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MASTERS IN HISTORY. 
 
MASTERS IN HISTORY. 
 
 GIBBON p 1^ 
 
 GROTE A ^-^ 
 
 MACAULAY 
 
 MOTLEY. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. PETER ANTON, 
 
 DYSART. 
 
 "Biography is by nature the most universally profitable, universally pleasant, of 
 all things, especially Biography of distinguished individuals." — Carlyle. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 MACNIVEN & WALLACE, PRINCES STREET. 
 
 1880. 
 
3^ 
 
 ^ 
 O 
 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Neither this book nor the series of which it forms a part 
 pretends to any higher claim than to be a concise 
 epitome of the Hves which it recounts, designed for those 
 whom youth, business, disincUnation, or lack of oppor- 
 tunity prevents perusing long biographies, but who 
 nevertheless desire, as shortly as may be, to know what 
 those great men were, what they did, and how they did 
 it. The design being purely personal, criticism is intro- 
 duced only to give a more complete presentation of the 
 subjects and the lessons they teach, and to illustrate, 
 embellish, or vary the narrative. We are sanguine that 
 such an effort will be found to be of use by those among 
 whom it is believed to be most desiderated — from 
 schoolboys who have little more than read their first 
 novel to business-men whose exacting occupations leave 
 scanty leisure for the pursuit of knowledge. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 EDWARD GIBBON, ...... i 
 
 GEORGE GROTE, ...... 6l 
 
 T. B. MACAULAY, . . . . . .121 
 
 JOHN MOTLEY, 
 
 195 
 
EDWARD GIBBON, 
 
 Of Michael Angelo it has been said, in the realm of art, 
 stat mag?ii nonwiis umbra. No higher tribute than this 
 could possibly be paid to human attainment in any 
 department of intellectual life. The claim made by the 
 admirers of the painter and sculptor is the very greatest, 
 but nevertheless it is one which in the sphere of modern 
 historical literature could also be made for Edward 
 Gibbon. Indeed, not reckoning some of the great 
 historical masters of antiquity — leaving specially out of 
 account Tacitus and Herodotus, — there are no names in 
 his own special department his does not fairly throw into 
 shade. In speaking of the ancient historians, we cannot 
 forget they worked under conditions essentially their own, 
 and it is only with those of his own time and writers 
 similarly situated to the events they seek to record, and 
 the records of these events, a man like Gibbon can with 
 due fairness be brought into comparison. To contrast, 
 however, the work of Gibbon with the work of his Scottish 
 contemporaries, Robertson and Hume, or with the work 
 of those who since his time have made for themselves 
 great names as historical writers, however interesting or 
 profitable it might be, consists not with our present 
 purpose. The aim of these sketches is not to enter into 
 any special discourse either critical, political, or philo- 
 sophical, regarding the history, but to pass in brief and 
 rapid review the life of the historian, with the influences 
 <^> A 
 
2 Masters in History. 
 
 that moulded, the sorrows that chastened, the activities 
 that filled, and the aspirations that quickened it. As 
 with every artist and his work, so with the historian and 
 his : you cannot fully comprehend the two apart because 
 each interprets the other ; and so the key to the inner 
 meaning of any great history— the tone that pervades it, 
 the undercurrent that runs through it, the bias that turns 
 it— is to be found for the most part buried in the life of 
 the historian. 
 
 It is possibly not unworthy of remark that whilst the 
 capitals of England and Scodand have ever been the 
 centres of the intellectual activity of the two countries, 
 the points to which their intellectual forces have gravitated 
 and the rallying places of their respective men of genius 
 and culture, London and Edinburgh, are not distinguished 
 above many humbler towns in both countries as having 
 been the birthplaces of their greatest men. If the former 
 can boast she was the mother of Dryden and Milton, still 
 the provinces can speak of Shakspeare in the drama. 
 Fielding in romance, Johnson in polite letters, and 
 Wordsworth in poetry. Again, if the Modern Athens is 
 proud of Scott, still Ayrshire has Robert Burns, Dumfries- 
 shire Thomas Carlyle, and Paisley Christopher North. 
 
 It would have been something if London could have 
 marked as her own the author of "The Decline and Fall." 
 It was not, however, in that city but near it, at Putney, on 
 the 8th May 1737, that Edward Gibbon was born. Of a 
 family of seven he was the eldest, but his one sister and 
 five brothers survived not the period of their infancy. 
 From the time of his birth the life of Edward also was 
 regarded as precarious, and the child was of so sickly a 
 constitution that the minds of his parents were not seldom 
 filled with the very gravest fears. 
 
 The historian plumed himself on his ancestry, and 
 
Edward Gibbon. 3 
 
 delighted to trace back his pedigree to the times of the 
 Edwards. What truth there is in his claims we cannot 
 tell, but considering the importance which the researches 
 of Bastian and others have given to such investigations, 
 he would be a bold man indeed who, in these days, would 
 venture to assume the spirit of the Old Gardener and 
 " smile at the claims of long descent." On the whole, on 
 the ground of ancestry Gibbon had not much room to 
 boast himself; but still his grandfather was a man of more 
 than ordinary talents and common force of character. 
 Although when the South Sea Bubble burst, his fortunes 
 were scattered to the winds — the fortunes he had hardly 
 gathered by his business tact and care ; still he did not 
 mope and repine, and eventually die of starvation and a 
 broken heart in a poor-house : he turned a stern face to 
 the black outlook, and when he died he was wealthier 
 than ever. He attained in his lifetime to some eminence, 
 for he was a commissioner of customs, and strange to say 
 must have discussed the state of the taxes with Mat Prior, 
 who was one of his colleagues in office. All things con- 
 sidered it may be quite true what Bolingbroke said, " No 
 man knew better than Mr Edward Gibbon the commerce 
 and finances of England." The son of this gentleman 
 and the father of the historian was a man of a different 
 stamp altogether. Although he had the best education 
 the times could bestow, the experiences of continental 
 travel, and a seat in the House of Commons, still he was 
 a weak, vacillating, impulsive man, but withal it is to be 
 remembered to his credit he had a gentle disposition and 
 a kind and loving heart, and these things more than all 
 intellectual acuteness are deserving of the higher com- 
 mendation. One already named said truthfully, "The 
 heart's aye the part aye that makes us right or wrong," 
 and it is gratifying to think if the life of the elder Gibbon 
 
4 Masters in History, 
 
 were measured by this standard alone there would not 
 be found much occasion for fault-finding. 
 
 To little purpose as it was, the parent was anxious the 
 son should run the race his father ran. All attempts, 
 however, to give the young Edward a systematic educa- 
 tion were completely frustrated by the miserable state of 
 his bodily health. Those years that should have been 
 filled with the exuberance and frolic of school life had in 
 them too much of pain, languor, and sickness to be 
 recollected with pleasure. They brought no fresh re- 
 miniscences to the mind of the great historian when he 
 sat down to write his autobiography : if they had done so, 
 one may easily conjecture how delicately and with what 
 ease and grace the pen that could trace with such graphic 
 power the progress and achievements of the Roman 
 legion would have stooped to recount the incidents of a 
 snowball fight at Westminster School or a football match 
 in its playground. The remark that Wellington made 
 about the making of the warriors of England as he looked 
 on the Eton boys at their sports he might also have made 
 about her senators. The friends of Gibbon confessed 
 themselves astonished and taken aback that during the 
 years he sat in the House he never ventured to open his 
 lips ; but when we look on the pale, delicate boy thus 
 early turning away from the rude noise and wrangle of 
 his companions, we must cease to wonder at the conduct 
 of the grown man. 
 
 Two years spent at a school in Westminster was the 
 only approach Edward Gibbon ever had to any kind of 
 systematic education during his earlier years, and when 
 the bent of the boy's mind is considered, the nature of 
 the teaching of the time, and the insufferable cruelty he 
 would have been compelled to endure from his stronger 
 companions, there is, on this score, very little cause for 
 
Edward Gibbo7i. 5 
 
 lamentation indeed. In the academies of the time party 
 spirit and flogging had full play. Edward was buffeted 
 and reviled because his father was a Tory. It was a,t the" 
 expense of both tears and blood he purchased his know- 
 ledge of the Latin syntax. 
 
 There can be little doubt if Gibbon had remained 
 much longer at school, and under continued subjection 
 to this petty tyranny both without and within the walls, 
 all love of letters in him would have been finally quenched. 
 Considering then, what he had to do in the world, and 
 the untiring zeal required for the work, possibly the best 
 thing that could have happened him was the complete 
 breakdown of his health, which at this time took place. 
 An occult nervous affection utterly prostrated him, and, 
 " contracting his legs, produced, without any visible 
 symptom, the most excruciating pain." During the pro- 
 gress of this illness he was watched over night and day 
 by his aunt, Catherine Porten, with a care more than 
 maternal. The disinterested and tender affection then 
 shewn him he never forgot, and when long years after- 
 wards he came to detail the circumstances which called 
 forth such loving efforts, the great historian had to con- 
 fess when he wrote the letters of Catherine Porten's 
 name, " he felt a tear of gratitude trickling down his 
 cheek." 
 
 Possessed of an inquisitive mind and a keen thirst for 
 knowledge, there was very little fear, although removed 
 from school. Gibbon would grow up either ignorant or un- 
 scholarly. Left to the bent of his own mind, and to follow 
 the leading of his own inclination, the future historian of 
 the " Decline and Fall " laid up a greater store of know- 
 ledge against the coming time than he ever would have 
 done under the strictest master. Before he had reached 
 his sixteenth year his reading had become both extensive 
 
6 Masters in History. 
 
 and cultured. Every book in English on Arabia, Persia, 
 Tartary, and Turkey, this weak, lame lad had already at 
 his fingers' ends. As he read, his historical instincts 
 developed themselves, and the old masters in history — 
 Herodotus, Xenophon, Tacitus, and Procopius — he tells , 
 us, at this period of his life, were by him " greedily de- 
 voured." Lives of illustrious individuals, too, and grave 
 historical events, usually studied only by men after their 
 powers are matured, had already for the boy a peculiar 
 fascination and a living interest. Mahomet and the 
 successors of Constantine had even thus early, to his 
 mind, ceased to be but indistinct figures moving on the 
 dark background of the past. These then were the seeds 
 of learning cast into this young intellect, that were to 
 spring up, and bear their hundredfold after many days. 
 
 After Gibbon's fourteenth year, and particularly on to 
 the end of his sixteenth, a wonderful change passed over 
 his whole constitution. Before this time there was 
 apparently before the boy only a brief life of lameness 
 and disease. Now, however, an unexpected tide of 
 health poured rapidly in on him. His nervous affections 
 ceased, and his lameness disappeared — improvements at 
 which his father was in ecstasies ; but he took the very 
 worst of all means to testify to his delight : he hurried 
 him off to Oxford, and entered him as a gentleman 
 commoner at Magdalen College. This was in the April 
 of 1752, and before Edward had completed his fifteenth 
 year. 
 
 Not often does Oxford find such a freshman as it 
 found in this Putney convalescent. He was possessed 
 of a "^stock of erudition which might have puzzled a 
 doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a school boy 
 might have been ashamed." Such was the quantity of 
 his scholarship, and such the nature of his ignorance, he 
 
Edward Gibbon. 7 
 
 tells us, when he found the sacred precincts of Magdalen; 
 and — all honour to the good old times, and all praise to 
 the English Universities of that time, their learned tutors 
 and their grave professors — such also was the quantity of 
 the scholarship, and such also the degree of ignorance of 
 Edward Gibbon when he left these precincts for ever ! 
 He wrote afterwards — " To the University of Oxford I 
 acknowledge no obligation, and she will as readily re- 
 nounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for 
 a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College; 
 they proved the most idle and unprofitable of my whole 
 life. The reader will pronounce between the school and 
 the scholar." 
 
 And there is no considerate reader will give his verdict 
 wholly in favour of either the one party or the other. 
 The sight is too common, even at the present day, of 
 young men coming out from our universities little better 
 than they went in, for us to be caught by Gibbon's plead- 
 ing, and throw the whole blame of his idleness and folly 
 at college, on the back of his university. It is true there 
 was little interest in scholarship, and no discipline, but it 
 just says the less for Gibbon that he showed no power to 
 rise superior to the temptations about him, and gave way 
 to a culpable idleness. On these fourteen months he 
 ever professed to look back with the utmost regret ; but 
 after all things are taken into consideration, and all allow- 
 ances made, this regret seems to have been wholly out of 
 proportion to the extent of his dissipations. His life was 
 anything but gross, it was simply free and easy, and very 
 much suited to the nature of a young person who felt for 
 the first time in his life the glee and spirit which are but 
 the legitimate offspring of a sound constitution. Possibly 
 these boyish freaks of his short university life, and the 
 truant excursions he took to Bath, Buckingham, and 
 
8 Masters in History. 
 
 London, brought him more than he ever knew. When 
 men have come to love only their work and their books, 
 their morning constitutionals, and their regular and solid 
 dinners, they are hardly capable of looking with an im- 
 partial eye on the exploits of their early days, when yet 
 their blood was warm, and not "a muscle had stopped in 
 its playing." 
 
 With all his idleness, so far as college work was con- 
 cerned, it is not to be supposed that the mind of the 
 student was, therefore, wholly inactive. So far from that, 
 it had returned with increased zeal to an old and favourite 
 subject of thought. There was inbred in him a taste for 
 theological discussion, and whilst at Oxford, Gibbon gave 
 it the fullest indulgence. He read Middleton's " Free 
 Enquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed 
 to have subsisted in the Christian Church ;" Bossuet on 
 "The Exposition of Catholic Doctrine" and "The History 
 of the Protestant Variations." These and other works 
 made their impression, and, as usual in such cases, a 
 catholic preceptor appeared in one of his companions to 
 fan the rising flame, and direct and stimulate the growing 
 impulse. We have here to note surely one of the strangest 
 episodes that ever occurred in the history of a mind 
 so young. From first to last, religion with Gibbon was 
 never a matter of the heart, it never was anything else 
 than an intellectual appeal — a thing of syllogisms, to be 
 overthrown or established by an application of correct 
 logical principles, — or a matter of fact to be attested and 
 certified by documentary evidence of sufficient authority. 
 To him, at no time, was Christianity a principle entering 
 into life to subdue, mould, and chasten it ; an impulse in 
 human existence flowing from the agency of an active 
 spirit. If any man ever had Christianity in his head but 
 wanted it in his heart, it was Gibbon. So peculiarly con- 
 
Edward Gibbon. g 
 
 stituted, there is little wonder that, so soon as the mind 
 of Gibbon was set Romewards, it advanced with vast 
 rapidity. Gauging afterwards the powers that swayed 
 him at this crisis, he says — " I was unable to resist the 
 weight of historical evidence that, within the same period 
 (the first four centuries of Christianity), most of the lead- 
 ing doctrines of Popery were already introduced in theory 
 and practice. Nor was my conclusion absurd, that 
 miracles are the test of truth, and that the Church must 
 be orthodox and pure which was so often approved by 
 the visible interposition of the Deity. The marvellous 
 tales which are boldly attested by the Basils and Chry- 
 sostoms, the Austins and Jeromes, compelled me to em- 
 brace the superior merits of celibacy, the institution of 
 the monastic life, the use of the sign of the cross, of holy 
 oil, and even of images ; the invocation of saints, the 
 worship of relics, the rudiments of purgatory in prayers 
 for the dead, and the tremendous mystery of the sacrifice 
 of the body and the blood of Christ, which insensibly 
 swelled into the prodigy of transubstantiation." The 
 phase of life Gibbon was now passing through seemed, in 
 after years, incredible to him ; the fact was he grew to 
 be ashamed of these early beliefs, feeling that, by having 
 momentarily succumbed to them, he had degraded his 
 intellect. But, apart from all after opinion, the fact 
 remains — " He read, he applauded, he believed, and 
 he fell" 
 
 After Gibbon's conversion to Romanism, or rather after 
 he had grasped it as a historical and intellectual system, 
 he immediately took steps to have himself enrolled as a 
 member of the religious community to whose principles 
 he had become attached. Youth is always impulsive 
 and impetuous, and more particularly so when it con- 
 ceives itself to be following the dictates of conscience. 
 
lo Masters in History. 
 
 " A momentary glow of enthusiasm had raised him 
 above all temporal considerations," and with all the 
 pomp, dignity, and self-satisfaction of a martyr, he 
 penned a letter annomicing his conversion to his father, 
 while at the same time he sought the feet of one Baker, 
 a Jesuit, and chaplain of the Sardinian Ambassador, and 
 there " solemnly, though privately, abjured the errors of 
 heresy." The date of the meeting with the priest was 
 the 8th of June 1753, and Gibbon was at that time just 
 one month over fifteen years of age. In after years 
 Gibbon seems to have regarded his conversion with very 
 varied feelings. At times he would lead us to suppose 
 he was proud of his honest and straightforward course 
 of conduct ; at other times, again, he seems to look back 
 on his conversion with regret. In one place he writes, 
 — " For my own part, I am proud of an honest sacrifice 
 of interest to conscience. I can never blush, if my 
 tender mind was entangled in the sophistry that seduced 
 the acute and manly understandings of Chillingworth 
 and Bayle, who afterwards emerged from their supersti- 
 tion." In another place and in another tone he says, 
 — " To my present feelings it seems incredible that I 
 should ever believe that I believed in transubstantiation." 
 And once again, in sad commiseration of the fact that 
 he had never received any religious teaching before par- 
 taking of episcopal ordinances, — " Without a single lec- 
 ture, either public or private, either Christian or Pro- 
 testant, without any academical subscription, without any 
 episcopal ordination, I was left by light of my catechism 
 to grope my way to the chapel and communion table, 
 where I was admitted without question how far or by 
 what means I might be qualified to receive the Sacra- 
 ment. Such almost incredible neglect was productive of 
 the worst mischiefs." 
 
Edward Gibbon. ii 
 
 What these mischiefs were the historian does not tell 
 us, but they are not far to seek. One can readily con- 
 ceive, when he wrote these words, he had in his mind's 
 eye the form of a certain youth kneeling in humility at 
 the feet of a well-remembered Jesuit. All things con- 
 sidered, however, it need cause us little astonishment 
 upon the whole, that at this time Gibbon made ship- 
 wreck of his faith. His mother died when he was ten 
 (December 1747), and so, although she had abundant 
 opportunity, still she never endeavoured in the smallest 
 way to embue the mind of her son with religious prin- 
 ciples, or to direct his precocious feelings into worthy 
 channels. His father was only zealous about his secular 
 education. Being thus left to " grope his way," there 
 can be very little cause for wonder that he stumbled in 
 the dark, and that the whole history of his religious 
 experiences was strangely erratic. 
 
 The elder Gibbon was not without his faults, but he 
 was capable on occasion of acting with decision and 
 promptitude. After his first burst of passion at his son's 
 perversion was over, he resolved immediately to take 
 counteractive measures. Before the month in which his 
 son had " gone over to Rome" had closed, he had settled 
 him in Lausanne, in Switzerland, under the orthodox roof 
 and tuition of M. PaviUiard, a Calvinist minister. 
 
 Feeling himself an exile and prisoner, the mind of 
 Edward Gibbon at first chafed amid its new surround- 
 ings. The gentleman commoner of Magdalen, living in 
 an elegant apartment, and with his pockets full of money, 
 was an infinitely preferable being to the exiled pervert, 
 living in an ill-contrived, ill-furnished, badly-heated 
 room in a gloomy back street. But, by-and-by, as he 
 began to understand the language of the people, and ap- 
 preciate the high character and scholarly attainments of 
 
12 Masters in History, 
 
 his new teacher, this feehng wore off. Under the in- 
 fluence of M. Pavilliard all the powers of Gibbon's 
 mind were brought into play, and in the years he passed 
 under his roof he reaped rich harvests on many literary 
 and classical fields. 
 
 The Calvinist minister was a man of the utmost good 
 sense, and he was not long in discovering that in all 
 matters of scholarship the pupil was ahead of the mas- 
 ter. Thus, once more, as in the days of his illness in 
 his father's house, was Gibbon left to indulge his own 
 tastes, and seek out for himself his own intellectual 
 pastures. His literary mentor saw there could come to 
 the young student nothing but gain from being allowed 
 to pursue his own course. An enthusiasm for the great 
 works in the Latin tongue now took possession of Gib- 
 bon's mind, and it was an enthusiasm which burned on 
 to the last, and which was only quenched with his life. 
 The perusal of the Roman classics was at once his exer- 
 cise and reward. At this time Cicero was his favourite, 
 and he was ready to subscribe to the observation of Quin- 
 tillian, that the student may judge of the progress of his 
 scholarly tastes by his appreciation of the works of the 
 Roman orator. The contents of the Ciceronian epistles, 
 orations, and philosophical treatises were as familiar to 
 him as if they had been written in his native tongue. 
 We can conceive that the roll of the Ciceronian sentence 
 must have had a peculiar attraction for the author of " The 
 Decline and Fall," and the very slightest study of the 
 style of this great work leaves us no occasion for surprise 
 at Gibbon's warm commendation of the Latin writer. 
 " I tasted," he says, speaking of the works of Cicero, 
 " I tasted the beauties of language, I breathed the spirit 
 of freedom, and I imbibed from his precepts and ex- 
 amples the public and private interest of a man." After 
 
Edward Gibbo7i. 13 
 
 making himself familiar with Cicero, Gibbon formed, for 
 so young a man, the vast design of reading through the 
 whole of the Latin authors. He divided them into four 
 divisions : i. Historians ; 2. Poets ; 3. Orators ; and 4. 
 Philosophers ; and this great plan, before he left Laus- 
 anne, he had very nearly accomplished. 
 
 Carrying on this systematic study of the Roman 
 classics, the student did not neglect other languages 
 and literatures. M. Pavilliard introduced him to the 
 language of Greece, but while he seems to have made 
 satisfactory progress in its study, and acquired a know- 
 ledge of it much above the modicum usually accounted 
 for respectability, with the tongue of the Hellenes he 
 never acquired that famiharity he had with the language 
 of Cicero. His mother tongue was at this time likely to 
 be left wholly in the background. The language not 
 only of Pavilliard, but of Lausanne and neighbourhood, 
 was French, and Gibbon soon acquired in it such a 
 facility that it became to him, after a very short resi- 
 dence, not merely the language of his speech and writ- 
 ing, but also of his thought. 
 
 Important as was the education which he received from 
 M. Pavilliard, and much as it profited him in after life, 
 still it was not to be educated that his father had sent 
 him to Lausanne. The first duty of the master in this 
 instance was not the education but the conversion of the 
 pupil. Brought into contact with such a mind as Pavil- 
 liard's, the effect on Gibbon might have been calculated 
 from the beginning. Never forgetting his first duty by 
 his pupil, trained in all the arts of ecclesiastical polemics, 
 ever calm and self-controlled, in his argument ever lum- 
 inous and logical, he was a man peculiarly adapted to 
 root out from a mind like Gibbon's the weeds of Ro- 
 manism. Any open attack on the part of the master 
 
14 Masters in History. 
 
 would have been repelled by the pupil ; any hasty 
 words would have been indignantly thrown back ; any 
 imperfect arguments were sure to be detected ; but in 
 none of these things did Pavilliard fail. He used the 
 utmost discrimination. Casting in here a little and there 
 a Httle of the leaven of Protestantism ; by-and-by the 
 whole was leaven, and in a difficult and delicate task, the 
 Calvinist won a perfect triumph. " The various articles 
 of the Romish creed disappeared like a dream" from the 
 mind of Gibbon, and on the Christmas-day of 1754 he 
 partook of the sacrament in the Protestant Church of 
 Lausanne. 
 
 This time it was to Mrs Porten and not to his father 
 he gave the first intelligence of the change that 
 had taken place in his religious opinions. " Dear 
 madam, I have at length good news to tell you. I am 
 now good Protestant, and am extremely glad of it. I 
 have in all my letters taken notice of the different move- 
 ments of my mind, entirely CathoHc when I came to 
 Lausanne, wavering long between the two systems, and 
 at last fixed for the Protestant — when that conflict was 
 over, I had still another difficulty — brought up with all 
 the ideas of the Church of England, I could scarce 
 resolve to communion with Presbyterians, as all the 
 people of this country are. I at last got over it, for 
 considering that whatever difference there may be between 
 these churches and ours, in the government and dis- 
 cipline, they still regard us as brethren and profess the 
 same faith as us — determined then in this design, I 
 declared it to the ministers of the town, assembled at 
 Mr Pavilliard's, who having examined me, approved of 
 it, and permitted me to receive the communion with 
 them, which I did Christmas day from the hands of Mr 
 Pavilliard, who appeared extremely glad of it. I am so 
 
Edward Gibbon. 15 
 
 extremely myself— and do assure you, feel a joy extremely 
 pure, and the more so, as I know it to be not only 
 innocent but laudable." 
 
 When we remember that Gibbon was little short of 
 five years at Lausanne, and taking into account the fact 
 that he was in his sixteenth year when he was sent there 
 by his father, it is very readily to be conceived that 
 other passions would come to the young man than merely 
 a burning love for the Roman classics. The passion 
 that reigned in the breast of Laura's lover has been a 
 good deal talked about, but possibly not more so than 
 the similar affection that disturbed the early dreams of 
 the author of the " Decline and Fall." While, however, 
 the loves of both men have been much talked about, 
 they have been talked about in very different ways. 
 While the part acted by the Sonneteer has been almost 
 universally praised, the part acted by the historian has 
 been almost as universally condemned. A poet wander- 
 ing about all his life writing sonnets to a lady to whom 
 he never had spoken, and who was the wife of another 
 man, is a sight that may readily be clothed with the hues 
 of romance. Again, however, the story that tells of a 
 young man loving a young lady dearly, and this lady the 
 recognised beauty of the place, returning the young man's 
 sentiments although sought after by others, and which 
 goes on to shew that the young man was obliged to draw 
 back by reason of certain mercenary objections of his 
 father, it must be confessed, has a very plain, worldly 
 flavour about it. 
 
 With a fine taste. Gibbon said, that "he hesitated 
 from the apprehension of ridicule when he approached 
 the delicate subject of his early love," but all the same 
 he gives us a very full and particular account of its 
 beginning, progress, and end. The Pavilliards were by 
 
1 6. Masters in History. 
 
 no means rich, but still on account of their position and 
 respectability they were cordially welcomed in the best 
 society of Lausanne. Through them Gibbon was intro- 
 duced into all the best families of the town and was 
 heartily received by all. On no account could his recep- 
 tion have been owing to his personal appearance. In after 
 years he grew ponderous and corpulent, but at this time 
 we have Lord Sheffield's word for it, "he had a thin 
 little figure with a large head." He was trained in the 
 polite exercises of dancing and fencing, and though not 
 lacking a fitting deportment, yet wanting both presence 
 and physique, left to himself he would have had difficulty 
 in gaining that place in even Lausanne circles, which by 
 his master's influence he secured at once. It was by 
 M. Pavilliard's introductions he met Mademoiselle Susan 
 Curchod. This lady was the daughter of the Calvinist 
 minister of Crossier, lying in the mountains that separate 
 the Pays de Vaud from the county of Burgundy. She 
 was born in the year 1740, and from her earliest years, 
 her father had devoted himself with the utmost pains to 
 her education. She was gifted with a fine intelligence, 
 and she soon excelled in every kind of learning. But it 
 was not with her as with Madame De Stael ; to mental 
 accomplishments of the highest kind were united personal 
 attractions the most pleasing. When she appeared at 
 Lausanne, she immediately became the talk of the town, 
 and whether she went out to play or reception, she was 
 equally surrounded with a crowd of admirers. Gibbon 
 heard the reports and his curiosity was excited. He 
 saw and loved. What followed has been told over and 
 over again, but it can never be told by any other writrer 
 so warmly, so truthfully, yet so gracefully, as it has been 
 by the historian himself. " I found her learned without 
 pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and 
 
Edward Gibbon. 17 
 
 elegant in manners; and the first sudden emotion was 
 fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar 
 acquaintance. She permitted me to make two or three 
 visits to her father's house. I passed some days there in 
 the mountains of Burgundy, and her parents honourably 
 encouraged the connection. In a calm retirement the 
 gay vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom ; 
 she listened to the voice of truth and passion, and I 
 might presume to hope that I made some impression on 
 a virtuous heart. At Grassy and X-ausanne I indulged 
 my dream of felicity; but on my return to England, I 
 soon discovered that my father would not hear of this 
 strange alliance, and that, without his consent, I was 
 destitute and helpless. After a painful struggle I yielded 
 to my fate ; I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son ; my 
 wound was insensibly healed by time, absence and the 
 habits of a new life. My cure was accelerated by a 
 faithful report of the tranquillity and cheerfulness of the 
 lady herself, and my love subsided into friendship and 
 esteem. The minister of Grassy soon afterwards died ; 
 his stipend died with him ; his daughter retired to 
 Geneva, where by teaching young ladies, she earned a 
 hard subsistence for herself and her mother ; but in her 
 lowest distress she maintained a spotless reputation and 
 a dignified behaviour. A rich banker of Paris, a citizen 
 of Geneva, had the good fortune and good sense to 
 discover and possess this inestimable treasure ; and in 
 the capital of taste and luxury she resisted the temptations 
 of wealth, as she had sustained the hardships of indigence. 
 The genius of her husband has exalted him to the most 
 
 conspicuous station in Europe and Mademoiselle 
 
 Curchod is now the wife of M. Necker, the minister, and 
 perhaps the legislator of the French monarchy." 
 
 Switzerland and England are far apart, but yet, the 
 
 (a) g 
 
1 8 Masters in History. 
 
 young gentleman of twenty and the young lady of seven- 
 teen that met amongst the mountains of Burgundy, were 
 destined to meet again, and on the score of friendship to 
 indulge a cordial intimacy. It would no doubt have 
 been better for Gibbon had his father allowed him to 
 follow his inclinations and marry Mdlle. Curchod, but 
 still he would be a bold man, indeed, who would venture 
 for a moment to say that he acted a part other than 
 honourable. Nobody would hold, of course, for an 
 instant, the other extreme position that Gibbon showed 
 either heroism or even the highest of spirit in the matter. 
 And it was good for him he didn't. His whole behaviour 
 was eminently creditable to him, as it was at once sensible 
 and dutiful. That his love had never been either warm 
 or true is a coarse accusation, against which his after-life 
 bears sufficient witness. Although he bowed to the 
 dictates of his father, that is not to say the effort was 
 made without pain. It is true we cannot estimate 
 Gibbon's suffering at very much, from anything on record, 
 or anything he himself says, but if we judge it by this, that 
 after the failure of his first wishes he never entertained 
 again any serious thoughts of forming a matrimonial 
 alliance, it could neither have been little nor soon 
 forgotten. 
 
 Another intimacy formed at Lausanne, and one that 
 was to remain ever unbroken, was that contracted by 
 Gibbon for M. Deyverdun. This friendship was formed 
 on the basis of mutual esteem and was of the highest 
 benefit to both parties. M. Deyverdun was not such a 
 deep student as his companion, but still he had a sincere 
 love of books and a desire of knowledge for its own sake. 
 To Gibbon, who passed a sedentary life, and who cared 
 nothing for the robust physical exercises of youth, the 
 elegant manners, the refined conversation, and the 
 
Edward Gibbon, 19 
 
 amiable temperament of M. Deyverdun seem to have 
 been peculiarly agreeable and attractive. 
 
 Only one man of note in the world of letters was it 
 Gibbon's fortune to meet while in Switzerland. This 
 was Voltaire. The years 1 757-1 758 he spent in the 
 neighbourhood of Lausanne. His settlement there was 
 immediately after he had by his own misconduct for- 
 feited the favour of the Prussian Court. Gibbon was as 
 eager to make the acquaintance of the philosopher, as he 
 had been of the beauty. Not similarly, however, was 
 his enthusiasm answered. The Frenchman received the 
 English youth in the coldest manner. Voltaire was irrit- 
 able beyond measure, and a slight indiscretion on 
 Gibbon's part ruffled his temper, and was by no means cal- 
 culated to make matters sweeter between them. So soon 
 as Voltaire had settled at Lausanne, he found, as another 
 felt, that " Lake Leman woo'd him with her crystal face," 
 and he wrote an ode in her praise. This effusion the 
 Frenchman showed to Gibbon, and allowed him to 
 peruse it twice. The memory of the young student was 
 retentive. The two readings fixed the poem in Gibbon's 
 memory, and a copy of it was soon in circulation amongst 
 the people of the town. Voltaire thought he had been 
 taken advantage of, and was extremely displeased. This 
 indiscretion on Gibbon's part destroyed the possibility of 
 all intimacy in the future between him and the irascible 
 philosopher. But although it broke, what might have 
 come to be in the course of time, a strong bond of 
 friendship, it did not shut out Gibbon from the theatre 
 which Voltaire had established. On almost every occa- 
 sion when a dramatic representation was to be given the 
 ardour of the English youth seldom failed to secure a 
 ticket, and it was here he had the good fortune with all 
 the pomp and declamation of the old stage to see Voltaire 
 
20 Masters in History. 
 
 appear in his best characters — Lusignan, Alvarez, Be- 
 nassar, Eupheraon. 
 
 On the iith of April 1758, Gibbon took leave of 
 Lausanne ; and though it had been to him a place of 
 exile, still not without regret did he bid it farewell. He 
 had gone to it a Catholic, he now left it a Protestant. 
 The years he had spent with the Pavilliards had been 
 filled with laborious studies, and, through the energy of 
 his teacher, certain tendencies acquired at Oxford, of 
 gaming for high stakes at cards and using the pleasures 
 of the table too freely, had been, if not extirpated, at 
 least kept in check. It is not too much to say, in those 
 five years Gibbon spent at Lausanne, he went through a 
 course of study much more valuable than he could have 
 received at any of the English colleges of the time, and 
 being under such a master as M. Pavilliard, he was 
 exempt from those temptations, flowing from youthful 
 companionship, he was naturally ill-fitted to withstand. 
 During his stay his reading had been exact, methodical, 
 and extensive. In the following remarks from the pre- 
 face to a series of memoranda commenced two years 
 after this date, we trace the wise and discriminating rules 
 that had guided his studies : — 
 
 " ' Reading is to the mind,' said the Duke of Vivonne 
 to Louis XIV., 'what your partridges are to my chops.' 
 It is, in fact, the nourishment of the mind ; for by read- 
 ing we know our Creator, His works, ourselves chiefly, 
 and our fellow-creatures. But this nourishment is easily 
 converted into poison. Dalmasius had read as much as 
 Grotius, perhaps more ; but their different modes of 
 reading made the one an enlightened philosopher, and 
 the other, to speak plainly, a pedant, pufled up with 
 useless erudition. 
 
 " Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves 
 
Edward Gibbon. 21 
 
 an end to which all our studies may point. Through 
 the neglect of this rule gross ignorance often disgraces 
 great readers ; who, by skipping hastily and irregularly 
 from one subject to another, render themselves incapable 
 of combining their ideas. So many detached parcels 
 of knowledge cannot form a whole. This inconstancy 
 weakens the energy of the mind, creates in it a dislike to 
 application, and even robs it of the advantages of 
 natural good sense. 
 
 " Yet let us avoid the contrary extreme, and respect 
 method, without rendering ourselves its slaves. While 
 we propose an end in our reading, let not this end be too 
 remote ; and when once we have attained it, let our 
 attention be directed to a different subject. Inconstancy 
 weakens the understanding a long and exclusive appli- 
 cation to a single object hardens and contracts it. Our 
 ideas no longer change easily into a different channel, 
 and the course of reading to which we have too long 
 accustomed ourselves is the only one we can pursue with 
 pleasure. 
 
 "We ought, besides, to be careful not to make the 
 order of our thoughts subservient to that of our subjects ; 
 this would be to sacrifice the principal to the accessory. 
 This use of our reading is to aid us in thinking. The 
 perusal of a particular work gives birth, perhaps, to ideas 
 unconnected with the subject of which it treats. I wish 
 to pursue these ideas \ they withdraw me from my pro- 
 posed plan of reading, and throw me into a new track, 
 and from thence, perhaps, into a second and third. At 
 length I begin to perceive whither my researches tend. 
 Their result, perhaps, may be profitable ; it is worth 
 while to try j whereas had I followed the high road, I 
 should not have been able, at the end of my long 
 journey, to retrace the progress of my thoughts. This 
 
2 2 Masters in History. 
 
 plan of reading is not applicable to our early studies, 
 since the severest method is scarcely sufficient to make 
 us conceive objects altogether new. Neither can it be 
 adopted by those who read in order to write, and who 
 ought to dwell on their subject till they have sounded its 
 depths. These reflections, however, I do not absolutely 
 warrant. On the supposition that they are just, they 
 may be so, perhaps for myself only. The constitution of 
 minds differs like that of bodies ; the same regimen will 
 not suit all. Each individual ought to study his own. 
 
 " To read with attention, exactly to define the expres- 
 sions of our author, never to admit a conclusion without 
 comprehending its reason, often to pause, reflect, and 
 interrogate ourselves, these are so many advices which it 
 is easy to give, but difficult to follow. The same may 
 be said of that almost evangelical maxim of forgetting 
 friends, country, religion, of giving merit its due praise, 
 and embracing truth wherever it is to be found. 
 
 '' But what ought we to read ? Each individual must 
 answer this question for himself, agreeably to the object 
 of his studies. The only general precept that I would 
 venture to give is that of Pliny, ' to read much rather 
 than many things ; ' to make a careful selection of the 
 best works, and to render them famiHar to us by atten- 
 tive and repeated perusals." 
 
 When Gibbon found himself again on EngHsh soil, his 
 heart was troubled with various anxieties, but as formerly 
 he repaired to his aunt Porten, the guardian of his 
 tender years, and found her nature as warm, and her 
 counsels as wise as they had ever been. Not so hastily 
 did he seek the face of his father. The last time he had 
 seen that countenance it had been clouded with anger, 
 and besides, the elder Gibbon had now married a second 
 time, and the son of the first wife was not predisposed 
 
Edward Gibbon. 23 
 
 to regard the second with favour. It is true we find in 
 one of Gibbon's letters from Lausanne to Mrs Porten 
 these two sentences — " I forgot to ask you whether, in 
 case my father writes to tell me of his marriage, woitld 
 yott advise me to compliment my mother-in-law. 1 think 
 so.^' But still he regarded his father's marriage as an act 
 of displeasure to his son, and on that ground he had got 
 to entertain anything but a pleasurable idea of the nature 
 of his future intercourse with her. All anxieties were 
 dissipated in the very first meeting. In the presence of 
 his father and mother-in-law all his vain imaginations 
 were dissipated. His father received him as a man and 
 a friend, and applauded his education. " Every word 
 and action was expressive of the most cordial affection ; 
 and our fives would have passed without a cloud if his 
 economy had been equal to his fortune, or if his fortune 
 had been equal to his desires." Mrs Gibbon he dis- 
 covered to be a most amiable and deserving woman, of 
 warm and exquisite sensibility. They found so much 
 pleasure in each other's society that they soon " adopted 
 the tender names and genuine characters of mother and 
 son." 
 
 In the year 1761 Gibbon gave to the world his first 
 literary work. It had been commenced two years before 
 he left Lausanne, and it bore the title of " An Essay on 
 the Study of Literature." It was written in French to 
 flatter the vanity of the author. Gibbon at this time 
 was carried away by the juvenile ambition that it would 
 be a fine thing for an Englishman to claim a place 
 amongst the writers of France. If the style of the essay 
 was in no way remarkable, still the object it had in view 
 was worthy of all praise. Its aim was to establish the 
 works of the classical masters in the popular mind, by 
 emancipating it from the prejudice that then prevailed 
 
24 Masters in History, 
 
 against them. It brought nothing to the writer, and the 
 English translation of the work, small though it was, met 
 with a slow sale. It was not till the publication of ''The 
 Decline and Fall," that it came to be eagerly sought 
 after. 
 
 Meanwhile, in view of impending danger to the 
 country, the militia had been called out, and Gibbon 
 appointed captain in the Hampshire regiment, of which 
 his father was major. The life of an officer of militia 
 was as uncongenial to the natural tastes of the historian 
 as could well be conceived. He was torn away from his 
 books and his studies to spend two years and a half (May 
 lo, 1760, to December 23, 1762) of military servitude. But 
 little as he took at first to the profession of arms, by and 
 by it grew upon him, and he began to entertain serious 
 thoughts of embracing it for life. The literary instincts 
 of the scholar, however, triumphed over a momentary 
 enthusiasm, and he soon began to see that the militia 
 was unfit for and unworthy of him. With continual 
 marching, camping and parade, he could find almost no 
 time for study, and if occasionally he did find a little 
 leisure, the surroundings of mifitary tent, guardroom or 
 country inn, were not conducive to intellectual applica- 
 tion. For eight months he was not able to open a book, 
 and the loss of the valuable hours was never compensated 
 by a single elevating pleasure. Deep drinking and the 
 broad jest of the barrack were his only reliefs from the 
 mechanical round of duty. They were questionable 
 enjoyments, but they did not undermine the solid founda- 
 tions of character that had been laid by the austere 
 Pavilliard. He enjoyed them for a time, but by and 
 by his better tendencies had sway, and he soured 
 at the coarse indulgencies of his boon companions, and 
 the rough sports of the rustic officers. Of his doings in 
 
Edward Gibbon. 25 
 
 the militia he kept a regular journal, and too often do we 
 find in it such entries as these. "September 23d. — This 
 proved a very debauched day : we drank a good deal 
 both after dinner and supper ; and when at last Wilkes 
 had retired, Sir Thomas and some others (of whom I was 
 one) broke into his room, and made him drink a bottle 
 of claret in bed." 
 
 Still, with all its drawbacks, the time spent in the 
 militia was not wholly lost. Indeed, though torn from 
 his book, he got a very valuable education of another 
 kind. He obtained an inside view of our civil and mili- 
 tary system ; he saw how armies were fed, commanded 
 and handled in the field ; he learned the science of 
 tactics, and had abundant opportunities of marking the 
 effects of discipline and drill. And not only so, but con- 
 trary to his own inclinations, he was brought into contact 
 with all kinds of men, so that the reserve of the scholar 
 got shaken out of him, and the cosmopolitan ideas he 
 had cherished in his study vanished before the growth of 
 a manly patriotism. Nor was it a small matter that his 
 captaincy brought him from the musty atmosphere of his 
 library to the country and the open air. Being com- 
 pelled to spend much of his time out of doors, his 
 health was recruited, and his constitution substantially 
 fortified. All things considered, the time spent by 
 Gibbon in the Hampshire militia, although it might have 
 been turned to better, was by no means turned to bad 
 account. A historian without a practical knowledge of 
 military affairs is often placed at a great disadvantage, 
 and the insight Gibbon got into such matters came after- 
 wards to be of the utmost service. The historian spoke 
 from personal experience and truly when he said: — "The 
 discipline and evolution of a modern battalion gave me 
 a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion, and the 
 
26 Masters in History. 
 
 captain of the Hampshire Grenadiers (!) has not been 
 useless to the historian of the Roman Empire." 
 
 If such passages as the following show the hand of the 
 indefatigable scholar, they also betray the knowledge of 
 the militia captain! — "Jerusalem has derived some 
 reputation from the number and importance of her 
 memorable sieges. It was not till after a long and 
 obstinate contest that Babylon and Rome could prevail 
 against the obstinacy of the people, the craggy ground 
 that might supersede the necessity of fortifications, and 
 the walls and towers that would have fortified the most 
 accessible plain. These obstacles were diminished in 
 the age of the crusades. The bulwarks had been com- 
 pletely destroyed and imperfectly restored \ the Jews, their 
 nation and worship, were for ever banished ; but nature 
 is less changeable than man, and the site of Jerusalem, 
 though somewhat softened and somewhat removed, was 
 still strong against the assaults of the enemy. By the 
 experience of a recent siege and a three years' possession, 
 the Saracens of Egypt had been taught to discern, and in 
 some degree to remedy, the defects of a place which 
 religion as well as honour forbade them to resign. 
 Aladan of Iftikhar, the caliph's lieutenant, was entrusted 
 with the defence ; his policy strove to restrain the native 
 Christians by the dread of their own ruin and that of the 
 holy sepulchre j to animate the Moslems by the assurance 
 of temporal and eternal rewards. His garrison is said to 
 have consisted of forty thousand Turks and Arabians ; 
 and if he could muster twenty thousand of the inhabi- 
 tants, it must be confessed that the besieged were more 
 numerous than the besieging army. Had the diminished 
 strength and number of the Latins allowed them to grasp 
 the whole circumference of four thousand yards — about 
 two English miles and a half — to what useful purpose 
 
Edward Gibbon. 27 
 
 should they have descended into the valley of Ben 
 Himmon and torrent of Cedron, or approached the 
 precipices of the south and east, from whence they had 
 nothing either to hope or fear ? Their siege was more 
 reasonably directed against the northern and western 
 sides of the city. Godfrey of Bouillon erected his 
 standard on the first swell of Mount Calvary ; and to the 
 left, as far as St Stephen's gate, the line of attack was 
 continued by Tancred and the two Roberts ; and Count 
 Raymond established his quarters from the citadel to 
 the foot of Mount Sion, which was no longer included 
 within the precincts of the city. On the fifth day the 
 crusaders made a general assault, in the fanatic hope of 
 battering down the walls without engines, and of scaling 
 them without ladders. By the dint of brutal force, they 
 burst the first barrier, but they were driven back with 
 shame and slaughter to the camp ; the influence of vision 
 and prophecy was deadened by the too frequent abuse of 
 those pious stratagems, and time and labour were found 
 to be the only means of victory. The time of the siege 
 was indeed fulfilled in forty days, but they were forty 
 days of calamity and anguish. A repetition of the old 
 complaint of famine may be imputed in some degree to 
 the voracious or disorderly appetite of the Franks, but 
 the stony soil of Jerusalem is almost destitute of water \ 
 the scanty springs and hasty torrents were dry in the 
 summer season, nor was the thirst of the besiegers 
 relieved, as in the city, by the artificial supply of cisterns 
 and aqueducts. The circumjacent country is equally 
 destitute of trees for the uses of shade or building, but 
 some large beams were discovered in a cave by the 
 crusaders ; a wood near Sichem, the enchanted grove of 
 Tasso, was cut down ; the necessary timber was trans- 
 ported to the camp by the vigour and dexterity of 
 
28 Masters in History. 
 
 Tancredj and the engines were framed by those Genoese 
 artists who had fortunately landed in the harbour of 
 Jaffa. Two movable turrets were constructed at the 
 expense and in the stations of the Duke of Lorraine and 
 the Count of Toulouse, and rolled forwards with devout 
 labour, not to the most accessible, but to the most 
 neglected parts of the fortification. Raymond's tower 
 was reduced to ashes by the fire of the besieged, but his 
 colleague was more vigilant and successful ; the enemies 
 were driven by his archers from the rampart ; the draw- 
 bridge was let down; and on Friday at three in the 
 afternoon, the day and hour of the Passion, Godfrey of 
 Bouillon stood victorious on the walls of Jerusalem. His 
 example was followed on every side by the emulation of 
 valour ; and about four hundred and sixty years after the 
 conquest of Omar, the holy city was rescued from the 
 Mohammedan yoke. In the pillage of public and 
 private wealth, the adventurers had agreed to respect the 
 exclusive property of the first occupant ; and the spoils 
 of the great mosque — seventy lamps and massy vases of 
 gold and silver — rewarded the diligence and displayed 
 
 the generosity of Tancred After seventy thousand 
 
 Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless 
 Jews had been burnt in their synagogue, they could still 
 reserve a multitude of captains whom interest or lassitude 
 persuaded them to spare. Of these savage heroes of the 
 cross, Tancred alone betrayed some sentiments of com- 
 passion ; yet we may praise the more selfish lenity of 
 Raymond, who gained a capitulation and safe-conduct to 
 the garrison of the citadel. The holy sepulchre was now 
 free ; and the bloody visitors prepared to accomplish 
 their vow. Bareheaded and barefooted, with contrite 
 hearts, and in humble posture, they ascended the hill of 
 Calvary amidst the loud anthems of the clergy j kissed 
 
Edward Gibbon. 29 
 
 the stone which had covered the Saviour of the world, 
 and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monu- 
 ment of their redemption." 
 
 It is not to be thought that Gibbon made no effort to 
 loose himself from his militia servitude. On various 
 occasions he attempted to resign his commission, but his 
 fetters were only rivetted the closer by the solicitude of 
 his friends. At length the militia were disembodied, and 
 the captain of the Hampshire contingent had his freedom 
 once more. His father was anxious he should enter Parha- 
 ment, but in a long letter the son showed to the satisfac- 
 tion of the parent how much better it would be, and how 
 much more to the son's advantage, that the money spent on 
 securing his return should be expended in perfecting the 
 son's education by foreign travel. The elder Gibbon 
 throwing no difficulties in the way of his son carrying out 
 his project of making a great continental tour, thirty- 
 six days after the disbanding of the miHtia, and on the 
 28th January 1763, Edward was in Paris. Although 
 travelling by post-chaise was a slow means of locomotion, 
 he by no means intended to make up for time lost in 
 this way by shortening his stay at the various places he 
 intended to visit. The modern tourist is content, for the 
 most part, with a casual and hasty survey of the scenery 
 of the district through which he passes, and he seeks to 
 establish no friendships at all, unless certain of a very fleet- 
 ing kind with the various hotel keepers j it was different 
 with Gibbon ; he wished not merely to have a knowledge of 
 the geography of the countries through which he passed, 
 but he was also desirous of knowing their antiquities and 
 topography and forming an acquaintance with their great 
 living politicians and scientists, but especially with their 
 literary men. 
 
 In Paris Gibbon stayed for over three months. He had 
 
30 Masters in History. 
 
 taken with him recommendatory letters, but his essay 
 had been more famous in France than in England, and 
 it, joined to the fact that he was an Englishman, pro- 
 cured him, more than his written introductions, an easy 
 entrance into the best society of the capital. The 
 British name at that time being clothed with fresh military 
 glory, all classes in Paris were possessed of a severe form 
 of Anglo-mania. English opinions, fashions and games 
 had become the rage in the salons, and " every English- 
 man was supposed to be born a patriot and a philosopher." 
 This being the state of things, we do not wonder that the 
 doors of certain houses were ever open to the traveller 
 four days in the week, and without invitation he could 
 dine at the tables of Mesdames Geoffrin and du Bocage, 
 of the celebrated Helvetius and of the Baron d'Olbach. 
 Amongst men of letters d'Alembert and Diderot were 
 the most famous, and Gibbon met both of them. Buffon 
 was also in Paris, but him, to his regret, he did not see. 
 The time was unfortunate for making the acquaintance 
 of men of genius, Voltaire was away at Geneva, Rousseau 
 the year before had been driven into exile, and Mon- 
 tesquieu and Fontenelle were now no more. The salon 
 — meetings of the wealthy, the witty, and the wise, held 
 in the drawing-rooms of the great, and presided over by 
 the lady of the house — the salon, that unique product of 
 the French life of the i8th century, was in its glory, and 
 from Gibbon's perfect acquaintance with the language, as 
 well as from his natural sympathies, he must have been 
 able to enjoy its elegance and refinement, but nowhere, 
 strange to say, does he give any indication that he had 
 marked the nature of the opinions that were then at these 
 gatherings freely ventilated, or ever thought of fore- 
 casting the issue of such opinions in the near future. 
 The fact was, he was astonished at his reception ; and 
 
Edward Gibbon. 31 
 
 pleased beyond measure with the continued urbanity of 
 the people, he put away for the time being all thought of 
 severe studies, and gave himself up to the enjoyment of 
 the fascinating society of the French capital. He was so 
 enamoured, that if he had been more independent and 
 more wealthy, he intended to have taken up house in 
 Paris. 
 
