, and answered me very prettily when I made some inquiry about my route. I begged them to go on singing ; and they all four began carolling, in perfect concert, and in tones as joyous as a lark's. I gave them the silver that I had about me to buy dolls. I should like to have a picture of the cart and the cargo. Gainsbor(iugh would have been the man. But I should not like to have an execrably bad poem on the subject, such as Wordsworth would have written. I am really quite well ; though my Clifton doctor adjures me not to take liberties, and Bright writes, advising me to ask for the Chiltem Hundreds. Dr. Bright had good reason for the advice which he gave. So far from being quite well, it may be said that Macaulay never was well again. " Last July was a crisis in my life," he writes in March, 1853. " I be- came twenty years older in a week. A mile is more to me now than ten miles a year ago." In the winter that followed his re-election at Edin- burgh he had a severe attack of bronchitis ; and during all his remaining years he suffered from confirmed asthma, and was tormented by frequent and distressing fits of violent coughing. One after another, in quick succession, his favorite habits were abandoned, without any prospect of being resumed. His day-long rambles, in company with Homer or Goethe along river banks, and over ridge and common ; his afternoons spent iri leisurely explorations of all the bookstalls and printshops' between Charing Cross and Bethnal Green ; his Sunday walks from the Albany to Clapham, and from Clapham to Richmond or Blackwall, were now, during long periods together, exchanged for a crawl along the sunny side of the street in the middle hours of any day which happened to be fine. Instead of writing, as on a pinch he loved to write, straight on from his late and somewhat lazy breakfast until the moment of dinner found him hungry 1852-56. LORD MACAULAY. 211 and complacent, with a heavy task successfully performed, he was con- demned, for the first time in his life, to the detested necessity of breaking the labors of the day by luncheon. He was forced, sorely against his will, to give up reading aloud, which, ever since he was four years old, he had er joyed even more than reading to himself. He was almost totally de- barred from general society ; for his doctor rarely permitted him to go out of an evening, and often forbade him to go out at all. In February, 1855, he writes to Mr. Ellis : " I am still a prisoner ; I have now had nearly three rnonths of it, with rather less range than .Sir Francis Burdett had in the Tower, or Leigh Hunt at Newgate." In May, 1854, Lord Carlisle writes : " I met Macaulay at a few brealcfasts, and was sorry to think his health less good." And again: "It was tolerably pleasant; — always when Macaulay talked. The ' flashes of silence ' come much more fre- quently now."* The change for the worse in Macaulay's health was apparent even to those who watched him less closely and less anxiously than did Lord Carlisle; but, though that change might be read on his countenance, it was seldom, indeed, that any allusion to it passed his lips. Sufficient for himself, he made no demands upon the compassion of others. His equanimity had never been found wanting amidst the difficulties and reverses of a not unchequered public career ; and it now stood the severer test of a life, which, for long periods together, was the life of an invalid who had to depend largely upon his own fortitude for support, and upon his own mental resources for occupation and amusement. It might have been expected that he would have made his private journal the safety- valve for that querulousne'ss which an egotist vents upon his relatives, and a self-conscious author upon his readers. But, as each birthday and each New Year recurs, instead of peevishly mourning over the blessings which had departed from him, he records in manly terms his gratitude for those that had been left to him. "December 31, 1853. — Another day of work and solitude. I enjoy this invalid life extremely. In spite of my gradually sinking health, this has been a happy year. My strength is failing. My life will -not, I think, be long. But I have clear faculties, warm affections, abundant sources of pleasure." At very distant intervals, he gives expression, in two or three pathetic sentences, to the dejection which is the inevitable attendant upon the most depressing of all ailments. "I am not what I was, and every month my heart tells it me more and more clearly. I am a little low ; not from ap- * * " Yes," said Sydney Smith, " he is certainly more agreeable since his return from India. His enemies might perhaps have said before, though I never did so, that he talked rather too much ; but now he has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful." 212 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIII. prehension ; for I look forward to the inevitable close with perfect serenity; but from regret for what I love. I sometimes hardly command my tears when I think how soon I may leave them._ I feel that the fund of life is nearly spent." But, throughout the volumes of his journals, Macaulay never for a single instant assumes the air of an unfortunate or an ill-used man. One or two of his contemporaries, who grudged him his pros- perity, have said that discontent was a sin to which he had small tempta- tion. At any rate, it was a sin of which he never was guilty. Instead of murmuring and repining, we find him exhorting himself to work while it was day, and to increase his exertions as the sand sank ever lower in the glass ; rescuing some from the poverty from which he long ago had set himself free, and consoling others for the pangs of disappointed ambition from which he had never suffered ; providing the young people around him only too lavishly with the pleasures that h6 could no longer enjoy, and striving by every possible method to make their lives all- the brighter, as the shadows deepened down upon his own. To admit the world unre- servedly behind the scenes of Macaulay's life would be an act which the world itself would blame ; but those who have special reason to cherish his memory may be allowed to say, that proud as they are of his brilliant and elaborate compositions, which in half a score of languages have been the delight of a million readers, they set a still higher value upon the- careless pages of that diary which testifies how, through seven years of trying and constant illness, he maintained his industry, his courage, his patience, and his benevolence, unimpaired and unbroken to the last. By the end of October, 1852, Macaulay had recovered his health suffi- ciently to fulfil his engagements with the people of Edinburgh. After spending some days there in the society of his friends, both old and new, he delivered an Address in the Music Hall on the 2nd of November. He began, as became an historian, by reviewing the events of the past five years, both foreign and domestic, in a strain of lofty impartiality, to which his audience listened with respectful and not dissatisfied attention ; and then, of a sudden, he changed his tone, and did his best to satisfy the expectations of his constituents by giving them forty minutes of as rattling a party speech as ever was delivered from the Westminster Hustings, or the platform of the Free Trade Hall at Manchester. And yet, party speech as it was, it occasioned very little offence in any quarter ; for its easy flow of raillery was marked by an absence of asperity which betok- ened to experienced eyes that Macaulay, as far as modern pslitics were concerned, had ceased to be at heart a party man. As an author, he had met with so much indulgence from his Conservative fellow-countrymen that he was thenceforward most unwilling, as a statesman, to say any- thing which could hurt their feelings, or shodk their sincere convictions. The most determined Tory found little to quarrel with in the spirit of the 1852-56. LORD MACAULAY. 213 speech, and thought himself justified in laughing, as heartily as if he had been a Whig, over the jokes about Lord Maidstone's Hexameters, and the enfranchising clause which Lord Derby's Cabinet had proposed to tack on to the Militia Bill.* "Sunday, October 31, Edinburgh. — This is i Sunday, — a Presbyterian Sacrament Sunday. The town is as .still as if it were midnight. Who- ever opposes himself to the prevailing humor would run a great risk of being affronted. There was one person, whom Christians generally men- tion with respect, who, I am sure, could not have walked Prince's Street in safety, and who would have addressed some very cutting rebukes to my grave constituents.! " I have just been to Guthrie's Church. I had once before seen the Presbyterian administration of the Eucharist, in July, 1817. There was much appearance of devotion, and even of religious excitement, among the communicants ; and the rite was decently performed ; but, though Guthrie is a man of considerable powers, his prayers were at a prodigious distance from those of our liturgy. There was nothing which, even for a moment, rose to the level of ' Therefore with angels and archangels.' There were some fine passages, in the midst of much that was bad, in his sermon. The man is a noble, honest, courageous specimen of humanity.J * This clause gave a vote to every man who had served for two years in the Militia. " And what," said Macaulay, " is the qualification ? Why, the first qualification is youth. These electors are not to be above a certain age ; bat the nearer you can get them to eighteen, the better. The second qualification is poverty. The elector is to be a person, to whom a shilling a day is an object. The third qualification is ignorance ; for I venture to say that, if you take the trouble to observe the appearance of those young fellows who follow the recruiting sergeant in the streets, you will at once say that, among your laboring classes, they are not the most educated, they are not the most intelligent. And then ayoung man who goes from the ploughtail into the army is generally rather thoughtless, and iJisposed to idleness. Oh ! but there is another qualification which f had forgotten : the voter must be five feet two. There is a qualification for you 1 Only think of measuring a man for the franchise ! And this is the work of a Conservative Government, this plan which would swamp all the counties in England with electors who possess the qualifica- tions of youth, poverty, ignorance, a roving disposition, and five feet two. Why, what right have people who have proposed such a change as this to talk about — I do not say Lord John Russell's imprudence — but the imprudence of Ernest Jones, or of any other Chartist ? The Chartists, to do them justice, would give the franchise to wealth as well as to poverty, to knowledge as well as to ignorance, to mature age as well as to youth. But to make a qualification compounded of disqualifications is a feat of which the whole glory belongs to our Conservative rulers." t " Your old parson is a dunce," Macaulay writes to one of his sisters. " There is nothing in Homer, or in Hesiod either, about the observation of every seventh day. He- siod, to be sure, says that the seventh day of every month (a very different thmg) is a holi- day ; and the reason which he givfs is, that on the seventh day of the month, Latona brought Apollo into the world. A pretty reason for Christians! " t Some years before this, Macaulay had found himself in Scotland on a Fast-day, wi&out the luck of being in the same town with Guthrie. " A Kirk-fast< The place 214 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIII. I stayed at home all the afternoon ; dined alone ; and stole out in the dark for a walk. The view of the Old Town at night from liiy windows is the finest thing in the world. They have taken to lighting their houses with gas, and the effect is wonderful." " Tuesday, November 2.— A great day. Very fine ; a splendid specimen of St. Martin's little summer. I was pretty well prepared for the exhibi- tion, and doubted only about my bodily strength. People were too con- siderate to call this morning. At half past twelve came my escort, and brought me to the Hall, which was as full as it could hold. Multitudes had gone away, unable to find room. At one we went in. A vast gather- ing. They received me with a prodigious uproar of kindness. Black took the chair, pn Craig's motion, and said a very few words. Then I rose, and spoke more than an hour ; always with the sympathy and applause of the whole audience. I found that I could not go on longer ; so I contrived to leave off at a good moment, and to escape from some dangerous topics. Nothing could be more successful. There was immense acclamation, in the midst of which I retired, exhausted, but relieved from a weight which has been pressing on my heart during four months. I dined at Moncreiff's with a large party. Lord Ivory talked loud, with Cowan at his elbow, about the disgrace o£ 1847, and the recovered character of the city. I felt for Cowan, who has been very civil to me, and to whom I have not, and never have had, any unkind feeling. As I was undressing, came the proofs of the Scotsman's report of my speech. I was too much exhausted to correct them, and sent them back with a civil line to the editor, who is both a good and a clever fellow." The new Parliament assembled early in November, and on the 3rd of December Mr. Disraeli opened his Budget. " It was well done," writes Macaulay, " both as to manner and language. The statement was lucid, though much too long. I could have said the whole as clearly, or more clearly, in two hours ; and Disraeli was up five. The plan was nothing but taking money out of the pockets of people in towns, and putting it in- to the pockets of growers of malt. I greatly doubt whether he will be able to carry it ; but he has raised his reputation for practical ability." During the first six weeks of his renewed experience of the House of Commons, Macaulay, as befitted a re-enlisted veteran, thought that the standard of speaking was lower than of old. But he soon had reason to had all the aspect of a Puritan Sunday. Every shop was shut, and every church ^pen. T heard the worst and longest sermon that I ever remember. Every sentence was repeated three or four times over, and nothing in any sentence deserved to be said once. I with- drew ray attention, and read the Epistle to the Romans. I was much struck by the eloquence and force of some passages, and made out the connection and argument of some others which had formerly seemed to me unmeaning ; but there were others, again, which I was still quiet unable to comprehend, I know few things finer than the end of the First Chapter, and the ' Who shall separate us from the love of Christ 7 ' " 1852-56. LORD MACAULAY. 215 change his mind. 1832 itself could boast few more animated and exciting scenes than that which was enacted during the first three hours in the morning of the 17th of December, 1S52 ; when the Tory leader, more for- midable than ever in the audacity of despair^ turned to bay in defence of his doomed Budget ; and when, at the moment that friends and foes alike thought that the last word had been spoken on either side, Mr. Gladstone bounded on to the floor amidst a storm of cheering and counter-cheering such as the walls of Parliament have never re-echoed since, and plunged straight into the heart of an oration which, in a single day, doubled his influence in Parliament and his popularity in the country. " At half past ten," says Macaulay, " I went to the House, and stayed till near four ; generally in the library, or the divjsion lobby, reading. I heard a little of Disraeli, who was clever, but inconclusive ; and most unhandsome. A little of Gladstone, gravely and severely bitter. At last came the division. There was an immense crowd ; a deafening cheer, when Hayter took the right hand of the row of tellers ; and a still louder cheer when the num- bers were read ; — 305 to 286. In the midst of the shouting I stole away, got to my carriage, and reached home just at four, much exhausted." Then came the change of Government, with all that accompanies the process of forming a Cabinet The stir ; the gossip ; the political clubs, swarming with groups of talkers, who exchange morsels of news and of criticism in eager whispers ; the Hansom cabs dashing about Belgravia and Mayfair, or waiting for hours together at the door of the in-coming Premier ; the ever increasing discomfort of eminent statesmen who sit in their studies, waiting for the possible arrival of a Treasury messenger ; the cosy dinners at the houses of the new Ministers, growing larger and merrier daily, as another, and yet another. Right Honorable gentleman is added to the number of the elect. " I doubt," says Macaulay, " whether so many members of the two Houses have been in town on Christmas day since 1783, sixty-nine years ago. Then, as now, there was a change of Ministry in Christmas week. Indeed, there was a great debate in a full House of Commons on the 22nd of December, and Lord North made, on that occasion, a very celebrated speech. " December 20. — An eventful day. After breakfast, at the Athenjeum, I met Senior, who told me that he had been at my chambers to beg me to go to Lansdowne House ; — that Lord Lansdowne wished to see me before half past twelve. I went. I found him and Lord John closeted together. Lord John read us a letter which he had received from the Queen ; very good, like all her letters that I have seen. She told him that she saw hope of making a strong and durable Government, at once conservative and reforming ; that she had asked Lord Aberdeen to form such a Government ; that great exertions and sacrifices would be neces- sary, and that she relied on the patriotism of Lord John not to refuse his 2l6 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIH. valuable aid. They asked me what I thought. I said that I could im- prove the Queen's letter neither in substance nor in language, and that •she had expressed my sentiments to a tittle. Then Lord John said that of course he should try to help Lord Aberdeen ; — ^but how? There were two ways. He might take the lead o£ the Commons with the Foreign Office, or he might refuse office, and give his support from the back benches. I adjured him not to think of this last course, and I argued it with him during a quarter of an hour with, I thought, a great flow of thoughts and words. I was encouraged by Lord Lansdowne, who nodded, smiled, and rubbed his hands at everything that I said. I reminded him that the Duke of Wellington had taken the Foreign Office, after having teen at the Treasury, and I quoted his own pretty speech on the' Duke. '' You said. Lord John, that we could not all win battles of Waterloo ; but that we might all imitate the old man's patriotism, sense of duty, and indifference to selfish interests and vanities when the public welfare was concerned ; and now is the time for you to make a sacrifice. Your past services, and your name, give us a right to expect it.' He went away evidently much impressed by what had been said, and promising to con- sult others. When he was gone, LoreJ Lansdowne told me that I had come just as opportunely as Blucher did at Waterloo. He told me also what affected me and struck me exceedingly, that, in the last resort, he would himself, in spite of the danger to his health and the destruction of his comfort, take the Treasury, if in no other way Lord John could be induced to lead the Commqns. But this he keeps wisely secret for the present." When the question of the leadership in the Commons had once been settled, Macaulay's interest in the personal arrangements of Lord Aber- deen's Ministry did not go further than the sympathy, not unmixed with amusement, with which he listened to the confidences of his old Whig col- leagues. " I went to Brooks's," he says, " and heard not a little grumbling ' about the large share of the spoil which has been allotted to the Peelites. I myself think that we ought to have had either the Lord Lieutenant, or the Secretary for Ireland. How glad I am that I so positively announced at Edinburgh my resolution never again to hold office I Otherwise people might fancy that I was disappointed. I went home, but wrote nothing. I never can work in these times of crisis." Macaulay did well to stand aside from official life. He never opened Ws lips in Parliament without receiving a fresh proof that his authority there could gain nothing, even from a seat in the Cabinet. Lord Hotham, a much respected member of the Conservative party, had introduced a measure whose chief object was to exclude the Master of the rolls from the House of Commons. He had brought it unopposed through all its stages but the last ; and when,on the ist of June, 1853, he rose to move the Third .1852-56. LORD MACAULAY. 