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SELECT 
 
 ESSAYS OF MACAULAY 
 
 MILTON, BUNYAN, JOHNSON, GOLDSMITH, 
 MADAME D'ARBLAY 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 SAMUEL THURBER 
 
 >^ CQFYR/GAfr 
 
 AUG 31 I89I 
 
 Boston 
 
 ALLYN AND BACON 
 
 i8q2 
 
 \X 
 
 W 
 

 Copyright, 1891, 
 By SAMUEL THURBER. 
 
 Typography by J. S. Gushing & Co., Boston. 
 Pressvvork by Berwick & Smith, Boston. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 To be perfectly adapted for reading and study in the 
 class-room, a selection from our literature must meet 
 these conditions : it must be interesting, both in matter 
 and in manner, to the young persons for whom it is 
 intended ; it must have a genuinely important content, 
 that is, its subject must be worthy of serious attention 
 and must promise a substantial gain in knowledge ; it 
 must be a masterpiece of English, a model of clearness, 
 simplicity, and vigor. 
 
 The literary essays of Macaulay not only fulfil these 
 conditions, but they offer other advantages for school- 
 room study which render them, for a certain stage of the 
 high-school course, perhaps the most eligible prose writ- 
 ings in our literature. Macaulay 's reading had been 
 wonderfully comprehensive, and his memory retained 
 the results of this reading in a manner unexampled 
 among modern writers, ^ence he illustrates his mean- 
 ing, as he develops his subject, with constant allusion 
 and citation, challenging his reader with comparisons, 
 and never suffering him to relax his attention. His 
 paragraphs are full of names or of suggestions of names. 
 He assumes that his reader has the same acquaintance 
 with the older literature as himself. To catch instantly 
 the entire pertinency and appositeness of every allusion 
 of this writer would require that the reader should him- 
 
iv Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 self be endowed with equal gifts and possessed of equal 
 stores. The reader of Macaulay must often stop and 
 think ; he must summon up all his historical and literary 
 memories ; often he must inaugurate fresh reading under 
 the stimulus of an off-hand citation that evidently was 
 deemed by the author to throw a flood of light on the 
 subject in hand. 
 
 While, therefore, many writers are interesting in their 
 several ways, Macaulay's way lies peculiarly in the 
 direction of provocation to further examination both of 
 his main topics and of his incidental references. An 
 interested reader always reads concentrically; that is, 
 with some nucleus about which books and authors group 
 themselves with more or less mutual relation. Such a 
 centre is sure to be found in one or another essay of 
 Macaulay. Each essay requires at once certain further 
 research. The other essays are soon found to help won- 
 derfully towards the understanding of the one first read. 
 This reading must be done with pencil in hand. The 
 reader's own notes thus become his all-sufficient guide 
 in choosing his next books. Thus reading becomes 
 organic, having a principle of structure, a clear aim and 
 purpose, instead of being amorphous, with here a book 
 and there a book picked up by chance or at the advice 
 of another person. For example, the essays of Macaulay 
 touching eighteenth-century themes suggest an immense 
 range of possible reading of a most interesting character. 
 The stimulus which these essays give to such reading 
 is far more potent than the pages of histories of litera- 
 ture could be, for the reason that in the essays we see 
 and feel the effects of reading upon the culture and the 
 power of a writer, while the histories give us only exter- 
 
Introduction. v 
 
 nal facts. The young reader is apt to ask for a list of 
 books to read, and the okl adviser is often too willing 
 to accede to the request. But prearranged lists of books 
 are fatal to inner, spontaneous interest. No one reads 
 through a list except under duress. Not a list of items 
 to be checked off, but a centre, a starting-point, is the 
 true gift of the school-room Mentor to his learners. The 
 lines of progress that radiate from a good centre are 
 infinite both in their number and in their extent. All 
 good reading is gradually included within their reach. 
 The atoms of acquisition come in this way to cohere and 
 to take shape in well-rounded culture. 
 
 For yet another reason Macaulay is a writer peculiarly 
 stimulating to youth : he is himself always a youth in 
 the fervor and the intensity of his sympathies. What 
 he admires he admires extremely, and what he hates he 
 hates with most cordial hatred. It is usual to say that 
 he goes too far, and praises too highly, or depreciates 
 more than is fair. It is plain, however, that were 
 Macaulay's feelings less ardently enlisted in his exposi- 
 tions, these expositions would tend to approach the 
 commonplace, and would never have become the power 
 in literature that they are. It is impossible to conceive 
 an earnest and moving piece of writing whose chief con- 
 cern should be to balance praise and blame, and show 
 up merits and demerits in equal measure. Macaulay's 
 function in literature was not cold criticism. He was 
 far removed from indifference towards the persons and 
 the things he describes. His service was to arouse in 
 English readers an interest in the great events of their 
 history and their literature. He is the most popular of 
 writers. Nor will it be said that his judgments, though 
 
vi Select Essays of Macaulay, 
 
 often expressed in strong language, are wrong and per- 
 verted judgments. For youthful readers he may be 
 accepted as a safe guide. His exaggerated expressions 
 are never intended to conceal insufficiency of knowledge. 
 He never indulges in mere conventional j)hrasing, the 
 besetting sin of young and ambitious writers. He is 
 absolutely sincere and original. Familiarity with such 
 a writer during the period of life when habits are form- 
 ing must be altogether wholesome. 
 
 The English teacher Avill naturally find an advantage 
 in reading with his class selections that discuss his own 
 especial theme. As lessons in literary history, as well 
 as lessons in English composition, these studies will be 
 fruitful and memorable. In connection with the in- 
 cidental researches which they suggest, they will con- 
 stitute an opportunity for the acquisition of knowledge, 
 and for the general discipline of the taste that, from the 
 pedagogic point of view, lacks absolutely no element of 
 desirableness. 
 
 Such reading as is here offered the young student 
 must be done as work, not as mere amusement. The 
 pencil must be kept in constant use, and the note-book 
 must be ahvays at hand. The student must be his own 
 annotator. No more in reading a piece of English than 
 in working out an algebra lesson should the learner 
 expect to have his work done for him. Only what he 
 earns will he ever possess, though what he borrows from 
 another, or has given him, may meet the requirements/ 
 of an examination. 
 
 No pedagogic maxim can be adduced that shall favor 
 giving the learner results without leading him through 
 the processes through which the results Avere obtained. 
 
Introduction. vii 
 
 Results without research are dead and useless. Research 
 without results is excellent and vital, because always 
 accompanied with hope. Notes are usually a mere incu- 
 bus upon interest. They put an obstacle in the way of 
 the teacher, who would like to exercise his skill by lead- 
 ing his pupils through the various stages of growing 
 curiosity and zealous search up to the consummation of 
 successful finding. Those editors who steal from the 
 teacher his opportunity of teaching are really his worst 
 foes. Strange ideas of the pedagogic province seem to 
 be lield by annotators who try to tell the pupil every- 
 thing, as if all the teacher had to do was to ask ques- 
 tions and o^et thing's told ag^ain, — re-cited. 
 
 As there is appended to the present selection of 
 the essays of Macaulay a body of " notes," the anno- 
 tator desires to explain exactly what ground these 
 notes cover, and for what purpose they were prepared. 
 In nearly every case where a note appears, it will be 
 found to ask a question or to suggest a bit of research, 
 with a hint as to the direction in which the research 
 must be made. In no instance is a note given Avhere 
 the needed investigation is obvious and can be readily 
 planned. That any notes at all of this kind are given 
 is hereby confessed to be, so far forth, a trenching on 
 the proper field of the teacher, whose duty it is to 
 prescribe tasks and furnish the needful helps for their 
 performance ; and the annotator accordingly offers his 
 apologies to those teachers who find his f-uggestions 
 superfluous, and he would rejoice to be able to think 
 tliat all teachers belonged to this class. On the. proper 
 field of the pupil, however, he has not trenched. If, 
 like a visitor to the class-room, he has asked a few ques- 
 
viii Select Essays of Macaiday. 
 
 tions that the teacher would soon have asked himself, 
 he has not thwarted the teacher by whispering to the 
 pupil his answers. The great bulk of the annotable 
 matter has been left without annotation, in order that 
 the activity of the student may find free play. Only 
 where the possibility or the desirableness of incidental 
 reading has been somewhat less obvious, has any ques- 
 tion been asked, and only when the books to be con- 
 sulted have been such as would not instantly suggest 
 themselves, have hints been given as to what to read. 
 
 Occasionally the needed research has been a little 
 troublesome to make. In a few such cases results liave 
 been given, in view of the fact that the book is destined 
 for use by young persons whose time is limited, and 
 that investigable matter, in any Macaulay text, is 
 already superabundant. The annotator believes that 
 he has omitted no difficult point. Allusions not noted 
 he has thought fairly within the reach of high-school 
 classes. A considerable portion of the entire mass of 
 the notes is occupied by quotations of interesting rele- 
 vant passages that should be read in connection with 
 the text. 
 
 It sometimes happens that Macaulay names an ob- 
 scure and unimportant person with some epithet, or in 
 connection Avith a context, that sufficiently explains this 
 person's appearance, so that any note at all becomes 
 needless. It is by no means always necessary to run 
 to the biographical dictionaries when a name appears. 
 Sometimes investigation will reveal only so much as the 
 author himself tells in a word or two, and to find even 
 this will cost time. If Macaulay says a writer is worth- 
 less, it is no increase of knowledge to find in what year 
 
Introduction. ix 
 
 such a writer wrote his worthless book. Discrimination 
 is necessary in reading pieces so overcharged with allu- 
 sion. It is only the ancient classics whose every word 
 is precious. The reader of English must reach the end 
 of the chapter. Infinite other chapters await his eager 
 attention. Hence the English reader must learn to 
 recognize and set aside what is unimportant. Even tlie 
 unimportant things will gradually gain significance as 
 the reader's acquaintance with literature extends, and 
 the young reader must not at the outset be too much 
 loaded with erudition whose relation to what he is 
 studying he cannot appreciate. 
 
 But by far the greater portion of Macaulay's allusions 
 must be worked out with whatever labor of researcli is 
 necessary to make them yield their meaning. This 
 labor constitutes the getting of the lesson. A lesson in 
 English literature should be got by a method analogous 
 to that which, in the physical sciences, has already come 
 fully into vogue, and is sometimes called the laboratory 
 method. In physics it is no longer customary to let a 
 student merely read a formula and Avitness an experi- 
 ment. He must himself conduct the experiment, ob- 
 serve the phenomena, and deduce and formulate the 
 law. In literature the entire mass of phenomena lies 
 concealed in books. The art of research is here the art 
 of using libraries. A beginner is bewildered as he con- 
 fronts a large library. Graduall}^ he acquires skill and 
 begins to find things with ease. The labor of this 
 search is pleasant, and the successes give it zest, while 
 the tantalizing failures pique and stimulate perseverance. 
 The study of history, which the learner is carrying on 
 at the same time with his English, is also a library 
 
Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 study, and the same familiarity with books which he 
 gains in the one helps him in the other. Thus these 
 studies are manifestly such as cannot be carried on 
 while the student sits motionless at a desk and pores 
 over a single book. The method of explanatory notes 
 presupposes a dead learning-by-heart, Avith the young 
 people sitting in straight lines, their eyes fixed on their 
 lessons, their thoughts bent on committing these lessons 
 to memory. The library method assumes a collection 
 of books and such freedom of movement as choice and 
 consultation of them necessarily imply. It assumes, 
 moreover, pleasant and free relations with the larger 
 libraries outside the schoolroom that all American com- 
 munities are rapidly coming to possess. 
 
 The present editor has had in view schools of second- 
 ary grade ; that is, high schools and academies. He has 
 taken for granted that such schools have collections of 
 books, just as, if he were preparing a text-book of physics, 
 he would take for granted the presence in the schools of 
 proper laboratories. There is no such thing as reading 
 one book without the help of other books. There must 
 be perpetual reference from book to book. This is the 
 case even in easy reading. In reading that is perpetually 
 setting tasks of elucidation and verification the presence 
 of a good reference library becomes an absolute neces- 
 sity. The best dictionaries, the best encyclopaedias, the 
 standard histories and biographies, complete editions of 
 the principal authors, must be always within reach of 
 the student. It is not the business of a pedagogic edi- 
 tor to dispense readers from the necessity of procuring 
 the means of research. Rather is it his province to show 
 readers how to conduct research and what apparatus of 
 research is most serviceable. 
 
 I 
 
Introduction. xi 
 
 The custom prevalent in the schools of dwelling a long 
 time on small portions of Latin and Greek text must not 
 be allowed to establish itself in the English work also. 
 An English piece must be read and got through with. 
 If we adopt Professor Marcli's method of exhaustive ques- 
 tioning, we shall never arrive at any goal and shall never 
 make English interesting. Work in English should be 
 vigorous and rapid, taking many things for granted. 
 The skilful teacher surmises when his pupils fail to 
 understand a point riglitly, and halts the column of 
 march only on such occasions. Tliat the reading of such 
 selections as those here offered may go oft" smoothly and 
 intelligently, due preparation should be made. The 
 teacher should look over a few pages in advance and 
 note the points at which special difficulties of any kind 
 will arise. These points, as they require more elaborate 
 investigation, he will separate from the text when he 
 assigns the lesson, and he will exempt the class e.n masse 
 from giving them attention. The text, thus tempora- 
 rily cleared of the chief difficulties, is prescribed to all 
 the class, who must work it out and be prepared on it 
 at the next lesson. At the same time the special points 
 of difficulty are dealt out to individuals, one to each, to 
 be looked up and reported on. The interest of a class 
 exercise is much enhanced if the individual pupils bring 
 different contributions, so that each is listened to with 
 curiosity on a fresh topic. Moreover, if all alike are 
 required to make the same investigations, the reference 
 books may not suffice to go round. All the obscure 
 points are reported on, and all the pupils get the bene- 
 fit of the explanation. Each pupil has had as much 
 research to make as he had time and opportunity for. 
 
xii Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 and the class can at once pass on to fresh woods and 
 pastures new. In this way it is legitimately feasible to 
 cover considerable ground in the class reading of Eng- 
 lish texts while pursuing strictly the method of research. 
 
 The points of special difficulty may well be looked up 
 a few days in advance of the time when the class is to 
 read as a lesson the passages where they occur, and 
 these may in some cases be given to pupils as themes, 
 which must be punctually written out, ready for read- 
 ing at the precise moment when, being needed as eluci- 
 dations, they will be appreciated and will be listened to 
 with attention. The pupil who has such a theme to 
 prepare will ordinarily need assistance in making his 
 researches. To give this assistance is the teachei\s 
 business. The teacher must, accordingly, be prepared, 
 when he assigns such a theme to a pupil, to say where 
 the desired matter can be found. He must know 
 whether the books that will have to be used are in the 
 school library or must be looked for in the public library 
 of the town. If the books are absolutely inaccessible to 
 the pupils, the themes whose elaboration depends on 
 these books must not be given out at all. In such case 
 it is the teacher's privilege to present as a downright 
 gift the matter which, in better circumstances, it would 
 be more proper to let the pupils work for and earn the 
 right to possess. 
 
 The school should prepare for life, an-d not for exam- 
 inations. The memorizing method, the cram method, 
 the note method, is good only for examinations. The 
 English that pupils are destined to read for their enter- 
 tainment and culture as mature men and women will 
 not be annotated. It is riglit to keep in view the con- 
 
Introduction. xiii 
 
 ditions that will actually exist. The habit of depending 
 on notes is enfeebling. Books in the ancient languages 
 are always read with the help of notes, and books in the 
 ancient languages have accordingly ceased tQ be read 
 except by a caste of special devotees whose work in life 
 continues to have some relation to the pedagogic func- 
 tion. But all men and women read English books. 
 To read English books with intelligence, the habit of 
 consulting the various collateral helps, of drawing upon 
 the stores of related knowledge, is of all importance. 
 It is doubtless a trouble and annoyance to use the dic- 
 tionary. But only by using the dictionary can one 
 attain to a command of the English language. He Avho 
 cannot bring himself often to turn aside from the book 
 he holds in his hand to the other books on his shelves 
 finds himself limited in his reading to the weakest and 
 shallowest books of the day. He can read no history, 
 no biography, no travels ; he can read nothing whatever 
 that is old, nothing that was produced from the stores 
 of large and generously equipped minds, nothing that 
 reflects the life and manners of its generation, nothing 
 that employs a vocabulary richer and more varied than 
 that which serves the petty uses of every day. 
 
 Some of the books of reference which a high-school 
 library should contain for the use of its English classes 
 are the following : — 
 
 Webster's International Dictionary. Among other usefiil things, 
 the new International contains a revised edition of Wheeler's 
 Dictionary of the Noted Names of Fiction. 
 
 A good encyclopaedia. The Britannica is not too large. Even 
 the best will often be found to give no help. 
 
 Adams's Dictionary of English Literature. 
 
xiv Select Ussat/s of Macaulay, 
 
 Brewer's Reader's Handbook of Allusions, References, Plots, 
 and Stories. 
 
 Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, giving the derivation, 
 source, or origin of common phrases, allusions, and words that have 
 a tale to tell. 
 
 Taine's English Literature. 
 
 Cruden's Concordance to the English Bible. 
 
 Scoones's Four Centuries of English Letters. 
 
 Macaulay's Works, entire. 
 
 Knight's Popular History of England. 
 
 Ploetz's Epitome of Universal History. 
 
 Hare's Walks in London. 
 
 Baedeker's London. 
 
 Ryland's Chronological Outlines of English Literature. 
 
 The books here named are given as specimens of ref- 
 erence books proper. Their number could be increased 
 to any extent desirable. But reference will almost as 
 often be fruitfully made to books that do not come 
 under this denomination. Good editions should be pro- 
 cured, as fast as the means of the school allow, of the 
 chief English writers. It is almost daily the case that 
 an obscure point in the selection that is being studied 
 can be explained by reference to some other work of 
 the same writer. This often happens to readers of 
 Macaulay. In works of history, moreover, the library 
 cannot be too well stocked. Both the classes in history 
 and those in English will find great furtherance in an 
 abundance of the standard works of history. 
 
 As here printed, the essay on Milton is shortened by 
 the omission of a portion that seemed to the editor some- 
 what less interesting to young students. Very slight 
 omissions from the other essays will explain themselves. 
 
SELECT ESSAYS OF MACAULAY. 
 
 >t«c 
 
 MILTON. 
 
 (August, 1825.) 
 
 Towards the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, deputy 
 keeper of the state papers, in the course of his researches 
 among the presses of his office, met with a large Latin 
 manuscript. With it were found corrected copies of the 
 foreign despatches written by Milton while he filled the 
 office of Secretary, and several papers relating to the Popish 
 Trials and the Rye-house Plot. The whole was wrapped up 
 in an envelope, superscribed To Mr. Skinner, Merchant. 
 On examination, the large manuscript i:>roved to be the 
 long lost essay on the Doctrines of Christianity, which, 
 according to Wood and Toland, Milton finished after the 
 Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, 
 it is well known, held the same political opinions with his 
 illustrious friend. It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon 
 conjectures, that he may have fallen under the suspicions 
 of the Government during that persecution of the Whigs 
 which followed the dissolution of the Oxford parliament, 
 and that, in consequence of a general seizure of his papers, 
 this work may have been brought to the office in which 
 it has been found. But whatever the adventures of the 
 manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist that it is a 
 genuine relic of the great poet. 
 
 1 
 
2 Se\'ct Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by his Majesty to edit 
 and translate the treatise, has acquitted himself of his task 
 in a manner honorable to his talents and to his character. 
 His version is not indeed very easy or elegant ; but it is 
 entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity. His notes 
 abound wdth interesting quotations, and have the rare merit 
 of really elucidating the text. The preface is evidently the 
 work of a sensible and candid man, firm in his own religious 
 opinions, and tolerant towards those of others. 
 
 The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton. 
 It is, like all his Latin works, well written, though not 
 exactly in the style of the prize essays of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge. There is no elaborate imitation of classical antiq- 
 uity, no scrupulous purity, none of the ceremonial cleanness 
 which characterizes the diction of our academical Pharisees. 
 The author does not attempt to polish and brighten his 
 composition into the Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. He 
 does not, in short, sacrifice sense and spirit to pedantic 
 refinements. The nature of his subject compelled him to 
 use many words 
 
 " That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp." 
 
 But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin 
 were his mother-tongue ; and, where he is least happy, his 
 failure seems to arise from the carelessness of a native, not 
 from the ignorance of a foreigner. We may apply to him 
 what Denham with great felicity says of Cowley. He wears 
 the garb, but not the clothes, of the ancients. 
 
 We wish to avail ourselves of the interest, transient as it 
 may be, which this work has excited. The dexterous Cap- 
 uchins never choose to preach on the life and miracles of a 
 saint till they have awakened the devotional feelings of 
 their auditors by exhibiting some relic of him, a thread of 
 his garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop of his blood. On 
 the same principle, we intend to take advantage of the late 
 
Milton. " 3 
 
 interesting discovery, and, while this memorial of a great 
 and good man is still m the hands of all, to say something 
 of his moral and intellectual qualities. Nor, we are con- 
 vinced, wril the severest of our readers blame us if, on an 
 occasion like the present, we turn for a short time from the 
 topics of the day to commemorate, in all love and reverence, 
 the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the states- 
 man, the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the 
 champion and the martyr of English liberty. 
 
 It is by his poetry that Milton is best known ; and it is 
 of his poetry that we wish first to speak. By the general 
 suffrage of the civilized world, his place has been assigned 
 among the greatest masters of the art. His detractors, 
 however, though outvoted, have not been silenced. There 
 are many critics, and some of great name, who contrive in 
 the same breath to extol the poems and to decry the poet. 
 The works they acknowledge, considered in themselves, 
 may be classed among the noblest productions of the human 
 mind. But they will not allow the author to rank with 
 those great men who, born in the infancy of civilization, 
 supplied, by their own powers, the want of instruction, and, 
 though destitute of models themselves, bequeathed to pos- 
 terity models which defy imitation. Milton, it is said, 
 inherited what his predecessors created ; he lived in an 
 enlightened age ; he received a finished education ; and we 
 must therefore, if we would form a just estimate of his 
 powers, make large deductions in consideration of these 
 advantages. 
 
 We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the 
 remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle 
 with more unfavorable circumstances than Milton. He 
 doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he had not been 
 born "an age too late." Eor this notion Johnson has 
 thought fit to make him the butt of much clumsy ridicule. 
 The poet, we believe, understood the nature of his art better 
 
4 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 
 
 than the critic. He knew that his poetical genius derived 
 no advantage from the civilization which surrounded him, 
 or from the learning which he had acquired ; and he looked 
 back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple 
 words and vivid impressions. 
 
 We think that, as civilization advances, poetry almost 
 necessarily declines. Therefore, though we fervently ad- 
 mire those great works of imagination which have appeared 
 in dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they 
 have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that 
 the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great 
 poem produced in a civilized age. We cannot understand 
 why those wdio believe in that most orthodox article of 
 literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, 
 should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception. 
 Surely the uniformity of the jjhenomenon indicates a cor- 
 responding uniformity in the cause. 
 
 The fact is, that common observers reason from the prog- 
 ress of the experimental sciences to that of the imitative 
 arts. The improvement of the former is gradual and slow. 
 Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more in separat- 
 ing and combining them. Even when a system has been 
 formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. 
 Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed 
 to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by 
 fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, there- 
 fore, the first speculators lie under great disadvantages, 
 and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. Their 
 pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily sur- 
 pass them in actual attainments. Every girl who has read 
 Mrs. Marcet's little dialogues on political economy could 
 teach Montague or Walpole many lessons in finance. Any 
 intelligent man may now, by resolutely applying himself 
 for a few years to mathematics, learn more than the great 
 Newton knew after half a century of study and meditation. 
 
Milton. 5 
 
 But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with 
 sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. The progress 
 of refinement rarely supplies these arts with better objects 
 of imitation. It may indeed improve the instruments 
 which are necessary to the mechanical ox^erations of the 
 musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the 
 machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its 
 rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and 
 then abstract. They advance from particular images to gen- 
 eral terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society 
 is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical. 
 
 This change in the language of men is partly the cause 
 and partly the effect of a corresponding change in the na- 
 ture of their intellectual operations, of a change by which 
 science gains and poetry loses. Generalization is necessary 
 to the advancement of knowledge ; but particularity is 
 indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In pro- 
 portion as men know more and think more, they look less 
 at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make 
 better theories and worse poems. They give us vague 
 phrases instead of images, and personified qualities instead 
 of men. They may be better able to analyze human nature 
 than their predecessors. But analysis is not the business 
 of the poet. His office is to portray, not to dissect. He 
 may believe in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury; he may 
 refer all human actions to self-interest, like Helvetius ; or 
 he may never think about the matter at all. His creed on 
 such subjects will no more influence his poetry, properly so 
 called, than the notions which a painter may have conceived 
 respecting the lachrymal glands, or the circulation of the 
 blood, will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes of 
 his Aurora. If Shakspeare had written a book on the mo- 
 tives of human actions, it is by no means certain that it 
 would have been a good one. It is extremely improbable 
 that it would have contained half so much able reasoninor 
 
6 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 on the subject as is to be fouud in the fable of the Bees. 
 But could Mandeville have created an lago? Well as he 
 knew how to resolve characters into their elements, would 
 he have been able to combine those elements in such a man- 
 ner as to make up a man, a real, living, individual man ? 
 
 Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy 
 poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything 
 which gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsound- 
 ness. By poetry we mean not all writing in verse, nor even 
 all good writing in verse. Our definition excludes many 
 metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the 
 highest praise. By poetry we mean the art of employing 
 words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the 
 imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the 
 painter does by means of colors. Thus the greatest of 
 poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the 
 vigor and felicity of their diction, and still more valuable 
 on account of the just notion which they convey of the 
 art in which he excelled : 
 
 " As imagination bodies forth 
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name." 
 