 Leaving the salons of Paris behind him, he was again, 
 after five years absence, on the shores of the Leman 
 Lake, and amongst his old acquaintances at Lausanne, 
 His old master met him with embraces and tears, but 
 having tasted the luxury of England and Paris he now 
 disdained the homely table of Madame Pavilliard, and 
 entered himself a pejtsionnaire or boarder at the house of 
 M. de Mesery — a house which for the long period of 
 twenty years held a first place amongst the elegant 
 boarding estabHshments of Europe. It was in this 
 agreeable society he first made the acquaintance of Mr 
 Holroyd — afterwards Lord Sheffield. The two men were 
 drawn to each other by the similarity of their tastes, and 
 the friendship then formed between them was destined 
 to be life-long. On the springing up of this happy ac- 
 quaintanceship, Gibbon in his " Memoirs of his Life and 
 Writings " makes a delicate and philosophical observation. 
 "Our lives," says he, "are in the power of chance, and 
 a slight variation on either side, in time or place, might 
 have deprived me of a friend, whose activity in the 
 ardour of youth was always prompted by a benevolent 
 heart, and directed by a strong understanding." The 
 society at Lausanne was much as he had left it, only 
 Voltaire had gone to Ferney where he paid him a visit. 
 Mdlle. Curchod he did not see. With the old scenes 
 his old habits came back upon him, and he now began a 
 severe and systematic course of study. He applied him- 
 
32 Maste7^s in History. ' 
 
 self with enormous diligence to the topography of old 
 Rome, the science of medals, and the ancient geography 
 of Italy. It was now beginning to be plainly evident 
 whither the bent of his genius was leading him. It 
 would fill at least two pages of this book to record the 
 names of the Latin works he perused. Nor was his 
 reading done hastily. He sat with a pen in his hand 
 and took notes as he went. Nor, again, were these notes 
 left in a crude form j he gathered them all up into an 
 elaborate treatise on the towns, provinces, and nations of 
 ancient Italy. This work was his guide in his Trans- 
 alpine expedition. And thus it was after eleven months' 
 hard intellectual labour at Lausanne " he was armed for 
 his Italian journey," and for making the acquaintance- 
 ship of that city which had been the centre of most of 
 his thinking since childhood, and about whose walls his 
 historic imagination had ever flown in narrower or 
 wider circles. 
 
 Leaving Lake Leman behind him as he had left Paris, 
 he climbed Mount Cenis on the back of an elephant, 
 passed through Turin and Genoa, and by the road of 
 Bologna and the Apennines he at last arrived at 
 Florence, "where during the heat of the summer months," 
 he reposed from June to September. After leaving 
 Florence, and passing through Pisa, he arrived in 
 Rome in the beginning of October. The impression the 
 city made on the historian of its empire can never be 
 given in other than his own words : — " My temper is not 
 very susceptible of enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm 
 which I do not feel I have ever scorned to affect. But 
 at the distance of twenty-five years I can neither forget 
 nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind 
 as I first approached and entered the eternal city. After 
 a sleepless night, I trod, with a lofty step, the ruins of the 
 
Edward Gibbon. 33 
 
 Forum ; each memorable spot where Romulus stood, or 
 Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my 
 eye ; and several days of intoxication were lost or 
 enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute 
 investigation. My guide was Mr Byers, a Scotch 
 antiquary of experience and taste; but in the daily 
 labour of eighteen weeks, the powers of attention were 
 sometimes fatigued, till I was myself qualified, in a last 
 review, to select and study the capital works of ancient 
 and modern art." It will satisfy the curious to know 
 that it was in the eternal city itself that the idea of his 
 great work flashed upon Gibbon's mind. " It was at 
 Rome, on the 15th October 1764, as I sat musing amid 
 the ruins of the Capitol while the bare-footed fryars were 
 singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea 
 of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to 
 my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed by 
 the decay of the city rather than of the empire : and 
 though my reading and reflections began to point 
 toward that object, some years elapsed, and several 
 avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in 
 the execution of that laborious work." 
 
 Gibbon's return to the West was more rapid than his 
 progress Eastward had been. He had intended on his 
 way home to visit the southern provinces of France, but 
 receiving urgent letters he could only stay a fortnight in 
 Paris. On his arrival at the French capital he found 
 that Mdlle. Curchod was already settled there as the 
 wife of M. Necker. So far from their avoiding each other, 
 which would certainly have been the case had either been 
 conscious of having acted a dishonourable part, they 
 associated with each other on the footing of their old 
 friendship, and M. Necker received Gibbon to his house 
 every day with unaffected cordiality. In the most 
 
 (2) n 
 
34 Masters in History. 
 
 playful terms did Gibbon describe the meeting to his 
 friend Holroyd. "The Curchod I saw in Paris, and 
 she was very proud of me, and the husband particularly 
 civil. Could they insult me more cruelly. ... It is 
 making an old lover of mighty Httle consequence. She 
 is as handsome as ever and much genteeler : seems 
 pleased with her wealth rather than proud of it," etc., etc. 
 The pen of the historian could run Hghtly at times, 
 and we believe it ran not the less lightly on such a theme 
 as Mdlle. Curchod, as it could convey nothing but the 
 pure memories of the writer. 
 
 After an interval of two years and five months, Gibbon 
 again drove through the summer dust and solitude of 
 London, and on the 25th June 1765 he arrived at his 
 father's house. The period from this date up to the time 
 of his father's death, five years later, can only be filled up 
 with tolerable accuracy. He began to think with regret 
 of the aimlessness of his past Hfe. When he looked 
 round him he saw his friends for the most part married, 
 and all devoted to certain professions invested with 
 power, and commanding the respect of others and on the 
 high road to wealth and honour. Had he only taken to 
 trade or business, had he only studied law or sought, 
 through divinity classes, "the fat slumbers of the Church," 
 things might have been with him as with others. As it 
 was, he found himself now an individual of no considera- 
 tion and with neither part nor lot in the bustling world 
 about' him. These serious anxieties were increased by 
 domestic misapprehensions. His father for long had 
 been living above his income, his position every year was 
 getting more and more embarrassed, and his creditors 
 more and more clamorous. The outlook for Gibbon was 
 consequently sufficiently dark, and he conceived there 
 
Edward Gibbon. 35 
 
 could only be before him an old age without either 
 inheritance or the fruits of industry. 
 
 Such gloomy forebodings did not, however, damp the 
 ardour of his mind. It is to his credit that at this crisis 
 he remained true to his scholarly habits. At this time he 
 was joined by Deyverdun. His friend was in even a 
 worse plight than himself. His father had squandered 
 his fortune, and an unfortunate love affair had thrown him 
 from his position at the Russian court, and he was now, 
 without any visible means of subsistence, cast upon the 
 world. Brethren in misfortune as they were, they could 
 still be serviceable to each other. Gibbon procured for 
 his friend a clerkship in the office of the Secretary of 
 State, and Deyverdun translated for his old acquaintance 
 German works bearing on the subject of the history of 
 Switzerland which he proposed to write. Two years 
 were spent by Gibbon in collecting materials, but away 
 " from the archives and libraries of the Swiss republic," 
 the result was not satisfactory, and the opening chapters 
 having been severely handled at a meeting of foreigners 
 in London, the work was there and then finally abandoned. 
 But no sooner was the project of the Swiss history cast 
 to the wind, than Gibbon planned along with Deyverdun 
 the issue of a work bearing the title of " Memoires 
 Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne," but the joint con- 
 tributors finding it brought more reputation than emolu- 
 ment, it too, after the issue of two volumes, was 
 abandoned. This issue of works in the' French tongue 
 was an undoubted mistake, but it took Gibbon some 
 time to find out that in the first place he must write for 
 Englishmen and not Europeans. 
 
 After two successive literary failures, and exasperated 
 by the complexion of domestic affairs, he was in a very 
 proper mood for polemical writing, and he got rid of 
 
2,6 Masters in History. 
 
 some of the spleen that was consuming him about the 
 nature of things in general, by writing certain bitter 
 " Critical Observations on the Sixth Book of the ^neid." 
 The little work is characterized by great elasticity of style, 
 but as it is nothing else than a specimen of special plead- 
 ing, it has never been regarded as an authority, and has 
 long since become obsolete. 
 
 In these five years immediately subsequent to his 
 return from his Italian tour, it is evident from many hints 
 that his religious views had again undergone a complete 
 change. It is remarkable while he speaks with the 
 utmost frankness of the causes which brought about his 
 perversion to Romanism, and of the paths by which he 
 was led back to Protestantism once again, he maintains 
 a careful reticence on every matter connected with his 
 second and final departure from the opinions of the 
 Reformation. But although his silence is studied, there 
 can be no doubt the break with Protestantism was com- 
 plete. What set of opinions he adopted does not appear, 
 but whatever they were he was henceforth to be allowed 
 to hold them in peace. The severe logic and kindly 
 solicitude of another Pavilliard were not to deliver 
 him from the mists of philosophy as they had rescued 
 him from the errors of Romanism. It was in these years 
 *' he flattered himself, that an age of light and of liberty 
 would receive, without scandal, an inquiry into the human 
 causes of the progress and establishment of Christianity." 
 It was in them the foundation of the two lamentable 
 chapters that conclude the first volume of " The Decline 
 and Fall " were laid in the mind of the author. These 
 two chapters which he was feign afterwards to confess, 
 had he anticipated the stir they would make in the world, 
 had he known the wounds they would inflict on men whose 
 purity of life commanded universal respect, had he guessed 
 
Edward Gibbon. 37 
 
 the pain they would bring to many whose only endeavour 
 was to work out in their conduct the spirit of Christian 
 self-sacrifice, he never would have written at all. Nor 
 can the present writer be accused of dealing hardly with 
 the memory of the great historian, if he points to a certain 
 moral inconsistency in a man cherishing the spirit of 
 these chapters, and all the while casting a longing eye 
 towards " the fat slumbers of the Church." 
 
 Whilst Gibbon was contemplating his future work at 
 " an awful distance," whilst he was advancing from the 
 wish to the hope, from the hope to the design, and from 
 the design to the execution, his life was darkened and 
 his energies prostrated — for it is a great mistake to 
 suppose Gibbon was the selfish Epicurean he is often 
 called — by the death of his father. This event took 
 place on the loth Nov. 1770, when the elder Gibbon 
 was in the sixty- fourth year of his age. Although the 
 father had long been living above his income, and his 
 whole estate was left in a questionable position, still he 
 had been a kind, indulgent, and loving parent, and the 
 son was profoundly affected at his decease. " His grace- 
 ful person," says the historian, "polite address, gentle 
 manners, and unaffected cheerfulness, recommended him 
 to the favour of every company ; and in the change of 
 times and opinions, his liberal spirit had long since 
 delivered him from the zeal and prejudice of a Tory 
 education. I submitted to the order of nature ; and my 
 grief was soothed by the conscious satisfaction that I had 
 discharged all the duties of filial piety." 
 
 The poet may work in poverty, but the historian can't. 
 The labours of the latter are so prolonged and engross- 
 ing and the tools he works with often so difiicult to be 
 had, that some degree of riches is positively necessary 
 before they can be carried on. Great riches may un- 
 
38 Masters in History. 
 
 doubtedly have a tendency to relax the activities of the 
 historian, but great poverty must as undoubtedly kill 
 them altogether. It seemed possible at this crisis that 
 " The Decline and Fall " would be throttled through the 
 indigence of the writer. Gibbon, however, after he had 
 retired to London and taken up house at No. 7 Bentinck 
 Street, near Manchester Square, and after all his father's 
 affairs had been wound up, found to his satisfaction, that 
 a moderate competency had been secured to him from 
 the general wreck. If his income was such that he could 
 not dispense with carefulness, still it enabled him to be- 
 come a member of Boodle's, White's, and Almack's, to 
 give occasionally a thorough-going bachelor dinner to 
 which Reynolds and Goldsmith were invited, and to sit 
 down without fear from importunate tradesmen to his 
 studies and historical researches. Besides the painter 
 and the poet just named, Gibbon was brought into inti- 
 mate contact with Dr Johnson, Burke, Garrick, Colman, 
 Sir WiUiam Jones, Fox, Sheridan and Adam Smith, the 
 poHtical economist. Amongst all the literary gossip of 
 that time, it is a matter of regret that we have no genuine 
 account of Gibbon's appearance in society. Had he so 
 minded, the Exquisite Esquire of Strawberry Hill, might 
 have given us a valuable sketch of the portly and accom- 
 pHshed author of " The Decline and Fall." His manners, 
 however, were so uniformly unobtrusive, and his general 
 bearing so much in accord with the society in which he 
 moved, that he never attracted any undue attention to 
 himself. Had he been less elegant in his manners, had 
 he been the unfortunate possessor of any peculiar foible, 
 we may rest assured he would not have escaped the 
 observation of the critics of his time. He was not 
 destitute of humour, but wanting the ready wit which 
 can set the table in a roar. His conversation has not 
 
Edward Gibbon, 39 
 
 contributed a single bon-mot to the thousands recorded 
 of the hterary men of his time. He moved in society 
 the perfect gentleman, and if to its polite history his 
 words never give an intellectual sally, his life never con- 
 tributes a single oddity. 
 
 At his home in Bentinck Street Gibbon now addressed 
 himself to the work of his history. " At the outset," he 
 writes, " all was dark and doubtful : even the title of the 
 work, the true era of the Decline and Fall of the Empire, 
 the limits of the introduction, the division of the chapters, 
 and the order of the narrative, and I was often tempted 
 
 to cast away the labour of seven years Many 
 
 experiments were made before I could hit the middle 
 tone between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical declam- 
 ation : three times did I compose the first chapter, and 
 twice the second and third, before I was tolerably 
 satisfied with their efiect In the remainder of the way I 
 advanced with a more equal and easy pace; but the 
 fifteenth and sixteenth chapters have been reduced by 
 three successive revisals, from a large volume to their 
 present size : and they might still be compressed, with- 
 out any loss of facts or sentiments." 
 
 It has been complained that while Gibbon grew 
 garrulous over his earlier studies, conversions and per- 
 versions, it would have been of far more importance to 
 the world in general had he said less about these, and 
 more about those three years he spent in the com- 
 position of the first volume of the " Decline and Fall." 
 The point of the complaint is more apparent than real. 
 When we look into the matter we find that Gibbon's 
 silence about those years must have been largely 
 owing to the fact that he had little to tell the reader 
 which would not have been a repetition of what he 
 already knew. During his whole life the Historian 
 
40 Masters in History. 
 
 had been collecting materials for his work, and often 
 consciously, often unconsciously, training himself for 
 his task. When, therefore, he settled near Manchester 
 Square, he was fully prepared : his stores were by him or 
 deposited in his memory, his mind had received its 
 appropriate discipline, and when the time for work did 
 come, there was little else for him to do than what he 
 plainly tells us — to seek out an appropriate style to 
 convey his thoughts, and show continued discrimination 
 in moulding into form the raw materials of his life-long 
 studies. Mankind have ever displayed a natural curiosity 
 to be taken into the workshop of authors, but authors 
 themselves have ever been careful to keep their study 
 doors locked against all prying inquisitiveness into the 
 secrets of their profession. But that they have told little 
 concerning the composition of their works is doubtless 
 owing to the fact that they had little to tell: writers 
 seem puzzled to account for their own productions. 
 Dickens promised to tell us all about the conception of 
 " Pickwick," but what he told threw no light upon the 
 subject. It only amounts to this, that "somehow or other 
 it came into his head." Poe wrote an elaborate essay 
 telling, or professing to tell, how he composed the 
 " Raven," how he thought it out and elaborated it until 
 he made it what it is. He proposed to tell us all that, 
 but it is agreed on all hands his essay is a fiction. 
 Account for it as we may, no writer of eminence has 
 ever taken any one into his intellectual laboratory. 
 Scott never did, and of all men, he • was the most 
 approachable. Burns never did, and he was the most 
 open-hearted of men. Voltaire never did. Goethe 
 never did. Milton never did. If then Gibbon had 
 more to tell than what he has told, he keeps his secrets 
 in good company. 
 
Edward Gibbon. 41 
 
 But in whatever dubiousness we are left with regard to 
 Gibbon's methods of composition, there certainly can be 
 no doubt whatever about the quality of the work performed. 
 The first volume of the " Decline and Fall" involved the 
 settling of both method and style for the whole work ; 
 but still, although the first volume took longer than any 
 of the other five that followed it, and the hand of the 
 writer grew firmer and more rapid as he advanced, it 
 reflects all the beauties of the other parts, and shews at 
 once the vast powers and resources which Gibbon had 
 brought to bear on his special subject. 
 
 Amongst the first things that arrest the attention of the 
 reader of the "Decline and Fall," is the dignity and 
 elegance of the style. From the first sentence to the last 
 there is no appearance of falling away, and subjects of 
 secondary importance in themselves derive a primary 
 significance from the grace and beauty of the diction. 
 Vast though the work be, there is no page of it where the 
 hand of the writer seems wearied or his energies relaxed. 
 The high literary notes struck in the first chapters, are 
 heard without diminution of either strength or volume in 
 the last. And if there is never any sign of flagging, 
 neither is there ever any appearance of haste. The 
 goal is in the far distance, but one could never guess the 
 author had ever once looked at it, or cherished a single 
 desire to attain it. One feels there is nothing left out, 
 nothing passed over, nothing vaguely comprehended, and 
 with one or two exceptions, nothing misunderstood. 
 The historian never gives the slightest sign that he feels 
 his burden, and his varied themes he handles with so 
 much facility that he seems to play with them. It was 
 only his thorough preparation that could have made him 
 feel so much at home in his work. He was conscious 
 that he had a perfect acquaintance with his subject, knew 
 
42 Masters in History. 
 
 the whole range of literature bearing upon it, and was 
 as intimately acquainted with its minutest as with its 
 most outstanding details. With so much to work on, 
 not the least difficult part the author had to perform, was 
 to show that he was neither clogged nor hampered by the 
 multiplicity of his materials. The ease with which he 
 manipulated his heavy references is only surpassed by the 
 power he displayed in moulding obdurate chronological 
 events to suit his literary form. Had Gibbon possessed 
 this power in a less degree, had he been only capable of 
 dealing with facts and dates in a manner less thorough- 
 going and masterly, he had certainly failed to infuse 
 into his narrative its grand panoramic effect. For this 
 is true ""of Gibbon's History and pertains to it, and is 
 characteristic of it, more than of any other, that whilst it is 
 a history, it is also at the same time a series of carefully 
 executed and artistically wrought pictures. It is true we 
 hear in his stately prose the sound of the Roman phalanx, 
 but it is also true in his elaborate grouping we see the 
 battalions of the empire drawn up in battle array. What 
 has been said of the work by Mr Freeman is deserving 
 of quotation : — " That Gibbon should ever be displaced 
 seems impossible. That wonderful man monopolised, 
 so to speak, the historical genius and the historical 
 learning of a whole generation, and left little indeed of 
 either for his contemporaries. He remains the one 
 historian of the eighteenth century, whom modern 
 research has neither set aside or threatened to set aside. 
 We may correct and improve upon the stores which have 
 been opened since Gibbon's time; we may write again large 
 parts of his story from other and often truer and more whole- 
 some points of view, but the work of Gibbon as a whole, 
 as the encyclopaedic history of 1300 years, as the grandest 
 of historical designs, carried out alike with wonderful 
 
Edward Gibbon. 43 
 
 power, and with wonderful accuracy, must ever keep its 
 place. Whatever else is read, Gibbon must be read." 
 
 Apart from the characteristics above enumerated, the 
 reader of Gibbon is struck by the display of many sub- 
 sidiary qualifications. His topographical knowledge is 
 marvellous. He seems to have possessed that power 
 held by Bulwer Lytton and others, of being able to 
 describe with absolute faithfulness and graphic effect 
 places he had never seen. With his minute knowledge 
 of places, his geographical information was commensurate, 
 and this latter again was adorned with the fruits of 
 laborious scientific study, so that as Gibbon said himself, 
 *' the natural historian might have tracked him in his own 
 snow." His insight into character, if occasionally super- 
 ficial was, on the whole, worthy of his scholarship, and little 
 stray incidents in men's lives that others '' would have 
 passed by unnoticed, he had the happy knack of so intro- 
 ducing into his narrative as to illustrate their characters and 
 supply keys to their conduct." How the historian could 
 seize on a trivial incident and make it tell, the following 
 paragraph will show. " While Julian struggled with the 
 almost insuperable difficulties of his situation, the silent 
 hours of the night were devoted to study and contempla- 
 tion. Whenever he closed his eyes in short and inter- 
 rupted slumbers, his mind was agitated by painful 
 anxiety; nor can it be thought surprising that the Genius 
 of the Empire should once more appear before him, cover- 
 ing with a funereal veil his head and his horn of abund- 
 ance, and slowly retiring from the imperial tent. The 
 monarch started from his couch, and stepping forth to 
 refresh his weary spirits with the coolness of the mid- 
 night air, he beheld a fiery meteor which shot athwart the 
 sky and suddenly vanished. Julian was convinced that 
 he had seen the menacing countenance of the God of 
 
44 Masters in History, 
 
 war : the council which he summoned of Tuscan Haru- 
 spices, unanimously pronounced that he should abstain 
 from action ; but on this occasion necessity and reason 
 were more prevalent than superstition, and the trumpets 
 _sounded at the break of day." 
 
 The first volume of the history, published in February 
 1776, although it was in some respects inferior to the 
 two that immediately followed it, met with a most hearty 
 reception from the public. The first impression of a 
 thousand was exhausted in a few days, and a second 
 and third got ready as quickly as the old hand-presses 
 of the time would allow, were scarcely adequate to meet 
 the demand. Although Gibbon professed to regard the 
 publication of the work with the complacency of a 
 philosopher, he made no attempt to conceal his joy at 
 its success. That he had done his duty with diligence 
 and accuracy, he had the testimony of his own conscience, 
 and the vanity he indulged at the thought of " his book 
 being on every table, and almost on every toilette, — the 
 historian crowned by the taste or fashion of the day, nor 
 the general voice disturbed by the barking of any profane 
 critic," is very readily excusable. But along with the 
 applause of the people came also the praise of the 
 learned, and if Gibbon for his own part, refused to allow 
 his name to be put forward as one of the triumvirate 
 of English historians, still he accepted the hand of 
 brotherhood held out to him by Robertson and Hume. 
 
 Meanwhile Gibbon had entered parliament. One 
 morning some short time after the Historian had got out 
 of bed, and just as he was destroying an army of barbar- 
 ians, a double knock was heard at the door of No. 7 
 Bentinck Street. It was a messenger from Mr (afterwards 
 Lord) Eliot. This gentleman had married Gibbon's first 
 cousin, and by his friendship he found himself after the 
 
Edward Gibbon, 45 
 
 general election of 1774, member for the borough of 
 Liskeard. Had Gibbon cared to make for himself a name 
 as a politician he had now before him a splendid oppor- 
 tunity. He was already well known as a man of scholarly 
 habits, he was in the course of a few months to be 
 famous as an author, and burning questions were every 
 night debated in thronged and excited houses. There 
 were also on both sides foemen worthy of the finest steel. 
 Lord North was the government leader, " a statesman of 
 spotless integrity, a consummate master of debate, who 
 could wield with equal dexterity the arms of reason and 
 of ridicule." The leader was supported by men who 
 have come to be hardly less famous than himself. The 
 most notable of these were Thurlow and Wedderburne. 
 The latter statesman was afterwards created Lord Chan- 
 cellor, and successively illustrated the title of Lord 
 Loughborough and Earl of Rosslyn. It is enough to 
 say that on the opposition benches sat Fox and Burke. 
 Here surely was an arena where a man of Gibbon's attain- 
 ments might have been ambitious to excel. Nothing, 
 however, would tempt him to "get up" in the house. 
 It may have been that while he sat on the Commons 
 benches his heart was in his study, it may have been that 
 he found himself wanting in the physical qualities of 
 the orator — "the intrepid energy of mind and voice, 
 vincente77i strepitus et natwn rebus agendis" or it may 
 have been, and probably was, that he was unduly afraid of 
 risking as a speaker the personal reputation he had 
 gained as a writer. At any rate, during the whole of the 
 eight sessions he sat in parliament " prudence," he says, 
 condemned him to acquiesce in the humble station of a 
 mute." Except on one occasion, when he published his 
 "Memoire Justificatif," to vindicate against the French, 
 and in their own language, the justice of the British arms, 
 
46 Masters in History. 
 
 he rendered no service to his party further than supporting 
 them by his vote. We need not wonder that such feeble 
 friendship was little appreciated in those exciting times, 
 when the independence of America was a question every 
 night before the House, or that Gibbon had to confess 
 his chagrin when in the division of the spoil he found 
 himself wholly forgotten. The Historian might affect to 
 be careless about how his party vote was appreciated, 
 but he could not be careless about the fact that he was 
 regularly excluded from the emoluments of office. We 
 fear it was with Gibbon as with too many, he entered 
 parliament from no high sense of public duty, from no 
 particular wish to benefit the public service, but only 
 froi^ the hope that he might secure an appointment, the 
 salary from which would augment his private income. 
 Gibbon, left to himself, would possibly never have 
 dreamt of entering parliament at all, but the opportunity 
 put before him, along with the chances of bettering his 
 income, were not to be put aside. 
 
 At first his style of living in Bentinck Street had been 
 conceived in the spirit of his yearly allowance from the 
 remainder of his Father's estate, but by and by, what 
 with " the giving of the prettiest dinners in the world," 
 and the society which more and more courted his 
 presence, he soon found himself in his parent's position, 
 living beyond his income, and consequently running into 
 debt. This b'eing the state of his domestic affairs, his 
 appointment to the post of one of the Lords' Com- 
 missioners of Trade and Plantations, must have come 
 opportunely. He got this berth by the influence of his 
 friends Eliot and Wedderburne, and the salary attached 
 was about ;^8oo a year. It came to him most acceptably, 
 although he was not to enjoy it long. The Board came 
 under the lash of Burke, and Gibbon in a footnote to 
 
Edward Gibbon. 47 
 
 his "Memoirs," says, "he never could forget the delight 
 with which that diffusive and ingenious orator Mr Burke 
 was heard by all sides of the house, and even by those 
 whose existence he proscribed." The orator pronounced 
 sentence of death on the Board in the following terms : 
 " This board, sir, has had both its original formation and 
 its regeneration in a job. In a job it was conceived, 
 and in a job its mother brought it forth. This board is 
 a sort of temperate bed of influence : a sort of gently 
 ripening hothouse where eight members of Parliament 
 receive salaries of a thousand a-year, for a certain given 
 time, in order to mature at a proper season a claim to 
 two thousand for doing less." The humour of the 
 orator's address was too much for the Historian, and 
 whilst Burke was inditing his sentence, Gibbon was 
 chuckling on the side benches. Notwithstanding the 
 efforts of the opposition, and it must be confessed, the 
 goodness of their case, the Board was only aboHshed 
 by the smallest majority. The numbers were 207 
 against 199 votes. 
 
 Gibbon's parliamentary life has been attacked with the 
 utmost acrimony, but it cannot really be said to admit of 
 such bitter representation as that to which it has been 
 subjected. It is true it was dominated by no great social 
 purpose and regulated by no political ideal. It is also 
 true it was entered on without enthusiasm and carried on 
 for no other end than to secure the Historian's own 
 advancement by rendering steady if not servile obedience 
 to the dictates of party. But take it for all in all, it was 
 not much better, not much worse, than the political lives 
 of many members of ParHament of his time. Granted 
 that his object was earthly, and that he entered parliament 
 to serve his own ends and add to his own income, still 
 where is the justice of visiting Gibbon with a condemna- 
 
48 Masters in History. 
 
 tion which hundreds of other Members of Parliament 
 have merited without receiving, and merited too in a way 
 which Gibbon never merited, for certainly if a sin con- 
 fessed is half condoned, in estimating the Historian's 
 parHamentary career we should not forget these words are 
 his own : "I went into Parliament without patriotism and 
 without ambition, and all my views tended to the con- 
 venient and respectable place of a lord of trade." We are 
 persuaded the condemnation of Gibbon cannot be sought 
 for on these lines. His condemnation is this, that the 
 object he had in view was an object which however it 
 might have satisfied some men, should never have satisfied 
 him. Had he been a mercenary whig mill owner, or a fat 
 Tory grazier, his parliamentary conduct might have been 
 passed without either note or comment, but because he 
 was Edward Gibbon, the scholar, the philosopher, the 
 historian, all in one, there is a feeling of disappointment 
 when it is found his public life, giving as it did so many 
 rare opportunities, shewed no signs whatever of his superior 
 enlightenment. 
 
 With such a public career in view it is pleasing to turn 
 to the more congenial pursuits of the friend and the 
 historian. After the publication of his first volume 
 Gibbon visited Paris, and became the constant guest of 
 the Neckers. His fame had gone before, and he was 
 received with open arms by the most cultivated society 
 of the^ French capital. Gibbon's head could not be 
 easily turned, and all his laurels he wore with becoming 
 meekness. If it was the case that Madame Necker when 
 he met her after his Italian tour in the first flush of her 
 magnificence just affected to treat him with the slightest 
 condescension. Gibbon now with the literary world at his 
 feet was in rare position to have returned the most refined 
 incivility. No such encounter, however, occurred, and 
 
Edward Gibbon. 49 
 
 Edward Gibbon, the great historian, had just as simple 
 and transparent a heart to Madame Necker amid the 
 blandishments of Paris, as the young English student had 
 to Mdlle. Curchod amid the wilds of Burgundy. Gibbon 
 spent a most enjoyable six months in Paris, and next 
 year he had the honour of entertaining his kind French 
 hosts at his quiet bachelor-home in Bentinck Street. 
 Many as were the calls which London Hfe made on his 
 time, still he never forgot his work, and his brain was 
 never quicker, his pen never more facile, than when these 
 calls were most numerous. By 1781 he had two other 
 quartos completed, and after his parliamentary career was 
 over he was able to write, " My skill was improved by 
 practice, my diligence perhaps was quickened by the loss 
 of office ;''and excepting the last chapter, I had finished 
 the fourth volume before I sought a retreat on the banks 
 of the^Leman Lake." 
 
 Somehow or other it never occurs to the mind of an 
 English gentleman, when he finds himself in straitened 
 circumstances, that he can begin the policy of domestic 
 retrenchment in his own country. When he finds his 
 expenditure outrunning his income his thoughts seem to 
 turn naturally to continental life. Gibbon's action at the 
 conclusion of his public life accorded with the national 
 instinct. Wishing to free himself from a growing burden 
 of debt amid the dust of London which he loved, and 
 amid the' city's extravagance which he loved still more, 
 he cherished visions of the quiet of Lausanne and the 
 inspiring scenery amongst which he had spent laborious 
 years a quarter of a century ago. Since his friend 
 Deyverdun had worked with him in London fortune had 
 smiled on him, and he was now staying at Lausanne in 
 an excellent house bequeathed to him by his aunt. 
 Gibbon wrote to his friend promising to join him there 
 (2) 13 
 
50 Masters in History. 
 
 should it suit his convenience and undertaking, while | 
 Deyverdun possessed the property, the whole expense of '' 
 the common house. Deyverdun, like Gibbon, w^as a 
 bachelor, and he eagerly entered into the arrangements 
 of his friend. The letters that passed between the old 
 acquaintances have ever been esteemed models of 
 elegance, and hardly to be surpassed in that form of com- 
 position. Gibbon disclosed his scheme in these words : 
 — " You live in a charming house, I see from here my 
 apartments, the rooms we shall share with one another, 
 our table, our walks. But such a marriage is worthless, 
 unless it suits both parties, and I easily feel that circum- 
 stances, new tastes and connections may frustrate a 
 design which appeared charming in the distance. To 
 settle my mind and to avoid regrets, you must be as 
 frank as I have been, and give me a true picture, ex- 
 ternal and internal, of George Deyverdun." To this 
 epistle the friend of the Historian made answer : " Call 
 to mind, my dear friend, that I saw you enter Parliament 
 with regret, and I think I was only too good a prophet, 
 I am sure that career has caused you more privations 
 than joys, more pains than pleasures. Ever since I have 
 known you I have been convinced that your happiness 
 lay in your study and in society, and that any path which 
 led you elsewhere was a departure from happiness. By 
 making this retreat to Switzerland, besides the beauty of 
 the country, and the pleasures of its society, you will 
 acquire two blessings which you have lost, liberty and 
 competence. You will also be useful, your works will 
 also continue to enlighten us, and independently of your 
 talents, the man of honour and refinement is never use- 
 less. You used to like my house and garden; what 
 would you do now ? On the first floor which looks on 
 the declivity of Ouchy, I have fitted up an apartment 
 
Edward Gibbon. 51 
 
 which is enough for me. I have a servants' room, two 
 salons, two cabinets. On a level with the terrace two 
 other salons^ of which one serves as a dining-room in 
 summer, and the other a drawing-room for company. I 
 have arranged three more rooms between the house and 
 the coach-house, so that I can offer you all the large 
 apartment, which consists actually of eleven rooms, 
 great and small, looking east and south, not splendidly 
 furnished, I allow, but with a certain elegance which I 
 hope you will like. I have purchased the vineyard 
 below the garden, and in front of the house made it into 
 a lawn, which is watered by the water of the fountain. 
 In a word, strangers come to see the place, and in spite 
 of my pompous description of it, I think you will like it. 
 If you come you will find a tranquillity you cannot have 
 in London, and a friend who has not passed a single day 
 without thinking of you, and who, in spite of his defects, 
 his foibles, and his inferiority, is still one of the com- 
 panions that suit you best." 
 
 After all matters had been arranged satisfactorily with 
 Deyverdun, still the strength of home associations was 
 like to retain him in London. Lord Sheffield was dead 
 against his going, Mrs Gibbon was loath to part with her 
 son, and his heart declared if he now went abroad he 
 would not be likely to see his affectionate Aunt Porten 
 again. Gibbon was by no means a strong-willed man 
 when personal considerations influenced him. Here, 
 however, he showed praiseworthy resolution. By one 
 effort he broke his London fetters, passed over West- 
 minster Bridge in a chaise, and so bade a long, if not a 
 last farewell to the fimium et opes strepitumque Romae. 
 On the 27th September 1783 he arrived after a tedious 
 journey in Lausanne. 
 
 Many changes had taken place since last he had left 
 
52 Masters in History. 
 
 the shores of the Lake of Geneva. His older acquaint- 
 ances had left the stage, "virgins were ripened into 
 matrons, and children were grown to the age of man- 
 hood." That his old master was gone we are left to 
 surmise, for he nowhere makes any definite allusion. 
 Where there had been so many changes, he was gratified 
 to find the manners of the people simple and unaffected 
 as they used to be, and the heart of his friend as warm 
 as he had expected. Much as Gibbon had loved the 
 smoke of London — loving it even as Charles Lamb 
 loved "the sweet shady side of Cheapside and the silver- 
 smiths' shops," — he could not help rejoicing he had 
 escaped from the intrigues of party. He was flattered, 
 too, to think — for there was not wanting in his character 
 a thin vein of vanity, — that while, in London, he had 
 been lost in the crowd, he was now, in Lausanne, an 
 individual of consideration, and ranking and exchanging 
 civilities with the best families. It was to him also a 
 congenial change to leave his small house in Bentinck 
 Street — " a house between a street and a stable-yard " for 
 the spacious and convenient mansion of Deyverdun. It 
 was well for Gibbon he formed the manly resolution to 
 leave London, and once for all have done with practical 
 politics. It was well he formed it at the time he did, for 
 not three months after leaving the capital the Coalition 
 Ministry was wrecked, and many public men like Fox 
 had their reputations almost irretrievably ruined. His 
 part in Parliament had never been glorious, but it is just 
 possible it had been still more inglorious had he been in 
 it then. Gibbon showed how he valued his continental 
 retirement. " My friends had been kindly apprehensive 
 that I should not be able to exist in a Swiss town at the 
 foot of the Alps, after having so long conversed with the 
 first men of the first cities of the world. Such lofty con- 
 
Edward Gibbon. 53 
 
 nections may attract the envious and gratify the vain; 
 but I am too modest, or too proud, to rate my own value 
 by that of my associates; and whatsoever may be the 
 fame of learning or genius, experience has shewn me 
 that the cheaper qualifications of politeness and good 
 sense are of more useful currency in the commerce of 
 life." 
 
 Gibbon's life at Lausanne was all he could wish it to 
 be ; \X was in the most perfect accord with his scholarly 
 tastes. The scenery was ever to him a source of delight. 
 He was occasionally visited by eminent individuals from 
 France, Prussia, and England. His income was equal to 
 his circumstances, and while M. Necker and his wife, now 
 exiled from France, were not many miles away, he had 
 always near him his dear and accomplished friend Dey- 
 verdun, whom to know the more was to love the better. 
 In this environment the Historian sat down to calm 
 steady work, and as he never moved, for the next four 
 years, ten miles from Lausanne, and only exchanged 
 visits with his most intimate friends, the fruits of his 
 extraordinary application soon manifested themselves. 
 Begun in March 1782, he ended his fourth volume in 
 June 1784, begun the next month of that year, he ended 
 his fifth on 1st May 1786, and begun on 18th of that 
 same month, he finished his history on the 27th June 
 1787. The following passage from Gibbon's Memoir ^o 
 often garbled and misquoted, will not cease to interest 
 till the Decline and Fall of the Roman ^w/Z/r^has. become 
 an obsolete work. " It was not till after many designs, 
 and many trials, that I preferred, as I still prefer, the 
 method of grouping my picture' by nations]; I and '.the 
 seeming neglect of chronological order is surely compen- 
 sated by the superior merits of interest and perspicuity. 
 The style of the first^ volume is, in my' opinion, somewhat 
 
54 Masters in Histoi^y. 
 
 crude and elaborate ; in the second and third it is ripened 
 into ease, correctedness and numbers; but in the three 
 last I may have been seduced by the facility of my pen, 
 and the constant habit of speaking one language and 
 writing another may have infused some mixture of 
 Gallic idioms. Happily for my eyes I have always 
 closed my studies with the day, and commonly with the 
 morning ; and a long, but temperate labour has been 
 accomplished without fatiguing either mind or body; 
 but when I computed the remainder of my time and my 
 task, it was apparent that, according to the season of 
 publication, the delay of a month would be productive 
 of that of a year. I was now straining for the goal and in 
 the last winter many evenings w^ere borrowed from the 
 social pleasures of Lausanne. I could now wish that a 
 pause, an interval, had been allowed for serious revisal. 
 I have presumed to mark the moment of conception : I 
 shall now commemorate the hours of my final deliverance. 
 It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27 th of June 
 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I 
 wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house 
 in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several 
 turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which com- 
 mands a prospect of the country, the lake and the 
 mountain. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, 
 the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, 
 and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first 
 emotions of joy on recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, 
 the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon 
 humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my 
 mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of 
 an old and agreeable companion, and that whatever might 
 be the future of my history, the fife of the Historian must 
 be short and precarious." Thus was the work concluded 
 
Edward Gibbon. 55 
 
 after the direct labour of fourteen— Gibbon himself says 
 twenty— years, and the indirect labour of a life. Thus 
 Gibbon paid his debt to the world and society for all of 
 friendship and pleasure he had got from them, and thus 
 the copestone was placed on that gorgeous literary fabric 
 of which Mr Haley the poet and the friend of the 
 Historian sang, 
 
 " As ages multiply, its fame shall rise. 
 
 And earth must perish ere its splendour dies." 
 Now a man unusually heavy and corpulent and with 
 an inveterate dislike to everything involving bodily exer- 
 tion, still he repaired to London immediately he had 
 concluded his MS., and in the April of 1788 he had the 
 satisfaction of seeing his work safely through the press. 
 On this occasion his reception in England was most 
 flattering to himself. He was satisfied with the general 
 civilities of the world, and all party resentment being 
 now lost in oblivion, as he was no man's rival, no man 
 was his enemy. He had the good fortune to be present 
 at " the august spectacle of Mr Hasting's trial in West- 
 minster Hall." He was moved by the eloquence of 
 Sheridan and touched by the personal compliment paid 
 him by the orator. The reference to the Historian was 
 to the following effect. Sheridan said " The facts that 
 made up the volume of the narrative were unparalleled in 
 atrociousness, and that nothing equal in criminality was 
 to be traced, either in ancient or modern history, in the 
 correct periods of Tacitus or the luminous page of 
 Gibbon." {Morniiig Chivnide, June 14, 1788). After 
 the history had been given to the world the Historian 
 was eager to return again to his loved Lausanne. The 
 amusements of the city were no longer congenial to him. 
 The clubs were filled with new faces and the older men 
 were gone, the late dinners of the metropolis were mani- 
 
56 Masters in History. 
 
 festly acting injuriously on his health, and so once more 
 he broke through all the entreaties of his friends, and 
 sought again on the shores of Lake Leman the scholarly 
 companionship of his old and trusted friend. The joy 
 of the meeting was terribly damped by the state of 
 Deyverdun's health, and not long after Gibbon's return 
 the ties that had bound the two men together were 
 snapped. In the summer of 1789 Deyverdun succumbed 
 to a long illness, and so while " that evening sun of July 
 was shining on reapers amid peaceful woods and fields, 
 on old women spinning in cottages, on ships far out on 
 the silent main, on balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, 
 where high-rouged dames were dancing with double- 
 jacketted Hussar officers," it also shed its beams on 
 Gibbon mourning the loss of his friend. 
 
 Deyverdun's death touched the roots of Gibbon's 
 nature, and he never recovered the shock. It mattered 
 not that his friend had placed it in his power to occupy 
 the house, with every spot, every walk, every bench, 
 bringing back memories of the hours that could not be 
 recalled and the conversations that could not be renewed, 
 he found the state of his mind cast a gloom over the 
 fairest scenes. It was in vain that Madame Necker 
 tried to retain him amongst them, it was in vain that she 
 asked him to come and be her husband's guest, that in 
 their talks about old times the Historian might be led to 
 forget his present melancholy and abandon his resolutions 
 of once more returning to England. Every entreaty was 
 vain, and another sad occurrence confirmed his purpose. 
 So soon as he heard of Lady Shefiield's death, he set out 
 for home, thus getting rid of the growing sadness of 
 Lausanne associations and trusting to convey to one who 
 had been more bereaved than himself the personal con- 
 solations of a long and close friendship. Gibbon was , 
 
Edzvard Gibbon. 57 
 
 made very welcome to Sheffield Place. The Historian 
 could not have made the long journey without much 
 suffering, and Lord Sheffield took the great pains to 
 which Gibbon had put himself to be with him on such a 
 sorrowful occasion as the most sincere testimony to the 
 tenderness of his regard. Gibbon remained about four 
 months with his Lordship. During that time he confined 
 himself for the most part to library and dining-room and 
 was seldom out of doors. His cherished aversion to 
 out-door exercise had become chronic, and his long con- 
 tinued neglect of the rules of health had undermined his 
 constitution. He had ever an eager appetite, but it 
 would have been well for him if he could have been con- 
 tent with a plainer regimen. He was affected with the 
 gout, yet he drank Madeira every day. The use of this 
 sweet wine he regarded as " essential to his reputation." 
 His treatment of his ailments was strange and unaccount- 
 able. He was affected with the most serious disorders, 
 yet he never once for a space of about thirty years either 
 consulted a physician or mentioned the matter to his 
 friends. When medical aid did come to such a man it 
 is evident it could only come too late. The fact is, he 
 who saw '' the giant form of empires on their way to ruin," 
 was himself rapidly approaching his mortal Fall. Hap- 
 pening when it did, his decease affords but another sad 
 illustration of the vanity of human hopes. While he was 
 looking forward to the enjoyment of "the autumnal 
 feHcity " of his closing years, while he was weighing the 
 probabilities, calculating the chances of existence, and 
 flattering himself with the belief he might reasonably 
 expect other fifteen years of life, death was on his very 
 threshold. The Historian, no doubt, made the calculation 
 calmly, but a footnote to the arithmetical problem shows 
 the heart was not free from secret anxiety and foreboding. 
 
58 Masters m History. 
 
 
 " Mr Buffon, from our disregard of the possibility 
 death within the four-and-twenty hours, concludes that 
 a chance, which falls below or rises above ten thousand 
 to one, will never affect the hopes and fears of a reason- 
 able man. The fact is true, but our courage is the effect 
 of thoughtlessness, rather than of reflection. If a public 
 lottery were drawn for the choice of an immediate 
 victim, and if our name were subscribed on one of the 
 ten thousand tickets, should ^ we be perfectly easy ? " The 
 question put with so much force can only be answered 
 in the line of the Historian's argument. It does not 
 appear that Gibbon's mind was seriously disturbed at the 
 thought of the approach of dissolution ; but that he dwelt 
 wholly in a philosophical calm, and was unconcerned 
 whether this solemn event in his life was near or far 
 away, such a passage as the above plainly contradicts. 
 The philosopher is not less a philosopher that he reflects 
 in his own feelings the instincts of the race. 
 
 After leaving Sheffield Place, Gibbon paid a visit of 
 some days to his mother, and was glad to find her at her 
 far advanced age possessed of all her faculties. He then 
 settled in London, where his malady, a complication 
 of dropsy and rupture, called for medical interference. 
 Farquhar, an eminent surgeon, and two other doctors 
 were consulted. The case was recognised to be serious. 
 On Thursday the 14th November, he was tapped. He 
 went through the operation with patience and even good 
 humour, and after it, was able to be out at dinners and 
 parties as usual. The following letter to Lord Sheffield 
 has a melancholy interest, it being the last he ever wrote. 
 It was of date the 7th January 1794 : "St James's, four 
 o'clock, Tuesday. This date says everything. I was 
 almost killed between Sheffield Place and East Grint- 
 stead by hard, frozen, long and cross ruts, that would 
 
Edward Gibbon. 59 
 
 disgrace the approach of an Indian wigwam. The rest 
 was somewhat less painful, and I reached this place half 
 dead, but not seriously feverish or ill. I found a dinner 
 invitation from Lord Lucan ; but what are dinners to 
 me? I wish they did not know of my departure. I 
 catch the flying post. What an effort ! Adieu till 
 Thursday or Friday." On the 13th January another 
 operation was performed, but whilst he was relieved for 
 the time, on the evening of next day he became very 
 weak, and after being attended by his physician, his last 
 articulate words were these to his valet-de-chambre, 
 "Fourqtioi est ce que vous me quittez .?" If not his speech, 
 he preserved his senses to the last, and in absolute 
 tranquillity, and with his eyes half shut, near to the hour 
 when he used to throw aside his books for the night — 
 about a quarter before one, he ceased to breathe. He 
 was fifty-seven years of age all but eighty-three days. 
 The mortal remains of the Historian were deposited by 
 Lord Sheffield in his family burying-place in Fletching 
 Church, Sussex. 
 
 The life of Edward Gibbon presents an unique feature 
 in literary biography. On its intellectual side it was from 
 first to last a steady and upward progress, and we will 
 seek in vain for another example of such intense and 
 prolonged devotion to a special task. Macaulay and 
 Froude and Grote have excelled in other departments, 
 but the whole streams of Gibbon's life flowed in one 
 channel. The emotional side of his nature aflbrds a 
 more rugged, but not nearly so pleasant a prospect. It 
 cannot but be viewed with regret, and while he confessed 
 it shewed " the failure of those hopes which will always 
 tinge with a browner shade the evening of Hfe," still 
 possibly his feeble religious vacillations had their cause 
 in sources lying beyond himself His emotional nature 
 
6o Masters in History. 
 
 lies by the side of his intellectual like a field run wild 
 alongside a highly cultivated tract. In the future while 
 others may write from truer points of view, there is little 
 fear Gibbon's great work will be superseded. It will 
 always remain a monument to colossal learning, and one 
 of the finest expressions of historical genius. The 
 days in which such men die mark eras and epochs, in the 
 literary calendar they are 
 
 " red-letter days. 
 And richer than the songs of Grecian years." 
 
GEORGE GROTE. 
 
GEORGE GROTE 
 
 As the names of Greece and Rome are ever associated 
 together in the history of antiquity, so the names of 
 Grote and Gibbon will ever be mentioned together in 
 the literary history of England. There is a certain pro- 
 priety that a country which has surpassed Rome in the 
 extent of her empire, and at least equals Greece in all 
 matters of philosophical and intellectual accomplish- 
 ment, should have given birth to the greatest writer on 
 the decline and fall of the one, and the best historian 
 of the rise and progress of the other. We cannot tell 
 what the future may have in store for us, but it is diffi- 
 cult to beUeve the histories of Gibbon and Grote can 
 ever be superseded. Discoveries may be made that 
 may cast fresh light on particular points, writers may 
 arise who may survey certain portions of the field from 
 other and truer stand-points, isolated conclusions of the 
 historians may be called in question or proved to be 
 erroneous — all these things may occur, as indeed, some 
 of them have occurred already, but that the histories of 
 Greece and Rome, as written by Grote and Gibbon, will 
 ever become obsolete it is very difficult to conceive. 
 They have been ™tten with so much genius and care, 
 that they will survive as literary works even when they 
 are found to be faulty as histories. 
 