217 Reading, he was fully justified in regarding his success as a foregone conclu- «ion. But the ultimate fate of the bill was curiously at variance with the anticipations which were entertained by its promoter, and, indeed, by all other Members of Parliament who knew that such a bill was in existence. The story was told at the time in the Leader newspaper, with a minute- ness of circumstance which calls for some degree of abridgment. " It was pleasanter talking on Wednesday, when the position of Mr. Macaulay in Great Britain was measured in a great way. On a Wednesday the House, and the Committees, are sitting at once. The talk was not interesting ; — on a Wednes- day it seldom is ; — and you were loitering along the Committee lobby up stairs, wondering which of the rooms you should take next, when, as you paused uncer- tain, you were bumped against by somebody. He begged your pardon, and rushed on; a Member; a stout Member; a man you couldn't conceive in a run, and yet he's running like mad. You are still staring at him, when two more men trot past you, one on each side, and they are Members too. The door close to you, marked ' Members' Entrance,' is flung open, and five Members dash from it, and plunge furiously down the lobby. More doors open ; more Members rush out ; Members are tearing past you, from all points, but in one direction. Then wigs and gowns appear. Their owners tell you, with happy faces, that their committees have ad- journed ; and then come a third class, the gentlemen of the Press, hilarious. Why, what's the matter ? Matter ? Macaulay is up. It was an announcement that one had not heard for years ; and the passing of the word had emptied the committee rooms, as, of old, it emptied clubs. " You join the runners in a moment, and are in the gallery in time to see the senators, who had start of you, perspiring into their places. It was true. He was up, and in for a long speech. He was in a new place ; standing in the second row above the Treasury Bench ; and looking and sounding all the better for the eleva- tion, and the clearer atmosphere for an orator. The old voice, the old manner and the old style ; — glorious speaking ! Well prepared, carefully elaborated, confessedly essay- ish ; but spoken with perfect art, and consummate management ; — the grand conversa- tion of a man of the world, confiding his learning, his recollections, and his logic, to a party of gentlemen, and just raising his voice enough to be heard through the room. Such it was while he was only opening his subject, and waiting for his au- dience but, as the House filled, which it did with marvellous celerity, he got prouder and more oratorical ; and then he poured out his speech, with rapidity increasing after .every sentence, till it became a torrent of the richest words, carrying his hearers with him into enthusiasm, and yet not leaving them time to cheer. A torrent of words ; — that is the only description of Macaulay's style,when he was warmed into speed. And such words ! Why, it wasn't four in the afternoon ; lunch hardly digested ; and the quiet, reserved English gentlemen were as wild with delight as an Opera House, after Grisi, at ten. You doubt it ? See the division ; and yet, before Mr. Macaulay had spoken, you might have safely bet fifty to one that Lord Hotham would have carried his bill. After that speech the bill was not thrown out, but pitched out. One began to have a higher opinion of the House of Com- mons, seeing, as one did, that, if the Macaulay class of minds would bid for leader- 2l8 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIII. ship, they would get it. But it was not all congratulation. Mr, Macaulay had rushed through his oration of forty minutes with masterly vigor ; but the doubts about his health, which arise when you met him in the street, — ^when you take ad- vantage of his sphinx-like reverie, Staring right on with calm, eternal eyes, to study the sickly face, — would be confirmed by a close inspection on Wednesday. The great orator was trembling when he sat down ; the excitement of a triumph overcame him ; and he had scarcely the self-possession to acknowledge the eager praises which were offered by the Ministers and others in the neighborhood." Lord Hotham, with the courage of a man who had been wounded at Sala- manca, did his best, in his reply, to stem the cataract of arguments and illustrations with which his unfortunate measure had been overwhelmed. But all was in vain. There were at least two hundred men in the House who had been brought there to hear Macaulay, and who knew nothing about the question except what he had thought fit to tell them. The bill was thrown out by 224 votes to 123. After the lapse of twenty years, the Act which created the Supreme Court of Judicature at length gave effect to Lord Hotham's policy. That portion of the Act, which provided for the exclusion of the Master of the Rolls from the House of Commons, was carried through the Parliament of 1873 without discussion. " Clauses 9 to II, inclusive, agreed to," is the sole notice which Hansard takes of the proceedings which revised the decision of 1853. The enthusiastic adhe- sion to Macaulay's views of a House of Commons which had heard those views stated by himself, as compared with the silent unanimity, in the op- posite direction, of a House of Commons which he was not there to per- suade, together constitute as high, and, at the same time, as unintentional a compliraentas ever was paid to the character and the genious of an orator. Macaulay's own account of the affair pi'oves how short a time he gave to the preparation of a speech, conspicuous, even among his speeches, for wealth of material and perfection of finish. He spent exactly two morn- ings' work over the arrangement of what he intended to say on an occa- sion which he regarded as critical, for personal, as well as for public, reasons. On the evening preceding the debate, he writes : " I thought of Lord Hotham's bill. Craig called, and sate for two hours. His account of the state of things at Edinburgh is as good as possible. In the evening I again thought of the bill. I was anxious, and apprehensive of complete failure ; and yet I must stand the hazard." " Wednesday, June i. — A day of painful anxiety, "and great success. I thought that I should fail, and though no failure can now destroy my rep- utation, which rests on other than Parliamentary successes, it would have mortified me deeply. I was vexed to find how much expectation had been excited. I was sure that I should not speak well enough to satisfy that expectation. However, down I went. First we were three hours on an 18S2-S6. LORD MACAULAY. 219 Irish criminal law bill, and then the Judges Exclusion Bill came on. Drummond moved to put off the third reading for six months, and spoke tersely and keenly, but did not anticipate anything at all important that had occured to me. When he sate down, nobody rose. There was a cry of ' Divide ! ' Then I stood up. The House filled, and was as still as death; — a severe trial to the nerves of a man returning, after an ab.sence of six years, to an arena where he had once made a great figure. I should have been more discomposed if I had known that my dear Hannah and Margaret were in the gallery. They had got tickets, but kept their inten- tion strictly secret from me meaning, if I failed, not to let me know that they had witnessed my failure. I spoke with great ease to myself ; great applause ; and, better than aplause, complete success. We beat Lord Hotham by more than a hundred votes, and everybody ascribes the vic- tory to me. I was warmly congratulated by all my friends and acquaint- ances. In the midst of the first tumult of applause, a note was handed to me from Margaret, to say that she and her mamma were above. I went up to them, and they were very kind, and very happy. To have given them pleasure is to me the best part of this triumph. To be sure, I am glad to have stopped a most mischievous course of legislation, and to find that, even for public conflict, my faculties are in full vigor and alertness. Craig I hear, was in the gallery ; and his kind heart will be pleased with my success. But I was knocked up." Just twenty years had passed since Macaulay won his spurs as a Minister by the workmanlike style in which he conducted through Parlia- ment the India Bill of 1833. In 1853 the time had again come round for the periodical revision of our relations with our Eastern dependency ; and Sir Charles Wood, as President of the "^Board of Control, introduced a bill which met with Macaulay'S warmest approbation. He recognized the courage and public spirit which prompted the Minister to call upon Parliament to enact that a nomination for the Civil Service of India should thenceforward become the reward of industry and ability, instead of being the price of political support, or the appanage of private interest and family connection. He had himself imported into the Act of 1833 clauses which rearranged the system of appointment to the Civil Service on a basis of Competition.* But the Directors of the East India Com- * The passage in which Macaulay explained and defended these clauses is still worth reading : ** It is said, I know, that examinations in Latin, in Greek, and in mathematics are no tests of what men will prove to be in life. I am perfectly aware that they are not infallible -tests ; but that they are tests I confidently maintain. Look at every walk of life, at this House, at the other House, at the Bar, at the Bench, at the Church, and see whether it be not true that those who attain high distinction in the world were generally men who were distinguished in their academic career. Indeed, Sir, this objection would ' prove far too much even for.those who use it. It would prove that there is no use at all in Education. Education would be a mere useless torture, if at two or three-and-twentyf 22,0 LIFE AND LETTERS" OF CH. XIII. pany had then been too strong for him. They were not going to resign without a struggle the most val uable patronage which had existed in the world since the days when the Roman senate sent proconsuls and proprae- tors to Syria, Sicily, and Egypt. Backstairs influence in Leadenhall Street contrived that the clauses embodying Macaulay's plan lay dormant in a pigeon hole at the Board of Control, until Backstairs influence in Parliament at length found an opportunity to procure their repeal. Jnfortunately, the India Bill of 1853 fell short of Mr. Bright's expec- tations. That statesman, in his generous enthusiasm for the welfare of the Indian people, pronounced that the Ministerial scheme did. little or nothing to promote those salutary reforms which, in his opinion, our duty as a nation imperatively demanded of us to effect without delay. The discussion in the House of Commons on the First Reading damaged the prospects of Sir Charles Wood's measure. The effect of cold water, when thrown by Mr. Bright, is never very bracing ; and Macaulay was seriously alarmed for the future of a bill, the positive advantages of which, in his opinion, outweighed all defects and shortcomings whatso- ever. " I read Wood's speech," he writes on the 5th of June ; " and thought the plan a great improvement on the present system. Some of Bright's objections are groundless, and others exaggerated ; but the vigor of his speech will do harm. On the Second Reading I will try whether I cannot deal with the Manchester champion." The Second Reading of the India Bill was moved on the 23rd of June. Sir Charles Wood urged Macaulay to speak as early in the debate as possible ; but his health was already in a state which required that special a man who had neglected his studies -were exactly on a par with a man who had applied himself to them, — exactly as likely to perform all the offices of public life with credit to himself and with advantage to society. Whether the English system of Education be good or bad is not now the question. Perhaps I may think that tod much time is given to the ancient languages and to the abstract sciences. But what then ? Whatever be the languages, whatever be the sciences, which it is, in any age or country, the fashion to teach, the persons who become the greatest proficients in those languages and those sciences will generally be the flower of the youth ; the most acute, the most industrious, the most ambitious of honorable distinctions. If the Ptolemaic system were taught at Cambridge instead of the Newtonian, the senior wrangler would, nevertheless, be in general a superior man to the wooden spoon. If, instead of learning Greek, we learned Cherokee, the man who understood the Cherokee best, who made the most correct and melodious Cherokee verses, who comprehended most accurately the effect of the Chero- Jcee particles would generally be a superior man to him who was destitute of these .accom- plishments. If astrology were taught at our universities, the young man who cast nativities best would generally turn out a superior man. If alchymy were taught, the young man who showed most activity in the pursuit of the philosopher's stoue would generally turn out a superior man." When Macaulay was correcting this speech for the Press, in 1853, ho says with par^ donable complacency : " Every subject has a striking and interesting side to it, ii people could find it put." 1852--56-. LORD HACAUtAY. Z2I arrangements should be made in order to enable him to speak at all. The oppression on his chest would not allow him to exert his voice for some hours after eating ; and, on the other hand, with his tendency to faint- ness, he could not go far into the evening without the support of food. There was a general wish that he should take the first place on the afternoon of the 24th; but the Ministers were not sufficiently on the alert ; and, late at night on the 23rd, Mr. Joseph Hume moved the ad- journment, and secured the precedence for himself. When the morrow came, the House was crammed. Every one who could venture to remonstrate with the Member for Montrose on so delicate a subject entreated him not to stand between Macaulay and his audience ; but Mr. Hume replied that his own chest was weak ; that his health was as important as that of any other person ; that he knew just as much about India as Mr. Macaulay ; and, in short, that speak he would. In spite of his assurances that he would detain Honorable Gentlemen for no " great length of time," the House, which had very little compassion for an invalid who had been on his legs six times within the last ten days, received him with signs of impatience so marked that Hansard has thought it incumbent upon him to record them with greater minuteness than he has .bestowed upon the speech itself. Hume, and his hearers, had different notions as to length of time ; and the clock was well on towards eight before Macaulay rose. " It was the deadest time of the evening," he writes ; " but the House was very well filled. I spoke for an hour and a half, pretty well, — others say very well. I did not satisfy myself ; but, on the whole, I succeeded better than I expected. I was much exhausted, though I had by no means exhausted my subject" As a consequence of his having been forced to bring his speech to an abrupt and premature conclusion, Macaulay did not judge it worthy of a place in the Collected Edition. He was too much an artist to consent to rest his reputation upon unfinished work, and too much a man of the world to print what he had never spoken. But it would have been well if he had done some violence to his literary tastes, by publishing, as a fragment, the most masterly vindication of the principle of Appointment by Competition that efver was left unanswered. He began by a few remarks about the relations between the Board of Control and the Court of Directors, and then glided off, by a happy transition, from that portion of the bill which related to the men who