 These are the fruits of the " fine frenzy '^ which he as- 
 cribes to the poet, — a fine frenzy, doubtless, but still a 
 frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry ; but it is the 
 truth of madness. The reasonings are just, but the jorem- 
 ises are false. After the first suppositions have been made, 
 everything ought to be consistent ; but those first supposi- 
 tions require a degree of credulity which almost amounts 
 to a partial and temporary derangement of the intellect. 
 Hence of all people children are the most imaginative. 
 They abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. 
 Every image which is strongly presented to their mental 
 
Milton, T 
 
 eye produces on them the effect of reality. No man, what- 
 ever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or 
 Lear as a little girl is affected by the story of poor Eed 
 Eidinghood. She knows that it is all false, that wolves can- 
 not speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet, in 
 spite of her knowledge, she believes ; she weeps ; she 
 trembles ; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should 
 feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the 
 despotism of the imagination over uncultivated minds. 
 
 In a rude state of society, men are children with a greater 
 variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society 
 that we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its 
 highest perfection. In an enlightened age there will be much 
 intelligence, much science, much philosophy, abundance of 
 just classification and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and 
 eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good ones ; but 
 little poetry. Men will judge and compare ; but they will not 
 create. They will talk about the old poets, and comment 
 on them, and to a certain degree enjoy them, But they will 
 scarcely be able to conceive the effect which poetry produced 
 on their ruder ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the pleni- 
 tude of belief. The Greek rhapsodists, according to Plato, 
 could scarce recite Homer without falling into convulsions. 
 The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping-knife while he shouts 
 his death-song. The power which the ancient bards of 
 Wales and Germany exercised over their auditors seems to 
 modern readers almost miraculous. Such feelings are very 
 rare in a civilized community, and most rare among those 
 who participate most in its improvements. They linger 
 longest among the peasantry. 
 
 Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a 
 magic lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body. 
 And, as the magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry 
 effects its purpose most completely in a dark age. As the 
 light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the 
 
8 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 
 
 outlines of certainty become more and more definite, and 
 the shades of probability more and more distinct, the hues 
 and lineaments of the phantoms which the poet calls up 
 grow fainter and fainter. We cannot unite the incompatible 
 advantages of reality and deception, the clear discernment of 
 truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction. 
 
 He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to 
 be a great poet, must first become a little child. He must 
 take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn 
 much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted 
 hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents 
 will be a hindrance to him. His difiiculties will be pro- 
 portioned to his proficiency in the pursuits which are 
 fashionable among his contemporaries ; and that proficiency 
 will in general be proportioned to the vigor and activity of 
 his mind. And it is well if, after all his sacrifices and 
 exertions, his works do not resemble a lisping man or a 
 modern ruin. We have seen in our own time great talents, 
 intense labor, and long meditation employed in this struggle 
 against the spirit of the age, and employed, we will not say 
 absolutely in vain, but with dubious success and feeble ap- 
 plause. 
 
 If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed 
 over greater difficulties than Milton. He received a learned 
 education : he was a profound and elegant classical scholar : 
 he had studied all the mysteries of rabbinical literature : he 
 was intimately acquainted with every language of modern 
 Europe from which either pleasure or information was then 
 to be derived. He was perhaps the only great poet of later 
 times who has been distinguished by the excellence of his 
 Latin verse. The genius of Petrarch was scarcely of the 
 first order ; and his poems in the ancient language, though 
 much praised by those who have never read them, are 
 wretched compositions. Cowley, with all his admirable wit 
 and ingenuity, had little imagination : nor, indeed, do we 
 
Milton. 9 
 
 think his classical diction comparable to that of Milton. 
 The authority of Johnson is against us on this point. But 
 Johnson had studied the bad writers of the middle ages 
 till he had become utterly insensible to the Augustan ele- 
 gance, and was as ill qualified to judge between two Latin 
 styles as an habitual drunkard to set up for a wine-taster. 
 
 Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched, 
 costly, sickly imitation of that which elsewhere may be 
 found in healthful and spontaneous perfection. The soils 
 on which this rarity flourishes are in general as ill suited 
 to the production of vigorous native poetry as the flower- 
 pots of a hot-house to the growth of oaks. That the author 
 of the Paradise Lost should have written the Epistle to 
 Manso was truly wonderful. Never before were such 
 marked originality and such exquisite mimicry found 
 together. Indeed, in all the Latin poems of Milton the 
 artificial manner indispensable to such works is admirably 
 preserved, while, at the same time, his genius gives to them 
 a peculiar charm, an air of nobleness and freedom, which 
 distinguishes them from all other writings of the same 
 class. They remind us of the amusements of those angelic 
 warriors who composed the cohort of Gabriel : 
 
 ' ' About him exercised heroic games 
 The unarmed youth of heaven ; but nigh at hand 
 Celestial armory, shields, helms, and spears. 
 Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold." 
 
 We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the 
 genius of Milton ungirds itself without catching a glimpse 
 of the gorgeous and terrible panoply which it is accustomed 
 to wear. The strength of his imagination triumphed over 
 every obstacle. So intense and ardent was the fire of his 
 mind, that it not only was not suffocated beneath the weight 
 of fuel, but penetrated the whole superincumbent mass with 
 its own heat and radiance. 
 
10 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 It is not our intention to attempt anything like a complete 
 examination of the poetry of Milton. The public has long 
 been agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, 
 the incomparable harmony of the numbers, and the excel- 
 lence of that style which no rival has been able to equal 
 and no parodist to degrade, which displays in their highest 
 perfection the idiomatic powers of the English tongue, and 
 to which every ancient and every modern language has con- 
 tributed something of grace, of energy, or of music. In 
 the vast field of criticism on which we are entering, innu- 
 merable reapers have already put their sickles. Yet the 
 harvest is so abundant that the negligent search of a strag- 
 gling gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf. 
 
 The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton 
 is the extreme remoteness of the associations by means of 
 which it acts on the reader. Its effect is produced, not so 
 much by what it expresses, as by what it suggests ; not so 
 much by the ideas which it directly conveys, as by other 
 ideas which are connected with them. He electrifies the 
 mind through conductors. The most unimaginative man 
 must understand the Iliad. Homer gives him no choice, 
 and requires from him no exertion, but takes the whole 
 upon himself, and sets the images in so clear a light that it 
 is impossible to be blind to them. The works of Milton 
 cannot be comprehended or enjoyed unless the mind of the 
 reader co-operate with that of the writer. He does not 
 paint a finished picture, or play for a mere passive listener. 
 He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the outline. He 
 strikes the key-note, and expects his hearer to make out 
 the melody. 
 
 We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The 
 expression in general means nothing ; but, applied to the 
 writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry acts 
 like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious mean- 
 ing than in its occult power. There would seem, at first 
 
Milton. 11 
 
 sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. Bnt 
 they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pro- 
 nonnced, than the past is present and the distant near. New 
 forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the 
 burial-places of the memory give up their dead. Change 
 the structure of the sentence ; substitute one synonym for 
 another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses 
 its power ; and he who should then hope to conjure with it 
 would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the 
 Arabian tale, when he stood crying, " Open Wheat," '' Open 
 Barley," to the door which obeyed no sound but " Open 
 Sesame." The miserable failure of Dry den in his attempt 
 to translate into his own diction some parts of the Paradise 
 Lost is a remarkable instance of this. 
 
 In support of these observations, we may remark that 
 scarcely any passages in the poems of Milton are more 
 generally known or more frequently repeated than those 
 wlitch are little more than muster-rolls of names. They 
 are not always more appropriate or more melodious than 
 other names. But they are charmed names. Every one of 
 them is the first link in a long chain of associated ideas. 
 Like the dwelling-place of our infancy revisited in manhood, 
 like the song of our country heard in a strange land, they 
 produce upon us an effect wholly independent of their intrin- 
 sic value. One transports us back to a remote period of 
 history. Another places us among the novel scenes and 
 manners of a distant region. A third evokes all the dear 
 classical recollections of childhood, the school-room, the dog- 
 eared Virgil, the holiday, and the prize. A fourth brings 
 before us the splendid phantoms of chivalrous romance, the 
 trophied lists, the embroidered housings, the quaint devices, 
 the haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the achieve- 
 ments of enamored knights, and the smiles of rescued 
 princesses. 
 
 In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar manner 
 
12 Select Essays of Macaulay, 
 
 more happily displaj'ed than in the Allegro and the Pen- 
 seroso. It is impossible to conceive that the mechanism of 
 language can be brought to a more exquisite degree of per- 
 fection. These poems differ from others as attar of roses 
 differs from ordinary rose-water, the close-packed essence 
 from the thin, diluted mixture. They are, indeed, not so 
 much poems as collections of hints, from each of which the 
 reader is to make out a poem for himself. Every epithet is 
 a text for a stanza. 
 
 The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are works which, 
 though of very different merit, offer some marked points 
 of resemblance. Both are lyric poems in the form of 
 plays. There are perhaps no two kinds of composition so 
 essentially dissimilar as the drama and the ode. The busi- 
 ness of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and 
 to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he 
 attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken. 
 The effect is as unpleasant as that which is produced on 
 the stage by the voice of a prompter or the entrance of a 
 scene-shifter. Hence it was that the tragedies of Byron 
 were his least successful performances. They resemble 
 those pasteboard j^ictures invented by the friend of chil- 
 dren, Mr. Newbery, in which a single movable head goes 
 round twenty different bodies, so that the same face looks 
 out upon us successively, from the uniform of a hussar, the 
 furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. In all the char- 
 acters, patriots and tyrants, haters and lovers, the frown 
 and sneer of Harold were discernible in an instant. But 
 this species of egotism, though fatal to the drama, is the 
 inspiration of the ode. It is the part of the lyric poet to 
 abandon himself, without reserve, to his own emotions. 
 
 Between these hostile elements many great men have en- 
 deavored to effect an amalgamation, but never with com- 
 plete success. The Greek drama, on the model of which 
 the Samson was written, spruns: from the ode. The dia- 
 
Milton. 13 
 
 logue was ingrafted on the chorus, and naturally partook of 
 its character. The genius of the greatest of the Athenian 
 dramatists co-operated with the circumstances under which 
 tragedy made its first appearance, ^schylus was, head 
 and heart, a lyric poet. In his time, the Greeks had far 
 more intercourse with the East than in the days of Homer ; 
 and they had not yet acquired that immense superiority in 
 war, in science, and in the arts, which, in the following 
 generation, led them to treat the Asiatics with contempt. 
 From the narrative of Herodotus it should seem that they 
 still looked up, with the veneration of disciples, to Egypt 
 and Assyria. At this period, accordingly, it was natural 
 that the literature of Greece should be tinctured with the 
 Oriental style. And that style, we think, is discernible in 
 the works of Pindar and ^schylus. The latter often re- 
 minds us of the Hebrew writers. The Book of Job, indeed, 
 in conduct and diction, bears a considerable resemblance to 
 some of his dramas. Considered as plays, his works are 
 absurd ; considered as choruses, they are above all praise. 
 If, for instance, we examine the address of Clytaemnestra 
 to Agamemnon on his return, or the description of the 
 seven Argive chiefs, by the principles of dramatic writing, 
 we shall instantly condemn them as monstrous. But if we 
 forget the characters, and think only of the poetry, we 
 shall admit that it has never been surpassed in energy and 
 magnificence. Sophocles made the Greek drama as dra- 
 matic as was consistent with its original form. His por- 
 traits of men have a sort of similarity ; but it is the simi- 
 larity, not of a painting, but of a bass-relief. It suggests 
 a resemblance ; but it does not produce an illusion. Eu- 
 ripides attempted to carry the reform further. But it was 
 a task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any powers. 
 Instead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what 
 was excellent. He substituted crutches for stilts, bad ser- 
 mons for good odes. 
 
14 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly, 
 much more highly than, in our opinion, Euripides deserved. 
 Indeed, the caresses which this partiality leads our country- 
 man to bestow on " sad Electra's poet " sometimes remind 
 us of the beautiful Queen of Fairy-land kissing the long 
 ears of Bottom. At all events, there can be no doubt that 
 this veneration for the Athenian, whether just or not, was 
 injurious to the Samson Agonistes. Had Milton taken 
 ^schylus for his model, he would have given himself up to 
 the lyric inspiration, and poured out profusely all the treas- 
 ures of his mind, without bestowing a thought on those 
 dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work rendered 
 it impossible to preserve. In the attempt to reconcile 
 things in their own nature inconsistent he has failed, as 
 every one else must have failed. We cannot identify our- 
 selves with the characters, as in a good play. We cannot 
 identify ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. The 
 conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed, 
 neutralize each other. We are by no means insensible to 
 the merits of this celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of 
 the style, the graceful and pathetic solemnity of the open- 
 ing speech, or the wild and barbaric melody which gives so 
 striking an effect to the choral passages. But we think it, 
 we confess, the least successful effort of the genius of 
 Milton. 
 
 The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian masque, 
 as the Samson is framed on the model of the Greek tragedy. 
 It is certainly the noblest performance of the kind which 
 exists in any language. It is as far superior to The Faithful 
 Shepherdess, as The Faithful Shepherdess is to the Aminta, 
 or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton 
 that he had here no Euripides to mislead him. He under- 
 stood and loved the literature of modern Italy. But he did 
 not feel for it the same veneration which he entertained for 
 the remains of Athenian and Itoman poetry, consecrated by 
 
Milton. 15 
 
 so many lofty and endearing recollections. The faults, more- 
 over, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to which 
 his mind had a deadly, antipathy. He could stoop to a plain 
 style, sometimes even to a bald style ; but false brilliancy 
 was his utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a 
 russet attire ; but she turned with disgust from the finery 
 of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chim- 
 ney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears 
 are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but 
 capable of standing the severest test of the crucible. 
 
 Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction which 
 he afterward neglected in the Samson. He made his 
 Masque what it ought to be, essentially lyrical, and dra- 
 matic only in semblance. He has not attempted a fruitless 
 struggle against a defect inherent in the nature of that 
 species of composition; and he has therefore succeeded, 
 wherever success was not impossible. The speeches must 
 be read as majestic soliloquies ; and he who so reads them 
 will be enraptured with their eloquence, their sublimity, 
 and their music. The interruptions of the dialogue, how- 
 ever, impose a constraint upon the writer, and break the 
 illusion of the reader. The finest passages are those which 
 are lyric in form as well as in spirit. " I should much com- 
 mend,'^ says the excellent Sir Henry Wotton in a letter to 
 Milton, ^' the tragical part if the lyrical did not ravish me 
 with a certain Dorique delicacy in your songs and odes, 
 whereunto, I must plainly confess to you, I have seen yet 
 nothing parallel in our language." The criticism was just. 
 It is when Milton escapes from the shackles of the dialogue, 
 when he is discharged from the labor of uniting two incon- 
 gruous styles, when he is at liberty to indulge his choral 
 raptures without reserve, that he rises even above himself. 
 Then, like his own good Genius bursting from the earthly 
 form and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth in celestial free- 
 dom and beauty ; he seems to cry exultingly, 
 
16 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 " Now my task is smoothly done, 
 I can fly or I can run," 
 
 to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the 
 Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells 
 of nard and cassia, which the musky winds of the zephyr 
 scatter through the cedared alleys of the Hesperides. 
 
 There are several of the minor poems of Milton on which 
 we would willingly make a few remarks. Still more wil- 
 lingly would we enter into a detailed examination of that 
 admirable poem, the Paradise Eegained, which, strangely 
 enough, is scarcely ever mentioned except as an instance of 
 the blindness of the parental affection which men of letters 
 bear toward the offspring of their intellects. That Milton 
 was mistaken in preferring this work, excellent as it is, 
 to the Paradise Lost, we readily admit. But we are sure 
 that the superiority of the Paradise Lost to the Paradise 
 Regained is not more decided than the superiority of the 
 Paradise Regained to every poem which has since made 
 its appearance. Our limits, however, prevent us from dis- 
 cussing the point at length. We hasten on to that extraor- 
 dinary production which the general suffrage of critics has 
 placed in the highest class of human compositions. 
 
 The only poem of modern times which can be compared 
 with the Paradise Lost is the Divine Comedy. The sub- 
 ject of Milton, in some points, resembled that of Dante ; 
 but he has treated it in a widely different manner. We can- 
 not, we think, better illustrate our opinion respecting our 
 own great poet than by contrasting him with the father of 
 Tuscan literature. 
 
 The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante as the 
 hieroglyphics of Egypt differ from the picture-writing of 
 Mexico. The images which Dante employs speak for them- 
 selves; they stand simply for what they are. Those of 
 Milton have a signification which is often discernible only 
 to the initiated. Their value depends less on what they 
 
Milton. 17 
 
 directly represent than on what they remotely suggest. 
 However strange, however grotesque, may be the appear- 
 ance which Dante undertakes to describe, he never shrinks 
 from describing it. He gives us the shape, the color, the 
 sound, the smell, the taste; he counts the numbers; he 
 measures the size. His similes are the illustrations of a 
 traveller. Unlike those of other poets, and especially of 
 Milton, they are introduced in a plain, business-like manner; 
 not for the sake of any beauty in the objects from which 
 they are drawn ; not for the sake of any ornament which 
 they may impart to the poem ; but simply in order to make 
 the meaning of the writer as clear to the reader as it is to 
 himself. The ruins of the precipice which led from the 
 sixth to the seventh circle of hell were like those of the 
 rock which fell into the Adige on the south of Trent. 
 The cataract of Phlegetlion was like that of Aqua Cheta 
 at the monastery of St. Benedict. The place where the 
 heretics were confined in burning tombs resembled the vast 
 cemetery of Aries. 
 
 Now let us compare with the exact details of Dante the 
 dim imitations of Milton. We will cite a few examples. 
 The English poet has never thought of taking the measure 
 of Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. 
 In one passage the fiend lies stretched out huge in length, 
 floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born enemies 
 of Jove, or to the sea-monster which the mariner mistakes 
 for an island. When he addresses himself to battle against 
 the guardian angels, he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas : his 
 stature reaches the sky. Contrast with these descriptions 
 the lines in which Dante has described the gigantic spectre 
 of Nimrod. " His face seemed to me as long and as broad 
 as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome ; and his other limbs 
 were in proportion ; so that the bank, which concealed him 
 from the waist downward, nevertheless showed so much of 
 him that three tall Germans would in vain have attempted 
 
18 Select Essays of 3Iacaulay. 
 
 to reach to his hair." We are sensible that we do no jus- 
 tice to the admirable style of the Florentine poet. But Mr. 
 Gary's translation is not at hand ; and our version, however 
 rude, is sufficient to illustrate our meaning. 
 
 We will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of 
 settling precedency between two such writers. Each in 
 his own department is incomparable; and each, we may 
 remark, has wisely, or fortunately, taken a subject adapted 
 to exhibit his peculiar talent to the greatest advantage. 
 The Divine Comedy is a personal narrative. Dante is the 
 eye-witness and ear-witness of that which he relates. He 
 is the very man who has heard the tormented spirits crying 
 out for the second death, who has read the dusky characters 
 on the portal within which there is no hope, who has hidden 
 his face from the terrors of the Gorgon. His own hands 
 have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer. His own feet 
 have climbed the mountain of expiation. His own brow 
 has been marked by the purifying angel. The reader would 
 throw aside such a tale in incredulous disgust, unless it 
 were told with the strongest air of veracity, with a sobriety 
 even in its horrors, with the greatest precision and mul- 
 tiplicity in its details. The narrative of Milton in this 
 respect differs from that of Dante as the adventures of Ama- 
 dis differ from those of Gulliver. The author of Amadis 
 would have made his book ridiculous if he had introduced 
 those minute particulars which give such a charm to the 
 work of Swift, the nautical observations, the affected deli- 
 cacy about names, the official documents transcribed at full 
 length, and all the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the 
 court, springing out of nothing, and tending to nothing. 
 We are not shocked at being told that a man who lived, 
 nobody knows when, saw many very strange sights, and we 
 can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of the romance. 
 But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, resident at Eother- 
 hithe, tells us of pygmies and giants, flying islands, and 
 
Milton, 19 
 
 philosophizing horses, nothing but such circumstantial 
 touches could produce for a single moment a deception on 
 the imagination. 
 
 The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all other 
 writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonderful creations. 
 They are not metaphysical abstractions. They are not wicked 
 men. They are not ugly beasts. They have no horns, no 
 tails, none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso and Klopstock. 
 They have just enough in common with human nature to be 
 intelligible to human beings. Their characters are, like 
 their forms, marked by a certain dim resemblance to those 
 of men, but exaggerated to gigantic dimensions, and veiled 
 in mysterious gloom. 
 
 To return for a moment to the parallel which we have 
 been attempting to draw between Milton and Dante, we 
 would add that the poetry of these great men has in a con- 
 siderable degree taken its character from their moral quali- 
 ties. They are not egotists. They rarely obtrude their 
 idiosyncrasies on their readers. They have nothing in 
 common with those modern beggars for fame who extort a 
 pittance from the compassion of the inexperienced by 
 exposing the nakedness and sores of their minds. Yet it 
 would be difficult to name two writers whose works have 
 been more completely, though undesignedly, colored by their 
 personal feelings. 
 
 The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by 
 loftiness of spirit ; that of Dante by intensity of feeling. 
 In every line of the Divine Comedy we discern the asperity 
 which is produced by pride struggling with misery. There 
 is perhaps no work in the world so deeply and uniformly 
 sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no fantastic 
 caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance of time can 
 be judged, the effect of external circumstances. It was 
 from within. Neither love nor glory, neither the conflicts 
 of earth nor the hope of heaven, could dispel it. It turned 
 
20 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 every consolation and every pleasure into its own nature. 
 It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense 
 bitterness is said to have been perceptible even in its honey. 
 His mind was, in the noble language of the Hebrew poet, 
 " a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and where the light 
 was as darkness." The gloom of his character discolors all 
 the passions of men, and all the face of nature, and tinges 
 with its own livid hue the flowers of paradise and the glories 
 of the eternal throne. All the portraits of him are singu- 
 larly characteristic. No person can loek on the features, 
 noble even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek, 
 the haggard and woful stare of the eye, the sullen and con- 
 temptuous curve of the lip, and doubt that they belong to 
 a man too proud and too sensitive to be happy. 
 
 Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover; and, 
 like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and in 
 love. He had survived his health and his sight, the com- 
 forts of his home, and the prosperity of his party. Of the 
 great men by whom he had been distinguished at his entrance 
 into life, some had been taken away from the evil to come ; 
 some had carried into foreign climates their unconquerable 
 hatred of oppression ; some were pining in dungeons ; and 
 some had jooured forth their blood on scaifolds. Venal and 
 licentious scribblers were now the favorite writers of the 
 sovereign and of the public. It was a loathsome herd, which 
 could be compared to nothing so fitly as to the rabble 
 of Comus, grotesque monsters, half bestial, half human, 
 dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling in 
 obscene dances. Amidst these that fair Muse was placed, 
 like the chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, and 
 serene, to be chattered at, and pointed at, and grinned at, 
 by the whole rout of Satyrs and Goblins. If ever despond- 
 ency and asperity could be excused in any man, they 
 might have been excused in Milton. But the strength 
 of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, 
 
Milton, 21 
 
 nor gout, nor age, nor x^t^n^iT? ^^r domestic afflictions, 
 nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, 
 nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic 
 patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but 
 they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, 
 perhaps stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings 
 could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was when, on the 
 eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in the 
 prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary dis- 
 tinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes ; such it contin- 
 ued to be when, after having experienced every calamity 
 which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and 
 disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die. 
 
 Hence it was that, though he wrote the Paradise Lost at 
 a time of life when images of beauty and tenderness are 
 in general beginning to fade, even from those minds in 
 which they have not been effaced by anxiety and disappoint- 
 ment, he adorned it with all that is most lovely and delight- 
 ful in the physical and in the moral world. Neither 
 Theocritus nor Ariosto had a finer or a more healthful sense 
 of the pleasantness of external objects, or loved better to 
 luxuriate amidst sunbeams and flowers, the songs of night- 
 ingales, the juice of summer fruits, and the coolness of 
 shady fountains. His conception of love unites all the 
 voluptuousness of the Oriental harem, and all the gallantry 
 of the chivalric tournament, with all the pure and quiet 
 affection of an English fireside. His poetry reminds us of 
 the miracles of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful 
 as fairy-land, are embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic 
 elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom unchilled on the 
 verge of the avalanche. 
 
 Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of Milton may 
 be found in all his works ; but it is most strongly displayed 
 in the Sonnets. Those remarkable poems have been under- 
 valued by critics who have not understood their nature. 
 
22 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 They have no epigrammatic j)oiiit. There is none of the 
 ingenuity of Filicaja in the thought, none of the hard and 
 brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style. They are simple 
 but majestic records of the feelings of the poet; as little 
 tricked out for the public eye as his diary would have been. 
 A victory, an expected attack upon the City, a momentary 
 fit of depression or exultation, a jest thrown out against one 
 of his books, a dream which for a short time restored to 
 him that beautiful face over which the grave had closed 
 forever, led him to musings, which, without effort, shaped 
 themselves into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity 
 of style which characterize these little pieces remind us of 
 the Greek Anthology, or perhaps still more of the Collects 
 of the English Liturgy. The noble poem on the Massacres 
 of Piedmont is strictly a collect in verse. 
 
 His public conduct was such as was to be expected from 
 a man of a spirit so high and of an intellect so powerful. 
 He lived at one of the most memorable eras in the history 
 of mankind, at the very crisis of the great conflict between 
 Oromasdes and Arimanes, liberty and despotism, reason and 
 prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single gen- 
 eration, for no single land. The destinies of the human 
 race were staked on the same cast with the freedom of the 
 English people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty 
 principles which have since worked their way into the 
 depths of the American forests, which have roused Greece 
 from the slavery and degradation of two thousand years, 
 and which, from one end of Europe to the other, have 
 kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, 
 and loosed the knees of the oppressors with an unwonted 
 fear. 
 
 Of those principles, then struggling for their infant ex- 
 istence, Milton was the most devoted and eloquent literary 
 champion. We need not say how much we admire his 
 public conduct. But we cannot disguise from ourselves 
 
Milton. 23 
 
 that a large portion of his countrymen still think it unjusti- 
 fiable. The civil Avar, indeed, has been more discussed, and 
 is less understood, than any event in English history. The 
 friends of liberty labored under the disadvantage of which 
 the lion in the fable complained so bitterly. Though they 
 were the conquerors, their enemies were the painters. As 
 a body, the Roundheads had done their utmost to decry 
 and ruin literature ; and literature was even with them as, 
 in the long run, it always is with its enemies. 
 