 There have not been wanting those who have said 
 that the writers of history are more worthy of our 
 
64 Masters in History. 
 
 admiration than the makers of it, that it is Gibbon 
 we admire and not Constantine, Grote and not 
 Alcibiades, Motley and not William the Silent. The 
 statement is too sweeping to be accepted in its 
 entirety, but there can be no doubt it contains in 
 it a certain element of truth. The historian is not 
 a mere annalist — a bare recorder of the facts of a 
 nation's life. He differs from the latter as the painter 
 differs from the photographer, and for the carrying out 
 of his work the historian, like the painter, requires a 
 severely disciplined artistic sense. To put down in their 
 order the dates of the births and deaths of princes, the 
 names of the places where battles were fought, the names 
 of the generals, and which side won, is the part of the 
 chronicler; but it is the work of the historian to group, to 
 paint, and to vivify, to trace the hidden stream of tendency 
 which has brought about particular events, and to calculate 
 the results which are likely to proceed or flow from them. 
 It is the artistic elements which the historian embodies 
 in his narrative that attract the attention of the reader 
 to the genius of the former, while perusing the events of 
 the latter. It is these elements, entering as they do in 
 so large a measure into the substance of the " Decline 
 and Fall of the Roman Empire " and the " History of 
 Greece," which give these works a permanent literary 
 value, apart altogether from the importance or accuracy 
 of the facts they record. 
 
 While the works of Gibbon and Grote lie side by side, 
 their lives, strikingly similar in all matters concerning 
 literary purpose, yet present certain distinguishing con- 
 trasts. The life of Grote cannot fail to have the more 
 salutary influence. Gibbon was a historian and nothing 
 else : he was trained for no particular profession, he gave 
 himself to no special business, his life-work was his his- 
 
George Grote. 65 
 
 tory, and it formed the business and pleasure of his exist- 
 ence. Although an outstanding example of special devo- 
 tion to a particular task, it is a life all the same which can 
 only appeal to the few, and can never be held up as a stim- 
 ulus to the great majority of men who must spend the seri- 
 ous hours of the day in professional or business labours, 
 and have only a very narrow margin to devote to the intel- 
 lectual pursuits of literature and science. Whilst the lives 
 of Gibbon and Grote show what can be done by those 
 whose good fortune it has not been to receive a university- 
 education, it is only in the life of the latter we see to what 
 splendid purpose the leisure hours of a hard working 
 career may be put, what rich fruits may be gathered in 
 them, and what a fabric of learning and research may be 
 built up by filling them with cultured activities. It is 
 impossible to come into living contact with a mind like 
 Grote's without finding in it the lineaments of a charac- 
 ter singularly noble. This man of whom we speak was, 
 no doubt, to a large extent, Grote the successful Banker, 
 in virtue of the fact that he was his father's son, but he 
 was altogether Grote the Great Historian, in virtue of the 
 use to which he put his hours after he had left the count- 
 ing-room for the day. He may have been speaking for 
 many others, but certainly for himself, when he gave 
 utterance to these words in his presidential address to the 
 London Scientific Institution, on the ist June 1846, in 
 the London Tavern, " To those — whether they be many 
 or few, I know not — who may still hold the ungenial 
 prejudice that there is an inherent incompatibility be- 
 tween a day of industry in the counting-house, and an 
 evening of study in the lecture-room, the class-room, or 
 the library — we must continue to present the best of all 
 refutations, in the lives and behaviour of our members. 
 To those, on the other hand, whose sentiments are more 
 
66 Masters in History. 
 
 generous and exalted, who esteem an enlightened popu- 
 lation a greater glory than splendid edifices and unmea- 
 surable capital, and who count it an honour to London 
 to interweave the threads of literature and science 
 with the staple of a commercial and professional life ; to 
 these minds we offer ourselves with confidence as auxi- 
 liaries and instruments, prepared to justify our claim 
 
 upon their paternal sympathy To-morrow as well 
 
 as to-day — in the times of our descendants as in our owti 
 — the life of the commercial and professional man will 
 consist of a day of labour and an evening of leisure, 
 which may be well or ill appropriated ; to-morrow as well 
 as to-day, the sociability of his nature may be enlisted in 
 favour of the better employment instead of the worse — 
 in favour of mental progress and elevating recreations, 
 and against both seductions and lassitude Speak- 
 ing as one, the best years of whose life have been passed 
 as principal of a banking house, I contend, emphatically, 
 that merchants and bankers will obey the call of interest 
 as well as of duty, in seconding the voluntary efforts of 
 our members."* 
 
 In George Grote, the historian of Greece, there was a 
 strain of foreign blood. His grandfather, Andrew Grote, 
 came over from Bremen about the middle of the eight- 
 eenth century ; and, prospering in business, he eventually 
 entered into partnership with one George Prescott. As 
 the result of this union of business talent, the banking 
 house of "Grote, Prescott, and Company" was estab- 
 lished January ist, 1766. Andrew Grote still further 
 added to his wealth by marrying Miss Ann Adams, a 
 lady of position and fortune. The brother of this lady 
 dying without issue, the estate of Badgemore and Henley- 
 on-Thames passed into the Grote family. In 1757, Mrs 
 * Minor Works of George Grote, pp. 188, 192, 193. 
 
George Grote. 67 
 
 Grote died, and three years later, Mr Grote took to himself 
 another wife, in the person of Miss Mary Ann Calverden. 
 To her husband, this lady bore three sons and six 
 daughters ; and George, the eldest son of this second 
 marriage, was the father of the future historian of Greece. 
 He was educated at the Charterhouse, apprenticed abroad, 
 and most strictly trained in the arts of business by his 
 father. In due time he came to occupy his father's posi- 
 tion in the firm of " Grote, Prescott, & Co," and in 1793, 
 he " married the daughter of Doctor Peckwell, a reverend 
 divine, endowed with a handsome person, and talents 
 of a somewhat superior quality." It may be mentioned 
 as showing the bloods that were mixed in the historian, 
 that the wife of Dr Peckwell was of French extraction ; 
 the revocation of the edict of Nantes had brought her 
 family to Ireland not long after the year 1685. After 
 his marriage with Miss Selina Peckwell, Mr George 
 Grote settled at Clay Hill, near Beckenham, in Kent, 
 about ten miles from London, and there, on the 17th 
 November 1794, his son George was born unto him. 
 
 It would appear that Mrs Grote, like the minister's 
 daughter to whom we have had occasion to refer so fre- 
 quently in the previous paper, was a lady of superior in- 
 telligence and refinement. It is quite possible Dr Peck- 
 well may have bestowed as much pains on the education 
 of his daughter as M. Curchod did on his ; but letting 
 this be as it may, it is satisfactory to know that Mrs 
 Grote was ambitious her son should excel in learning ; 
 and, before he was five and a-half years of age, at which 
 period it was deemed necessary to send him to school, 
 the mother had taught her son to read and write, and 
 actually grounded him in the elements of Latin. With 
 such careful maternal preparation, it is not to be wondered 
 at, that when the youngster entered the Grammar^School 
 
68 Masters in History. 
 
 of Sevenoaks, he was able to rank with boys above his 
 age, or that the master, the Rev. Mr Whitehead, imme- 
 diately discovered in him " a decided aptitude for study." 
 It is not easy to estimate a mother's influence over her 
 son, but the pains which Mrs Grote took to fix on 
 George's mind during his holidays what he had been 
 learning during the session can hardly be over-valued. 
 Habits, which masters work hard to break their pupils 
 into, are often wholly dissipated by two months' com- 
 plete idleness; and when teachers and scholars meet 
 again, the former find they have their labours all to begin 
 anew. In this household at Beckenham, however, it was 
 different : what Mrs Grote's boy learned from his masters 
 during the term, she was careful to confirm in the recess ; 
 and so, whatever intellectual ground the boy had gained, 
 was kept, and whatever information he had gathered, was 
 securely stored up. 
 
 When he was ten. Master Grote passed from the 
 Grammar School to the Charterhouse. This change 
 could hardly have taken place more opportunely. Dr 
 Raine, an enthusiastic schoolmaster and distinguished 
 scholar, was then at the head of the establishment ; and 
 George Waddington, afterwards Dean of Durham; Conop 
 Thirlwall, afterwards Bishop of St David's, and historian 
 of Greece ; Henry Havelock, afterwards the fearless soldier, 
 and others, were then boys in the classes, and the every- 
 day companions of young Grote. Between discipline on 
 the one hand, and clever competitors on the other, the 
 education of the future historian of Greece could hardly 
 have been conducted under more favourable auspices. 
 Master George was too clever a boy ever to feel the rod 
 for neglected lessons, or insufiiciently prepared exercises, 
 but he had also in him too much of animal spirit not to 
 feel it often for the venial offences peculiar to boyhood, 
 
George Grote. 69 
 
 and which are more the product of an exuberant life, 
 than of an evil spirit. It was in 1810, on the eve of his 
 leaving school, and when, by his talents, he stood almost 
 at the head of it, he received his last flogging. To com- 
 memorate the close of his Charterhouse days, Grote in- 
 vited a number of his class-fellows and school companions 
 to supper in the " Albion Tavern," Aldersgate Street, and 
 for partaking somewhat amply, and inviting others to do 
 the same, he was doomed to suffer in the flesh. What the 
 master said to him on the occasion does not appear ; but, 
 doubtless, the good man — as teachers are wont on such 
 occasions — predicted a depraved future from such a close 
 to the career of a Charterhouse scholar ! 
 
 The father and mother of George Grote formed a pe- 
 culiar couple, and in many ways were singularly unsuited 
 to each other. Even after a long life together, they could 
 not fit in wholly to each other's habits. The elder Grote 
 was a man who had a preference for country life, and an 
 inborn fondness for the common rural sports of hunting 
 and shooting, and being a man of wealth and position, 
 and having many acquaintances, he loved from time to 
 time to meet his friends around his board. Mrs Grote, 
 on the other hand, was a strict Calvinist, and would asso- 
 ciate with none but those who reflected her own religious 
 sentiments. She disliked the society of her country 
 neighbours, and frowned on all guests visiting her house 
 on her husband's invitation. Such a state of matters no 
 doubt led to a deal of domestic unpleasantness, but the 
 elder Grote, finding her opinions were not to change, left 
 her to pursue in all matters of household management 
 her own course, only reserving for himself the reins in all 
 matters connected with his children's education. It was 
 just a pity when the husband left so much to his wife he 
 did not leave this also, for there cannot be a doubt, if 
 
70 Masters in History. 
 
 Mrs Grote had had her own way in the educational 
 affairs of her family, she would from the Charterhouse 
 Academy, have sent her eldest son at once to the 
 University. With regard, however, to the advantages to 
 be derived from a liberal education, the elder Grote was 
 wholly indifferent ; he had no anxiety that his son should 
 get on anywhere but in the commercial world — his only 
 ambition being, that he might be a successful banker ; and 
 so, when his son was but sixteen years of age, he was in- 
 stalled, with a more imperfect education than falls to the 
 lot of thousands of the English youth of to-day, in 
 Threadneedle Street, to commence his banking career. 
 This was in 1810. Let us read what this lad, when he 
 had become a grown man, spoke six-and-thirty years 
 after when he addressed University College, on the ist 
 July 1846 : — " I hope, and I believe, that the adminis- 
 trators of University College will succeed in diffusing 
 among the public of London larger ideas on the proper 
 measure of a citizen's education — in correcting that mis- 
 taken impatience with which parents, often under no 
 pressure of necessity, abridge those years requisite for 
 their son's complete education, and hurry him into pro- 
 fessional life a half-educated man."* The fact was, 
 Grote never ceased to regret his early devotion to busi- 
 ness and consequent premature withdrawal from every 
 system of public educational discipline. 
 
 In so far as society was concerned, the young man was 
 placed under many disadvantages by the unfavourable 
 condition of things existing in his own home. But as 
 we shall more fully discover as we proceed, Grote had 
 ever that happy pushing spirit which rose above even 
 extraordinary difficulties. And so, while his mother was 
 on visiting terms with but few of her neighbours, he was 
 * Minor Works of George Grote, pp. 202, 203. 
 
George Grote. "ji 
 
 a general favourite, and on the best footing with all. 
 Considering what was required of him in Threadneedle 
 Street, he still could always find an occasional afternoon 
 for cricket, and he had not as yet become so sufficiently 
 studious as to love his books more than the innocent 
 dissipations of a country ball. In going out into society 
 his mind was poetic and impressionable ; but with one 
 exception, he was distinctly fortunate in his special 
 friendships, and he had already that in him which made 
 it wholly impossible for him to draw to any companion 
 devoid of intellectual tastes. By and by this temperament 
 got so absolutely confirmed, that intellectual worth, and 
 that alone, was the only quality which he would allow to 
 command his respect, or which he would acknowledge as 
 deserving of the respect of others. The later develop- 
 ments of this spirit were certainly owing to the influence 
 of James Mill. This eminent man, and historian of 
 India, young Grote first met at the house of David 
 Ricardo, whither he was wont to repair as often as he 
 could, that he might Hsten to his conversation on a 
 science that was already occupying much of his thought, 
 namely, the science of PoHtical Economy. In a letter 
 which he ^\Tote at this time to George W. Norman, one 
 of Grote's most trusted and accompHshed young friends, 
 we find the following words : — " I have met Mill often at 
 Ricardo's house, and hope to derive great pleasure and 
 instruction from his acquaintance, as he is a very pro- 
 found thinking man, and seems well disposed to com- 
 municate, as well as clear and intelligible in his manner. 
 His mind has, indeed, all that cynicism and asperity 
 which belong to the Benthamian School, and what I 
 chiefly dislike in him is, the readiness and seeming pre- 
 ference with which he dwells on t\iQ faults and defects of 
 others, even of the greatest men ! But it is so very rarely 
 
72 Masters in History. 
 
 thai a man of any depth comes across my path, that I 
 shall most assuredly cultivate his acquaintance a good 
 deal farther. My friends in Calf a7id Russia still continue 
 faithful and interesting, and if it were not for them, life 
 would be a very waste indeed." This passage is of the 
 greatest interest, as it shows the mind of Grote operating 
 freely, and before it got completely entangled in Mill's 
 intellectual coils. Above all others, James Mill was the 
 kind of man to whose opinions Grote, by the natural 
 constitution of his mind, was predisposed to defer, and 
 the result brought about could have been anticipated 
 from the beginning of their acquaintance. The philo- 
 sopher was an eager propagandist, and in the course of 
 a remarkably short space of time he had his young 
 disciple at his feet. It would no doubt have been better 
 for Grote, it would most certainly have left him with a 
 sweeter tone of mind, if he had been more discriminating 
 in his admiration of his master. While he received many 
 good lessons, he also imbibed many unreasonable pre- 
 judices. No mind ever kept so faithfully the direction 
 it received from the impulse of another than did the 
 mind of Grote the direction given it by the mind of Mill. 
 The metaphysician gave him a love for philosophy, and 
 that love was never quenched ; he made him a student, 
 and a student he remained. His RadicaHsm and 
 democratic sympathies Grote also took from the teaching 
 of his early master. It would have been well could the 
 future Historian of Greece have stopped short at this 
 part of his master's educating process; but Mill's 
 fanaticism against the governing classes simply because 
 they were the governing classes, his rancorous hatred of 
 the aristocracy, his " profound prejudice " against the 
 Established Church and her ministers, all had their 
 reflection more or less in the sentiments of the pupil. 
 
George Grote. 73 
 
 To the credit of Grote this must be said, however, that 
 while the good influences of Mill remained, the antipathies 
 died out, and eventually the sweeter mind prevailed. 
 Along with Ricardo and Mill, Grote was also at this time 
 associating with Bentham, but what permanent impression 
 this able man left on the mind of his young friend does 
 not appear. Bentham was peculiar in his conversation : 
 he would bear with no interruption ; so, although he 
 talked fluently, it is just possible one so enquiring as 
 Grote would feel his meetings with him, pleasant though 
 they were in their way, yet somewhat unsatisfactory in 
 their results. 
 
 The unfortunate acquaintanceship * already alluded to 
 was with a clergyman of the Church. Mrs Grote in her 
 " Personal Life " of her husband, a work written with admir- 
 able delicacy, condensation, and grace, but here and 
 there disfigured by touches of asperity, has not told us 
 either who he was, or to what congregation it was his 
 privilege to minister, and it is well she has kept her own 
 counsel, giving the world no further clue to the man than 
 
 it can have in the sufficiently hazy symboHsm of E . 
 
 To this man, the Rev. Mr E , Grote had been 
 
 attracted by the suavity of his manners, the extent and 
 variety of his reading, and the fact that he was acknow- 
 ledged as a scholar and a masterly critic. In [the com- 
 pany of this reverend individual Grote was wont to talk 
 freely and openly, and while he still believed him to be a 
 gentleman, he submitted to him in confidence the secrets 
 of his heart. It is every way to be regretted this con- 
 fidence was so completely misplaced, as it would have 
 been of incalculable advantage to the young man to have 
 discussed over again with a clergyman of cultured 
 intelligence the philosophical positions of Mill ; and there 
 * " Personal Life/' p. 15, et seq. 
 
74 Masters in History. 
 
 can be no doubt in the society of such an one this further 
 advantage would have accrued — the unreasoning an- 
 tipathies of the teacher would have been immediately 
 corrected, and possibly wholly neutralized before they 
 had fixed themselves in the temperament of the future 
 Historian. 
 
 Grote's break with the Rev. Mr E flowed from his 
 
 dishonourable conduct in a love affair of the young man. 
 In the winter of 1 8 14-15, Grote became acquainted 
 with Miss Harriet Lewin, on the introduction of his friend 
 G. M. Norman, and towards this young lady he soon 
 cherished the tenderest of sentiments. Now, as it would 
 happen, the young man, in the first place, confided his 
 
 passion to his friend E , and by this individual he 
 
 was told the pursuit was hopeless, as it consisted with his 
 knowledge her hand was already promised to another. 
 In his innocence, George Grote suspected no duplicity ; 
 he gave up the hopes of happiness he had been cherish- 
 ing, and tried to forget his pain by increased devotion to 
 business and study. His father observed his son's 
 changed deportment, and interrogating him on the mat- 
 ter, he was told all that had occurred. The parent was 
 in no way sorry at the result, and, to guard against all 
 future difficulties, he extorted from his son the promise 
 that he would never marry until he had obtained his 
 father's sanction in the matter. Soon after this promise 
 
 had been given, the treachery of E 's conduct was 
 
 disclosed. The fact was, he himself had been an importu- 
 nate suitor for Miss Lewin's hand. " E is a villain ; 
 
 and Harriet completely exculpated " was the glad news 
 sent by G. W. Norman to his friend Grote in the autumn 
 of 1 8 13. So far all was well, but wakening to a know- 
 ledge of E 's trickery, he woke also to the conscious- 
 ness of his rash and hasty promise to his father. Grote 
 
George Grote. 75 
 
 appealed to his father to release him, considering the cir- 
 cumstances in which the promise had been made ; but 
 the heart of the old banker was in no way touched by the 
 passion of the youth. The young man's last difficulty 
 was like to be worse than his first, for, as he v/as entirely 
 dependent on his father, there remained no alternative 
 for him but to bow to his stern decree, and reHnquish all 
 intercourse with the Lewin family. 
 
 In his second perplexity Grote again returned, and 
 with increased eagerness, for consolation to his books. 
 He made a special study of Sismondi's " Italian History." 
 Like Gibbon, he took copious notes as he went on, and 
 never considered himself master of any subject until he 
 had put down on paper the thoughts that had occurred 
 to him about it. He confessed to his friend Norman, " I 
 have always found that, in order to make myself master 
 of a subject, the best mode was to sit down and give an 
 account of it myself." So " literature continued to form 
 the greatest attraction to his mind," and was, he acknow- 
 ledged, " the only pleasure he could enjoy which left no 
 repentance behind it," until the March of 18 18, when all 
 his former passion was awakened by finding himself un- 
 expectedly in the presence of its object. The effect 
 produced was unmistakeable, as his own words suffici- 
 ently testify. "I had the happiness or misfortune (I 
 know not which to call it, the feelings are so mixed) to 
 see my dear and favourite, Hamet Lewin, the other day 
 in Bromley. She was sitting with Charlotte and another 
 lady in the carriage, which was waiting at the door of the 
 ' Bell.' I stood there and conversed with her for about 
 ten minutes, but something — I know not what it is — kept 
 me, during the whole of the time, in such a state of inde- 
 scribable tremor and uneasiness, that I could hardly utter 
 a rational sentence. She looked lovely beyond expres- 
 
76 Masters in History. 
 
 sion. Her features still retained the same life and soul 
 which once did so magnetize me ; I never have seen it, 
 and I never shall see it, on any other face. My dear 
 Harriet ! It is terrible work. It is most cruelly painful 
 to think that I can only appear to her in the light of one 
 who has occasioned nothing but pain and uneasiness to 
 her. Yet so it must be. I am sometimes tempted to 
 wish myself an isolated being, without any family or rela- 
 tions, and nothing but those friends whom my own merit 
 (little as it is) may attach to me, and to whom my affec- 
 tions flow spontaneously and ardently. Relations are a 
 chain which drags a man on by means of his sense of 
 duty. Happy is he who has fewest." After this first 
 meeting, and, no doubt, also after many others, for Miss 
 Lewin was now staying with Lord Harewood, at his resi- 
 dence in Hanover Square, the son petitioned the father 
 with increased emphasis, and eventually the old banker 
 agreed to his son's proposals, on condition that the nup- 
 tials should not take place for two years. The new 
 arrangement was judged of in the worst spirit by the 
 Lewin family ; it was distasteful, in the highest degree, that 
 they were obliged to accept the young man's suit with so 
 distant a prospect of union. Miss Lewin also said, " it 
 was not without mortification and embarrassing reflections 
 she made up her mind to forget the painful circumstances 
 of 1 815, and to submit to enter into this harsh com- 
 pact." All things considered, it was natural the lady 
 should have had some feeHng in the matter; on the whole, 
 however, the young man seems to have been contented 
 with the final turn of events. He opened up his mind 
 to his old Charterhouse friend, Waddington, on the sub- 
 ject of his future marriage, and, in return, he had a cha- 
 racteristic letter with certain caustic touches : " I saw a 
 monster yesterday— an English monster — [the letter is 
 
George Gi^ote. "jj 
 
 written from Paris] — that weighs about 20 stone, and yet, 
 perhaps is still as much like a man as any other animal; 
 
 I mean in appearance. It calls itself E . Going to 
 
 dine at the table d'hote with my cousin, I observed this 
 phenomenon waiting to be fed." 
 
 The two years preceding Grote's marriage were divided 
 between bank work and study. He kept a regular diary, 
 and by it Miss Lewin was kept perfectly posted up in the 
 events of his daily life. His diary would have its special 
 interest for Miss Lewin, but it has also now its general 
 interest for the educated world. Here are tAvo entries — 
 one of a Sunday, and another of a week day — taken at 
 random. January, 1819. Tuesday — " Rose at \ past 8. 
 Breakfasted and unlocked. Read some more of ' Say's 
 preface.' Thought much this day on the subject of 
 Foreign Trade. Dined at J past 5 ; played on the bass 
 for an hour, and then read some of Lessing's theological 
 writings. Drank tea, and spent the evening in writing 
 down my thoughts on Foreign Trade. Bed at 12." Stm- 
 day, March 28 — " Rose at h past 5. Studied Kant until 
 J past 8, when I set off to breakfast with Mr Ricardo. 
 Met Mr Mill there, and enjoyed some most interesting 
 and instructive discourse with them, indoors and out 
 walking in Kensington Gardens, until J past three, when 
 I mounted my horse, and set off to Beckenham. Was 
 extremely exhausted with fatigue and hunger when I 
 arrived there, and ate and drank plentifully, which 
 quenched my intellectual vigour for the night. Bed at 
 J past 10." 
 
 Early in the month of March 1820, at Bexley Church, 
 Kent, George Grote and Miss Harriet Lewin were mar- 
 ried by the Rev. Edward Barnard, the vicar. Before 
 this consummation was brought about they had endured 
 much for each other's sake, but that endurance was fully 
 
78 Masters in History. 
 
 rewarded by the lifetime of happiness they had with 
 each other. Mrs Grote was a woman of rich native 
 talents, and by her contributions to the Westminster Re- 
 view^ she helped to increase the household income dur- 
 ing her first married years. Such exertions on her part 
 should not have been at all necessary if her husband 
 had been paid according to the duties he performed, 
 and his position as working partner in the Bank. The 
 narrow establishment they were obliged to keep — merely 
 a dingy unhealthy house at the Bank, and furnished 
 lodgings in the suburbs — was owing to the parsimony of 
 the elder Grote. When they began life with each other 
 the pair had a heart for any fate, and, considering the 
 affluent circumstances in which they afterwards moved, 
 it was possibly for the advantage of both that they were 
 called on for two or three years to practise a rigid fru- 
 gality. Miss Harriet Lewin was in every way fitted to 
 be the wife of such a man as George Grote. She knew 
 what such a man needed was sympathy and companion- 
 ship in his higher work ; and before her marriage she 
 had so disciplined her mind by study in view of the life 
 before her, that when she became Mrs Grote there was 
 no need for her husband to decline to the narrower 
 heart and the range of lower feelings. What Grote 
 might have done with a less accomplished wife we can- 
 not tell, but this we know, it was Mrs Grote kept his 
 literary impulse ever active, and his intellectual passions 
 ever warm ; she entered into the spirit of his every en- 
 deavour, and she suggested his greatest work. It was 
 from the well-springs of his domestic life he drew strength 
 for his every achievement, and to them he ever went for 
 solace and refreshment. 
 
 The married pair had not gone far together in the 
 path of life when they were met by severe domestic 
 
George Grote. 79 
 
 affliction. The unhealthy nature of their house in 
 Threadneedle Street acted very injuriously on Mrs 
 Grote's health. Her reduced constitution brought about 
 premature labour, and a boy was born, who only sur- 
 vived a week. Puerperal fever followed on the birth, 
 and after three days the doctors said there could only be 
 one termination to the illness. They were very happily, 
 however, disappointed ; their patient rallied, and, after a 
 slow convalescence, recovered. 
 
 While Grote's days were spent in his office, his even- 
 ings were now almost exclusively devoted to study, and 
 more than ever did he court the acquaintanceship of intel- 
 lectual men. Mr David Ricardo, Mr John Smith, M.P., 
 Mr John Black of the Morning Chronicle, Thomas 
 Campbell the poet, John and Charles Austin, John 
 Romilly, Charles Buller, Lord WiUiam Bentinck, Eyton 
 Tooke, John Stuart Mill, John R. Macculloch, and M. 
 de Santa Rosa, were all frequent visitors at Threadneedle 
 Street between the years 1822 and 1830. Mrs Grote 
 had many connections amongst the aristocracy, whom it 
 would have been her pleasure to visit and entertain, but 
 such a decided aversion had her husband to " everything 
 tinctured with aristocratic tastes and forms of opinion," 
 that she was obliged, for the sake of domestic quietness, 
 and that she might not directly displease " her somewhat 
 intolerant" husband, to relinquish to a very large extent 
 her aristocratic friendships. He would not suffer that 
 Mrs Grote should be dictated to by the very highest offi- 
 cers in the State. Witness the following to his wife, then 
 staying at the noble residence of Gilston Park, Herts : — 
 " I trust you will not be kept longer than Thursday or 
 Friday : and I really think that neither you nor Mrs 
 Lewin ought to suffer your time and your expectations to 
 be tampered with any longer, eimi by the Governor- 
 
8o Masters i7i History. 
 
 General of India. If he does not come on Monday or 
 Tuesday, I would not wait for him at all." 
 
 Getting up early, for the most part about six, reading 
 all manner of learned works in the morning and in the 
 evening, Grote accumulated vast quantities of notes on 
 the volumes perused. One day Mrs Grote said to her 
 husband, " You are always studying the ancient 
 authors whenever you have a moment's leisure; now 
 here would be a fine subject for you to treat. Suppose 
 you try your hand I" Mrs Grote's reference was to a 
 subject frequently under discussion, namely, the history 
 of Greece. Grote accepted the suggestion of his wife. 
 The idea of a great new History of Greece fixed itself 
 in his mind, and from that time — the autumn of 1823 — 
 his studies became directed towards the accomplishment 
 of his vast self-imposed task. The historian himself 
 gives no clue to the first idea of his work, he merely 
 says in one place,^ " The first idea of this history was 
 conceived many years ago, at a time when ancient Hellas 
 was known to the English public chiefly through the 
 pages of Mitford." 
 
 It is not to be thought for a moment that while Grote 
 was thus earnestly devoting himself to study, he was even 
 in the smallest way neglecting his business. . The fact 
 was he did not find private study and public duty in any 
 way incompatible, and whilst he was enlarging his repu- 
 tation amongst men of letters, he was at the same time 
 establishing himself amongst mercantile men as a wise 
 and considerate banker. So far from the interests of the 
 house " Prescott, Grote, & Co." suffering in his hands, 
 after the concern had been for some time under almost 
 his sole management, it was found, on his father's death 
 
 * " History of Greece," vol. i., Preface, p. 5. 
 
George Grate. 8i 
 
 in 1830, that he had very materially enlarged the busi- 
 ness. 
 
 By the decease of the elder Grote, his son inherited 
 the family estate in Lincolnshire and ^^40,000 of per- 
 sonal property. This event put him on a perfectly dif- 
 ferent social footing. So far — his views on many things 
 differing so substantially from his father's — his life had 
 been subject to considerable restraint ; now he was in 
 a position to do what seemed to him good in his own 
 eyes. As yet he had taken no personal part in the 
 politics of his time : and the only matter in which he 
 had interested himself, acting along with Macaulay, Mill, 
 Waymouth, Hume, and Hallam, had been the founding 
 of the London University. Now, however, his demo- 
 cratic sympathies were keenly affected by the aspect of 
 affairs in the country. The people were agitated, and 
 the Reform Bill was being debated in Parliament. At 
 the request of Mill he gave some weeks to the thinking 
 out of the whole question then before the country, and in 
 a very short space he issued from the press a fibrous and 
 closely reasoned essay on the Essentials of Parlimtientary 
 Refo7"m. The subject suited the temper of the author's 
 mind, and finding his ground firm beneath him he struck 
 out fiercely. He even allowed his antipathies play — but 
 this is not the strong point of his paper — and declaimed 
 against the aristocracy in language not the most mea- 
 sured. In these sentences there is something both of the 
 thought and sarcasm of the complete paper : — " Supe- 
 rior income afi'ords no ground for guessing at the capa- 
 cities of men, even as a general rule. In comparing 
 men of middling incomes, from ;£"ioo per annum up- 
 wards, there is no presumption of superior capacity on 
 either side ; but when we reach the very high figure in 
 the scale, it will be found that not only is there no pre- 
 
 F 
 
 (2) 
 
82 Masters in History. 
 
 sumption in favour of mental eminence, but there is a 
 probability not easy to be rebutted against it. The po- 
 sition and circumstances of a very rich man cut off all 
 motive to mental labour : he is caressed and deified by 
 his circle without any of those toils whereby others pur- 
 chase an attentive hearing ; and the purple, the fine 
 linen, and the sumptuous fare every day of Dives are 
 impediments to solid improvement hardly less fatal than 
 the sores and wretchedness of Lazarus."* 
 
 It was evident to all that a man who could write such 
 a paper as the Essentials of Parlimnentary jReform, was 
 a man to be looked up to by his party. After its publi- 
 cation great endeavours were made to get him to contest 
 the City of London, but at first he positively refused. 
 Apart from the little work above referred to, he had not 
 as yet won fame as an author, and beyond his business 
 connections and a small circle, there were comparatively 
 few acquainted in any way with the sterling worth of the 
 man. Mrs Grote was right when she held that for her 
 husband to enter on a successful parliamentary contest, 
 and to be heard with respect and attention in the House, 
 it was necessary he should first have made himself a 
 name. It was only after the publication of the history, 
 and " when it had reflected a literary renown upon its 
 author, he could hope to derive an importance in the 
 public eye adequate to sustain him in a political course." 
 
 The views of Mrs Grote were just and sensible ; but 
 the stream of influence steadily increasing in volume, 
 eventually its force was not to be resisted, and in 1832, 
 after the Reform Bill had been passed in its final shape, 
 he issued his address to the electors of the City of 
 London. This carefully drawn up document went on to 
 say that he regarded the Reform Bill as but the first step 
 * ''Minor Works, "pp. 18, 19. 
 
George Grote. 8 
 
 o 
 
 " towards a series of great and essential ameliorations," 
 and he would not consider it had even got a fair trial 
 until two improvements indispensable to the efficacy of 
 the Representative System had been completed. These 
 improvements were Vote by Ballot and Triennial 
 Elections. To the constituency of the City, Grote 
 simply and plainly declared himself a Radical, and that 
 the electors were neither afraid of the man nor the name 
 they showed by their votes, for the name of " George 
 Grote " was at the head of the poll with a majority of 
 924 votes, the total number given in his favour being 
 8788. Mrs Grote confessed " it was a proud day to her 
 when she looked down on 4000 citizens in Guildhall, 
 cheering and echoing the sentiments which for years we 
 had privately cherished, but which were now first fearlessly 
 avowed." 
 
 During these exciting times the history had been "pro- 
 gressing favourably ; but for a period it was now laid on 
 the shelf, — currency, the Bank Charter, and cognate 
 subjects engaging the new M.P.'s attention. At a dinner 
 party in Threadneedle Street, at which ^^ were present 
 Henry Warburton, John Romilly, Joseph Hume, and 
 James Mill, it was agreed that Grote should be the person 
 who should undertake to bring the Ballot before the 
 House in the ensuing parliamentary session. The en- 
 trusting of Grote with this duty virtually constituted him 
 leader of the Radical party. Although his brother 
 Charles had been now settled in his old house at the 
 bank, thus easing him considerably in affairs of business, 
 still, from the position he occupied, it was difficult to get 
 spare time for extraordinary labours. However, as best 
 he could, he surmounted all difficulties, and on the 25th 
 April 1833, he made his first motion in favour of the 
 Ballot, concluding it with these words : " That this 
 
84 Masters in History. 
 
 House might be so constituted, that it should enjoy and 
 command and deserve the confidence of the people." 
 Grote occupied the time of the House for an hour, and 
 although he had not yet studied the graces of elocution 
 and the arts of distinct speaking, still he was perfectly 
 heard by the whole assembly. He had a difficult 
 question to deal with, and he succeeded in putting the 
 issues before the House with absolute clearness. The 
 speech contains many forcible passages, and in such 
 pieces as these we find unmistakeable traces of his severe 
 classical culture, and the pith and directness of the 
 Socratic dialogue : — " How much influence over votes 
 ought a rich man to have ? As much as he can purchase? 
 No, certainly ; for even the present law forbids all idea 
 of his purchasing any influence. Not as much as he can 
 purchase, but as much as he deserves, and as much as 
 unconstrained freemen are willing to pay him. Amongst 
 unconstrained freemen, the man of recognised superiority 
 will be sure to acquire spontaneous esteem and deference : 
 these are his just deserts, and they come to him un- 
 bidden and unbespoken. But they will come to him 
 multiplied tenfold, if along with such intrinsic excellencies, 
 he possesses the extrinsic recommendation of birth and 
 fortune ; if he be recommended to the attention of his 
 neighbours by the conspicuous blazon of established 
 opulence and station, and if he be thus furnished with 
 the means of giving ample range and effect to an 
 enlightened beneficence. This is the meed which awaits 
 men of birth and station, if they do but employ their 
 faculties industriously and to the proper ends. Poorer 
 men may, doubtless, attain it also ; but with them the 
 ascent is toilsome, the obstructions numerous, and the 
 success at best uncertain : to the rich man the path is 
 certain and easy — the willing public meet him half way, 
 
George Grote, 85 
 
 and joyfully hail the gradual opening of his virtues. He 
 is the man to whom they delight to pay homage, and 
 their idolatrous fancy forestalls and exaggerates his real 
 merits. This, sir, is, in my opinion, the legitimate 
 influence of wealth and station : to serve as the passport, 
 the ally, and the handmaid of superior worth and talent. 
 This influence is as gentle and kindly as it is lasting and 
 infallible ; it is self-created and self-preserving ; and it is, 
 moreover, twice blest, for it blesses as well the few who 
 exercise it, as the many over whom it is exercised." The 
 M.P. for the City closed with the following appeal : — " If 
 ever there was a case in which the address to your reason 
 was vehemently and powerfully seconded by the appeal 
 to your feelings, that case is the emancipation of honest 
 voters — the making peace between a man's duty and his 
 worldly cares — the rescue of political morality from the 
 snares which now beset it, and from the storms which 
 now lay it prostrate. You are called upon to protect the 
 rights and to defend the integrity of the electoral con- 
 science j to shield the innocent from persecution at the 
 hands of the guilty ; to guard the commonwealth against 
 innumerable breaches of trust committed by the reluctant 
 hands of well-meaning citizens. . . . Above all, you 
 are called on to make this House what it professes and 
 purports to be, a real emanation from the pure and free- 
 spoken choice of the electors j an assembly of men com- 
 manding the general esteem and confidence of the 
 people, and consisting of persons — the fittest which the 
 nation affords — for executing the true end and aim of 
 government. When all these vast interests, collective 
 and individual, are at stake in one measure, am I not 
 justified in demanding from you, not merely a cold and 
 passive attention, but an earnest sympathy and solici- 
 tude?"* The motion of Grote was supported by Dr 
 * •' Hansard's Parliamentary Speeches." 
 
S6 Masters in History. 
 
 Lushington, Cobbett, and O'Connell; but the result of 
 the voting was — ayes, io6 ; noes, 211; pairs, 26. Again 
 and again Grote returned to the attack, but each time 
 only to sustain defeat. During his parliamentary career, 
 six times in all did he bring forward his motion. On the 
 3rd June 1835, he only secured 146 in his favour, whilst 
 319 votes were recorded against him. In the following 
 year the tone of parliamentary feeling was unchanged, 88 
 was the number of the ayes, and 139 the number of the 
 noes. On the 8th March 1837, the division stood — for, 
 155 ; against, 267 ; pairs, 5. The last time Grote made 
 the motion was on the i8th June 1839. He said he had 
 no novel arguments to bring forward, and hoped even 
 although "they intended the Reform Act to be final, 
 they did not mean also to embalm its deformities." The 
 mover was ably supported by the brilliancy of Macaulay, 
 but when the count came, only 216 members declared 
 " aye," while 333 declared " no." 
 
 During Grote's Parliamentary career from 1833 to 
 1 84 1, there had been two dissolutions; and when he 
 sought, on the last of these occasions, re-election for the 
 city, he stood at the bottom of the four returned, and 
 only escaped defeat by six votes. For Grote, this very 
 narrow majority was in reality a defeat ; but it was not 
 so much the man as the decay of the party, which 
 brought about a result at the election, which the 
 historian could not but feel. In the Parliament of 
 1836, there were only half-a-dozen members " to sustain 
 the Radical opinions of the House of Commons." One 
 evening in Grote's house, when all the other guests had 
 departed, and Sir William Molesworth and Charles 
 Buller remained late to talk about the state of affairs, the 
 latter said to his host, " I see what we are coming to, 
 Grote ; in no very long time from this, you and I shall 
 be left to ' tell ' Molesworth ! " 
 
George Grote. Sy 
 
 The ballot was, no doubt, the measure with which 
 Grote's name as a Member of Parliament was chiefly 
 identified, but it was certainly very far from engaging his 
 whole attention ; he made important speeches on other 
 matters and did a great amount of parliamentary work. 
 Between the preparation of speeches, attendance at the 
 House, and the engrossing nature of private and the ex- 
 citement of public business, his years of parliamentary 
 life were wholly barren of literary products strictly so 
 called. His friend, Molesworth, at the suggestion of 
 Mrs Grote, pubhshed an edition of the works of 
 Hobbes ; and his old schoolmate, Waddington — now 
 Dean of Durham — also gave to the world a " History 
 of the Reformation," both of which works, at great 
 trouble to himself, Grote revised. But this was all. It 
 may be said he found both tasks uncongenial — the latter 
 especially so. 
 
 Although Grote was a man of an exceedingly powerful 
 constitution, he found House-of-Commons life extremely 
 fagging. No evil results, however, accrued to his 
 health, for so soon as his tone was perceptibly lowered, 
 Mrs Grote had him immediately away from the foetid 
 atmosphere of London and its assemblies. In this way 
 the historian had most agreeable trips to Paris, Belgium, 
 Switzerland, the Rhine, and the South of England ; and 
 thus his public life was pleasantly diversified by private 
 recreation. 
 
 That the life of a Member of Parliament, ever full of 
 wrangle and noise, but ever barren of practical result, 
 could long have continued satisfactory to such a man as 
 George Grote, it is wholly impossible to believe. It was 
 certainly good for liim he had entered Parliament, for in 
 discussing the constitution of the Grecian States it fur- 
 nished him with personal experiences of a popular assem- 
 
88 Masters in History. 
 
 bly, but all the same, he soon grew weary of it, or, per- 
 haps, more properly speaking, he bethought himself of 
 the long evenings he had had to himself before he 
 entered Parliament, his long spells of improving study, 
 and the chapters of his " History of Greece " that were 
 lying on the shelf. At anyrate, in the February of 1838, 
 we find him writing thus to his friend, Mr John Austin, 
 then Senior Commissioner of Inquiry at Malta : — " The 
 degeneracy of the Liberal party, and their passive acquies- 
 cence in everything, good or bad, which emanates from 
 the present Ministry, puts the accomplishment of any 
 political good out of the question, and it is not at all 
 worth while to undergo the fatigue of a nightly attend- 
 ance in Parliament for the simple purpose of sustaining 
 Whig Conservatism against Tory Conservatism. I now 
 look wistfully back to my unfinished Greek History. I 
 hope the time will soon arrive when I can resume it." 
 
 After the dissolution in 1841, Grote and his wife 
 carried out a long-thought-of idea of visiting Rome. 
 The first time the historian of Greece caught sight of the 
 Eternal City, he could hardly restrain his emotion \ but 
 plain fact often treads rudely on the skirts of sentiment, 
 and the future historian was called away from musing 
 amid the ruins of antiquity to pay the April Bank divi- 
 dends in Threadneedle Street ! 
 
 Immediately he was back in England, his old pre-parlia- 
 mentary habits came back upon him. His leisure was 
 again filled with profitable study. At his house at Burn- 
 ham Beeches, he laid out in detail the scheme of his first 
 two volumes of his " History of Greece," and in the 
 Westminster Review for May 1843, ^^ g^ve the learned 
 world a foretaste of their contents in an elaborate article 
 on Early Grecian Legends. 
 
 In the autumn of 1843, ^^er having been thirty years 
 
George Grote. 89 
 
 connected with the banking-house, Grote retired from 
 the firm of Prescott, Grote, & Co. The clerks in the 
 estabhshment paid him a valued compliment on the 
 occasion ; but apart from the death of Mrs Grote's 
 father, his meeting with the reverend wit, Sydney Smith, 
 at his residence Combe Florey, in Somersetshire, with 
 the French philosopher M. Comte in Paris, and with that 
 great musical genius, Felix Mendelssohn in London, this 
 year and the one following passed quietly and unevent- 
 fully. 
 
 Before going on to speak of the publication of the His- 
 tory, it will be well to pause for a little and consider the 
 preparation the historian had made for his work. 
 
 It is to be noted, in the first place, that the languages 
 of which he was master were Greek, Latin, French, 
 Italian, German, and, of course, Enghsh. By means of 
 these instruments he had made himself acquainted with 
 the manners and customs, the habits and institutions of 
 a great number of countries, making himself specially 
 conversant with the facts and circumstances attending the 
 rise of their national life. Every fact connected with the 
 growth of a people's power was interesting to him, and 
 having secured, in his young days, an extensive vocabu- 
 lary by the perusal of all kinds of imaginative liteiature, 
 it was ever a pleasure to him to write down his opinions 
 of books, men, and historical events. When he sat down 
 in earnest to his work, he had thus beside him common- 
 place books, filled with learned references, and a great 
 accumulation of short sketches and essays on matters 
 particularly bearing on Grecian history. 
 
 The turn of mind which he received from James Mill 
 is not to be lost sight of. If the chief defects of Mitford's 
 history flowed from the monarchical tendencies of the 
 writer, it was the democratic habit of thought planted in 
 
QO Master's in Histoiy. 
 
 his pupil by the philosopher which brought Grote into 
 sympathetic connection with the Hellenic race, and gave 
 him that principle of living interpretation which even 
 more than his scholarship and assiduity was to unlock the 
 hidden secrets of Grecian life. The knowledge and re- 
 search Grote brought to bear on the whole range of his 
 work, no doubt surpassed that of any other Grecian his- 
 torian, but, in reality, it was the spirit he brought to bear 
 on the cold facts which gave his pages fresh interest, and 
 his conclusions their inestimable value. Mr Murray's 
 confidential adviser, after perusing the MSS. of Grote's 
 first two volumes, and without knowing who the author 
 was, said to the publisher, " Sir, you have got hold of a 
 good thing here, and one likely to produce a great effect 
 upon the scholar world. If I am not mistaken, this will 
 prove to be a work of profound interest to us all." And 
 Mill pronounced on the general effect in these words : — 
 " Though the statement has the air of an exaggeration, yet, 
 after much study of Mr Grote's book, we do not hesitate 
 to assert, that there is hardly a fact of importance in 
 Grecian history which was perfectly understood before his 
 re-examination of it." 
 
 Furthermore, when account is taken of the large place 
 in Grecian history filled by necessary accounts of works 
 of philosophy and art, it is at once evident that some- 
 thing more must be possessed by the historian of Hellas 
 than merely '' a historical or narrative interest." The 
 phenomena of Grecian culture required its historian to 
 be at the same time a psychologist and philosopher. 
 Excepting in Hume and Mill, these qualities have seldom 
 been found in the same individual. Grote, however, is 
 another exception, and in him the analytic habit of the 
 philosopher was happily blended with the discriminating 
 power of the historian \ and it was in virtue of possessing 
 
George Grote. 91 
 
 these faculties he was as able to follow the footsteps of 
 Alexander as to thread the mazes of the Platonic philo- 
 sophy. Thus, in most comfortable worldly circumstances, 
 freed from business entanglements, with languages learned, 
 with studious habits confirmed, with stores of past indus- 
 try to draw from, with a large knowledge of the world, 
 and with a mind ready to mark and sympathise with every 
 popular effort after freedom, Grote, in the seclusion of 
 Burnham Beeches, sat down to his great self-imposed 
 task. 
 
 The scope of the historian's work was " to exhaust the 
 free Hfe of collective Hellas," to put down in their order 
 all the events that marked, and the activities that quick- 
 ened, the Grecian race from the time of the Homeric 
 poems to the death of Alexander. The work was to be 
 divided into two great parts — Legendary and Historical 
 Greece. The latter part again, the historian proposed to 
 subdivide into six great divisions. From 776 B.C. to the 
 accession of Peisistratus at Athens was to constitute the 
 first period of Historical Greece ; from Peisistratus to the 
 repulse of Xerxes, the second; from the repulse of 
 Xerxes to the overthrow of Athens, the third ; from the 
 close of the Peloponnesian war to the battle of Leuktra, 
 the fourth ; from the battle of Leuktra to that of Chae- 
 roneia, the fifth ; and from the battle of Chaeroneia to 
 the end of the generation of Alexander, the sixth. 
 
 By the beginning of 1846 the first two volumes were 
 ready for the press. After some difficulty, Mr Murray, 
 of Albemarle Street, was secured by Mr Grote, as publisher. 
 Strange to say, Grote would take nothing to do with the 
 pubHshing arrangements. He only ventured to hope 
 " that the poor man might not be a loser by him, and then 
 he would be content, come what might." The truth was, 
 Grote was in doubt, considering the legendary and gene- 
 
92 Masters in History. 
 
 rally uninteresting nature of their contents, about the suc- 
 cess of these two first volumes. He was conscious he 
 had spent a deal of labour on them, but he had misgiv- 
 ings with regard to their reception by the public. He 
 wrote to J. S. Mill, " It is repugnant to me, rather, to 
 publish the legendary matter, together with so small a 
 portion of the real history as I shall be able to comprise 
 in this first batch ; but a beginning must be made." 
 
 In the March of the year 1846, the first instalment of 
 the " History of Greece " was given to the world. This 
 was twenty-two years after the idea of such a work had 
 been suggested to Grote by his wife. The fears of the 
 author were quickly dissipated by the success of the work. 
 Lewis was the first to congratulate him, and thought he 
 "had completely succeeded in placing the whole question of 
 the mythology and legendary narrations of the Greeks 
 upon what he believed to be their true footing." Not long 
 after the publication, Henry Hallam, at a dinner at Sir T. 
 Frankland Lewis's, drew aside the historian's wife, and 
 said to her, " I have been familiar with the literary world 
 for a very long period, and I can safely affirm that I never 
 knew a book take so 7'apid a flight to the highest summits 
 of fame as George's new ' History of Greece.' It has pro- 
 duced a striking sensation among scholars." 
 
 The chief charge which Grote anticipated would be 
 made against him with regard to the subject-matter of 
 Vols. I. and II., that he had not inquired sufficiently into 
 that kernel of fact in which the legends had their begin- 
 ning, he most ably repelled even before it had been pre- 
 ferred. " I describe," says the historian, " the earlier 
 times by themselves, as conceived by the faith and feel- 
 ing of the first Greeks, and known only through their 
 legends — without presuming to measure how much or how 
 little of historical matter these legends may contain. If 
 
George Grote. 93 
 
 the reader blame me for not assisting him in determining 
 this — if he ask me why I do not withdraw the curtain and 
 disclose the picture — I reply in the words of the painter 
 Zeuxis, when the same question was addressed to him on 
 exhibiting his masterpiece of imitative art — ' The curtain 
 is the picture.' ^Vhat we now read as poetry and legend 
 was once accredited history, and the only genuine history 
 which the first Greeks could conceive or relish of their 
 past time : the curtain conceals nothing behind, and can- 
 not, by any ingenuity, be withdrawn." * 
 
 During the next two years Grote and his wife had a 
 great deal of intercourse with the stars of the musical 
 world. Felix Mendelssohn had come to town to bring 
 out his oratorio of " Elijah." Jenny Lind stayed with 
 them at Burnham Beeches, and they became her warm 
 friends and active partisans. They also came a great 
 deal into contact with Moscheles, Ernst, Thalberg, and 
 others. With such lively and interesting company about 
 him, the historian still proceeded steadily with his work, 
 and in the April of 1847 two other volumes made their 
 appearance. The latter of these concludes with the battle 
 of Marathon, " the narrative of which," said one, " cannot 
 be read for the hundredth time without deep emotion." 
 
 In the description of this battle the characteristic 
 features of Grote's style are apparent. It was as diffe- 
 rent from Gibbon's as could be well conceived. In 
 Grote the balance of Gibbon's polished paragraphs, and 
 the roll of his long sentences are wanting. Grote's sen- 
 tences ever flow simply and sweetly. You realize while 
 you read the author is not declaiming but speaking to 
 you. The more massive figures of speech — hyperbole, 
 interrogation, climax — are all wanting, but the simpler 
 figures — metaphor and simile — he uses frequently and 
 '^' " History of Greece," vol. i., Preface, pp. 12-13. 
 