were to rule India from home, to that portion which related to the men who were to rule it on the spot " The test," he said, " by which I am inclined to judge of the present bill, is the probable effect it will have upon the Civil Service in India. Is it likely to raise, or is it likely to lower, the character and spirit of that dis- tinguished body which furnishes India with its Judges and Collectors } " The question for the House was to consider the process by which these 222 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIII. functional ies were henceforward to be selected. There had been talk o£ giving the Governor-General an unlimited power of appointing whom he chose. " There is something plausible in the proposition that you should allow him to take able men wherever he finds them. But my firm opinion is, that the day on which the Civil Service of India ceases to be a close service will be the beginning of an age of jobbing, — the most monstrous, the most extensive, and the most perilous system of abuse in the distribution of patronage that we have ever witnessed. Every Governor-General would take out with him, or would soon be followed by, a crowd of nephews, first and second cousins, friends, sons of friends, and political hangers on ; while every steamer arriving from the Red Sea would carry to India ■ some adventurer bearing with him testimonials from people of influence in England. The Governor-General would have it in his power to distribute Residencies, Seats at the Council Board, Seats at the Revenue Board, places of from 4,000/. to 6,000/. a year, upon men without the least acquaintance with the character or habits of the natives, and with only such knowledge of the language as would enable them*to call for another bottle of pale ale, or desire their attendant to pull the punkah faster. In what way could you put a check on such proceedings ? Would you, the House of Commons, control them ? Have you been so successful in extirpating .nepotism at your own door, and in excluding all abuses from Whitehall and Somerset House that you should fancy that you could establish purity in countries the situation of which you do not know, and the names of which you cannot pronounce ? I believe most fully that, instead of purity resulting from that arrangement to India, England itself would soon be tainted ; and that before long, when a son or brother of some active men:ber of this House went out to Calcutta, carrying' with him a Jetter of recommendation from the Prime Minister to the Governor-General, that letter would be really a Bill of Exchange, drawn on the revenues of India for value received in Parliamentary support in this House. " We are not without experience on this point. We have only to look back to those shameful and lamentable years which followed the first establishment of out power in Bengal. If you turn to any poet, satirist, or essayist of those times, you may see in what manner that system^f appointment operated. There was a tra- dition in Calcutta that, during Lord Clive's second administration, a man came out with a strong letter of recommendation from one of the Ministers. Lord Clive said in his peculiar way, ' Well, chap, how much do you want ? ' Not being accustomed to be spoken to so plainly, the man replied that he only hoped for some situation in which his services might be useful. * That is no answer, chap,' said Lord Clive. * How much do you want? will a hundred thousand pounds do?'* The person replied, that he should be delighted if, by laborious service, he could obtain that competence. Lord Clive at once wrote out an order for the sum, and told the appli- cant to leave India by the ship he came in, and, once back in England to remain * I have tept the amount of money as it stands in Hansard ; but it is more than proba- ble that Macaulay said " a hundred thousand rupees," in accordance with the version which in his day was current at Calcutta. A hundred thousand rupees was a favorite sum with LorJ Clive. When he was called upon for a sentiment after dinner, he used to give " Alas and a-lackaday ! " (a lass, and a lac a day.) 1852-56- LORB MACAULAY. 223 there. I think that the story is very probable, and I also think that India ought to be grateful for the course which Lord Clive pursued ; for though he pillaged the people of Bengal to enrich this lucky adventurer, yet, if the man had received an appointment, they would have been pillaged, and misgoverened as well. Against evils like these there is one security, and, I believe, but one ; and tliat is, that the Civil service should be kept close." Macaulay then referred to Sir Charles Wood's proposal, that admis* sioiis to the Civil Service of India should be distributed according to the result of an open Competitive Examination. He expressed his satisfaction at the support which that proposal had received from the present Earl of Derby, and the surprise and disappointment which had been aroused in his mind by the nature of Lord EUenborough's opposition to it. " If I understand the opinions imputed to that noble Lord, he thinks that the proficiency of a young man in those pursuits which constitute a liberal education'is not only no indication that he is likely to make a figure in after life, but that it posi- tively raises a presumption that he will be passed by those whom he overcame in these early contests. I understand that the noble Lord holds that young men who gain distinction in such pursuits are likely to turn out dullards, utterly unfit for an active career ; and I am not sure that the noble Lord did not say that it would be wiser to make boxing or cricket a test of fitness than a liberal education. It seems to me that there never was a fact proved by a larger mass of evidence, or a more un- varied experience than this ; — that men, who distinguish themselves in their youth above their contemporaries, almost always keep to the end of their lives the^tart which they have gained. This experience is so vast that I should as soon expect to hear any one question it, as to hear it denied that arsenic is poison, or that brandy is intoxicating. Take down in any library th^ Cambridge Calender. There you have the list of honors for a hundred years. Look at the list of wranglers and of junior optimes ; and I will venture to say that, for one man who has in after life distin- guished himself among the junior optimes, you will find twenty among the wrang- lers. Take the Oxford Calendar, and compare the list of first-class men with an equal number of men in the third class. Is not our history full of instances which prove this fact? Look at the Church, or the Bar. Look at Parliament, from the time that Parliamentary government began in this country ; — from the days of Mon- tague and St. John to those of Canning and Peel. Look to India. The ablest man who ever governed India was Warren Hastings, and was he not in the first rank at Westminster? The ablest civil servant I ever knew in India was Sir Charles Met- calfe, and was he not of the first standing at Eton ? The most eminent member of the aristocracy who ever- governed India was Lord Wellesley. What was his Eton reputation ? What was his Oxford reputation ? I must also mention, — I cannot refrain from mentioning, — another noble and distinguished Governor-General. A few days ago, while the memory of the speech to which I have alluded was still fresh in my mind, I read in the Muses Cantahrigienses a very eloquent and classical ode by a young poet of seventeen, which the University of Cambridge rewarded with a gold medial ; and with pleasure not altogether unmingled with pain, I read at the bottom of that composition the name of the Honorable Edward Law, of St. John's 224 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIII. College, I saw with pleasure that the name of Lord Ellenborough may be added to the long list of men who, in early youth, have, by success in academical studies, given the augiury of the part which they were afterwards to play in public life ; and, at the same time, could not but feel some concern and surprise that a nobleman, so honor- ably distinguished in his youth by attention to those studies, should, in his maturer years, have descended to use language respecting them which would have better be* come the lips of Ensign Northerton,* or the captain in Swift's poem, who says : A scholard when tirst from his college broke loose Can hardly tell how to cry bok / to a goose. Your Noveds, and Bluturchs, and Omurs, and stuff| By George, they don't signify this pinch of snufE. To give a young gentleman right education The army's the only good school in the nation. My schoolmaster called me a dunce and a fool ; But at cuffs I was always the cock of the school. If a recollection of his own early triumphs did not restrain the noble Earl from using this language, I should thought that his filial piety would have had that effect I should have thought that he would have remembered how splendid was the aca- demical career of that great and strong-minded magistrate, the late Lord Ellen- borough. * * * * It is no answer to say that you can point, — as it is desirable that you should be able to point, — to two or three men of great powers who, having idled when they were young, stung with remorse- and generous shame have afterwards ex- erted themselves to retrieve lost time. Such exceptions should be noted ; for they seem intended to encourage those who, after having thrown away their youth from levity or love of pleasure, may be inclined to throw their manhood after it from de- spair ; but the general rule is, beyond all doubt, that the men who were first in the competition of the schools have been first in the competition of the world." Macaulay clearly explained to the House how a system of Competitive Examination, by an infallible and self-acting process, maintains, and even raises, the standard of excellence, and how a system of pass examination tends surely and constantly to lower it. He supported his view by a chain of reasoning which has often been employed since, but to which no advocate of the old mode of appointment by private interest has even so much as attempted to reply.t He said something against the superstition * It was Ensign Northerton who, on a certain famous occasion, commented over the mess-table upon Homer and Corderius in language far too strong for quotation, and with an audacious misapplication of epithets as ludicrous as anything in Fielding. Itcannotbe said that the young officer's impertinence was unprovoked. Tom Jones's observations' about the Greeks and Trojans would have been voted a gratuitous piece of pedantry even in a college common-room. t His argument ran thus : Under a system of Competition every man struggles to do his best ! and the consequence is that, without any effort on the part of the examiner, the standard keeps itself up. But the moment that you say to the examiner, not, *' Shall A or B go to India ? '* but " Here is A. Is he fit ^o go to India ? " the question becomes altogether a different one. The examiner's compassion, his good nature, his unwilling- ness to MaKt the prospects of a young man, lead him to strain a point in order to let the" 1852-56. LORD MACAULAY. 225 that proficiency in learning implies a want of energy and force of charac- ter ; which, like all other superstitions, is cherished only by those who are unwilling to obse^^ /e facts, or unable to draw deductions. A man who has forced his way to the front of English politics has afforded at least a strong presumption that he can hold his t^eadat." Macaulay proposed to substitute " Ppofi " for " adfi '." ' it In November, 1857, Macaulay received invitations from Edinburgh and Glasgow to take part in the ceremonies of the Burns centenary. " I refused both invitations," he says, " for fifty reasons," one of which is that, if I went down in the depth of winter to harangue in §90tland, I should never come back alive." 1856-58. LORD MACAULAY. 279 entry; Finch; Oliver Cromwell; Clarendon; and Russell, the La Hogue man. Very few places have been so filled." The ceremony of Macaulay's inauguration of High Steward was deferred till the warm weather of 1858. " Tuesday, May 11. — I was at Cambridge by ten. The mayor was at the station to receive me ; and most hospitable he was, and kind. I went with him to the Town Hall, was sworn in, and then was ushered into the great room where a public breakfast was set out. I had not been in that room since 1820, when I heard Miss Stephens sing there, and bore part in a furious contest between ' God save the King ' and ' God save the Queen.' I had been earlier in this room. I was there at two meetings of the Cambridge Bible Society; that of 1813, and that of 1815. On the latter occasion I bought at Deighton's Scott's Waterloo, just published, and read it on a frosty journey back to Aspenden Hall. But how I go on wandering ! The room now looked smaller than in old times. About forty municipal functionaries, and as many guests, chiefly of the Univer- sity, were present. The mayor gave my health in a very graceful manner. I replied concisely, excusing myself, with much truth, on the plea of health, from haranguing longer. I was well received ; very well. Several speeches followed ; the Vice-Chancellor saying very handson\ely that I was a pledge of the continuance of the present harmony between town and gown." Macaulay had good reason to shrink from the exertion of a long speech, as was only too evident to his audience in the Cambridge Assembly-room. There was a touch of sadness in the minds of all present as they listened to the brief but expressive phrases in which he reminded them that the time had been when he might have commanded a hearing " in larger and stormier assemblies," but that any services which he could henceforward do for his country must be done in the quiet of his own library. " It is now five years," he said, " since I raised my voice in public ; and it is not likely — unless there be some special call of duty — that I shall ever raise it in public again." That special call of duty never came. Macaulay's indifference to the vicissitudes of party politics had by this time grown into a confirmed habit of mind. His correspondence during the spring of 1857 contains but few and brief allusions even to catastrophes as striking as the minis- terial defeat upon the China war, and the overwhelnring reverse of fortune which ensued when the question was transferred to the polling booths. " Was there ever anything," he writes, "since the fall of the rebel angels, like the smash of the Anti-Corn Law League ? How art thou fallen trom Heaven, O Lucifer ! I wish that Bright and Cobden had been returned." Macaulay's opinion in the matter, as far as he had an opinion, was in fav* of the Government, and against the coalition. " I am glad," he 28o LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIV. wrote on the eve of the debate, " that I have done with politics. I should not have been able to avoid a pretty sharp encounter with Lord John." But his days for sharp encounters were over, and his feelings of partizan- ship were reserved for the controversies about Standing Armies and Royal Grants which convulsed the last two Parliaments of the seventeenth century. He was, to describe him in his own words, " a vehement minis- terialist of 1698," who thought "more about Somers and Montague than about Campbell and Lord Palmerston." A faint interest, rather personal than political, in the proceedings of the Upper House, was awakened in his breast when, sitting for the first time on the red benches, he found himself in the presence of the moat- eminent among his ancient rivals, adversaries, and allies. " Lord Derby,'' he writes, " was all himself, — clever, keen, neat, clear ; never aiming high, but always hitting what he aims at." A quarter of a century had not changed Macaulay's estimate of Lord Brougham, nor softened his mode of expressing it. " Strange fellow ! His powers gone. His spite immortal. A dead nettle." * During his first Session the new Peer more than once had a mind to speak upon matters relating to India. In February, 1858, Lord Ellen-, borough gave notice of a motion for papers, with the view, as was pre- sumed, of eliciting proofs that the Sepoy Mutiny had been provoked by the proselytizing tendencies of the British Government. Macaulay, prompted by an Englishman's sense of fair-play, resolved to give the eloquent and redoubtable ex-Governor-General a chance of paying off outstanding scores. But it all came to nothing. " February ig. — I worked hard, to make ready for a discussion of the great question of religion and education in India. I went down to the House. Lord Ellenborough's speech merely related to a petty question about the report of a single inspector — a very silly one, I am afraid — in Bahar. Lord Granville an- swered well, and much more than sufficiently. Then the debate closed. Many people thought that Lord EUenborough would .have been much longer and more vehement if he had not been taken aback by seeing me ready to reply. They say that he has less pluck than his warm and somewhat petulant manner indicates. I can only say that I was quite as much afraid of him as he could be of me. I thought of Winkle and * Macaulay's disapprobation of Lord Brougham had been revived and intensified by a recent occurrence. " April z-j, 1856. — I had a short conversation with Lord Lansdowne about a disagreeable matter ; — that most cruel and caiumnious attack which Brougham has made on Lord Rutherford in a paper which has been printed and circulated among the peers who form the Committee on Life Peerages. I was glad to find that there was no chance that the paper would be published. Should it be pubUshed, poor Rutherford will not want defenders." lS56-^S8- LORD MACAULAY. 