 If it were possible that a people brought up under an in- 
 tolerant and arbitrary system could subvert that system 
 without acts of cruelty and folly, half the objections to 
 despotic power would be removed. We should, in that^' 
 case, be compelled to acknowledge that it at least produces/ 
 no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral character (/ 
 of a nation. We deplore the outrages which accompany 
 revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more 
 assured we feel that a revolution was necessary. The vio- 
 lence of those outrages will always be proportioned to the 
 ferocity and ignorance of the people ; and the ferocity and 
 ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppres- 
 sion and degradation under which they have been accus- 
 tomed to live. Thus it was in our civil war. The heads of 
 the church and state reaped only that which they had 
 sown. The government had prohibited free discussion ; it 
 had done its best to keep the x^eople unacquainted with 
 their duties and their rights. The retribution was just and 
 natural. If our rulers suffered from popular ignorance, it 
 was because they had themselves taken away the key of 
 knowledge. If they were assailed with blind fury, it was 
 because they had exacted an equally blind submission. 
 
 It is the character of such revolutions that we always 
 see the worst of them at first. Till men have been some 
 time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The 
 natives of wine countries are generally sober. In climates 
 
24 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly 
 liberated people may be compared to a northern army 
 encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that when 
 soldiers in such a situation first find themselves able to 
 indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive lux- 
 ury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, however, 
 plenty teaches discretion ; and, after wine has been for a 
 few months their daily fare, they become more temperate 
 than they had ever been in their own country. In the same 
 manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wis- 
 dom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are 
 often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, scepticism on 
 points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mys- 
 terious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to 
 exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half- 
 finished edifice ; they point to the flying dust, the falling 
 bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of 
 the whole appearance ; and then ask in scorn where the 
 promised splendor and comfort are to be found. If such 
 miserable sophisms were to prevail, there would never be 
 a good house or a good government in the world. 
 
 Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some mys- 
 terious law of her nature, was condemned to appear at 
 certain seasons in the forui of a foul and poisonous snake. 
 Those who injured her during the period of her disguise 
 were forever excluded from participation in the blessings 
 which she bestowed. But to those who, in spite of her 
 loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterward 
 revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial form which 
 was natural to her, accompanied their steps, granted all 
 their wishes, filled their houses with wealth, made them 
 happy in love and victorious in war. Such a spirit is 
 Liberty. At times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. 
 She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But woe to those who 
 in disgust shall venture to crush her ! And happy are 
 
Milton. 25 
 
 those wlio, having dared to receive lier in her degraded and 
 frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by her in the 
 time of her beauty and her glory ! 
 
 There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired 
 freedom produces; and that cure is freedom. When a 
 prisoner first leaves his cell he cannot bear the light of day ; 
 he is unable to discriminate colors or recognize faces. But 
 the remedy is, not to remand him into his dungeon, but to 
 accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth 
 and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which 
 have become half blind in the house of boiulage. But let 
 them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a 
 few years men learn to reason. The extreme violence of 
 opinions subsides. Hostile theories correct each other. 
 The scattered elements of truth cease to contend, and begin 
 to coalesce ; and at length a system of justice and order is 
 educed out of the chaos. 
 
 Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it 
 down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to 
 be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim 
 is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to 
 go into the water till he had learned to swim. If men are 
 to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, 
 they may indeed wait forever. 
 
 Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the conduct 
 of Milton and the otlier wise and good men who, in spite of 
 much that was ridiculous and hateful in the conduct of their 
 associates, stood firmly by the cause of public liberty. 
 
 Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the 
 public character of Milton apply to him only as one of a 
 large body. We shall proceed to notice some of the pecu- 
 liarities which distinguished him from his contemporaries. 
 And, for that purpose, it is necessary to take a short survey 
 of the parties into which the political world was at that 
 time divided. 
 
26 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 We would sj)eak first of the Puritans, the most remark- 
 able body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever pro- 
 duced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character 
 lie on the surface. He that runs may read them ; nor have 
 there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to 
 point them out. For many years after the Restoration, 
 they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. 
 They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press 
 and of the stage, at the time when the press and the stage 
 were most licentious. They were not men of letters ; they 
 were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend them- 
 selves ; and the public would not take them under its pro- 
 tection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, 
 to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The 
 ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, 
 their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, 
 their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they 
 introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human 
 learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were in- 
 deed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the 
 laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be 
 learned. And he who approaches this subject should care- 
 fully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule 
 which has already misled so many excellent writers. 
 
 Those who roused the people to resistance ; who directed 
 their measures through a long series of eventful years ; who 
 formed, out of the most unpromising materials, the finest 
 army that Europe had ever seen ; who trampled down king. 
 Church, and aristocracy ; who, in the short intervals of 
 domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England 
 terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no 
 vulgar fanatics. Most of their absurdities were mere ex- 
 ternal badges, like the signs of freemasonry or the dresses 
 of friars. We regret that these badges were not more at- 
 tractive. We regret that a body to whose courage and 
 
Milton. 27 
 
 talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not 
 the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the adher- 
 ents of Charles the First, or the easy good-breeding for 
 Avhich the court of Charles the Second was celebrated. 
 But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in 
 the play, turn from the specious caskets which contain only 
 the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix on the plain 
 leaden chest which conceals the treasure. 
 
 The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a 
 peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior 
 beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowl- 
 edging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they 
 habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great 
 Being for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose in- 
 spection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve 
 him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of exist- 
 ence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious hom- 
 age which other sects substituted for the pure worship of 
 the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the 
 Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full 
 on his intolerable brightness, and to commune with him 
 face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terres- 
 trial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and 
 the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish when compared 
 with the boundless interval which separated the whole race 
 from him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. 
 They recognized no title to superiority but his favor; and, 
 confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplish- 
 ments and all the dignities of the world. If they were un- 
 acquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they 
 were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names 
 were not found in the registers of heralds, they were re- 
 corded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accom- 
 panied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering 
 angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses 
 
28 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 not made with hands ; their diadems crowns of glory which 
 should never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on 
 nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt ; for 
 they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, 
 and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the 
 right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of 
 a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to 
 whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged ; 
 on whose slightest action the spirits of light and dark- 
 ness looked with anxious interest ; who had been destined, 
 before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity 
 which should continue when heaven and earth should have 
 passed aAvay. Events which short-sighted politicians as- 
 cribed to earthly causes had been ordained on his account. 
 For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. 
 For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the 
 pen of the evangelist and the harp of the prophet. He had 
 been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no 
 common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no 
 vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was 
 for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had 
 been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature had 
 shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God. 
 
 Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, 
 the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, 
 the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He j^rostrated 
 himself in the dust before his Maker ; but he set his foot 
 on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he 
 prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was 
 half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard 
 the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He 
 caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke, screaming, 
 from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought 
 himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. 
 Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that 
 
Milton. 29 
 
 God had hidden his face from him. But when he took his 
 seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tem- 
 pestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace 
 behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but 
 their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but 
 their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at 
 them. But those had little reason to laugh who encoun- 
 tered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. 
 These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a cool- 
 ness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which 
 some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious 
 zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. 
 The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them 
 tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had 
 subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. 
 Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. They 
 had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their 
 sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm 
 had made them stoics, had cleared their minds from every 
 vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them aljove the in- 
 fluence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might 
 lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose 
 unwise means. They went through the world, like Sir 
 Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and 
 trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, 
 but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities, 
 insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be 
 pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier. 
 Such we believe to have been the character of the Puri- 
 tans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We 
 dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We 
 acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often in- 
 jured by straining after things too high for mortal reach. 
 Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consideration, 
 we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an 
 honest, and a useful body. 
 
30 Select Essays of Macaulay, 
 
 The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly 
 because it was the cause of religion. There was another 
 party, by no means numerous, but distinguished by learning 
 and ability, which acted with them on very different prin- 
 ciples. We speak of those whom Cromwell was accustomed 
 to call the Heathens, men who were, in the phraseology 
 of that time, doubting Thomases or careless Gallios with 
 regard to religious subjects, but passionate worshippers of 
 freedom. Heated by the study of ancient literature, they 
 set up their country as their idol, and proposed to them- 
 selves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples. They 
 seem to have borne some resemblance to the Brissotines of 
 the French Pevolution. But it is not very easy to draw 
 the line of distinction between them and their devout asso- 
 ciates, whose tone and manner they sometimes found it 
 convenient to affect, and sometimes, it is probable, imper- 
 cej^tibly adopted. 
 
 We now come to the Eoyalists. We shall attempt to 
 sj)eak of them, as we have spoken of their antagonists, 
 with perfect candor. W^c shall not charge upon a whole 
 party the profligacy and baseness of the horse-boys, gam- 
 blers, and bravoes, whom the hope of license and plunder 
 attracted from all the dens of Whitefriars to the standard 
 of Charles, and who disgraced their associates by excesses 
 which, under the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary 
 armies, were never tolerated. We will select a more favor- 
 able specimen. Thinking as we do that the cause of the 
 king was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot 
 refrain from looking with complacency on the character of 
 the honest old Cavaliers. We feel a national pride in com- 
 paring them with the instruments Avhich the despots of 
 other countries are compelled to employ, with the mutes 
 who throng their antechambers, and the janizaries who 
 mount guard at their gates. Our Royalist countrymen 
 were not heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing at every 
 
Milton. 31 
 
 step; and simpering at every word. They were not mere 
 machines for destruction, dressed up in uniforms, caned 
 into skill, intoxicated into valor, defending without love, 
 destroying without hatred. There was a freedom in their 
 subserviency, a nobleness in their very degradation. The 
 sentiment of individual independence was strong within 
 them. They were indeed misled, but by no base or selfish 
 motive. Compassion and romantic honor, the prejudices of 
 childhood, and the venerable names of history, threw over 
 them a spell potent as that of Duessa; and, like the Ked- 
 cross Knight, they thought that they were doing battle 
 for an injured beauty, while they defended a false and 
 loathsome sorceress. In truth, they scarcely entered at all 
 into the merits of the political question. It was not for a 
 treacherous king or an intolerant Church that they fought, 
 but for the old banner which had waved in so many battles 
 over the heads of their fathers, and for the altars at which 
 they had received the hands of their brides. Though noth- 
 ing could be more erroneous than their political opinions, 
 they possessed, in a far greater degree than their adver- 
 saries, those qualities which are the grace of private life. 
 With many of the vices of the E-ound Table, they had also 
 many of its virtues, courtesy, generosity, veracity, tender- 
 ness, and respect for women. They had far more both of 
 profound and of polite learning than the Puritans. Their 
 manners were more engaging, their tempers more ami- 
 able, their tastes more elegant, and their households more 
 cheerful. 
 
 Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes which 
 we have described. He was not a Puritan. He was not a 
 freethinker. He was not a Eoyalist. In his character the 
 noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmo- 
 nious union. From the Parliament and from the court, 
 from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the 
 gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from 
 
32 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature 
 selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good, 
 while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by 
 which those finer elements were defiled. Like the Puritans, 
 he lived 
 
 " As ever in his great taskmaster's eye." 
 
 Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an 
 Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. And hence he 
 acquired their contempt of external circumstances, their 
 fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. But 
 not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was more 
 perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, 
 their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of 
 science, and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny 
 with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless all the estimable 
 and ornamental qualities which Avere almost entirely monop- 
 olized by the party of the tyrant. There was none who had 
 a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer relish for 
 every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of 
 honor and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his 
 tastes and his associations were such as harmonize best with 
 monarchy and aristocracy. He was under the influence of 
 all the feelings by which the gallant Cavaliers were misled. 
 But of those feelings he was the master, and not the slave. 
 Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of 
 fascination; but he was not fascinated. He listened to the 
 song of the Sirens ; yet he glided by without being seduced 
 to their fatal shore. He tasted the cup of Circe ; but he 
 bore about him a sure antidote against the effects of its 
 bewitching sweetness. The illusions which captivated his 
 imagination never impaired his reasoning powers. The 
 statesman was proof against the splendor, the solemnity, 
 and the romance which enchanted the poet. Any person 
 who will contrast the sentiments expressed in his treatises 
 
Milton. 33 
 
 on Prelacy with the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical archi- 
 tecture and music in the Penseroso, whicli was published 
 about the same time, will understand our meaning. This 
 is an inconsistency which, more than anything else, raises 
 his character in our estimation, because it shows how many 
 private tastes and feelings he sacrificed, in order to do what 
 he considered his duty to mankind. It is the very struggle 
 of the noble Othello. His heart relents, but his hand is firm. 
 He does naught in hate, but all in honor. He kisses the 
 beautiful deceiver before he destroys her. 
 
 That from which the public character of Milton derives 
 its great and peculiar splendor still remains to be men- 
 tioned. If he exerted himself to overthrow a forsworn king 
 and a persecuting hierarchy, he exerted himself in conjunc- 
 tion with others. But the glory of the battle which he 
 fought for the species of freedom which is the most valua- 
 ble, and which was then the least understood, the freedom 
 of the human mind, is all his own. Thousands and tens of 
 thousands among his contemporaries raised their voices 
 against ship-money and the Star-chamber. But there were 
 few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral 
 and intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would result 
 from the liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of 
 private judgment. These were the objects which Milton 
 justly conceived to be the most important. He was desirous 
 that the people should think for themselves as well as tax 
 themselves, and should be emancipated from the dominion 
 of prejudice as well as from that of Charles. He knew 
 that those who, with the best intentions, overlooked these 
 schemes of reform, and contented themselves with pulling 
 down the king and imprisoning the raalignants, acted like 
 the heedless brothers in his own poem, who, in their eager- 
 ness to disperse the train of the sorcerer, neglected the 
 means of liberating the captive. They thought only of con- 
 quering when they should have thought of disenchanting. 
 
34 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 " Oh, ye mistook ! Yc should have snatched his wand 
 And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed, 
 And backward mutters of dissevering power, 
 We cannot free the lady that sits here 
 In stony fetters fixed and motionless." 
 
 To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to break 
 the ties which bound a stupefied people to the seat of en- 
 chantment, was the noble aim of Milton. To this all his 
 public conduct was directed. For this he joined the Pres- 
 byterians ; for this he forsook them. He fought their per- 
 ilous battle ; but he turned away with disdain from their 
 insolent triumph. He saw that they, like those whom they 
 had vanquished, were hostile to the liberty of thought. He 
 therefore joined the Independents, and called upon Crom- 
 well to break the secular chain, and to save free conscience 
 from the paw of the Presbyterian wolf. With a view to 
 the same great object, he attacked the licensing system, in 
 that sublime treatise which every statesman should wear as 
 a sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his eyes. 
 His attacks were, in general, directed less against particular 
 abuses than against those deeply seated errors on which 
 almost all abuses are founded, the servile worship of emi- 
 nent men and the irrational dread of innovation. 
 
 That he might shake the foundations of these debasing 
 sentiments more effectually, he always selected for himself 
 the boldest literary services. He never came up in the 
 rear, when the outworks had been carried and the breach 
 entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. At the begin- 
 ning of the changes, he wrote with incomparable energy 
 and eloquence against the bishops. But when his opinion 
 seemed likely to prevail, he x^assed on to other subjects, 
 and abandoned prelacy to the crowd of writers who now 
 hastened to insult a falling party. Tliere is no more haz- 
 ardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth 
 into those dark and infected recesses in which no light has 
 
Milton. 35 
 
 ever shone. But it was the choice and the pleasure of Mil- 
 ton to penetrate the noisome vapors, and to brave the 
 terrible explosion. Those who most disapprove of his 
 opinions must respect the hardihood with which he main- 
 tained them. He, in general, left to others the credit of 
 expounding and defending the popular parts of his religious 
 and political creed. He took his own stand upon those 
 which the great body of his countrymen reprobated as 
 criminal, or derided as paradoxical. He stood up for divorce 
 and regicide. He attacked the prevailng systems of educa- 
 tion. His radiant and beneficent career resembled that of 
 the god of light and fertility. 
 
 " Nitor in adversum ; nee me, qui cpetera, vincit 
 Impetus, et rapido contrarius evelior orbi." 
 
 It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton 
 should, in our time, be so little read. As Gompositions, 
 they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to 
 become acquainted with the full power of the English lan- 
 guage. They abound with passages compared with which 
 the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. 
 They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff 
 with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier books 
 of the Paradise Lost has the great poet ever risen higher 
 than in those parts of his controversial works in which 
 his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of 
 devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own 
 majestic language, " a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and 
 harping symphonies." 
 
 We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear our- 
 selves away from the subject. The days immediately fol- 
 lowing the publication of this relic of Milton appear to be 
 peculiarly set apart, and consecrated to his memory. And 
 we shall scarcely be censured if, on this his festival, we be 
 found lingering near his shrine, how worthless soever may 
 
36 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 be the offering which we bring to it. While this book lies 
 on our table, we seem to be contemporaries of the writer. 
 We are transported a hundred and fifty years back. We 
 can almost fancy that we are visiting him in his small 
 lodging ; that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath 
 the faded green hangings ; that we can catch the quick 
 twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vain to find the day ; that we 
 are reading in the lines of his noble countenance the proud 
 and mournful history of his glory and his affliction. We 
 image to ourselves the breathless silence in which we should 
 listen to his slightest word, the passionate veneration with 
 which we should kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it, 
 the earnestness with which we should endeavor to console 
 him, if indeed such a spirit could need consolation, for the 
 neglect of an age unworthy of his talents and his virtues, 
 the eagerness with which we should contest with his daugh- 
 ters, or with his Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege of 
 reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal 
 accents which flowed from his lips. 
 
 These are perha23S foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be 
 ashamed of them ; nor shall we be sorry if what w^e have 
 written shall in any degree excite them in other minds. 
 We are not much in the habit of idolizing either the living 
 or the dead ; and we think that there is no more certain 
 indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect than that 
 propensity which, for want of a better name, we will ven- 
 ture to christen Boswellism. But there are a few charac- 
 ters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest 
 tests, which have been tried in the furnace and have proved 
 pure, which have been weighed in the balance and have not 
 been found wanting, which have been declared sterling by 
 the general consent of mankind, and which are visibly 
 stamped with the image and superscription of the Most 
 High. These great men we trust that we know how to 
 prize 5 and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, 
 
Milton. 37 
 
 the sound of his name, are pleasant to us. His thoughts 
 resemble those celestial fruits and flowers which the Virgin 
 Martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of para- 
 dise to the earth, and which were distinguished from the 
 productions of other soils, not only by superior bloom and 
 sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to 
 heal. They are powerful, not only to delight but to elevate 
 and purify. Nor do we envy the man who can study either 
 the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot with- 
 out aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works with 
 which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal 
 with which he labored for the public good, the fortitude 
 with which he endured every private calamity, the loftyj 
 disdain with which he looked down on temptations and dan-1 
 gers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, 
 and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and 
 with his fame. 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 
 
 (May, 1854.) 
 
 John Bunyax, the most popular religious writer in the 
 English language, was born at Elstow, about a mile from 
 Bedford, in the year 1G28. He may be said to have been 
 born a tinker. The tinkers then formed a hereditary caste, 
 which was held in no high estimation. They were gener- 
 ally vagrants and pilferers, and were often confounded with 
 the gypsies, whom in truth they nearly resembled. Bun- 
 yan's father was more respectable than most of the tribe. 
 He had a fixed residence, and was able to send his son to a 
 village school where reading and writing were taught. 
 
 The years of John's boyhood were those during which 
 the Puritan spirit was in the highest vigor all over Eng- 
 land ; and nowhere had that spirit more influence than in 
 Bedfordshire. It is not wonderful, therefore, that a lad to 
 whom nature had given a powerful imagination, and sensi- 
 bility which amounted to a disease, should have been early 
 haunted by religious terrors. Before he was ten, his sports 
 were interrupted by fits of remorse and despair; and his 
 sleep was disturbed by dreams of fiends trying to fly away 
 with him. As he grew older, his mental conflicts became 
 still more violent. The strong language in which he de- 
 scribed them has strangely misled all his biographers 
 except Mr. Southey. It has long been an ordinary practice 
 with pious writers to cite Bunyan as an instance of the 
 supernatural power of divine grace to rescue the human 
 soul from the lowest depths of wickedness. He is called in 
 38 
 
John Bunyan. 39 
 
 one book the most notorious of profligates ; in another, the 
 brand plucked from the burning. He is designated in j\Ir. 
 Ivimey's History of the Baptists as the depraved Bunyan, 
 the wicked tinker of Elstow. Mr. Ryland, a man once 
 of great note among the Dissenters, breaks out into the 
 following rhapsody : "ISTo man of common sense and com- 
 mon integrity can deny that Bunyan was a practical atheist, 
 a worthless, contemptible infidel, a vile rebel to God and 
 goodness, a common profligate, a soul-despising, a soul- 
 murdering, a soul-damning, thoughtless wretch as could 
 exist on the face of the earth. Now, be astonished, 
 heavens, to eternity ! and wonder, O earth and hell ! while 
 time endures. r>ehold this very man become a miracle of 
 mercy, a mirror of wisdom, goodness, holiness, truth, and 
 love." But whoever takes the trouble to examine the evi- 
 dence will find that the good men who wrote this had been 
 deceived by a phraseology which, as they had been hearing 
 it and using it all their lives, they ought to have understood 
 better. There cannot be a greater mistake than to infer, 
 from the strong expressions in which a devout man bemoans 
 his e:»ceeding sinfulness, that he has led a worse life than 
 his neighbors. Many excellent persons, whose moral char- 
 acter from boyhood to old age has been free from any stain 
 discernible to their fellow-creatures, have, in their autol)iog- 
 raphies and diaries, applied to themselves, and doubtless 
 with sincerity, epithets as severe as could be applied to 
 Titus Gates or Mrs. Brownrigg. It is quite certain that 
 Bunyan was, at eighteen, what, in any but the most austerely 
 Puritanical circles, would have been considered as a young 
 man of singular gravity and innocence. Indeed, it may be 
 remarked that he, like many other penitents who, in general 
 terms, acknowledge themselves to have been the worst of 
 mankind, fired up, and stood vigorously on his defense, 
 whenever any particular charge was brought against him 
 by others. He declares, it is true, that he had let loose 
 
40 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 the reins on the neck of his lusts, that he had delighted in 
 all transgressions against the divine law, and that he had 
 been the ringleader of the youth of Elstow in all manner of 
 vice. But when those who wished him ill accused him of 
 licentious amours, he called on God and the angels to attest 
 his purity. Not only had he been strictly faithful to his 
 wife, but he had, even before marriage, been perfectly spot- 
 less. It does not appear from his own confessions, or from 
 the railings of his enemies, that he ever was drunk in his 
 life. One bad habit he contracted, that of using profane 
 language ; but he tells us that a single reproof cured him 
 so effectually that he never offended again. The worst that 
 can be laid to the charge of this poor youth, whom it has 
 been the fashion to represent as the most desperate of 
 reprobates, as a village Rochester, is that he had a great 
 liking for some diversions, quite harmless in themselves, 
 but condemned by the rigid precisians among whom he 
 lived, and for whose opinion he had a great respect. The 
 four chief sins of which he was guilty were dancing, ring- 
 ing the bells of the parish church, playing at tip-cat, and 
 reading the History of Sir Bevis of Southampton. A 
 rector of the school of Laud would have held such a young 
 man up to the whole parish as a model. But Bunyan's 
 notions of good and evil had been learned in a very differ- 
 ent school; and he was made miserable by the conflict 
 between his tastes and his scruples. 
 
 When he was about seventeen, the ordinary course of his 
 life was interrupted by an event which gave a lasting color 
 to his thoughts. He enlisted in the Parliamentary army, 
 and served during the decisive campaign of 1645. All that 
 we know of his military career is that, at the siege of Leices- 
 ter, one of his comrades, who had taken his post, was killed 
 by a shot from the town. Bunyan ever after considered 
 himself as having been saved from death by the special 
 interference of Providence. It may be observed that his 
 
John Bunyan. 41 
 
 imagination was strongly impressed by the glimpse which 
 he had caught of the pomp of war. To the last he loved to 
 draw his illustrations of sacred things from camps and for- 
 tresses, from guns, drums, trumpets, flags of truce, and 
 regiments arrayed, each under its own banner. His Great- 
 heart, his Captain Boanerges, and his Captain Credence, are 
 evidently portraits, of which the originals were among those 
 martial saints who fought and expounded in Fairfax's 
 army. 
 
 In a few months Bunyan returned home and married. 
 His wife had some pious relations, and brought him as her 
 only portion some pious books. And now his mind, excita- 
 ble by nature, very imperfectly disciplined by education, 
 and exposed, without any protection, to the infectious viru- 
 lence of the enthusiasm which was then ejDidemic in Eng- 
 land, began to be fearfully disordered. In outward things 
 he soon became a strict Pharisee. He was constant in at- 
 tendance at prayers and sermons. His favorite amusements 
 were, one after another, relinquished, though not without 
 many painful struggles. In the middle of a game at tip-cat 
 he paused, and stood staring wildly upward with his stick 
 in his hand. He had heard a voice asking him whether he 
 would leave his sins and go to heaven, or keep his sins and 
 go to hell ; and he had seen an awful countenance frowning 
 on him from the sky. The odious vice of bell-ringing he 
 renounced ; but he still for a time ventured to go to the 
 church tower and look on while others pulled the ropes. 
 But soon the thought struck him that, if he persisted in 
 such wickedness, the steeple would fall on his head; and 
 he fled in terror from the accursed place. To give u]3 danc- 
 ing on the village green was still harder ; and some months 
 elapsed before he had the fortitude to part with this darl- 
 ing sin. When this last sacrifice had been made, he was, 
 even when tried by the maxims of that austere time, fault- 
 less. All Elstow talked of him as an eminently pious 
 
42 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 youth. But his own mind was more unquiet than ever. 
 Having nothing more to do in the way of visible reforma- 
 tion, yet finding in religion no pleasures to supply the 
 place of the juvenile amusements which he had relinquished, 
 he began to apprehend that he lay under some special male- 
 diction ; and he was tormented by a succession of fantasies 
 which seemed likely to drive him to suicide or to Bedlam. 
 