94 Masters in History. 
 
 to good purpose. He is sometimes blamed for lack of 
 warmth, but if his narrative is anywhere cold it was not 
 that he wanted the poetic spirit, but because he knew 
 that in historical work poetry could never pass for proof, 
 nor emotion for matter of fact. Not the least remark- 
 able of the many good qualities of his style is that it is 
 never clouded, but always simple and perspicuous, and 
 the sense to be conveyed always apparent to the very 
 lowest capacity. We have said the description of the 
 battle of Marathon may be taken as a specimen of 
 Grote's simple and lucid style : — " Of the two opposing 
 armies at Marathon, we are told that the Athenians were 
 10,000 hoplites, either including, or besides, the 1000 
 who came from Platsea. Nor is this statement in itself 
 improbable, though it does not come from Herodotus, 
 who is our only really valuable authority on the case, 
 and who mentions no numerical total. Indeed, the 
 number named seems smaller than we should have ex- 
 pected, considering that no less than 4000 Kleruchs or 
 out-settled citizens had just come over from Euboea. 
 A sufficient force of citizens must, of course, have been 
 left behind to defend the city. The numbers of the 
 Persians we cannot be said to know at all ; nor is there 
 anything certain except that they were greatly superior to 
 the Greeks. We hear from Herodotus that their arma- 
 ment originally consisted of 600 ships of war, but we are 
 not told how many transports there were ; and more- 
 over, re-infor cements had been procured as they came 
 across the ^gean from the islands successfully con- 
 quered. The aggregate crews on board of all their 
 ships must have been between 150,000 and 200,000 
 men ; but what proportion of these were fighting men, 
 or how many actually did fight at Marathon we have no 
 means of determining. There was a certain proportion 
 
 ( 
 
George Grote. 95 
 
 of cavalry, and some transports expressly prepared for 
 the conveyance of horses. Moreover, Herodotus tells 
 us that Hippias selected the plain of Marathon for a 
 landing-place, because it was the most convenient spot 
 in Attica for cavalry movements — though it is singular 
 that in the battle the cavalry are not mentioned. 
 
 '' Marathon, situated near to a bay on the eastern coast 
 of Attica, and in a direction E.N.E. from Athens, is 
 divided by the high ridge of Mount Pentelikus from the 
 city, with which it communicated by two roads — one to 
 the north, another to the south of that mountain. Of 
 these two roads, the northern, at once the shortest and 
 most difficult, is twenty-two miles in length \ the south- 
 ern — longer, but more easy, and the only one practicable 
 for chariots— -is twenty-six miles in length, or about six 
 and a half hours of computed march. It passed be- 
 tween Mount Pentelikus and Hymettus, through the 
 ancient denies of Gargettus and Pallene, and was the 
 road by which Peisistratus and Hippias, when they 
 landed at Marathon forty-seven years before, had marched 
 to Athens. The bay of Marathon, sheltered by a pro- 
 jecting cape from the northward, affords both deep 
 water and a shore convenient for landing, while its plain 
 (says a careful modern observer*) extends in a perfect 
 level along this fine bay, and is in length about six miles, 
 in breadth never less than about one mile and a half. 
 Two marches bound the extremity of the plain; the J^ 
 southern is not very large, and is always dry at the con- 
 clusion of the great heats; but the northern, which 
 generally covers considerably more than a square mile, 
 offers several parts which are at all seasons impassable. 
 Both, however, leave a broad, firm, sandy beach between 
 them and the sea. The uninterrupted flatness of the 
 "•' Findlay on the Battle of Marathon. 
 
g6 Masters in History. 
 
 plain is hardly relieved by a single tree, and an amphi- 
 theatre of rocky hills and rugged mountains separate it 
 from the rest of Attica, over the lower ridges of which 
 some steep and difficult paths communicate with the 
 districts of the interior. 
 
 " The position occupied by Miltiades before the battle, 
 identified as it was to all subsequent Athenians by the 
 sacred grove of Herakles, near Marathon, was probably 
 on some portion of the high ground above this plain, 
 and Cornelius Nepos tells us that he protected it from 
 the attacks of the Persian cavalry by felled trees ob- 
 structing the approach. The Persians occupied a posi- 
 tion on the plain ; while their fleet was arranged along 
 the beach, and Hippias himself marshalled them for the 
 battle. The native Persians and Sakae, the best troops 
 in the whole army, were placed in the centre, which they 
 considered as the post of honour, and which was occu- 
 pied by the Persian king himself when present at battle. 
 The right wing was so regarded by the Greeks, and the 
 polemarch Kallmiachus had the command of itj the 
 hoplites being arranged in the order of their respective 
 tribes from right to left. At the extreme left stood the 
 Platseans. It was necessary for Miltiades to present a 
 front equal, or nearly equal, to that of the more nume- 
 rous Persian host, in order to guard himself from being 
 taken in flank : and with this view he drew up the cen- 
 tral tribes, including the Leontis and Antiochis, in shal- 
 low files, occupying large breadth of ground : while each 
 of the wings was in stronger and deeper order, so as to 
 make his attack efficient on both sides. His whole army 
 consisted of hoplites, with some slaves as unarmed or 
 light-armed attendants, but without either bowmen or 
 cavalry. Nor could the Persians have been very strong 
 in this latter force, seeing that their horses had to be 
 
George Grote. 97 
 
 transported across the ^gean. But the elevated position 
 of Miltiades enabled them to take some measure of the 
 numbers under his command ; and the entire absence 
 of cavalry among their enemies could not but confirm 
 the confidence with which a long career of uninterrupted 
 victory had impressed their generals. 
 
 " At length the sacrifices in the Greek camp were 
 favourable for battle, and Miltiades, who had everything 
 to gain by coming immediately to close quarters, ordered 
 his army to advance at a running step over the interval 
 of one mile which separated the two armies. This rapid 
 forward movement, accompanied by the war-cry or paean 
 which always animated the charge of the Greek soldier, 
 astounded the Persian army ; who construed it as an act 
 of desperate courage little short of insanity, in a body not 
 only small, but destitute of cavalry or archers — but who, 
 at the same time, felt their conscious superiority sink 
 within them. It seems to have been long remembered 
 among the Greeks as the peculiar characteristic of the 
 battle of Marathon, and Herodotus tells us that the 
 Athenians were the first Greeks who ever charged at a 
 run. It doubtless operated beneficially in rendering the 
 Persian cavalry and archers comparatively innocuous, 
 but we may reasonably suppose it also disordered the 
 Athenian ranks, so that when they reached the Persian 
 front, they were both out of breath and unsteady in that 
 line of presented spears and shields which constituted 
 their force. On the two wings, where the files were deep, 
 this disorder produced no mischievous effect ; the Per- 
 sians, after a certain resistance, were overborne and 
 driven back. But in the centre, where the files were 
 shallow, and where, moreover, the native Persians and 
 other choice troops of the army were posted, the breath- 
 less and disordered Athenian hoplites found themselves 
 (2) G 
 
98 Masters in History. 
 
 in far greater difficulties. The tribes Leontis and Anti- 
 oches, with Thomastikles and Aristides among them, 
 were actually defeated, broken, driven back, and pursued 
 by the Persians and Sakae. Miltiades seems to have fore- 
 seen the possibility of such a check when he found him- 
 self compelled to diminish so materially the depth of his 
 centre ; for his wings having routed the enemies opposed 
 to them, were stayed from pursuit until the centre was 
 extricated, and the Persians and Sakae put to flight along 
 with the rest. The pursuit then became general, and the 
 Persians were chased to their ships, ranged in line along 
 the shore ; some of them became involved in the impas- 
 sable march and there perished. The Athenians tried 
 to set the ships on fire, but the defence here was both 
 vigorous and successful — several of the forward warriors 
 of Athens were slain, and only seven ships out of the 
 numerous fleet destroyed. This part of the battle ter- 
 minated to the advantage of the Persians. They repulsed 
 the Athenians from the sea-shore, and secured a safe re- 
 embarkation; leaving few or no prisoners, but a rich 
 spoil of tents and equipments which had been disem- 
 barked and could not be carried away. 
 
 " Herodotus estimates the number of those who fell on 
 the Persian side in this memorable action at 6400 men ; 
 the number of Athenian dead is accurately known since 
 all were collected for the last solemn obsequies— they 
 were 192. How many were wounded we do not hear. 
 The brave Kallimachus, the polemarch, and Stezilaus, 
 one of the ten generals, were among the slain ; together 
 with Kynegeirus, son of Euphorion, who, in laying hold 
 of the poop-staif of one of the vessels, had his hand cut 
 off by an axe, and died of the wound. He was brother 
 to the poet ^schylus, himself present at the fight ; to 
 whose imagination this battle at the ships must have em- 
 
George Grote. g^ 
 
 phatically recalled the fifteenth book of the Iliad 
 Both these Athenian generals are said to have perished 
 m the assault of the ships, apparently the hottest part of 
 the conflict. The statement of the Persian loss as given 
 by Herodotus appears moderate and reasonable, but he 
 does not specify any distinguished individuals as having 
 fallen." * ^ 
 
 The battle of Marathon being one of the outstanding 
 events m Grecian History, and its proudest scene of 
 heroism and victorious valour, it has been again and 
 agam objected to Grote's account that it does not suffi- 
 ciently excite the imagination. But it is worthy of 
 remark, that those who have had the deepest knowledge 
 of military affairs have never had for the historian's de- 
 scription anything but unqualified praise. One-and- 
 twenty years after the publication of the fourth volume 
 one of the few survivors of Waterloo, Sir William Gomm' 
 confessed that he burned with a desire to view the site of 
 Marathon with Grote's book in his hand. On Mrs Grote 
 saying, « It has been objected by the critics that the 
 story of Marathon was too coldly narrated in Grote-" 
 the veteran replied, " Not at all ! It is excellently told 
 and I have read it over, often, with delight." 
 
 To resume. After the publication of the third and 
 fourth volumes, Grote became eagerly interested in the 
 condition of affairs in Switzerland. The poHtics of the 
 country were strangely agitated, and Grote believing that 
 the condition of the Cantons formed a good practical 
 illustration of the autonomy— a word, by the way first 
 brought into repute by the historian— of the ancient 
 Grecian States, at once took ship for the Continent, that 
 he might make a personal inspection of this peculiar 
 form of government. He made his inspection with that 
 ll!o?S^°'^ of Greece," vol. iv., pp. 467-476, ut sz.pra. 
 
lOO Masters in History. 
 
 thoroughness and masterHness which characterised his 
 every work, and eventually he published a little book on 
 the subject. In the beginning of the volume he states 
 how the purpose of his visit had been entirely that he 
 might be enabled to carry those enlightened views to the 
 elucidation of the poHtics of Greece. 
 
 " The inhabitants of the twenty-two Cantons of Swit- 
 zerland are interesting on every ground to the general 
 intelligent public of Europe. But to one whose studies 
 lie in the contemplation and interpretation of historical 
 phenomena, they are especially instructive — partly from 
 the many specialities and differences of race, language, 
 religion, civilization, wealth, habits, &c., which distin- 
 guish one part of the population from another, compris- 
 ing between the Rhine and the Alps, a miniature of all 
 Europe, and exhibiting the fifteenth century in juxtaposi- 
 tion with the nineteenth — partly from the free and unre- 
 pressed action of the people, which brings out such 
 distinctive attributes in full relief and contrast. To 
 myself in particular, they present an additional ground of 
 interest from a certain political analogy (nowhere else to 
 be found in Europe) with those who prominently occupy 
 my thoughts, and on whose history I am still engaged — 
 the ancient Greeks." * 
 
 In Switzerland, Grote spent a day with Mendelssohn 
 at his home at Interlachen. This was only some weeks 
 before the death of the great musician. Next winter, 
 when Grote and his wife were entertaining during the 
 opera season, Jenny Lind, Chopin, Thalberg, and Dorus 
 Gras at the " Beeches," it seemed, without Felix Men- 
 delssohn's vivacious company, most unlike the happy 
 party they had formed there in past days. The sudden 
 
 * « ' Preface to Letters on Switzerland. " 
 
George Grote. loi 
 
 death of the Jewish composer was a great blow to the 
 musical world, but by few in the country excepting that 
 solitary couple at Burnham Beeches, was it felt as a per- 
 sonal bereavement. 
 
 Diversified though they were by occasional company, 
 still those quiet years that the historian passed at his subur- 
 ban residence were filled to the full by studious labours, 
 and they saw his scholarly passion ever deepening and in- 
 tensifying. The historian was full of his subject ; he felt he 
 was able for it — that he was master of it ; and thence- 
 forward to nearly the close of his life, he frequently 
 complained, not in any spirit of exasperation, but mildly 
 and blandly, that ''the days were too short." Gibbon's 
 regret was when he looked back on his Oxford years, 
 that he had not done more in the past ; Grote's, on the 
 other hand, was, that he could not make enough of the 
 present — that the golden hours passed too swiftly by, and 
 all too quickly after the dawn came the close of the work- 
 ing day. How frugal he was of his time, the extent of his 
 works bears sufficient testimony. In the autumn of 1 848, 
 appeared the fifth and sixth volumes, only to be followed 
 in the March of 1850 by the seventh and eighth. 
 
 It has always been common with the writers of books 
 to show their manuscripts to trusted friends before 
 putting them into the hands of the printer ; but while 
 Grote often performed the part of reader for others, 
 he never required for himself any other adviser than his 
 wife. Excepting part of the sixth volume, the whole of 
 the manuscript and proof came under her eye, and many 
 were the corrections, emendations and excisions which 
 at her instance were made on the work. There cannot 
 be the least doubt that such extraordinary capacity on 
 the part of his wife, if it was not at the root, must at least 
 have very distinctly stimulated those active efforts he put 
 
I02 Masters in History. 
 
 forth, while member of the Council of University College, 
 for the higher education of women. 
 
 During the winter of the last mentioned year, Grote, 
 with his wife, attended, on the invitation of the Queen, 
 the theatrical "Soirees" of Her Majesty at Windsor. This 
 was not the first time, for ever since the publication of 
 the " Swiss Letters," which greatly pleased Prince Albert, 
 the ex-M.P. for the city had not been lost sight of at 
 Court. Mrs Grote confessed she did not know whether 
 to feel " flattered or insulted " at the frequent inquiries 
 which these invitations called forth from certain quarters. 
 She felt the honour in her heart, but still she was a 
 woman after all — a woman and a wife ; and what honour 
 could be too much for George. It would appear, not- 
 withstanding the Windsor theatricals, Grote was still as 
 much a Radical as ever, and not yet had any change 
 passed over his political sentiments. One night in 
 Drury Lane, when Grote and his wife were in a pit box, 
 Monckton Milnes came and talked with Mrs Grote. 
 " You see," said Mr Milnes, " that man in the stalls 
 opposite, that is the envoy from the French Republic." 
 The wife passed the information along with an opera 
 glass to her husband. " Bless me," said the historian, 
 using the binocular, " I must go and call on that gentle- 
 man immediately." Next morning Grote was at the 
 door of the " Ambassador of the Republic," and two 
 days after the Ambassador was dining with him in his 
 town establishment, now in Saville Row. In 1849, when 
 the historian paid a short visit to his friends in Paris, he 
 was "unwontedly excited" at the idea that he was then 
 actually living under a Republic. 
 
 On the 15th of March 1850, the name of Grote, along 
 with the names of Lords Monteagle and Overstone, Sir 
 James Graham, Thomas B. Macaulay, Sir George Corne- 
 
George Grote. 103 
 
 wall Lewis, and Henry Hallam, were added by the 
 Crown to the Senate of University College, and in this 
 institution he took the very warmest interest to the end. 
 During the twenty-one years Grote was a member of the 
 Senate, many critical questions came to be discussed and 
 voted on, and the historian was invariably found on the 
 side of progress and liberality. It said much for Grote's 
 inherent breadth of spirit that, while all his years had 
 been taken up with erudite and classical studies, still he 
 was willing to believe that other studies than those in 
 which he had found a special charm might be equally 
 useful and salutary. To the claims of science he was 
 never indifferent. In two measures he took a particular 
 mterest ; the one was the claim of the graduates to be 
 admitted into the corporate body, and the other was the 
 admission of women to the examinations of the univer- 
 sity. The agitation concerning the first measure was 
 successful, and that concerning the second was only de- 
 feated by the narrowest of majorities ; indeed, just by the 
 casting vote of the Chancellor. The speech made by 
 Grote, when this vote was taken in the Senate, was one 
 of the most temperate, exhaustive, and genuinely hberal 
 he ever uttered. In one part of it he said : " The convic- 
 tion has spread much, and is spreading more, among 
 both sexes, that women must be taught much more than 
 they have been, to earn for themselves and by their own 
 efforts, an honourable and independent living. There is 
 a larger proportion of women now than formerly who are 
 dissatisfied with a life of mere dependence, without any 
 active purposes or prospects. To throw open to them 
 the field of professional competition more largely than 
 is now done, appears to me most desirable as well 
 as most equitable ; but it is an essential preliminary to 
 success in any line that habits of steady, accurate appli- 
 
I04 Masters in History. 
 
 cation should be formed at an early period of life. 
 Wherever a female has that genuine aspiration to attain 
 an independent and self-maintaining position, which in 
 my judgment is a virtue ahke in both sexes, the prospect 
 of access to our examinations and certificates will. tend to 
 stimulate the diligent and serious application in early 
 life which is now wanting, because it goes untested and 
 unrewarded. Complaints of the general inaccuracy of 
 women's minds are sufficiently frequent to have reached 
 everyone. Let those women who are superior to this 
 very frequent infirmity, and who are prepared to prove 
 themselves superior, have the opportunity of doing so by 
 admission to our examinations." 
 
 The ninth and tenth volumes of the " History of 
 Greece" were brought out in the month of February 
 1852, and the eleventh about the end of April of the 
 following year, but what substantial reward, besides fame 
 and honour, the work was bringing to the historian we 
 are, for the most part, left to guess. Grote did not write 
 for money ; no historian can. To George C. Lewis our 
 author once remarked in a letter, " No man can write a 
 long work on history or philosophy who has not means 
 of support independent of what the work is to produce." 
 Grote's hope at first had been, " that the poor man, the 
 publisher, might lose nothing by him." But as the work 
 was extensively read, as it appeared, and as the first 
 volumes were already in their third edition, there is no 
 doubt the history must have been by this time a source 
 of very considerable profit. What the extent of the 
 profit was we are not told, but Mrs Grote informs us that 
 the residence they built for themselves at East Burnham 
 was named " History Hut," from the fact that it was 
 wholly built and furnished from the proceeds of the sale 
 of the history. 
 
Geoi^ge Grote. 105 
 
 Although Grote certainly had not " cultivated litera- 
 ture on a little oatmeal," still, from the force of circum- 
 stances above set forth, he had never been able to call 
 himself a university man. That he thus had to educate 
 himself in the higher branches of literature, and that this 
 work in no way could be considered as the product of 
 college training, may have been the reasons why he was 
 so long in being recognised by the authorities of the 
 national universities. But, at any rate, from whatever 
 cause, it was not until the historian was verging on sixty 
 years of age he received academical distinction. In the 
 middle of 1853, Henry Milman, then Dean of St Paul's, 
 communicated with Grote on the matter of the honorary 
 degree of D.C.L. Milman acted on behalf of his univer- 
 sity, and his offer of the degree was in terms the most 
 flattering. " My own feeling of reverence," said the 
 Dean, " and love for the university induces me to wish 
 most earnestly, that by proposing some higher names, 
 more worthy of the honour, more worthy of being joined 
 with Macaulay, Oxford may redeem herself from the 
 somewhat inglorious Hst, which, in fact, according to old 
 usage, she receives from the Chancellor at his installa- 
 tion." In due course, Grote was invested with the de- 
 gree of doctor of civil law. He received his distinction 
 at the hands of the late Earl of Derby, and he confessed 
 to being somewhat nervous in finding himself for the 
 first time surrounded by the scholarship of Oxford. At 
 a banquet given in honour of the new Chancellor, Grote 
 replied for the "British Historians," and Sir Roderick 
 Murchison said, that " he made by far the best speech of 
 the evening." 
 
 The pursuits of literature are very far removed from 
 those of banking, and those of agriculture stand far 
 apart from both. Now, it might be thought that any 
 
io6 Masters in History. 
 
 man who had it in him to excel in the higher walks of 
 scholarship and trade could hardly fail in the lower walk 
 of farming. Experience, however, has shown again and 
 again that the very greatest men may make the most un- 
 successful agriculturists. Amongst the very considerable 
 number of names great in literature, but beaten and 
 disappointed in farming, must be placed the name of 
 Grote. About this time he got entangled with a 600 acre 
 farm of his own in Lincolnshire, but after entering into 
 it with the utmost spirit, and spending a deal of money 
 on implements, cattle, and draining, and after also, it 
 must be said, reading the best works on the subject, he 
 was obliged eventually to let it to another, as finding in 
 it a source of continued irritation, vexation, and loss. 
 When we know the historian had got his ideas of farm- 
 ing from Virgil's " Bucolics," we can hardly wonder he 
 suffered defeat and disappointment when himself put his 
 hand to the plough. 
 
 On the 23d December the last sheets of the " History 
 of Greece" were sent from History Hut to the publishers. 
 Thus, thirty-two years after the first idea of the work had 
 been suggested to him by his wife, and twelve years after 
 he had left the firm of ''Prescott, Grote, & Co.," from 
 which time he had given himself almost exclusively to 
 its preparation, George Grote had the satisfaction, amid 
 the applause of educated England and Germany, to 
 bring, what was acknowledged by all as one of the 
 greatest literary and historical efforts of his time, to a 
 triumphant conclusion. Gibbon, as we have seen, after 
 finishing his great work on the " Decline and Fall of the 
 Roman Empire," left his writing-table to muse for a 
 little, in the soft stillness of the evening, and while the 
 silver orb of the moon was showing its shimmering re- 
 flection in the Genevese lake, on the uncertainty of all 
 
George Grote. 107 
 
 human life, and the possible brevity of his own. The 
 conclusion of the " History of Greece" calls us to view 
 a homelier scene altogether, and the historian in a less 
 romantic situation. Mrs Grote tells us it was Christmas 
 Eve, and, along with one or two of her husband's bro- 
 ther's children — for they had none of their own — they 
 were all very happy together. While the children played 
 by themselves, Mrs Grote brewed a bowl of punch, in 
 celebration of the completion of the ^''opus magmun;'' and 
 she further discloses, that as the Doctor continued to 
 sip " the delicious mixture," for the most part in silence, 
 but " giving unmistakeable signs of inward compla- 
 cency," she grew garrulous in her wifely happiness, 
 bringing to mind the scenes of thirty years ago, and 
 sooner, when they had met in their golden prime, when 
 she had first spoken of the history ; and descanting upon 
 ^' the happiness of their living to see this day," and the 
 termination of the work. As we have said, this is a 
 homelier scene than a similar one we depicted in our 
 previous sketch, but on that account it hath not the less 
 a broader human appeal. 
 
 As the historian had advanced, he had warmed to his 
 work, and his zeal and thoroughness had so increased 
 with his progress, that the twelfth volume may be taken 
 as containing the best part of the whole history. In this 
 volume the outstanding feature is the startling and mar- 
 vellous career of Alexander the Great. On the whole 
 life of this great warrior the historian had bestowed the 
 utmost pains ; but he had so mastered the subject that 
 we never see in any part of this narrative, what we fre- 
 quently behold in other departments of the history, the 
 writer bent down with such a weight of authorities that 
 his step wants elasticity and his advance seems painful 
 and' slow. In the story of Alexander we find the greatest 
 
io8 Masters in History. 
 
 possible amount of research united to the greatest sup- 
 pleness of style and rapidity of narrative. The last 
 hours of the son of Philip of Macedon are thus de- 
 scribed : — " On the morrow, though desperately ill, he 
 still made the effort requisite for performing the sacrifice : 
 he was then carried across from the garden-house to the 
 palace, giving orders that the generals and officers should 
 remain in permanent attendance in and near the hall. 
 He caused some of them to be called to his bedside ; 
 but though he knew them perfectly, he had by this time 
 become incapable of utterance. One of his last words 
 spoken is said to have been, on being asked to whom he 
 bequeathed his kingdom, ' To the strongest : ' one of his 
 last acts was to take his signet ring and hand it to Per- 
 dikkas. For two nights and a day he continued in this 
 state, without either amendment or repose. Meanwhile, 
 the news of his malady had spread through the army, 
 filling them with grief and consternation. Many of the 
 soldiers, eager to see him once more, forced their way 
 into the palace, and were admitted unarmed. They 
 passed along by the bedside, with all the demonstrations 
 of affliction and sympathy, Alexander knew them, and 
 made show of friendly recognition as well as he could, 
 but was unable to say a word. Several of the generals 
 slept in the Temple of Serapis, hoping to be informed by 
 the god in a dream whether they ought to bring Alexan- 
 der into it, as a suppliant, to experience the divine heal- 
 ing power. The god informed them in their dream that 
 Alexander ought not to be brought into the temple — 
 that it would be better for him to be left where he was. 
 In the afternoon he expired — June 323 B.C. — after a life 
 of thirty-two years and eight months, and a reign of 
 
 twelve years and eight months Alexander had 
 
 mastered, in defiance of fatigue, hardship, and combat, 
 not merely all the eastern half of the Persian empire, 
 
George Grote. 109 
 
 but unknown Indian regions beyond its eastermost limits. 
 Besides Macedonia, Greece, and Thrace, he possessed 
 all that immense treasure and military force which had 
 once rendered the great king so formidable. By no such 
 contemporary man had any such power ever been known 
 or conceived. With the turn of imagination then preva- 
 lent, many were doubtless disposed to take him for a 
 god on earth, as Grecian spectators had once supposed 
 with regard to Xerxes, when they beheld the innumer- 
 able Persian host crossing the Hellespont. Exalted to 
 this prodigious grandeur, Alexander was at the time of 
 his death little more than thirty-two years old — the age 
 at which a citizen of Athens was growing into important 
 commands \ ten years less than the age for a consul at 
 Rome \ two years younger than the age at which Timour 
 first acquired the crown, and began his foreign conquests. 
 His extraordinary bodily powers were unabated ; he had 
 acquired a large stock of military experience ; and, what 
 was still more important, his appetite for further con- 
 quest was as voracious, and his readiness to purchase it 
 at the largest cost of toil or danger as complete, as it 
 had been when he had first crossed the Hellespont. 
 Great as his past career had been, his future achieve- 
 ments, with such increased means and experience, were 
 likely to be yet greater. His ambition would have been 
 satisfied with nothing less than the conquest of the whole 
 habitable world as then known; and if his life had 
 been prolonged he would probably have accompHshed it. 
 Nowhere (so far as our knowledge reaches) did there re- 
 side any military power capable of making head against 
 him j nor were his soldiers, when he commanded them, 
 daunted or baffled by any extremity of cold, heat, or 
 fatigue." 
 
 * "History of Greece," vol. xii., pp. 344, 345, 348, 349. 
 
no Masters m History. 
 
 Carlyle somewhere says that the writing . of his books 
 has invariably made him ill : and when we consider the 
 number of years Grote had spent on his history — the 
 steady devotion and intellectual energy with which he 
 prosecuted his task — we cannot wonder after it was done 
 he seemed so thoroughly jaded that Mrs Grote was glad 
 to get him away to the Italian lakes to recruit. Before, 
 however, the History had been well out of his hands, and 
 before setting out for his well-earned tour, he had put 
 his papers together in prospect of attacking the Philo- 
 sophy of Plato. Ever as he grew older the idea of the 
 short days and the long work made him ever more eager 
 to seize the opportunity of the passing hour. 
 
 The next two or three years after his return from Italy 
 were passed at History Hut in study and comparative 
 retirement. Left to himself, Grote would never have 
 become member of any club, but by the exertions of 
 Lord Overstone, and the connivance of his wife, his 
 resistance was overcome, and he was enrolled a member 
 of " The Club," as it is called, par excellence. It was the 
 club of which Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith, and 
 Gibbon had all been members in their day. Grote never 
 regretted the step, but used to recount the conversation 
 of the rooms, and was often highly delighted with the 
 superior literary talk of the members. Amongst the 
 visitors who enlivened the historian's leisure were Mrs 
 Stanley, Lady Trelawny, Lady Lewis, Dr William Smith, 
 John Mill, Mr Lowe, and Professor Bain. Grote also 
 met by accident while on a visit to the country the Hon. 
 Lothrop Motley, the famous historian of the Low 
 Countries. There is no account of what passed between 
 the two men, but from the nature of their sentiments, we 
 may well suppose they would find in each other the 
 most congenial companionship. Motley was travelling 
 
George Grote. 1 1 1 
 
 with his wife and daughter in England, and after this 
 casual meeting they all paid a short visit to Grote at 
 Barrow Green, whither he had removed after disposing 
 of History Hut. 
 
 On the 9th of January his old friend Henry Hallam 
 died, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. Hallam 
 had been a trustee of the British Museum, and it had 
 been one of his last wishes that Grote might be appointed 
 in his place after he was gone. This wish was realised 
 in the appointment of Grote to the vacant seat; but 
 although he had already sufficient " Board " work, the 
 duties of a Museum Trustee were at once interesting and 
 peculiar, and after the brain was fatigued by philosophical 
 writing, he always found it a pleasing diversity to par- 
 ticipate in labours requiring practical discernment. 
 
 In the beginning of January 1862, John Stuart Mill 
 was anxious Grote should accompany him in a tour to 
 Greece. Finding himself, however, now too old for the 
 foot and horse exercise inevitable in such a journey, 
 Grote was obliged to decline visiting in person those 
 scenes of which he had written so much, and which since 
 his earliest years had ever shone before his imagination. 
 A consciousness of growing years and failing strength 
 made Grote now more cautious in his exercises and 
 methodical in his studies than he had ever been. He 
 now rose regularly at 8 a.m., and after a short walk and 
 light breakfast, he repaired to his study, where he re- 
 mained till dinner, with only a short cessation from work 
 at luncheon time. From breakfast till luncheon he was 
 invariably accompanied by " Dora," a little favourite pet- 
 dog. "Dora" took up her position on the historian's 
 knees, and Mrs Grote " will vouch for it that the greater 
 portion of the volumes of his Plato were written over the 
 back of this little favourite." After luncheon, having 
 
112 Masters iii History. 
 
 spent the morning with " the Master," " Dora " devoted 
 the remainder of the day to attending on the " Mistress." 
 
 In 1863 Grote paid a visit to Canon Stanley, Professor 
 of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford, and met with a most 
 flattering reception from young England. In the year 
 following he had the high honour to be elected " Foreign 
 Member " of the Institute of France, " The muster roll of 
 which," said the Count Adolphe de Circourt, in giving 
 him notice of his election, " is probably the highest and 
 fullest representation of the genius and learning of the 
 age." 
 
 Vast as was the conception of the " History of 
 Greece," it was in reality but part of a grander design in 
 the mind of the historian. His object was to write a 
 great Greek Trilogy : the first part being the History of 
 Greece, the second was to be an elucidation of the 
 Philosophy of Plato and his contemporaries, and the 
 third a discussion of the life, influences, and ethics of 
 Aristotle. In May 1865, nine years after the completion 
 of the History, appeared the second part of this great 
 work, under the title of " Plato and the other Com- 
 panions of Sokrates." The subject was one which com- 
 mended itself specially to the historian's intelligence, as 
 he regarded the writings of Plato as the pure and 
 unadulterated products of the Hellenic mind. ^They 
 had a rich value of their own, because they were unmixed 
 by foreign speculations, and " preceded the development 
 of Alexandria and the amalgamation of Oriental views of 
 thought with the inspirations of the Academy or the 
 Lyceum." " The Orontes and the Jordan had not yet 
 begun to flow westward, and to impart their own colour 
 to the waters of Attica and Latium."* 
 
 *" Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates," vol. i. 
 Preface, p. 12. 
 
Geo7^ge Grote. 113 
 
 The year following the publication of the " Plato " was 
 embittered by a severe sectarian struggle. The Pro- 
 fessorship of Logic in University College had become 
 vacant, and as the Dissenters had ever looked with 
 interest to the rise of this institution, they were most 
 anxious to have their party represented amongst its Pro- 
 fessors. For this purpose they brought forward the Rev. 
 James Martineau as a candidate for the vacant chair. 
 Grote was dismayed for the moment. But not losing 
 courage, his wife says, like " Christian " when he found 
 Apollyon bestraddling the pathway, Grote " immediately 
 felt for his sword." The fight was acrimonious and en- 
 venomed; but Grote succeeded in swaying the vote 
 against the Unitarian. This matter we need scarcely 
 have alluded to ; it is only worthy of mention from the 
 fact that defeat would have severed Grote's forty years 
 connection with an institution whose prosperity was in 
 great measure owing to his own disinterested endeavours. 
 
 Grote began his work on Aristotle in his seventy-first 
 year, so anxious was he to complete his account, if he 
 were able, not only of the active, but also of the specula- 
 tive history of Hellas. Apart from writing some contri- 
 butions to Professor Bain's " Manual," including the 
 De Anima, which occupied eight months in composition, 
 the Aristotle engaged the whole of his studious hours. 
 This work, however, was never to see the light in Grote's 
 lifetime ; indeed, although the author had advanced it 
 far, still he did not live to complete it. It is but a frag- 
 ment — a sad memorial of the defeat which awaits the 
 most courageous human endeavours. While Grote thus 
 strove to exhaust the Hfe of collective Hellas, it is strange 
 we have nowhere any hint that the artistic powers of the 
 Greek intelligence were as worthy of examination, and 
 just as great as either their active or speculative capa- 
 
 H 
 
114 Masters in History. 
 
 bilities. With his books on the works of Plato and 
 Aristotle before us, we cannot help thinking of possible 
 books as full and elaborate on the works of Phidias and 
 Praxiteles. 
 
 In a letter to Professor Bain, dated 4th December 
 1868, we find Grote saying — " I am sure my intellect is 
 as good as ever it was. I shall be 74, Nov. 17." While 
 the historian was writing in this manner to his friend, Mrs 
 Grote was writing to the following effect in her diary : — 
 " Mr Grote's health, I fully expect, will ere long give way 
 under the unwholesome habits in which he permits him- 
 self to indulge ; spending about twenty-two hours out of 
 the twenty-four — indeed sometimes twenty-three — within 
 four walls. ... Mr Grote's personal aspect is sen- 
 sibly changed within the last eight months, whilst I dis- 
 cern a lessening capacity for bodily exertion, not fairly 
 referable to his being one year older. His hand shakes 
 worse than it did, his gait has altered to that of an old man, 
 from being remarkably steady and elastic up to a recent 
 date." During the hot June of 1869 he stuck to his 
 " Board " work in town, and his studious labours at his 
 desk, but his wife getting him to consult a physician, he 
 was ordered off at once to Hombourg-les-Bains, to drink 
 the waters for three weeks, and thereafter to travel in 
 Switzerland. 
 
 Honours, as we have seen, had been falling thick on 
 him lately, but shortly after his return from the Continent 
 he had the greatest of all placed before him for his accept- 
 ance. With the authority of Her Majesty, Mr Gladstone 
 proposed to him that he should become a peer of the 
 United Kingdom. In a long letter to the Prime Mini- 
 ster, Grote set forth his reasons for refusing the generous 
 offer, and one paragraph of it was characteristic : — " Last, 
 though not least, I am engaged in a work on Aristotle, 
 
George Grote. 1 1 5 
 
 forming a sequel to my work on Plato : and, as I am 
 thoroughly resolved to complete this, if health and energy 
 be preserved to me, I feel that (being now nearly seventy- 
 five) I have no surplus force for other purposes." This 
 reflects the man : he could never think of position apart 
 from corresponding duties to be discharged, and from no 
 duty, however onerous, would he ever turn to grasp at any 
 position, however honourable. 
 
 Since the time Grote had first given utterance to his 
 views on the ballot, now nearly forty years ago, his opin- 
 ions had been slowly ripening in the country ; but when, 
 in the month of February 1870, a member of Parliament 
 moved for " leave to bring in a bill for ballot at elec- 
 tions," and Lord Hartington gave no sign of any in- 
 tention on the part of the Government of the day to 
 oppose the bill, the near prospect of the passing of this 
 measure which the historian had struggled so earn- 
 estly for in his younger years, created in him no concern 
 whatever. The fact was he had already anticipated the 
 results that were to accrue from its action, clearly per- 
 ceiving it was not likely to bring more radical members 
 to the House than the open voting system. When the 
 ballot act was about to be carried into effect, Mrs Grote 
 said to the historian one day, " You will soon have lived 
 to see your own favourite measure triumph over all ob- 
 stacles, and you will, of course, feel great satisfaction 
 thereat?^' The husband made answer, "I should have 
 done so had it not been for the recent alteration of the 
 suffrage. Since the wide expansion of the voting element, 
 I confess that the value of the ballot has sunk in my esti- 
 mation \ I do not, in fact, think that the elections will be 
 affected by it, one way or another, as far as party interests 
 are concerned." The wife made the further inquiry, 
 " Still you will, at all events, get at the genuine preference 
 
1 1 6 Masters in History. 
 
 of the constituency in choosing their candidate?" " No 
 doubt," answered Grote, " but then, again, I have come 
 to perceive that the choice between one man and another, 
 among the EngHsh people, signifies less than I formerly- 
 used to think it did. Take a section of society, cut it 
 from top to bottom, and examine the composition of the 
 successive layers. They are much alike throughout the 
 scale. The opinions all based upon the same social 
 instincts : never upon a clear or enlightened perception 
 oi general interests. Every particular class pursuing its 
 own, the result is a universal struggle for the advantages 
 accruing from party supremacy. The English mind is 
 much of one pattern take whatever class you will. The 
 same favourite prejudices, amiable and otherwise; the 
 same antipathies, coupled with ill-regulated, though bene- 
 volent efforts to eradicate human evils, are well nigh uni- 
 versal: modified, naturally, by instruction among the 
 highly educated few ; but they hardly affect the course of 
 out-of-doors sentiment. I believe, therefore, that the 
 actual composition of Parliament represents, with tolerable 
 fidelity, the British people. And it will never be better 
 than it is, for a House of Commons cannot afford to be 
 above its own constituencies, in intelligence, knowledge, 
 or patriotism." Again, such a remark as the historian 
 made to Mrs Grote, when talking to her about the affairs 
 of the United States, gives too great insight into his later 
 opinions to be passed without notice. "I have out- 
 lived," said Grote, " my faith in the efficacy of republican 
 government regarded as a check upon the vulgar passions 
 of the majority in a nation, and I recognize the fact that 
 supreme power lodged in their hands may be exercised 
 quite as mischievously as by a despotic ruler like the first 
 Napoleon. The conduct of the Northern States, in the 
 late conflict with the Southern States, has led me to the 
 
George Groie. 117 
 
 conclusion, though it costs me much to avow it, even to 
 myself." It is not to be thought, from these remarks, 
 that Grote's early democratic opinions had suffered eclipse j 
 in reality, it was not so j his spirit never ceased to the last 
 to cherish a lofty ideal of popular freedom ; but, in ma- 
 ture years, he had had too much experience, meditated too 
 profoundly on the drawbacks and impulses to civiHzation, 
 and had become, in short, too much of a philosopher to 
 believe that a perfect government could be organized out 
 of the defective and broken materials of human life. To 
 the end, if he had had to choose between monarchy and 
 republicanism, he would have preferred the latter, but out 
 of no spirit of enmity to the former. 
 
 In the spring of 1870, the Members of Convocation of 
 the University of London, asked Grote, their now re- 
 spected Vice-Chancellor, to sit for his portrait — the 
 picture, when finished, to be- placed in the senate-room 
 of their new buildings in Burlington Gardens. The his- 
 torian complied, but it was while " sitting " in Mr Millais's 
 studio he received a chill, from which he never perfectly 
 recovered. He had taken off his great-coat on coming 
 into the painter's workshop, and although he felt uncom- 
 fortable, being ever more zealous about the comfort of 
 others than himself, he thought it might have been an 
 injustice to the artist if he had asked to be allowed to 
 put it on again. The illness which supervened would 
 certainly have been triumphed over but for the historian's 
 continued disobedience to medical orders. Dividend 
 warrants had to be signed at the Bank of England, and 
 he had to be there to sign them ; the British Museum 
 Standing Committee had important work before it, and 
 he had to be there to give his vote and see to everything 
 being satisfactorily done. On the i6th May, the Uni- 
 versity Senate held a committee meeting in his house in 
 
1 i 8 Masters in History. 
 
 Savile Row. The Vice-Ghancellor presided. The matters 
 on hand " taxed his cerebral faculties severely." This 
 was the last effort Grote ever made for the public good, 
 — the last meeting he ever attended. On the morn- 
 ing of the 1 8th June, the great historian passed away 
 tranquilly and without pain ; and thus was brought to 
 a close, a career singularly devoted, conscientious, and 
 laborious, a life rich in virtue and honour and the 
 esteem of the wise and the good. The remains were 
 buried in Westminster Abbey. "I selected," says 
 Dean Stanley, " the spot in the south transept, in what 
 Fuller calls the learned side of Poet's Corner. Camden 
 and Causaubon look down upon the grave, and Macaulay 
 lies a few feet distant." 
 
 The eulogy which Grote pronounced over the life of 
 Solon,* is a eulogy which with equal justice can be pro- 
 nounced over his own : " He represents the best ten- 
 dencies of his age, combined with much that is person- 
 ally excellent j the improved ethical sensibility ; the thirst 
 for enlarged knowledge and observation, not less potent 
 in old age than in youth ; the conception of regularised 
 popular institutions, departing sensibly from the type and 
 spirit of the governments around him, and calculated to 
 found a new character in the Athenian [in Grote's case 
 English] people ; a genuine and reflecting sympathy with 
 the mass of the poor, anxious not merely to rescue them 
 from the oppression of the rich, but to create in them habits 
 of self-relying industry : lastly, during his temporary pos- 
 session of a power altogether arbitrary, not merely an 
 absence of all selfish ambition, but a rare discretion in 
 seizing the mean between conflicting exigencies." Like 
 
 * " History of Greece," vol. iii., p. 212. 
 
George Grote. 1 1 9 
 
 the endeavours of him who was " neither Lancelot nor 
 another," all the aim of this knight of literature was 
 
 " To keep down the base in man, 
 To teach high thought, and amiable words. 
 And courthness and the desire of fame. 
 And love oftruth^ attd all that makes a manP 
 
T. B. M A C A U L A Y. 
 
T. B. MACAULAY. 
 
 " 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view;" and for 
 the correct appreciation of a great number of things it is 
 absohitely necessary we be not too near them. From 
 the sides of Ben Nevis the surrounding country may be 
 seen to the utmost advantage ; but he himself can never 
 be seen to advantage from such an outlook. The 
 beautiful outline, the vast bulk, and the rugged grandeur 
 of the mountain are only understood by those who view 
 him from a distance. The tourist at the foot of the Ben 
 finds he grows on his vision and imagination, and that 
 he gains truer ideas of his size and height, just in pro- 
 portion as, within a certain range, he moves away from 
 his base. But what holds good of distance in space also 
 holds good of distance in time. The progress of the 
 years brings understanding with it. Events but im- 
 perfectly understood by the people of the age in which 
 they occurred, are often perfectly comprehended by the 
 men of succeeding generations. The evolutions that are 
 dark and mysterious to us, will in all likelihood be clear 
 and intelligible enough to our children's children. This 
 is one of the reasons, amongst a number of others, which 
 makes it so difficult for any writer to give a true historical 
 account of the events of his own time. A contemporary 
 author is ever too near his own age to be able to estimate 
 
124 Masters in History. 
 
 correctly its moral height or its intellectual bulk. As 
 the climber on the mountain, he may feel in some vague 
 uncertain way that what is beneath and around him is 
 vast and stupendous ; but that is all — his vantage ground 
 forbids him taking the large and embracing view, and 
 thoroughly precludes him from making a relative esti- 
 mate. [Gibbon illustrated all this to the full. While 
 that great historian had open eyes before the minutest 
 events of the Roman Empire in the far past age of 
 Constantine, he was blind to the vast forces at work in 
 France in his own time. | It mattered not that these 
 forces were operating strongly, and were certain to bring 
 about vast results ; too near to the proud current, he 
 seemed incapable of calculating either its direction or 
 speed. 
 
 The lives of historical personages being of the sub- 
 ject-matter of history, it follows that the appreciation 
 of their work must answer to the same laws as the 
 other events that form part of the historical narrative. 
 There is no fear that any man who has in him the 
 real substance of greatness can by any possibility be for- 
 gotten. It need cause us no uneasiness whatever that 
 the stream of time will wash out their names from the 
 memories of men. In all greatness there is '' a divinity 
 that grows not old j " and as the rock to the fisherman 
 sailing out from beneath it seems to loom higher, so, as 
 the tide of time, bearing mankind on its breast, takes 
 them further and further away from any truly noble life, 
 rather, as they are borne onward, than such a life be- 
 coming dimmer and more indistinct until it finally dis- 
 appears, will the divinity that is in it rise on the view and 
 stand out in bolder relief. Many historical personages 
 are like their oil memorials of the gallery thus far — they 
 are improved by age, and are best seen when seen from 
 a distance. 
 
Macaulay. 125 
 
 There are not wanting evidences that time is begin- 
 ning to have a kindly effect on the memory of Macaulay. 
 What was trivial in the man is fast sinking out of sight ; 
 what was great is coming more and more into prominence. 
 The bitter things he spoke in his times of temper, with 
 the harsh things he wrote in his hours of passion, are 
 fast being forgotten, and only that the finer qualities of 
 his genius may be the better studied and remembered. 
 Thinking of the elegant poet, people are letting go their 
 recollections of the brusque gentleman ; with the ornate 
 works of the unparalleled essayist in their hands, men 
 are willing to leave to oblivion the antipathetic and 
 sometimes vindictive reviewer; and passing over the 
 bitter partisan, the people of England are evermore read- 
 ing with increased pleasure the work of the matchless 
 historian of their country. There is no mistaking the 
 finer tone which the national portrait of Macaulay is 
 taking from the course of the years. We remember a 
 sketch of Macaulay in a certain gallery of literary por- 
 traits that is wholly acid ; * we don't forget another able 
 paper,! amongst a number of others still abler, by Dr 
 Hutchison Stirling, where the acidity is not nearly so 
 prevalent ; but the best estimate of his character we 
 have seen is that by Mr Gladstone. J It is the most 
 recent, as also the sweetest and most penetrating ; and it 
 has the distinguishing merit of being neither ill-natured, 
 partial, nor partizan — three faults strangely common in 
 most writers on England's most popular historian. The 
 difficulties that have lain in the way hitherto of forming 
 a correct estimate of the life and work of Macaulay are 
 
 * Gilfillan's "Gallery of Literary Portraits," 
 
 t " Jerold, Tennyson, Macaulay, with other Critical Essays," by 
 J. H. Stirling, LL.D. 
 
 t "Gleanings of Past Years," by W. E. Gladstone, M.P., 
 vol. II, 
 
126 Masters in History. 
 
 sufficiently apparent. He was a poet, and consequently 
 a subject to be scoffed at by the prosaic; he was a 
 violent Whig, and consequently when spoken of by 
 members of either party in the State, it was either in 
 fulsome praise or in terms of unscrupulous detraction. 
 When he was stung, as he often was, he stung in return, 
 and almost invariably he left more poison in the skin of 
 his enemy than ever the enemy could lodge in his. His 
 powers of trenchant criticism made him feared, his suc- 
 cess made him envied, and the vast literary reputation 
 he eventually built up for himself stirred the spirit of 
 jealousy amongst a countless number of little and in- 
 significant spirits. These and other influences have pre- 
 vented the prevalence of just notions respecting the 
 character of Macaulay. Glorified as he is on the one 
 hand by partizanship, and dwarfed as he is on the other 
 by the influences of still surviving prejudices, he cannot 
 be said as yet to have received that place in our literary 
 history which, when maturer judgments prevail, he will 
 ultimately occupy. 
 
 When we look into the opinions of contemporary 
 writers it would seem as if Macaulay's existence was a 
 perfect intellectual puzzle, so highly is he spoken of by 
 some, so bitterly is he written of by others. So far, how- 
 ever, from his life containing any irreconcilable elements, 
 ere many years are gone students of our literature, we 
 are persuaded, will find in it no puzzle at all, but that 
 it is one of the simplest and most accountable. Its 
 literary unity is even now perfectly apparent. Macaulay's 
 essays are ah exercises in history \ with only one or two 
 exceptions they are all exercises in English history. To 
 his great work his Essays bear the relation which aisle 
 and chapel bear to the whole cathedral — the minor 
 buildings are included in the larger structure, but while 
 
Macaulay, 127 
 
 they have a unity of their own, they look somewhat 
 insignificant in comparison with the vaster edifice of 
 which they form a part, and whose design they help to 
 complete. Nor does Macaulay's poetry come in to break 
 this unity, but rather to add to and soften its otherwise 
 somewhat hard outline. It is the tracery and carved 
 cornicing of the general design. It is a great mistake, 
 however, to suppose that all Macaulay's poetry is em- 
 bodied in the " Lays." The essays on Clive and Hastings 
 have a marked poetic colouring, and with fine effect in 
 all his poetical critiques he brings the ideal faculty to 
 bear on the interpretation and analysis of its own pro- 
 ducts. A certain glow and imaginative enthusiasm runs 
 through his whole prose; now penetrating it like a 
 spirit, now hanging round it like a subtle fragrance, it 
 contributes largely to that enthralling interest which his 
 writings excite in so large a measure. It is the embodi- 
 ment of this enthusiasm in his most casual literary effort^ 
 which makes papers written only with the object of 
 satisfying the requirements of the hour likely to survive 
 with the survival of our Hterature. What has been 
 marked by the critics as the outcome of a repre- 
 hensible and even lying exaggeration, is in reality the 
 product of a quick fancy and a lively imagination. It is 
 by the exercise of these powers we breathe again in his 
 writings the heated atmosphere of popular assemblies, 
 and live over once more exciting scenes of revolution or 
 of blood. 
 