28 1 Dowler in the Pickwick Papers." * On the ist of May in the same year Macaulay says : " I meant to go to the Museum , but, seeing that Lord Shaftesbury has given notice of a petition which may produce a discus- sion about Christianity in India, I stayed at home all day, preparing my- self to speak if there should be occasion. I shall drop no hint of my intention. I cannot help thinking that I shall succeed, if I have voice enough to make myself heard." But, when the day arrived, he writes : " Shaftesbury presented the petition with only a few words. Lord Ellen- borough said only a fsw words in answer.t To make a long set speech in such circumstances would have been absurd ; so I went quietly home." In the course of the year 1858 several of those eminent Frenchmen who refused to bow the knee before the Second Empire had frequent and friendly conversations with Macaulay on the future of their unhappy country ; but they failed to convince the historian of our great Revolu- tion that the experiment of 1688 could be successfully repeated on Gallic soil. " I argued strongly," he writes on one occasion, " against the notion that much good was likely to be done -by insurrection even against the bad governments of the Continent. What good have the revolutions of 1848 done .' Or, rather, what harm have they not done ? The only rev- olutions which have turned out well have been defensive revolutions ; — ours of 1688 ; the French of 1830. The American was, to a great extent, of the same kind." On the 15th of May he says : " Montalembert called. He talked long, vehemently, and with feeling, about the degraded state of France. I could have said a good deal on the other side ; but I re- frained. I like him much." A fortnight later: " Duvergier d'Hauranne called, and brought his son. How he exclaimed against the French Emperor ! I do not like the Emperor or his system ; but I cannot find that his enemies are able to hold out any reasonable hope, that, if he is pulled down, a better government will be set up : I cannot say to a Frenchman what I think ; — that the French have only themselves to thank; and that a people which violently pulls down constitutional gov- ernments, and lives quiet under despotism, must be, and ought to be, despotically governed. We should have reformed the government of the House of Orleans without subverting it. We should not have borne the yoke of Celui-ci for one day. However, I feel for men like Duvergier d'Hauranne and Montalembert, who are greatly in advance of the body of their countrymen." Macaulay had little attention to spare for the politics of the West- * " ' Mr. Winkle, Sir, be calm. Don't strike me. I won't bear it. A blow 1 Never I ' said Mr. Dowler, looking meeker than Mr. Winkle had expected from a gentle- man oi his ferocity." t Between February and May Lord £llenborou|;h had become Secr^taiy of the Indian Board of Control, 282 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIV. minister lobbies or the Parisian boulevards ; but it must not be thought that he was growing indifferent to the wider and more permanent inter ests of the British nation and the British empire. The honor of our flag, and the welfare of our people, were now, as ever, the foremost objects of his solicitude. "England," he writes, "seems to be profoundly quiet. God grant that she may long continue so, 'and' that the history of the years which I may yet have to live may be the dullest portion of her history I It is sad work to live in times about which it is amusing to read." The fervor of this prayer for public tranquillity was prompted by the recollections of 1857, which were still fresh in Macaulay's mind. On the 2gth of June in that terrible year he notes in his diary : " To break- fast with Milnes. Horrible news from India ; massacre of Europeans at Delhi, and mutiny. I have no apprehensions for our Indian Empire; but this is a frightful event. Home ; but had no heart to work. I will not try at present." Again he says, and yet again : " I cannot settle to work while the Delhi affair is undecided." His correspondence during the coming months overflows with allusions to India. " No more news ; that is to say, no later news than we had before you started ; but private let- ters are appearing daily in the newspapers. The cruelties of the Sepoys have inflamed the nation to a degree unprecedented within my-memory. Peace Societies, and Aborigines Protection Societies, and Societies for the Reformation of Criminals are silenced. There is one terrible cry for revenge. The account of that dreadful military execution at Peshawur, — forty men blown at once from the mouths of cannon, their heads, legs, arms flying in all directions, — was read with delight by people who three weeks ago were against all capital punishment. Bright himself declares for the vigorous suppression of the mutiny. The almost universal feeling IS that not a single Sepoy within the walls of Delhi should be spared ; and I own that it is a feeling with which I cannot help sympathizing." When Macaulay was writing these words, the crimes of the mutineers were still unpunished, and their power unbroken. The belief that mercy to the Sepoy was no mercy, as long as Delhi remained in rebel hands, was sternly carried into action in the Punjaub and the North West Provinces of India by men who were sincerely humane both by temperament and by religious conviction! That belief was almost universal among people of our race on both sides of the Atlantic. The public opinion even of phil- anthropic and abolitionist Boston did not differ on this point from the pub- lic opinion of London. " The India mail," wrote Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, " brings stories of women and children outraged and murdered. The royal stronghold is in the hands of the babe-killers. England takes down the Map of the world, which she has girdled with empire, and makes a correction thus : DELHI. Dele. The civilized world says, Amen I." "September 19, 1857. The Indian business looks ill. This miserabje 1856-58. LORD MACAULAY. 283 aff.iir at Dinapore may produce serious inconvenience* However, the tide is near the turn. Within a month the flood of English will come in fast. But it is painful to be so revengeful as I feel myself. I, who can- not bear to see a beast or bird in pain, could look on without winking while Nana Sahib underwent all the tortures of Ravaillac And these feelings are not mine alone. Is it possible that a year passed under the influence of such feelings should not have some effect on the national • character ? The effect will be partly good and partly bad. The nerves of our minds will be braced. Effeminate, mawkish philanthropy will lose all its influence. But shall we not hold human life generally cheaper than we have done ? Having brought ourselves to exult in the misery of the guilty, shall we not feel less sympathy for the sufferings of the innocent ? In one sense, no doubt, in exacting i tremendous retribution we are doing our duty and performing an act of mercy. So is Calcraft when he hangs a murderer. Yet the habit of hanging murderers is found to injure the character." Macaulay did everything which lay in his power to show that at such a crisis tie felt a citizen's concern in the fortunes of the commonwealth. At the invitation of the Lord Mayor he became a member of the Committee for the relief of the Indian sufferers. On the day appointed for national humiliation and prayer he writes as follows : '■ Octohfr 7. — Wind and rain. However, I went to Church, though by no means well. Nothing could be more solemn or earnest than the aspect of the congregation, which was numerous. The sermon was detestable ; ignorance, stupidity, bigotry. If the maxims of this fool, and of others like him, are followed, we shall soon have, not the mutiny of an army, but the rebellion of a whole nation to deal with. He would have the Government plant missionaries everywhere, invite the Sepoy to listen to Christian in- struction, and turn the Government schools into Christian seminaries. Happily there is some security against such mischievous doctrines in the good sense of the country, and a still stronger security in its nonsense. Christianity in teaching sounds very well ; but the moment that any plan is proposed, all the sects in the kingdom will be together by the ears. We who are for absolute neutrality shall be supported against such fools as this man by all the Dissenters, by the Scotch, and by the Roman Catho- lics." " October 25, 1857. — My birthday. Fifty-seven. I have had a not un- * The Dinapore Brigade, a force of twenty-five hundred hayonets, mutinied on the 25th of July, and a few days later routed, and well-nigh destroyed, an ill-conducted expe- dition which had been despatched to relieve the European garrison at Ap^h. The glo- rious defence of the little house, and its equally glorious relief, have thrown into shade the memory of the lamentable blunde^ which gave occasion for that display of intelligent and heroic valor. C'- 284 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIV. pleasant year. My health is not good, but ray head is clear and my heart is warm. I receive numerous marks of the good opinion of the public ; — a large public, including the educated men both of the old and of the new world. I have been made a peer, with, I think, as general an approbation as I remember in the case of any man that in my time has been made a peer. What is much more important to my happiness than wealth, titles, and even fame, those whom I love are well and happy, and very kind and affectionate to me. These are great things. I have some complaints, however, to make of the past year. The Indian troubles have affected my spirits more than any public events in the whole course of my life. To be sure, the danger which threatened the country at the beginning of April 1848, came nearer to me. But that danger was soon over ; and the Indian Mutiny has now lasted several months, and may last months still. The emotions which it excites, too, are of a strong kind. I may say that, till this year, I did not know what real vindictive hatred meant. "With what horror I used to read in Livy how Fulvius put to death the whole Capuan Senate in the Second Punic War I And with what equanimity I could hear that the whole garrison of Delhi, all the Moulavies and Mussulman Doctors there, and all the rabble of the bazaar had been treated in the same way ! Is this wrong ? Is not the severity which springs from a great sensibility to human suffering a better thing than the lenity which springs from indifference to human suffering ? The question may be argued long on both sides." "October 27. — Huzzal Huzzat Thank Godl Delhi is taken. A great event. Glorious to the nation, and one which will' i^esound through all Christendom and Islam. What an exploit for that handful of Englishmen in the heart of Asia to have performed ! " " November 11. — Huzza! Good news! Lucknow relieved. Delhi ours. The old dotard a prisoner. God be praised ! Another letter from Long- man. They have already sold 7600 more copies. This is near 6000/., as I reckoned, in my pocket. But it gratified me, I am glad to be able to say with truth, far, very far, less than the Indian news. I could hardly eat my dinner for joy." The lovers of ballad-poetry may be permitted to wonder how it was that the patriotic ardor which passing events aroused in Macaulay did not find vent in strains resembling those with which he celebrated Ivry and the Armada. It is still more remarkable that (if we except the stanzas which he wrote after his defeat at Edinburgh) he never embodied inverse any of those touching expressions of personal emotion which so constantly recur in the pages of his journal. The explanation probably lies in the fact that, from the time when he became a regular contributor to the Edinburgh Review, he always had on hand some weighty and continuous employment which concentrated his imagination, and consumed all his productive ener- 1856-58. LORD MACAULAY. 285 gies. There was but one short break in his labors ; and that break gave us the Lays of Ancient Rome. " K," said Goethe, " you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it." * The truth of this aphorism, representing, as it does, the lifelong experience of the greatest master who ever consciously made an art of literature, was at first not very acceptable to Macaulay. But he soon discovered that Clio was a mistress who would be satisfied with no divided allegiance ; and her sister muses thencefor- ward lost the homage of one who might fairly have hoped to be numbered among their favored votaries. Long after Macaulay had abandoned all other public business he continued to occupy himself in the administration of the British Museum. In February, 1856, he wrote to Lord Lansdowne, vrith the view of securing that old friend's potent influence in favor of an arrangement by which Professor Owen might be placed in a position worthy of his reputation and of his services. The circumstance which gave rise to the letter was the impending appointment of Signer Panizzi to the post of Secretary and Principal Librarian to the Museum. " I am glad of this," writes Macau- lay, " both on public and private grounds. Yet I fear that the appoint- ment will be unpopular both within and without the walls of the Museum. There is a growing jealousy among men of science which, between our- selves, appears even at the Board of Trustees. There is a notion that the department of Natural History is neglected, and that the library and the sculpture gallery are unduly favored. This feeling will certainly not be allayed by the appointment of Panizzi, whose great object, during many years, has been to make our library the best in Europe, aud who would at any time give three Mammoths for an Aldus." Macaulay then went on to propose that, simultaneously with Signor Panizzi's nomination to the Secretaryship, Professor Owen should be constituted Superintendent of the whole department of Natural History, * This remark was addressed to Eckermann. The whole conversation is highly interest- ing. *' Beware," Goethe said, " of attempting a large work. It is exactly that which injures our hest minds, even those distinguished by the finest talents and the most earnest efforts. I have suffered from this cause, and know how much it has injured me. What have I not let fall into the well ! If I had written all that I well might, a hundred volumes would not contain it. " The present will have its rights. The thoughts which daily press upon the poet will and should be expressed. But, if you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it ; all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasantness of life itself is for the time lost. What exertion and expenditure of mental force are required to arrange and round off a great whole ; and then what powere, and yhat a tranquil, undisturbed situation in life, to express it with the proper fluency ! » * • » But if he [the poet] daily seizes the present, and always treats with a freshness of feeling what is offered him, he always makes sure of something good, and, if he sometimes does not succeed, has, at least lost nothing." The English of this passage is that of Mr. Oxenford's translation. .286 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIV. including geology, zoology, botany, and mineralogy. " I cannot but think," he says, "that this arrangement would be beneficial in the highest degree to the Museum. I am sure that it would be popular. I must add that I am extremely desirous that something should be done for Owen. I hardly know him to speak to. His pursuits are not mine. But his fame is spread over Europe. He is an honor to our country, and it is painful to me to think that a man of his merit should be approaching old age amidst anxieties and distresses. He told me that eight hundred a year, without a house in the Museum, would be opulence to him. He did not he said, even wish for more. His seems to me to be a case for public patronage. Such patronage is not needed by eminent literary men o! artists. A poet, a novelist, an historian, a painter, a sculptor, who stood in his own line as high as Owen stands among men of science, could nevei be in want except by his own fault. But the greatest natural philosopher may starve, while his countrymen are boasting of his discoveries, and while foreign Academies are begging for the honor of being allowed to add his name to their list." * From the moment when, in the summer of-i854, Macaulay had definite. ly and deliberately braced himself to the work of completing the second great instalment of the History, he went to his daily labors without inter- mission and without reluctance until his allotted task had been accomplished. When that result had been attained, — ^when his third and fourth volumes were actually in the hands of the public, — it was not at first that he became aware how profoundly his already enfeebled health had been Strained by the prolonged effort which the production of those volumes had cost him. At every previous epoch in his life the termination of one undertaking had been a signal for the immediate commencement of another ; but in 1856, summer succeeded to spring, and gave place to autumn, before he again took pen in hand. For many weeks together he indulged himself in the pleasure of loitering over those agreeable occupa- tions which follow in the train of a literary success ; — answering letters of congratulation; returning thanks, more or less, sincere, for the sugges- tions and criticisms which poured in from the most opposite, and some- times the most unexpected quarters ; preparing new editions ; and read- ing everything that the Reviews had to say about him with the placid enjoyment of a veteran author. " I bought the British Quarterly Review ; — an article on my book, praise and blame. Like other writers I swallow the praise, and think the blame absurd. But in truth I do think that the fault-finding is generally unreasonable, though the book is, no doubt, faulty enough. It • On the 26th of May, 1856, Professor Owen was appointed Superintendent of the Department of Natural History with a salary of 800?. a year. 1856-58. LORD MACAULAY. 