 At one time he took it into his head that all persons of 
 Israelite blood would be saved, and tried to make out that 
 he partook of that blood ; but his hopes were speedily de- 
 stroyed by his father, who seems to have had no ambition 
 to be regarded as a Jew. 
 
 At another time Bunyan was disturbed by a strange 
 dilemma : " If I have not faith, I am lost ; if I have faith, 
 I can work miracles." He was tempted to cry to the pud- 
 dles between Elstow and Bedford, "Be ye dry," and to 
 stake his eternal hopes on the event. 
 
 Then he took up a notion that the day of grace for Bed- 
 ford and the neighboring villages was passed ; that all who 
 were to be saved in that part of England were already con- 
 verted ; and that he had begun to pray and strive some 
 months too late. 
 
 Then he was harassed by doubts whether the Turks were 
 not in the right, and the Christians in the wrong. Then 
 he was troubled by a maniacal impulse which prompted 
 him to pray to the trees, to a broomstick, to the parish bull. 
 As yet, however, he was only entering the Valley of the 
 Shadow of Deat>h. Soon the darkness grew thicker. Hid- 
 eous forms floated before him. Sounds of cursing and wail- 
 ing were in his ears. His way ran through stench and fire, 
 close to the mouth of the bottomless pit. He began to be 
 haunted by a strange curiosity about the unpardonable sin, 
 and by a morbid longing to commit it. But the most 
 frightful of all the forms which his disease took was a pro- 
 pensity to utter blasphemy, and especially to renounce his 
 
John Bunyan. 43 
 
 share in the benefits of the redemption. Night and day, 
 in bed, at table, at work, evil spirits, as he imagined, were 
 repeating close to his ear the words, "Sell him ! sell him ! " 
 He strnck at the hobgoblins ; he pnshed them from him ; 
 bnt still they were ever at his side. He cried out in answer 
 to them, hour after hour, "Never, never; not for thousands 
 of worlds ; not for thousands." At length, worn out by 
 this long agony, he suffered the fatal words to escape him, 
 " Let him go, if he will." Then his misery became more 
 fearful than ever. He had done what could not be forgiven. 
 He had forfeited his part of the great sacrifice. Like Esau, 
 he had sold his birthright, and there was no longer any 
 place for repentance. " None," he afterward wrote, ''knows 
 the terrors of those days but myself." He has described 
 his sufferings with singular energy, simplicity, and pathos. 
 He envied the brutes ; he envied the very stones in the 
 street, and the tiles on the houses. The sun seemed to 
 withhold its light and warmth from him. His body, though 
 cast in a sturdy mould, and though still in the highest vigor 
 of youth, trembled whole days together with the fear of 
 death and judgment. He fancied that this trembling was 
 the sign set on the worst reprobates, the sign which God 
 had put on Cain. The unhappy man's emotion destroyed 
 his power of digestion. He had such pains that he ex- 
 pected to burst asunder like Judas, whom he regarded as 
 Jiis ])rototype. 
 
 Neither the books which Bunyan read, nor the advisers 
 whom he consulted, were likely to do much good in a case 
 like his. His small library had received a most unseason- 
 able addition, the account of the lamentable end of Fran- 
 cis Spira. One ancient man of high repute for piet^^, whom 
 the sufferer consulted, gave an opinion which might well 
 have produced fatal consequences. "I am afraid," said 
 Bunyan, " that I have committed the sin against the Holy 
 Ghost." '' Indeed," said the old fanatic, " I am afraid that 
 you have." 
 
44 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 At length the clouds broke ; the light became clearer and 
 clearer ; and the enthusiast, who had imagined that he was 
 branded with the mark of the first murderer, and destined 
 to the end of the arch traitor, enjoyed x^eace and a cheerful 
 confidence in the mercy of God. Years elapsed, however, 
 before his nerves, which had been so perilously overstrained, 
 recovered their tone. When he had joined a Baptist society 
 at Bedford, and was for the first time admitted to partake 
 of the Eucharist, it was with difficulty that he could refrain 
 from imprecating destruction on his brethren while the cup 
 was passing from hand to hand. After he had been some 
 time a member of the congregation he began to preach ; and 
 his sermons produced a powerful effect. He was, indeed, 
 illiterate ; but he spoke to illiterate men. The severe 
 training through which he had passed had given him such 
 an experimental knowledge of all the modes of religious 
 melancholy as he could never have gathered from books ; 
 and his vigorous genius, animated by a fervent spirit of 
 devotion, enabled him not only to exercise a great influence 
 over the vulgar, but even to extort the half contemptuous 
 admiration of scholars. Yet it was long before he ceased 
 to be tormented by an impulse which urged him to utter 
 words of horrible impiety in the pulpit. 
 
 Counter-irritants are of as great use in moral as in phys- 
 ical diseases. It should seem that Bunyan was finally re- 
 lieved from the internal sufferings which had embittered 
 his life by sharp persecution from without. He had been 
 five years a preacher when the Restoration put it in the 
 power of the Cavalier gentlemen and clergymen all over the 
 country to oppress the Dissenters ; and, of all the Dissenters 
 whose history is known to us, he was perhaps the most 
 hardly treated. In November, 1660, he was flung into 
 Bedford jail ; and there he remained, with some intervals 
 of partial and precarious liberty, during twelve years. His 
 persecutors tried to extort from him a promise that he 
 
John Bunyan. 45 
 
 would abstain from preaching; but he was convinced that 
 he was divinely set apart and commissioned to be a teacher 
 of righteousness, and he was fully determined to obey God 
 rather than man. He was brought before several tribunals, 
 laughed at, caressed, reviled, menaced, but in vain. He 
 was facetiously told that he was quite right in thinking 
 that he ought not to hide his gift ; but that his real gift 
 was skill in repairing old kettles. He was compared to 
 Alexander the coppersmith. He was told that, if he would 
 give up preaching, he should be instantly liberated. He 
 was warned that, if he persisted in disobeying the law, he 
 would be liable to banishment ; and that if he were found 
 in England after a certain time, his neck would be stretched. 
 His answer was, " If you let me out to-day, I will preach 
 again to-morrow." Year after year he lay patiently in a 
 dungeon, compared with which the worst prison now to be 
 found in the island is a palace. His fortitude is the more 
 extraordinary because his domestic feelings were unusually 
 strong. Indeed, he was considered by his stern brethren 
 as somewhat too fond and indulgent a parent. He had 
 several small children, and among them a daughter who 
 was blind, and whom he loved with peculiar tenderness. 
 He could not, he said, bear even to let the wind blow on 
 her; and now she must suffer cold and hunger, she must 
 beg, she must be beaten; "yet," he added, "I must, I 
 must do it." While he lay in prison, he could do nothing 
 in the way of his old trade for the support of his family. 
 He determined, therefore, to take up a new trade. He 
 learned to make long tagged thread laces ; and many thou- 
 sands of these articles were furnished by him to the hawkers. 
 While his hands were thus busied, he had other employment 
 for his mind and his lips. He gave religious instruction to 
 his fellow captives, and formed from among them a little 
 flock, of which he was himself the pastor. He studied 
 indefatigably the few books which he possessed. His two 
 
46 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 
 
 chief companions were the Bible and Fox's Book of Mar- 
 tyrs. His knowledge of the Bible was such that he might 
 have been called a living concordance ; and on the margin 
 of his copy of the Book of Martyrs are still legible the ill 
 spelt lines of doggerel in which he expressed his reverence 
 for the brave sufferers, and his implacable enmity to the 
 mystical Babylon. 
 
 At length he began to write, and though it was some time 
 before he discovered where his strength lay, his writings 
 were not unsuccessful. They were coarse, indeed, but they 
 showed a keen mother-wit, a great command of the homely 
 mother-tongue, an intimate knowledge of the English Bible, 
 and a vast and dearly bought spiritual experience. They 
 therefore, when the corrector of the press had improved the 
 syntax and the spelling, were well received by the humbler 
 class of Dissenters. 
 
 Much of Bunj^an's time was spent in controversy. He 
 wrote sharply against the Quakers, whom he seems always 
 to have held in utter abhorrence. It is, however, a remark- 
 able fact that he adopted one of their peculiar fashions : 
 his practice was to write, not November or December, but 
 eleventh month and twelfth month. 
 
 He wrote against the liturgy of the Church of England. 
 No two things, according to him, had less affinity than the 
 form of prayer and the spirit of prayer. Those, he said 
 with much point, who have most of the spirit of prayer are 
 all to be found in jail ; and those who have most zeal for 
 the form of prayer are all to be found at the ale-house. 
 The doctrinal articles, on the other hand, he warmly praised 
 and defended. 
 
 Bunyan had also a dispute with some of the chiefs of the 
 sect to which he belonged. He doubtless held with perfect 
 sincerity the distinguishing tenet of that sect, but he did 
 not consider that tenet as one of high importance, and will- 
 ingly joined in communion with pious Presbyterians and 
 
Jolin Bunyan. 47 
 
 Independents. The sterner Baptists, therefore, loudly pro- 
 nounced him a false brother. A controversy arose which 
 long survived the original combatants. In our own time 
 the cause which Bunyan had defended with rude logic and 
 rhetoric was pleaded by Robert Hall with an ingenuity and 
 eloquence such as no polemical writer has ever surpassed. 
 
 During the years which immediately followed the Eesto- 
 ration, Bunyan's confinement seems to have been strict ; but 
 as the passions of IGGO cooled, as the hatred with which the 
 Puritans had been regarded while their reign was recent 
 gave place to pity, he was less and less harshly treated. 
 The distress of his family, and his own patience, courage, 
 and piety, softened the hearts of his persecutors. Like his 
 own Christian in the cage, he found protectors even among 
 the crowd of Vanity Fair. The bishop of the diocese, Dr. 
 Barlow, is said to have interceded for him. At length the 
 prisoner was suffered to pass most of his time beyond the 
 walls of the jail, on condition, as it should seem, that he 
 remained within the town of Bedford. 
 
 He owed his complete liberation to one of the worst acts 
 of one of the worst governments that England lias ever 
 seen. In 1671 the Cabal was in power. Charles II. had 
 concluded the treaty by which he bound himself to' set up 
 the Roman Catholic religion in England. The first step 
 which he took toward that end was to annul, by an uncon- 
 stitutional exercise of his prerogative, all the penal statutes 
 against the Roman Catholics ; and in order to disguise his 
 real design, he annulled at the same time the penal statutes 
 against Protestant non-conformists. Bunyan was conse- 
 quently set at large. In the first warmth of his gratitude, 
 he published a tract in which he compared Charles to that 
 humane and generous Persian king who, though not him- 
 self blessed with the light of the true religion, favored the 
 chosen people, and permitted them, after years of captivity, 
 to rebuild their beloved temple. To candid men, who con- 
 
48 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 sicler how miich Bunyan had suffered, and how little he 
 could guess the secret designs of the court, the unsuspicious 
 thankfulness with which he accepted the precious boon of 
 freedom will not appear to require any apology. 
 
 Before he left his prison he had begun the book which 
 has made his name immortal. The history of that book is 
 remarkable. The author was, as he tells us, writing a treat- 
 ise, in which he had occasion to speak of the stages of the 
 Christian progress. He compared that progress, as many 
 others had compared it, to a pilgrimage. Soon his quick 
 wit discovered innumerable points of similarity which had 
 escaped his predecessors. Images came crowding on his 
 mind faster than he could put them into words : quagmires 
 and j)its, steep hills, dark and horrible glens, soft vales, 
 sunny pastures; a gloomy castle, of which the court-yard 
 was strewn with the skulls and bones of murdered prison- 
 ers ; a town all bustle and splendor, like London on the 
 Lord Mayor's Day ; and the narrow path, straight as a rule 
 could make it, running on uphill and downhill, through 
 city and through wilderness, to the Black Eiver and the 
 Shining Gate. He had found out, as most people would 
 have said, by accident, as he would doubtless have said, by 
 the guidance of Providence, where his powers lay. He 
 had no suspicion, indeed, that he was producing a master- 
 piece. He could not guess what place his allegory would 
 occupy in English literature, for of English literature he 
 knew nothing. Those who suppose him to have studied 
 the Fairy Queen might easily be confuted, if this were the 
 proper place for a detailed examination of the passages 
 in which the two allegories have been thought to resemble 
 each other. The only work of fiction, in all probability, 
 with which he could compare his pilgrim, was his old favor- 
 ite, the legend of Sir Bevis of Southampton. He would 
 have thought it a sin to borrow any time from the serious 
 business of his life, from his expositions, his controversies, 
 
John Bunyan. 49 
 
 and his lace tags, for the purpose of amusing himself with 
 what he considered merely as a trifle. It was only, he 
 assures us, at spare moments that he returned to the House 
 Beautiful, the Delectable Mountains, and the Enchanted 
 Ground. He had no assistance. Nobody but himself saw 
 a line till the whole was complete. He then consulted his 
 pious friends. Some were pleased. Others were much 
 scandalized. It was a vain story, a mere romance about 
 giants, and lions, and goblins, and warriors, sometimes 
 figliting with monsters, and sometimes regaled by fair ladies 
 in stately palaces. The loose, atheistical wits at Will's 
 might write such stuff to divert the painted Jezebels of the 
 court ; but did it become a minister of the Gospel to copy 
 the evil fashions of the world ? There had been a time 
 when the cant of such fools would have made Bunyan mis- 
 erable. But that time was passed, and his mind was now 
 in a firm and healthy state. He saw that, in employing 
 fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, he was 
 only following the example which every Christian ought to 
 propose to himself ; and he determined to print. 
 
 The Pilgrim's Progress stole silently into the world. 
 Not a single copy of the first edition is known to be in 
 existence. The year of publication has not been ascer- 
 tained. It is probable that, during some months, the little 
 volume circulated only among poor and obscure sectaries. 
 But soon the irresistible charm of a book which gratified 
 the imagination of the reader with all the action and 
 scenery of a fairy tale, which exercised his ingenuity by 
 setting him to discover a multitude of curious analogies, 
 which interested his feelings for human beings, frail like 
 himself, and struggling with temptations from within and 
 from without, which every moment drew a smile from him 
 by some stroke of quaint yet simple pleasantry, and never- 
 theless left on his mind a sentiment of reverence for God 
 and of sympathy for man, began to produce its effect. In 
 
50 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 Puritanical circles, from which plays and novels were 
 strictly excluded, that effect was such as no work of 
 genius, though it were superior to the Iliad, to Don 
 Quixote, or to Othello, can ever produce on a mind 
 accustomed to indulge in literary luxury. In 1G78 came 
 forth a second edition, with additions; and then the de- 
 mand became immense. In the four following years the 
 book was reprinted six times. The eighth edition, which 
 contains the last improvements made by the author, was 
 published in 1G82, the ninth in 1684, the tenth in 1685. 
 The help of the engraver had early been called in; and 
 tens of thousands of children looked with terror and de- 
 light on execrable copperplates, which represented Chris- 
 tian thrusting his sword into Apollyon or writliing in 
 the grasp of Giant Despair. In Scotland and in some 
 of the colonies, the Pilgrim was even more popular than 
 in his native country. Bunyan has told us, Avith very 
 pardonable vanity, that in New England his Dream was 
 the daily subject of the conversation of thousands, and was 
 thought worthy to appear in the most superb binding. He 
 had numerous admirers in Holland and among the Hugue- 
 nots of; Prance. With the pleasure, however, he experi- 
 enced some of the pains of eminence. Knavish booksellers 
 put forth volumes of trash under his name, and envious 
 scribblers maintained it to be impossible that the poor 
 ignorant tinker should really be the author of the book 
 which was called his. 
 
 He took the best way to confound both those who coun- 
 terfeited him and those who slandered him. He continued 
 to work the gold-field which he had discovered, and to 
 draw from it new treasures, not, indeed, with quite such 
 ease and in quite such abundance as when the .precious soil 
 was still virgin, but yet with success which left all com- 
 petition far behind. In 1684 appeared the second part of 
 the Pilgrim's Progress. It was soon followed by the Holy 
 
John Bunyan. 51 
 
 War, which, if the Pilgrim's Progress did not exist, woukl 
 be the best allegory that ever was written. 
 
 Bunyan's place in society was now very different from 
 what it had been. There had been a time when many Dis- 
 senting ministers, who could talk Latin and read Greek, had 
 affected to treat him with scorn. Bat his fame and influ- 
 ence now far exceeded theirs. He had so great an author- 
 ity among the Baptists that he was popularly called Bishop 
 Bunyan. His episcopal visitations were annual. From 
 Bedford he rode every year to London, and preached there 
 to large and attentive congrega,tions. From London he 
 went his circuit through the country, animating the zeal of 
 his brethren, collecting and distributing alms, and making 
 up quarrels. The magistrates seem in general to have 
 given him little trouble. But there is reason to believe 
 that in the year 1685 he was in some danger of again 
 occupying his old quarters in Bedford jail. In that year 
 the rash and wicked enterprise of Monmouth gave the Gov- 
 ernment a pretext for prosecuting the Non-conformists ; 
 and scarcely one eminent divine of the Presbyterian, In- 
 dependent, or Baptist persuasion remained unmolested. 
 Baxter was in prison ; Howe was driven into exile ; Henry 
 was arrested. Two eminent Baptists, with whom Bunyan 
 had been engaged in controversy, were in great peril and 
 distress. Danvers was in danger of being hanged ; and 
 Kifhn's grandsons were actually hanged. The tradition is 
 that, during those evil days, Bunyan was forced to disguise 
 himself as a wagoner, and that he preached to his congre- 
 gation at Bedford in a smock-frock, with a cart-whip in his 
 hand. But soon a great change took place. James the 
 Second was at open war with the Church, and found it 
 necessary to court the Dissenters. Some of the creatures 
 of the Government tried to secure the aid of Bunyan. 
 They probably knew that he had written in praise of the 
 indulgence of 1672, and therefore hoped tliat he might be 
 
52 Select Essays of Macaulay. >^^ 
 
 equally pleased with the indulgence of 1687. But fifteen 
 years of thought, observation, and commerce with the 
 world had made him wiser. Nor were the cases exactly 
 parallel. Charles was a professed Protestant ; James was a 
 professed Papist. The object of Charles's indulgence was 
 disguised ; the object of James's indulgence was patent. 
 Bunyan was not deceived. He exhorted his hearers to 
 prepare themselves by fasting and prayer for the danger 
 which menanced their civil and religious liberties, and 
 refused even to speak to the courtier who came down 
 to remodel the corporation of Bedford, and who, as was 
 supposed, had it in charge to offer some municipal dignity 
 to the Bishop of the Baptists. 
 
 Bunyan did not live to see the Revolution. In the sum- 
 mer of 1688 he undertook to plead the cause of a son with 
 an angry father, and at length prevailed on the old man not 
 to disinherit the young one. This good work cost the 
 benevolent intercessor his life. He had to ride through 
 heavy rain. He came drenched to his lodgings on Snow 
 Hill, was seized with a violent fever, and died in a few days. 
 He was buried in Bunhill Fields ; and the spot where he 
 lies is still regarded by the Non-conformists with a feeling 
 which seems scarcely in harmony with the stern spirit of 
 their theology. Many Puritans, to whom the respect paid 
 by Roman Catholics to the relics and tombs of saints seemed 
 childish or sinful, are said to have begged with their dying 
 breath that their coffins might be placed as near as possible 
 to the coffin of the author of the Pilgrim's Progress. 
 
 The fame of Bunyan during his life, and during the cen- 
 tury which followed his death, was indeed great, but was 
 almost entirely confined to religious families of the middle 
 and lower classes. Very seldom was he during that time 
 mentioned with respect by any writer of great literary emi- 
 nence. Young coupled his prose with the poetry of the 
 wretched D'Urfey. In the Spiritual Quixote, the adven- 
 
Joli7i Bunyan. 53 
 
 tures of Christian are ranked with those of Jack the Giant- 
 killer and John Hickathrift. Cowper ventured to praise 
 the great allegorist, but did not venture to name him. It 
 is a significant circumstance that, till a recent period, all 
 the numerous editions of the Pilgrim's Progess were evi- 
 dently meant for the cottage and the servants' hall. The 
 paper, the printing, the plates, were all of the meanest 
 description. In general, when the educated minority and 
 the common people differ about the merit of a book, the 
 opinion of the educated minority finally prevails. The 
 Pilgrim's Progress is perhaps the only book about which, 
 after the lapse of a hundred years, the educated minority 
 has come over to the opinion of the common people. 
 
 The attempts which have been made to improve and to 
 imitate this book are not to be numbered. It has been done 
 into verse: it has been done into modern English. The 
 "Pilgrimage of Tender Conscience," the "Pilgrimage of 
 Good Intent," the "Pilgrimage of Seek Truth," the "Pil- 
 grimage of Theophilus," the ''Infant Pilgrim," the "Hindoo 
 Pilgrim," are among the many feeble copies of the great 
 original. But the peculiar glory of Bunyan is that those 
 who most hated his doctrines have tried to borrow the help 
 of his genius. A Catholic version of his parable may be 
 seen with the head of the Virgin in the title-page. On the 
 other hand, those Antinomians for whom his Calvinism is 
 not strong enough, may study the pilgrimage of Hephzibah, 
 in which nothing will be found which can be construed into 
 an admission of free agency and universal redemption. But 
 the most extraordinary of all the acts of Vandalism by 
 which a fine work of art was ever defaced was committed 
 so late as the year 1853. It was determined to transform 
 the Pilgrim's Progress into a Tractarian book. The task 
 was not easy ; for it was necessary to make the two sacra- 
 ments the most prominent objects in the allegory ; and of 
 all Christian theologians, avowed Quakers excepted, Bunyan 
 
54 Select Essays of Macaiday. 
 
 was the one in whose system the sacraments held the least 
 prominent place. However, the Wicket Gate became a type 
 of baptism, and the House Beautiful of the Eucharist. The 
 effect of this change is such as assuredly the ingenious per- 
 son who made it never contemplated ; for, as not a single 
 pilgrim passes through the Wicket Gate in infancy, and as 
 Faithful hurries past the House Beautiful without stopping, 
 the lesson which the fable, in its altered shape, teaches, is 
 that none but adults ought to be baptized, and that the 
 Eucharist may safely be neglected. Nobody would have 
 discovered from the original Pilgrim's Progress that the 
 author was not a Peedobaptist. To turn his book into a 
 book against Psedobaptism was an achievement reserved for 
 an Anglo-Catholic divine. Such blunders must necessarily 
 be committed by every man who mutilates parts of a great 
 work, without taking a comprehensive view of the whole. 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 
 (December, 1856.) 
 
 Samuel Johnson, one of the most eminent English 
 writers of the eighteenth century, was the son of Michael 
 Johnson, who was, at the beginning of that century, a 
 magistrate of Lichfield, and a bookseller of great note in 
 the Midland Counties. Michael's abilities and attainments 
 seem to have been considerable. He was so well acquainted 
 with the contents of the volumes which he exposed to sale, 
 that the country rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire 
 thought him an oracle on points of learning. Between him 
 and the clergy, indeed, there was a strong religious and 
 political sympathy. He was a zealous Churchman, and, 
 though he qualified himself for municipal office by taking 
 the oaths to the sovereigns in possession, was to the last a 
 Jacobite in heart. At his house, a house which is still 
 pointed out to every traveller who visits Lichfield, Samuel 
 was born on the 18th of September, 1709. In the child the 
 physical, intellectual, and moral peculiarities which after- 
 ward distinguished the man were plainly discernible ; great 
 muscular strength, accompanied by much awkwardness and 
 many infirmities ; great quickness of parts, with a morbid 
 propensity to sloth and procrastination ; a kind and generous 
 heart, with a gloomy and irritable temper. He had in- 
 herited from his ancestors a scrofulous taint, which it was 
 beyond the power of medicine to remove. His parents 
 were weak enough to believe that the royal touch was a 
 specific for this malady. In his third year he was taken up 
 
 55 
 
56 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 to London, inspected by the court surgeon, prayed over by 
 the court chaplains, and stroked and presented with a piece 
 of gold by Queen Anne. One of his earliest recollections 
 was that of a stately lady in a diamond stomacher and a 
 long black hood. Her hand was applied in vain. The 
 boy's features, which were originally noble and not irregular, 
 were distorted by his malady. His cheeks were deeply 
 scarred. He lost for a time the sight of one eye, and he 
 saw but very imperfectly with the other. But the force of 
 his mind overcame every impediment. Indolent as he was, 
 he acquired knowledge with such ease and rapidity that at 
 every school to which he was sent he was soon the best 
 scholar. From sixteen to eighteen he resided at home, and 
 was left to his own devices. He learned much at this time, 
 though his studies were without guidance and without plan. 
 He ransacked his father's shelves, dipped into a multitude 
 of books, read what was interesting, and passed over what 
 was dull. An ordinary lad would have acquired little or no 
 useful knowledge in such a way ; but much that was dull to 
 ordinary lads was interesting to Samuel. He read little 
 Greek; for his proficiency in that language was not such 
 that he could take much pleasure in the masters of Attic 
 poetry and eloquence. But he had left school a good 
 Latinist, and he soon acquired, in the large and miscella- 
 neous library of which he now had the command, an 
 extensive knowledge of Latin literature. That Augustan 
 delicacy of taste, which is the boast of the great public 
 schools of England, he never possessed. But he was early 
 familiar with some classical writers who were quite un- 
 known to the best scholars in the sixth form at Eton. He 
 was peculiarly attracted by the works of the great restorers 
 of learning. Once, while searching for some apples, he 
 found a huge folio volume of Petrarch's works. The name 
 excited his curiosity, and he eagerly devoured hundreds of 
 pages. Indeed, the diction and versification of his own 
 
Samuel Jolinson. 57 
 
 Latin compositions show that he had paid at least as much 
 attention to modern copies from the antique as to the 
 original models. 
 