 While, however, Macaulay was largely possessed of 
 the poetic temperament, he had few of the poet's fail- 
 ings. A certain resentment and irritability, the products 
 of acute sensitiveness, united to a susceptibility to be 
 influenced by flattery, possibly sum up the extent of his 
 weaknesses in this direction. In his work he was never 
 
128 Masters in History. 
 
 trammelled by the impetuosities, the scruples, or the 
 passions of genius. He was most unpoetically regular 
 and methodical in all his habits, and there can be no 
 doubt whatever, had he shown less perseverance, less 
 concentration of purpose, less capacity for continued 
 intellectual exertions, or less sobriety of judgment, the 
 intermittent efforts of his genius would hardly have saved 
 his name from oblivion. The popularity of Macaulay's 
 works far transcends the popularity of the works of either 
 Gibbon or Grote, and yet in the intrinsic worth of his intel- 
 lect he is probably inferior to both. If not a depth, nor 
 even a solidity, of scholarship, there is in the writings of 
 Macaulay a sparkle and light which we will seek for in 
 vain in the works of either Gibbon or of Grote. And so 
 far his Hfe is like his writing, if neither singularly deep nor 
 luminous, it has yet that sparkle which betrays movement 
 and change, and a multitude of polished facets. 
 • Macaulay was of Scotch extraction. His great-grand- 
 father was minister of Tiree and Coll. The Highland 
 pastor had his difficulties to contend with. The laird of 
 Ardchattan took away his stipend by decreet. The 
 minister was in delicate health, and the two islands were 
 exposed and unhealthy. Moreover there was no church, 
 no fund for communion elements, no mortifications for 
 schools or charitable purposes. In truth, Aulay 
 Macaulay, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
 summed up in his own person the whole ecclesias- 
 tical estabhshment of the desolate islands of Tiree and 
 Coll. Under such circumstances we may conceive that 
 the Rev. Mr Macaulay heard gladly " the call " of the 
 Harris people to come over and help them. 
 
 Although, as may be guessed, the worldly circum- 
 stances of Aulay were straitened enough, nevertheless he 
 was the father of fourteen young Highlanders. Of these, 
 
 
Macmday. 129 
 
 Kenneth, who entered the church, and eventually be- 
 came minister of Ardnamurchan, is not wholly unknown 
 to fame. He wrote a history of St Kilda, a work 
 which, little known as it was, did not escape the 
 notice of Johnson. The great English scholar had read 
 the book with pleasure, and certain allusions it con- 
 tained touched his superstitious notions. The industry of 
 Boswell has preserved to us Johnson's comment on the his- 
 tory. " Macaulay," said Johnson, " who writes the account 
 of St Kilda, set out with a prejudice against prejudice, and 
 wanted to be a smart modern thinker ; and yet affirms 
 for a truth that when a ship arrives there all the inhabi- 
 tants are seized with a cold." * When Johnson took 
 his northern tour he met Kenneth Macaulay, who had 
 by this time become minister of Calder. Something in 
 Johnson's congratulation did not please the Scottish 
 parson j something in Macaulay was not satisfactory to 
 the Englishman. By-and-by, as the conversation went 
 on, Johnson showed himself the Ursa Major with a 
 vengeance. Next morning, however, the scholar be- 
 thought himself, and was pleased to atone for his rudeness 
 of the previous evening. It was, however, not Kenneth, 
 the eldest son of old Aulay, that was the grandfather of 
 the historian. He, too, was in the church ; he, too, met 
 Dr Johnson ; and he, too, like his brother, had an un- 
 seemly altercation with the scholar. In this instance 
 the clergyman was the first offending party, and in this 
 instance also reconcilement succeeded rupture. " Next 
 morning," says Boswell, " Mr Macaulay breakfasted with 
 us, nothing hurt or dismayed by last night's correction. 
 Being a man of good sense, he had a just admiration of 
 Dr Johnson." 
 
 John Macaulay was twice married, and by his second 
 * Boswell's "Life of Johnson," chap. xv. 
 I 
 
130 Masters in History. 
 
 wife Margaret, daughter of Colin Campbell of Inver- 
 seger, he had twelve of a family. He was minister of 
 various parishes, but eventually he settled in Cardross in 
 Dumbartonshire. He had the patronage of the Duke of 
 Argyll, but his various translations he owed as much to 
 his fluency and abilities as a popular preacher as to any 
 influence lying beyond his own. The living of Cardross, 
 though somewhat beyond the average of the livings of 
 the Scottish clergy, is still not so large as to support in 
 anything like aflluence such a numerous household as 
 that of John Macaulay. The children of Cardross manse 
 were consequently brought up on the plainest fare j but 
 so far as air, scenery, and solid paternal nurture in things 
 human and divine were concerned, they had placed each 
 day before them of the very best. In the grandson sur- 
 vived the effects of the life and discipline of the Cardross 
 manse. One day, at the house of Lord Ashburton, 
 Carlyle thought to himself, as he looked on the features 
 of Macaulay in thoughtful repose over a book, " Well ! 
 any one can see you are a homely sort of fellow, made 
 out of oatmeal." 
 
 Several of John Macaulay's children rose to positions 
 of eminence. One became a distinguished clergyman 
 of the Church of England, and eventually was presented 
 to the Hving of Rothley by Mr Thomas Babington, the 
 owner of Rothley Temple, a gentleman whom he had 
 tutored in his student days, and who also married one of 
 the young ladies of Cardross manse. Another of the 
 sons succeeded the father in the ministry of the parish, 
 but of all the family Zachary displayed the most solid 
 acquirements of character, and became the most famous. 
 At the early age of sixteen he was sent to Jamaica to 
 assist in the office work of a large estate. Soon he 
 became sole manager, and thus was brought into inti- 
 
Macaulay, 1 3 1 
 
 mate contact with every kind of slave life. Early pre- 
 possessions were strengthened by more intimate know- 
 ledge, and he grew to hate the whole system. John 
 Macaulay thought that religion and slavery were com- 
 patible, and capable of working together -, the son, on 
 the other hand, was a Christian of less compromising a 
 type, and in his heart he forbade the banns. He tried 
 for a time to make the best of his position ; but, by-and- 
 by, finding that kind treatment and the exercise of a 
 gentle and compromising spirit were utterly powerless 
 against the deeper evils of the slavery system, he threw 
 up a situation which his conscience would allow him 
 no longer to hold, and returned to England. Zachary 
 Macaulay was not long without work of a more con- 
 genial kind. Ten years previous to his return all slaves 
 had been declared freemen so soon as their feet touched 
 the soil of our island. But what to make of the liber- 
 ated but expatriated slaves was still a difficult question. 
 Great hopes were entertained that spheres of usefulness 
 would open up before them could civilization be made 
 to gain a permanent footing on the African continent. 
 To establish this object a company was formed, char- 
 tered by the Crown. Wilberforce and Granville Sharpe 
 were members of the managing Board. By this Board 
 Zachary Macaulay was appointed Second Member of 
 the Sierra Leone Council. He sailed in 1793 for Africa, 
 and soon attained the position of Governor. The matters 
 of the colony were not long, after many trying ordeals, 
 in prospering under his care. The Governor worked as 
 only an anti-slavery enthusiast could, but he also worked 
 in the very best spirit. The secret of his diligence flowed 
 from deeper sources than merely the desire to discharge 
 duty in such a manner that the esteem of his masters 
 might be secured. He was a man deeply religious ; he 
 
132 Masters in Histojy, 
 
 would allow himself on no occasion the slightest indivi- 
 dual licence ; and down to the very smallest matters he 
 made his conduct square with his religious convictions. 
 Sir James Stephen says justly of him : — " His earthward 
 affections, active and all-enduring as they were, could 
 yet thrive without the support of human sympathy, be- 
 cause they were sustained by so abiding a sense of the 
 divine presence, and so absolute a submission to the 
 divine will, as raised him habitually to that higher region 
 where the reproach of man could not reach, and the 
 praise of man might not presume to follow him." 
 
 When everything was going on prosperously in the 
 colony eight French sail appeared off the coast. In a 
 short time they were raking the streets with bullets and 
 grape, and after this, for the most part, harmless diver- 
 sion, they proceeded to the more serious work of sacking 
 the town. After the visit of the sans cullotes, Zachary 
 Macaulay worked hard to have things put in order, and 
 when the colony had been once more put on its feet, 
 returned to England to recruit his health, which had 
 been considerably impaired by his exertion. 
 
 On Macaulay's return, and when on a visit to Hannah 
 More at Cowslip Green, near Bristol, he met, and fell in 
 love with a pretty young Quaker, Miss SeHna Mills, a 
 former pupil of Hannah. The friends of the lady 
 threw difficulties in the way of the match. The lady, 
 however, was obdurate; but it was not until Zachary 
 Macaulay had been out to Sierra Leone and back again 
 that the couple were married at Bristol in 1799. 
 
 Of this marriage Lord Macaulay was the first fruit. 
 He was bom at Rothley Temple, on the 25th of October 
 1800, a date he liked to associate with the anniversary 
 of Agincourt. In the November following he was 
 baptized in the private chapel of the house. The Rev. 
 
Macaulay. 1 3 3 
 
 Aulay Macaulay and Mr and Mrs Babington acted as 
 sponsors, and the child received the names Thomas 
 Babington. The two years following the birth were 
 spent by Mr and Mrs Macaulay in a house in Birchin 
 Lane, where the Sierra Leone Company had its office. 
 It was a dreary residence, and one day when father and 
 son were surveying the roofs of the neighbouring houses 
 from the nursery window, and particularly a great 
 chimney that was belching forth vast volumes of black 
 smoke, the child, in wonder, asked the parent, " Is that 
 hell?" What answer was given does not appear. 
 George Otto Trevelyan, who tells the story, only says, 
 that "the inquiry was received with grave dis- 
 pleasure, which at the time the child could not under- 
 stand." 
 
 The next removal of the family was to a house in the 
 High Street of Clapham. Here the boy spent the best part 
 of his childhood, and here his precious powers developed 
 themselves. He used, eating bread and butter the while, 
 to amuse the domestics by expounding from a volume 
 as big as himself \ and remembering, evidently without 
 effort, the phraseology of the books that came in his way, 
 they used to say of little Tom that he talked " quite 
 printed words." One day Hannah More, paying a visit 
 to Clapham, tells us she had a surprise. Cahing at Mr 
 Macaula/s, the door was answered by a pretty, slight 
 child, who told her that his parents were from home, 
 but if she would be good enough to come in, he would 
 bring her a glass of spirits ! On another occasion, 
 having had some hot coffee spilt on his legs by a friend 
 of his father's, he answered a lady, who asked him 
 some time afterwards how he was feeling, in the words, 
 " Thank you, madam, the agony is considerably abated." 
 Every place on the common where he played had its 
 
1 34 Masters in History. 
 
 name. One ridge was " The Alps," and a slight rising, 
 Mount Sinai ! 
 
 In these early years the boy would stay with Hannah 
 More for weeks together, and she exercised on his mind 
 a most salutary influence. She fostered his great budding 
 powers, but, at the same time, she never suffered him to 
 forget he was still a child. All things considered these 
 years were possibly — we could almost say, undoubtedly 
 — the years of his greatest literary activity. To the boy 
 everything was new and nothing difficult. What he read 
 he remembered, what he thought he found it delightful 
 to express, and what he undertook gave him pleasure to 
 perform. He was ready to try his hand on hymn or 
 epic, on essay or history. He wrote a paper which he 
 proposed to have translated into Malabar to persuade 
 the people of Travancore to embrace the Christian 
 religion ! Reading Scott's " Lay of the Last Minstrel " 
 and " Marmion," his youthful imagination was so excited 
 that he commenced a poem to be called " The Battle of 
 Cheviot." In two days he had completed three cantos 
 of one hundred and twenty lines each. He also wrote 
 an epitome of universal history " from the time of a king 
 who knew not Joseph," down to the time of Oliver 
 Cromwell, "an unjust and wicked man." "Fingal, a 
 poem in XII. Books," also belongs to this period. Nor, 
 though these juvenile products were many, were they by 
 any means deficient in either fire or force. One who 
 has read them, as they have been preserved by the family, 
 says, " They go swinging along with plenty of animation 
 and no dearth of historical and geographical allusion." 
 
 Macaulay's precocity was altogether remarkable and 
 unaccountable ; indeed, if we except the manifestation of 
 early genius in Chatterton, it is without a parallel in our 
 literary history. Nor was it, what is such a common 
 
Macaulay. 135 
 
 sight, a mere boyish fervour, to pass gradually away with 
 growing years, until in manhood it becomes finally 
 extinct. In this case the splendour of the flower was 
 not to belie the quality of the fruit. Clever boys are 
 often spoiled, but with regard to young Macaulay every 
 effort was made to kill those seeds of vanity which 
 almost invariably turn what is ability in the boy to 
 ignorant assumption in the man. Master Tom was no 
 doubt far cleverer than those twice his years, but he was 
 never let know but that every boy was just as clever 
 as he. 
 
 In 1812 Tom, having got beyond the capacities of 
 Clapham, was sent by his father to a private school, 
 kept by the Rev. Mr Preston, at Little Shelford, a village 
 in the immediate neighbourhood of Cambridge. The 
 parent had fixed on this school chiefly because of the 
 Low Church views of the master. He knew how to 
 teach, but he was a man of bad taste, and did not stop 
 to consider circumstances. When teaching the boys he 
 dragged in theological topics, and was not slow to break 
 a problem in Euclid that he might ask his pupils con- 
 cerning their spiritual welfare. Considering Zachary 
 Macaulay's opinions, he must have been pleased to hear 
 from Mr Preston, after he had taken Tom through hands, 
 " Your lad is a fine fellow. He shall stand before kings. 
 He shall not stand before mean men." 
 
 Was there ever a boy away at school about whom 
 parents at home were not anxious ? Was there ever a 
 boy so situated about whom there never came to his 
 parents' ears malevolent whispers of questionable pro- 
 ceedings? Whether such a boy ever existed we know 
 not j but this we aver, he is not found in the person of 
 young Tom Macaulay. By some mysterious messenger 
 or other it came to the knowledge of the inmates of the 
 
136 Masters in History. 
 
 house in the High Street of Clapham, that the lad at 
 school was getting famous as a loud, contumacious fellow. 
 The report called forth the following letter from the 
 parent : — " March 4, 18 14. My dear Tom, — In taking 
 up my pen this morning a passage in Cowper almost 
 involuntarily occurred to me. You will find it at length 
 in his Conversation : — 
 
 * Ye powers who rule the tongue, if such there are, 
 And make colloquial happiness your care, 
 Preserve me from the thing I dread and hate, 
 A duel in the form of a debate. 
 Vociferated logic kills me quite, 
 A noisy man is always in the right.' 
 
 You know how much such a quotation as this would fall 
 in with my notions — averse as I am to loud and noisy 
 tones, and self-confident, overwhelming, and yet perhaps 
 very unsound arguments. And you will remember how 
 anxiously I dwelt upon this point while you were at 
 home. I have been in hopes that this half-year would 
 witness a great change in you in this respect. My 
 hopes, however, have been a little damped by something 
 which I heard last week through a friend, who seemed 
 to have received an impression that you had gained a 
 high distinction among the young gentlemen at Shelford 
 by the loudness and vehemence of your tones. Now, 
 my dear Tom, you cannot doubt that this gives me 
 painj and it does so not so much on account of the 
 thing itself, as because I consider it a pretty infaUible 
 test of the mind within. I do long and pray most 
 earnestly that the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit 
 may be substituted for vehemence and self-confidence, 
 and that you may be as much distinguished for the 
 former as you ever have been for the latter. It is a 
 school in which I am not willing that any child of mine 
 
Macaulay. 137 
 
 should take a high degree." The letter of the parent 
 called forth the following from the boy; and let the 
 masterliness of the boy's reply be noticed with regard to 
 the crime laid to his charge : — "Shelford, April 1 1, 18 14. — 
 My dear mamma, — The news is glorious indeed. Peace, 
 peace with a Bourbon, with a descendant of Henri 
 Quatre, with a prince who is bound to us by all the ties 
 of gratitude ! I have some hopes that it will be a lasting 
 peace, that the troubles of the last twenty years may 
 make kings and nations wiser. I cannot conceive a 
 greater punishment to Buonaparte than that which the 
 allies have inflicted on him. How can his ambitious 
 mind support it? All his great projects and schemes, 
 which once made every throne in Europe tremble, are 
 buried in the solitude of an Italian isle. How miracu- 
 lously everything has been conducted ! We almost seem 
 to hear the Almighty saying to the fallen tyrant, ' For 
 this cause have I raised thee up, that I might show in 
 thee my power.' As I am in very great haste with this 
 letter, I shall have but little time to write. I am sorry 
 to hear that some nameless friend of papa's denounced 
 my voice as remarkably loud. I have consequently 
 resolved to speak in a moderate key, except on the 
 undermentioned special occasions. Imprimis, when I am 
 speaking at the same time with three others. Secondly, 
 when I am praising the Christimi Observer.'^ Thirdly, 
 when I am praising Mr Preston or his sisters, I may be 
 allowed to speak in the loudest voice, that they may hear 
 me. I saw to-day that greatest of Churchmen, that 
 pillar of Orthodoxy, that true friend to the Liturgy, that 
 mortal enemy to the Bible Society — Herbert Marsh, 
 D.D., Professor of Divinity on Lady Margaret's founda- 
 tion." [With this gentleman Zachary Macaulay was at 
 * Of this periodical Zachary Macaulay was editor. 
 
13B Masters in History. 
 
 that time holding a bitter controversy, and he was loudly 
 denouncing him in the pages of the Christian Observer. 
 By seeming to justify the father's loud speaking, he 
 delicately suggests that the advice which he gives, it 
 might not be amiss to take. The son is not finding 
 fault with the parent's declamation !] ''I stood looking at 
 him for about ten minutes, and shall always continue to 
 maintain that he is a very ill-favoured gentleman as far 
 as outward appearance is concerned." 
 
 Instead of taking so seriously to heart the report that 
 was brought him of his son's loud talking, Zachary 
 Macaulay might have been very glad those who were 
 willing to speak evil of the boy had nothing worse to say. 
 Such as it was, this was the only occasion while Tom was 
 at school the elder Macaulay ever found it necessary to 
 call the youthful behaviour of his son in question. From 
 Shelford Mr Preston removed to Aspenden ; but neither 
 at the one place nor the other was there the slightest 
 fear of young Macaulay being led away by the influences 
 of his companions. At school he was undoubtedly 
 clever; but he cannot have been very popular. He 
 never joined his class-fellows in their sports, and he was 
 utterly unable to take part in any game. While they 
 were roistering in the play-ground or tumbling in the 
 park, he was busy with his books, and- gathering from all 
 quarters vast stores of knowledge. The secret of his 
 boundless acquirements was his quick, almost intuitive 
 discernment, and his extraordinary memory. "To the 
 end he read books faster than other people skimmed 
 them, and skimmed them as fast as anyone else could 
 turn the leaves." His intellectual appetite was simply 
 prodigious, and it was far from particular about the 
 pabulum set before it. Along with the best works of 
 genius was devoured the most miserable trash. It 
 
Macaulay. 1 39 
 
 mattered not what it was — Shakespeare or Mrs Meek — 
 what was read was hardly ever to be forgotten. Two 
 pieces of rhyme read in a provincial newspaper, as he 
 waited in a coffee-room at Cambridge for the post-chaise, 
 forty years afterwards he could recall word for word. 
 On an afternoon, visiting at a friend's house with his 
 father, he discovered on the table " The Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel." While the elder Macaulay talked, the son 
 was busy with the poem. He had no more than time to 
 peruse it once j but coming home, he was able to repeat 
 to his mother several cantos of the work. Once when 
 going over to Ireland, he beguiled the monotony of the 
 sea passage by reading over from his memory, as from a 
 book, the first half of '' Paradise Lost." He made the 
 boast that, if by any chance " Paradise Lost " and the 
 ''Pilgrim's Progress" were destroyed from the face of the 
 earth, he would undertake- t-o^ reproduce them both from 
 his recollection. No wonder some people would have 
 been proud ''to be as sure of anything as Tom Macaulay 
 was of everything." 
 
 Young Macaulay's first appearance in print happened 
 under somewhat peculiar circumstances. The views of the 
 son, on many things, differed from those of the father, 
 and novel-reading was one of the points on which they 
 were hopelessly at variance. On this subject the boy 
 addressed a letter to the editor of the Christian Observer, 
 defending works of fiction, and eulogising Fielding and 
 Smollett. This letter, Zachary Macaulay having incauti- 
 ously published, brought him a great deal of trouble. 
 The editor was placed in the position of having counten- 
 anced opinions which, in his editorial capacity, he should 
 have taken every pains to repress, and his embarrassment 
 was increased by the discovery of the fact that the letter 
 was from the pen of his son. In time the storm blew 
 
i2|.o Masters in History. 
 
 by, and as there can be no doubt the editor must have to 
 some extent sympathised with the temper of the letter 
 of his anonymous correspondent, the affair passed off with- 
 out father and son ever exchanging an angry word. 
 
 Strictly speaking, Macaulay cannot be said to have had 
 any intellectual childhood. While still a mere babe, he 
 expressed himself in the fashion of a man ; while still a 
 youth, he was possessed by the matured opinions that 
 are only formed in others by years and long experience \ 
 " the long dark nights and the sweet society of books," 
 two things which were the solace of De Quincey's age, 
 this Clapham boy found his special delight before he had 
 well entered on his teens. We might conceive the fol- 
 lowing to have been written by some old man of sixty- 
 five did we not know it to be the production of a youth 
 not yet fifteen : — 
 
 "Aspenden Hall, August 22, 181 5. Dear Sir, — I 
 know not whether ^peeping at the world through the 
 loopholes of retreat ' be the best way of forming us for 
 engaging in its busy and active scenes. I am sure it is 
 not a way to my taste. Poets may talk of the beauties 
 of nature, the enjoyments of a country life, and rural 
 innocence : but there is another kind of life which, though 
 unsung by bards, is yet to me infinitely superior to the 
 dull uniformity of country life. London is the place for 
 me. Its smoky atmosphere and its muddy river charm 
 me more than the pure air of Hertfordshire, and the crys- 
 tal currents of the river Rib. Nothing is equal to the 
 splendid varieties of London life, * the fine flow of Lon- 
 don talk,' and the dazzling brilliancy of London spec- 
 tacles. Such are my sentiments, and, if ever I publish 
 poetry, it shall not be pastoral. Nature is the last god- 
 dess to whom my devoirs shall be paid. — Yours most faith- 
 fully, Thomas B. Macaulay." 
 
Macaulay, 141 
 
 Mr Preston having done everything for Macaulay he 
 could, and the young man having done more for himself 
 than ever his master was able, in October 181 8 he en- 
 tered Trinity College, Cambridge. At first he lodged 
 and studied with Henry Sykes Thornton, the eldest son 
 of an intimate friend of his father. The two young men 
 were fast friends during their whole college career ; but 
 this primary arrangement was soon broken through, as 
 the studies of the men began to run in different chan- 
 nels. Mathematics were the passion of Thornton, but 
 already Macaulay had begun to regard " the hard-grained 
 muses of the cube and square " with positive aversion. 
 Removed to apartments within the walls of Trinity, he 
 was free to pursue the bent of his own mind, and into all 
 college life he entered with extraordinary zest. Getting 
 up his work with great ease and rapidity, he was ready 
 for conversation and debate with every caller. Sleep was 
 a secondary matter with the undergraduate ; rather than 
 run the risk of not seeing a friend off in the morning, he 
 would talk with him through the night, and he never 
 thought of repose as long as a taper glimmered from the 
 windows of a student's chamber. Greater reader than 
 ever, and harder student than before, he was by no means 
 either book-worm or pedant. Macaulay loved the society 
 of intimate friends as much as that of his books, and the 
 opinions derived from the latter he tested and aired in his 
 conversations with the former. His most intimate col- 
 lege acquaintances were Derwent Coleridge and Henry 
 Nelson, who afterwards became the brother-in-law of Der- 
 went. In the year beneath him were the undergraduates 
 who afterwards adorned the titles of Lord Grey, Lord 
 Belper, and Lord Romilly, and more especially was there 
 that remarkable spirit Charles Austin, at this time a stu- 
 dent of Jesus. People wondered at the vast influence of 
 
142 Masters in History, 
 
 Austin over Macaulay j they could not understand how a 
 man of but shght classical attainments could exercise any 
 power over a Craven scholar. But resent it as they 
 might, the influence was patent enough to all. When 
 Macaulay went to Cambridge he was a Tory, but when 
 he left it he was an unmistakable Whig. The explana- 
 tion of this change, and the source of those ideas that 
 coloured all his after life, are only to be found in his inti- 
 macy with Austin of Jesus. This young man was in 
 philosophy a utilitarian, in pohtics a radical, and in 
 church matters a dissenter. To his own philosophical 
 and political views Austin seems to have completely con- 
 verted Macaulay ; with his ideas of church government, 
 however, he could never wholly indoctrinate the mind 
 of his friend — his eloquence and subtlety could not destroy 
 Macaulay's faith in a National establishment, although 
 there are not wanting evidences, they shook it very con- 
 siderably. When afterwards* Macaulay, confessing him- 
 self a supporter of the EstabHshed Church, yet declared 
 if all were rich and there were no poor in the country he 
 would be a Voluntary, it would seem to us that Austin 
 only needed to have been at very little more pains indeed 
 to have made the opinions of his friend square with his 
 own on this matter also. There can never be more than 
 the slightest boundary between men whose only differ- 
 ence consists in the views they hold on the paltry subject 
 of how their ministers should be paid. 
 
 With these and other companions Macaulay spent his 
 time at Cambridge most happily. They attended classes 
 in the morning, they strolled in the afternoon, they read 
 in the evening, they fed on roast turkey and milk -punch 
 at midnight, and when occasion would allow, they spent 
 the small hours sauntering in the moonlight. These 
 * Speech, June 6, 1854. 
 
Macaulay. 143 
 
 college days Macaulay never forgot — each recollection of 
 them brought him a separate pleasure. They afforded 
 him a never-failing subject of talk for his whole life. 
 One morning, in subsequent years, Austin and he 
 happened, at Lord Lansdowne's, to fall on college topics 
 after breakfast. The result was, both men drew their 
 chairs to either end of the chimney-piece, and talking at 
 each other across the hearth-rug, they kept their com- 
 panions of the breakfast-table — ladies, artists, politi- 
 cians, and diners-out — an unbroken company until the 
 sounding of the dinner-gong. Trevelyan says : " The 
 only dignity, in his later days, he was known to covet, 
 was an honorary fellowship which would have allowed 
 him again to look through his window upon the college 
 grass-plots, and to sleep within sound of the splashing of 
 the fountain ; again to breakfast on commons, and dine 
 beneath the portraits of Newton and Bacon on the dais 
 of the hall; again to ramble by moonlight round 
 Neville's cloister, discoursing the picturesque but some- 
 what exoteric philosophy which it pleased him to call by 
 the name of metaphysics. From the door of his rooms, 
 along the wall of the chapel, there runs a flagged path- 
 way, which affords an acceptable relief from the rugged 
 pebbles that surround it. Here, as a Bachelor of Arts, 
 he would walk, book in hand, morning after morning, 
 throughout the long vacation, reading with the same 
 eagerness and the same rapidity whether the volume was 
 the most abstruse of treatises, the loftiest of poems, or 
 the flimsiest of novels. That was the spot where, in his 
 failing years, he loved to renew the feelings of the past ; 
 and there are those who can never revisit it without the 
 fancy that there, if anywhere, his dear shade must linger." 
 In his college studies Macaulay won many special 
 victories. He twice gained the Chancellor's medal for 
 
144 Masters in History. 
 
 the best poem. This prize he also lost once. On that 
 occasion the subject was "Waterloo," but Macaulay's 
 poem, though one of marked abiUty, was shaped from 
 too simple a model to satisfy the requirements of univer- 
 sity culture. He also gained the ten pound prize given 
 to " the Junior Bachelor of Trinity College who wrote 
 the best essay on the Conduct and Character of William 
 the Third." For the most part, university essays are at 
 best but crude performances, but in his paper on William, 
 the undergraduate showed he had in him the genuine 
 stuff which goes to the making of a great historian. We 
 cannot but acknowledge the force and promise of such a 
 passage as the following : — " To have been a sovereign, 
 yet the champion of liberty \ a revolutionary leader, yet 
 the supporter of social order, is the peculiar glory of 
 William. He knew where to pause. He outraged no 
 national prejudice. He abolished no ancient form. He 
 altered no venerable name. He saw that the existing in- 
 stitutions possessed the greatest capabilities of excellence, 
 and that stronger sanctions and clearer definitions were 
 alone required to make the practice of the British con- 
 stitution as admirable as the theory. Thus he imparted 
 to innovation the dignity and stability of antiquity. He 
 transferred to a happier order of things the associations 
 which had attached the people to their former govern- 
 ment. As the Roman warrior, before he assaulted Veii, 
 invoked its guardian gods to leave its walls, and to accept 
 the worship and patronise the cause of the besiegers, this 
 great prince, in attacking a system of oppression, sum- 
 moned to his aid the venerable principles and deeply- 
 seated feelings to which that system was indebted for 
 protection." It is worth while contrasting the views 
 and expression of the undergraduate with the matured 
 opinions and formed style of the historian. We can 
 
Macau lay. 145 
 
 hardly mistake the Ten Pound Prizeman in the following 
 passage : — " The highest eulogy * which can be pro- 
 nounced on the revolution of 1688 is this, that it was 
 our last revolution. Several generations have now 
 passed away since any wise and patriotic Englishman 
 has meditated resistance to the estabHshed government. 
 In all honest and reflecting minds there is a conviction, 
 daily strengthened by experience, that the means of 
 effecting every improvement which the constitution 
 requires may be found within the constitution itself. 
 Now, if ever, we ought to be able to appreciate the 
 whole importance of the stand which was made by our 
 forefathers against the house of Stuart. All round us 
 the world is convulsed by the agonies of great nations. 
 Governments, which lately seemed likely to stand during 
 ages, have been, on a sudden, shaken and overthrown. 
 The proudest capitals of Western Europe have streamed 
 with civil blood. All evil passions, the thirst of gain 
 and the thirst of vengeance, the antipathy of class to 
 class, the antipathy of race to race, have broken loose 
 from the control of divine and human laws. Fear and 
 anxiety have clouded the faces and depressed the hearts 
 of millions. Trade has been suspended and industry 
 paralysed. The rich have become poor, and the poor 
 have become poorer, doctrines hostile to all sciences, to all 
 acts, to all industry, to all domestic charities, — doctrines 
 which, if carried into effect, would, in thirty years, undo 
 all that thirty centuries had done for mankind, and 
 would make the fairest provinces of France and Germany 
 as savage as Congo or Patagonia, — have been avowed 
 from the tribune and defended by the sword. Europe 
 has been threatened with subjugation by barbarians, com- 
 pared wdth whom the barbarians who marched under 
 * " History of England," chap. x. 
 
146 Masters in History. 
 
 Attila and Alboin were enlightened and humane. The 
 truest friends of the people have, with deep sorrow, 
 owned that interests more precious than any political 
 privileges were in jeopardy, and that it might be neces- 
 sary to sacrifice even liberty in order to save civilisation. 
 Meanwhile, in our island, the regular course of govern- 
 ment has never been for a day interrupted. The few 
 bad men who longed for license and plunder have not 
 had the courage to confront for one moment the strength 
 of a loyal nation, rallied in formidable array round a 
 parental throne. And if it be asked what has made us 
 to differ from others, the answer is, that we never lost 
 what others are wildly and blindly seeking to regain. It 
 is because we had a preserving revolution in the seven- 
 teenth century that we have not had a destroying revolu- 
 tion in the nineteenth. It is because we had freedom in 
 the midst of servitude that we have order in the midst of 
 anarchy. For the authority of law, for the security of 
 property, for the peace of our streets, for the happiness 
 of our homes, our gratitude is due, under Him who 
 raises and pulls down nations at His pleasure, to the 
 long Parliament, to the Convention, and to William of 
 Orange." 
 
 The chief successes of Macaulay's university life were 
 summed up in his Craven Scholarship and his Fellow- 
 ship. For the latter of the two honours he had to com- 
 pete three times. This was owing to his deficiency in 
 mathematics, which study was to him the one bitter 
 element in all his Cambridge life. So far from finding 
 it a mental discipHne, he held it the embodiment of 
 " starvation, confinement, torture, annihilation." It went 
 against the grain of his nature, and he considered it dead- 
 ened his perceptions of elegance and beauty. It made 
 bis brain " as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage." 
 
Macaulay. 147 
 
 He confessed to his mother a vague fear of becoming in 
 the course of time a personification of Algebra, or a 
 living trigometrical canon, or probably a walking table 
 of logarithms ! It is very usual with university men to 
 exalt those subjects in which they have excelled, but, like 
 Grote, this was a mistake into which Macaulay never 
 fell. He was ever as willing to acknowledge differences 
 in intellectual as in sesthetical tastes ; and although he 
 could find no pleasure in mathematical pursuits, he had 
 a due appreciation of the science, and of the merits of a 
 senior wrangler. Another mistake also, and one which 
 presents special temptations to students who have dis- 
 tinguished themselves in their university career, he never 
 fell into — he never estimated academical honours above 
 their intrinsic value. He clearly perceived the great 
 error which men make who look upon them as ends and 
 not as encouragements to learning. He saw that very 
 often obscurity in a university career was succeeded by 
 obscurity in life, but he also perceived that the defeats of 
 the genuine student might have on his character as salu- 
 tary effect as his triumphs. Nothing could be better 
 than the following passage, which, while it was the pro- 
 duct of his later years, embodies those mature views of 
 university culture he entertained as early as his own 
 student days : — " If a man," says Macaulay, " brings 
 away from Cambridge self-knowledge, accuracy of mind, 
 and habits of strong intellectual exertion, he has gained 
 more than if he had made a display of showy superficial 
 Etonian scholarship, got three or four Brown's medals, 
 and gone forth into the world a schoolboy to the last. 
 After all, what a man does at Cambridge is in itself 
 nothing. If he make a poor figure in life, his having 
 been senior wrangler or university scholar is never men- 
 tioned but with derision. If he make a distinguished 
 
148 Masters in History. 
 
 figure, his early honours merge in those of a later date. 
 I hope I do not overrate my own place in the estimation 
 of society. Such as it is. I would not give a halfpenny to 
 add to the consideration which I enjoy all the considera- 
 tion I should derive from having been senior wrangler. 
 But I often regret, and even acutel)^, my want of a senior 
 wrangler's knowledge of physics and mathematics ; and I 
 regret still more some habits of mind which a senior 
 wrangler is pretty sure to possess." 
 
 In 1826, Macaulay was called to the bar, but Httle as 
 he had liked mathematics he was to like law even less ; and 
 being all his life dead against entering into any pursuit 
 which did not go with his grain, he got no business to 
 speak of either in London or on circuit, and his law life 
 cannot be said to form any real period in his biography. 
 While a barrister he was oftener to be found under the 
 gallery of the House than in chambers or court, and he 
 soon began to busy himself in other fields altogether. 
 In 1823 Macaulay having met a number of his former 
 university friends at Cambridge, they got set afloat 
 Knight's Quarterly Magazine. To this Macaulay contri- 
 buted largely for some time j but very soon his services 
 were in demand in another and higher quarter. The 
 Edinburgh Review had already been in existence for a 
 quarter of a century ; but although it had attained a great 
 circulation and wide influence, Jeffrey's vigilant mind 
 was troubled by perceiving certain elements of decay. 
 The old writers were getting every year more feeble, and 
 the young men about Edinburgh being for the most part 
 Tories, the editor wrote to a friend in London to see " if 
 he could not lay his hand on some clever young man 
 who could write for us." The search set afoot was re- 
 warded by the discovery of Macaulay j and in the August 
 of the same year in which the " clever young man " was 
 
Macaulay. 149 
 
 unearthed by Jeffrey's literary detectives, the essay on 
 Milton appeared in the Edinburgh. In that paper " the 
 negligent search of a struggling gleaner had been re- 
 warded with a sheaf" * indeed. In acknowledging the 
 manuscript, ''The more I think," said Jeffrey, "the less 
 I can conceive where you picked up that style." The pub- 
 lication of the essay brought the young writer immediately 
 into notice, and Murray declared it would be worth the 
 copyright of " Childe Harold" to have Macaulay on the 
 staff of the Quarterly. Exuberant in spirit, redundant 
 in imagery, profuse in language, often flashy in style, its 
 general construction condemned by the maturer judg- 
 ment of the author, " Milton " is still a splendid produc- 
 tion, and a worthy beginning to that matchless series of 
 essays in which the genius of Macaulay is as fully ex- 
 pressed as in his " History of England." 
 
 Awaking on that August morning to find himself 
 famous, we may conceive the lion hunters of the metro- 
 polis must for the most part have been sadly disappointed 
 when they came in sight of their quarry. What Gabriel 
 was " to the unarmed youth of heaven who about him 
 exercised heroic games," they certainly did not find 
 Macaulay to be to the literary aspirants of his time. He 
 had a short, squat figure — impertinently upright, some 
 have said, by a long continued habit of looking up to 
 bigger men — and a face square and homely, except when 
 in conversation, on which occasions it reflected every 
 mood and change of his mind. He loved to have his 
 wardrobe fully stocked, but his clothes never seemed to 
 fit him, and he never had the appearance of being well 
 dressed. His neckcloth was always badly tied, and his 
 hand thrust awkwardly into his waistcoat pocket. Lady 
 Holland, for one, was disappointed with the new writer. 
 * Macaulay 's " Essay on Milton." 
 
1 50 Masters in History. 
 
 The first time she met him at Holland House she could 
 not conceal her chagrin. " Mr Macaulay," said her lady- 
 ship, "you are so different to what I expected. I 
 thought you were dark and thin, but you are fair, and 
 really, Mr Macaulay, you are fat." 
 
 In society the plainness of his personal appearance 
 was lost in the brilliancy of his conversation, and all 
 bluntness of deportment was forgotten as soon as people 
 came to understand the kindliness of his heart. His 
 generosity was unbounded, and occasionally indiscri- 
 minate j but it was a passion he never extended to writers 
 of bad poetry or to political opponents. Every offence 
 against his literary taste he punished without mercy, and 
 the man was his enemy who either questioned his 
 scholarship or opposed his particular poHtical views. 
 To those he loved, he was as sweet as honey; but to 
 those he hated, he was as cold as ice. This spirit must 
 have made him an uncongenial companion on many 
 occasions, and the traces to be found of its operation 
 have in many instances disfigured his prose. Croker, he 
 said, he hated more than cold veal. The " Shepherd " 
 was right when he remarked on Macaulay's paper on that 
 gentleman's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, " Fee ! 
 faw ! fum ! I smell the bluid o' a pairty man." * Wil- 
 son's attacks might have put a less eager spirit than 
 Macaulay out of temper, but the latter was only rude when 
 he said, " I can't stand your cock-fighting, cudgel-play- 
 ing, grog-drinking Professor of Moral Philosophy." 
 
 After leaving the university, Macaulay's only regular 
 income was from his fellowship, and that did not amount 
 to ;£"3oo a-year. In 1828, however, he was appointed 
 by Lord Lyndhurst to a Commissionership of Bank- 
 ruptcy ; and this office bringing him about ;£'6oo annually, 
 * "Noctes Ambrosianse," Vol. III., p. 328. 
 
Macaulay. 151 
 
 put away from him for the present many disturbing 
 thoughts about the future. It would appear that, 
 Macaulay being the son of a Tory family, the party had not 
 yet given up hopes of winning him over to their cause. 
 All doubt about the side which the young man was to 
 take was, however, very soon set at rest, for in 1830, he 
 accepted the influence of Lord Lansdowne, and took his 
 seat in the Whig interest for the burgh of Calne. 
 
 Before entering ParHament, besides his paper on 
 Milton, he had contributed to the pages of the Edinburgh 
 Review articles on MachiavelH, Hallam's " Constitutional 
 History," and Southey's " Colloquies /' and all three being 
 distinguished by the ability and vivacity which had cha- 
 racterised his first contribution to that periodical, the 
 public curiosity was piqued as to how the new author 
 was likely to show himself in the presence of his betters. 
 Macaulay was quite aware that the assembly of which he 
 was now a member, was one, of all popular gatherings, 
 the most fickle either to address or command. He was 
 also aware that a man's success in other departments 
 was rather a reason for expecting him to fail than suc- 
 ceed in the House of Commons. " A place where Wal- 
 pole succeeded and Addison failed ; where Dundas 
 succeeded and Burke failed \ where Peel succeeds and 
 Mackintosh fails; where Erskine and Scarlett were dinner- 
 bells ; and where Lawrence and Jekyll, the two wittiest 
 men, or nearly so, of their time, are thought bores," — was 
 surely a strange place enough, and fitted to try any man's 
 metal. In this, " the most peculiar assembly in all the 
 world," Macaulay was destined to act a great part. He 
 was never a parliamentary debater in the strict sense of 
 the words ; the secret of his success was owing to the 
 facility with which he could give forth his carefully-pre- 
 pared speeches, word for word as they were composed in 
 
152 Masters in History. 
 
 his study, and as if they had been extemporaneous utter- 
 ances. He wanted the power of seizing on the circum- 
 stances of the occasion — his method prevented any indul- 
 gence in the repartee, the sarcasm, or the invective that 
 is born of the moment ; but the elegant address, the 
 studied antithesis, the lucid argument, and the culminat- 
 ing oratory, triumphed over all other considerations, and 
 ever gave him the full house and the rapt assembly. On 
 the 5th of April 1830 he addressed the House for the 
 first time. The question before Parliament was the Re- 
 moval of Jewish Disabilities. The new member for 
 Calne was heard with respect and attention throughout. 
 His straightforward manner secured to him at once 
 what he had on every successive occasion, the sympathy 
 of his audience ; and the following from his maiden 
 speech may be taken as a fair specimen of his spoken 
 essays to the House of Commons : — " The power of 
 which you deprive the Jew consists in maces and gold 
 chains, and skins of parchment with pieces of wax 
 dangling from their edges. The power which you leave 
 the Jew is the power of principal over clerk, of master 
 over servant, of landlord over tenant. As things now 
 stand, a Jew may be the richest man in England. He 
 may possess the means of raising this party and depress- 
 ing that : of making East India directors : of making 
 members of Parliament. The influence of a Jew may be 
 of the first consequence in a war which shakes Europe to 
 its centre. His power may come into play in assisting or 
 thwarting the greatest plans of the greatest princes ; 
 and yet, with all this confessed, acknowledged, undenied, 
 you would have him deprived of power ! Does not wealth 
 confer power ? How are we to permit all the consequences 
 of that wealth but one ? I cannot conceive the nature 
 of an argument that is to bear out that position. If we 
 
Macaulay, 153 
 
 were to be called on to revert to the day when the 
 warehouses of Jews were torn down and pillaged, the 
 theory would be comprehensible. But we have to 
 do with a persecution so delicate, that there is no ab- 
 stract rule for its guidance. You tell us the Jews have 
 no legal right to power, and I am bound to admit it ; 
 but, in the same way, three hundred years ago they had 
 no legal right to be in England, and six hundred years 
 ago they had no legal right to the teeth in their heads. 
 But, if it is the moral right we are to look at, I hold on 
 every principle of moral obligation the Jew has a right to 
 political power." There spoke the genuine Liberal. 
 
 Entering with great spirit into every phase of parlia- 
 mentary life for a time, he seems specially to have en- 
 joyed the elegant society into which his position in the 
 House and his literary reputation gave him the entree. 
 In fact, during his first years in the Commons, he became 
 an inveterate " diner-out," and in the quiet and refine- 
 ment of Holland House he ever found a most agreeable 
 retreat. In this literary haunt he associated with all the 
 leading men of his time, and on his every visit Lady 
 Holland received him with a graciousness she manifested 
 to few. Macaulay admired her ladyship's talents and 
 acquirements; but particularly the order in which she 
 kept her multitudinous guests. " It is to one," said he 
 in a letter to his sister; "it is to one 'Go,' and he goeth ; 
 and to another ' Do this,' and it is done. ' Ring the 
 bell, Mr Macaulay.' 'Lay down that screen. Lord 
 Russell ; you will spoil it.' ' Mr Allen, take a candle 
 and show Mr Cradock the picture of Buonaparte.'" In 
 those stirring years he met at Holland House many whose 
 reputation was of a purely literary character, and with 
 such he formed intimacies of a more or less enduring 
 kind. The sight of a Tory awakened in him bitterness 
 
154 Masters in History. 
 
 and resentment ; but he could always respect a man who 
 was a scholar, a poet, or a philosopher. Rogers, Lubrell, 
 and Moore he learned to esteem ; Sydney Smith he 
 respected in a distant, half-hearted way j Mackintosh was 
 a favourite ; but Mr Thomas Flower Ellis, from similarity 
 of character and compatibility of tastes, he loved above 
 all others, and the friendship thus early formed survived 
 to the last. As the years went by, London society grew 
 to have for him less and less attraction ; and, in his later 
 years, his former friends lamented his domesticated 
 habits and secluded life. In the brilliant society into 
 which he was drawn in his early parliamentary days, the 
 future Historian of England moved a strange figure. 
 Associating on terms of equality with wealthy aristocrats, 
 he was yet a poor man j and while his fame was in all 
 the clubs as a great parliamentary debater, he was selling 
 the gold medals he had gained at the University to keep 
 himself out of debt : having been a hero in some pro- 
 longed party-fight, he would retire to his chambers to 
 sup on bread and cheese and " a glass of the audit ale 
 which reminded him he was still a fellow of Trinity." 
 
 Macaulay's financial position was to him for some 
 time a source of very great uneasiness. To discharge 
 his duties in Parliament properly and without suspicion 
 he saw how absolutely necessary it v/as he should be 
 possessed of an independent income. He could not 
 bear to be taunted as a place-hunter or a time-server; 
 and it must be confessed, that his greatest enemies might 
 have no reason to impute motives, he was often while in 
 office unnecessarily opinionative and unbending, and not 
 seldom too ready to put his resignation in the hands of 
 ministers. Little as his income was at this time (1830-32) 
 it was likely soon to be less. Lord Brougham could 
 never brook a rival, and being nearly omnipotent in 
 
Macaulay. i55 
 
 the Edinhurgh Review, he did what he could to ruin 
 Macaulay's connection with the periodical. When the 
 essay on Hallam was published he complained to Jeffrey, 
 and when the first paper on Mill appeared " he foamed 
 with rage." Matters came to a head when Macaulay, 
 having agreed to write an article on the French Re- 
 volution, had to abandon the idea because Brougham 
 subsequently expressed his willingness to write on the 
 subject. Macaulay was justly chagrined at the cool 
 assumption of his rival, and wrote to Macvey Napier, 
 now the editor, that his connection with the Review—^ 
 connection which had been to him a source of pleasure 
 and pride— must now terminate, seeing it had now be- 
 come '' a source of humiliation and mortification." 
 Napier was sufficient for the situation, and Macaulay 
 was induced to reconsider his verdict. It is questionable, 
 however, if the editor would have been so successful as 
 he was, had all minor considerations of his contributor 
 not been sunk in his great sorrow over the sudden and 
 unexpected death of his sister Jane. This event not 
 only gave Macaulay a great shock— for never a brother 
 was more tenderly attached to sisters— but it was also 
 the original cause of his mother's death in the year 
 succeeding (1832). 
 
 A further change in Macaulay's family affairs occurred 
 about this time ; his sister Margaret was married to Mr 
 John Cropper, a gentleman who belonged to the Society 
 of Friends. Macaulay, who had taken a keen pleasure 
 in the company of his sisters, and loved them with 
 excessive fondness, felt these separations deeply. What- 
 ever he had been in the world, he had always been a boy 
 with them; but from the time of the marriage of his 
 sister Margaret, a certain vivacity which characterized 
 his domestic intercourse left him completely. He had 
 
156 Masters in History. 
 
 never counted on the precariousness of sisterly affection, 
 and a certain misery stole in about the springs of his life, 
 bringing with it something of regret that he had never 
 laid out for himself a larger scheme of existence. By 
 and by the brooding left him, and he awakened to the 
 better mind j but if much had been lost to him, still he 
 was ready manfully to confess, "to repine against the 
 nature of things, and against the great fundamental law 
 of all society, because in consequence of my own want 
 of foresight it happens to bear heavily on me, would be 
 the basest and most absurd selfishness." Macaulay's 
 life has no love story, unless what the tale of his affection 
 for his sisters conveys. After Margaret he had still 
 Hannah preserved to him; but let her be taken, and 
 then nothing remained to him but his study and his 
 books, and the gratification of a large and honourable 
 ambition. 
 
 On the 7th June 1832, the Reform Bill passed through 
 Parliament. Its provisions had long been matter of 
 eager debate, and the furtherance of the measure had 
 been owing not a little to the eloquence of Macaulay. 
 In acknowledgment of his exertions he was appointed 
 one of the Commissioners of the Board of Control, 
 "which represented the Crown in its relation to the 
 East India Directors." In his letters to his sisters 
 Macaulay shows again and again he could write and 
 embody the substance of his news in verse as readily as 
 in prose, and soon after this appointment, he was able to 
 make the following satisfactory communication to his 
 sister Hannah : — 
 
 " Next Wednesday will be quarter-day ; 
 And then, if Fm alive. 
 Of sterling pound I shall receive 
 Three hundred seventy-five. 
 
Macattlay. 157 
 
 " Already I possess in cash. 
 Two hundred twenty-four, 
 Besides what I have lent to John, 
 Which makes up twenty more. 
 
 " Also the man who editeth 
 The Yellow and the Blue 
 Doth owe me ninety pounds at least 
 All for my last review. 
 
 " So if my debtors pay their debts, 
 You'll find, dear sister, mine, 
 That all my wealth together makes 
 Seven hundred pounds and nine." 
 
 At the general election, after the passing of the Reform 
 Act, Macaulay was returned for Leeds; and in the 
 August of 1833 he was able to communicate to his sister 
 the news of his appointment to a place in the Supreme 
 Council of India. In those days India had a worse 
 name than it has now ; it was held in a kind of vague 
 terror, and seemed much further away. The situation, 
 however, was one which was attended with advantages 
 which could by no means be lightly regarded. The 
 emoluments of the office were such as to secure his 
 return j and a permanent competency at the end of a 
 very short period. The salary was ten thousand pounds 
 a-year, and he expected to live on half that sum, and to 
 be able to return to England at thirty-nine master of a 
 fortune of thirty thousand. " I am not fond of money," 
 said he, '' nor anxious about it ; but though every day 
 makes me less and less eager for wealth, every day 
 shows me more and more strongly how necessary a com- 
 petency is to a man who desires to be either great or 
 useful. At present the plain fact is, that I continue to 
 •be a public man only while I can continue in office. If 
 I left my place in Government, I must leave my seat in 
 
158 Masters in History, 
 
 Parliament too. For I must live. I can live only by my 
 pen; and it is absolutely impossible for any man to 
 write enough to procure him a decent subsistence, and 
 at the same time to take an active part in politics. I 
 have not during this session been able to send a single 
 line to the Edinburgh Review ; and, if I had been out of 
 office, I should have been able to do very little. . . . 
 Now, in order to live like a gentleman, it would be 
 necessary for me to write, not as I have done hitherto, 
 but regularly, and even daily. I have never made more 
 than two hundred a-year by my pen. I could not sup- 
 port myself in comfort on less than five hundred j and I 
 shall in all probability have many others to support. 
 The prospects of our family are, if possible, darker 
 than ever." 
 