287 is well for its reputation that I do not review it, as I could review it." " Fraser's Magazine. Very laudatory. The author evidently John Kemble. He is quite right in saying that I have passed lightly over . continental politics. But was this wrong .' I think I could defend my- self. I am writing a History of England ; arid as to grubbing, as he rec- ommends, in Saxon and Hessian archives for the purpose of ascertaining all the details of the continental negotiations of that time, I should have doubled my labor, already "severe enough. That I have not given a generally correct view of our continental relations he certainly has not shown." " After breakfast to the Athenaeum, and saw articles on my book in the Dublin Review, and the National Review. Very well satisfied to find that the whole skill and knowledge of Maynooth could make no impression on my account of the Irish war." " I received the AUgemeine Zeitung, and found in it a long article on my book, very laudatory, and to me very agreeable ; for I hold the judgment of foreigners to be a more sure prognostic of what the judgment of posterity is likely to be than the judgment of my own countrymen." " I made some changes in my account of James's Declaration of 1692. If my critics had been well informed, they might have worried me about one paragraph on that subject. But it escaped them, and now I have put everything to rights." " To-day I got a letter from , pointing out what I must admit to be a gross impro- priety of language in my book ; — an impropriety of a sort rare, I hope, with me. It shall be corrected ; and I am obliged to the fellow, little as I like him." At length, on the 1st of October, 1856, Macaulay notes in his diary ; " To the Museum, and turned over the Dutch despatches for information about the fire of Whitehall. Home, and wrote a sheet of foolscap, the first of Part III. God knows whether I shall ever finish that part. I begin it with little heart or hope." In the summer of 1857 he remarks : " How the days steal away, and nothing done I I think often of Johnson's lamentations repeated every Easter over his own idleness. But the cases differ. Often I have felt this morbid incapacity to work ; but never so long and so strong as of late ; — the natural effect of age and ease." On the 14th of July in the same year : " I wrote a good deal to-day ; Darien. The humor has returned, and I shall woo it to continue. What better amusement can I have, if it should prove no more than an amusement ? " And again : " Read about the Darien affair. It will be impossible to tell the truth as to that matter without putting the Scotch into a rage. But the truth shall be told." The intrinsic importance of the work on which Macaulay was now engaged could hardly be overrated ; for the course of his History had brought him to a most momentous era in the political annals of our coun- try. It was his business to tell the story, and to point the lesson, of the years 288 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIV. from i6g7 to 1701 ; — those years when the majority in the House of Com- mons was already the strongest force in the State, but when the doctrine that the executive administration must be in the hands of Ministers who possessed the confidence of that majority had not as yet been recognized as a constitutional axiom. Nothing which he has ever written is more valuable than his account of the grave perils which beset the kingdom during that period of transition, or, than his vivid and thoughtful com- mentary upon our method of government by alternation of parties. No passage in all hi^ works more clearly illustrates the union of intellectual qualities which formed the real secret of his strength, — the combination in one and the same man of literary power, historical learning, and prac- tical familiarity with the conduct of great affairs. * Nor again, as specimens of narrative carefully planned and vigorously sustained, has he produced anything with which his descriptions of the visit of the Czar, the tria' of Spencer Cowper, t and, above all, the fatal hallucination of Darien, may not fairly rank. And yet, however effective were the episodes which thickly strew the portion of his History that he did not live to publish, there can be no question that the alacrity with which he had once pursued his great undertaking had begun to languish. " I find it difficult," he writes in February, 1857, " to settle to my work. This is an old malady of mine. It has not prevented me from doing a good deal in the course of my life. Of late I have felt this impotence more than usual. The chief reason, I believe, is the great doubt which I feel whether I shall live long enough to finish another volume of my book." He already knew, to use the expression which he applied to the dying William of Orange, " that his time was short, and grieved with a grief such as only noble spirits feel, to think that he must leave his work but half finished." Gradually and unwillingly Macaulay acquiesced in the conviction that he must submit to leave untold that very portion of English history which he was competent to treat as no man again will treat it. Others may study the reign of Anne with a more minute and exclusive diligence, — the dis- covery of materials hitherto concealed cannot fail from time to time to throw fresh light upon transactions so extensive and complicated as those * See especially the two paragraphs in Chapter XXIV. which commence with the words, " If a Minister were now to find 'himself thus situated—" There is little doubt that Lord Carlisle had something of this in his mind when he wrote in his diary of the 28th of March, 1861 ; " I finished Macaulays fifth volume, and felt in despair to close that brilliant pictured page. I think it even surpasses in interest and animation what has gone before ; and higher praise no man can give. The leading reflection is, how as a nation we have been rescued, led, and blessed ; by the side of this, how much of the old faults and leaven still remain." t The page of Macaulay's manuscript, which is preserved in the British museum, il taken from his account of the trial of Spencer Cowper. 1856-58. LORD MACAULAY. 289 which took place between the rupture of the Peace of Ryswick and the accession of the House of Brunswick ; but it may safely be affirmed that few or none of Macaulay's successors will be imbued like him with the enthusiasm of the period. There are phases of literary taste which pass away, never to recur ; and the early associations of future men of letters will seldom be connected with the Rape of the Lock and the Essay on Criticism,— with the Spectator, the Guardian, the Freeholder, the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, and the History of John Bull. But Macaulay's youth was nourished upon Pope, and Bolingbroke, and Atter- bury, and Defoe. Everything which had been written by them, or about them, was as familiar to him as the Lady of the Lake, and the Bride of Abydos, were to the generation which was growing up when Lockhart's Life of Scott and Moore's Life of Byron were making their first appear- ance in the circulating libraries. He had Prior's burlesque verses, and Arbuthnot's pasquinades, as completely at his fingers' ends as a clever public-school boy of fifty years ago had the Rejected Addresses, or the poetry of the Anti-Jacobin. He knew every pamphlet which had been put forth by Swift, or Steele, or Addison as well as Tories of 1790 knew their Burke, or Radicals of 1820 knew their Cobbett. There were times when he amused hiniself with the hope that he might even yet be per- mitted to utilize these vast stores of information, on each separate frag- ment of which he could so easily lay his hand. His diary shows him to have spent more than one summer afternoon " walking in the portico, and reading pamphlets of Queen Anne's time." But he had no real ex- pectation that the knowledge which he thus acquired would ever be turned to account. Others, who could not bring themselves to believe that such raciness of phrase, and such vivacity of intellect, belonged to one whose days were already numbered, confidently reckoned upon his making good the brave words which form the opening sentence of the first chapter of his History. One old friend describes himself in a letter as looking for- ward to the seventh and eighth volumes in order to satisfy his curiosity about the reigns of the first two Georges ; which, he says, " are to me the dark ages." Another is sanguine enough to anticipate the pleasure of reading what Macaulay would have to say about " the great improvement of the steam-engine, and its consequences." But, by the time that he had written a few pages of his fifth volume, the author himself would have been well content to be assured that he would liye to carry his History, in a complete and connected form, down to the death of his hero, William of Orange. During the later years of his life Macaulay sent an occasional article to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. " He had ceased," says Mr. Adam Black, " to write for the reviews or other periodicals, though often earnest- ly solicited to do so. It is entirely to his friendly feeling that I am in- VoL. IL— iq 290 LIFE AND LETTERS OF . CH. XIV. debted for those literary gems, which could not have been purchased with money : and it is but justice to his memory that I should record, as one of the many instances of the kindness and generosity of his heart, that he made it a stipulation of his contributing to the Encyclopaedia that remuneration should not be so much as mentioned. The articles in question are those on Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Doctor Johnson, and William Pitt. The last of these, which is little more than seventy octavo pages in length, was on hand for three-quarters of a year. Early in November, 1857, Macaulay writes : " The plan of a good character of Pitt is forming in my mind;" and,. on the 9th of August, 1858 : " I finished and sent off the"paper which has caused me so much trouble. I began it, I see, in last November. What a time to have been dawdling over such a trifle ! " The conscientious and unsparing industry of his former days now brought Macaulay a reward of a value quite inestimable in the eyes of every true author. The habit of always working up to the highest stand- ard within his reach was so ingrained in his nature, that, however sure and rapid might be the decline of his physical strength, the quality of his productions remained the same as ever. Instead of writing worse, he only wrote less. Compact in form, crisp and nervous in style, these five little essays are everything which an article in an Encyclopaedia should be. The reader, as he travels softly and swiftly along, congratulates him- self on having lighted upon what he regards as a most fascinating literary or political memoir; but the student, on a closer examination, discovers that every fact, and, date, and circumstance is distinctly and faithfully recorded in its due chronological sequence. Macaulay's belief about him- self as a writer was that he improved to the last ; and the question of the superiority of his later over his earlier manner may securely be staked upon a comparison between the article on Johnson in the Edinburgh review and the article on Johnson in the Encyclopasdia Britannica. The latter of the two is indeed a model of that which its eminent subject pronounced to be the essential qualification of a biographer, — the art of writing trifles with dignity.* Macaulay was under no temptation to o*er-write himself ; £or his time never hung heavy on his hands. He had a hundred devices for dissipat- ing the monotony of his days. Now that he had ceased to strain his faculties, he thought it necessary to assure himself from time to time that they were not rusting ; like an old Greek warrior who continued to exer- cise in the Gymnasium the vigor which he no longer expended in the field. "I walked in the portico," he writes in Octobet 1857, "and learned by * A gentleman once observed to Doctor Johnson that he excelled his competitors in writing biography. " Sir," was the complacent reply, " I believe that is true. The doj,a don't :mow how to write triflis with dignity." .1856-58. LORD MACAULAi. 29I heart the noble Fourth Act of the Merchant of Venice. There are four hundred lines, of which I knew a hundred and fifty. I made myself per- fect master of the whole, the prose letter included, in two hours." And again : " I learned the passage in which Lucretius represents Nature ct- postulating with men, viixo complain of the general law of mortality. Very fine it is; but It strikes me that the Epicureans exaggerated immensely the effect which religious terrors and the fear of. future punishment had on their contemporaries, for the purpose of exalting their master, as having delivered mankind from a horrible mental slavery. I see no trace of such feelings in any part of the literature of those times except in these Epicurean declamations." " I have pretty nearly learned all that I like best in Catullus. He grows on me with intimacy. One thing he has, — I do not know whether it belongs to him, or to something in myself, — but there are some chords of my mind which he touches as nobody else does. The first lines of Miser Catulle ; the lines to Cornificius,written evidently from a sickbed ; * and part of the poem beginning ' Si qua recordanti' affect me more than I can explain. They always move me to tears." ' " I have now gone through the first seven books of Martial, and have learned about 360 of the best lines. His merit seems to me to lie, not in wit, but in the rapid succession of vivid images. I wish he were less nauseous. He is as great a beast as Aristophanes. He certainly is a very clever, pleasant writer. Sometimes he runs Catullus himself hard. But, besides his in- decency, his servility and his mendicancy disgust me. In his position, — for he was a Roman Knight, — sornething more like self-respect would have been becoming. I make large allowance for the difference of manners ; but it never can have been comme il faut in any age or nation for a man of note, — an accomplished man, — a man living with the great, — ■ to be constantly asking for money, clothes, and dainties, and to pursue with volleys of abuse those who would give him nothing." In September, 1857, Macaulay writes : " I have at odd moments been studying the Peerage. I ought to be better informed about the assembly in which I am to sit." He soon could repeat off book the entire roll of the House of Lords ; and a few days afterwards comes the entry, " more exercise for my memory, — Second titles." When he had done with the Peerage, he turned to the Cambridge, and then to the Oxford Calendars. " I have now,'' he says, " the whole of our University Fasti by heart ; all, I mean, that is worth remembering. An idle thing, but I wished to try whether my memory is as strong as it used to be, and I perceive no decay." " yune I, 1858. — I am vexed to think I am losing my German. I resolved to win it back. No sooner said than done. I took Schiller's '* Male est, Comifici, tuo Catullo, Male est, mehercule, et l;,boriose." 293 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIV. History of the War in the Netherlands out into the garden, and read a hundred pages. I will do the same daily all the summer." Having found the want of Italian on his annual tours, Macaulay engaged a master to assist him in speaking the language. " We talked," he says, " an hour and a quarter. I got on wonderfully ; much better than I at all expected." I well remember my uncle's account of the interview. As long as the lessons related to the ordinary colloquialisms of the road, the rail, and the hotel, Macaulay had little to say and much to iTarn ; but, whenever the conversation turned upon politics or literature, his companion was fairly bewildered by the profusion of his somewhat archaic vocabulary. The preceptor could scarcely believe his ears when a pupil, who had to be taught the current expressions required for getting his luggage through the custom-house or his letters from the Poste Restante, suddenly fell to denouncing the French occupation of Rome in a torrent of phrases that might have come straight from the pen of Fra Paolo. The zest with which Macaulay pursued the amusements that beguiled his solitary hours contributed not a little to his happiness and his equanim- ity. During his last two years he would often lay aside his book, and bury himself in financial calculations connected with the Stock Market, the Revenue Returns, the Civil Service Estimates, and, above all, the Clergy List. He would pass one evening in comparing the average duration of the lives of Archbishops, Prime Ministers; and Lord Chancel- lors ; and another in tracing the careers of the first half-dozen men in each successive Mathematical Tripos, in order to ascertain whether, in the race of the world, the Senior Wrangler generally contrived to keep ahead of his former competitors. In default of any other pastime, he would have , recourse to the retrospect of old experiences and achievements, or would divert himself by giving the rein to the vagaries of his fancy. " I took up Knight's Magazine the other day, and, after an interval of perhaps thirty years, read a Roman novel which I wrote at Trinity. To be sure, I was a smart lad, but a sadly unripe scholar for such an undertaking." * And again : " I read my own writings during some hours, and was not ill- pleased on the whole. Yet, alas, how short life and how long art ! I feel as if I had but just begun to understand how to write ; and the pro- bability is that I have very nearly done writing." " I find," he says in another place, " that I dream away a good deal of time now ; not more perhaps than formerly ; but formerly I dreamed my day-dreams chiefly while walking. Now I dream sitting or standing by my fire. I will write, if I live, a fuller disquisition than has ever yet been written on that • The Fragments of a Roman Tale are printed in Macaulay's Miscellaneous Writ- ings, 1856-58. LORD MACAULAY. 293 strange habit, — a good habit, in some respects. I, at least, impute to it a great part of my literary success."