 While he was thus irregularly educating himself, his 
 family was sinking into hopeless poverty. Old Michael 
 Johnson was much better qualified to pore over books, and 
 to talk about them, than to trade in them. His business 
 declined; his debts increased; it was with difficulty that 
 the daily expenses of his household were defrayed. It was 
 out of his power to support his son at either university; 
 but a wealthy neighbor offered assistance, and, in reliance 
 on promises which proved to be of very little value, Samuel 
 was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford. When the 
 young scholar presented himself to the rulers of that society, 
 they were amazed not more by his ungainly figure and 
 eccentric manners than by the quantity of extensive and 
 curious information which he had picked up during many 
 months of desultory, but not unprofitable, study. On the 
 first day of his residence he surprised his teachers by 
 quoting Macrobius ; and one of the most learned among 
 them declared that he had never known a freshman of 
 equal attainments. 
 
 At Oxford Johnson resided during about three years. 
 He was poor, even to raggedness ; and his appearance 
 excited a mirth and a pity which were equally intolerable to 
 his haughty spirit. He was driven from the quadrangle of 
 Christ Church by the sneering looks which the members of 
 that aristocratical society cast at the holes in his shoes. 
 Some charitable person placed a new pair at his door, but he 
 spurned them away in a fury. Distress made him, not ser- 
 vile, but reckless and ungovernable. No opulent gentleman 
 commoner, panting for one-and-twenty, could have treated 
 the academical authorities with more gross disrespect. The 
 needy scholar was generally to be seen under the gate of 
 Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing a 
 
68 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 circle of lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and 
 dirty linen, his wit and audacity gave him an undisputed 
 ascendency. In every mutiny against the discipline of the 
 college he was the ringleader. Much was pardoned, how- 
 ever, to a youth so highly distinguished by abilities and ac- 
 quirements. He had early made himself known by turning 
 Pope's Messiah into Latin verse. The style and rhythm, 
 indeed, were not exactly Virgilian, but the translation found 
 many admirers, and was read with pleasure by Pope him- 
 self. 
 
 The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the 
 ordinary course of things, have become a Bachelor of Arts : 
 but he was at the end of his resources. Those promises of 
 support on which he had relied had not been kept. His 
 family could do nothing for him. His debts to Oxford 
 tradesmen were small indeed, yet larger than he could pay. 
 In the autumn of 1731 he was under the necessity of quit- 
 ting the university without a degree. In the following 
 winter his father died. The old man left but a pittance, 
 and of that pittance almost the whole was appropriated to 
 the support of his widow. The property to which Samuel 
 succeeded amounted to no more than twenty pounds. 
 
 His life, during the thirty years which followed, was one 
 hard struggle with poverty. The misery of that struggle 
 needed no aggravation, but was aggravated by the suffer- 
 ings of an unsound body and an unsound mind. Before the 
 young man left the university, his hereditary malady had 
 broken forth in a singularly cruel form. He had become 
 an incurable hypochondriac. He said long after that he 
 had been mad all his life, or at least not perfectly sane; 
 and, in truth, eccentricities less strange than his have often 
 been thought grounds sufficient for absolving felons, and 
 for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures, his 
 mutterings, sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified 
 people who did not know him. At a dinner-table he would. 
 
Samuel Johnson. 59 
 
 in a fit of absence, stoop down and twitch off a lady's shoe. 
 He would amaze a drawing-room by suddenly ejaculating a 
 clause of the Lord's Prayer. He would conceive an unin- 
 telligible aversion to a particular alley, and perform a great 
 circuit rather than see the hateful place. He would set his 
 heart on touching every post in the streets through which 
 he walked. If by any chance he missed a post, he would 
 go back a hundred yards and repair the omission. Under 
 the influence of his disease, his senses became morbidly 
 torpid and his imagination morbidly active. At one time 
 he would stand poring on the town clock without being able 
 to tell the hour. At another, he would distinctly hear his 
 mother, who was many miles off, calling him by his name. 
 But this was not the worst. A deep melancholy took 
 possession of him, and gave a dark tinge to all his views of 
 human nature and of human destiny. Such wretchedness 
 as he endured has driven many men to shoot themselves or 
 drown themselves ; but he was under no temptation to com- 
 mit suicide. He was sick of life, but he was afraid of 
 death; and he shuddered at every sight or sound which 
 reminded him of the inevitable hour. In religion he found 
 but little comfort during his long and frequent fits of de- 
 jection, for his religion partook of his own character. The 
 light from heaven shone on him indeed, but not in a direct 
 line, or with its own pure splendor. The rays had to 
 struggle through a disturbing medium ; they reached him 
 refracted, dulled, and discolored by the thick gloom which 
 had settled on his soul; and, though they might be suf- 
 ficiently clear to guide him, were too dim to cheer him. 
 
 With such infirmities of body and of mind, this cele- 
 brated man was left, at two-and-twenty, to fight his way 
 through the world. He remained during about five years 
 in the midland counties. At Lichfield, his birthplace and 
 his early home, he had inherited some friends and acquired 
 others. He was kindly noticed by Henry Hervey, a gay 
 
60 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 officer of noble family, who happened to be quartered there. 
 Gilbert Walmesley, registrar of the ecclesiastical court of 
 the diocese, a man of distinguished parts, learning, and 
 knowledge of the world, did himself honor by patronizing 
 the young adventurer, whose repulsive person, unpolished 
 manners, and squalid garb moved many of the petty aris- 
 tocracy of the neighborhood to laughter or to disgust. At 
 Lichfield, however, Johnson could find no way of earning a 
 livelihood. He became usher of a grammar school in 
 Leicestershire ; he resided as a humble companion in the 
 house of a country gentleman ; but a life of dependence 
 was insupportable to his haughty spirit. He repaired to 
 Birmingham, and there earned a few guineas by literary 
 drudgery. In that town he printed a translation, little 
 noticed at the time, and long forgotten, of a Latin book 
 about Abyssinia. He then put forth proposals for publish- 
 ing by subscription the x^oems of Politian, with notes con- 
 taining a history of modern Latin verse ; but subscriptions 
 did not come in, and the volume never appeared. 
 
 While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson 
 fell in love. The object of his passion was Mrs. Elizabeth 
 Porter, a widow who had children as old as himself. To ordi- 
 nary spectators, the lady appeared to be a short, fat, coarse 
 woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in gaudy colors, 
 and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces which 
 were not exactly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. 
 To Johnson, however, whose passions were strong, whose 
 eyesight was too weak to distinguish ceruse from natural 
 bloom, and who had seldom or never been in the same 
 room with a woman of real fashion, his Titty, as he called 
 her, was the most beautiful, graceful, and accomplished of 
 her sex. That his admiration was unfeigned cannot be 
 doubted, for she was as poor as himself. She accepted, 
 with a readiness which did her little honor, the addresses 
 of a suitor who might have been her son. The marriage. 
 
Samuel Johnson. 61 
 
 however, in spite of occasional wranglings, proved happier 
 than might have been expected. The lover continued to be 
 under the illusions of the wedding-day till the lady died in 
 her sixty-fourth year. On her monument he placed an in- 
 scription, extolling the charms of her person and of her 
 manners ; and when, long after her decease, he had occasion 
 to mention her, he exclaimed, with a tenderness half ludi- 
 crous, half pathetic, "Pretty creature!" 
 
 His marriage made it necessary for him to exert himself 
 more strenuously than he had hitherto done. He took a 
 house in the neighborhood of his native town, and adver- 
 tised for pupils. But eighteen months passed away, and 
 only three pupils came to his academy. Indeed, his appear- 
 ance was so strange, and his temper so violent, that his 
 school-room must have resembled an ogre's den. Nor was 
 the tawdry painted grandmother whom he called his Titty 
 well qualified to make provision for the comfort of young 
 gentlemen. David Garrick, who was one of the pupils, 
 used, many years later, to throw the best company of Lon- 
 don into convulsions of laughter by mimicking the endear- 
 ments of this extraordinary pair. 
 
 At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, 
 determined to seek his fortune in the capital as a literary 
 adventurer. He set out with a few guineas, three acts of 
 the tragedy of Irene in manuscript, and two or three letters 
 of introduction from his friend Walmesley. 
 
 Never since literature became a calling in England had it 
 been a less gainful calling than at the time when Johnson 
 took up his residence in London. In the preceding genera- 
 tion a writer of eminent merit was sure to be munificently 
 rewarded by the Government. The least that he could 
 expect was a pension or a sinecure place ; and, if he showed 
 any aptitude for politics, he might hope to be a Member of 
 Parliament, a lord of the treasury, an ambassador, a secre- 
 tary of state. It would be easy, on the other hand, to 
 
62 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 
 
 name several writers of the nineteenth century of whom 
 the least successful has received forty thousand pounds 
 from the booksellers. But Johnson entered on his vocation 
 in the most dreary part of the dreary interval which sepa- 
 rated two ages of prosperity. Literature had ceased to 
 flourish under the patronage of the great, and had not begun 
 to flourish under the patronage of the public. One man of 
 letters, indeed, Pope, had acquired by his pen what was 
 then considered as a handsome fortune, and lived on a foot- 
 ing of equality with nobles and ministers of State. But 
 this was a solitary exception. Even an author whose repu- 
 tation was established, and whose works were popular, such 
 an author as Thomson, whose Seasons were in every library, 
 such an author as Fielding, whose Pasquin had had a greater 
 run than any drama since The Beggar's Opera, was some- 
 times glad to obtain, by pawning his best coat, the means 
 of dining on tripe at a cook-shop under ground, where he 
 could wipe his hands, after his greasy meal, on the back of a 
 Newfoundland dog. It is easy, therefore, to imagine what 
 humiliations and privations must have awaited the novice 
 who had still to earn a name. One of the publishers to 
 whom Johnson applied for employment measured with a 
 scornful eye that athletic though uncouth frame, and ex- 
 claimed, "You had better get a porter's knot, and carry 
 trunks." Nor was the advice bad, for a porter was likely 
 to be as plentifully fed, and as comfortably lodged, as a poet. 
 - Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson was 
 able to form any literary connection from which he could 
 expect more than bread for the day which was passing over 
 him. He never forgot the generosity with which Hervey, 
 Avho was now residing in London, relieved his wants during 
 this time of trial. " Harry Hervey," said the old philoso- 
 pher many years later, " was a vicious man ; but he was 
 very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey, I shall love 
 him." At Hervey's table Johnson sometimes enjoyed 
 
Samuel Johnson. 63 
 
 feasts which were made more agreeable by contrast. But 
 in general he dined, and thought that he dined well, on six- 
 pennyworth of meat and a pennyworth of bread at an ale- 
 house near Drury Lane. 
 
 The effect of the privations and sufferings which he en- 
 dured at this time was discernible to the last in his temper 
 and his deportment. His manners had never been courtly ; 
 they now became almost savage. Being frequently under the 
 necessity of wearing shabby coats and dirty shirts, he became 
 a confirmed sloven. Being often very hungry when he sat 
 down to his meals, he contracted a habit of eating with raven- 
 ous greediness. Even to the end of his life, and even at the 
 tables of the great, the sight of food affected him as it affects 
 wild beasts and birds of prey. His taste in cookery, formed 
 in subterranean ordinaries and alamode beef-shops, was far 
 from delicate. Whenever he was so fortunate as to have 
 near him a hare that had been kept too long, or a meat pie 
 made with rancid butter, he gorged himself with such vio- 
 lence that his veins swelled, and the moisture broke out 
 on his forehead. The affronts which his poverty embold- 
 ened stupid and low-minded men to offer to him would 
 have broken a mean spirit into sycophancy, but made him 
 rude even to ferocity. Unhappily, the insolence which, 
 while it was defensive, was pardonable, and in some sense 
 respectable, accompanied him into societies where he was 
 treated with courtesy and kindness. He was repeatedly pro- 
 voked into striking those who had taken liberties with him. 
 All the sufferers, however, were wise enough to abstain 
 from talking about their beatings, except Osborne, the most 
 rapacious and brutal of booksellers, who proclaimed every- 
 where that he had been knocked down by the huge fellow 
 whom he had hired to puff the Harleian Library. 
 
 About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in Lon- 
 don, he was fortunate enough to obtain regular employment 
 from Cave, an enterprising and intelligent bookseller, who 
 
64 Select Ussays of Maeaulay. 
 
 was proprietor and editor of The Gentleman's Magazine, w 
 That journal, just entering on the ninth year of its long 
 existence, was the only periodical work in the kingdom 
 which then had what would now be called a large circula- 
 tion. It was, indeed, the chief source of parliamentary 
 intelligence. It was not then safe, even during a recess, to 
 publish an account of the proceedings of either House with- 
 out some disguise. Cave, however, ventured to entertain 
 his readers with what he called " Reports of the Debates 
 of the Senate of Lilliput." France was Blefusca ; London 
 was Mildendo ; pounds were sprugs ; the Duke of New- 
 castle was the Nardac Secretary of State ; Lord Hardwicke 
 was the Hurgo Hickrad ; and William Pulteney was Wingul 
 Pulnub. To write the speeches was, during several years, 
 the business of Johnson. He was generally furnished with 
 notes, meagre indeed, and inaccurate, of what had been said ; 
 but sometimes he had to find arguments and eloquence both 
 for the ministry and for the opposition. He was himself a 
 Tory, not from rational conviction — for his serious opinion 
 was that one form of government was just as good or as bad 
 as another — but from mere passion, such as inflamed the 
 Capulets against the Montagues, or the Blues of the Roman 
 circus against the G-reens. In his infancy he had heard so 
 much talk about the villanies of the Whigs, and the dangers 
 of the Church, that he had become a furious partisan when 
 he could scarcely speak. Before he was three, he had in- 
 sisted on being taken to hear Sacheverell preach at Lichfield 
 cathedral, and had listened to the sermon with as much 
 respect, and probably with as much intelligence, as any 
 Staffordshire squire in the congregation. The work which 
 had been begun in the nursery had been completed by the 
 university. Oxford, when Johnson resided there, was the 
 most Jacobitical place in England, and Pembroke was one 
 of the most Jacobitical colleges in Oxford. The prejudices 
 which he brought up to London were scarcely less absurd than 
 
Samuel Johnson. 65 
 
 those of his own Tom Tempest. Charles the Second and 
 James the Second were two of the best kings that ever 
 reigned. Land, a poor creature who never did, said, or wrote 
 anything indicating more than the ordinary capacity of an 
 old woman, was a prodigy of parts and learning, over whose 
 tomb Art and Genius still continued to weep. Hampden 
 deserved no more honorable name than that of " the zealot 
 of rebellion." Even the ship-money, condemned not less 
 decidedly by Falkland and Clarendon than by the bitterest 
 Roundheads, Johnson would not pronounce to have been an 
 unconstitutional impost. Under a government the mildest 
 that had ever been known in the world — under a govern- 
 ment which allowed to the people an unprecedented liberty 
 of speech and action — he fancied that he was a slave ; he 
 assailed the ministry with obloquy which refuted itself, and 
 regretted the lost freedom and happiness of those golden 
 days in which a writer who had taken but one-tenth part of 
 the license allowed to him would have been pilloried, man- 
 gled with the shears, whipped at the cart's-tail, and flung 
 into a noisome dungeon to die. He hated dissenters and 
 stock-jobbers, the excise and the army, septennial parlia- 
 ments and Continental connections. He long had an aver- 
 sion to the Scotch, an aversion of which he could not 
 remember the commencement, but which, he owned, had 
 probably originated in his abhorrence of the conduct of the 
 nation during the Great Eebellion. It is easy to guess in 
 what manner debates on great party questions were likely 
 to be reported by a man whose judgment was so much dis- 
 ordered by party spirit. A show of fairness was indeed 
 necessary to the prosperity of the magazine ; but Johnson 
 long afterward owned that, though he had saved appear- 
 ances, he had taken care that the Whig dogs should not 
 have the best of it ; and, in fact, every passage which has 
 lived, every passage which bears the marks of his higher 
 faculties, is put into the mouth of some member of the 
 opposition. 
 
66 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 A few. weeks after Johnson had entered on these obscure 
 labors, he published a work which at once placed him high 
 among the writers of his age. It is probable that what he 
 had suffered during his first year in London had often 
 reminded him of some parts of that noble pOem in which 
 Juvenal had described the misery and degradation of a 
 needy man of letters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in 
 the tottering garrets which overhung the streets of Rome. 
 Pope's admirable imitations of Horace's satires and epistles 
 had recently appeared, were in every hand, and were by 
 many readers thought superior to the originals. What 
 Pope had done for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juve- 
 nal. The enterprise was bold, and yet judicious. For be- 
 tween Johnson and Juvenal there was much in common, 
 much more, certainly, than between Pope and Horace. 
 
 Johnson's "London" appeared, without his name, in May, 
 1738. He received only ten guineas for this stately and 
 vigorous poem ; but the sale was rapid and the success com- 
 plete. A second edition was required within a week. Those 
 small critics who are always desirous to lower established 
 reputations ran about proclaiming that the anonymous 
 satirist was superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar depart- 
 ment of literature. It ought to be remembered, to the 
 honor of Pope, that he joined heartily in the applause with 
 which the appearance of a rival genius was welcomed. He 
 made inquiries about the author of London. Such a man, 
 he said, could not long be concealed. The name was soon 
 discovered ; and Pope, with great kindness, exerted himself 
 to obtain an academical degree and the mastership of a 
 grammar school for the poor young poet. The attempt 
 failed, and Johnson remained a bookseller's hack. 
 
 It does not appear that these two men, the most emi- 
 nent writer of the generation which was going out, and the 
 most eminent writer of the generation which was coming in, 
 ever saw each other. They lived in very different circles, 
 
Samuel Johnso7i. 67 
 
 one surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by starving 
 pamphleteers and index-makers. Among Johnson's asso- 
 ciates at this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, when his 
 shirts were pledged, scrawled Latin verses sitting up in 
 bed with his arms through two holes in his blanket ; who 
 composed very respectable sacred poetry when he was sober, 
 and who was at last run over by a hackney-coach when he 
 was drunk : Hoole, surnamed the metaphysical tailor, who, 
 instead of attending to his measures, used to trace geomet- 
 rical diagrams on the board where he sat cross-legged : and 
 the penitent impostor George Psalmanazar, who, after por- 
 ing all day, in a humble lodging, on the folios of Jewish 
 rabbis and Christian fathers, indulged himself at night with 
 literary and theological conversation at an ale-house in the 
 City. But the most remarkable of 'the persons with whom 
 at this time Johnson consorted was Richard Savage, an 
 earl's son, a shoemaker's apprentice, who had seen life in 
 all its forms, who had feasted among blue ribbons in St. 
 James's Square, and had lain with fifty pounds' weight of 
 irons on his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate. This 
 man had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last 
 into abject and hopeless poverty. His pen had failed him. 
 His patrons had been taken away by death, or estranged by 
 the riotous profusion with which he squandered their bounty, 
 and the ungrateful insolence with which he rejected their 
 advice. He now lived by begging. He dined on venison 
 and champagne whenever he had been so fortunate as to 
 borrow a guinea. If his questing had been unsuccessful, he 
 appeased the rage of hunger with some scraps of broken 
 meat, and lay down to rest under the piazza of Covent 
 Garden in warm weather, and, in cold weather, as near as 
 he could get to the furnace of a glass-house. Yet, in his 
 misery, he was still an agreeable companion. He had an 
 inexhaustible store of anecdotes about that gay and brilliant 
 world from which he was now an outcast. He had observed 
 
68 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 the great men of both parties in hours of careless relaxa- 
 tion, had seen the leaders of opposition without the mask 
 of patriotism, and had heard the prime minister roar with 
 laughter and tell stories not over-decent. During some 
 months Savage lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson ; 
 and then the friends parted, not without tears. Johnson 
 remained in London to drudge for Cave ; Savage went to 
 the West of England, lived there as he had lived every- 
 where, and, in 1743, died, penniless and heart-broken, in 
 Bristol jail. 
 
 Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was 
 strongly excited about his extraordinary character and his 
 not less extraordinary adventures, a life of him appeared, 
 widely different from the catchpenny lives of eminent men 
 which were then a staple article of manufacture in Grub 
 Street. The style was indeed deficient in ease and variety ; 
 and the writer was evidently too partial to the Latin ele- 
 ment of our language. But the little work, with all its 
 faults, was a masterpiece. No finer specimen of literary 
 biography existed in any language, living or dead ; and a 
 discerning critic might have confidently predicted that the 
 author was destined to be the founder of a new school of 
 English eloquence. 
 
 The Life of Savage was anonymous ; but it was well 
 known in literary circles that Johnson was the writer. 
 During the three years which followed, he produced no 
 important work ; but he was not, and indeed could not be, 
 idle. The fame of his abilities and learning continued to 
 grow. Warburton pronounced him a man of parts and 
 genius ; and the praise of Warburton was then no light 
 thing. Such was Johnson's reputation that, in 1747, several 
 eminent booksellers combined to employ him in the arduous 
 work of preparing a Dictionary of the English Language, 
 in two folio volumes. The sum which they agreed to pay 
 him was only fifteen hundred guineas ; and out of this sum 
 
Sa77iuel Johnson. 69 
 
 he had to pay several poor men of letters who assisted him 
 in the humbler parts of his task. 
 
 The prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed to the 
 Earl of Chesterfield. Chesterfield had long been celebrated 
 for the politeness of his manners, the brilliancy of his wit, 
 and the delicacy of his taste. He was acknowledged to be 
 the finest speaker in the House of Lords. He had recently 
 governed Ireland, at a momentous conjuncture, with emi- 
 nent firmness, wisdom, and humanity, and he had since be- 
 come Secretary of State. He received Johnson's homage 
 with the most winning affability, and requited it with a few 
 guineas, bestowed doubtless in a very graceful manner, but 
 was by no means desirous to see all his carpets blackened 
 with the London mud, and his soups and wines thrown to 
 right and left over the gowns of fine ladies and the waist- 
 coats of fine gentlemen, by an absent, awkward scholar, 
 who gave strange starts and uttered strange growls, who 
 dressed like a scarecrow and ate like a cormorant. During 
 some time Johnson continued to call on his patron, but, after 
 being repeatedly told by the porter that his lordship was 
 not at home, took the hint, and ceased to present himself 
 at the inhospitable door. 
 
 Johnson had flattered himself that he should have com- 
 pleted his Dictionary by the end of 1750 ; but it was not 
 till 1755 that he at length gave his huge volumes to the 
 world. During the seven years which he passed in the 
 drudgery of penning definitions and marking quotations for 
 transcription, he sought for relaxation in literary labor of a 
 more agreeable kind. In 1749 he published the Vanity of 
 Human Wishes, an excellent imitation of the tenth satire 
 of Juvenal. It is, in truth, not easy to say whether the 
 palm belongs to the ancient or to the modern poet. The 
 couplets in which the fall of Wolsey is described, though 
 lofty and sonorous, are feeble when compared with the 
 wonderful lines which bring before us all Eome in tumult 
 
70 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 on the day of the fall of Sejanus, the laurels on the door- 
 posts, the white bull stalking towards the Capitol, the stat- 
 ues rolling down from their pedestals, the flatterers of the 
 disgraced minister running to see him dragged with a hook 
 through the streets, and to have a kick at his carcass before 
 it is hurled into the Tiber. It must be owned too that in 
 the concluding passage the Christian moralist has not made 
 the most of his advantages, and has fallen decidedly short 
 of the sublimity of his Pagan model. On the other hand, 
 Juvenal's Hannibal must yield to Johnson's Charles ; and 
 Johnson's vigorous and pathetic enumeration of the miseries 
 of a literary life must be allowed to be superior to Juvenal's 
 lamentation over the fate of Demosthenes and Cicero. 
 
 For the copyright of the Vanity of Human Wishes John- 
 son received only fifteen guineas. 
 
 A few days after the publication of this poem, his trag- 
 edy, begun many years before, was brought on the stage. 
 His pupil, David Garrick, had, in 1741, made his appear- 
 ance on a humble stage in Goodman's Fields, had at once 
 risen to the first place among actors, and was now, after 
 several years of almost uninterrupted success, manager of 
 Drury Lane Theatre. The relation between him and his 
 old preceptor was of a very singular kind. They repelled 
 each other strongly, and yet attracted each other strongly. 
 Nature had made them of very different clay, and circum- 
 stances had fully brought out the natural peculiarities of 
 both. Sudden prosperity had turned Garrick's head. Con- 
 tinued adversity had soured Johnson's temper. Johnson 
 saw with more envy than became so great a man the villa, 
 the plate, the china, the Brussels carpet which the little 
 mimic had got by repeating, with grimaces and gesticula- 
 tions, what wiser men had written ; and the exquisitely 
 sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by the thought that, 
 while all the rest of the world was applauding him, he 
 could obtain from one morose cynic, whose opinion it was 
 
Samuel Johnson. 71 
 
 impossible to despise, scarcely any compliment not acidu- 
 lated with scorn. Yet the two Lichfield men had so many 
 early recollections in common, and sympathized with each 
 other on so many points on which they sympathized with 
 nobody else in the vast population of the capital, that, 
 though the master was often provoked by the monkey-like 
 impertinence of the pupil, and the pupil by the bearish 
 rudeness of the master, they remained friends till they 
 were parted by death. Garrick now brought Irene out, 
 with alterations sufficient to displease the author, yet not 
 sufficient to make the piece pleasing to the audience. The 
 public, however, listened with little emotion, but with much 
 civility, to live acts of monotonous declamation. After 
 nine representations the play was withdrawn. It is, indeed, 
 altogether un suited to the stage, and, even when perused in 
 the closet, Avill be found hardly worthy of the author. He 
 had not the slightest notion of what blank verse should be. 
 A change in the last syllable of every other line would 
 make the versification of the Vanity of Human Wishes 
 closely resemble the versification of Irene. The poet, 
 however, cleared, by his benefit nights, and by the sale of 
 the copyright of his tragedy, about three hundred pounds, 
 then a great sum in his estimation. 
 
 About a year after the representation of Irene, he began 
 to publish a series of short essays on morals, manners, 
 and literature. This species of composition had been 
 brought into fashion by the success of The Tatler, and by 
 the still more brilliant success of The Spectator. A crowd 
 of small writers had vainly attempted to rival Addison. 
 The Lay Monastery, The Censor, The Freethinker, The Plain 
 Dealer, The Champion, and other works of the same kind, 
 had had their short day.^ None of them had obtained a 
 permanent place in our literature ; and they are now to 
 be found only in the libraries of the curious. At length 
 Johnson undertook the adventure in which so many aspir- 
 
72 Select Essays of Macaiday. 
 
 ants had failed. In the thirty-sixth year after the appear- 
 ance of the last number of The Spectator appeared the first 
 number of The Rambler. From March 1750 to March 
 1752, this paper continued to come out every Tuesday and 
 Saturday. 
 