 Apart from the articles already named, up to the 
 beginning of 1834, he had written for the Review his 
 essays on Johnson, Hamden, Bunyan, Byron, Robert 
 Montgomery, Burleigh, and Pitt. Some of these articles 
 it was thought Macaulay would never surpass, and his 
 friends despaired of him ever doing anything better than 
 Walpole ; they did not know he was yet to excel all his 
 former performances. 
 
 On the 15th February 1834 Macaulay left England, and 
 on the loth June his vessel was anchored off Madras. On 
 his arrival, he hastened to join Lord William Bentinck 
 in the Neilgherries. In this beautiful Indian retreat, 
 " where thickets of rhododendrons fill the glades and 
 clothe the ridges," he spent two months. Of Indian 
 scenery he gives us little or no description. In India, 
 as in England, his heart was never in the country. He 
 was a man of the town, and to all the sights and scenes 
 of rural life he was wholly indifferent. He could excel 
 in character and assembly painting, but he was a novice 
 
Macatday. 159 
 
 in landscape. The senses of atmosphere and sunlight 
 he hardly possessed. Of music he knew as little as 
 Johnson ; and unless on one occasion, when he was able 
 to identify The Campbells are Coinin\ he was never known 
 to distinguish one tune from another. We are com- 
 pletely in want, both in Macaulay's poetry and prose, of 
 evidence that the contemplation of natural scenery ever 
 filled him with a thrill of real delight. We have plenty 
 of proof that his imagination was stimulated by his Indian 
 sojourn, but it was the history, the worship, the great 
 cities, the architectural splendours, and the millions of 
 the population that acted on his ideal faculty ; and not 
 by any means either the rolling rivers, the vast plains, or 
 the towering mountains of our Eastern Empire. Tre- 
 velyan says he was touched by the glories of the Indian 
 forests. This may have been so j but for our part we have 
 discovered little traces of any permanent impression. 
 
 After two months stay in the hills he joined his sister 
 Hannah at Calcutta, and they set up house for them- 
 selves on a style even more handsome than that required 
 of them. Not many months had gone of their Indian 
 life when his sister married Mr Trevelyan. In their 
 Calcutta house they lived altogether; but the joy of the 
 weeks immediately succeeding the marriage was terribly 
 damped by the news of Mrs Cropper's death. " There 
 were not ten people in the world," said Macaulay at one 
 time, " whose deaths would spoil my dinner ; but there 
 are one or two whose deaths would break my heart." 
 Of these " one or two " Margaret was one. In the pre- 
 sence of the young married couple he bore up as best 
 he could, and he tried to drown his sorrow " in floods of 
 official work." He was afraid to leave his mind to its 
 own thoughts, to pass an hour without something to do, 
 a friend near him, or a book before him. 
 
i6o Masters in History. 
 
 To the work of the Supreme Council, Macaulay ren- 
 dered substantial aid, and he gave an impetus to educa- 
 tion in India which still survives ; but amid many advan- 
 tages, and in the enjoyment of even larger savings than 
 he had anticipated, he was not long in casting longing 
 thoughts to the West and the civilisation of England. 
 But what to do with himself after he got back was as yet 
 very far from clear. In a vague way the idea of his 
 History was rising in his mind. To his friend Ellis he 
 wrote : — " What my course of life will be when I return 
 to England is very doubtful. But I am more than half 
 determined to abandon politics and to give myself wholly 
 to letters ; to undertake some great historical work which 
 may be at once the business and the amusement of my 
 life; and to leave the pleasures of pestiferous rooms, 
 sleepless nights, aching heads, and diseased stomachs, to 
 -Roebuck and to Praed. . . . For what is it that the 
 politician submits, day after day, to see the morning break 
 over the Thames, and then totters home, with bursting 
 temples, to his bed ? Is it for fame ? Who would com- 
 pare the fame of Charles Townshend to that of Hume, 
 that of Lord North to that of Gibbon, that of Lord 
 Chatham to that of Johnson ? Who can look back on 
 the life of Burke, and not regret that the years which he 
 passed in ruining his health and temper by political 
 exertions were not passed in the composition of some 
 great and durable work ? Who can read the letters of 
 Atticus, and not feel that Cicero would have been an 
 infinitely happier and better man, and a not less cele- 
 brated man, if he had left us fewer speeches, and more 
 Academic Questions and Tusculan Disputations ? if he 
 had passed the time which he spent in brawling with 
 Vatinius and Clodius in producing a History of Rome 
 superior even to that of Livy ? But these are medita- 
 
Macaulay. 1 6 1 
 
 tions in a quiet garden, situated far beyond the con- 
 tagious influence of English faction. What I might feel 
 if I again saw Downing Street and Palace Yard is 
 another question. 
 
 During his Indian exile, Macaulay kept himself before 
 the English public by his articles on Mackintosh's 
 " History of the Revolution " and " Lord Bac on." The 
 latter was composed with great pains ; every sentence of 
 the second portion of the paper was recast, and some of 
 them repeatedly. It forms his most exhaustive essay. 
 In this production the student marks that the writer 
 has attained the excellency of literary power. There are 
 many details, but nothing positively wearisome. Deep 
 subjects are touched upon, but all is simple and clear. 
 Nothing is left out, nothing forgotten, and the literary 
 fabric is closely woven throughout. After reading the 
 MS., Jeifrey said : " Since Lord Bacon himself, I do not 
 know that there has been anything so fine." 
 
 In the beginning of January 1838 Macaulay, along 
 with the Trevelyans, set out for England, but they did 
 not arrive in London until June. While the Lord 
 Hu7igerford had been making a slow passage through 
 the southern seas, Zachary Macaulay died, and was 
 buried in Westminster. On a pedestal, bearing his bust, 
 we have all the biography we will ever likely have of his 
 devoted life. The inscription says he was a man who, 
 
 DURING FORTY SUCCESSIVE YEARS, PARTAKING IN THE 
 COUNSELS AND THE LABOURS WHICH, GUIDED BY FAVOUR- 
 ING PROVIDENCE, RESCUED AFRICA FROM THE WOES, AND 
 THE BRITISH EMPIRE FROM THE GUILT, OF SLAVERY AND 
 THE SLAVE TRADE, MEEKLY ENDURED THE TOIL, THE 
 PRIVATION, AND THE REPROACH, RESIGNING TO OTHERS 
 THE PRAISE AND THE REWARD. 
 
 Macaulay found his native land much as he had left 
 (2.) L 
 
1 62 Masters in History. 
 
 it, only Napier was more eager than ever for articles, and 
 the wrath of Lord Brougham had risen to open fury. 
 The idea of the history he had first cherished in India 
 grew upon him so soon as he found himself amongst the 
 libraries of London, and began to take a definite shape. 
 We find him writing again to ElHs : " As soon as I 
 return from Rome I shall seriously commence my history. 
 The first part (which, I think, will take up five volumes), 
 will extend from the Revolution to the commencement 
 of Sir Robert Walpole's long administration — a period of 
 three or four and thirty very eventful years. From the 
 commencement of Walpole's administration to the com- 
 mencement of the American war, events may be de- 
 spatched more concisely. From the commencement of 
 the American war it will again become copious. These, 
 at least, are my present notions." 
 
 The tour to Italy, referred to above, was an excursion 
 from which he derived the utmost pleasure, and while 
 he lingered at Florence his vanity was flattered by a 
 letter from Lord Melbourne offering him the post of 
 Judge Advocate, with an attached salary of ;£"2 5oo a 
 year. The offer he declined. Nothing short of the 
 Cabinet was now to satisfy his ambition. During his 
 journey his spirit caught fire from the scenes of classical 
 story, and in the course of his progress he seems to have 
 composed a good deal of poetry, and sketched the outline 
 of his Lays on the very ground where the deeds of valour 
 they celebrate were done. We have already spoken of the 
 musings of Gibbon and Grote amid the ruins of ancient 
 Rome, but Macaulay's, on comparison, will be found to 
 be very different from both. The decay of the Eternal 
 City was to him a prophecy of the decay of the English 
 Capital. " Yet to indulge in a sort of reflection, which 
 I often fall into here, the day may come when London, 
 
Macaulay. 163 
 
 then dwindled into the dimensions of the parish of St 
 Martin's, and supported in its decay by the expenditure 
 of wealthy Patagonians and New Zealanders, may have 
 no more important questions to decide than the arrange- 
 ment of ' Afflictions sore long time I bore ' on the grave- 
 stone of the wife of some baker in Houndsditch." The 
 thought of this sentence finds more elegant and elaborate 
 expression in his essay on Von Ranke's " History of the 
 Popes," and it will satisfy the curious to know that it is 
 in this essay that the celebrated individual known by the 
 name of Macaulay' s New Zealander is introduced : 
 "The members of the Roman CathoHc Church are 
 certainly not fewer than a hundred and fifty millions ; 
 and it will be difficult to show that all the other Chris- 
 tian sects united amount to a hundred and twenty 
 millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that 
 the term of her long dominion is approaching. She saw 
 the commencement of all the governments and of all 
 the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the 
 world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined 
 to see the end of them all. She was great and respected 
 before the Saxon had set foot in Britain, before the Frank 
 had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still 
 flourished in Antioch, when idols were still w^orshipped 
 in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in 
 undiminished vigour when some traveller from New 
 Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his 
 stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the 
 ruins of St Paul's." In Rome he busied himself with 
 other things than merely sight-seeing. He amused him- 
 self with Lytton's novels, studied hard at Gibbon, 
 elaborated Horatius, and " thought a good deal about 
 his history," feeling what Gibbon felt, that one of the 
 great difficulties was to get a good beginning. 
 
164 Masters in History. 
 
 In the first week of February 1839, Macaulay was in 
 London once more. The first thing he did was to buy 
 Mr Gladstone's new book on the " Connection of Church 
 and State," and on the April following he reviewed it in 
 the Edinhurgh. He found no difficulty in showing the 
 absurdity of many of Mr Gladstone's high Episcopalian 
 notions, and he was not slow to vindicate the position of 
 the Church of Scotland, which was, even thus early, an 
 object of Mr Gladstone's aversion. When we remember 
 that Gladstone was at this time a Tory of the Tories we 
 cannot but commend the uniform courtesy of the Whig 
 Reviewer. In such a paper we are tempted to look for 
 some expression of Macaulay' s own religious views, but 
 as the article judges the EstabHshments both north and 
 south of the Tweed in a strictly utilitarian spirit, we seek 
 in vain. The " Shepherd " said " Macaulay can hae nae 
 principle — that's flat," * but it may have been that his 
 convictions were not the less deep that he made of them 
 no particular parade. On the hustings, at Leeds, he 
 repudiated certain drawing questions with something like 
 moral indignation, and no further would he go than to 
 say, ^'I am a Christian." And, when time and place 
 are considered, few are there but will say, in going so 
 far, he had gone far enough to satisfy the requirements 
 of a legitimate curiosity. In purely literary and political 
 matters Macaulay used the naked blade, but in all his 
 writings bearing on religious topics, he never allowed 
 the button to come off the foil. 
 
 About this time Abercromby, the Speaker of the 
 House, was elevated to the peerage. This promotion 
 leaving Edinburgh vacant, Macaulay sat in his place. 
 His first speech in the House was in support of Grote's 
 motion on the Ballot. The speech showed the Indian 
 * "Noctes Ambrosianae, " Vol. ii., p. 364. 
 
Macaulay. 165 
 
 Councillor possessed all his old fire, and very soon he 
 was made War Minister. Not long did he occupy his 
 post. On the matter of the Corn Laws, raised in the 
 House by Lord John Russell, Parliament was dissolved 
 in the June of 1841, and the Conservatives succeeded to 
 power. Amid the many Whigs thrown out by the elec- 
 tion Macaulay retained his seat for Edinburgh. The 
 change of Government never cost him a regret. His 
 loss was only his official income, and his gain was a 
 leisure which was far more valued. 
 
 Macaulay now took up his residence in the Albany, 
 "that luxurious cloister, whose inviolable tranquillity 
 affords so agreeable a relief from the roar and flood of 
 the Piccadilly traffic." While in office he wrote his 
 essays on " Sir William Temple " and Ranke's " History 
 of the Popes," and also his famous paper on "Lord Clive." 
 Of all Macaulay's essays that on Clive has taken the 
 ■ead in popularity. As a separate production it sells 
 twice as well as " Chatham," thrice as well as "Addison," 
 and five times as well as " Byron." The only other 
 essay which has divided with it the palm of popularity, 
 is that on "Warren Hastings." It would have been 
 strange had it been otherwise ; the two papers are com- 
 panion productions. The style of both is rapid and 
 impetuous, unequalled by anything of the kind in our 
 language. On the two proconsuls Carlyle could have 
 done nothing better. While the transitions are rapid, 
 and the groupings gorgeous, their language is dyed in 
 the richest hues of the East, and their literature is heavy 
 with gems like the jewelled tapestry of a Nabob. As we 
 read, the forward flowing tide of time seems to flow back 
 with us, and we dream again of the golden prime of 
 Haroun Alraschid, and the days when 
 
 " Down the Tigris we were borne 
 By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold." 
 
1 66 Masters in History. 
 
 As we read, we seem to live in the hot haze of an Indian 
 day; strange populations move before us, and strange 
 buildings of marble are shining in the rich sunlight. The 
 primary aim of these papers is neither argument nor 
 information. Their effect is the effect of a poem ; they 
 appeal to the imagination, and they carry it captive. 
 
 "Warren Hastings" was the first product of our 
 author's Albany life, and the following, from the paper 
 bearing that title, may be taken as a fair specimen of his 
 powers as an assembly painter : — "In the meantime the 
 preparations for the trial had proceeded rapidly, and on 
 the 13th February 1788 the sittings of the Court com- 
 menced. There have been spectacles more dazzling 
 to the eye, more gorgeous with jewellery and cloth of 
 gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that 
 which was then exhibited at Westminster \ but perhaps 
 there never was a spectacle so well calculated to strike a 
 highly-cultivated, a reflective, an imaginative mind. All 
 the various kinds of interest which belong to the near 
 and to the distant, to the present and to the past, were 
 collected on one spot, and in one hour. All the talents 
 and all the accomplishments which are developed by 
 liberty and civilisation were now displayed with every 
 advantage that could be derived both from co-operation 
 and from contrast. Every step in the proceedings 
 carried the mind either backward, through many troubled 
 centuries, to the days when the foundations of our con- 
 stitution were laid ; or far away, over boundless seas and 
 deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, wor- 
 shipping strange gods, and writing strange characters 
 from right to left. The High Court of Parliament was to 
 sit, according to forms handed down from the days of 
 the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercis- 
 ing tyranny over the lord^of the holy city of Benares, and 
 
Macmtlay. 167 
 
 over the ladies of the princely house of Oude. The 
 place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall 
 of William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with 
 acclamations at the inauguration of thirty kings, the hall 
 which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon, and the 
 just absolution of Somers ; the hall where the eloquence 
 of Strafford had, for a moment, awed and melted a 
 victorious party, inflamed by just resentment; the hall 
 where Charles had confronted the High Court of 
 Justice with the placid courage which has half redeemed 
 his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. 
 The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The streets 
 were kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold 
 and ermine, were marshalled by the heralds under 
 Garter King-at-Arms. The judges, in their vest- 
 ments of State, attended to give advice on points of law. 
 Near a hundred and seventy lords, three-fourths of the 
 Upper House, as the Upper House then was, walked in 
 solemn order from their usual place of assembling to the 
 tribunal. The junior baron present led the way, George 
 EHott (Lord Heathfield), recently ennobled for his 
 memorable defence of Gibraltar against the fleets and 
 armies of France and Spain. The long procession was 
 closed by the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the 
 Realm, by the great dignitaries, and by the brothers and 
 sons of the King. Last of all came the Prince of Wales, 
 conspicuous by his fine person and noble bearing. The 
 grey old walls were hung with scarlet. The long 
 galleries w^ere crowded by an audience such as has rarely 
 excited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There 
 were gathered together, from all parts of a great, free, 
 enlightened, and prosperous empire, grace and female 
 loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every 
 science and of every art. There were seated round the 
 
1 68 Masters in History. 
 
 Queen the fair-haired young daughters of the house of 
 Brunswick. There the ambassadors of great kings and 
 commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle 
 which no other country in the world could present. 
 There Siddons, in the prime of her majestic beauty, 
 looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all the imita- 
 tions of the stage. There the historian of the Roman 
 Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the 
 cause of Sicily against Verres ; and when before a senate, 
 which still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus 
 thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There were 
 seen side by side the greatest painter and the greatest 
 scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds 
 from that easel which has preserved to us the thoughtful 
 foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and the 
 sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced 
 Parr to suspend his labours in that dark and profound 
 mind from which he had extracted a vast treasure of 
 erudition — a treasure too often buried in the earth, too 
 often paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, 
 but still precious, massive, and splendid. There 
 appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir 
 of the throne had, in secret, plighted his faith. There 
 too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the 
 Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love 
 and music, art has rescued from common decay. There 
 were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, 
 criticised, and exchanged repartees, under the rich pea- 
 cock-hangings of Mrs Montague. And there the ladies, 
 whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox himself, 
 had carried the Westminster election against palace and 
 treasury, shone round Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire." 
 The article on Hastings was soon followed by another 
 on Frederick the Great, and Macaulay was, for a time. 
 
Macaulay. 169 
 
 the more anxious to pursue these casual studies as he 
 felt they benefited his historical researches, and helped 
 him to grasp the ramifying life of his own country. 
 He laid his account, when he thus commenced his 
 history in the quiet of the Albany, to do everything 
 patiently and thoroughly. As with his essays, he made 
 up his mind to have no rough edges to his work, and no 
 stitches dropped. The canvass was to be full, but there 
 was to be no crowding ; the research was to be deep, but 
 the style was not to be burdened; the subject was to be 
 great, but the book was to be readable ; the scenes of 
 the great events of British history were many and far 
 away, but every one of them was to be visited; nothing 
 was to be left out, nothing forgotten, and nothing feebly 
 handled. He was to lead the English people over their 
 past life as through a terra incognita, and he was not to be 
 satisfied unless he produced something which should for 
 a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the 
 tables of young ladies. He was not to found his preten- 
 sions to the rank of a classic on his reviews, but if he 
 lived twelve or fifteen years he might perhaps produce 
 something which he would not be afraid to exhibit side 
 by side with the performances of the old masters. 
 
 The year which saw the History of England begun 
 also saw the publication of the " Lays of Ancient Rome." 
 There is no need to make any remark on a book, the 
 substance of which is in the memory of every school-boy, 
 and a hundred and fifty thousand copies of which, or 
 nearly so, are in the hands of the people. Professor 
 Wilson wiped off old scores by giving it a hearty welcome 
 in " Blackwood." Christopher was delighted to find that 
 the burnished fly, which twenty years ago, in the pride of 
 May, bounced through the window of "Knight's 
 Quarterly," had assumed the plume of the eagle, and was 
 
170 Masters in History, 
 
 1 
 
 now capable of looking on the sun. In verse, Wilson was 
 himself the most placid of poets, but we cannot help 
 thinking the cut-and-thrust style of the Lays must have 
 stirred his fiery spirit. We may conceive how the great 
 athletic frame shook and the broad chest heaved as he 
 shouldered his crutch, and, assuming for the nonce the 
 character of Horatius, showed the bewildered Hogg — 
 " How valiantly he kept the bridge 
 In the brave days of old." 
 "The young poets weave dreams," says North, "with 
 shadows transitory as clouds without substance j Macaulay 
 builds realities lasting as rocks. The young poets steal 
 from all and sundry, and deny their thefts ; he robs in 
 the face of day. Whom? Homer." This praise was 
 sweet to the Albany student. "I should really be 
 obliged to you," said Macaulay to Napier, " if, when you 
 have an opportunity, you will let Professor Wilson know 
 that his conduct has affected me as generous conduct 
 affects men not ungenerous." 
 
 In 1843 he pubHshed, much against his will, an 
 edition of his collected essays. The publication was 
 rendered necessary by the appearance in England of 
 pirated American editions, which contained, as the pro- 
 duct of his pen, an amount of trash, the circulation of 
 which would have been hurtful to his reputation. The 
 work had an enormous sale, but he felt bound to confess 
 that few of the articles could be read with satisfaction. 
 The acknowledgment is strange, considering how re- 
 solutely he stuck to his written opinions ; and it is only 
 explicable on the ground that its sole reference is to the 
 literary form of his articles. It forms a strange feature 
 in the character of Macaulay that he was so certain 
 everything he said was absolutely true, and so far from 
 certain that what he said had been said in the best 
 
Macattlay. 1 7 1 
 
 manner. What he felt after the pubUcation of his essays, 
 he felt also after the publication of his history. Of the 
 latter work he said, "When I compare my book with 
 what I imagine history ought to be, I feel dejected and 
 ashamed." The reference of these words is by no means 
 to the subject-matter of history, but to its style and 
 literary colouring. The facts he dealt with he always 
 assumed to be exactly as he gave them, and seldom 
 indeed did he ever submit himself either to retract or 
 correct anything referring primarily to matter of fact. 
 The mistake might be apparent enough, but he never 
 saw any need of altering it ; and we may conceive all 
 alteration was particularly painful that involved the dis- 
 turbance of the flowing narrative. The following is 
 characteristic : — " To-day, I got a letter from , point- 
 ing out what I must admit to be a gross impropriety 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." 
 
 Henceforward writing for the Review was to be for him 
 a secondary consideration. He was advancing with his 
 history, and he was beginning to find it would by and by 
 absorb his whole attention. He was not a man who 
 could keep two or three irons in the fire at one time. 
 Southey could work in such a manner, but not Macaulay. 
 The bent of his mind was such that it could not jump 
 from one subject to another. Anything he wished to do 
 well, needed to be the only subject of his study for the 
 time being. If he was to go on turning from one work 
 to another, he confessed he would lose time ; and having 
 had some experiences of the evils of procrastination, and 
 of having done nothing by attempting to do too much, 
 he determined '^he would no more go on dawdling and 
 reproaching himself all his life." 
 
172 Masters in History. 
 
 I 
 
 After the dissolution in 1843, Macaulay took a short 
 tour through Holland, and after paying the penalty of 
 greatness by being worried in the steamers and pestered 
 at the hotels, he was soon back again to his quiet cham- 
 bers in the Albany, to complete his paper on Chatham, 
 which had given him a gi-eat deal of trouble, and 
 which was primarily intended to be a paper on the life 
 and times of Burke. After the publication of this paper 
 a rumour went through the country that Macaulay had 
 discontinued writing for the Review. Macaulay denied 
 having set the rumour afloat, but all the same, the above- 
 mentioned article was the last he was to contribute to its 
 pages. Between parliamentary^business on the one hand, 
 and his history on the other, all idea of magazine writing 
 was wholly out of the question ; indeed, when a great 
 debate was looming in the distance, it was with difficulty 
 he could go on even with his historical work. " When 
 an approaching debate," he confessed, " is in my head, it 
 is to no purpose I sit down at my desk to write history, 
 and I soon get up again in disgust" 
 
 In 1846, when the Corn Law Bill had passed the Peers, 
 Lord John Russell was again commanded to form a 
 cabinet, and Macaulay was appointed Paymaster-General 
 of the Army. This necessitated his going down to Scot- 
 land to seek re-election. On account of the bold position 
 he had taken up on the Maynooth Grant, he was opposed 
 by the dissenters. The last sentence of his speech in 
 support of the grant are memorable. " Yes, Sir, to this 
 bill, and to every bill which shall seem to me likely to 
 promote the real Union of Great Britain and Ireland, I 
 will give my support, regardless of obloquy, regardless of 
 the risk which I may run of losing my seat in Parlia- 
 ment." The member brought forward by the dissenters 
 was Sir Culling Eardley Smith ; but although the fight was 
 
I 
 
 Macaulay, i73 
 
 smart, Macaulay returned in triumph to the Albany. In 
 Parliament he now spoke much seldomer than usual; 
 only five times did he open his mouth in the sessions 
 1846 and 1847. On one of these occasions it was to 
 defend the principle of the Factory Acts. As a public 
 speaker his voice had httle modulation, and he indulged 
 in no gesticulation whatever, except now and again mak- 
 ing a half-turn on his heel ; but the following may be 
 taken as a specimen of that forcible rhetoric which called 
 forth Disraeli's admiration in " The Young Duke," and 
 his flattering remark in the House that it was always so 
 agreeable to listen to the Right Honourable gentleman, 
 that they always rejoiced in the circumstances, whatever 
 they were, which induced him to speak -^ " Man, man is 
 the great instrument that produces wealth. The natural 
 difference between Campania and Spitzbergen is trifling 
 when compared with the difference between a country 
 inhabited by men full of bodily and mental vigour, and a 
 country inhabited by men sunk in bodily and mental de- 
 crepitude. Therefore it is that we are not poorer but 
 richer, because we have, through many ages, rested from 
 our labour one day in seven. That day is not lost. 
 While industry is suspended, while the plough Hes in the 
 furrow, while the Exchange is silent, while no smoke 
 ascends from the factory, a process is going on quite as 
 important to the wealth of nations as any process which 
 is performed on more busy days. Man, the machine of 
 machines, the machine compared with which all the con- 
 trivances of the Watts and the Arkwrights are worthless, 
 is repairing and winding-up, so that he returns to his 
 labours on the Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier 
 spirits, with renewed corporal vigour. Never will I be- 
 lieve that what makes a population stronger and healthier, 
 * "The Young Duke," book v., chap. vi. 
 
1 74 Masters in Histo7y. 
 
 and wiser, and better, can ultimately make it poorei. 
 You try to frighten us by telling us that, in some German 
 factories, the young work seventeen hours in the twenty- 
 four; that they work so hard that among thousands there 
 is not one who grows to such a stature that he can be 
 admitted to the army ; and you ask whether, if this bill 
 pass, we can possibly hold our own against such compe- 
 tition as this. Sir, I laugh at the thought of such compe- 
 tition. If ever we are forced to yield the foremost place 
 amongst commercial nations, we shall yield it, not to a 
 race of degenerate dwarfs, but to some people pre- 
 eminently vigorous in body and mind." 
 
 Of all men Macaulay was a man singularly free from 
 vices. No man ever went through the heat of an election 
 and had less laid to his charge. His character was 
 simple, and guileless, and generous. He was one of 
 those human beings, so seldom to be met with, that are 
 most loved by those who know them best. Of the low 
 games of intrigue and double dealing he knew nothing. 
 He had his temper, but it seldom got the better of him. 
 He had his passions, but, so far as known, they never 
 overcame him. He knew the value of money, but he 
 was the most open-handed of men. In all his ways he 
 walked with singular straightness, and his mind was ever 
 transparent as the purest crystal. It is not too much to 
 say that it was the honesty and genuineness of the man 
 which cost him his seat for Edinburgh in 1847. There 
 were four candidates in the field — Cowan, Craig, Macaulay, 
 and Blackburn ; and, speaking at the time, Hugh Miller 
 said : " The struggle is exciting the deepest interest, and, 
 as the beginning of a decided movement on the part of 
 Christians of various denominations to send men of 
 avowed Christian principles to Parliament, may lead to 
 great results." The great result was the rejection of 
 Macaulay, a consummation of which, ere many days 
 
Macatday. 1 75 
 
 had passed, the electors of Edinburgh were more than 
 ashamed. In the turn of popular feeling, it has to be 
 mentioned to the credit of the Scotsman^ that it ceased not 
 to vindicate the cause of the Historian, and Macaulay, 
 thankful for its steady support, conveyed his gratitude to 
 the Editor. 
 
 The years of retirement he spent after his defeat at 
 Edinburgh were possibly the most enjoyed of all the 
 years of his life. He was away from the wrangle of 
 Parliament and the misery of coming debates j he was 
 comfortable in his circumstances, respected amongst his 
 friends, and every day doing that amount of hard brain 
 work which gave zest to his simple pleasures. He never 
 loved animals, and had a special aversion to dogs ; but 
 children were his delight. He never wearied playing 
 with them \ and that no game might be hindered on his 
 account, he was ever ready to act the part of robber, 
 tiger, or donkey. 
 
 Macaulay well knew, however, the essential difference 
 between work and play. His diligence was at least 
 equal to that of Gibbon, and his research possibly sur- 
 passed that of Grote. It was true what Thackeray said 
 of him : " He reads twenty books to write a sentence ; he 
 travels a hundred miles to make a line of description." 
 He possessed that genuine historical spirit which approxi- 
 mates to a moral consciousness. It would have been 
 impossible for him to have described Marathon as Grote 
 described it, or written of Constantinople as Gibbon 
 wrote of it. Rest he could not, until he had seen with 
 his own eyes and gone over on his own feet the im- 
 portant places and battle-fields of his narrative. For this 
 purpose, Holland, Belgium, Scotland, Ireland, and France 
 were all visited by the indefatigable historian. The 
 notes he made during his tour in Ireland were as long 
 and elaborate as his article on Bacon. He visited 
 
1 76 Masters in History. 
 
 Killiecrankie that he might walk up the road which 
 runs by the Garry, and so estimate the time the Eng- 
 lish army took to defile through the pass. He made 
 a journey from London to Glencoe that he might write 
 little more than a dozen sentences. We leave it to the 
 reader to pronounce whether the little bit of narrative is 
 commensurate with the enormous pains : " Mac lan"^ 
 dwelt in the mouth of a ravine situated not far from the 
 southern shore of Lochleven, an arm of the sea which 
 deeply indents the western coast of Scotland, and sepa- 
 rates Argyleshire from Inverness-shire. Near his house 
 were two or three small hamlets inhabited by his tribe. 
 The whole population which he governed was not sup- 
 posed to exceed two hundred souls. In the neighbour- 
 hood of the little cluster of villages was some copsewood 
 and some pasture land j but a little further up the defile 
 no sign of population or of fruitfulness was to be seen. 
 In the Gaelic tongue, Glencoe signifies the Glen of 
 Weeping ; and in truth that pass is the most dreary and 
 melancholy of all the Scottish passes, the very Valley of 
 the Shadow of Death. Mists and storms brood over it 
 through the greatest part of the finest summer ; and even 
 on these rare days, when the sun is bright and when there 
 is no cloud in the sky, the impression made by the land- 
 scape is sad and awful. Huge precipices of naked 
 stone frown on both sides. Even in July the streaks of 
 snow may often be discerned in the rifts near the sum- 
 mits. All down the sides of the crags heaps of ruin 
 mark the headlong path of the torrents. Mile after mile 
 the traveller looks in vain for the smoke of one hut, or 
 for one human form wrapped in a plaid, and listens in 
 vain for the bark of a shepherd's dog or the bleat of a 
 lamb. Mile after mile the only sound that indicates life 
 * " History of England," chap, xviii. 
 
Macmday. 177 
 
 is the faint cry of a bird of prey from some storm-beaten 
 pinnacle of rock. The progress of civilisation, which 
 has turned so many wastes into fields yellow with 
 harvests or gay with apple blossoms, has only made 
 Glencoe more desolate. All the science and industry of 
 a peaceful age can extract nothing valuable from that 
 wilderness \ but in an age of violence and rapine, the 
 wilderness itself was valued on account of the shelter 
 which it afforded to the plunderer and his plunder." 
 
 A man who took a journey of four hundred miles to 
 write a few sentences was not likely to be careless about 
 any part of his work. A man who would read a 
 thousand pamphlets to find a single grain of truth was 
 not likely to be indifferent to his method of setting it 
 forth. The composition of Macaulay is consequently 
 characterised by unparalleled accuracy. His English is 
 undefiled. His sentences flow like water over a mossy 
 bed. Sometimes we have to read twice before the ear 
 catches the fine cadence of the language, but we never 
 need to read twice to grasp the sense j his meaning is 
 always as transparent as the water of a mountain spring. 
 They will turn over the pages of Macaulay in vain who 
 are searchers for anything either tumid or diffuse. He 
 wrote from a copious mind, but with a fine command of 
 himself The river flows brimming full, but it never 
 overflows its banks. His method of composition was 
 so severe that it repressed every vagary, and was fatal 
 to all excrescences whatsoever. First, he laboriously 
 gathered together his materials, laying the most untoward 
 subjects under tribute, and finding in the most out of the 
 way comers here a little and there a little ; then when he 
 had the subject fully in his head, and all the materials were 
 melted into a glowing mass in his brain, he opened the 
 gates and let the stream pour from his fast-moving pen. 
 (-•) M 
 
1 78 Masters in History. 
 
 But this was not all. Next morning he rewrote the work 
 of the previous day, purifying, refining, elaborating, and 
 polishing as he went along, till every clause was a unity, 
 and every paragraph a literary cosmos. He was pains- 
 taking almost to fastidiousness. He would rewrite a 
 paragraph for the sake of giving some obdurate sentence 
 a facile turn, and his taste had to be satisfied in matters 
 of punctuation as well as in refinements of style. And 
 last of all, like some completed viaduct that is tested by 
 some enormous weight greater than ever it will have to 
 bear when it is given over for common traffic, Macaulay 
 read his finished productions aloud to a select circle of 
 friends, before they were finally handed to the printer, 
 and thus given forth to the world. The style of the 
 historian is cultivated, but by no means elaborate. It 
 occupies a place midway between the styles of Gibbon 
 and Grote ; it is not so ambitious as that of the one, nor 
 so simple as that of the other. Its chief instrument 
 is the antithesis, and there are few sentences in all 
 Macaulay's writings without the figure either delicately 
 concealed or openly apparent. Measured and artificial 
 as it is, it is yet so stamped with the individuality of the 
 author that it can never be successfully copied. In his 
 lifetime Macaulay chastened it, but he never changed it. 
 It is his own \ and the style of " Milton " is the style of the 
 twenty-fifth chapter of the " History of England." No 
 author has ever adopted or imitated it. The mould 
 nature only allowed one to use, and when he was done 
 with it she broke it and threw it away. When we think 
 of his continued carefulness and the high ideal of literary 
 perfection he set before himself, we are prepared for the 
 following quotation from his diary : — " I am afraid of 
 saying to other people how much I miss in historians 
 who pass for good. The truth is, that I admire no his- 
 
Macaulay. 1 79 
 
 torians much except Herodotus, Thucydides, and Tacitus. 
 Perhaps, in his way — a very pecuHar way — I might add 
 Fra Paolo. The modern writers who have most of the 
 great quaHties of the ancient masters of history are some 
 memoir writers ; St Simon for example. There is merit, 
 no doubt, in Hume, Robertson, Voltaire, and Gibbon. 
 Yet it is not the thing. I have a conception of history 
 more just, I am confident, than theirs. The execution is 
 another matter. But I hope to improve." 
 
 In the summer of 1848 the first volumes were in the 
 hands of Mr Longman, the publisher. The author was 
 fearful and troubled about the success of his work, but 
 there were not wanting curious signs that the world was 
 looking forward to its publication with something like 
 feverish anxiety. He received two letters from America ; 
 "one from a Mr Crump, offering him 500 dollars if he 
 would introduce the name of Crump into his history ; 
 another from a Young Men's Philosophical Society in 
 New York, beginning, ' Possibly our fame has not 
 pinioned the Atlantic' " Whatever the fortune of his 
 history, Macaulay, like Gibbon, says he made up his 
 mind to possess his soul with a philosophical calm. 
 When, however, in the beginning of November, the work 
 was given to the world, all fears were completely set at 
 rest. It was welcomed with praise and satisfaction on 
 all hands. Recognizing the genius of the work, partizans 
 forgot their party, and paltry and contemptible spites 
 were neglected and sunk in a thoroughly English recog- 
 
 tnition of ability. Before the first week in December, the 
 first edition of 3000 was all sold, and before the middle 
 of the same month, another edition of a similar size had 
 ■^ found its way to the market. And this sudden success 
 
 Lwas, in reality, only the foretaste of a greater popularity. 
 --— — -- 
 
t8o Masters in History. 
 
 midst of the greatest triumphs it creates for itself 
 imaginary fears ; and while his history was selling as no 
 history has ever sold before or since, Macaulay was 
 troubled about a conceivable reaction that was sure to 
 follow the first burst of applause. In December 4, 1848, 
 we find the following remarkable entry in his diary : " 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 to have. The disappointment, if there is dis- 
 appointment, will be great. All that I hear is laudatory. 
 But who can trust to praise that is poured into his own 
 ear ? At all events, I have aimed high. I have tried to 
 do something that may be remembered ; I have had the 
 year 2000, and even 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 honourable 
 than nine-tenths of the success I have witnessed." In 
 six months thirteen thousand copies were taken up. 
 
 The popularity of Macaulay's works has been the 
 despair of the most conscientious critics. That he made 
 many mistakes is beyond all doubt, but to get the popular 
 mind to mark them has been the most hopeless of tasks. 
 A few students and scholars here and there are conversant 
 with his errors, but that is all. The article of the critic 
 lives for a day, but the error he combats survives. Here 
 is a case where the critic is over-matched and over- 
 weighted, and where his art is vain. For all the justice 
 of the critics' remarks, as Mr Gladstone says,* " the 
 error still sparkles in its diamond setting, circulates by 
 thousands and tens of thousands among flocks of readers 
 ever new and ever charmed, and has become part of the 
 household stock of every family." Of his popularity 
 * "Gleanings of Past Years," Vol. ii., p. 335. 
 
Macatday. 1 8 1 
 
 Thackeray told one of his piquant stories. Walking in 
 the Zoological Gardens, the novelist saw two pretty dam- 
 sels making their way to see the hippopotamus. They 
 had just paid their shilling to see the new addition to 
 the collection, when he saw some one pointing out to 
 them the historian in the distance. ' Mr Macaulay ! ' 
 cried the lovely pair. ' Is that Mr Macaulay ? Then 
 never mind the hippopotamus.' It was no matter they 
 had paid their shilling, they turned away from Behemoth 
 to view the author of the new ' History of England.' 
 Thackeray would swear to Macaulay it was the proudest 
 event in his life, and there is nothing to show the his- 
 torian was not of the same opinion as the novelist. 
 Macaulay ever esteemed as sincere the praise of the vulgar. 
 On one occasion, when helping the historian to horse, an 
 Irish groom praised his fine seat and manly appearance 
 in the saddle, and the flattery, although doubtless with- 
 out a single rag of sincerity, put him in a better humour 
 than all the compliments paid him about his history ! 
 
 In February 1848 Macaulay began the second part of 
 his history, and in the November of the same year he 
 was elected Lord Rector of Glasgow. All public appear- 
 ances were now getting distasteful to him. Having made 
 his way in the world, he was as unwilling to make " public 
 speeches as any timid stammerer in Great Britain." " I 
 was vexed," he confessed, " to hear that there is some 
 thought of giving me the freedom of Glasgow in a gold box." 
 His fears were vain. He took the oath, signed his name, 
 gave his address, and "the acclamations were prodigious." 
 
 Macaulay was now working harder than ever at his 
 history; he had begun to love it more than his life. 
 There are traces, that instead of mastering his work, his 
 work was really mastering him. These traces, however, 
 are few ; we cannot conclude that, Actaeon-like, he ever 
 
1 82 Masters in History. 
 
 came to be hunted by his own hounds. His diary he 
 kept regularly, and it is full of comments on men and 
 books. " Strange fellow !" he says of Brougham. "His 
 powers gone, his spite immortal. A dead nettle." The 
 following is charitable about Byron : " Poor fellow ! yet 
 he was a bad fellow, and horribly affected. But, then, 
 what that could spoil, a character, was wanting? Had I 
 at twenty-four had a peerage, and been the most popular 
 poet, and the most successful Lovelace of the day, I 
 should have been as great a coxcomb, and possibly as 
 bad a man. I passed some hours over ' Don Juan,' and 
 saw no reason to change the opinion which I formed 
 twenty-five years ago. The first two cantos are Byron's 
 masterpiece." Of the death of Jeffrey : " He saw through 
 and through you. He marked every fault of taste, every 
 weakness, every ridicule ; and yet he loved you as if he 
 had been the dullest fellow in England. He had a much 
 better heart than Sydney Smith. I do not mean that 
 Sydney was in that respect below par. In ability, I should 
 say, Jeffrey was higher, but Sydney rarer. I would rather 
 have been Jeffrey -, but there will be several Jeffreys be- 
 fore there is a Sydney. After all, dear Jeffrey's death is 
 hardly matter for mourning. God grant that I may die 
 so ! Full of years ; full of honours ; faculties bright and 
 affections warm to the last \ lamented by the public and 
 many valued friends. This is the euthanasia." 
 
 In 1850, Henry Hallam, the friend of Macaulay, as 
 well as of Tennyson, was gathered to his rest. During 
 those years in which his acquaintances were dropping out 
 of sight, he was still staying in his chambers in the Al- 
 bany. These chambers were all library, and contained 
 about 10,000 volumes, besides novels. Of the latter, he 
 must in the course of his life have read many thousands. 
 His study was not merely, however, his chambers. All 
 
Macatday. 183 
 
 his life he had the inveterate habit of reading in^? the 
 streets. How he was never run over, how he never got 
 into scrapes by knocking up against people, is marvellous. 
 Anything further than occasionally an exchange of plea- 
 santries, in which the historian was not usually put at a 
 disadvantage, his foible never cost him. The follow- 
 ing was to his friend EUis : — " The other day I was 
 overtaken by a hearse as I was strolling along, and read- 
 ing the night expedition of Diomede and Ulysses. 
 ' Would you like a ride, sir ? ' said the driver. ' Plenty 
 of room.' I could not help laughing. ' I daresay I shall 
 want such a carriage some day or other ; but I am not 
 ready yet.' The fellow, with the most consummate pro- 
 fessional gravity, answered, ' I meant, sir, that there 
 was plenty of room on the box.' " 
 
 By the time Parliament was dissolved in 1852, the 
 people of Edinburgh had thought better of their conduct 
 to Macaulay at the former election. The historian made 
 no concession whatever. The principles which had 
 guided the first days of his poHtical life were the prin- 
 ciples that guided him still. The position he occupied 
 then was the position he occupied now. He was aware 
 that opinions on many things had changed, and he was 
 not altogether sure that he stood en rapport with the 
 people; but his opinions had not changed, and as he 
 was, the Edinburgh people must either take him or want 
 him. " 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 abolition of standing armies. I am 
 opposed to the abrogation of capital punishment. I am 
 opposed to the destruction of the National Church. In 
 short, I am in favour of war, hanging, and Church Estab- 
 lishments." The upshot of all was that he was returned 
 at the top of the poll. Professor Wilson was not the 
 
184 Masters in History. 
 
 man to play false to his party, but he knew that excep- 
 tional circumstances demanded exceptional measures, 
 and to his credit he voted for the historian. 
 
 Some days after the Edinburgh election a very serious 
 change came over the state of Macaulay's health. He 
 was often incapable of vigorous exertion ; the idea of his 
 historical task lay on him like a weight ; he found him- 
 self at times as if under a spell of laziness, and the action 
 of the heart was weak and irregular. He said, " I am 
 vexed with myself for having suffered myself to be en- 
 ticed back to public life. My book seems to me certain 
 to be a failure." The truth is, from the time of the elec- 
 tion he never was again the man he used to be. The 
 July of 1853 was a crisis in his life. " He became 
 twenty years older in a week, and a mile was more to 
 him than ten miles a year before." 
 
 Although Macaulay had been enticed back to Parlia- 
 ment, he could not be enticed into office. He had been 
 twice a Cabinet Minister, and never made a farthing 
 thereby ; " but during the four years he had been out of 
 office he had added ten thousand pounds to his capital." 
 His most cogent argument against place was not, how- 
 ever, a monetary one, but the state of his bodily health. 
 Although not in the Cabinet, he yet rendered invaluable 
 service to his party, and his speeches helped greatly to 
 further the cause of Competitive Examination, then being 
 debated in Parliament. On this subject Macaulay took 
 up a correct and uncompromising position. " It seems 
 to me," he said, " that there never was a fact proved by 
 a larger mass of evidence, or a more unvaried experience 
 than this — that men, who distinguish themselves in their 
 youth above their contemporaries, almost always keep to 
 the end of their lives the start which they have gained. 
 This experience is so vast, that I should as soon expect 
 
Macaulay. 185 
 
 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 the Cambridge Calendar. There 
 you have the list of honours 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 dis- 
 tinguished himself among the junior optimes, you will 
 find twenty among the wranglers. 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 Montague 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 
 Metcalfe, 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 Musce 
 Cantahrigienses a very eloquent and classical ode by a 
 young poet of seventeen, which the University of Cam- 
 bridge rewarded with a gold medal \ and with pleasure, 
 not altogether unmingled with pain, I read at the bottom 
 of that composition the name of the Honourable Edward 
 Law, of St John's College." 
 
 From the time of the publication of his speeches in 
 1853 on to the pubHcation of the third and fourth 
 
1 86 Masters in History. 
 
 volumes, Macaulay devoted himself almost exclusively 
 to his history. Leisure, and letter-writing, and society, 
 and eventually his diary, he all gave up, that nothing by 
 either absorbing his time or distracting his attention 
 might keep him from getting on with his work. On the 
 2 1 St November 1855 the second instalment was com- 
 pleted j and on a scale perfectly unprecedented in book- 
 selling annals Longman arranged for the publication of 
 this continuation of the " History of England." The 
 first edition he took from the press contained the 
 immense number of 25,000 copies. A latter failure in 
 sale has not belied the first magnificent start. Within 
 five and twenty years after the publication of the " His- 
 tory," 140,000 copies had been printed and sold in the 
 United Kingdom alone. The two second volumes 
 brought their author, from the first edition alone, as 
 much as his four and a half years banishment in India. 
 
 On the successful historian honours now began to 
 pour. The Academies of Utrecht, Munich, and Turin 
 made him a member. He was named a Knight of the 
 Order of Merit by the King of Prussia. Guizot pro- 
 posed him for the Institute of France. The Philo- 
 sophical Institution of Edinburgh chose him their Presi- 
 dent. Along with Grote, Disraeli, and Lytton he received 
 from the University of Oxford the degree of Doctor of 
 Civil Law. On that occasion Macaulay said, " I con- 
 gratulated Grote with special warmth, for, with all his 
 faults of style, he has really done wonders." 
 
 In the beginning of 1856 Macaulay, finding himself 
 unable to discharge parliamentary duties according to his 
 sense of how they should be discharged, resigned his 
 seat for Edinburgh, and applied for the Chiltern Hun- 
 dreds. Up till this time his life had been formed on the 
 plainest scale, but he now made arrangements to pass 
 
 ^ 
 
I 
 
 Macatday. 1 8 7 
 
 what of it might remain to him in a more liberal provi- 
 sion. It touches one to think how while Macaulay had 
 been the idol of society, a member of the British Cabinet, 
 amongst the greatest in the House, and the foremost in 
 the country, he had not even allowed himself, until 185 1, 
 the indulgence of a carriage. He had spent fifteen 
 happy years in the Albany, but he now bought the lease 
 of a fine house and garden at Kensington. It gave the 
 historian no pleasure to leave his old quarters and the 
 chambers, clustering associations of carefully-composed 
 essays, elaborated poems, long evenings spent in pleasant 
 company, and long days in hard historical labours. When 
 the books were gone the empty cases looked like a skele- 
 ton, and tears came to the historian's eyes as he paced 
 the empty rooms. He felt, we conceive, like a bee wan- 
 dering about amongst the cells of a dried honeycomb. It 
 was no easy journey from the street up the numerous steps 
 to his chambers, yet he said, " I have been happy at the 
 top of this toilsome stair. Ellis came to dinner — the last 
 of probably four hundred dinners, or more, that we have 
 had in these chambers. Then to bed. Everything that 
 I do is coloured by the thought that it is for the last time. 
 One day there will come a last in good earnest." 
 
 Removed to Holly Lodge, Campden Hill, the stream 
 of the historian's life flowed just as quietly and unobtru- 
 sively as it had done in the Albany. People, no doubt, 
 said it was a secluded life, but in reality it was not so. 
 His friends were his relations, and his companions were 
 his books. When he read he had his pencil in hand, and 
 he talked with his author on the margin as he heard him 
 speak from his pages. In literature he was a pure con- 
 servative, and he was jealous of all new-fangled ways of 
 writing. If the torch was not lighted at some old beacon, 
 he would by no means condescend to be guided by its 
 
1 88 Masters in History. 
 
 light. We don't know, but we have some reason to sup- 
 pose, that the later developments of Carlyle's style must 
 have been his special aversion. The Greek warriors used 
 to practise the robust exercises of the gymnasium after 
 they had left off active service in the field. And so was it 
 with Macaulay in his retirement at Holly Lodge. Done 
 with the rough work of the open campaign, he still car- 
 ried on in the portico, the garden, and the study of his 
 house, those intellectual exercises with which, in his 
 earlier years, he had disciplined his mind. In his literary 
 ease it gave him pleasure to renew his acquaintance with 
 Cicero and Plato, to read over again the novels that de- 
 lighted him in youth, to hate Hook more than ever he 
 had hated Croker, and to keep his memory in action by 
 trying how much of Shakespeare he could get by heart 
 within a specified time. The amusements of his leisure 
 show the bent of his mind. At Holly Lodge we find 
 our author reading, composing, recollecting, committing 
 to memory, but never do we find him meditating or 
 reflecting. When he goes out into his garden amongst 
 his flowers it is to read the defence of Sextius, when he 
 walks in his portico it is to get by heart the " Merchant of 
 Venice," when he enters his study it is to consult authori- 
 ties for his fifth volume, and when he is being conveyed 
 over to Ireland in a steamer, he sits on deck wrapt in his 
 cloak — to let the dash of billows help his historical cogi- 
 tation ? by no means, but to read from his memory as 
 from a book the first half of Milton's " Paradise Lost." 
 The world of literature rather than that of philosophy 
 was that in which he lived, and moved, and had his intel- 
 lectual being ; and as he strolled, an observant student, 
 amid its glades, his wanderings were often guided as much 
 by mere whim as by solid consideration. Like a child 
 he was as ready to fill his lap with wild flowers as with 
 
Macaulay. 189 
 
 solid fruit. He could have told you how often a heroine 
 of Mrs Meek had fainted in the course of her Ufe, with as 
 certain accuracy as he could have run over the names of 
 the Popes in their chronological order. He loved certain 
 books for their badness just as he loved others for their 
 goodness, and to the end of his days he was the sworn 
 friend of Miss Austen. Macaulay lived in good style at 
 Holly Lodge, and, as in his dress, so also in his reading, 
 he had his morning and evening suits. " I read," he 
 says, " ' Henderson's Iceland ' at breakfast ; — a favourite 
 breakfast book with me. Why? How oddly we are 
 made ! Some books which I should never dream of open- 
 ing at dinner please me at breakfast, and vice versa.'' 
 