* And so Macaulay dwelt at ease in his pleasant retreat, a classic in his own lifetime. His critics, and still more his readers, honored him with a deferential indulgerice which is seldom exhibited towards a contemporary. One or another of the Magazines occasionally published an article reflect- ing upon his partiality as an historian; but he held his peace, and the matter, whatever it might be, soon died away. The world apparently refused to trouble itself with any misgivings that might impair the enjoy- ment which it derived from his pages. People were as little disposed to resent his disliking James, and admiring William, as they would have been to quarrel vvith Tacitus for making Tiberius a tyrant and Germanicus a hero. Macaulay, in his diary, mentions a circumstance illustrating the position which he already occupied in the popular estimation. A gentle- man moving in good, and even high, socfety, — as thorough a man of the world as any in London, — ^who had the misfortune to be a natural son, called on him in order to make a formal remonstrance on his having used the term "bastard" in his History, and earnestly entreated him not to sanction so cruel an epithet with his immense authority .t It may easily be supposed that Macaulay's literary celebrity attracted round him his full share of imitators and plagiarists, assailants and apolo- gists, busybodies and mendicants. " A new number of the Review. There is an article which is a mocking-bird imitation of me. Somehow or other, the mimic cannot catch the note, but many people would not be able to distinguish. Sometimes he borrows outright. ' Language so pure and holy that it would have become the lips of those angels — .' That is rather audacious. However, I shall not complain. A man should have enough to spare something for thieves." " I looked through 's two volumes. He is, I see, an imitator of me. But I am a very unsafe model. My manner is, I think, and the world thinks, on the whole a good one ; but it is very near to a very bad manner indeed, and those character- istics of my style which are most easily copied are the most questionable." " There are odd instances of folly and impertinence. A clergyman of the Scotch Episcopal Church is lecturing at Windsor. He wrote to me three weeks ago to ask the meaning of the allusion to St. Cecilia in my account of the trial of Warren Hastings. I answered him civilly, and he wrote to * " I went yesterday to Weybridge," he says in a letter to Mr. Ellis. " We talked about the habit of building castles in the air, a habit in which Lady Trevelyan and I, in- dulge beyond any people that I ever knew. I mentioned to George what, as far as I know, no critic has observed, that the Greeks called this habit KSV^ fiaaapia (empty happiness)." t The word in question is applied to the Due de Maine in Macaulay's account of the siege of Namur in his twenty-first Chapter. 294 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIV thank me. Now he writes again to say that he has forgotten a verse of my Horatius, and begs me to write it for him ; as if there was nobody in the kingdom, except me, to apply to. There is a fool at Wiesbaden, who sent me, some days ago, a heap of execrable verses. I told him that they were bad, and advised him to take to some other pursuit. As examples illustrating my meaning, I pointed out half-a-dozen lines. Now he sends me twice as many verses, and begs me to review them. He has, he assures me, corrected the lines to which I objected. I have sent him back his second batch with a letter which he cannot misunderstand." " A letter from a man in Scotland, who says that he wants to publish a novel, and that he will come up and show me the manuscript if I will send him fifty pounds. Really, I can get better novels cheaper." "What strange begging letters I receive. A fellow has virritten to me telling me that he is a painter, and adjuring me, as I love the fine arts, to hire or buy him a cow to paint from." " A schoolmaster at Cheltenham," writes Macaulay to his sister, "sent me two years and a hal^ ago a wretched pamphlet about British India. In answering him, I pointed out two gross blnndeis into which he had fallen, and which, as he proposed to publish a small edition for the use of schools, I advised him to correct. My reward was that his book was advertised as ' revised and corrected by Lord Macaulay.' It is idle to be angry with people of this sort. They do after their kind. One might as well blame a fly for buzzing." " An article on me in Blackwood The writer imagines that William the Third wrote his letters in English, and takes Coxe's translations for the original. A pretty fellow to set me to rights on points of history ! " "I ^vas worried by , who in spite of repeated entreaties, pesters me with his officious defences of my accuracy against all comers. Sometimes it is the Saturday Review ; then Paget ; and now it is Blackwood. I feel that I shall be provoked at last into saying something very sharp." " Some great fool has sent me a card printed with a distich, which he calls an Inipromptu on two bulky histories lately published : Two fabulists ; how clifferfent the reward I One justly censured, t'other made a Lord. Whom he means by the other I have not the slightest notion. That a man should be stupid enough to take such a couplet to a printer, and have it printed, purely in order to give pain, which, after all, he does not give I I often think that an extensive knowledge of literary history is of .inestimable value to a literary man ; I mean as respects the regulating of his mind, the moderating of his hopes and of his fears, and the strengthening of his fortitude. I have had detractors enough to annoy me, if I had not known that no writer equally successful with myself has 1S56-58. LORD MACAULAY. 295 ever suffered so little from detraction ; and that many writers, more deserving and less successful than myself, have excited envy which has appeared in the form of the most horrible calumnies. The proper answer to abuse is contempt, to which I am by nature sufficiently prone ; and contempt does not show itself by contemptuous expressions." Now and again, when Macaulay happened to be in a mood for criti- cism, he would fill a couple of pages in his journal with remarks sug- gested by the book which he had in reading at the time. A few of these little essays are worth preserving. " I cannot understand the mania of some people about Defoe. They think liim a man of tiie first order of genius, and a paragon of virtue. He certainly wrote an excellent book, — the first part of Robinson Crusoe, — one of tliose feats which can only be performed by the union of luck with ability. Tliat avi'ful solitude of a quarter of a century, — that strange union of comfort, plenty, and security with the misery of loneliness, — ^was my delight before 1 was five years old, and has been the delight of hundreds of thousands of boys. But what has Defoe done great except tlie first part of Robinson Crusoe ? The second part is poor in comparison. The History of the Plague, and the Memoirs of a Cavalier, are in one sense curious works of art. They are wonderfully like true histories ; but, considered as novels which they are, there is not much in them. He had undoubtedly a knack at making fiction look like truth. But is such a knack much to be admired? Is it not of the same sort with tlie knack of apiainter who takes in the lards with his fruit ? I have seen dead game painted in such a way that I thought the partridges and pheasants real ; but surely such pictures do not rank high as works of art \''illemain, and be- fore him Lord Chatham, were deceived by the Meiiioirs of a Ca\'alier ; but, when those Memoirs are known to be fictitious, what are they worth ? How immeasurably inferior to Waverley, or the L^end of Montrose, or Old MortaUty I As to Moll Flanders, Roxana, and Captain Jack, they are utterly wretdied and nauseous ; in no respect that I can see beyond the reach of Afra Behn.* As a poUtical writer, Defoe is merely one of the crowd. He seems to have been an unprincipled hack, ready to take any side of any question. Of all writers he was the most unlucky in irony. Tviics he was prosecuted for what he meant to be ironical : but he was soun* skilful that everybody understood him hterally. Some of his tracts are worse than immoral ; quite beastly. Altogether I do not like him.'' " Lord Stanhope sent me the first volume of the Peel papers. I devoured them. The first volume relates entirely to the Catholic question. It contains some interesting details which are new ; but it leaves Peel where he was. I alwa\-5 no- ticed while he was alive, and I"obs€T\-e again in this, his posthumous defence, an obstinate determination not to imderstand what the charge was which I, and otheis * " Take back yoar bonny Mis. Behn," said Mrs. Keith, of Rarelstone, to her grand- nephew, Sir Walter Scott ; " and, if you \rill take my advice, put her in the fire, for I found it impossible to get through the very first novel. But is it not a very odd thing that I, an old woman of eighty and upwards, sitting alone, feel myself ashamed to read a book which, sixty years ago, I have heard read aloud for the amusement of large cin^esj consisting of the first and most creditable society in London ? " 296 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIV. who agreed with me, brought against him. He always affected to think that we blamed him for his conduct in 1829, and he produced proofs of what we were perfectly ready to admit, — that in 1829 the State would have been in great danger if the Catholic Usabilities had not been removed. Now what we blamed was his conduct in 1825, and still more in 1827. We said : ' Either you were blind not to foresee what was coming, or you acted culp3,bly in not settling the question when It might have been settled without the disgrace of yielding to agitation and to the fear of insurrection ; and you acted most culpably in deserting and persecuting Canning.' To this, which was our real point, he does not even allude. He is a de- bater even in this book." * " I walked in the garden, and lead Cicero's speeches for Sextius and Coelius, and the invective against Vatinius. The egotism is perfectly intolerable. I know nothing like it in literature. The man's self-importance amounted to a monomania. To me the speeches, ti-ied by the standard of English forensic eloquence, seem very bad. They have no tendency to gain a verdict. They are fine lectures, fine dec- lamations, excellent for Exeter Hall or the Music Bl,oom at Edinburgh ; but not to be named with Scarlett's or Erskine's speeches, considered as speeches meant to convmce and persuade juries. We ought to know, however, what the temper of those Roman tribunals was. Perhaps a mere political harangue may have had an effect on the Forum which it could not have in the Court of King's Bench. We ought also to know how far in some of these cases Hortensius and others had dis- posed of questions of evidence before Cicero's turn came. The peroration seems to have been reserved for him. But imagine a barrister now, defending a, man accus- ed of heading a riot at an election, telling the jury that he thought this an excellent opportunity of instructing the younger part of the audience'in the galleries touch- ing the distinction between Whigs and Tories ; and then proceeding to give an historical dissertation of an hour on the Civil War, the Exclusion Bill, the Revolu- tion, the Peace of Utrecht, and heaven knows what 1 Yet this is strictly analo- gous to what Cicero did in his defence of Sextius," " I went to the AthenflEum, and stayed there two hours to read John Mill on liberty and on Reform. Much that is good in both. What he says about Indi- viduality in the treatise on Liberty is open, I think, to some criticism. What is meant by the complaint that there is no individuality now ? Genius takes its own course, as it always did. Bolder invention was never known in science than in our time. The steam-ships, the steam-carriage, the electric telegraph, the gas lights, the new military engines, are instances. Geology is quite a new true science. Phrenology is quite a new false one. Whatever may be thought of the theology, the metaphysics, the political theories of our time, boldness and novelty is not what they want, Comtism, St. Simonianism, Fourieris^m, are absurd enough, but surely they are not indications of a servile respect for usage and authority. Then the clairvoyance, the spirit-rapping, the table-turning, and all those other dotages and knaveries, indicate rather a restless impatience of the beaten paths than a stupid determination to plod on in those paths. Our lighter literature, as far as I * Macaulay "Writes elsewhere: "I read Guizot's Sir Robert Peel. Hardly quita worthy of Guizot's powers, I th ink ; nor can it be accepted as a just estimate of Peel. I could draw his portrait much better, but for many reasons I shall not do so." 1856-58. LORD MACAULAY. 297 know it, is spasmodic and eccentric Every writer seems to aim at doing some- thing odd, — at defying all rules and canons of criticism. The metre must be queer ; the diction queer. So great is the taste for oddity that men who have no recommendation but oddity hold a high place in vulgar estimation. I therefore do not at all like to see a man of Mill's excellent abiUties recommending eccentricity as a thing almost good in itself — as tending to prevent us from sinking into that Chinese, that Byzantine state which I should agree with him in considering as a great calamity. He is really crying * Fire 1' in Noah's flood." " I read the Quarterly Reviews of 1830, 1831, and 1832, and was' astonished by the poorness and badness of the political articles. I do not think that this is either personal or political prejudice in me, though I certainly did not like Southey, and though I had a strong antipathy to Croker, wlio were the two chief writers. But I see the merit ot many of Southey's writings with which I am far from agreeing, ^-Espriella's Letters, for example, and the Life of Wesley ; and I see the merit of the novels of Theodore Hook, whom I held in greater abhorrence than even Croker, stuffed as those novels are with scurrility against my political friends. Nay, I can see merit in Warren's Ten Thousand a Year. I therefore believe that my estimate of these political papers in the Quarterly Review is a fair one ; and to me they seem to be mere trash — absurd perversions of history ; parallels which shown no inge- nuity, and from which no instruction can be derived ; predictions which the event has singularly falsified ; abuse substituted for argument ; and not one paragraph of wit or eloquence. It is all forgotten, all gone to the dogs. The nonsense which Southey talks about political economy is enough to settle my opinion of his under- standing. He says that no man of sense ever troubles himself about such pseudo- scientific questions as what rent isj or what wages are. Surely he could not be such a dunce as not to know that a part of the produce of a landed estate goes to the proprietor, and a part to the cultivator ; and he must, unless he had a strange sort of skull, have supposed that there was some law or other which regulated the distribution of the produce between these parties. And, if there ,be such a law, how can it be unworthy of a man of sense to try to find out what it is ? Can any inquiry be more important to the welfare of society ? Croker is below Southey ; for Southey had a good styK, and Croker had nothing but italics and capitals as substitutes for eloquence and reason." " I read a great deal of the Memoirs of Southey by his son ; — little more than Southey's own .etters for the most part. I do not know how it happened that I never read the book before. It has not at all altered my opinion of Southey. A good father, husband, brother, friend, but prone to hate people whom he did not know, solely on account of differences of opinion, and in his hatred singularly bitter and rancorous. Then he was arrogant beyond any man in literary history ; for his self-conceit was proof against the severest admonitions. The utter failure of one of his books only confirmed him in his opinion of its excellence. Then he had none of that dissatisfaction with his own performances which I, perhaps because I have a great deal of it, am prone to believe to be a good sign. Southey says, some time after Madoc had been published, and when the first ardor of composition must have abated, that the execution is perfect ; that it cannot be better. I have had infinitely greater success as a writer than Southey, and, though I have not written 298 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIV. a fifth part, nor a tenth part of what he wrote, have made more thousands by literature than he made hundreds. And yet I can truly say that I never read again the most popular passages of my own works without painfully feeling how far my execution has fallen short of the standard which is in my mind. He says that Thalaba is equal or superior to the Orlando Furioso, and that it is the greatest poem that has appeared during ages ;-^and this over and over again, when nobody would read it, and when the copies were heaped up in the booksellers' garrets. His History of Brazil is to be immortal, — to be a mine of wealth to his family under an improved system of copyright. His Peninsular War, of which I never could get through the first volume, is to live for ever. To do him justice, he had a fine manly spirit where money was concerned. His conduct about Chatterton and Kirke White, at a time when a guinea was an object to himself, was most honorable, I could forgive him a great deal for it." Macaulay had a very slight acquaintance with the works of some among the best writers of his own generation. He was not fond of new lights, unless they had been kindled at the ancient beacons ; and he was apt to prefer a third-rate author, who had formed himself after some recognized model, to a man of high genius whose style and method were strikingly different from anything that had gone before. In books, as in people and places, he loved that, and that only, to which he had been accustomed from boyhood upwards.* Very few among the students of Macaulay will have detected the intensity and, in some cases, (it must be confessed.) the wilfulness, of his literary conservatism ; for, with the in- stinctive self-restraint of a great artist, he permitted no trace of it to appear in his writings. In his character of a responsible critic, he care- fully abstained from giving expression to prejudices in which, as a. reader, he freely indulged. Those prejudices injured nobody but himself ; and the punishment which befell him, from the very nature of thp case, was exactly proportioned to the offence. To be blind to the merits of a great author is a sin which brings its own penalty ; and, in Macaulay's instance, that penalty was severe indeed. Little as he was aware of it, it was no slight privation that one who had by heart the Battle of Marathon, as told by Herodotus, and the Raising of the Siege of Syracuse, as fold by Thucydides, should have passed through life without having felt the glow which Mr. Carlyle's story of the charge across the ravine at Dunbar could not fail to awake even in a Jacobite ; that one who so keenly * The remarks in Macaulay's journal on the History of Civilization curiously illustrate the spirit in which approached a new author. What he liked best in Buckle was that he had some of the faults gf Warburton. " March 24, 1858. — I read Buckle's book all day, '■ aud got to the end, skipping of course. A man of talent and of a good deal of reading, but paradoxical and incoherent. He is eminently an anticipator, as Bacon would have said. He wants to make a system before he has got the materials ; and he has not the excuse which Aristotle had, of having an eminently systematizing mind. The book reminds me perpetually of the Divine Legation. 