 From the first. The Eambler was enthusiastically admired 
 by a few eminent men. Kichardson, when only five num- 
 bers had appeared, pronounced it equal, if not superior, to 
 The Spectator. Young and Hartley expressed their appro- 
 bation not less warmly. Bubb Dodington, among whose 
 many faults indifference to the claims of genius and learn- 
 ing cannot be reckoned, solicited the acquaintance of the 
 writer. In consequence, probably, of the good offices of 
 Dodington, who was then the confidential adviser of Prince 
 Frederic, two of his royal highness's gentlemen carried a 
 gracious message to the printing-office, and ordered seven 
 copies for Leicester House. But these overtures seem to 
 have been very coldly received. Johnson had had enough 
 of the patronage of the great to last him all his life, and 
 was not disposed to haunt any other door as he had haunted 
 the door of Chesterfield. 
 
 By the public The Eambler was at first very coldly re- 
 ceived. Though the price of a number was only twopence, 
 the sale did not amount to five hundred. The profits were 
 therefore very small. But as soon as the flying leaves 
 were collected and reprinted, they became popular. The 
 author lived to see thirteen thousand copies spread over 
 England alone. Separate editions were published for the 
 Scotch and Irish markets. A large party pronounced the 
 style perfect, so absolutely perfect that in some essays it 
 would be impossible for the writer himself to alter a single 
 word for the better. Another party, not less numerous, 
 vehemently accused him of having corrupted the purity of 
 the English tongue. The best critics admitted that his dic- 
 tion was too monotonous, too obviously artificial, and now 
 
Samuel Johnson. 73 
 
 and then turgid even to absurdity. But they did justice to 
 the acuteness of his observations on morals and manners, 
 to the constant precision and frequent brilliancy of his lan- 
 guage, to the weighty and magnificent eloquence of many 
 serious passages, and to the solemn yet pleasing humor of 
 some of the lighter papers. On the question of precedence 
 between Addison and Johnson, a question which, seventy 
 years ago, was much disputed, posterity has pronounced a 
 decision from which there is no appeal. Sir Roger, his 
 chaplain and his butler. Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb, 
 the Vision of Mirza, the Journal of the Retired Citizen, the 
 Everlasting Club, the Dunmow Flitch, the Loves of Hilpah 
 and Shalum, the Visit to the Exchange, and the Visit to the 
 Abbey, are known to everybody. But many men and 
 women, even of highly cultivated minds, are unacquainted 
 with Squire Bluster and Mrs. Busy, Quisquilius and Venus- 
 tulus, the Allegory of Wit and Learning, the Chronicle of 
 the Revolutions of a Garret, and the sad fate of Aningait 
 and A jut. 
 
 The last Rambler was written in a sad and gloomy hour. 
 Mrs. Johnson had been given over by the physicians. 
 Three days later she died. She left her husband almost 
 broken-hearted. Many people had been surprised to see a 
 man of his genius and learning stooping to every drudgery, 
 and denying himself almost every comfort, for the purpose 
 of supplying a silly, affected old woman with superfluities 
 which she accepted with but little gratitude. But all his 
 affection had been concentrated on her. He had neither 
 brother nor sister, neither son nor daughter. To him she 
 was beautiful as the Gunnings, and witty as Lady Mary. 
 Her opinion of his writings was more important to him 
 than the voice of the pit of Drury Lane Theatre or the 
 judgment of the Monthly Review. The chief support which 
 had sustained him through the most arduous labor of his 
 life was the hope that she would enjoy the fame and the 
 
74 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 profit which he anticipated from his Dictionary. She was 
 gone ; and in that vast labyrinth of streets, peopled by 
 eight hundred thousand human beings, he was alone. Yet 
 it was necessary for him to set himself, as he expressed it, 
 doggedly to work. After three more laborious years, the 
 Dictionary was at length complete. 
 
 It had been generally supposed that this great work 
 would be dedicated to the eloquent and accomplished noble- 
 man to whom the prospectus had been addressed. He well 
 knew the value of such a compliment ; and therefore, when 
 the day of publication drew near, he exerted himself to 
 soothe, by a show of zealous and at the same time of deli- 
 cate and judicious kindness, the j)i*itle which he had so 
 cruelly wounded. Since the Ramblers had ceased to appear, 
 the town had been entertained by a journal called The 
 World, to which many men of high rank and fashion con- 
 tributed. In two successive numbers of The World, the 
 Dictionary was, to use the modern phrase, puffed with 
 wonderful skill. The writings of Johnson were warmly 
 praised. It was proposed that he should be invested with 
 the authority of a dictator, nay, of a pope, over our lan- 
 guage, and that his decisions about the meaning and the 
 spelling of words should be received as final. His two 
 folios, it was said, would of course be bought by everybody 
 who could afford to buy them. It was soon known that 
 these papers were written by Chesterfield. But the just 
 resentment of Johnson was not to be so appeased. In a 
 letter written with singular energy and dignity of thought 
 and language, he repelled the tardy advances of his patron. 
 The Dictionary came forth without a dedication. In the 
 preface the author truly declared that he owed nothing to 
 the great, and described the difficulties with which he had 
 been left to struggle so forcibly and pathetically that the 
 ablest and most malevolent of all the enemies of his fame, 
 Home Tooke, never could read that passage without tears. 
 
Samuel Johnson. 75 
 
 The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full justice, 
 and something more than justice. The best lexicographer 
 may well be content if his productions are received by the 
 world with cold esteem. But Johnson's Dictionary was 
 hailed with an enthusiasm such as no similar work has ever 
 excited. It was indeed the first dictionary which could be 
 read with pleasure. The definitions show so much acute- 
 ness of thought and command of language, and the passages 
 quoted from poets, divines, and philosophers are so skilfully 
 selected, that a leisure hour may always be very agreeably 
 spent in turning over the pages. The faults of the book 
 resolve themselves, for the most part, into one great fault. 
 Johnson was a wretched etymologist. He knew little or 
 nothing of any Teutonic language except English, which 
 indeed, as he wrote it, was scarcely a Teutonic language; 
 and thus he was absolutely at the merc}^ of Junius and 
 Skinner. 
 
 The Dictionary, though it raised Johnson's fame, added 
 nothing to his pecuniary means. The fifteen hundred 
 guineas which the booksellers had agreed to i^ay him had 
 been advanced and spent before the last sheets issued 
 from the press. It is painful to relate that, twice in the 
 course of the year which followed the publication of this 
 great work, he was arrested and carried to spunging-houses, 
 and that he was twice indebted for his liberty to his excel- 
 lent friend Eichardson. It was still necessary for the man 
 who had been formally saluted by the highest authority as 
 dictator of the English language to supply his wants by 
 constant toil. He abridged his Dictionary. He proposed 
 to bring out an edition of Shakspeare by subscription, and 
 many subscribers sent in their names and laid down their 
 money; but he soon found the task so little to his taste 
 that he turned to more attractive employments. He con- 
 tributed many papers to a new monthly journal, which was 
 called the Literary Magazine. Few of these papers have 
 
76 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 much interest; but among them was the very best thing 
 that he ever wrote, a masterpiece both of reasoning and of 
 satirical pleasantry, the review of Jenyns's Inquiry into the 
 Nature and Origin of Evil. 
 
 In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a 
 series of essays, entitled The Idler. During two years these 
 essays continued to appear weekly. They were eagerly 
 read, widely circulated, and, indeed, impudently pirated 
 while they were still in the original form, and had a large 
 sale when collected into volumes. The Idler may be de- 
 scribed as a second part of The Rambler, somewhat livelier 
 and somewhat weaker than the first part. 
 
 While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his mother, 
 who had accomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield. 
 It was long since he had seen her ; but he had not failed to 
 contribute largely out of his small means to her comfort. 
 In order to defray the charges of her funeral, and to pay 
 some debts which she had left, he wrote a little book in a 
 single week, and sent off the sheets to the press without 
 reading them over. A hundred pounds were paid him for 
 the copyright; and the purchasers had great cause to be 
 pleased with their bargain ; for the book was Rasselas. 
 
 The success of Rasselas was great, though such ladies 
 as Miss Lydia Languish must have been grievously disap- 
 pointed when they found that the new volume from the 
 circulating library was little more than a dissertation on 
 the author's favorite theme, the Vanity of Human Wishes ; 
 that the Prince of Abyssinia was without a mistress, and 
 the Princess without a lover; and that the story set the 
 hero and the heroine down exactly where it had taken them 
 up. The style was the subject of much eager controversy. 
 The Monthly Review and the Critical Review took different 
 sides. Many readers pronounced the writer a pompous 
 pedant, who would never use a word of two syllables where 
 it was possible to use a word of six, and who could not 
 
Samuel Jolmsoii, 77 
 
 make a waiting-woman relate her adventures without bal- 
 ancing every noun with another noun, and every epithet 
 with another epithet. Another party, not less zealous, cited 
 with delight numerous passages in which weighty meaning 
 was expressed with accuracy and illustrated with splendor. 
 And both the censure and the praise were merited. 
 
 About the plan of Rasselas little was said by the critics ; 
 and yet the faults of the plan might seem to invite severe 
 criticism. Johnson has frequently blamed Shakspeare 
 for neglecting the proprieties of time and place, and for 
 ascribing to one age or nation the manners and opinions 
 of another. Yet Shakspeare has not sinned in this way 
 more grievously than Johnson. Rasselas and Imlac, Ne- 
 kayah and Pekuah, are evidently meant to be Abyssinians 
 of the eighteenth century ; for the Europe which Imlac 
 describes is the Europe of the eighteenth century ; and the 
 inmates of the Happy Valley talk familiarly of that law of 
 gravitation which Newton discovered, and which was not 
 fully received even at Cambridge till the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. What a real company of Abyssinians would have 
 been may be learned from Bruce's Travels. But Johnson, 
 not content with turning filthy savages, ignorant of their 
 letters, and gorged with raw steaks cut from living cows, 
 into philosophers as eloquent and enlightened as him- 
 self or his friend Burke, and into ladies as highly accom- 
 plished as Mrs. Lennox or Mrs. Sheridan, transferred the 
 whole domestic system of England to Egypt. Into a land 
 of harems, a land of polygamy, a land where women are 
 married without ever being seen, he introduced the flirta- 
 tions and jealousies of our ballrooms. In a land where 
 there is boundless liberty of divorce, wedlock is described 
 as the indissoluble compact. "A youth and maiden meet- 
 ing by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange 
 glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of each 
 other. Such," says Rasselas, "is the common process of 
 
78 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 marriage." Such it may have been, and may still be, in 
 London, but assuredly not at Cairo. A writer who was 
 guilty of such improprieties had little right to blame the 
 poet who made Hector quote Aristotle, and represented 
 Julio Komano as flourishing in the days of the oracle of 
 Delphi. 
 
 By such exertions as have been described, Johnson sup- 
 ported himself till the year 1762. In that year a great 
 change in his circumstances took place. He had from a 
 child been an enemy of the reigning dynasty. His Jacobite 
 prejudices had been exhibited with little disguise both in 
 his works and in his conversation. Even in his massy and 
 elaborate Dictionary, he had, with a strange want of taste 
 and judgment, inserted bitter and contumelious reflections 
 on the Whig party. The excise, which was a favorite 
 resource of Whig financiers, he had designated as a hateful 
 tax. He had railed against the commissioners of excise in 
 language so coarse that they had seriously thought of prose- 
 cuting him. He had with difficulty been prevented from 
 holding up the Lord Privy Seal by name as an example of 
 the meaning of the word '^ renegade." A pension he had 
 defined as pay given to a state hireling to betray his coun- 
 try ; a pensioner, as a slave of state hired by a stipend to 
 obey a master. It seemed unlikely that the author of these 
 definitions would himself be pensioned. But that was a 
 time of wonders. George the Third had ascended the 
 throne ; and had, in the course of a few months, disgusted 
 many of the old friends and conciliated many of the old 
 enemies of his house. The city was becoming mutinous. 
 Oxford was becoming loyal. Cavendishes and Bentincks 
 were murmuring. Somersets and Wyndhams were hasten- 
 ing to kiss hands. The head of the treasury was now Lord 
 Bute, who was a tory, and could have no objection to 
 Johnson's toryism. Bute wished to be thought a patron 
 of men of letters ; and Johnson was one of the most emi- 
 
Samuel Johnson. 79 
 
 nent and one of the most needy men of letters in Europe. 
 A pension of three hundred a year was graciously offered, 
 and with very little hesitation accepted. 
 
 This event produced a change in Johnson's whole way 
 of life. For the first time since his boyhood he no longer 
 felt the daily goad urging him to the daily toil. He was 
 at liberty, after thirty years of anxiety and drudgery, to 
 indulge his constitutional indolence, to lie in bed till two in 
 the afternoon, and to sit up talking till four in the morning, 
 without fearing either the printer's devil or the sheriff's 
 officer. 
 
 One laborious task indeed he had bound himself to per- 
 form. He had received large subscriptions for his promised 
 edition of Shakspeare ; he had lived on those subscriptions 
 during some years ; and he could not without disgrace omit 
 to perform his part of the contract. His friends repeatedly 
 exhorted him to make an effort, and he repeatedly resolved 
 to do so. But, notwithstanding their exhortations and his 
 resolutions, month followed month, year followed year, and 
 nothing was done. He prayed fervently against his idle- 
 ness ; he determined, as often as he received the sacrament, 
 that he would no longer doze away and trifle away his time; 
 but the spell under which he lay resisted prayer and sacra- 
 ment. His private notes at this time are made uj) of self- 
 reproaches. ^'My indolence," he wrote on Easter-eve in 
 1764, " has sunk into grosser sluggishness. A kind of 
 strange oblivion has overspread me, so that I know not 
 what has become of the last year." Easter 1765 came, 
 and found him still in the same state. "My time," he 
 wrote, "has been unprofitably spent, and seems as a dream 
 that has left nothing behind. My memory grows confused, 
 and I know not hoAv the days pass over me." Happily for 
 his honor, the charm which held him captive was at length 
 broken by no gentle or friendly hand. He had been weak 
 enough to pa.y serious attention to a story about a ghost 
 
80 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 which haunted a house in Cock Lane, and had actually gone 
 himself, with some of his friends, at one in the morning, to 
 St. John's Church, Clerkenwell, in the hope of receiving a 
 communication from the perturbed spirit. But the spirit, 
 though adjured with all solemnity, remained obstinately 
 silent ; and it soon appeared that a naughty girl of eleven 
 had been amusing herself by making fools of so many phi- 
 losophers. Churchill, who, confident in his powers, drunk 
 with popularity, and burning with party spirit, was looking 
 for some man of established fame and Tory politics to in- 
 sult, celebrated the Cock Lane Ghost in three cantos, nick- 
 named Johnson "Pomposo," asked where the book was 
 which had been so long promised and so liberally paid for, 
 and directly accused the great moralist of cheating. This 
 terrible word proved effectual; and in October 1765 ap- 
 peared, after a delay of nine years, the new edition of 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 This publication saved Johnson's character for honesty, 
 but added nothing to the fame of his abilities and learning. 
 The preface, though it contains some good passages, is not 
 in his best manner. The most valuable notes are those in 
 which he had an opportunity of showing how attentively he 
 had during many years observed human life and human 
 nature. The best specimen is the note on the character of 
 Polonius. ISTothing so good is to be found even in Wilhelm 
 Meister's admirable examination of Hamlet. But here 
 praise must end. It would be difficult to name a more 
 slovenly, a more worthless, edition of any great classic. 
 The reader may turn over play after play without finding 
 one happy conjectural emendation, or one ingenious and sat- 
 isfactory explanation of a passage which had baffled pre- 
 ceding commentators. Johnson had, in his Prospectus, told 
 the world that he was peculiarly fitted for the task which 
 he had undertaken, because he had, as a lexicographer, been 
 under the necessity of taking a wider view of the English 
 
Samuel Johnson. 81 
 
 language than any of his predecessors. That his knowl- 
 edge of our literature was extensive is indisputable. But, 
 unfortunately, he had altogether neglected that very part 
 of our literature with which it is especially desirable that 
 an editor of Shakspeare should be conversant. It is dan- 
 gerous to assert a negative. Yet little will be risked by 
 the assertion that in the two folio volumes of the English 
 Dictionary there is not a single passage quoted from any 
 dramatist of the Elizabethan age, except Shakspeare and 
 Ben. Even from Ben the quotations are few. Johnson 
 might easily, in a few months, have made himself well ac- 
 quainted with every old play that was extant. But it never 
 seems to have occurred to him that this was a necessary 
 preparation for the work which he had undertaken. He 
 would doubtless have admitted that it would be the height 
 of absurdity in a man who was not familiar with the works 
 of iEschylus and Euripides to publish an edition of Sopho- 
 cles. Yet he ventured to publish an edition of Shakspeare 
 without having ever in his life, as far as can be discovered, 
 read a single scene of Massinger, Ford, Decker, Webster, 
 Marlowe, Beaumont, or Fletcher. His detractors were noisy 
 and scurrilous. Those who most loved and honored him 
 had little to say in praise of the manner in which he had 
 discharged the duty of a commentator. He had, however, 
 acquitted himself of a debt which had long lain heavy on 
 his conscience, and he sunk back into the repose from which 
 the sting of satire had roused him. He long continued to 
 live upon the fame which he had already won. He was 
 honored by the University of Oxford with a doctor's degree, 
 by the Eoyal Academy with a professorshij3, and by the 
 king with an interview, in which his majesty most gra- 
 ciously expressed a hope that so excellent a writer would 
 not cease to write. In the interval, however, between 1765 
 and 1775 Johnson published only two or three political 
 tracts, the longest of which he could have produced in 
 
82 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 
 
 forty-eight hours, if he had worked as he worked on the 
 Life of Savage and on E-asselas. 
 
 But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active. 
 The influence exercised by his conversation, directly upon 
 those with whom he lived, and indirectly on the whole 
 literary world, was altogether without a parallel. His col- 
 loquial talents were indeed of the highest order. He had 
 strong sense, quick discernment, wit, humor, immense 
 knowledge of literature and of life, and an infinite store of 
 curious anecdotes. As respected style, he spoke far better 
 than he wrote. Every sentence which dropped from his 
 lips was as correct in structure as the most nicely balanced 
 period of The Rambler. But in his talk there were no pom- 
 pous triads, and little more than a fair proportion of words 
 in osity and ation. All was simplicity, ease, and vigor. He 
 uttered his short, weighty, and pointed sentences with a 
 power of voice, and a justness and energy of emphasis, of 
 which the effect was rather increased than diminished by 
 the rollings of his huge form, and by the asthmatic gaspings 
 and puffings in which the peals of his eloquence generally 
 ended. Nor did the laziness which made him unwilling to 
 sit down to his desk prevent him from giving instruction or 
 entertainment orally. To discuss questions of taste, of 
 learning, of casuistry, in language so exact and so forcible 
 that it might have been printed without the alteration of a 
 word, was to him no exertion, but a pleasure. He loved, as 
 he said, to fold his legs and have his talk out. He was 
 ready to bestow the overflowings of his full mind on any- 
 body who would start a subject, on a fellow-passenger in a 
 stage-coach, or on the person who sat at the same table with 
 him in an eating-house. But his conversation was nowhere 
 so brilliant and striking as when he was surrounded by a 
 few friends, whose abilities and knowledge enabled them, as 
 he once expressed it, to send him back every ball that he 
 threw. Some of these, in 1764, formed themselves into a 
 
Samuel Johnso7i. 83 
 
 club, which gradually became a formidable power in the 
 commonwealth of letters. The verdicts pronounced by this 
 conclave on new books were speedily known over all Lon- 
 don, and were sufficient to sell off a whole edition in a day, 
 or to condemn the sheets to the service of the trunk-maker 
 and the pastry-cook. Nor shall we think this strange when 
 we consider what great and various talents and acquire- 
 ments met in the little fraternity. Goldsmith was the rep- 
 resentative of poetry and light literature, Keynolds of the 
 arts, Burke of political eloquence and political philosophy. 
 There, too, were Gibbon, the greatest historian, and Jones, 
 the greatest linguist, of the age. Garrick brought to the 
 meeting his inexhaustible pleasantry, his incomparable 
 mimicry, and his consummate knowledge of stage effect. 
 Among the most constant attendants were two high-born 
 and high-bred gentlemen, closely bound together by friend- 
 ship, but of widely different characters and habits ; Bennet 
 Langton, distinguished by his skill in Greek literature, by 
 the orthodoxy of his opinions, and by the sanctity of his 
 life ; and Topham Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, his 
 knowledge of the gay world, his fastidious taste, and his sar- 
 castic wit. To predominate over such a society was not 
 easy. Yet even over such a society Johnson predominated. 
 Burke might indeed have disputed the supremacy to which 
 others were under the necessity of submitting. But Burke, 
 though not generally a very patient listener, was content to 
 take the second part when Johnson was present ; and the 
 club itself, consisting of so many eminent men, is to this 
 day popularly designated as Johnson's Club. 
 
 Among the members of this celebrated body was one to 
 whom it has owed the greater part of its celebrity, yet who 
 was regarded with little respect by his brethren, and had 
 not without difficulty obtained a seat among them. This 
 was James Boswell, a young Scotch lawyer, heir to an hon- 
 orable name and a fair estate. That he was a coxcomb and 
 
84 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 a bore, weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous, was obvious 
 to all who were acquainted with him. That he could not 
 reason, that he had no Avit, no humor, no eloquence, is 
 apparent from his writings. And yet his writings are read 
 beyond the Mississippi, and under the Southern Cross, and 
 are likely to be read as long as the English exists, either as 
 a living or as a dead language. Nature had made him a 
 slave and an idolater. His mind resembled those creepers 
 Avhich the botanists call parasites, and which can subsist 
 only by clinging round the stems and imbibing the juices of 
 stronger plants. He must have fastened himself on some- 
 body. He might have fastened himself on Wilkes, and have 
 become the fiercest x^atriot in the Bill of Rights Society. 
 He might have fastened himself on Whitefield, and have 
 become the loudest field-preacher among the Calvinistic 
 Methodists. In a happy hour he fastened himself on 
 Johnson. The pair might seem ill-matched ; for Johnson 
 had early been prejudiced against Bos well's country. To a 
 man of Johnson's strong understanding and irritable tem- 
 per, the silly egotism and adulation of Boswell must have 
 been as teasing as the constant buzz of a fly. Johnson 
 hated to be questioned ; and Boswell was eternally catechis- 
 ing him on all kinds of subjects, and sometimes propounded 
 such questions as, " What would you do, sir, if you were 
 locked up in a tower with a baby? " Johnson was a water- 
 drinker, and Boswell was a wine-bibber, and indeed little 
 better than an habitual sot. It was impossible that there 
 should be perfect harmony between two such companions. 
 Indeed, the great man was sometimes provoked into fits of 
 passion, in which he said things that the small man, during 
 a few hours, seriously resented. Every quarrel, however, 
 was soon made up. During twenty years the disciple con- 
 tinued to worship the master : the master continued to scold 
 the disciple, to sneer at him, and to love him. The two 
 friends ordinarily resided at a great distance from each 
 
Samuel Jolmson. 85 
 
 other. Boswell practised in the Parliament House of Edin- 
 burgh, and could pay only occasional visits to London. Dur- 
 ing those visits his chief business was to watch Johnson, to 
 discover all Johnson's habits, to turn the conversation to 
 subjects about which Johnson was likely to say something 
 remarkable, and to fill quarto note-books with minutes of 
 what Johnson had said. In this way were gathered the 
 materials out of which was afterward constructed the most 
 interesting biographical work in the world. 
 
 Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed a 
 connection less important indeed to his fame, but much 
 more important to his happiness, than his connection with 
 Boswell. Henry Thrale, one of the most opulent brewers 
 in the kingdom, a man of sound and cultivated understand- 
 ing, rigid principles, and liberal spirit, was married to one 
 of those clever, kind-hearted, engaging, vain, pert, young 
 women, who are perpetually doing or saying what is not 
 exactly right, but who, do or say what they may, are always 
 agreeable. In 1765 the Thrales became acquainted with 
 Johnson, and the acquaintance ripened fast into friendship. 
 They were astonished and delighted by the brilliancy of his 
 conversation. They were flattered by finding that a man 
 so widely celebrated preferred their house to any other in 
 London. Even the peculiarities which seemed to unfit 
 him for civilized society, his gesticulations, his rollings, 
 his puffings, his mutterings, the strange way in which he 
 put on his clothes, the ravenous eagerness with which he 
 devoured his dinner, his fits of melancholy, his fits of anger, 
 his frequent rudeness, his occasional ferocity, increased the 
 interest which his new associates took in him. For these 
 things M^ere the cruel marks left behind by a life which had 
 been one long conflict with disease and with adversity. In 
 a vulgar hack writer such oddities would have excited only 
 disgust. But in a man of genius, learning, and virtue, their 
 effect was to add pity to admiration and esteem. Johnson 
 
86 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 soon had an apartment at the brewery in Southwark, and a 
 still more pleasant apartment at the villa of his friends on 
 Streatham Common. A large part of every year he passed 
 in those abodes, abodes which must have seemed magnifi- 
 cent and luxurious indeed, when compared -with the dens in 
 which he had generally been lodged. But his chief pleas- 
 ures were derived from what the astronomer of his Abys- 
 sinian tale called "the endearing elegance of female 
 friendship." Mrs. Thrale rallied him, soothed him, coaxed 
 him, and, if she sometimes provoked him b}'" her flippancy, 
 made ample amends by listening to his reproofs with angelic 
 sweetness of temper. When he was diseased in body and 
 in mind, she was the most tender of nurses. No comfort 
 that wealth could purchase, no contrivance that womanly 
 ingenuity, set to work by womanly compassion, could devise, 
 was wanting to his sick-room. He requited her kindness 
 by an affection pure as the affection of a father, yet deli- 
 cately tinged with a gallantry which, though awkward, 
 must have been more flattering than the attentions of a 
 crowd of the fools who gloried in the names, now obsolete, 
 of Buck and Maccaroni. It should seem that a full half of 
 Johnson's life, during about sixteen years, was passed under 
 the roof of the Thrales. He accompanied the family some- 
 times to Bath, and sometimes to Brighton ; once to Wales, 
 and once to Paris. But he had at the same time a house in 
 one of the narrow and gloomy courts on the north of Fleet 
 Street. In the garrets was his library, a large and miscel- 
 laneous collection of books, falling to pieces and begrimed 
 with dust. On a lower floor he sometimes, but very rarely, 
 regaled a friend with a plain dinner, a veal pie, or a leg of 
 lamb and spinach, and a rice pudding. Nor was the dwell- 
 ing uninhabited during his long absences. It was the home 
 of the most extraordinary assemblage of inmates that ever 
 was brought together. At the head of the establishment 
 Johnson had placed an old lady named Williams, whose 
 
Samuel Johnson. 87 
 
 chief recommendations were her blindness and her poverty. 
 But, in spite of her murmurs and reproaches, he gave an 
 asylum to another lady who was as poor as herself, Mrs. 
 Desmoulins, whose family he had known many years before 
 in Staffordshire. Koom was found for the daughter of Mrs. 
 Desmoulins, and for another destitute damsel, who was 
 generally addressed as Miss Carmichael, but whom her gen- 
 erous host called Polly. An old quack doctor named Levett, 
 who bled and dosed coal-heavers and hackney coachmen, 
 and received for fees crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses 
 of gin, and sometimes a little copper, completed this strange 
 menagerie. All these poor creatures were at constant war 
 with each other, and with Johnson's negro servant Frank. 
 Sometimes, indeed, they transferred their hostilities from 
 the servant to the master, complained that a better table 
 was not kept for them, and railed or maundered till their 
 benefactor was glad to make his escape to Streatham, or to 
 the Mitre tavern. And yet he, w^ho was generally the 
 haughtiest and most irritable of mankind, who was but too 
 prompt to resent anything which looked like a slight on the 
 part of a purse-proud bookseller, or of a noble and powerful 
 patron, bore patiently from mendicants, who, but for his 
 bounty, must have gone to the workhouse, insults more 
 provoking than those for which he had knocked down 
 Osborne and bidden defiance to Chesterfield. Year after 
 year Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Desmoulins, Polly and Levett, 
 continued to torment him and to live upon him. 
 