 Macaulay's gains from literature were enormous. In one 
 year (1856) he made ^20,000, and the receipt for that 
 large sum the Messrs Longman still preserve as a curiosity. 
 With all his wealth he was far from being close-fisted. 
 We know that all poor poetry got a merciless reception 
 at his hands, but we also know that no poor poet did he 
 ever send empty away. No doubt his generosity was 
 often ill regulated; sham Mary Howitts robbed him of 
 ten-pound notes, and professional impostors, under the 
 garb of broken down Cambridge Fellows, plundered him 
 of hundred-pound cheques; but, on the whole, his giving 
 must have done much good, and been blessed often to 
 the receiver as it always was to the tender heart of the 
 giver. Some will not give at all, for fear they should 
 encourage one impostor. Macaulay gave always, for fear 
 he should pass over one really needy. 
 
 Macaulay, as we have seen, was not a Senior Wrangler 
 of his university, but, all the same, he took the highest 
 honours in life; and on August 28, 1857, he was made, 
 by the advice of Palmerston, a Senior Wrangler of the 
 Empire. In that year he received his coronet, and was 
 
190 Masters in History. 
 
 constituted a Peer of the realm, under the style and title of 
 Baron Macaulay of Rothley. Being, as he acknowledged, 
 a man of humble origin and moderate fortune, he was 
 surprised that such high distinction should have been 
 conferred upon him ; but while he duly appreciated his 
 dignity, no one, we are sure, ever wore his ribbon with 
 less parade, as no one, we are certain, ever wore it with 
 less envy. 
 
 Macaulay's " History of England " is a torso. When 
 he sat down to his great work, "I propose," he 
 said, " to write the ' History of England ' from the 
 accession of King James the Second down to a time 
 within the memory of men still hving ; " but the pledge 
 he never redeemed, and thus the work so far is frag- 
 mentary. Good as were the articles on Atterbury, 
 Bunyan, Goldsmith, Dr Johnson, and Pitt, he contri- 
 buted in his later years to the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," 
 how gladly would we have wanted them, to have been 
 taken by the fluent and informed cicerone through the 
 reign of Anne, to have lived again in the company of her 
 Court, to have held conversation with Harley and 
 St John, with Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot, and to have 
 talked with Bolingbroke and Steele, with Addison and 
 Defoe. That part of English history which Macaulay 
 was approaching at the end of the fifth volume was the 
 part which of all others he would have done the best, 
 and it is hopeless almost to think any other historical 
 genius will arise who will bring to bear on the events of 
 the period a fluency of style and a power of reaUstic 
 picturing at all commensurate with his. Of course, what 
 we have lost we cannot tell, but it is in no vague way we 
 feel it to be immense. 
 
 The fifth volume he commenced very reluctantly. In 
 former years one work was no sooner done than another 
 
Macatilay. 1 9 1 
 
 was begun, but after the fourth volume was in the hands 
 of the pubhc it was some months before he again took 
 pen in hand, and when he eventually did get a start 
 made, he said, " God knows whether I shall ever finish 
 this part. I begin it with little heart or hope." By 
 reason of ill-health, a tendency to sleep, and an aversion 
 to work, his progress was slow. " How the days steal 
 away, and nothing done," was a common exclamation of 
 his at this time. Already had he begun to grieve that 
 he would not be spared to finish his work. Further than 
 lessening the amount, however, his growing ailments had 
 no other efi"ect on his literary products ; they certainly 
 never damaged the quality of his work. There was 
 nothing he was surer of than that his literary career had 
 been a steady and upward progress ; that in every matter 
 of style, form, language, and expression, the works of his 
 mature years were vastly in advance of his more juvenile 
 efforts. What was the historian's own declaration the 
 student will very readily confirm. When he was writing 
 least, his literary sense was at its greatest perfection ; and 
 this it was which completely prevented any decline in 
 the substance of his composition, or any falling away 
 from that strength which is so characteristic of all his 
 literary handling. 
 
 The last volume of Macaulay's " History of England," 
 the historian was not to see through the press. The 
 truth is, when the beginning of 1859 came, his path was 
 narrowing, and he was already faring onward among the 
 shadows. When Trevelyan left for India, having been 
 appointed Governor of Madras, the historian said " he 
 could hardly expect to see him again. 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." His love for his sister 
 
192 Masters in History. 
 
 Hannah had always been peculiarly intense, and when 
 some time after her husband had arrived in India she 
 proposed to leave her brother and join her husband 
 there, the idea of a parting — which he felt in his heart 
 must be, so far as this world was concerned, a parting 
 for ever — filled him with the deepest sorrow. A journey 
 to Scotland did not lighten the misery which preyed on 
 his too sensitive heart. On this, as on other occasions, 
 he found in his books his surcease from the troubles that 
 surely assailed him in his hours of reverie or contempla- 
 tion. The studies of his youth thus became the con- 
 solations of his age, and in the pleasures of literature he 
 found an anodyne for his heaviest afflictions. The book 
 which, in this emergency, he used to drive away dull 
 care, was Nichol's " Literary Anecdotes," a great work in 
 nine volumes, and each volume containing well nigh a 
 thousand closely printed pages. He set on it with 
 something like his old ardour. Every blunder in taste 
 and grammar he supplied, every omission he marked, 
 and, as he went on, he commented and enlarged. By 
 doing a volume a week he finished his task in a little 
 over two months. The sad labour was in its object only 
 partially successful. The depression of mind resulted 
 from causes too deep to be removed by a medicine so 
 simple. Do what he might the strange unhappiness 
 came back to him. " I dread," he said, " the next four 
 months more than even the months which will follow the 
 separation. This prolonged parting — this slow sipping 
 of the vinegar and the gall — is terrible." 
 
 The parting was to come in a different ananner from 
 that which he anticipated. The December of 1859 
 broke bleak and cold, and before the first fortnight of the 
 month was gone, it had set in hard and enduring frost. 
 Macaulay, surrounded with the warmth of Holly Lodge 
 
Macmilay. 193 
 
 though he was, felt the bite of the winter blast. He was 
 not an old man yet, but he felt as if he were dying of old 
 age. " A month," he said, " a month more of such days 
 as I have been passing of late, would make me impatient 
 to get to my little narrow crib, like a weary factory 
 child." 
 
 That was what he wrote in his Journal on the 19th 
 December. Four days later he made his last entry, and 
 on the morning of the 28th, the hand that had written 
 so much wrote its last ; it was a letter to a poor curate, 
 enclosing five-and-twenty pounds. Late in the afternoon, 
 when the lamps were being lighted in the streets and 
 shop windows of London, the historian, sitting by his 
 library fire, took up the first number of the Cornhill 
 Magazine and began reading Thackeray's tale of *' Lovel 
 the Widower." His nephew joined him for a little in 
 the library, but seeing he was weaker than usual, he went 
 off to get his mother, Mrs Trevelyan, to come and spend 
 the night at the Lodge. The nephew had not been long 
 gone, when Macaulay told his butler he would go to bed 
 earlier that night. The butler solicited the historian to • 
 rest for a little on the sofa. Macaulay put away the 
 magazine and made effort as if he would rise. Then he 
 reclined back in his chair and slept, but woke not again. 
 The last had come in good earnest. 
 
 Thus it was that Lord Macaulay, having made himself 
 a great and enduring name, and gratified a large and 
 honourable ambition, passed to his rest. To use Mr 
 Gladstone's words, " Full-orbed he was seen above the 
 horizon ; and, so full-orbed, after thirty-five years of con- 
 stantly emitted splendour, he sank beneath it." 
 
 In his life, Macaulay had loved to linger in Poets' 
 Corner, Westminster Abbey ; and as he lingered, he was 
 known to cherish the hope, that he might do so bravely 
 (^) N 
 
194 Masters in History, 
 
 by his countrymen, that when he was gone, they would 
 bury him there. The wish passed into realization, and 
 on the 9th of January i860, his countrymen laid him to 
 rest amid their illustrious dead. He reposes at the feet 
 of Addison, and near to the tombs of Johnson, and Gold- 
 smith, and Gay. The slab that covers him bears these 
 words : — 
 
 His body is buried in peace, 
 But his name liveth for evermore. 
 
JOHN MOTLEY. 
 
 \ 
 
JOHN MOTLEY. 
 
 Although a man cannot well be killed an hundred years 
 before he is born, nevertheless circumstances may arise 
 at such a date which may render his birth an impossi- 
 bility. The man regarded by his generation and by the 
 testimony of history as the product of his age, often 
 owes his very being to the mere accident of an accident. 
 When we look on these substantial works, " The Rise of 
 the Dutch Repubhc " and " The History of the United 
 Netherlands," looking down on us from the shelves of 
 the library, it is curious to think how their existence was 
 imperilled so long ago as the beginning of the last century. 
 
 On the morning of the 29th August 1708, there was 
 lamentation and weeping in the little town of Haverhill, 
 Massachusetts. The early chronicles of New England 
 tell how, on that day, the French and the Indians made 
 a fierce attack on the town ; they recount how nearly 
 forty persons were slaughtered, and a very considerable 
 number of the inhabitants carried captive into Canada. 
 
 Whilst the pillage and slaughter were proceeding, 
 whilst the tomahawk and scalping-knife were doing their 
 merciless work, the minister of Haverhill, the Rev. Ben- 
 jamin Rolfe was shot by a bullet through the door of 
 his house. The master gone, things might have been 
 
198 Masters in History. 
 
 expected to go badly with the other inmates. Hagar, 
 the minister's maidservant, was, however, equal to the 
 occasion. So soon as she heard the whoop of the 
 savages, with the true instinct of a woman, she immedi- 
 ately seized the children, Mary and Elizabeth, who were 
 sleeping at her side, and hid them in the cellar of the 
 house. She had no more than time to secrete herself, 
 when the Indians burst open the door. They ransacked 
 the house, they rummaged the cellar, but fortunately 
 they missed their prey. Had they but turned over two 
 large wash-tubs, sitting in a certain dark corner, most 
 assuredly would there have been lost to us " The Dutch 
 Republic " and " The United Netherlands," and most 
 certainly lost also to the page of American Literary His- 
 tory the great name of John Lothrop Motley. 
 
 Owing to the ready wit of the maidservant, both girls, 
 after the storm had swept past, came scatheless from 
 their hiding-places. As the years went by, EHzabeth, 
 the younger, grew up to womanhood. In the course of 
 time she married the Rev. Samuel Checkley of Boston, 
 a gentleman of English extraction. A son of this pair, 
 the Rev. Samuel Checkley, jun., also became a minister 
 in Boston, and he gave one of his daughters in marriage 
 to his assistant and successor, the Rev. John Lothrop. 
 Anna, a daughter of this family again, became the mother 
 of the historian on the 15 th of April 18 14. Her hus- 
 band was Thomas Motley, whose great-grandfather went 
 over to America from Belfast. Along with his brother, 
 for the long period of nearly half-a-century, Thomas 
 Motley carried on a large and lucrative business concern 
 in the city of Boston. His family numbered eight, and 
 in the order of birth our historian stood second. 
 
 The merchant and his wife were the handsomest 
 couple in all Boston. Thomas Motley was the very type 
 
John Motley. 199 
 
 of the American ; shrewd and vivacious, he was a man 
 both of talent and abiHty. Loving books for their own 
 sake, he had made himself some reputation as an author. 
 Over the education of his children he watched with care, 
 taking particular patience with their reading and decla- 
 mation. In his wife the enterprising merchant found a 
 suitable companion. She was a lady endowed with the 
 finest gifts of tact and affection. To a rare sweetness of 
 temper there was united in Mrs Motley a certain regal 
 beauty " which made her the type of a perfect mother- 
 hood." 
 
 It is ever to the offspring of such parents we turn for 
 the perfectest types of the race, ever in them we seek for 
 the finest graces of person and intellect. We cannot 
 speak for the rest of the family, but certainly there was 
 combined in Thomas Lothrop the best mental and 
 physical qualities of his parents. He grew up tall and 
 lithe, and no companion ever came into contact with 
 him without marking the grace of his every movement and 
 gesture. The set of his beautiful head on his shoulders 
 was characterised by peculiar elegance. Lady Byron 
 said he brought her in mind of her husband more than 
 any other man she ever met ; but those who saw Motley 
 in the bloom of his youth would never allow that, in the 
 matter of personal appearance, Byron came at all near 
 him. Letting this be as it may, in certain qualities of 
 spirit the famous American bore unmistakable likeness 
 to the more famous Englishman. In the young Motley 
 there was a certain Byronic haughtiness and cynicism, 
 and in the lineaments of his early character there are 
 lines of superciHousness, wilfulness, and impetuosity. 
 We trace the shortcomings of the poet to certain defi- 
 ciences in maternal training, but the shortcomings of the 
 historian are on that score wholly unaccountable^ and are 
 only to be sought for in the original bent of his mind. 
 
200 Masters in History. 
 
 The family residence was No. 7 Walnut Street, both 
 garden and garret of which the boy was allowed to 
 appropriate for the purpose of carrying out his schemes 
 of amusement. The lad loved skating and swimming, 
 but, for the most part, he found within the bounds of 
 his home a field wide enough for the prosecution of all 
 his youthful exercises. Little man as he was at eleven, 
 he was still a great reader, and many hours did he while 
 away with the novels of Scott and of Cooper. In the 
 course of his life his novel-reading was not nearly so ex- 
 tensive as Macaulay's, but it was as soon begun, and pos- 
 sibly, as a habit, became as rapidly confirmed. In those 
 immature years the garret was really the boy's study. 
 After the historian had come to eminence, a younger 
 brother used to tell how John used to give him barley- 
 sugar to keep him quiet while he lay wrapped up in a 
 shawl at his feet, figuring the dead Caesar, and he de- 
 claimed the oration of Anthony over the prostrate body. 
 In that garret in Walnut Street there met, every Saturday 
 afternoon, three boys. They clad themselves in doublets 
 and plumed hats j they made themselves kings or robbers, 
 saints or sinners, according to the requirements of their 
 varying moods; and according as the mind of their genius 
 veered, they expressed themselves in the language of 
 tragedy or comedy. These three boys all came to act 
 memorable parts in life : John Lothrop Motley " became 
 the dramatist of a nation's life history ;" Thomas Gold 
 Appleton effloresced into an agreeable and popular 
 writer ; Wendell Phillips became the Chrysostom of 
 American liberty. 
 
 The boy having passed a year at a school in Jamaica 
 Plain, was now sent to Round Hill, Northampton, then 
 under the care of Mr Cogswell and Mr Bancroft. Tak- 
 ing into account the abilities and scholarship of Mr 
 
John Motley. 201 
 
 Bancroft, the pupil must ever be regarded as having 
 been fortunate in his teacher. The meeting of precep- 
 tor and scholar is, however, remarkable for other reasons. 
 George Bancroft is the accomplished historian of the 
 United States, and when we add to his name the names of 
 Motley and Prescott, we complete the trinity of Ameri- 
 can masters in history. There are evidences which go 
 to show that Bancroft took the utmost pains with his 
 pupil ', but what would he have thought if he had known 
 when he was teaching him German, then a language but 
 seldom taught, that he was laying the foundation of one 
 of the greatest literary fabrics ! and what would have been 
 his feelings had he known that this beautiful Boston youth 
 was yet to become a historian of world-wide reputation, 
 and to be recognised at the shrine of Clio as one of her 
 most worthy worshippers. 
 
 Than the power of acquiring languages there is pos- 
 sibly no gift that goes further, or is more highly 
 appreciated, at public seminaries j and this faculty young 
 Motley possessed in a very extraordinary degree. It was 
 his aptitude for languages that had prompted Bancroft 
 to teach the boy German ; but, strange to say, his very 
 abilities lay at the root of his weaknesses. Learning 
 readily what other boys learned slowly, he was led into 
 the fatal error of trusting to his genius more than to his 
 powers of application. Finding himself an object of ad- 
 miration and flattery, certain original tendencies of his 
 constitution to imperiousness and pride were unduly 
 fostered and developed at the expense of the solid quali- 
 ties of character. In the eyes of his school-fellows, his 
 gifts must have been the spoiling of him, for it is not at 
 all likely that boys would either love or respect any of 
 their companions who gave themselves airs of superiority. 
 At Round Hill the boy, had he been more condescend- 
 
202 Master's in History. 
 
 ing, had been more loved ; had he been less clever, had 
 been more popular. The real danger of the youth lay in 
 his acquiring those habits of hasty reading which would 
 entirely unfit the man for carrying out any great purpose 
 that required the exercise of continued energy and reso- 
 lution. This kind of school training was the very worst 
 possible discipline for college life; but if, as a student, he 
 did not entirely redeem himself from the errors of the 
 school-boy, 'as a man he wholly eradicated them from his 
 character. He soon came to discover, what many have 
 discovered before and since, that work of itself partakes 
 of the nature of genius, and that that ability is next to 
 worthless which is not joined to powers of application. 
 Remembering the clever, careless school-boy, his friends 
 were astonished at the hard-working man ; knowing the 
 flippancy of the youth, they opened their eyes in wonder 
 at the resolution of the historian. Those who thought he 
 was only good for the dash of the short race were taken 
 aback "at the long-breathed tenacity of purpose" he 
 manifested in running the countless laps of his after per- 
 formances. Although possessed of an impulsive and 
 ardent disposition, he seems, on the whole, to have be- 
 haved himself at Round Hill with becoming propriety. 
 Apart from his school work, and the desultory reading of 
 which he was so fond, he gave his brain little other exer- 
 cise. Two chapters of a novel, after the style of Cooper, 
 summed up his juvenile efforts in original composition. 
 The romance began not with one, but with two solitary 
 horsemen riding up to an inn in the valley of the Housa- 
 tonic. Where the Housatonic was the boy did not know; 
 he was satisfied that the sound of the word fulfilled the 
 requirements of his young imagination. 
 
 So soon as a man does anything notable in the world, 
 and particularly in the world of letters, he excites a strong 
 
John Motley. 203 
 
 personal interest ; every part of his life is immediately 
 scanned with a care which many parts do not really de- 
 serve, and all his actions surrounded with an importance 
 which belong only to few of them. Remembering the 
 great historian, we are apt to forget that even when he 
 entered college he was still the merest child, acting, for 
 the most part, from motives hardly definable, and with 
 the very least forethought. It must ever be a mistake to 
 set anything but the slightest value on those actions of 
 early youth performed before either the responsibilities 
 of life are felt, or its ambitions fired. 
 
 When young Motley went up from Round Hill to 
 Harvard he was only thirteen years of age. He took 
 with him a good reputation as a linguist, and altogether 
 commenced his college career under the most favourable 
 auspices. Wendell Holmes says he remembers " the 
 impression which his striking personal beauty produced 
 upon him as he took his seat in the college chapel." 
 During the first year of his course he did his work in a 
 manner commensurate with his abilities, and stood third 
 in his class. Next session, however, he fell away from 
 study so terribly that he was rusticated. In the univer- 
 sities of England rustication is usually the penalty of the 
 gravest offences, but, in the case of Motley, continued 
 negligence is the reason assigned. But whatever was the 
 reason of his being sent to the country, it did him good, 
 and he came back sobered, and with a larger inclination 
 for work. While, however, after being sent down, he did 
 his part as a student with more fidelity, he never after- 
 wards showed the least desire for academical distinction, 
 or put forth the smallest efforts to secure it. Although 
 not manifested in the classes, his abiHty was recognised 
 by his fellow-students, and in a very marked manner. 
 The members of the Phi Beta Kappa Society consisted 
 
204 Masters in History, 
 
 of the first sixteen of every class, but the rules of the 
 association were stretched in the case of Motley, as it was 
 considered his after career would be such as would make 
 it an honour for the society to have his name on their roll 
 of members. 
 
 Motley improved and educated himself in lines lying 
 apart from regular college work. There was a certain 
 shallow drawer in a writing table of his rooms which 
 he delighted to fill with character sketches, prose por- 
 traits, plays, and poems ; and as often as the drawer was 
 filled with the fruits of his industry he delighted in 
 making a little bonfire of the mass. As there must have 
 been amongst these productions pieces of real merit, it is 
 to be regretted that so few of his college effusions have, 
 from this cause, been preserved to us. As yet, his his- 
 torical instincts were only taking the crudest of shapes. 
 One day a tutor stood aghast before the vast number of 
 novels on the student's table. He remonstrated with 
 Motley, but only to receive the boastful answer, " I am 
 reading historically, and have come to the novels of the 
 nineteenth century. Taken in a lump, they are very hard 
 reading." 
 
 The personal traits of his character were few. He left 
 different impressions on different companions. One 
 bears testimony, " He was a manly boy, with no love or 
 leaning to girls' company ; no care for dress j not a trace 
 of personal vanity. He was, or at least seemed, wholly 
 unconscious of his rare beauty, and of the fascination of 
 his manner ; not a trace of pretence, the simplest and 
 most natural creature in the world." Another says, '' He 
 seemed to have a passion for dress. But, as in every- 
 thing else, so in this, his fancy was a fitful one. At one 
 time he would excite our admiration by the splendour of 
 his outfit, and perhaps the next week he would seem to 
 
John Motley. 205 
 
 take equal pleasure in his slovenly or careless appear- 
 ance." We cannot read the latter picture without recal- 
 ling to our recollection its likeness to the portrait of a 
 certain eminent statesman as he appeared, when a youth 
 of nineteen, in the house of the Countess of Blessington. 
 That these portraits of Motley are quite reconcileable, the 
 " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table " very cleverly shows. 
 ''Motley so well became everything he wore, that, if he had 
 sprung from his bed, and slipped his clothes on at an 
 alarum fire, his costume would have looked like a prince's 
 undress. His natural presentment, like that of Count 
 D'Orsay, was of the kind which suggests the intentional 
 effects of an elaborate toilet, no matter how little thought 
 or care may have been given to make it effective. I 
 think ' the passion for dress ' was really only a seeming, 
 and that he often excited admiration when he had not 
 taken half the pains to adorn himself, that many a youth, 
 less favoured by nature, has wasted upon his unblest 
 exterior only to be laughed at." Writing verses for the 
 *' Anti-Masonic Mirror," occasional papers for a maga- 
 zine then started by Mr Willis, welcoming every appear- 
 ance of Christopher in Blackwood With, as great a glee as 
 if he had been a young Scotch Tory, and supping with 
 his friends every week at Fresh Pond and Gallagher's, 
 Motley's student days, such as they were, came to an 
 end. Really the most notable thing in the young man's 
 college life was a letter one of his companions received 
 from Madame Goethe, on the occasion of his sending her 
 an essay on Goethe, which Motley had spoken at one of 
 the college exhibitions. Madame Goethe was so pleased 
 with the performance that she said, " I want to see the 
 first book that young man will write." 
 
 It is to be seen at a glance that the college days of 
 Motley were not wholly satisfactory. There was promise 
 
2o6 Masters in History. 
 
 in them \ but manifestly that promise was not in the ordi- 
 nary sphere of university work. Looking back on the 
 trivial efforts made by the future historian during those 
 valuable Harvard years, it consoles one to think on the 
 observation of Barthlemy, that no Grecian youth who 
 won a prize at Olympia as a boy ever won a prize at 
 Olympia as a man; — he noticed that the severity of a too 
 early training destroyed the capabilities of the matured 
 powers. Thinking, again, however, of Motley's discur- 
 sive studies, we remember a philosophical observation of 
 Boswell in the first chapter of his " Life of Johnson." 
 Says the prince of biographers : — " The flesh of animals 
 who feed excursively is allowed to have a higher flavour 
 than that of those who are cooped up. May there not 
 be the same difference between men who read as their 
 taste prompts, and men who are confined to their cells 
 and colleges to stated tasks ? " 
 
 As time went past the positive necessity of application 
 became to Motley more and more apparent, and after 
 leaving Harvard for the universities of Berlin and Gottin- 
 gen, it must be confessed, he worked so hard as to make 
 up in great part, in his two years' residence in Europe, 
 what he had lost at the American college. 183 2-1 83 3 
 were the years the student spent in Germany, and so 
 filled were they with studious labours, that we have of 
 them very little record. What record we have of them, 
 however, shows that Motley was particularly fortunate in 
 the two companionships he formed with two contem- 
 porary students. His young friends of Berlin and Got- 
 tingen came even to be more famous than those of Wal- 
 nut Street. The one was Count Alexander Keyserling, 
 the distinguished botanist; and the other Prince Bismarck, 
 the dictator of German politics. Bismarck, writing last 
 year to Professor Holmes, told how he met Motley first 
 
John Motley, 207 
 
 at Gottingen, and how he drew to him on account of his 
 wit, humour, and originality. When they left Gottingen 
 the three students became fellow lodgers in a house in 
 BerHn. They used to discuss Shakespeare, Byron, and 
 Goethe, till the small hours ; but in all their debates the 
 American ever maintained a mild and amiable temper. 
 Prince Bismarck goes on to say :— " The most striking 
 feature of his handsome and delicate appearance was un- 
 commonly large and beautiful eyes. He never entered a 
 drawing-room without exciting the curiosity and sympathy 
 of the ladies." In after years the two old students met 
 repeatedly. At Frankfurt, Motley stayed with his old 
 friend, and the last occasion on which they met was at 
 Varzin in 1872, at the celebration of Bismarck's silver 
 wedding. 
 
 After Motley's return from Germany in 1834, he ap- 
 pears to have given himself for a time to the study of 
 Law. He found the profession uncongenial, and he 
 never, like Macaulay, entertained the most distant 
 thoughts of devoting his life to its exacting service. Still, 
 without having settled to a definite profession, he mar- 
 ried, on the 2d March 1837, Miss Mary Benjamin, then 
 residing with her brother at No. 14 Temple Place. This 
 lady, although not possibly of so high intellectual acquire- 
 ments as the wife of the historian of Greece, was still 
 even more serviceable to her husband than Mrs Grote to 
 hers. Although Mrs Motley never directly helped her 
 husband with his work, yet without her the work had 
 possibly never been done at all. What success the his- 
 torian achieved in his life was largely owing to the impe- 
 tus given to his energies by her gentle and amiable spirit. 
 Those who knew her " found it hard to speak of her in 
 the common terms of praise which they award to the 
 good and the lovely." Her influence gave Motley the 
 
2o8 Masters in History. 
 
 two things he wanted most, concentration and direction. 
 After his marriage he found no difficulty in devoting him- 
 self to a particular work, and settling himself to a task to 
 bring it to a successful termination. 
 
 In 1839, two years after Motley's marriage, appeared 
 his first literary work, " Morton's Hope," a novel, in two 
 volumes. It was not without its merits, but, lacking 
 everything a novel should have, it proved a complete 
 failure. Showing passion boiling behind a mask of 
 cynicism, it treated the reader to an ill-concealed Byronism. 
 Morton was a mixed Vivian Grey and Pelham, and his 
 hope was pretty much the hope of the former; it was 
 something big and grand, but altogether vague and 
 shadowy. "The novel is a chaos before the creative 
 epoch; the light has not been divided from the dark- 
 ness ; the firmament has not yet divided the waters from 
 the waters." "Morton's Hope" is valuable to a large 
 extent just as " Vivian Grey" is valuable. In it we find 
 both an autobiography and a forecast of the author's 
 future as it seemed in his fancy to lie stretched out 
 before him. " Morton's Hope" gives us the dream of 
 the young historian ; " Vivian Grey," again, presents us 
 with the vision of the young politician. We give such 
 passages as the following, partly as specimens of Motley's 
 early style, and partly to supplement our narrative of his 
 life, for with regard to the primary reference of the 
 author there cannot be the least doubt : — 
 
 " The ground of my early character was plasticity and 
 fickleness. I was mortified by this exposure of my 
 ignorance, and disgusted with my former course of read- 
 ing. I now set myself violently to the study of history. 
 With my turn of mind and with the preposterous habits 
 I had been daily acquiring, I could not fail to make as 
 gross mistakes in the pursuit of this as of other branches 
 
John Motley. 209 
 
 of knowledge. I imagined, on setting out, a system of 
 strict and impartial investigation of the sources of history. 
 I was inspired with the absurd ambition, not uncommon 
 to youthful students, of knowing as much as their masters. 
 I imagined it necessary for me, stripling as I was, to 
 study the authorities ; and, imbued with the strict neces- 
 sity of judging for myself, I turned from the limpid 
 pages of the modern historians to the notes and authori- 
 ties at the bottom of the page. These, of course, sent 
 me back to my monastic acquaintances, and I again 
 found myself in such congenial company to a youthful 
 and ardent mind as Florence of Worcester and Simeon 
 of Durham, the venerable Bede, and Matthew Paris ; 
 and so on to Gregory and Fredegarius, down to the 
 more modern and elegant pages of Froissart, Hollinshed, 
 Hooker, and Stowe. Infant as I was, I presumed to 
 grapple with masses of learning almost beyond the 
 strength of the giants of history. A spendthrift of my 
 time and labour, I went out of my way to collect materials 
 and to build for myself, when I should have known that 
 older and abler architects had already appropriated all 
 that was worth preserving \ that the edifice was built, the 
 quarry exhausted, and that I was, consequently, only 
 delving amidst rubbish. . . . 
 
 "From studying and investigating the sources of 
 history with my own eyes, I went a step further; I 
 refused the guidance of modern writers ; and proceeding 
 from one point of presumption to another, I came to the 
 magnanimous conviction that I could not know history 
 as I ought to know it unless I wrote it for myself. . . . 
 
 " My ambition was boundless ; my dreams of glory 
 
 were not confined to authorship and literature alone ; but 
 
 every sphere in which the intellect of man exerts itself 
 
 revolved in a blaze of light before me. And there I sat 
 (2) O 
 
2IO Mastei's in History. 
 
 in my solitude and dreamed such wondrous dreams ! 
 Events were thickening around me which were soon to 
 change the world — but they were unmarked by me. 
 The country was changing to a mighty theatre, on whose 
 stage those who were as great as I fancied myself to be, 
 were to enact a stupendous drama in which I had no 
 part. I saw it not ; I knew it not \ and yet how infinitely 
 beautiful were the imaginations of my solitude ! Fancy 
 shook her kaleidoscope each moment as each directed, 
 and lo ! what new, fantastic, brilliant, but what unmean- 
 ing visions. My ambitious anticipations were as bound- 
 less as they were various and conflicting. There was 
 not a path which leads to glory in which I was not 
 destined to gather laurels. As a warrior I would conquer 
 and overrun the world ; as a statesman I would re- 
 organize and govern it ; as a historian I would consign 
 it to immortality ; and in my leisure moments I would 
 be a great poet and man of the world." 
 
 The outline is bold enough and filled in with warm 
 enough colours surely. If there is a saving power in 
 hope, then this hero would certainly never perish. How 
 far the ideal was found in the real, how far the dream 
 had its fulfilment, and "how many of the coins the dervise 
 gave the merchant did not turn into leaves next morning," 
 the sequel will show. 
 
 Mr Carlyle in one or other of his essays makes the 
 remark, that he who would write heroic poems should 
 make his whole life a heroic poem. A similar observa- 
 tion might be made about our great historians. When 
 we look over the whole range of masters in history, we 
 find that great part of them are also historical personages. 
 Herodotus was not merely the father of history; when he 
 returned to Halicarnassus, after having fled from the fury 
 of Lygdamis, he took a prominent part in expelling the 
 
John Motley. 2 1 1 
 
 tyrant from his native city. Thucydides was not only the 
 historian of the demus HaUmus; he led an Athenian 
 squadron at Thasus. Xenophon not only wrote the 
 "Anabasis," he was also leader of the ten thousand. 
 Tacitus was not only the author of the "Annales," he 
 was also a consul and in high office at the court of 
 Vespasian. Josephus was a Jewish leader and warrior 
 as well as a Jewish historian. We have seen how the 
 exertion of Grote secured for his countrymen the ballot, 
 and how Macaulay was both a Governor of India and a 
 distinguished Parliamentary debater. We now turn to 
 the first page of Motley's public career. 
 
 In 18*4 the future historian of the Netherlands was 
 appointed Secretary of Legation to the Russian Mission. 
 This office he held only for a very short period. He feared 
 to expose his wife and two young children to the rigours 
 of a Russian climate, and so far away from those whom 
 he loved most, the heart of the young husband grew 
 home-sick. His position was such that every door in 
 St Petersburg would have readily opened unto him, but 
 his reserve was such that it would have taken him longer 
 time " to have become intimate than to thaw the Baltic." 
 That he had an observant eye for what was going on 
 round about him, and a facile pen to describe it, the 
 following, from a letter to his mother, will show : — " We 
 entered through a small vestibule, with the usual arrange- 
 ment of treble doors, padded with leather to exclude the 
 cold, and guarded by two 'proud young porters' in 
 severe cocked-hats and formidable batons, into a broad 
 hall — threw off our furred boots and cloaks, ascended a 
 carpeted marble staircase, in every angle of which stood 
 a statuesque footman in gaudy coat and unblemished 
 unmentionables, and reached a broad landing on the 
 top, as usual thronged with servants. Thence we passed 
 
212 Masters in History. 
 
 through an ante-chamber into a long, high, brilliantly 
 lighted, saffron-papered room, in which a dozen card- 
 tables were arranged, and thence into the receiving- 
 room. This was a large room, with splendidly inlaid 
 and polished floor, the walls covered with crimson satin, 
 the cornices heavily encrusted with gold, and the ceiling 
 beautifully painted in arabesque. The massive fauteuils 
 and sofas, as also the drapery, were of crimson satin, 
 with a profusion of gilding. . . . One might almost 
 imagined one's-self in the Hand of the cypress and 
 myrtle ' instead of our actual whereabout upon the polar 
 banks of the Neva. Wandering through these mimic 
 groves, or reposing from the fatigues of the dance, was 
 many a fair and graceful form, while the brilliantly- 
 lighted ball-room, filled with hundreds of exquisitely- 
 dressed women (for the Russian ladies, if not pretty, are 
 graceful, and make admirable toilettes), formed a dazzling 
 contrast with the tempered light of the ' Winter Garden.' 
 The conservatory opened into a library, and from the 
 library you reach the ante-chamber, thus completing the 
 * giro ' of one of the prettiest houses in St Petersburg. 
 I waltzed one waltz and quadrilled one quadrille — but it 
 was hard work; and as the sole occupation of these 
 parties is dancing and card-playing — conversation appa- 
 rently not being customary — they are to me not very 
 attractive." Moving about amongst such scenes as these, 
 the heart of the young diplomatist was still in Boston ; 
 and after staying in the Russian capital only a few months, 
 he returned again to America. Although resigning his 
 appointment thus early, there was no unpleasantness 
 occurred. He simply gave up an ofiice which he found 
 did not suit him, and the emoluments of which were 
 inadequate. 
 
 Disappointed with his first efforts to serve the Re- 
 
 ^ 
 
John Motley, 2 1 3 
 
 public, he returned to America only to mourn the loss 
 of his first-born, who had died in his absence. 
 
 The state of political feeling at the time was not such 
 as could bring any consolation to Motley in the midst 
 of his sorrows and disappointments. The election of a 
 Mr Palk instead of Mr Henry Clay, a gentleman of 
 probity and honour, ruffled his temper dreadfully, and 
 put him almost in despair about the nature of American 
 institutions generally. He thought the election " proved 
 that a man better qualified by an extraordinary combina- 
 tion of advantages to administer the government than 
 any man now living, or any man we can ever produce 
 again, can be beaten by anybody. It has taken forty 
 years to prepare such a man for the Presidency, and the 
 result is that he can be beaten by anybody — Mr Palk is 
 anybody — he is ' Mr Quelconque.' " 
 
 Motley had taken some part in local pohtics, and 
 made various speeches ; but after an election, where 
 both experience and intellectual power had gone to the 
 wall, he turned with disgust from a career that could 
 only make the man of character a note-distributor, a 
 fence-viewer, or a hog-reeve. These were the first steps 
 in that statesmanship which, according to " Morton's 
 Hope," " was to reorganize and govern the world." 
 
 Turning from the turbid waters of American politics. 
 Motley found solace in the prosecution of his literary 
 studies. In the North American Review for 1845 he 
 published a Memoir of the life of Peter the Great. This 
 was a most able production, and his first essay in the 
 historical field. It marked the concentration and de- 
 velopment of that diffused power which his friends had 
 noticed in his college career. It had a welcome from 
 the American public somewhat similar to that accorded 
 to Macaulay's " Milton " by the English people. If in 
 
214 Masters in History , 
 
 his novel he had given the world a revelation of his 
 personality, in his essay he gave an unmistakable mani- 
 festation of his powers as biographer and historian. 
 While the American public admired it for its intrinsic 
 merit, his relations regarded it as the first of a series of 
 more ambitious and elaborate performances. It is of 
 interest to the student as showing "the movement of 
 the hand, the glow of the colour, that were in due time 
 to display on a broader canvas the full-length portraits 
 of William the Silent and of John of Bameveld." The 
 July of 1847 saw the pubHcation of a paper on Balzac, 
 the man ''who made twenty assaults upon fame, and had 
 forty books killed under him," before he gained the 
 heights of popular favour. In October 1849 he gave to 
 the world, through the pages of the Reviezv, another 
 historical study on the '' PoUty of the Puritans." The 
 article was written in a thoroughly American spirit, and 
 takes a comprehensive view of American liberaHsm. 
 There is real insight in such an observation as the follow- 
 ing : — " We enjoy an inestimable advantage in America. 
 One can be a republican, a democrat, without being a 
 radical. A radical, one who would uproot, is a man 
 whose trade is dangerous to society. Here is but little 
 to uproot. The trade cannot flourish. All classes are 
 conservative by necessity, for none can wish to change 
 the structure of our poHty." 
 
 The year 1849 is memorable as the year of the death of 
 Joseph Lewis Stackpole, Motley's most intimate friend and 
 brother-in-law. This gentleman, although not possessing 
 the parts of the historian, had yet more discretion, com- 
 mon sense, and knowledge of the world, and he was of 
 the utmost service to Motley in restraining his impulsive 
 disposition, and directing his talents to appropriate 
 objects of study. He perished in a railway accident, 
 
John Motley. 2 1 5 
 
 and in his death, Holmes says, the historian lost more 
 than he ever knew. The year of Motley's brother-in- 
 law's death was also the year in which he sat as a mem- 
 ber of the Massachusetts House of Representatives ; but 
 having brought forward a report, when he acted as Chair- 
 man of an Education Committee, which received a criti- 
 cism which he was not able to refute, he retired, " cured 
 of any ambition for political promotion in Massachusetts." 
 This same year also he gave to the world a second novel. 
 It was a vast advance on his primary effort, and the 
 reader found the perfume of " Vivian Grey " lost in the 
 flavour of " Kenilworth." " Merry Mount " was founded 
 on a half historical basis, and, like a vestibule, we pass 
 through it to that part of Motley's life filled with purely 
 historical studies. 
 
 So early as 1846 Motley had begun collecting mate- 
 rials for his " Rise of the Dutch Republic." When, how- 
 ever, in 1850, he found himself willing to set seriously 
 to work, he discovered in his way a most unexpected, 
 and, as it appeared at first sight, a wholly insur- 
 mountable difficulty. He had hardly sat down in earnest 
 to his desk when he heard that Mr Prescott was occupied 
 with an historical work covering the same field. The 
 information was painful and disappointing, but, like the 
 man of honour he was. Motley resolved to pursue a straight- 
 forward and open course. Before throwing down his pen 
 and abandoning what had been to him the cherished 
 dream of years, before throwing aside an undertaking 
 that must have involved the complete renunciation of 
 authorship^ he resolved, stranger as he was to the veteran 
 historian, he would seek him out and ascertain from his 
 own lips his views of the matter. " My subject," he 
 says, " had taken me up, drawn me on, and absorbed 
 me into itself. It was necessary for me, it seemed, to 
 
2 1 6 Masters in History. 
 
 write the book I had been thinking much of, even if it 
 were destined to fall dead from the press, and I had no 
 inclination to write any other." Prescott received 
 Motley in the very kindest spirit; he dissuaded him from 
 abandoning the work, assured him that one able book 
 never yet injured another, and ended by offering to place 
 at Motley's disposal any works in his library that he 
 thought would be useful to him in the prosecution of his 
 undertaking. All this was most handsome. The fact 
 was, the older was thoroughly capable of sympathising 
 with the younger man, for Prescott in his earlier days 
 had been placed in a similar predicament when he began 
 his " History of the Conquest of Mexico." Counselling 
 Motley as he did, in reality he was only giving the 
 advice he himself received. Great works depend not 
 merely on accidents of birth, as has already been shown; 
 they depend sometimes on such trivial things as a genial 
 reception and a kindly manner. '' Had the result 
 of that interview been different," said Motley, — " had he 
 distinctly stated, or even vaguely hinted, that it would 
 be as well I should select some other topic, or had he 
 only sprinkled me with the cold water of conventional 
 and commonplace encouragement, — I should have gone 
 from him with a chill upon my mind, and, no doubt, 
 have laid down the pen at once ; for, as I have already 
 said, it was not that I cared about writing a history, but 
 that I felt an inevitable impulse to write one particular 
 history. And although it seems easy enough for a man 
 of world-wide reputation thus to extend the right hand of 
 fellowship to an unknown and struggling aspirant, yet I fear 
 that the history of literature will show that such instances 
 of disinterested kindness are as rare as they are noble." 
 
 To Motley, who wished to do his work systematically 
 and thoroughly, it was highly unsatisfactory to labour at 
 
John Motley. 217 
 
 such a distance from original references and the archives 
 of Europe. He had already, in 185 1, done a large part 
 of his task, but the necessity of greater investigation 
 and research so grew upon him that he started with his 
 family for the continent, to begin his labours anew. He 
 spent several years in Europe in unintermitting study 
 and research, and in the course of his investigations he 
 visited the libraries of BerHn, Dresden, the Hague, and 
 Brussels. We cannot follow the historian through all 
 his wanderings, but the following lucid sentences, taken 
 from a letter to Holmes, give us sufficient insight into 
 his manner of life while pursuing his researches. They 
 also show, while he was doing the laborious work of 
 the history, he could still ply the tripping pen of the 
 novelist : — 
 
 "Brussels, 20th November 1853. Our daily career 
 is very regular and monotonous. Our life is as stagnant 
 as a Dutch canal. Not that I complain of it ; on the 
 contrary, the canal may be richly freighted with mer- 
 chandise and be a short cut to the ocean of abundant 
 and perpetual knowledge; but, at the same time, few 
 points rise above the level of so regular a life, to be 
 worthy of your notice. You must, therefore, allow me 
 to meander along the meadows of common-place. Don't 
 expect anything of the impetuous or boiling style. We 
 go it weak here. I don't know whether you were ever 
 in Brussels. ... I haunt this place because it is my 
 scene, my theatre. Here were enacted so many deep 
 tragedies, so many stately dramas, and even so many 
 farces, which have been familiar to me so long that I 
 have got to imagine myself invested with a kind of 
 property in the place, and look at it as if it were 
 merely the theatre, with the coulisses, machinery, 
 drapery, etc., for representing scenes which have long 
 
2 1 8 Masters in History. 
 
 since vanished, and which no more enter the minds of 
 the men and women who are actually moving across its 
 pavement than if they had occurred in the moon. With 
 the present generation I am not familiar. En revanche^ 
 the dead men of the place are my intimate friends. I 
 am at home in any cemetery. With the fellows of the 
 sixteenth century I am on the most familiar terms. 
 Any ghost that ever flits by night across the moonlit 
 square is at once hailed by me as a man and a brother. 
 I call him by his Christian name at once. My habits 
 here for the present year are very regular. I came here, 
 having, as I thought, finished my work, or rather the 
 first part (something like three or four volumes, 8vo), 
 but I find so much original matter here, and so 
 many emendations to make, that I am ready to 
 despair. However, there is nothing for it, but to 
 penelopize, pull to pieces, and stitch away again. 
 Whatever may be the result of my labour, nobody can 
 say I have not worked like a brute beast — but I don't 
 care for the result. The labour is in itself its own 
 reward, and all I want. I go day after day to the 
 Archives here (as I went all summer at the Hague) 
 studying the old letters and documents of the fifteenth 
 century. Here I remain among my fellow-worms, 
 feeding on those musty mulberry leaves, out of which we 
 are afterwards to spin our silk. How can you expect any- 
 thing interesting from such a human cocoon ? It is, how- 
 ever, not without its amusement, in a mouldy sort of way, 
 this reading of dead letters. It is something to read 
 the real, hona-jide sign manual of such fellows as William 
 of Orange, Count Egmont, Alexander Tarvese, Philip 
 II., Cardinal Granvelle, and the rest of them. It gives 
 a ' realizing sense,' as the Americans have it." 
 
 At length the labours of ten years were brought to a 
 
John Motley, 219 
 
 conclusion. Bearing with him his huge manuscript, he 
 now emerged from his continental retirement and repaired 
 to London, to make arrangements for the publishing of 
 the work. To the booksellers of London he was utterly 
 unknown, and not one of them would undertake the 
 publication of the history on their own responsibility. 
 First he called on Mr Murray, who afterwards published 
 the United Netherlands, but it was only to be politely 
 rebuffed. Eventually, the author, through Mr John 
 Chapman, gave the work to the world at his own ex- 
 pense. In a very few weeks after its publication there 
 was gnashing of teeth amongst the booksellers who had 
 declined the manuscript. The ^' Rise of the Dutch 
 Republic " immediately took the popular taste, and before 
 1850 had closed no less than 15,000 copies of the 
 work had been sold in England alone. Those who had 
 slumbered and slept over " Morton's Hope," and drowsed 
 over " Merry Mount," now found their sleepiness slip from 
 them like a garment as they perused the glowing pages 
 of the Dutch Republic. The patient research united to 
 the full colouring, the rapidity of movement combined 
 with the reality of portraiture, kept the reading world 
 enthralled as they had never been by history or romance 
 before or since. When Mr Froude read the work, he 
 passed his word in the Westminster Review, that it would 
 take its place amongst the finest histories in this or in 
 any language; and so far as gone his prediction still 
 holds. There is no indication that it has before it a 
 waning popularity, and eventually the dusty shelf of a 
 library as its final resting-place. The Dutch Republic 
 possesses a double life : it will live as an accurate record 
 of facts ; it will live as a thrilling narrative. The ruddy 
 vivacity of the story, the deep dye of the language and 
 the sumptuousness of the dramatic descriptions, make one 
 
2 20 Masters in History. 
 
 inclined to say of the author what Guido said of Rubens : 
 " The fellow mixes blood with his colours." The Re- 
 public marks usually a period in a man's reading. He for- 
 gets when he read other works, but he always remembers 
 about it, and calculates before and after it as a chrono- 
 logical event in his intellectual existence. After reading 
 the volumes, Prescott held out to Motley the hand of 
 fellowship, rejoicing most of all in this, that it had been 
 reserved for one of his countrymen to tell the story of 
 the memorable revolution better than it ever had been 
 told. Holmes says : — " The lonely student, who had 
 almost forgotten the look of living men in the solitude 
 of archives haunted by dead memories, found himself 
 suddenly in the full blaze of a great reputation." The 
 following is Motley's description of the siege of Antwerp : — 
 " At ten o'clock, a moving wood was descried approach- 
 ing the citadel from the south-west. The whole body of 
 the mutineers from Alost, wearing green branches in 
 their helmets, had arrived under command of their 
 Eletto, Navarrete. Nearly three thousand in number, 
 they rushed into the castle, having accomplished their 
 march of twenty-four miles since three o'clock in the 
 morning. They were received with open arms. Sancho 
 d'Avila ordered food and refreshments to be laid before 
 them, but they refused everything but a draught of wine. 
 They would dine in Paradise, they said, or sup in 
 Antwerp. Finding his allies in such spirit, Don Sancho 
 would not balk their humour. Since early morning his 
 own veterans had been eagerly waiting his signal, * strain- 
 ing upon the start.' The troops of Romero, Vargas, 
 Valdez, were no less impatient. At about an hour before 
 noon, nearly every living man in the citadel was mustered 
 for the attack, hardly men enough being left behind to 
 guard the gates. Five thousand veteran foot soldiers, 
 
John Motley. 221 
 
 besides six hundred cavalry, armed to the teeth, sallied 
 from the portals of Alva's citadel. In the counterscarp 
 they fell upon their knees, to invoke, according to custom, 
 the blessing of God upon the devil's work, which they 
 were about to commit. The Eletto bore a standard, one 
 side of which was emblazoned with the crucified Saviour, 
 and the other with the Virgin Mary. The image of Him 
 who said, 'Love your enemies,' and the gentle face of 
 the Madonna, were to smile from heaven upon deeds 
 which might cause a shudder in the depths of hell. 
 Their brief orisons concluded, they swept forward to the 
 city. Three thousand Spaniards, under their Eletto, were 
 to enter by the street of Saint Michael; the Germans 
 and the remainder of the Spanish foot, commanded by 
 Romero, through that of Saint George. Champagny 
 saw them coming, and spoke a last word of encourage- 
 ment to the Walloons. The next moment the compact 
 mass struck the barrier, as the thunderbolt descends 
 from the cloud. The Spaniards clashed through the 
 bulwark, as though it had been a wall of glass. The 
 Eletto was first to mount the rampart ; the next instant 
 he was shot dead, while his followers, undismayed, sprang 
 over his body, and poured into the streets. The fatal 
 gaps, due to timidity and carelessness, let in the destruc- 
 tive tide. Champagny, seeing that the enemies had all 
 crossed the barrier, leaped over a garden wall, passed 
 through a house into a narrow lane, and thence to the 
 nearest station of the German troops. Hastily collecting 
 a small force he led them in person to the rescue. The 
 Germans fought well, died well, but they could not 
 reanimate the courage of the Walloons, and all were now 
 in full retreat, pursued by the ferocious Spaniards. In 
 vain Champagny stormed among them j in vain he strove 
 to rally their broken ranks. With his own hand he seized 
 
2 22 Masters in History. 
 
 a banner from a retreating ensign, and called upon the 
 nearest soldiers to make a stand against the foe. It was 
 to bid the flying clouds pause before the tempest. Torn, 
 broken, aimless, the scattered troops whirled about the 
 streets before the pursuing wrath. Champagny, not yet 
 despairing, galloped hither and thither, calling upon the 
 burghers everywhere to rise in defence of their homes, 
 nor did he call in vain. They came forth from every 
 place of rendezvous, from every alley, from every house. 
 They fought as men fight to defend their hearths and 
 altars, but what could individual devotion avail against 
 the compact, disciplined, resistless mass of their foes? 
 The order of defence was broken ; there was no system, 
 no concert, no rallying point, no authority. So soon as 
 it was known the Spaniards had crossed the rampart, 
 that its six thousand defenders were in full retreat, it was 
 inevitable that a panic should seize the city. 
 