1 could draw the parallel out far." 18S&-58. LORD MACAULAY. 299 relished the exquisite trifling of Plato should never have tasted the description of Coleridge's talk in the Life of John Sterling, — a passage which yields to nothing of its own class in the Protagoras or the Sympo- sium ; that one who eagerly and minutely studied all that Lessing has written on art, or Goethe on poetry, should have left unread Mr. Ruskin's . comparison between the landscape of the Odyssey and the landscape of the Divine Comedy, or his analysis of the effect produced on the imagina- tion by long continued familiarity with the aspect of the Campanile of Giotto. Great, beyond all question, was the intellectual enjoyment that Mac- aulay forfeited by his unwillingness to admit the excellence of anything which had been written in bold defiance of the old canons ; but, heavy as the sacrifice was, he could readily afford to make it. With his omnivorous and insatiable appetite for books there was, indeed, little danger that he would ever be at a loss for something to read. A few short extracts, taken at random from the last volume of his journals, will sufficiently indicate how extensive and diversified were the regions of literature over which he roved at will. " I turned over Philo, and compared his narrative with Josephus. It is amusing to observe with what skill those Jews, trained in Greek learning, exhibited the philosophical side of their religion to the Pagan scholars and statesmen, and kept out of sight the ceremonial part. It was just the contrary, I imagine, with the lower class of Jews, who be- came, in some sense, the spiritual directors of silly women at Rome." " I read a good deal of Fray Gerundio. A good book. The traits of manners are often interesting. There is something remarkable in the simple plenty and joyousness of the life of the rustics of Old Castile." " I read some of a novel about sporting ; — a Mr. Sponge the hero. It was a new world to me, so I bore with the hasty writing, and was enter- tained." " I read some of Tieck ; the Brothers, and the Preface to the collected works. He complains that his countrymen are slow to take a joke. He should consider that the jokes which he, and some of his brother writers, are in the habit of producing are not laughing matters. Then Sir Walter Scott's Life. I had Rokeby out, and turned it over. Poor work ; and yet there are gleams of genius few and far between. What a blunder to make the scenery the foreground, and the human actors the background of a picture I In the Lay the human actors stand out as they should, and the Aill, and the Tweed, and Melrose Abbey are in proper subordination. Even in the Lady of the Lake, Loch Katrine does not throw Fitzjames and Roderic into the shade ; but Rokeby is primarily a descriptive poem like Grongar Hill. There was some foun- dation for Moore's sarcastic remark that Scott meant to do all the gentle- men's seats from Edinburgh to London. The only good thing in the poem is the Buccaneer." " I read .lElian for the first time. Odd that it 300 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XIV. should be for the first time ! I despatched the whole volume in a few hours, skimming and reading sometimes the Greek, and scmetimes the Latin translation, which I thought more than usually well written. The most interesting fact which I learned from this very miscellaneous collec- tion of information was that there were said to be translations of Homer into the Persian and Indian languages, and that those translations were sung by the barbarians. I had never heard this mentioned. The thing is really not impossible. The conquests of Alexander must have made the Greek language well known to men whose mother tongue was the Persian or the Sanskrit. I wish to Heaven that the translations could be found." Some of the great metaphysical philosophers, both ancient and modern, were among the authors with whom Macaulay was most familiar ; but he read them for the pleasure of admiring the ingenuity of their arguments or the elegance of their literary manner, and not from any sympathy with the subject-matter of their works. He was, in fact,, very much inclined towards the opinion expressed by Voltaire in Zadig : " II savait de la metaphysique ce qu'on a su dans tous les Sges, — c'est a dire, fort peu de chose." But there was another field of inquiry and discussion in which he was never tired of ranging. He had a strong and enduring«predilec- tion for religious speculation and controversy, and was widely and pro- foundly read in ecclesiastical history. His partiality for studies of this nature is proved by the full and elaborate notes with which he has cov- ered the margin of such books as Warburton's Julian, Middleton's Free Enquiry, Middleton's Letters to Venn and Waterland, and all the rest of the crop of polemical treatises which the Free Enquiry produced.* But nowhere are there such numerous and deeply-marked traces of his passion for Church history as in the pages of Strype's biographies of the bishops who played a leading part in the English Reformation. Those grim folios of six generations back, — the Lives of Cranmer, and Grindal, and Whit- * " Middleton," writes Macaulay, " does not shine in any of his strictly controversial pieces. He is too querulous and egotistical. Above all, he is not honest. He knew that what alarmed the Church was not his conclusion, but the arguments by which he arrived at that conclusion. His conclusion might be just, and yet Christianity might be of Divine origin; but his arguments seem to be quite as applicable to the miracles related by St. Luke as to those related by Jerome. He was in a deplorable predicament. He boasted of bis love of truth and of his courage, and yet he was paltering and shamming through the whole controversy. He should have made up his min^d from the beginning whether he had the courage to face obloquy and abuse, to give up all hopes of preferment, and to speak -plainly out. If, from selfish motives, (or, as 1 rather believe and hope, from a real conviction that, by attacking the Christian religion, he should do more harm than good to mankind), he determined to call himself a Christian, and to respect the sacred books, he should have kept altogether out of a controversy which inevitably brought him into the necessity of either declaring himself an infidel, or resorting to a thousand dishonest shiitSf injurious to his arguments, and discreditable to lus character." 1856-58. LORD MACAULAY. 3OI gift, and Parker, — acquire all the interest of a contemporary narrative if read with the accompaniment of Macaulay's vivid and varied comments. When, at the commencement of the Life of Cranmer, Strype apologizes for employing phraseology which even in his own day was obsolete and uncouth, he obtained an easy pardon from his assiduous student. " I like," says Macaulay, " his old-fashioned style. He writes like a man who lived with the people of an earlier age. He had thoroughly imbued himself with the spirit of the sixteenth century." * And again : " Strype was an honest man and a most valuable writer. Perhaps no person with so slender abilities has done so much to improve our knowledge of English history." Somewhat" later in the same volume, when Gardiner first ap- pears upon the scene, Macaulay writes : " Gardiner had very -great vices. He was a. dissembler and a persecutor. But he was, on the whole, the first public man of his generation in England. He had, I believe, a real love for his country. He showed a greater respect for Parliaments than any statesman of that time. He opposed the Spanish match. When forced to consent to it, he did-his best to obtain such terms as might secure the independence of the realm. He was a far more estimable man than Cranmer." Of Latimer he says : " He was the Cobbett of the Reformation, with more honesty than Cobbett, and more courage ; but very like him in the character of his understanding." At the foot of a fine letter addressed by Ridley from his prison in " Bocardo in Oxenford, to his former steward who had complied with the Romish Religion," Mac- aulay notes " A stout-hearted, honest, brave man." Grin^al he more than once pronounces to be "the best Archbishop of Canterbury since the Reformation, except Tillotson." Indeed, it may saftly be asserted that, in one corner or another of Macaulay's library, there is in existence his estimate of every famous or notorious English prelate from the beginning of the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. The most concise of these sketches of episcopal character may be found in his copy of the letters from Warburton to Hurd, the first of which is headed in pencil with the words, " Bully to Sneak." Valuable, indeed, is the privilege of following Macaulay through his favorite volumes, where every leaf is plentifully besprinkled with the annotations of the most lively of scholiasts ; but it would be an injustice towards his reputation to separate the commentary from the text, and present it to the public in a fragmentary condition. Such a process could give but a feeble idea of the animation and humor of that species of run- ning conversation which he frequently kept up with his author for whole chapters together. Of all the memorials of himself which he has left * Strype himself was well enough aware that his style was suited to his subject. ** In truth," he writes, " he that is a lover of antiquity loves the very language and phrases ol antiquitj . 302 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. xrV. behind him, these dialogues with the dead are the most characteristic The energy of his remonstrances, the heartiness of his approbation, the contemptuous vehemence of his censure, the eagerness with which he uiges and reiterates his own opinions, are such as to make it at times dif- ficult to realize that his remarks are addressed to people who died cen- turies, or perhaps tens of centuries, ago. But the writer of a book which had lived was always alive for Macaulay. This sense of personal relation between himself and the men of the past increased as years went on,— -as he became less able and willing to mix with the world, and more and more thrown back upon the society which he found in his own library. His way of life would have been deemed solitary by others, but it was not solitary to him. While he had a volume in his hands he never could be without a quaint companion to laugh with or laugh at ; an adversary to stimulate his combativeness ; a counsellor to suggest wise or lofty thoughts, and a friend with whom to share them. When he opened for the tenth or fifteenth time some history, or memoir, or romance, — every incident, and almost every sentence of which he had by heart, — his feeling was precisely that which we experience on meeting an old comrade, whom we like all the better because 'we know the exact lines on which his talk will run. There was no society in London so agreeable that Macaulay would have preferred it at breakfast or at dinner to the company of Sterne, or Fielding, or Horace Walpole, or Boswell ; and there were many less dis- tinguished authors with whose productions he was very well content to cheer his repasts. " I read," he says, " Henderson's Iceland at breakfast ; — a favorite breakfast book with me. Why ? How oddly we are made I Some books which I never should dream of opening at diimer please me ■ at breakfast, and vice vers^." In choosing what he should take down from his shelves he was guided at least as much by whim as by judgment. There were certain bad writej's whose vanity and folly had a flavor of peculiarity which was irresistibly attractive to Macaulay. In August, 1859, he says to Lady Trevelyan : " The books which I had sant to the binder are come ; and Miss Seward's letters are in a condition to bear twenty more re-perusals." But, amidst the infinite variety of lighter literature with which he beguiled his leisure, Pride and Prejudice, and the five sister novels, remained without a rival in his affections. He never for a moment wavered in his allegiance to Miss Austen. In 1858 he notes in his jour- nal : " If I could get materials I really would write a short life of that wonderful woman, and raise a little money to put up a monument to her in Winchester, .Cathedral." Some of his old friends may remember how he prided himself on a correction of his own in the first page of Persua- sion, which he maintained to be worthy of Bentley, and which undoubtedly fulfils all the conditions. required to establish the credit of an emendation; for, without the alteration of a word, or even of a letter, it turns into per- l8s6-.58- LORD MACAULAY. 303 fectly intelligible common-sense a passage which has puzzled, or which ought to have puzzled, two generations of Miss Austen's readers.* Of the feelings which he entertained towards the great minds of by- gone ages it is not for any one except himself to speak. He has told us how his debt to them was incalculable ; how they guided him to truth ; how they filled his mind with noble and graceful images ; how they stood by him in all vicissitudes, — comforters in sorrow, nurses in sickness, com- panions in solitude, " the old friends who are never seen with new faces ; who are the same in wealth and in poverty, in glory and in obscurity." Great as were the honors and possessions which Macaulay acquired by his pen, all who knew him were well aware that the titles and rewards, which he gained by his own works, were as nothing in the balance as compared with the pleasure which he derived from the works of others. That knowledge has largely contributed to the tenderness with which he has been treated by wi-iters whose views on books, and events, and politics past and present diflfer widely from his own. It has been well said that even the most hostile of his critics cannot help being " awed and touched by his wonderful devotion to literature." And, while his ardent and sin- cere passion for letters has thus served as a protection to his memory, it was likewise the source of much which calls for admiration in his character and conduct. The confidence with which he could rely upon intellectual pursuits for occupation and amusement assisted him not a little to pre- serve that dignified composure, with which he met all the changes and chances of his public career ; and that spirit of cheerful and patient en- durance, which sustained him through years of broken health and enforced seclusion. He had no pressing need to seek for excitement and applause abroad, when he had beneath his own roof a never-failing store of ex- quisite enjoyment. That " invincible love of reading," which Gibbon de- clared that he would not exchange for the treasures of India, was with Macaulay a main element of happiness in one of the happiest lives that it has ever fallen to the lot of a biographer to record. * A slight change in the punctuation effects all that is required. According to Mac- aulay, the sentence was intended by its author to run thus : " There, any unwelcome sen- sations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history wrth an interest which never friled* This vas the page at which the favorite volume opened : — " 304 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CB. XT. CHAPTER XV. 1859. Melancholy anticipations — Visit to the English lakes and to Scotland — Extracts from Macaulay's journal — His death and funeral* "TTTHEN the year 1859 opened, it seemed little likely that any event V V was at hand which would disturb the tranquil course of Macaulay's existence. His ailments, severe as they were, did not render him dis- contented on his own account, nor diminish the warmth of his interest in the welfare of those who were around him. Towards the close of the preceding year, his niece, Margaret Trevelyan, had been married to the son of his old friend Sir Henry Holland ; an event which her uncle re- garded with heartfelt satisfaction. Mr. Holland resided in London; and consequently the marriage, so far from depriving Macaulay of one whom he looked on as a daughter, gave him another household where he was as much at home as in his own. But « most unexpected circumstance now occurred which changed in a moment the whole complexion of his life. Early in January 1859 the Governorship of Madras was offered to my father. He accepted the post, and sailed for India in the third week of February. My mother remained in England for a while ; but she was to "follow her husband after no very long interval, and Macaulay was fully convinced that, when he and his sister parted, they would part for ever. Though he derived his belief from his own sensations, and not from any warning of physicians, he was none the less firmly persuaded that the end was now not far off. " I took leave t)f Trevelyan," he says on the l8th of February. " He said, ' You have always been a most kind brother to me.' I certainly, tried to be so. Shall we ever meet again ? I do not expect it. My health is better ; but another sharp winter would probably finish me." In another place he writes : " I am no better. This malady tries me severely. However, I bear up. As to my temper, it never has been soured, and, while I keep my understanding, will not, I think, be l8S9^ LORD MACAULAY. 