 The course of life which has been described was inter- 
 rupted in Johnson's sixty-fourth year by an important 
 event. He had early read an account of the Hebrides, and 
 had been much interested by learning that there was so 
 near him a land peopled by a race which was still as rude 
 and simple as in the middle ages. A wish to become 
 intimately acquainted with a state of society so utterly 
 unlike all that he had ever seen frequently crossed his 
 
88 Select Essays of Macaulaij. 
 
 mind. But it is not probable that his curiosity would have 
 overcome his habitual sluggishness, and his love of the 
 smoke, the mud, and the cries of London, had not Bos well 
 importuned him to attempt the adventure, and offered to be 
 his squire. At length, in August 1773, Johnson crossed 
 the Highland line, and plunged courageously into what was 
 then considered, by most Englishmen, as a dreary and 
 perilous wilderness. After wandering about two months 
 through the Celtic region, sometimes in rude boats which 
 did not protect him from the rain, and sometimes on small 
 shaggy ponies which could hardly bear his weight, he re- 
 turned to his old haunts with a mind full of new images 
 and new theories. During the following year he employed 
 himself in recording his adventures. About the beginning 
 of 1775, his Journey to the Hebrides was published, and 
 was, during some weeks, the chief subject of conversation 
 in all circles in which any attention was paid to literature. 
 The book is still read with pleasure. The narrative is en- 
 tertaining; the speculations, whether sound or unsound, are 
 always ingenious ; and the style, though too stiff and pom- 
 pous, is somewhat easier and more graceful than that of his 
 early writings. His prejudice against the Scotch had at 
 length become little more than matter of jest ; and what- 
 ever remained of the old feeling had been effectually re- 
 moved by the kind and respectful hospitality with which 
 he had been received in every part of Scotland. It was, of 
 course, not to be expected that an Oxonian Tory should 
 praise the Presbyterian polity and ritual, or that an eye 
 accustomed to the hedge-rows and parks of England should 
 not be struck by the bareness of Berwickshire and East 
 Lothian. But even in censure Johnson's tone is not un- 
 friendly. The most enlightened Scotchmen, with Lord 
 Mansfield at their head, were well pleased. But some 
 foolish and ignorant Scotchmen were moved to anger by 
 a little unpalatable truth which was mingled with much 
 
Samuel Johnson. 89 
 
 eulogy, and assailed him whom they chose to consider as 
 the enemy of their country with libels much more dishonor- 
 able to their country than anything that he had ever said 
 or written. They published paragraphs in the newspapers, 
 articles in the magazines, sixpenny pamphlets, five-shilling 
 books. One scribbler abused Johnson for being blear-eyed 5 
 another for being a pensioner; a third informed the world 
 that one of the Doctor's uncles had been convicted of felony 
 in Scotland, and had found that there was in that country 
 one tree capable of supporting the weight of an Englishman. 
 Macpherson, whose Fingal had been proved in the Jour- 
 ney to be an impudent forgery, threatened to take ven- 
 geance with a cane. The only effect of this threat was that 
 Johnson reiterated the charge of forgery in the most con- 
 temptuous terms, and walked about, during some time, with 
 a cudgel, which, if the impostor had not been too wise to 
 encounter it, would assuredly have descended upon him, to 
 borrow the sublime language of his oWn epic poem, "like a 
 hammer on the red son of the furnace." 
 
 Of other assailants Johnson took no notice whatever. He 
 had early resolved never to be drawn into controversy ; and 
 he adhered to his resolution with a steadfastness which is 
 the more extraordinary because he was, both intellectually 
 and morally, of the stuff of which controversialists are 
 made. In conversation he was a singularly eager, acute, 
 and pertinacious disputant. When at a loss for good 
 reasons, he had recourse to sophistry ; and when heated by 
 altercation, he made unsparing use of sarcasm and invec- 
 tive. But when he took his pen in his hand, his whole 
 character seemed to be changed. A hundred bad writers 
 misrepresented him and reviled him ; but not one of the 
 hundred could boast of having been thought by him worthy 
 of a refutation, or even of a retort. The Kenricks, Camp- 
 bells, MacNicols, and Hendersons did their best to annoy 
 him, in the hope that he would give them importance by 
 
90 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 answering them. But the reader will in vain search his 
 works for any allusion to Kenrick or Campbell, to Mac- 
 Nicol or Henderson. One Scotchman, bent on vindicating 
 the fame of Scotch learning, defied him to the combat in a 
 detestable Latin hexameter : 
 
 " Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum." 
 
 But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had 
 learned, both from his own observation and from literary 
 history, in which he was deeply read, that the place of 
 books in the public estimation is fixed, not by what is 
 written about them, but by what is written in them ; and 
 that an author whose works are likely to live is very un- 
 wise if he stoops to wrangle with detractors whose works 
 are certain to die. He always maintained that fame was 
 a shuttlecock, which could be kept up only by being beaten 
 back, as well as beaten forward, and which would soon fall 
 if there were only one battledore. No saying was oftener 
 in his mouth than that fine apophthegm of Bentley, that no 
 man w^as ever written down but by himself. 
 
 Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of the 
 Journey to the Hebrides, Johnson did what none of his 
 envious assailants could have done, and, to a certain extent, 
 succeeded in writing himself down. The disputes between 
 England and her American colonies had reached a point at 
 which no amicable adjustment was possible. Civil war was 
 evidently impending; and the ministers seem to have thought 
 that the eloquence of Johnson might, with advantage, be 
 employed to inflame the nation against the opposition here, 
 and against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. He had 
 already written two or three tracts in defense of the for- 
 eign and domestic policy of the Government; and those 
 tracts, though hardly worthy of him, were much superior 
 to the crowd of pamphlets which lay on the counters of 
 Almou and Stockdale. But his Taxation No Tyranny 
 
Samuel Johnson, 91 
 
 was a pitiable failure. The very title was a silly phrase 
 which can have been recommended to his choice by nothing 
 but a jingling alliteration which he ought to have despised. 
 The arguments were such as boys uge in debating societies. 
 The pleasantr}^ was as awkward as the gambols of a hippo- 
 potamus. Even Boswell was forced to own that in this 
 unfortunate piece he could detect no trace of his master's 
 powers. The general opinion was that the strong faculties 
 which had produced the Dictionary and The Rambler 
 were beginning to feel the effect of time and of disease, 
 and that the old man would best consult his credit by 
 writing no more. 
 
 But this was a great mistake. Johnson had failed, not 
 because his mind was less vigorous than when he wrote 
 Rasselas in the evenings of a week, but because he had 
 foolishly chosen, or suffered others to choose for him, a sub- 
 ject such as he would at no time have been competent 
 to treat. He was in no sense a statesman. He never will- 
 ingly read or thought or talked about affairs of State. He 
 loved biography, literary history, the history of manners ; 
 but political history was positively distasteful to him. The 
 question at issue between the colonies and the mother- 
 country was a question about which he had really nothing 
 to say. He failed, therefore, as the greatest men must fail 
 when they attempt to do that for which they are unfit ; as 
 Burke would have failed if Burke had tried to write come- 
 dies like those of Sheridan ; as Reynolds would have failed 
 if Reynolds had tried to paint landscapes like those of Wil- 
 son. Happily, Johnson soon had an opportunity of proving 
 most signally that his failure was not to be ascribed to 
 intellectual decay. 
 
 On Easter-eve 1777, some persons, deputed by a meeting 
 which consisted of forty of the first booksellers in London, 
 called upon him. Though he had some scruples about 
 doino' business at that season, he received his visitors with 
 
92 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 much civility. They came to inform him that a new edition 
 of the English poets, from Cowley downward, was in contem- 
 plation, and to ask him to furnish short biographical prefaces. 
 He readily undertook tke task, a task for which be w^as pre- 
 eminently qualified. His knowledge of the literary history of 
 •England since the Kestoration was unrivalled. That knowl- 
 edge he had derived partly from books and partly from sources 
 which had long been closed ; from old Grub Street traditions ; 
 from the talk of forgotten poetasters and pamphleteers who 
 had long been lying in parish vaults ; from the recollections 
 of such men as Gilbert Walmesley, who had conversed with 
 the wits of Button ; Gibber, who had mutilated the plays 
 of two generations of dramatists ; Orrery, who had been 
 admitted to the society of Swift ; and Savage, who had ren- 
 dered services of no very honorable kind to Pope. The 
 biographer, therefore, sat down to his task with a mind full 
 of matter. He had at first intended to give only a para- 
 graph to every minor poet, and only four or five pages to 
 the greatest name. But the flood of anecdote and criticism 
 overflowed the narrow channel. The work, which was 
 originally meant to consist only of a few sheets, swelled 
 into ten volumes, small volumes, it is true, and not closely 
 printed. The first four appeared in 1779, the remaining six 
 in 1781. 
 
 The Lives of the Poets are, on the whole, the best of 
 Johnson's works. The narratives are as entertaining as 
 any novel. The remarks on life and on human nature are 
 eminently shrewd and profound. The criticisms are often 
 excellent, and, even when grossly and provokingly unjust, 
 well deserve to be studied ; for, however erroneous they 
 may be, they are never silly. They are the judgments of a 
 mind trammelled by prejudice and deficient in sensibility, 
 but vigorous and acute. They therefore generally contain 
 a portion of valuable truth which deserves to be separated 
 from the alloy ; and, at the very worst, they mean some- 
 
Samuel Johnson. 93 
 
 thing, a praise to which much of what is called criticism in 
 our time has no pretensions. 
 
 Savage's Life Johnson reprinted nearly as it had appeared 
 in 1744. Whoever, after reading that life, will turn to the 
 other lives, will be struck by the difference of style. Since 
 Johnson had been at ease in his circumstances, he had writ- 
 ten little and had talked much. When, therefore, he, after 
 the lapse of years, resumed his pen, the mannerism which 
 he had contracted while he was in the constant habit of elab- 
 orate composition was less preceptible than formerly ; and 
 his diction frequently had a colloquial ease which it had 
 formerly wanted. The improvement may be discerned by 
 a skilful critic in the Journey to the Hebrides, and in the 
 Lives of the Poets is so obvious that it cannot escape the 
 notice of the most careless reader. 
 
 Among the Lives the best are perhaps those of Cowley, 
 Dryden, and Pope. The very worst is, beyond all doubt, 
 that of Gray. 
 
 This great work at once became popular. There was, 
 indeed, much just and much unjust censure ; but even those 
 who were loudest in blame were attracted by the book in 
 spite of themselves. Malone computed the gains of the 
 publishers at five or six thousand pounds. But the writer 
 was very poorly remunerated. Intending at first to write 
 very short prefaces, he had stipulated for only two hundred 
 guineas. The booksellers, when they saw how far his per- 
 formance had surpassed his promise, added only another 
 hundred. Indeed, Johnson, though he did not despise, or 
 affect to despise, money, and though his strong sense and 
 long experience ought to have qualified him to protect his 
 own interests, seems to have been singularly unskilful and 
 unlucky in his literary bargains. He was generally reputed 
 the first English writer of his time. Yet several writers of 
 his time sold their copyrights for sums such as he never ven- 
 tured to ask. To give a single instance, Kobertson received 
 
94 Select Essays of Macaulay, 
 
 four thousand five hundred pounds for the History of 
 Charles the Fifth ; and it is no disrespect to the memory 
 of Robertson to say that the History of Charles the Fifth 
 is both a less valuable and a less amusing book than the 
 Lives of the Poets. 
 
 Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. The infir- 
 mities of age were coming fast upon him. That inevitable 
 event, of which he never thought without horror, was 
 brought near to him, and his whole life was darkened by 
 the shadow of death. He had often to pay the cruel price 
 of longevity. Every year he lost what could never be 
 replaced. The strange dependents to whom he had given 
 shelter, and to whom, in spite of their faults, he was strongly 
 attached by habit, dropped oft' one by one; and, in the 
 silence of his home, he regretted even the noise of their 
 scolding-matches. The kind and generous Thrale was no 
 more 5 and it would have been well if his wife had been laid 
 beside him. But she survived to be the laughing-stock of 
 those who had envied her, and to draw from the eyes of the 
 old man who had loved her beyond anything in the world 
 tears far more bitter than he would have shed over her 
 grave. With some estimable and many agreeable qualities, 
 she was not made to be independent. The control of a mind 
 more steadfast than her own was necessary to her respecta- 
 bility. While she was restrained by her husband, a man of 
 sense and firmness, indulgent to her taste in trifles, but 
 always the undisputed master of his house, her worst 
 offences had been impertinent jokes, white lies, and short 
 fits of pettishness ending in sunny good-humor. But he 
 was gone ; and she was left an opulent widow of forty, with 
 strong sensibility, volatile fancy, and slender judgment. 
 She soon fell in love with a music-master from Brescia, in 
 whom nobody but herself could discover anything to admire. 
 Her pride, and perhaps some better feelings, struggled hard 
 against this degrading passion. But the struggle irritated 
 
Samuel Johnson. 95 
 
 her nerves, soured her temper, and at length endangered 
 her health. Conscious that her choice was one which John- 
 son could not approve, she became desirous to escape from 
 his inspection. Her manner toward him changed. She was 
 sometimes cold and sometimes petulant. She did not con- 
 ceal her joy when he left Streatham : she never pressed him 
 to return ; and if he came unbidden, she received him in a 
 manner which convinced him that he was no longer a wel- 
 come guest. He took the very intelligible hints which she 
 gave. He read, for the last time, a chapter of the Greek 
 Testament in the library which had been formed by himself. 
 In a solemn and tender prayer he commended the house and 
 its inmates to the Divine protection, and, with emotions 
 which choked his voice and convulsed his powerful frame, 
 left forever that beloved home for the gloomy and desolate 
 house behind Fleet Street, where the few and evil days 
 which still remained to him were to run out. Here, in June, 
 1783, he had a paralytic stroke, from which, however, he 
 recovered, and which does not appear to have at all impaired 
 his intellectual faculties. But other maladies came thick 
 upon him. His asthma tormented him day and night. 
 Dropsical symptoms made their appearance. While sinking 
 under a complication of diseases, he heard that the woman 
 whose friendship had been the chief happiness of sixteen 
 years of his life had married an Italian fiddler ; that all Lon- 
 don was crying shame upon her; and that the newspapers 
 and magazines were filled with allusions to the Ephesian 
 matron and the two pictures in Hamlet. He vehemently 
 said that he would try to forget her existence. He never 
 uttered her name. Every memorial of her which met his 
 eye he flung into the fire. She meanwhile fled from the 
 laughter and hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen 
 to a land where she was unknown, hastened across Mont 
 Cenis, and learned, while passing a merry Christmas of con- 
 certs and lemonade parties at Milan, that the great man 
 
96 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 with whose name hers is inseparably associated had ceased 
 to exist. 
 
 He had, in spite of much mental and much bodily afflic- 
 tion, clung vehemently to life. The feeling described in 
 that fine but gloomy paper which closes the series of his 
 Idlers seemed to grow stronger in him as his last hour drew 
 near. He fancied that he should be able to draw his breath 
 more easily in a Southern climate, and would probably 
 have set out for Rome and Naples but for his fear of the 
 expense of the journey. That expense, indeed, he had the 
 means of defraying ; for he had laid up about two thousand 
 pounds, the fruit of labors which had made the fortune of 
 several publishers. But he was unwilling to break in upon 
 this hoard, and he seems to have wished even to keep its 
 existence a secret. Some of his friends hoped that the 
 Government might be induced to increase his pension to 
 six hundred pounds a year, but this hope was disappointed, 
 and he resolved to stand one English winter more. This 
 winter was his last. His legs grew weaker; his breath 
 grew shorter; the fatal water gathered fast, in spite of 
 incisions which he, courageous against pain, but timid 
 against death, urged his surgeons to make deeper and 
 deeper. Though the tender care which had mitigated his 
 sufferings during months of sickness at Streatham was 
 withdrawn, he was not left desolate. The ablest physicians 
 and surgeons attended him, and refused to accept fees from 
 him. Burke parted from him with deep emotion. AVind- 
 ham sat much in the sick-room, arranged the pillows, and 
 sent his own servant to watch at night by the bed. Frances 
 Burney, whom the old man had cherished with fatherly 
 kindness, stood weeping at the door ; while Langton, whose 
 piety eminently qualified him to* be an adviser and com- 
 forter at such a time, received the last pressure of his 
 friend's hand within. When at length the moment, dreaded 
 through so many years, came close, the dark cloud passed | 
 
Samuel Johnson. 97 
 
 away from Johnson's mind. His temper became unusually 
 patient and gentle ; he ceased to think with terror of death, 
 and of that which lies beyond death ; and he spoke much 
 of the mercy of God, and of the propitiation of Christ. In 
 this serene frame of mind he died on the 13th of December, 
 1784. He was laid, a week later, in Westminster Abbey, 
 among the eminent men of whom he had been the historian, 
 — Cowley and Denham, Dry den and Congreve, Gay, Prior, 
 and Addison. 
 
 Since his death the popularity of his works — the Lives 
 of the Poets, and, perhaps, the Vanity of Human Wishes, 
 excepted — has greatly diminished. His Dictionary has 
 been altered by editors till it can scarcely be called his. 
 An allusion to his Rambler or his Idler is not readily 
 apprehended in literary circles. The fame even of Rasselas 
 has grown somewhat dim. But though the celebrity of the 
 writings may have declined, the celebrity of the writer, 
 strange to say, is as great as ever. Boswell's book has done 
 for him more than the best of his own books could do. The 
 memory of other authors is kept alive by their works. But 
 the memory of Johnson keeps many of his works alive. 
 The old philosopher is still among us in the brown coat 
 with the metal buttons and the shirt which ought to be at 
 wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, drumming with his 
 lingers, tearing his meat like a tiger, and swallowing his 
 tea in oceans. No human being who has been more than 
 seventy years in the grave is so well known to us. And 
 it is but just to say that our intimate acquaintance with 
 what he would himself have called the anfractuosities of 
 his intellect and of his temper, serves only to strengthen 
 our conviction that he was both a great and a good man. 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 
 
 (February, 1856.) 
 
 Oliver Goldsmith was one of the most pleasing English 
 writers of the eighteenth century. He was of a Protestant 
 and Saxon family which had been long settled in Ireland, 
 and which had, like most other Protestant and Saxon fami- 
 lies, been, in troubled times, harassed and put in fear by 
 the native population. His father, Charles Goldsmith, 
 studied, in the reign of Queen Anne, at the diocesan school 
 of Elphin, became attached to the daughter of the school- 
 master, married her, took orders, and settled at a place 
 called Pallas, in the county of Longford. There he with 
 difficulty supported his wife and children on what he could 
 earn, partly as a curate and partly as a farmer. 
 
 At Pallas Oliver Goldsmith was born in November 1728. 
 That spot was then, for all practical purposes, almost as 
 remote from the busy and splendid capital in which his 
 later years were passed, as any clearing in Upper Canada 
 or any sheep-walk in Australasia now is. Even at this day 
 those enthusiasts who venture to make a pilgrimage to the 
 birthplace of the j^oet are forced to perform the latter part 
 of their journey on foot. The hamlet lies far from any 
 high-road, on a dreary plain which, in wet weather, is often 
 a lake. The lanes would break any jaunting-car to pieces ; 
 and there are ruts and sloughs through which the most 
 strongly built wheels cannot be dragged. 
 
 When Oliver was still a child, his father was presented 
 to a living, worth about two hundred pounds a year, in 
 
Oliver Goldsmith. 99 
 
 the county of Westmeath. The family accordingly quitted 
 their cottage in the wilderness for a spacious house on a 
 frequented road, near the village of Lissoy. Here the boy 
 was taught his letters by a maid-servant, and was sent, in 
 his seventh year, to a village school kept by an old quarter- 
 master on half-pay, who professed to teach nothing but 
 reading, writing, and arithmetic, but who had an inexhaust- 
 ible fund of stories about ghosts, banshees, and fairies, 
 about the great Rapparee chiefs, Baldearg O'Donnell and 
 galloping Hogan, and about the exploits of Peterborough 
 and Stanhope, the surprise of Monjuich, and the glorious 
 disaster of Brihuega./ This man must have been of the 
 Protestant religion ; but he was of the aboriginal race, and 
 not only spok6 the Irish language, but could pour forth 
 unpremeditated Irish verses. Oliver early became, and 
 through life continued to be, a passionate admirer of the 
 Irish music, and especially of the compositions of Carolan, 
 some of the last notes of whose harp he heard. It ought to 
 be added that Oliver, though by birth one of the Englishry, 
 and though connected by numerous ties with the Estab- 
 lished Church, never showed the least sign of that con- 
 temptuous antipathy with which, in his days, the ruling 
 minority in Ireland too generally regarded the subject 
 majority. So far, indeed, was he from sharing in the opin- 
 ions and feelings of the caste to which he belonged, that 
 he conceived an aversion to the Glorious and Immortal 
 Memory, and, even when George the Third was on the 
 throne, maintained that nothing but the restoration of the 
 banished dynasty could save the country. 
 
 From the humble academy kept by the old soldier Gold- 
 smith was removed in his ninth year. He went to several 
 grammar-schools, and acquired some knowledge of the 
 ancient languages. His life at this time seems to have 
 been far from happy. He had, as appears from the admira- 
 ble portrait of him at Knowle, features harsh even to ugli- 
 
100 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 ness. The small-pox had set its mark on him with more 
 than usual severity. His stature was small, and his limbs 
 ill put together. Among boys little tenderness is shown to 
 personal defects ; and the ridicule excited by poor Oliver's 
 appearance was heightened by a peculiar simplicity and a 
 disposition to blunder which he retained to the last. He 
 became the common butt of boys and masters, was pointed 
 at as a fright in the playground, and flogged as a dunce 
 in the sclioolroom. When he had risen to eminence, those 
 who once derided him ransacked their memory for the 
 events of his early years, and recited repartees and couplets 
 which had dropped from him, and which, though little 
 noticed at the time, were supposed, a quarter of a century 
 later, to indicate the powers which produced the Vicar of 
 Wakefield and the Deserted Village. 
 
 In his seventeenth year Oliver we^nt up to Trinity College, 
 Dublin, as a sizar. The sizars paid nothing for food and 
 tuition, and very little for lodging; but they had to per- 
 form some menial services from which they have long 
 been relieved. They swept the court ; they carried up the 
 dinner to the fellows' table, and changed the plates and 
 poured out the ale of the rulers of the society. Goldsmith 
 was quartered, not alone, in a garret, on the window of 
 which his name, scrawled by himself, is still read with 
 interest. From such garrets many men of less parts than 
 his have made their way to the wool-sack or to the epis- 
 copal bench. But Goldsmith, while he suffered all the 
 humiliations, threw away all the advantages of his situa- 
 tion. He neglected the studies of the place, stood low at 
 the examinations, was turned down to the bottom of his 
 class for playing the buffoon in the lecture-room, was 
 severely reprimanded for pumping on a constable, and was 
 caned by a brutal tutor for giving a ball in the attic story 
 of the college to some gay youths and damsels from the 
 city. 
 