 " Their entrance once effected, the Spanish force had 
 separated, according to previous arrangement, into two 
 divisions, one half charging up the long street of Saint 
 Michael, the other forcing its way through the street of 
 Saint J oris. 'Santiago, Santiago! Espana, Espana ! a 
 sangre, a carne, a fuego, i, sacco !' — Saint James, Spain, 
 blood, flesh, fire, sack ! ! Such were the hideous cries 
 which rang through every quarter of the city, as the 
 savage horde advanced. Van Ende, with his German 
 troops, had been stationed by the Marquis of Havr4 to 
 defend the Saint Joris gate, but no sooner did the 
 Spaniards under Vargas present themselves, than he 
 deserted to them instantly with his whole force. United 
 with the Spanish cavalry, these traitorous defenders of 
 Antwerp dashed in pursuit of those who had only been 
 faint-hearted. Thus the burghers saw themselves attacked 
 by many of their friends, deserted by more. Whom wer 
 
John Motley. 223 
 
 they to trust ? Nevertheless, Oberstein's Germans were 
 brave and faithful, resisting to the last, and dying every 
 man in his harness. The tide of battle flowed hither 
 and thither, through every street and narrow lane. It 
 poured along the magnificent Place de Meer, where 
 there was an obstinate contest. In front of the famous 
 Exchange, where, in peaceful hours five thousand 
 merchants met daily to arrange the commercial affairs of 
 Christendom, there was a determined rally, a savage 
 slaughter. The citizens and faithful Germans, in this 
 broader space, made a stand against their pursuers. The 
 tesselated, marble pavement, the graceful, cloister-like 
 arcades, ran red with blood. The ill-armed burghers 
 faced their enemies, clad in complete panoply, but they 
 could only die for their homes. The massacre at this 
 point was enormous, the resistance at last overcome. 
 
 " Meantime the Spanish cavalry had cleft its way 
 through the city. On the side furthest removed from 
 the castle, along the Horse-market, opposite the New- 
 town, the states dragoons and the light horse of Beveren 
 had been posted, and the flying masses of pursuers and 
 pursued swept at last through this outer circle. Cham- 
 pagny was already there. He essayed, as his last hope, 
 to rally the cavalry for a final stand, but the effort was 
 fruitless. Already seized by the panic, they had 
 attempted to rush from the city through the gate of 
 Eeker. It was locked. They then turned and fled 
 towards the Red-gate, where they were met face to face 
 by Don Pedro Tassis, who charged upon them with his 
 dragoons. Retreat seemed hopeless. A horseman in 
 complete armour, with lance in rest, was seen to leap 
 from the'parapet of the outer wall into the moat below, 
 whence, still on horseback, he escaped with life. 
 Few were so fortunate. The confused host of fugitives 
 
2 24 Masters in History. 
 
 and conquerors, Spaniards, Walloons, Germans, burghers, 
 struggling, shouting, striking, cursing, dying, swayed 
 hither and thither Hke a stormy sea. Along the spaci- 
 ous Horse-market, the fugitives fled onward towards the 
 quays. Many fell beneath the swords of the Spaniards, 
 numbers were trodden to death by the hoofs of the 
 horses, still greater multitudes were hunted into the 
 Scheldt. Champagny, who had thought it possible, even 
 at the last moment, to make a stand in the New-town, 
 and to fortify the palace of the Hausa, saw himself 
 deserted. With great daring and presence of mind he 
 effected his escape to the fleet of the Prince of Orange 
 in the river. The Marquis of Havre, of whom no deeds 
 of valour of that eventful day have been recorded, was 
 equally successful. The unlucky Oberstein, attempting 
 to leap into a boat, missed his footing, and, oppressed 
 with the weight of his armour, was drowned. 
 
 " Meantime, while the short November day was fast 
 declining, the combat still raged in the interior of the 
 city. Various currents of conflict, forcing their separate 
 way through many streets, had at last mingled in the 
 Grande Place. Around this irregular, not very spacious 
 square, stood the gorgeous Hotel de Ville, and the 
 tall, many storied, fantastically-gabled, richly-decorated 
 palaces of the guilds. Here a long struggle took place. 
 It was terminated for a time by the cavalry of Vargas, 
 who, arriving through the streets of Saint Joris, accom- 
 panied by the traitor Van Ende, charged decisively into 
 the melee. The masses were broken, but multitudes of 
 armed men found refuge in the buildings, and every 
 house became a fortress. From every window and bal- 
 cony a hot fire was poured into the square, as, pent in 
 a corner, the burghers stood at last at bay. It was diffi- 
 cult to carry the houses by storm, but they were soon set 
 
John Motley. 225 
 
 on fire. A large number of sutlers and other varlets had 
 accompanied the Spaniards from the citadel, bringing 
 torches and kindling materials for the express purpose of 
 firing the town. With great dexterity these means were 
 now employed, and in a brief interval the city-hall, and 
 other edifices on the square, were in flames. The con- 
 flagration spread with rapidity, house after house, street 
 after street, taking fire. Nearly a thousand buildings in 
 the most splendid and wealthy quarter of the city were 
 soon in a blaze, and multitudes of human beings were 
 burned with them. In the city-hall many were con- 
 sumed, while others leapt from the windows to renew 
 the combat below. In the street called the Canal au 
 Sucre, immediately behind the Town-house, there was a 
 fierce struggle, a horrible massacre. A crowd of burghers, 
 grave magistrates, and such of the German soldiers as 
 remained alive, still confronted the ferocious Spaniards. 
 There, amid the flaming desolation, Goswyn Verreyck, 
 the heroic margrave of the city, fought with the energy 
 of hatred and despair. The burgomaster. Van der Meere, 
 lay dead at his feet j senators, soldiers, citizens, fell fast 
 around him, and he sank at last upon a heap of slain. 
 With him efi"ectual resistance ended. The remaining 
 combatants were butchered, or were slowly forced down- 
 ward to perish in the Scheldt. Women, children, old 
 men, were killed in countless numbers, and still, through 
 all this havoc, directly over the heads of the struggling 
 throng, suspended in mid-air above the din and smoke of 
 the conflict, there sounded, every half-quarter of every 
 hour, as if in gentle mockery, from the belfry of the 
 cathedral, the tender and melodious chimes. 
 
 " Never was there a more monstrous massacre, even 
 in the blood-stained history of the Netherlands. It was 
 estimated that, in the course of this and the two follow- 
 (2) P 
 
2 26 Masters in History, 
 
 ing days, not less than eight thousand human beings 
 were murdered. The Spaniards seemed to have cast off 
 even the vizard of humanity. Hell seemed emptied of . 
 its fiends. Night fell upon the scene before the soldiers 
 were masters of the city ; but worse horrors began after 
 the contest was ended. This army of brigands had 
 come hither with a definite, practical purpose, for it was 
 not blood-thirst, nor lust, nor revenge, which had im- 
 pelled them, but it was avarice, greediness for gold. For 
 gold they had waded through all this blood and fire. 
 Never had men more simplicity of purpose, more direct- 
 ness in its execution. They had conquered their India 
 at last ; its gold mines lay all before them, and every 
 sword should open a shaft. Riot and rape might be de- 
 ferred ; even murder, though congenial to their taste, 
 was only subsidiary to their business. They had come 
 to take possession of the city's wealth, and they set them- 
 selves faithfully to accomplish their task. For gold, 
 infants were dashed out of existence in their mother's 
 arms ; for gold, parents were tortured in their children's 
 presence ; for gold, brides were scourged to death before 
 their husband's eyes. Of all deeds of darkness yet com- 
 passed in the Netherlands, this was the worst. It was 
 called the Spanish Fury, by which dread name it has been 
 'i?:nown for ages."* 
 
 Motley spent the winter of 1856-57 amongst his friends 
 in Boston, and they were pleased to observe the serene, 
 subdued, thoughtful manhood which had grown out of 
 the eager, impulsive boyhood. His fame had only added 
 to his modesty, and he wore his accomplishments lightly 
 as a flower. The American people had the pedestal of 
 the idol ready for him, "but he showed no desire to 
 show himself upon it." In 1858 he returned to England, 
 
 * " The Rise of the Dutch Republic," Part IV., Chapter V. 
 
John Motley. 227 
 
 and his daughter, who became Lady Harcourt, says he 
 enjoyed during his stay the society of Lord Lyndhurst, 
 Lord and Lady CarHsle, Lady WilHam Russell, Lord and 
 Lady Palmerston, Dean Milman, and many others. 
 
 " The Rise of the Dutch Republic " is a complete 
 book in , itself, but the design of the historian was to 
 write a great work to be called " The Eighty Years' War 
 for Liberty," of which it was only to form the first epoch. 
 His plan was to take up the historical clue where he had 
 left it in the Republic, and constitute the period from 
 the death of William the Silent till the Twelve Years' 
 Truce into a second epoch ; and then going on, from 
 the recognition of Independence to the Peace of West- 
 phalia ( 1 609-1 648), to embody the events of those years 
 into a third epoch, with which his labours would con- 
 clude, and after which he would " cease to scourge the 
 public." The first part of this vast design was no sooner 
 completed, than Motley immediately set himself to work 
 to collect materials for his second epoch. Industrious as 
 he had been before in the libraries of Europe, he was now 
 more industrious than ever ; and by keeping his copyists 
 continually at work, he was able to make more rapid 
 progress than before. He felt his next part of his History 
 must have particular value, as, " by special favour of the 
 Belgian Government, he was allowed to read what no 
 one else had ever been permitted to see." 
 
 History is imperious in its demand on its writer. Clio 
 will have no divided worship. Gibbon did nothing else 
 than devote himself heart and soul to the " Decline and 
 Fall." When Grote undertook the " History of Greece " 
 he had to give up his business. Macaulay, when he 
 began the " History of England," had to drop writing 
 articles for the Edinburgh Review. And if this volume 
 establishes one thing more than another, it is this, that 
 
2 28 Masters in History. 
 
 our great masters in history have also been the greatest 
 workers of their age. Men of genius as they were, they 
 would have been nameless had they not applied them- 
 selves Hke Titans to their tasks. One hardly knows 
 whether to admire more the persistence and dogged per- 
 severance with which they prosecuted their work, or the 
 ability and scholarship they brought to its execution. In 
 cases of emergency men can do very wonderful things : for 
 a week or a month they may work with surpassing energy ; 
 but the sight that is before us in these lives we have 
 sketched is the sight of men working at the very highest 
 pitch, and putting out for long years on end such in- 
 tellectual and physical efforts as would leave ordinary 
 men completely exhausted in a few days, or in the course 
 of a few weeks at most. Nor can it be said that this 
 supreme impulse comes in any way from the love of 
 gain. No historian ever kept that as an end in view j no 
 historian ever needed to write for money ; and only one 
 or two have kept it in view even as a secondary con- 
 sideration. In truth, every great history is a testimony 
 to the love of knowledge and intellectual exercise for 
 their own sakes, and is a witness to that consuming, un- 
 selfish ardour which, in a more or less degree, every 
 noble study inspires. 
 
 In powers of continued labour, Motley takes rank with 
 those we have already named. So soon as the " Dutch 
 Republic " was through the press, he was started on his 
 second epoch; and in i860 he gave to the world two 
 volumes of the " United Netherlands." In the second 
 chapter of that work the author gives us some insight 
 into those delights which thrill the heart of the historian 
 as he pores over the musty records of the past : — 
 " Moreover, as already indicated, the envoys, and those 
 whom they represented, had not the same means of 
 
John Motley. 229 
 
 arriving at a result as are granted to us. Thanks to the 
 liberaHty of many modern Governments of Europe, the 
 archives where the State secrets of the buried centuries 
 have so long mouldered, are now open to the student of 
 history. To him who has patience and industry many 
 mysteries are thus revealed which no political sagacity 
 or critical acumen could have divined. He leans over 
 the shoulder of Philip the Second at his writing-table, as 
 the king spells patiently out, with cypher key in hand, 
 the most concealed hieroglyphics of Parma, or Guise, or 
 Mendosa. He reads the secrets of 'Fabius'"^ as that 
 cunctative Roman scrawls his marginal apostilles on 
 each despatch; he pries into all the stratagems of 
 Camillus, Hortensius, Mucins, Julius, Tullius, and the 
 rest of those ancient heroes who lent their names to the 
 diplomatic masqueraders of the sixteenth century; he 
 enters the cabinet of the deeply-pondering Burghley, 
 and takes from the most private drawer the memoranda 
 which record that minister's unutterable doubtings; he 
 pulls from the dressing-gown folds of the stealthy, softly- 
 gliding Walsingham the last secret which he has picked 
 from the Emperor's pigeon-holes or the Pope's pocket ; 
 and which, not Hatton, nor Buckhurst, nor Leicester, 
 nor the Lord Treasurer, is to see — nobody but Elizabeth 
 herself; he sits invisible at the most secret council of 
 the Nassaus, and Barneveld, and Buys, or pores with 
 Farnese over coming victories, and vast schemes of uni- 
 versal conquest ; he reads the latest bit of scandal, the 
 minutest characteristic of king or minister, chronicled by 
 the gossiping Venetians for the edification of the Forty ; 
 and, after all this prying and eavesdropping, having seen 
 the cross-purposes, the bribings, the windings, the fencings 
 in the dark, he is not surprised if those who were syste- 
 * The name usually assigned to Philip himself. 
 
230 Masters in History. 
 
 matically deceived did not always arrive at correct con- 
 clusions." 
 
 In i860 Motley took up house at No. 31 Hertford 
 Street, May Fair. But while he sat down to devote 
 himself to the further continuation of his history of the 
 Low Countries, the voice of civil contention coming 
 across the Atlantic from his native land called away his 
 attention from the events of the past to the more engross- 
 ing events of the present — from being a calm spectator 
 of the affairs of the sixteenth century, to be an eager 
 partizan in those of the nineteenth. So soon as the 
 mutterings of civil discord were heard, he wrote two 
 elaborate letters to the Times, laying bare the weighty 
 issues at stake in the struggle, and in 1861 he returned 
 to America. Aware of the service he had rendered to his 
 country by his efforts in the Times, soon after his landing 
 he was appointed by Lincoln, Minister to Austria. He 
 at once repaired to Vienna, and this post he held for 
 the space of six years. While Austrian Ambassador he 
 had many delicate offices to perform ; but the most deli- 
 cate of all was the conducting of certain negotiations 
 connected with the affairs of Mexico. The United 
 States saw fit to take up a strong stand on the subject, and 
 Motley had to convey to Count Mensdorff the American 
 ultimatum. He was in Vienna when Denmark stood 
 alone against the combined powers of Austria and 
 Prussia. When the war was done Bismarck came to 
 arrange terms of peace with the Emperor, and the 
 occasion gave the historian and the politician ample 
 opportunities of renewing the friendship of college 
 days. 
 
 During these Vienna years literature was in abeyance. 
 Motley's whole soul was absorbed in the conflict in 
 which his country was involved. Confessing they were 
 
John Motley. 231 
 
 living over again the days of the Dutchmen or the 
 seventeenth-century EngHshmen, all else seemed to him 
 "but leather and prunella." "Everything around his 
 inkstand, within a radius of a thousand miles/' was to 
 the eager historian, who dipped his pen into it, of the 
 deepest interest. In certain letters to his American 
 friends, he said, the question they had to settle was, 
 *' Shall slavery die or the Great Republic ? " and it was 
 astounding to him " there could be two opinions in the 
 free States as to the answer." " The great Republic and 
 slavery cannot both survive. We have been defied to 
 mortal combat, and yet we are afraid to strike." It was 
 in vain he sighed, " Dear me ! I wish I could get back 
 to the sixteenth and seventeenth century." To his 
 ardent spirit the events of the nineteenth were too 
 engrossing. The struggle was one he could not look 
 on coldly, yet while all his speech and action were the 
 speech and action of the most genuine patriotism, it is 
 strange to think he was not exempt from the shafts of 
 malevolence. 
 
 No one doubts there is before the American people 
 a glorious future \ but the fact that a man like Motley, 
 a man whose sterling integrity and uprightness were 
 vindicated by his successors in the offices which he filled, 
 was twice humiliated, at the instance of unknown 
 calumniators, by the American government, is not one 
 of those things which will hasten the realization of that 
 future, but will rather retard its coming. That the 
 government of one of the greatest nations on the earth 
 can stoop to the foul charges of anonymity, that they 
 have an ear for the whisper of malice and envy, must 
 ever enter as an element of trouble into our every 
 estimate of American political life and institutions. A 
 government, like an individual, when it speaks no 
 
232 Masters in History. 
 
 slander, only does half its duty— the other and equally 
 important half is not to listen to it. 
 
 The facts which brought about Motley's resignation as 
 Austrian Ambassador were simply these. Andrew John- 
 son, the President of the United States, received a 
 letter dated Paris, October 23, 1866, and signed 
 " George W. M'Crackin (!) of New York." This letter, 
 under the cover of a criticism of certain Massachusetts 
 affairs, heaped on Motley the lowest abuse, accused him 
 of speaking "malignantly" and "offensively" of the 
 Andrew Johnson above named, and said that he had 
 called Mr Seward " a thorough flunkey " and some terms 
 of that sort. Had this letter been received by an 
 English official, very probably the next minute after it 
 had been read it would have made a contribution to the 
 ashes of the grate. Or if it had been saved from this 
 fate, equally rapidly would it have found its way into the 
 hands of a detective, and without doubt a letter would 
 have been sent telling the gentleman aspersed that eaves- 
 droppers were about, and " venomous familiars " were 
 crawling about his person, and so he had better be on 
 his guard. Andrew Johnson did not act as it seems to us 
 an Enghsh government official would have done. The 
 letter passed into the hands of Mr Seward, the Secretary 
 of State. This gentleman, whether or not by the order 
 of the President does not appear, sent to Motley not 
 asking him to confess or deny the accusations of 
 M'Crackin, but putting to him various questions suggested 
 by the Paris document. Seward's letter was both an 
 accusation and an insult. The accusation Motley 
 answered by denying it, the insult he repudiated by 
 at once sending in his resignation. The historian 
 " blushed that such charges^ could have been uttered ; he 
 was deeply wounded that Mr Seward could have Hstened 
 o such falsehood." 
 
John Motley. 233 
 
 No man of the name of M'Crackin had Motley ever 
 seen or known. Hohiies would give us to understand 
 that he was an " interviewer " of the American Press, 
 who, getting near his person, had taken advantage of his 
 hour of expansion. He says truly, "No man is safe 
 whose unguarded threshold the mischief-making ques- 
 tioner has crossed. The more unsuspecting, the more 
 frank, the more courageous, the more social is the sub- 
 ject of his vivisection, the more easily does he get at 
 his vital secrets, if he has any to be extracted. No man 
 is safe if the hearsay reports of his conversation are 
 to be given to the public without his own careful 
 revision." While one acknowledges the truth of Holmes' 
 words, one still may regard with more complacency such 
 exhibitions of malevolence. The evil-spirited enjoy their 
 hours of triumph over the finer and opener natures, but 
 they are soon found out, and come to be regarded as of 
 all God's creatures the most wretched and the most 
 miserable. They, too, have their reward. 
 
 But this is not all. When Mr Seward received Motley's 
 resignation, he sent a letter to him declining to accept it. 
 What became of this letter nobody ever knew, but there 
 is every reason to believe that President Johnson sent a 
 telegraphic order to a despatch agent and arrested it 
 before it came into Motley's hands. Thus, by a course of 
 action singularly base and dishonourable throughout. 
 Motley's long and successful services at the court of 
 Vienna were brought to a close, and he was sent out with 
 the stigma upon him that he had betrayed the secrets 
 and traduced the character of the highest members of the 
 United States Government. 
 
 Motley's humiliation was, no doubt, ill enough to bear, 
 and having his ardent nature, it was well for him that he 
 had a work to fall back upon in the prosecution of which 
 
234 Masters in History. 
 
 he could forget the unhandsome deaHngs of his govern- 
 ment and the maHce of his unseen and secret enemies. In 
 1868 he was able to publish the two concluding volumes 
 of the "History of the United Netherlands." These latter 
 volumes, if they were less interesting than the former, were 
 not composed with less masterly care, nor were they the 
 product of less diligent search. If they contain nothing 
 to equal the nineteenth chapter of the second volume, 
 that is because they had to chronicle nothing to compare 
 with the building, sailing, and destruction of the Spanish 
 Armada. If we find their pages colder it is not that the 
 pictures are less real, but because we have not the same 
 interest in the men and women whose portraits he draws 
 and whose deeds he narrates. In the second instalment 
 of the ''United Netherlands" there are no sieges like those 
 of Leyden, Antwerp and Maestricht, no names so dear to 
 our hearts or come so readily to our lips as these — William 
 the Silent, Egmont, Elizabeth, Sir Philip Sidney, Leicester, 
 and Amy Robsart. 
 
 To the faults of Motley's style we have not alluded, 
 nor do they require other than the very briefest notice. 
 To the popular reader it may be said to be a style wholly 
 without faults. Everything being plain and simple, but 
 lucid and glowing, ordinary minds are pleased, they are 
 carried so rapidly along ; and with new sensations coming 
 to them with the turning of every leaf, they care not to 
 pause to examine the narrative with a critical eye. 
 Those, however, who stop now and again to examine the 
 historian's workmanship'are bound to notice the occasional 
 manifestation of, as it were, an animal glee, where the 
 historian in his impatience seems to break loose from the 
 trammels of his subject. There are lights and shades made 
 lighter and darker than need be, evidently with the view 
 of presenting a striking contrast. There are also 
 
John Motley. 235 
 
 scintillating images and twinkling epithets that seem 
 more to answer the requirements of Hterary effect than 
 historical verity. There are paragraphs and expressions 
 that put one in mind of Harvard and "Morton's Hope." 
 On the whole, however, it must be said his exercises in the 
 novel stood him in the very best stead. Intrigue and 
 plot he managed not the worse, but the better, because of 
 his early efforts in romance. No historian makes his 
 men and women do their part with less jostling than 
 Motley, as no historian has been able to give the 
 appearance of greater unity and of culminating interest 
 to the body of his work. 
 
 There is nothing easier than to trace in Motley's work 
 the hand of the novelist, but that it was a help and not a 
 hindrance such passages as these can well testify: "It 
 was a pompous spectacle, that midsummer night on those 
 narrow seas. The moon, which was at the full, was 
 rising calmly upon a scene of anxious expectation — would 
 she not be looking, by the morrow's night, upon a 
 subjugated ^England, a re-enslaved Holland — upon the 
 downfall of civil and religious liberty ? Those ships of 
 Spain, which lay there with their banners waving in the 
 moonlight, discharging salvoes of anticipated triumph, 
 and filling the air with strains of insolent music, would 
 they not, by daybreak, be moving straight to their 
 purpose, bearing the conquerors of the world to the 
 scene of their cherished hopes ? 
 
 " As the twilight deepened, the moon became totally 
 obscured, dark cloud-masses spread over the heavens, 
 the sea grew black, distant thunder rolled, and the sob of 
 an approaching tempest became distinctly audible. Such 
 indications of a westerly gale were not encouraging to 
 those cumbrous vessels, with the treacherous quick- 
 sands of Flanders under their lee. 
 
236 Masters in History, 
 
 "An hour past midnight it was so dark that it was 
 difficult for the most practised eye to pierce far into the 
 gloom. But a faint drip of oars now struck the ears of 
 the Spaniards as they watched from the decks. A few 
 moments afterwards the sea became suddenly luminous, 
 and six flaming vessels appeared at a slight distance, 
 bearing steadily down upon them, before the wind and 
 tide." ^ 
 
 Here again is a paragraph, — a complete paragraph; 
 can we read it without thinking of " Merry Mount," or 
 that within some book with yellow boards we have met 
 it before : — " Winter, standing side by side with the 
 Lord-Admiral on the deck of the little Ark Royal, gazed 
 for the first time on those enormous galleons and 
 galleys with which his companion was already sufficiently 
 familiar." f 
 
 Immediately on the publication of his history, Motley 
 once more crossed the Atlantic, and established himself 
 in Boston. The people were on the eve of making a 
 Presidential Election. Motley, on the invitation of the 
 Parker Fraternity, gave a great electioneering speech. 
 He spoke in warm eulogy of Grant, and of a govern- 
 ment with which he was soon to be at as great enmity 
 as he had been with the government of Johnson. 
 
 Like the Times letters, the speech was not without its 
 effect. Soon after the election of General Grant, Motley 
 was appointed American Ambassador to England. It 
 was the highest diplomatic appointment the government 
 had to bestow. Whether or not certain presentiments, 
 the taint left by the Vienna resignation, still hung about 
 him, we cannot tell, but his appointment brought no 
 gladness to his heart, and he even accepted it with mis- 
 
 * " United Netherlands," vol. ii., pp. 485, 491. 
 t " United Netherlands," vol. ii., p. 486." 
 
John Motley. 237 
 
 giving of spirit. We find him writing to a dear friend — 
 a friend now acknowledged on both sides of the Atlantic 
 as the first of American essayists : — " I feel anything but 
 exultation at present, rather the opposite sensation. I 
 feel that I am placed higher than I deserve, and, at the 
 same time, that I am taking greater responsibilites than 
 ever were assumed by me before. Yoil will be indulgent 
 to my mistakes and shortcomings — and who can expect 
 to avoid them ? But the world will be cruel, and times 
 are threatening. I shall do my best — but the best may 
 be poor enough — and keep ' a heart for every fate.' " 
 
 The history of Motley's English diplomatic appoint- 
 ment is another painful page in American political life. 
 The facts concerning his recall are few and simple. 
 
 When Reverdy Johnson was minister at the Court of 
 St James, he drew out an Alabama Treaty, which was 
 rejected by the Senate, and which also made the Senate 
 think proper to recall their ambassador. Mr Motley had 
 the friendship of Sumner; he was nominated without 
 opposition, and his appointment was ratified by the Ameri- 
 can Senate. When the new minister arrived in Liver- 
 pool he was very cordially welcomed by the English 
 people. In London his worth and abilites were known, 
 and he was regarded with sentiments of deference and 
 respect. Settled in the capital, he soon had an interview 
 with Lord Clarendon, then Foreign Secretary of State. 
 The conversation with the English minister the American 
 ambassador reported in full to his own government. The 
 conversation was generally approved of. Some words 
 were thought to be stronger than necessary, and one point 
 was thought to be not absolutely in accordance with the 
 President's views. The government suggested these 
 things to Motley in the friendliest way, after receiving his 
 report of his meeting with Lord Clarendon, and they 
 
238 Masters in History. 
 
 concluded their despatch by repeating again their ap- 
 proval of their ambassador's exertions. Here ends the 
 first complaint. 
 
 The second complaint was to the effect that the mini- 
 ster had shown minutes of this conversation to Lord 
 Clarendon, to obtain his confirmation of their correctness, 
 and he had not mentioned this circumstance to his 
 government till some weeks after it had taken place. 
 
 So soon as communication was made to Motley by 
 Mr Fish, then Secretary of State, that part of the con- 
 versation he had with Lord Clarendon was not approved 
 of, he immediately sent a written communication to his 
 lordship explaining the exact position of his government, 
 and using FisHs identical language. 
 
 This was all. No one could have conceived there 
 was anything to find fault with. All that had taken 
 place amounted just to nothing. A mistake had been 
 made and corrected, and the conduct of the ambassador 
 generally approved. There is nothing in Motley's con- 
 duct but might have been soon forgotten, and, indeed, it 
 was like to be forgotten. A year and more rolled past, 
 the ambassador worked hard and conscientiously, and 
 there was nothing heard about that first interview. 
 
 Only one thing had occurred in the twelve months 
 worthy of note. The position of Motley the govern- 
 ment had objected to as somewhat strong, they them- 
 selves ordered Modey to take up. The expressions 
 Motley used to Lord Clarendon, which they had found 
 fault with at first, they now authorized him to use. If 
 he had made a mistake at first, the government now came 
 forv/ard and endorsed his mistake. There was not, 
 therefore, the remotest shadow of difference between 
 Motley and his government. They were one. If ever 
 man seemed secure in the position he occupied, it 
 
John Motley. 239 
 
 was Motley in his position as American minister in 
 England. 
 
 When all was going quietly, when the political atmo- 
 sphere was apparently without a cloud, when Motley 
 felt himself as he said, thoroughly established in the 
 confidence of his government and the friendship of the 
 best people in England, in the July of 1870 he got a 
 letter from Fish asking him to resign. Perhaps he 
 thought he had been hasty in resigning at Vienna, 
 perhaps he thought President Grant would write a letter 
 that would not be intercepted this time. The letter 
 never came. In November he was recalled. 
 
 When Motley got the letter asking him to resign, he 
 was completely taken aback. It fell on him like a 
 thunderbolt. The historian was also the more surprised 
 that the secretary of the American Republic should have 
 couched it in terms of gross and undignified insult. The 
 whole matter was unaccountable and mysterious in the 
 highest degree to the EngHsh minister. Had there been 
 any outstanding reason, had he ever acted an under- 
 hand part, had he ever made any palpable blunder, had 
 he ever bartered the interests of his government for the 
 ends of private ambition, Motley would have been the 
 first of men to have acknowledged his weakness, and 
 acquiesced in his recall ; but as no such reasons could be 
 assigned, the scholar felt his humiliation deeply, and the 
 blow fell heavily on the " newly-healed wound of malice." 
 
 The reasons given for certain actions often, instead of 
 paUiating, aggravate the offence. The reason of Motley's 
 recall makes the injustice that was done him doubly 
 black. Mr Sumner was a power in the American Senate, 
 and to his influence the historian largely owed his place 
 at the EngHsh court. On an important San Domingo 
 question, a treaty had been drawn up which the Senate 
 
240 Masters in History. 
 
 rejected. President Grant's vanity was wounded, and 
 Sumner and he came to an open rupture. The treaty 
 was rejected on the 30th day of June, the quarrel took 
 place on the same day, and the very next day the note 
 demanding Motley's resignation was issued. Sumner 
 was a power which Grant could not injure ; the only way 
 he could stab him was by humiliating his friend. Grant 
 said bitterly, "Sumner promised me he would vote for 
 the treaty. But when it was before the Senate, he did 
 all he could to beat it." It was a rough, soldier-Hke way 
 to pay off his score against Sumner by recaUing the English 
 minister. 
 
 It was all too apparent. The President and Fish had 
 to vindicate themselves in some way, and they went 
 away and sought a reason for their action in the long 
 forgotten Motley-Clarendon conversation, calling their 
 minister bad names over again for a course of conduct 
 which they themselves had ratified. Drowning men 
 catch at straws, but the straws, all the same, do not save 
 their lives. Motley did not care to have the matter 
 debated in his life. He bent to the blow, although he 
 knew he would never recover from its effects. After the 
 historian was gone, the whole question was brought up 
 and put definitely before the American people. Grant of 
 course repudiated acting a maUcious part ; but acquitted 
 by his lips, we can hardly fail to mark from his words he 
 was condemned by his conscience. " Is it proper to say 
 of me," said Grant, " that I killed Motley, or that I made 
 war upon Sumner, for not supporting the annexation of 
 San Domingo ? But if I dare to answer that I removed 
 Motley from the highest considerations of duty as an 
 executive ; and if I presume to say that he made a 
 mistake in his office which made him no longer useful to 
 the country ; if Fish has the temerity to hint that 
 
John Motley. 241 
 
 Sumner's temper was so unfortunate that business rela- 
 tions with him became impossible,— we are slandering 
 the dead." 
 
 Altogether, it is a sad, disheartening story. The author 
 of "Morton's Hope" dreamt of " a statesmanship that was 
 to reorganise and govern the world," but the dream 
 faded, and the old diplomatist found that the gold coins 
 which the dervise had given him in youth, had turned at 
 last into withered leaves in his hands. 
 
 As English minister, the part which Motley had to 
 perform was of the most difficult kind. The negotiations 
 he had to conduct required far more than ordinary 
 delicacy. The Alabama claims were repudiated by the 
 mass of the EngHsh people. Every mention of them gave 
 rise to exasperation. But never once did the popular 
 feeHng — a feeling on such occasions not usually marked 
 by the utmost discrimination — lay anything to the charge 
 of the United States' diplomatist; and when he was 
 recalled, the Daily News spoke of him in the following 
 terms :— " We are violating no confidence in saying that 
 all the hopes of Mr Motley's official residence in England 
 have been amply fulfilled, and that the announcement of 
 his unexpected and unexplained recall was received 
 with extreme astonishment and unfeigned regret. The 
 vacancy he leaves cannot possibly be filled by a minister 
 more sensitive to the honour of his government, more 
 attentive to the interests of his country, and more capable 
 of uniting the most vigorous performance of his public 
 duties with the high-bred courtesy and conciliatory tact 
 and temper that make those duties easy and successful. 
 Mr Motley's successor will find his mission wonderfully 
 facilitated by the firmness and discretion that have pre- 
 sided over the conduct of American affairs in this country 
 
242 Masters in History, 
 
 during too brief a term, too suddenly and unaccountably 
 concluded." 
 
 Motley's recall from the English mission — a mission 
 in which he had taken both pride and pleasure — inflicted 
 a wound on his sensitive nature from which he never 
 completely recovered. It says, however, much for his 
 resolution and literary devotedness that, immediately 
 his connection with his government had been severed, 
 he wasted not a moment in useless repining, but at once 
 set to work again. The conception and general outline 
 of his " third epoch " now rose before him, quickening 
 all his endeavours, and calling forth all his energies. From 
 London he repaired to the Hague, and began his 
 researches in earnest. The "Dutch Republic" had 
 already been translated into the languages of the Nether- 
 lands and been read with the keen'est interest. Vast 
 masses of information had been gathered by laborious 
 German scholars, but here they saw the facts embodied 
 in a manner they had never seen before ; they marked 
 in the history something of the enthusiasm that had 
 fired the hearts of their forefathers, and the whole people 
 were sensible they owed a deep debt of gratitude to the 
 American writer. When, therefore, Motley repaired 
 to the Hague, the Queen of the Netherlands but gave 
 expression to the feeHng of the country, by the personal 
 courtesy she showed to the historian : she made ready 
 a house for him, providing him with a large library, and 
 was solicitous about his every comfort. He also enjoyed 
 the patronage of the king, and the respect of all Dutch 
 scholars. M. Groen van Prinsterer, although a man of 
 colossal erudition, looked upon the American with 
 feelings of the utmost deference and respect. Although 
 Prinsterer was a man of unbounded application, it is 
 said that Motley's powers of work surprised even him. 
 The historian used the facilities placed at his command 
 
John Motley. 243 
 
 to collect a vast mass of materials for a work which he 
 proposed to publish as an introduction to his third epoch. 
 At the Hague all his severely studious habits came back 
 to him, and he worked at his " Life and Death of John 
 of Barneveld " with as much energy as he had done at 
 the " Dutch Republic " and " The United Netherlands." 
 His daughter, Lady Harcourt, gives us a very interesting 
 account of his habits of study : — " He generally rose 
 early, the hour varying somewhat at different parts of his 
 life, according to his work and health. Sometimes when 
 much absorbed by literary labour he would rise before 
 seven, often lighting his own fire, and with a cup of tea or 
 coffee \mting until the family breakfast hour, after which his 
 work was immediately resumed, and he usually sat over 
 his writing-table until late in the afternoon, when he 
 would take a short walk. His dinner hour was late, and 
 he rarely worked at night. During the early years of his 
 literary studies he led a Hfe of great retirement. Later, 
 after the publication of the "Dutch Republic" and dur- 
 ing the years of official place, he was much in society in 
 England, Austria, and Holland. He enjoyed social life, 
 and particularly driving out, keenly, but was very 
 moderate and simple in all his personal habits, and for 
 many years before his death had entirely given up smok- 
 ing. His work, when not in his own library, was in the 
 Archives of the Netherlands, Brussels, Paris, the English 
 State Paper Office, and the British Museum, where he 
 made his own researches ; patiently and laboriously con- 
 sulting original manuscripts, and reading masses of corre- 
 spondence, from which he afterwards caused copies to 
 be made, and where he worked for many consecutive hours 
 a-day. After his material had been thus painfully and 
 toilfully amassed, the writing of his own story was always 
 done at home, and his mind, having digested the 
 
244 Masters in History, 
 
 necessary matter, always poured itself forth in writing so 
 copiously that his revision was chiefly devoted to reduc- 
 ing the over-abundance. He never shrank from any of 
 the drudgery of preparation, but I think his own part of 
 the work was sheer pleasure to him." 
 
 From the Hague, in 1872, Motley returned to London. 
 The health of his wife, and particularly his own, im- 
 peratively required a change. In the autumn of that 
 year they arrived at Bournemouth, and on the very day 
 of their arrival a very serious illness overtook the histo- 
 rian from the rupture of one of the vessels on the lungs. 
 In some weeks he recovered sufficiently to revise his 
 Hague manuscript, but he was not long at his desk when 
 he was struck down by the first of a number of attacks 
 of the head, " which robbed him of all power of work, 
 although his intellect remained untouched." 
 
 In 1874, notwithstanding much illness, he was able to 
 give to the world his work on Barneveld. In the third 
 and fourth volume of the " United Netherlands " there 
 had been a falling away in the spirit of the narrative, but 
 in Barneveld he took up the quill with which he had 
 written the " Dutch RepubHc ; " his primary historical 
 enthusiasm came back to him ; his old spirit possessed 
 him ; and he filled in his outline of the face of Barneveld 
 with as bold yet accurate a brush as he had painted his 
 famous portrait of William the Silent. Many may not 
 think so, but he thought the two heroes like each other. 
 In the first chapter the historian says : — " There can be 
 no doubt that if William the Silent was the founder of 
 the independence of the United Provinces, Barneveld 
 was the founder of the Commonwealth itself. Had that 
 country, of which he was so long the first citizen, main- 
 tained until our day the same proportional position among 
 the empires of Christendom as it held in the seventeenth 
 
yohn Motley, 245 
 
 century, the name of John of Barneveld would have 
 perhaps been as famiHar to all men as it is at this 
 moment to nearly every inhabitant of the Netherlands." 
 
 The "Life of Barneveld" threw Motley open anew 
 to the charge of importing into historical writing an 
 American spirit. Blackwood charged him with being a 
 member of the " fast " school, after the publication of 
 the " Dutch Republic." This charge, however, it has to 
 be said, was made more in good humour than in any 
 bitterness of spirit. The complaint that the historian 
 was a devotee of the rollicking, rattling style might have, 
 with some show of reason, been preferred anew from the 
 pages of " Barneveld j" but in reality it was hardly 
 named. The critics were lost in admiration of "that 
 subtle alchemy of the brain which had enabled him to 
 produce out of dull, crabbed, and often illegible state 
 papers, the vivid, graphic, and sparkling narrative which 
 he has given to the world." 
 
 A question purely theological, if it has no bearing on 
 church government, seldom causes amongst the people 
 much interest in this country ; but when we turn to the 
 pages of Motley we see how terribly the whole Dutch 
 population was excited over certain speculations in 
 divinity.^ " In burghers' mansions, peasants' cottages, 
 mechanics' back - parlours ; on board herring-smacks, 
 canal-boats, and East Indiamen ; in shops, counting- 
 rooms, farm-yards, guard-rooms, ale-houses ; on the ex- 
 change, in the tennis-court, on the wall ; at banquets, at 
 burials, christenings, or bridals; wherever and when- 
 ever human creatures met each other,— there was ever 
 to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and 
 Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological 
 rhetoric, the pelting of hostile texts. The blacksmith's 
 iron cooled on the anvil, the tinker dropped a kettle half 
 mended, the broker left a bargain unclenched, the 
 
246 Masters in History, 
 
 Scheveningen fisherman, in his wooden shoes, forgot the 
 cracks in his pinkie, while each paused to hold high con- 
 verse with friend or foe on fate, free-will, or absolute 
 foreknowledge; losing himself in wandering mazes whence 
 there was no issue. Province against province, city 
 against city, family against family — it was one vast scene 
 of bickering, denunciation, heart-burnings, mutual ex- 
 communication and hatred." 
 
 It is curious to notice how, in writing the biography of 
 another, the biographer often also writes his own. Every 
 biography is to some extent an autobiography, the indivi- 
 dual feelings and experiences of a writer creep into his 
 narrative before he is aware. While he thinks he is 
 looking with the eyes of the man of whom he is writing, 
 he is in reality looking with his own ; while he thinks he 
 is gazing on the heart of another individual, he is but 
 looking into his own breast. The motives he seeks to 
 analyse are frequently but the motions of his own mind 
 — the powers that have set, not another, but himself a 
 working. The author and his hero are the two lives 
 that mingle together, more or less, in every biography. 
 By an acromatic process light is uninfluenced by the 
 medium through which it passes, but every life takes 
 more or less of its form and colour from the mind of the 
 individual that undertakes to estimate it. The life of 
 Johnson is to a large extent the life of Boswell ; and in 
 '' John of Barneveld," we find much which seems to us 
 to speak in no vague way of the English minister of the 
 United States, and the treatment he received at the hands of 
 his government. When Motley wrote the following'he was 
 no doubt writing biography, but it appears to us he was 
 also making a contribution to autobiography: — ''Nor was 
 the Envoy at first desirious of remaining. Nevertheless 
 he yielded reluctantly to Bameveld's request, that he 
 
John Motley. 247 
 
 should, for the time at least, remain at his post. Later 
 on, as the intrigues against him began to unfold them- 
 selves, and his faithful services were made use of at 
 home to blacken his character and procure his removal, 
 he refused to resign, as to do so would be to play into 
 the hands of his enemies, and by interference, at least, 
 accuse himself of infidelity to his trust. It is no wonder 
 that the Ambassador was galled to the quick by the out- 
 rage which those concerned in the government were 
 seeking to put upon him. How could an honest man 
 fail to be overwhelmed with rage and anguish at being 
 dishonoured before the world by his masters for scrupu- 
 lously doing his duty, and for maintaining the rights and 
 dignity of his own country ? He knew that the charges 
 were but pretexts, that the motives of his enemies were 
 as base as the intrigues themselves, but he also knew 
 that the world sides with the government against the 
 individual, and that a man's reputation is rarely strong 
 enough to maintain itself unsullied in a foreign land 
 when his own government stretches forth its hand not to 
 shield, but to stab him. '■ I know,' said Aerssens, ' that this 
 plot has been woven partly in Holland and partly here 
 by good correspondence, in order to drive me from my 
 post with disreputation. But as I have discovered this 
 accurately, I have resolved to offer my masters the con- 
 tinuation of my humble service for such time and under 
 such conditions as they may think good to prescribe. I 
 prefer forcing my natural and private inclinations to 
 giving an opportunity for the ministers of this kingdom 
 to discredit us, and to my enemies to succeed in injuring 
 me, and by fraud and malice to force me from my post. 
 My enemies have misrepresented my actions, and my 
 language as passionate, exaggerated, mischievous, but I 
 have no passion except for the service of my superiors.' " 
 
248 Masters in History. 
 
 The following passage is also of interest : — " All 
 history shows that the brilliant soldier is apt to have 
 the advantage, in a struggle for popular affection and 
 applause, over the statesman, however consummate. 
 The great battles and sieges of the Prince had been on 
 a world's theatre, and on their issue had frequently de- 
 pended, or seemed to depend, the very existence of the 
 nation. The labours of the statesman, on the contrary, 
 had been comparatively secret. His noble orations and 
 arguments had been spoken with closed doors to assem- 
 blies of colleagues — rather envoys than senators — . . . 
 while his vast labours in directing both the internal ad- 
 ministration, and especially the foreign affairs of the com 
 monwealth, had been, by their very nature, as secret as 
 they were perpetual and enormous." 
 
 The year that saw the publication of the " Life and 
 Death of Barneveld " closed darkly for the historian. On 
 the last day of the year his wife was taken from him. 
 The blow was one which would have been sufficient to 
 have prostrated him at any time, but he was ill fitted to 
 stand it now. Its effects he never recovered. Lady 
 Harcourt observes : — '' From that day it seems to me 
 that his life may be summed up in two words — patient 
 waiting. Never for one hour did her spirit leave him, 
 and he strove to follow its leading for the short and evil 
 days left, and the hope of the Hfe beyond. I think I 
 have never watched quietly and reverently the traces of 
 one personal character remaining so strongly impressed 
 on another nature." 
 
 Motley's active life was now done. The pen he could 
 ply so deftly for hours together, he could hardly now use 
 to scrawl the briefest of notes. The brain would not 
 work as it used to do, and paralysis had deprived his 
 hand of its cunning. The great third epoch was now 
 
John Motley. 249 
 
 an unattainable ambition. Not having finished his task, 
 yet is he wholly without blame. Rather is it to his credit 
 that he did so much. He was a man who had before him 
 every inducement to spend a life of easy gaiety. There 
 was that in him which would have made him eagerly 
 welcomed in every drawing-room. Every evening could 
 he have spent in Boston society, and the small hours of 
 every morning with jovial boon-companions. He might 
 have been a man of consideration in his locality, the 
 leader of a poHte clique, the hero of a coterie. His posi- 
 tion was a temptation to him to forego large designs, to 
 shrink from laborious undertakings ; to be content with 
 the society of the clubs, and the reputation of a billiard 
 player. To the thousands of clever young men, born 
 with the appliances of refinement and indulgence in their 
 hands, and who run the risk of losing every manly ambi- 
 tion in a solid content with trivial dissipations, the life of 
 Motley offers a stimulating example. He had a heart 
 above gilded frippery and dressed-up uselessness, and he 
 valued his works not as they flattered his vanity, but as 
 they tended to the lifting up of human life, and the pro- 
 gress of the race. 
 
 Motley's life was not wholly successful; no life is. In 
 a contest with malice and envy, he got the worst of it by 
 far ; but, if walking on a public way, he was wounded by 
 bullets shot from behind the hedges of power or anonym- 
 ity, he cannot be blamed for failure in a journey which 
 jealousy would not allow him to perform. He was not 
 the kind of man to succeed as an American politician, 
 but this does not say the less for the man. His was a 
 mind that lived " remote from the trading world of cau- 
 cus managers." His dispirited retirement from his diplo- 
 matic career will not damage him in the eyes of the com- 
 ing generations of American citizens ; for when the names 
 
250 Masters in History. 
 
 of those that buzzed about his path, and stung when they 
 could, are forgotten, these generations will continue to 
 prize the name of Motley as one of the greatest ornaments 
 of their literary history. 
 
 After the death of his wife, he once again visited 
 America, and he spent the autumn of 1875 at Nahant, a 
 watering-place in the neighbourhood of Boston. Those 
 who met him there tell how his thoughts used to wander 
 back to her who had been the loved companion of his 
 life j they tell also how the formerly springy step had 
 grown heavy, and the tall, straight form sadly drooped. 
 In 1876 he was back again in England. Sir William 
 Gull was his medical adviser, and in him he put the 
 utmost confidence. Sir William writes concerning a 
 visit he paid him on one occasion : — " It was plain how 
 much his point of view of the whole course and relation 
 of things had changed. His mind was the last to dog- 
 matize on any subject. There was a candid and child- 
 like desire to know, with an equal confession of the 
 incapacity of the human intellect. I wish I could recall 
 the absolute expressions he used, but the sense was that 
 which has been so well stated by Hooker in concluding 
 an exhortation against the pride of the human intellect, 
 where he remarks : ' Dangerous it were for the feeble 
 brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most 
 High ; whom although to know be life, and joy to make 
 mention of His Name, yet our soundest knowledge is to 
 know that we know Him, not indeed as He is, neither 
 can know Him : and our safest eloquence concerning 
 Him is our silence, when we confess without confession 
 that His glory is inexplicable. His greatness above our 
 capacity and reach. He is above, and we upon earth j 
 therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few ! ' " 
 
 At the close of his life, particularly during those years 
 
John Motley. 251 
 
 of '■' patient waiting," Motley's thoughts turned to Him 
 who directs the processes which history records, and is 
 surely, though mysteriously, bringing all the purposes of 
 the ages — purposes that seem to our poor human vision 
 so tangled and interlaced — to blessed issues. All his Hfe 
 he had been dealing with the facts of history, but he 
 now busied his mind by trying to spell out its philosophy. 
 He made rapid progress in his new. exercise, coming 
 soon to perceive that those puzzling ramifications of 
 faction and intrigue, over the unravelling of which he had 
 spent so much thought, were clear as the day to Him in 
 whom is no darkness at all. 
 
 Motley had been long looking for his departure. On 
 the 29th of May, 1877, as if death had been the convey- 
 ance of a friend he heard approaching, the historian said : 
 *'It has come, it has come;" then his spirit passed, 
 leaving " his face beautiful and calm, without a trace of 
 suffering or illness." 
 
 Motley was buried beside his wife in Kensal Green 
 Cemetery. It was his wish that, besides the dates of his 
 birth and death, only this text, which he had chosen, 
 should be carved on his tombstone : — 
 
 " In God is lights and in Htm is no darkness at all^ 
 
 So soon as the historian was gone, both countries — 
 the country of his birth, and the country in which he 
 had found a grave — were eager in bearing testimony to 
 their appreciation of his work and worth. Dean Stanley, 
 in the course of his funeral sermon preached in West- 
 minster Abbey, said : — " We sometimes ask what room 
 or place is left in the crowded temple of Europe's fame 
 for one of the Western world to occupy. But a sufficient 
 answer is given in the work which was reserved to be 
 accomplished by him who has just departed. So long 
 
252 Masters in History, 
 
 as the tale of the greatness of the house of Orange, of 
 the siege of Leyden, of the tragedy of Barneveld, interests 
 mankind, so long will Holland be indissolubly connected 
 with the name of Motley, in that union of the ancient 
 culture of Europe with the aspirations of America, which 
 was so remarkable in the ardent, laborious, soaring soul 
 that has passed away." 
 
 In the land of his birth, Bryant sang of him as follows, 
 — but alas ! death has now dulled the murmur of the 
 Poet's lip as perfectly as that of the Historian's. 
 
 Sleep, Motley, with the great of ancient days, 
 
 Who wrote for all the years that yet shall be. 
 Sleep with Herodotus, whose name and praise 
 
 Have reached the isles of earth's remotest sea. 
 Sleep, while, defiant of the slow delays 
 
 Of Time, thy glorious writings speak of thee, 
 And in the answering heart of millions raise 
 
 The generous zeal for Right and Liberty. 
 And should the days overtake us, when, at last, 
 
 The silence that — ere yet a human pen 
 Had traced the slenderest record of tl>e past — 
 
 Hushed the primeval languages/ of men, 
 Upon our English tongue its spell shall cast, 
 
 Thy memory shall perish only then. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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