305 soured, by evils for which it is evident that no human being is respon- sible. To be angry with relations and servants because you suffer some- thing which they did not inflict, and which they are desirous to alleviate, is unworthy, not merely o£ a good man, but of a rational being. Yet I see instances enough of such irritability to fear that I may be guilty of it. But I will take care. I have thought several times of late that the last scene of the play was approaching. I should wish to act it simply, but with fortitude and gentleness united." The prospect of a. separation from one with whom he had lived in close and uninterrupted companionship since her childhood and his own early manhood, — a prospect darkened by the thought that his last hour would surely come when she was thousands of miles awd^f, — was a trial which weighed heavily on Macaulay's sinking health. He endured it manfully, and almost silently ; but his spirits never recovered the blow. During the spring and summer of 1859 his journal contains a few brief but significant allusions to the state of his feelings; one of which, and one only, may fitly be inserted here. " yuly 11, 1859. — A letter from Hannah ; very sad and affectionate. I answered her. There is a pleas- ure even in this exceeding sorrow ; for it brings out the expression of love with a tenderness which is wanting in ordinary circumstances. But the sorrow is very, very bitter. The Duke of Argyll called, and left me the sheets of a forthcoming poem of Tennyson. I like it extremely ; — notwithstanding some faults, extremely. The parting of Lancelot and Guinevere, her penitence, and Arthur's farewell, are all very affecting. I cried over some passages ; but I am now apTidaKfwc * as Medea says." Towards the end of July my uncle spent a week with us at Lowood Hotel, on the shore of Windermere ; and thence accompanied my mother and my younger sister on a fortnight's tour through the Western High- lands, and by Stirling to Edinburgh. Every stage of the journey brought some fresh proof of the eager interest which his presence aroused in the minds of his fellow-countrymen, to whom his face and figure were very much less familiar than is usual in the case of a man of his eminence and reputation. He now so rarely emerged from his retirement that, when- ever he appeared abroad, he was attended by a respect which gratified, and a curiosity which did not annoy him. " I went the day before yes- terday," he writes to Mr. Ellis, " to Grasmere Churchyard, and saw Wordsworth's tomb. I thought of announcing my intention of going, and issuing guinea tickets to people who wished to see me there. For a Yankee who was here a few days ago, and heard that I was expected, said that he would give the world to see that most sublime of all specta- des, Macaulay standing by the grave of Wordsworth." " In Scotland," • *' With the tears near the eyes." • Vol. II. — 2o 306 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XV. my mother writes, " his reception was everywhere most enthusiastic. He was quickly recognized on steamers. and at railway stations. At Tarbet we were escorted down to the boat by the whole' household; and, while they surrounded your uncle, finding a seat for him, and making him com- fortable, I sat modestly in the shade next a young woman, who called a man to her, and asked who they were making such a fuss about. He replied that it was the great Lord Macaulay, who wrote the History. 'Oh,' said she, ' I thought it was considered only a romance!' How- ever, she added herself to the group of starers. When we went to Dr. Guthrie's church at Edinburgh, the congregation made a' line fOr us through which to walk away." At the hotels, one not uncommon form of doing Macaulay honor consisted in serving up a better dinner than had been ordered, — no easy matter when he was catering for others besides himself,— and then refusing to accept payment for his entertainment." At Inverary he writes ; " The landlord insisted on treating us to our drive of yesterday, but I was peremptory. I was half sorry afterwards, and so was Hannah, who, at the time, took my part. It is good to accept as well as to give. My feeling is too much that of Calderon's hero ; C6mo sabrA pedir Quien solo ha sabido dar ? * I shrink too much from receiving services which I love to render." During this visit to the North my uncle was still the same agreeable travelling companion that we had always known him; with the same readiness to please and be pleased, and the same sweet and even temper. When one of us happened to be alone with hira, there sometimes was a touch of melancholy about his conversation which imparted to it a singular charm ; but, when the whole of our little circle was assembled, he showed himself as ready as ever to welcome any topic which promised to afford material for amusing and abundant talk. I especially remember our sitting at the window through the best part of an afternoon, looking across Windermere, and drawing up under his superintendence a list of forty names for an imaginary English Academy. The result of our labors, in ' the shape in which it now lies before me, bears evident marks of having been a work of compromise, and cannot therefore be pre- sented to the world as a faithful and authentic expression of Macaulay's estimate of his literary and scientific contemporaries. In a letter to Mr. Ellis, written on the 24th of October, 1859, Macaulay says : " I haVe been very well in body since we parted ; but in mind I have suffered much, and the more because I have had to put a force upon myself in order to appear cheerful. It is at last settled that Hannah and Alice are to go to Madras in February. I cannot deny that it is right ; • " How will he know how to ask who has only known how to give ? " 1859. LORD MACAULAY. 307 and my duty is to avoid whatever can add to the pain which they suffer. But I am very unhappy. However, I read, and write, and contrive to forget my sorrow for whole hours. But it recurs, and will recur." The trial which now at no distant date awaited Macaulay was one of the heaviest that could by any possibility have been allotted to him, and he summoned all his resources in order to meet it with firmness and re- signation. He henceforward made it a duty to occupy his mind, and fortify his powers of self-control, by hard and continuous intellectual exertion. " I must drive away," he says, " these thoughts by writing ; " and with diminished strength he returned to his labors, purposing not to relax them until he had completed another section of the History. In October he tells Mr. Longman that he is working regularly, and that he designs to publish the next volume by itself. On the 14th of December he writes : " Finished at last the session of 1699-1700. TJiere is a good deal in what I have written that is likely to interest readers. At any rate this employment is a good thing for myself, and will be a better soon when I shall have little else left" Influenced by the Same settled determination- forcibly to divert the current of his reflections from the sombre channel in which they were now prone to run, Macaulay, even during his hours of leisure, began to read on system. On the second day after he had received the unwelcome announcement of my mother's plans with regard to India, he commenced the perusal of Nichol's Literary Anecdotes, — a ponderous row of nine volumes, each containing seven or eight hundred closely-printed pages. He searched and sifted this vast repertory of eighteenth century erudition and gossip with a minute diligence such as few men have the patience to bestow upon a book which they do not intend to re-edit ; — correcting blunders, supplying omissions, stigmatizing faults in taste and grammar, and enriching every blank space, which invited his pencil, with a profusion of valuable and entertaining comments. Progressing steadily at the rate of a volume a week, he had read and annotated the entire work between the 17th day of October and the 21st of December. During this period of his life Macaulay certainly was least unhappy when alone in his own library; * for, in the society of those whom he was about to lose, the enjoyment of fhe moment could not fail to be over- clouded by sad presentiments. " I could almost wish," he writes, " that what is to be were to be immediately. I dread the next four months ■ more than even the months which will follow the separation. This pro- longed parting, — this slow sipping of the vinegar and the gall,— is terrible." The future was indeed dark before him ; but God, who had so blessed * On the i6tll of October he notes in his diary : " I read, and found, as I have always found, that an interesting book apt^d as an aqpdyne." 308 LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XV. him, dealt kindly with him even to the end, and his burden was not per- mitted to be greater than his strength could bear. "Friday, December i6. — From this morning I reckon some of the least agreeable days of my life. The physic was necessary, but I believe it brought me very low. The frost was more intense than ever, and arrested my circulation.* Bating the irregularity of the pulse, I suffered all that I suffered when, in 1852, I was forced to go to Clifton. The de- pression, the weakness, the sinking of the heart, the incapacity to do any- thing that required steady exertion, were very distressing. To write, though but a few words, is disagreeable to me. However, I read German, Latin, and English, and got through the day tolerably." " December 17 — Very hard frost. The weather has seldom been colder in this latitude. I sent for Martin, and told him my story .t He says that there is no organic affection of the heart, but that the heart is weak. " December 19. — Still intense frost. I could hardly use my razor for the palpitation of the heart. I feel as if I were twenty years older since last Thursday ; — as if I were dying of old age. I am perfectly ready, and shall never be readier. A month more of such days as I have been pass- ing of late would make me impatient to get to my little narrow crib, like a weary factory child." " Wednesday December 21. — Everything changed ; the frost and frozen snow all gone ; heavy rain falling ; clouds from the south-west driving fasf through the sky. The sun came, and it was so mild that I ventured into the veranda ; but I was far from well. My two doctors, Watson and Martin, came to consult. They agreed in pronouncing my complaint a heart-complaint simply. If the heart acted with force, all the plagues would vanish together. They may be right. I am certainly very poorly ; — ^weak as a child. Yet I am less nervous than usual. I have shed no tears during some days, though with me tears ask only leave to flow, as poor Cowper says. I am sensible of no intellectual decay; — ^not the smallest." "Friday, December 23. — In the midst of life — '. This morning I had scarcely left my closet when down came the ceiling in large masses. I should certainly have been stunned, probably killed, if I had stayed a few minutes longer. I stayed by my fire, not exerting .myself to write, but making Christmas calculations, and reading. An odd declaration by Dickens that he did not mean Leigh Hunt by Harold Skimpole. Yet he owns that he took the light externals of the character from Leigh Hunt, and surely it is by those light externals that the bulk of mankind will always recognize character. Besides, it is.to be observed that the vices * Macaulay's habitual ill health had been aggravated by a walk which he took in a ibitter East wind, from the British Museum to the, Athenffium Club, t Sir Ranald Martin had been Mncmiby's physician in Calcutta. l859- LORD MACAULAY. 309 of Harold Skimpole are vices to which Leigh Hunt had, to say the least, some little leaning, and which the world generally imputed to him most unsparingly. That he had loose notions of meum and tuum, that he had no high feeling of independence, that he had no sense of obligation, that he took money wherever he could get it; that he felt no gratitude for it, that he was just as ready to defame a person who had relieved his distress as a person who had refused him relief, — these were things which, as Dickens must have known, were said, truly or falsely, about Leigh Hunt and had made a deep impression on the public mind. Indeed, Leigh Hunt had said himself : ' I have some peculiar notions about money. They will be" found to involve considerable difference of opinion with the community, particularly in a commercial country, I have not that horror of being under obligation which is thought an essential refinement in money matters.' This is Harold Skimpole all over. How then could D. doubt that H. S. would be supposed to be a portrait of L. H. ? " At this point Macaulay's journal comes to an abrupt close. Two days afterwards he wrote to Mr. Ellis : " The physicians think me better ; but there is little change in my sensations. The day before yesterday I had a regular fainting-fit, and lay quite insensible. I wish that I had continued to be so ; for if death be no more — . Up I got, however ; and the doctors agree that the circumstance is altogether unimportant." Nevertheless, from this time forward there was a marked change for the worse in Macaulay. " I spent Christmas Day with him," my mother writes. " He talked very little, and was constantly dropping asleep. We had our usual Christmas dinner with him, and the next day I thought him better. Never, as long as I live, can I lose the sense of misery that I ever left him after Christmas Day. But I did not feel alarmed. I thought the accident to the ceiling had caused a shock to his nerves from which he was gradually recovering; and, when we were alone together, he gave way to so much emotion that, while he was so weak, I rather avoided being long with him." It may give occasion for surprise that Macaulay's relatives entertained no apprehension of his being in grave and immediate danger ; but the truth is that his evident unhappiness, (the outward mani- festations of which, during the last few days of his life, he had no longer the force to suppress, ) was so constantly present to the minds of us all that our attention was diverted from his bodily condition. His silence and depression, — due, in reality, to physical causes, — ^were believed by us to proceed almost entirely from mental distress. In a contemporary account of Macaulay's last illness * it is related • This account, which is very brief, but apparently authentic, is preserved among the Marquis of Lansdowne's papers. Macaulay writes, on the 19th of Aug^t, 1859 % " I grieve to hear about my dear old friend^ ^prd Lansdo>yne. I owe more to him than to '3iO ' LIFE AND LETTERS OF CH. XV. that on the morning of Wednesday, the 28th of December, he mustered strength"to dictate a letter addressed to a poor curate, enclosing twenty- five pounds ; — after signing which letter he never wrote his name again. Late in the afternoon of the same day I called at Holly Lodge, intending to propose myself to dinner ; an intention which was abandoned as soon as I entered the library. My uncle was sitting, with his head bent for- ward on his chest, in a languid and drowsy reverie. The first number of the Comhill Magazine lay unheeded before him, open at the first page of Thadkeray's story of Lovel the Widower. He did not utter a word, ex- cept in answer ; and the only one of my observations that at this distance of time I can recall, suggested to him painful and pathetic reflections which altogether destroyed his self-command. On hearing my report of his state, my mother resolved to spend the night at Holly Lodge. She had just left the drawing-room to make her preparations for the visit, (it being, I suppose, a little before seven in the evening, ) when a servant arrived with an urgent summons. As we drove up to the porch of my uncle's house the maids ran crying out into the darkness to meet us, and we knew that all was over. We found him in the library, seated in his easy chair, and dressed as usual ; with his book on the table beside him, still open at the same page. He had told his butler that he should go to bed early, as he was very tired. The man proposed his lying on the sofa. He rose as if to move, sat down again and ceased to breathe. He died as he had always wished to die ; — ^without pain ; without any formal farewell ; preceding to the grave all whom he loved; and leaving behind him a great and honorable name, and the memory of a life every action of which was as clear and transparent as one of his own sentences. It would be unbecoming in me to dwell upon the regretful astonishment with which the tidings of his death were re- ceived wherever the 'English language is read ; and quite unnecessary to describe the enduring grief of those upon whom he had lavished his af- fection, and for whom life had been brightened by daily converse with his genius, and ennobled by familiarity with his lofty and upright example. " We have lost," (so my mother wrote,) " the light of our home, the most tender, loving, generous, unselfish^ devoted of friends. What he was to me for fifty years how can I tell ? What a world of love he poured out upon nie and mine I The blank, the void he has left,— ^filling, as he did, so entirely both heart and intellect, — ^no one can understand. For who ever knew such a life as mine passed as the cherished companion of such a man ? " He was buried in Westminster Abbey, on the gth of January, i860. any man.Hving ; and he never seemed to be sensible that I owed him anything. I shall I00I& anxiously for the next accounts." Lord Lansdowne recovered from this illness, and survived Macaulay more than three years. 1859. LORD MACAULAY. 31I The pall was borne by the Duke of Argyll, Lord John Russell, Lord Stanhope, Lord Carlisle, Bishop Wilberforce, Sir David Dundas, Sir Henry Holland, Dean Milman, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, the Lord Chancellor, and the Speaker of the House of Commons. " A beautiful sunrise," wrote Lord Carlisle. " The pall-bearers met in the Jerusalem Chamber. The last time I had been there on a like errand was at Can- ning's funeral. The whole service and ceremony were in the highest de- gree solemn and impressive. All befitted the man and the occasion." He rests with his peers in Poet's Corner, near the west wall of the South Transept. There, amidst the tombs of Johnson, and Garrick, and Handel, and Goldsmith, and Gay, stands conspicuous the statue of Ad- dison ; and, at the feet of Addison, lies the stone which bears this inscrip- tion: THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD MACAULAY. BORN AT ROTHLEY TEMPLE, LEICESTERSHIRE, OCTOBER 25, 1800. DIED AT HOLLY LODGE, CAMPDEN HILL, DECEMBER 28, 1859. "HIS BODY IS BURIED IN PEACE, BUT HIS NAME UVETH FOR EVERMORE." THE END.