Oliver Goldsmith. 101 
 
 While Oliver was leading at Dublin a life divided be- 
 tween squalid distress and squalid dissipation, his father 
 died, leaving a mere pittance. The youth obtained liis 
 bachelor's degree, and left the university. During some 
 time the humble dwelling to which his widowed mother 
 had retired was his home. He was now in his twenty-first 
 year ; it was necessary that he should do something ; and 
 his education seemed to have fitted him to do nothing but 
 to dress himself in gaudy colors, of which he was as fond 
 as a magpie, to take a hand at cards, to sing Irish airs, to 
 play the flute, to angle in summer, and to tell ghost stories 
 by the fire in winter. He tried five or six professions in 
 turn without success. He applied for ordination ; but, as 
 he applied in scarlet clothes, he was speedily turned out of 
 the episcopal palace. He then became tutor in an opulent 
 family, but soon quitted his situation in consequence of a 
 dispute about play. Then he determined to "emigrate to 
 America. His relations, with much satisfaction, saw him 
 set out for Cork on a good horse, with thirty pounds in his 
 pocket. But in six weeks he came back on a miserable 
 hack, without a penny, and informed his mother that the 
 ship in which he had taken his passage, having got a fair 
 wind while he was at a party of pleasure, had sailed with- 
 out him. Then he resolved to study the law. A generous 
 kinsman advanced fifty pounds. With this sum Goldsmith 
 went to Dublin, was enticed into a gaming-house, and lost 
 every shilling. He then thought of medicine. A small 
 purse was made up ; and in his twenty-fourth year he was 
 sent to Edinburgh. At Edinburgh he passed eighteen 
 months in nominal attendance on lectures, and picked up 
 some superficial information about chemistry and natural 
 history. Thence he went to Leyden, still pretending to 
 study physic. He left that celebrated university, the 
 third university at which he had resided, in his twenty- 
 seventh year, without a degree, with the merest smattering 
 
102 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 of medical knowledge, and with no property but his clothes 
 and his flute. His flute, however, proved a useful friend. 
 He rambled on foot through Flanders, France, and Switzer- 
 land, j)laying tunes which everywhere set the peasantry 
 dancing, and which often procured for him a supper and a 
 bed. He wandered as far as Italy. His musical perform- 
 ances, indeed, were not to the taste-' of the Italians ; but he 
 contrived to live on the alms which he obtained at the gates 
 of convents. It should, however, be observed, that the 
 stories which he told about this part of his life ought to be 
 received with great caution ; for strict veracity was never 
 one of his virtues ; and a man who is ordinarily inaccurate 
 in narration is likely to be more than ordinarily inaccurate 
 when he talks about his own travels. Goldsmith, indeed, 
 was so regardless of truth as to assert in print that he was 
 present at a most interesting conversation between Voltaire 
 and Fontenelle, and that this conversation took place at 
 Paris. Now it is certain that Voltaire never was within 
 a hundred leagues of Paris during the whole time which 
 Goldsmith passed on the Continent. 
 
 In 1756 the wanderer landed at Dover, without a shilling, 
 without a friend, and without a calling. He had, indeed, if 
 his own unsupported evidence may be trusted, obtained 
 from the University of Padua a doctor's degree ; but this 
 dignity proved utterly useless to him. In England his flute 
 was not in request : there were no convents ; and he w^as 
 forced to have recourse to a series of desperate expedients. 
 He turned strolling player ; but his face and figure were ill 
 suited to the boards even of the humblest theatre. He 
 pounded drugs and ran about London with phials for chari- 
 table chemists. He joined a swarm of beggars, which made 
 its nest in Axe Yard. He was for a time usher of a school, 
 and felt the miseries and humiliations of this situation so 
 keenly, that he thought it a promotion to be permitted to 
 earn his bread as a bookseller's hack ; but he soon found 
 
Oliver Goldsmith. 103 
 
 the new yoke more galling than the old one, and was glad 
 to become an usher again. He obtained a medical appoint- 
 ment in the sei-vice of the East India Company ; but the 
 appointment was speedily revoked. Why it was revoked 
 we are not told. The subject was one on which he never 
 liked to talk. It is probable that he was incompetent to 
 perform the duties of the place. Then he presented himself 
 at Surgeons' Hall for examination, as mate to a naval hos- 
 pital. Even to so humble a post he was found unequal. 
 By this time the school-master whom he had served for a 
 morsel of food and the third part of a bed was no more. 
 Nothing remained but to return to the lowest drudgery of 
 literature. Goldsmith took a garret in a miserable court, to 
 which he had to climb from the brink of Fleet Ditch by a 
 dizzy ladder of flag-stones called Breakneck Steps. The 
 court and the ascent have long disappeared ; but old Lon- 
 doners well remember both. Here, at thirty, the unlucky 
 adventurer sat down to toil like a galley-slave. 
 
 In the succeeding six years he sent to the press some 
 things which have survived, and many which have perished. 
 He produced articles for reviews, magazines, and news- 
 papers ; children's books, which, bound in gilt paper and 
 adorned with hideous wood-cuts, appeared in the window of 
 the once far-famed shop at the corner of St. Paul's Church- 
 yard; An Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in 
 Europe, which, though of little or no value, is still reprinted 
 among his works ; a Life of Beau ISTash, which is not re- 
 printed, though it well deserves to be so ; a superficial and 
 incorrect, but very readable. History of England, in a 
 series of letters purporting to be addressed by a nobleman 
 to his son ; and some very lively and amusing Sketches of 
 London Society, in a series of letters purporting to be 
 addressed by a Chinese traveller to his friends. All these 
 works were anonymous ; but some of them were well known 
 to be Goldsmith's ; and he gradually rose in the estimation 
 
104 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 of the booksellers for whom he drudged. He was, indeed, 
 emphatically a popular writer. For accurate research or 
 grave disquisition he was not well qualified by nature or by 
 education. He knew nothing accurately : his reading had 
 been desultory ; nor had he meditated deeply on what he 
 had read. He had seen much of the world; but he had 
 noticed and retained little more of what he had seen than 
 some grotesque incidents and characters which happened to 
 strike his fancy. But, though his mind was very scantily 
 stored with materials, he used what materials he had in 
 such a way as to produce a wonderful effect. There have 
 been many greater writers ; but perhaps no writer was ever 
 more uniformly agreeable. His style was always pure and 
 easy, and, on proper occasions, pointed and energetic. His 
 narratives were always amusing, his descriptions always 
 picturesque, his humor rich and joyous, yet not without an 
 occasional tinge of amiable sadness. About everything that 
 he wrote, serious or sportive, there was a certain natural 
 grace and decorum, hardly to be expected from a man a 
 .great part of whose life had been passed among thieves and 
 beggars, street-walkers, and merry-andrews, in those squalid 
 dens which are the reproach of great capitals. 
 
 As his name gradually became known, the circle of his 
 acquaintance widened. He was introduced to Johnson, who 
 was then considered as the first of living English writers ; 
 to Reynolds, the first of English painters ; and to Burke, 
 who had not yet entered Parliament, but had distinguished 
 himself greatly by his writings and by the eloquence of his 
 conversation. With these eminent men Goldsmith became 
 intimate. --In 1763 he was one of the nine original members 
 of that celebrated fraternity which has sometimes been 
 called the Literary Club, but which has always disclaimed 
 that epithet, and still glories in the simple name of The 
 Club. 
 
 By this time Goldsmith had quitted his miserable dwell- 
 
Oliver Goldsmith. 105 
 
 ing at the top of Breakneck Steps, and had taken chambers 
 in the more civilized region of the Inns of Court. But he 
 was still often reduced to pitiable shifts. Towards the close 
 of 1764 his rent was so long in arrear that his landlady one 
 morning called in the help of a sheriff's officer. The debtor, 
 in great perplexity, despatched a messenger to Johnson ; and 
 Johnson, always friendly, though often surl}^, sent back the 
 messenger with a guinea, and promised to follow speedily. 
 He came, and found that Goldsmith had changed the guinea, 
 and was railing at the landlady over a bottle of Madeira. 
 Johnson put the cork into the bottle, and entreated his 
 friend to consider calmly how money was to be procured. 
 Goldsmith said that he had a novel ready for the press. 
 Johnson glanced at the manuscript, saw that there were 
 good things in it, took it to a bookseller, sold it for sixty 
 pounds, and soon returned with the money. The rent was 
 paid, and the sheriff's officer withdrew. According to one 
 story. Goldsmith gave his landlady a sharp reprimand for 
 her treatment of him ; according to another, he insisted on 
 her joining him in a bowl of punch. Both stories are prob- 
 ably true. The novel which was thus ushered into the 
 world was the Vicar of Wakefield. 
 
 But before the Vicar of Wakefield appeared in print, 
 came the great crisis of Goldsmith's literary life. In 
 Christmas week, 1764, he published a poem, entitled the 
 Traveller. It was the first work to which he had put 
 his name ; and it at once raised him to the rank of a 
 legitimate English classic. The opinion of the most skil- 
 ful critics was that- nothing finer had appeared in verse 
 since the fourth book of the Dunciad. In one respect, 
 the Traveller differs from all Goldsmith's other writings. 
 In general, his designs were bad, and his execution good. 
 In the Traveller, the execution, though deserving of much 
 praise, is far inferior to the design. No philosophical 
 poem, ancient or modern, has a plan so noble, and at the 
 
106 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 same time so simple. An English wanderer, seated on a 
 crag among the Alps, near the point where three great 
 countries meet, looks down on the boundless prospect, re- 
 views his long pilgrimage, recalls the varieties of scenery, 
 of climate, of government, of religion, of national character, 
 which he has observed, and comes to the conclusion, just or 
 unjust, that our happiness depends little on political insti- 
 tutions, and much on the temper and regulation of our 
 minds. 
 
 While the fourth edition of the Traveller was on the 
 counters of the booksellers, the Vicar of Wakefield ap- 
 peared, and rapidly obtained a popularity which has lasted 
 down to our own time, and which is likely to last as long 
 as our language. The fable is indeed one of the worst 
 that ever was constructed. It wants, not merely that prob- 
 ability which ought to be found in a tale of common Eng- 
 lish life, but that consistency which ought to be found even 
 in the wildest fiction about witches, giants, and fairies. 
 But the earlier chapters have all the sweetness of pastoral 
 poetry, together with all the vivacity of comedy. Moses 
 and his spectacles, the Vicar and his monogamy, the 
 Sharper and his cosmogony, the Squire proving from Aris- 
 totle that relatives are related, Olivia preparing herself for 
 the arduous task of converting a rakish lover by studying the 
 controversy between Eobinson Crusoe and Friday, the great 
 ladies with their scandal about Sir Tomkyn's amours and 
 Dr. Burdock's verses, and Mr. Burchell with his " Fudge ! " 
 have caused as much harmless mirth as has ever been 
 caused by matter packed into so small a number of pages. 
 The latter part of the tale is unworthy of the beginning. 
 As we approach the catastrophe, the absurdities lie thicker 
 and thicker, and the gleams of pleasantry become rarer and 
 rarer. ^ 
 
 is. The^uccess which had attended Goldsmith as a novelist 
 .^mbold^ned him to try his fortune as a dramatist. He 
 
Oliver Goldsmith. 107 
 
 wrote the Goocl-Datured Man, a piece which had a worse 
 fate than it deserved. Garrick refused to produce it at 
 Drury Lane. It was acted at Covent Garden in 1768, but 
 was coldly received. The author, however, cleared by his 
 benefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright, not less 
 than five hundred pounds, five times as much as he had 
 made by the Traveller and the Vicar of Wakefield together. 
 The plot of the Good-natured Man is, like almost all Gold- 
 smith's plots, very ill constructed. But some passages are 
 exquisitely ludicrous ; much more ludicrous, indeed, than 
 suited the taste of the town at that time. A canting, 
 mawkish play, entitled False Delicacy, had just had an 
 immense run. Sentimentality was all the mode. During 
 some years, more tears were shed at comedies than at trag- 
 edies ; and a pleasantry which moved the audience to any- 
 thing more than a grave smile was reprobated as low. It 
 is not strange, therefore, that the very best scene in the 
 Good-natured Man, that in which Miss Eichland finds her 
 lover attended by the bailiff and the bailiff's follower in 
 full court-dresses, should have been mercilessly hissed, and 
 should have been omitted after the first night. 
 ^ In 1770 appeared the Deserted Village. In mere dic- 
 tion and versification, this celebrated poem is fully equal, 
 l^erhaps superior, to the Traveller ; and it is generally 
 preferred to the Traveller by that large class of readers 
 who think, with Bayes in the Rehearsal, that the only 
 use of a plan is to bring in fine things. More discerning 
 judges, however, while they admire the beauty of the 
 details, are shocked by one unpardonable fault which per- 
 vades the whole. The fault which we mean is not that 
 theory about wealth and luxury which has so often been 
 censured by political economists. The theory is indeed 
 false ; but the poem, considered merely as a poem, is not 
 necessarily the worse on that account. The finest poem in, 
 the Latin language, indeed the finest didactic poem in any 
 
108 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 language, was written in defence of the silliest and meanest 
 of all systems of natural and moral i)liilosophy. A poet 
 may easily be pardoned for reasoning ill ; but he cannot 
 be pardoned for describing ill, for observing the world in 
 which he lives so carelessly that his portraits bear no 
 resemblance to the originals, for exhibiting as copies from 
 real life monstrous combinations of things which never 
 were, and never could be, found together. What would be 
 thought of a painter who should mix August and January in 
 one landscape, who should introduce a frozen river into 
 a harvest scene? Would it be a sufficient defence of such 
 a picture to say that every part was exquisitely colored, 
 that the green hedges, the apple-trees loaded with fruit, the 
 wagons reeling under the yellow sheaves, and the sunburnt 
 reapers wiping their foreheads, were very fine, and that the 
 ice and the boys sliding were also very fine? To such a 
 picture the Deserted Village bears a great resemblance. 
 It is made up of incongruous parts. The village in its 
 happy days is a true English village. The village in 
 its decay is an Irish village. The felicity and the misery 
 which Goldsmith has brought close together belong to 
 two different countries, and to two different stages in the 
 progress of society. He had assuredly never seen in his 
 native island such a rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, 
 content, and tranquillity, as his Auburn. He had assuredly 
 never seen in England all the inhabitants of such a para- 
 dise turned out of their homes in one day, and forced to 
 emigrate in a body to America. The hamlet he had prob- 
 ably seen in Kent ; the ejectment he had probably seen in 
 Munster; but by joining the two, he has produced some- 
 thing which never was and never will be seen in any part of 
 the world. 
 
 In 1773 Goldsmith tried his chance at Covent Garden 
 with a second play, She Stoops to Conquer. The manager 
 was not without great difficulty induced to bring this piece 
 
Oliver Groldsmith. 109 
 
 out. The sentimental comedy still reigned, and Goldsmith's 
 comedies were not sentimental. The Good-natured Man 
 had been too funny to succeed ; yet the mirth of the Good- 
 natured Man was sober when compared with the rich droll- 
 ery of She Stoops to Conquer, which is, in truth, an incom- 
 parable farce in five acts. On this occasion, however, genius 
 triumphed. Pit, boxes, and galleries were in a constant 
 roar of laughter. If any bigoted admirer of Kelly and 
 Cumberland ventured to hiss or groan, he was speedily 
 silenced by a general cry of " turn him out ! " or " throw 
 him over ! " Two generations have since confirmed the ver- 
 dict which was pronounced on that night. 
 
 While Goldsmith was writing the Deserted Village and 
 She Stoops to Conquer, he was employed on works of a very 
 different kind, works from which he derived little reputa- 
 tion, but much profit. He compiled for the use of schools a 
 History of Kome, by which he made three hundred pounds ; 
 a History of England, by which he made six hundred pounds ; 
 a History of Greece, for which he received two hundred 
 and fifty pounds ; a Natural History, for which the book- 
 sellers covenanted to pay him eight hundred guineas. These 
 works he produced without any elaborate research, by merely 
 selecting, abridging, and translating into his own clear, pure, 
 and fiowing language, what he found in books well known 
 to the world, but too bulky or too dry for boys and girls. 
 He committed some strange blunders; for he knew nothing 
 with accuracy. Thus, in his History of England he tells us 
 that Naseby is in Yorkshire ; nor did he correct this mis- 
 take when the book was reprinted. He was very nearly 
 hoaxed into putting into the History of Greece an account 
 of a battle between Alexander the Great and Montezuma. 
 In his Animated Nature he relates, with faith and with per- 
 fect gravity, all the most absurd lies which he could find in 
 books of travels about gigantic Patagonians, monkeys that 
 preach sermons, nightingales that repeat long conversa- 
 
110 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 tions. " If lie can tell a horse from a cow," says Johnson, 
 ^Hhat is the extent of his knowledge of zoology." How 
 little Goldsmith was qualified to write about the physical 
 sciences is sufficiently proved by two anecdotes. He on 
 one occasion denied that the sun is longer in the northern 
 than in the southern signs. It was vain to cite the author- 
 ity of Maupertuis. " Maupertuis ! " he cried ; " I under- 
 stand those matters better than Maupertuis." ^On another 
 occasion he, in defiance of the evidence of his own senses, 
 maintained obstinately, and even angrily, that he chewed 
 his dinner by moving his upper jaw. 
 
 Yet, ignorant as Goldsmith was, few writers have done 
 more to make the first steps in the laborious road to knowl- 
 edge easy and pleasant. His compilations are widely dis- 
 tinguished from the compilations of ordinary book-makers. 
 He was a great, perhaps an unequalled, master of the arts 
 of selection and condensation. In these respects his his- 
 tories of Eome and of England, and still more his own 
 abridgments of these histories, well deserve to be studied. 
 In general nothing is less attractive than an epitome : but 
 the epitomes of Goldsmith, even when most concise, are 
 always amusing ; and to read them is considered by intelli- 
 gent children not as a task, but as a pleasure. 
 
 Goldsmith might now be considered as a prosperous man. 
 He had the means of living in comfort, and even in what 
 to one who had so often slept in barns and on bulks must 
 have been luxury. His fame was great, and was constantly 
 rising. He lived in what was intellectually far the best 
 society of the kingdom, in a society in which no talent or 
 accomplishment was wanting, and in which the art of con- 
 versation was cultivated with splendid success. There 
 probably were never four talkers more admirable in four 
 different ways than Johnson, Burke, Beauclerk, and Gar- 
 rick ; and Goldsmith was on terms of intimacy with all 
 the four. He aspired to share in their colloquial re- 
 
 i* 
 
■ Oliver Goldsmith. Ill 
 
 nown ; but never was ambition more unfortunate. It 
 may seem strange that a man who wrote with so much 
 perspicuity, vivacity, and grace, should have been, when- 
 ever he took a part in conversation, an empty, noisy, 
 bhuidering rattle. But on this point the evidence is over- 
 whelming. So extraordinary was the contrast between 
 I G-oldsmith's published works and the silly things which he 
 *^said, that Horace Walpole described him as an inspired 
 idiot. "Noll," said Garrick, "wrote like an angel, and 
 talked like poor Pol.'' Chamier declared that it was a 
 hard exercise of faith to believe that so foolish a chatterer 
 could have really written the Traveller. Even Boswell 
 could say, with contemptuous compassion, that he liked 
 very well to hear honest Goldsmith run on. " Yes, sir," 
 said Johnson, "but he should not like to hear himself." 
 Minds differ as rivers differ. There are transparent and 
 sparkling rivers from which it is delightful to drink as 
 they flow ; to such rivers the minds of such men as Burke 
 and Johnson may be compared. But there are rivers of 
 which the water when first drawn is turbid and noisome, 
 but becomes pellucid as crystal and delicious to the taste if 
 it be suffered to stand till it has deposited a sediment ; and 
 such a river is a type of the mind of Goldsmith. His first 
 thoughts on every subject were confused even to absurdity, 
 but they required only a little time to work themselves 
 clear. When he wrote they had that time, and therefore 
 his readers pronounced him a man of genius ; but when he 
 talked, he talked nonsense, and made himself the laughing- 
 stock of his hearers. He was painfully sensible of his 
 inferiority in conversation ; he felt every failure keenly ; 
 yet he had not sufficient judgment and self-command to 
 hold his tongue. His animal spirits and vanity were 
 always impelling him to try to do the one thing which he 
 could not do. After every attempt, he felt that he had ex- 
 posed himself, and writhed with shame and vexation ; yet 
 the next moment he began again. 
 
112 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 His associates seem to have regarded him with kindness, 
 which, in spite of their admiration of his writings, was not 
 unmixed with contempt. In truth, there was in his char- 
 acter much to love, but very little to respect. His heart 
 X was soft, even to weakness ; he was so generous, that he 
 quite forgot to be just ; he forgave injuries so readily, that 
 he might be said to invite them, and was so liberal to beg- 
 gars that he had nothing left for his tailor and his butcher. 
 He was vain, sensual, frivolous, profuse, improvident. One 
 vice of a darker shade was imputed to him, envy. But 
 there is not the least reason to believe that this bad passion, 
 though it sometimes made him wince and utter fretful 
 exclamations, ever impelled him to injure by wicked arts 
 the reputation of any of his rivals. The truth probably is, 
 that he was not more envious, but merely less prudent, than 
 his neighbors. His heart was on his lips. All those small 
 jealousies, which are but too common among men of letters, 
 but which a man of letters who is also a man of the world 
 does his best to conceal, Goldsmith avowed with the simplic- 
 ity of a child. When he was envious, instead of affecting 
 indifference, instead of damning with faint praise, instead 
 of doing injuries slyly and in the dark, he told everybody 
 that he was envious. "Do not, pray do not, talk of John- 
 son in such terms," he said to Boswell ; "you harrow up 
 my very soul." George Steevens and Cumberland were men 
 far too cunning to say such a thing. They would have 
 echoed the praises of the man whom they envied, and then 
 have sent to the newspapers anonymous libels upon him. 
 Both what was good and what was bad in Goldsmith's 
 character was to his associates a perfect security that he 
 would never commit such villany. He was neither ill- 
 natured enough, nor long-headed enough, to be guilty of 
 any malicious act which required contrivance and disguise. 
 Goldsmith has sometimes been represented as a man of 
 genius, cruelly treated by the world, and doomed to struggle 
 
Oliver Goldsmith. 11^ 
 
 with difficulties which at last broke his heart. But no rep- 
 resentation can be more remote from the truth. He did, 
 indeed, go through much sharp misery before he had done 
 anything considerable in literature. But after his name 
 had appeared on the title-page of the Traveller, he had 
 none but himself to blame for his distresses. His average 
 income during the last seven years of his life certainly 
 exceeded four hundred pounds a year, and four hundred 
 pounds a year ranked among the incomes of that day at 
 least as high as eight hundred pounds a year would rank at 
 present. A single man living in the Temple with four 
 hundred pounds a year might then be called opulent. Not 
 one in ten of the young gentlemen of good families who 
 were studying the law there had so much. But all the 
 wealth which Lord Clive had brought from Bengal, and Sir 
 Lawrence Dundas from Germany, joined together, would not 
 have sufficed for Goldsmith. He spent twice as much as he 
 had. He wore fine clothes, gave dinners of several courses, 
 paid court to venal beauties. He had also, it should be 
 remembered to the honor of his heart, though not of his 
 head, a guinea, or five, or ten, according to the state of his 
 purse, ready for any tale of distress, true or false. But it 
 was not in dress or feasting, in promiscuous amours or pro- 
 miscuous charities, that his chief expense lay. He had been 
 from boyhood a gambler, and at once the most sanguine and 
 the most unskilful of gamblers. For a time he put off the day 
 of inevitable ruin by temporary expedients. He obtained 
 advances from booksellers by promising to execute works 
 which he never began. But at length this source of supply 
 failed. He owed more than two thousand pounds, and he 
 saw no hope of extrication from his embarrassments. His 
 spirits and health gave way. He w^as attacked by a nervous 
 fever, which he thought himself competent to treat. It 
 would have been happy for him if his medical skill had 
 been appreciated as justly by himself as by others. Not- 
 
 I 
 
V 
 
 114 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 withstanding the degree which he pretended to have re- 
 ceived at Padua, he coukl procure no patients. "I do not 
 practise," he once said ; " I make it a rule to prescribe only 
 for my friends." "Pray, dear Doctor," said Beauclerk, 
 " alter your rule, and prescribe only for your enemies." 
 Goldsmith now, in spite of this excellent advice, prescribed 
 for himself. The remedy aggravated the malady. The 
 sick man was induced to call in real physicians, and they 
 at one time imagined that they had cured the disease. Still 
 his weakness and restlessness continued. He could get no 
 sleep; he could take no food. "You are worse," said one 
 of his medical attendants, "than you should be from the 
 degree of fever which you have. Is your mind at ease ? " 
 "No, it is not," were the last recorded words of Oliver 
 Goldsmith. He died on the 3d of April, 1774, in his forty- 
 sixth year. He was laid in the churchyard of the Temple ; 
 but the spot was not marked by any inscription, and is now 
 forgotten. The coffin was followed by Burke and Reynolds. 
 Both these great men were sincere mourners. Burke, when 
 he heard of Goldsmith's death, had burst into a flood of 
 tears. 'Reynolds had been so much moved by the news, 
 that he had flung aside his brush and palette for the day. 
 
 A short time after Goldsmith's death, a little poem 
 appeared, which will, as long as our language lasts, associ- 
 ate the names of his two illustrious friends with his own. 
 It has already been mentioned that he sometimes felt keenly 
 the sarcasm which his wild, blundering talk brought upon 
 him. He was, not long before his last illness, provoked 
 into retaliating. He wisely betook himself to his pen, andl 
 at that weapon he proved himself a match for all his assail-1 
 ants together. Within a small compass he drew with a| 
 singularly easy and vigorous pencil the characters of nine 
 or ten of his intimate associates. Though this little work 
 did not receive his last touches, it must always be regarded 
 as a masterpiece. It is impossible, however, not to wish 
 
Oliver Golthinlth. 115 
 
 that four or live likenesses wliicli liave no interest for pos- 
 terity were wanting to that noble gallery, and that their 
 places were supplied by sketches of Johnson and Gibbon, 
 as hapj)y and vivid as the sketches of Burke and Garrick. 
 
 Some of Goldsmith's friends and admirers honored him 
 with a cenotaph in Westminster Abbey. ISTollekens was the 
 sculptor, and Johnson wrote the inscription. It is much to 
 be lamented that Johnson did not leave to posterity a more 
 durable and a more valuable memorial of his friend. A life 
 of Goldsmith would have been an inestimable addition to 
 the Lives of the Poets. No man appreciated Goldsmith's 
 writings more justly than Johnson ; no man was better 
 acquainted with Goldsmith's character and habits ; and no 
 man was more competent to delineate with truth and spirit 
 the peculiarities of a mind in which great powers were 
 found in company with great weaknesses. But the list of 
 poets to whose works Johnson was requested by the book- 
 sellers to furnish prefaces ended with Lyttelton, who died 
 in 1773. The line seems to have been drawn expressly for 
 the purpose of excluding the person whose portrait would 
 have most fitly closed the series. Goldsmith, however, has 
 been fortunate in his biographers. Within a few years his 
 life has been written by Mr. Prior, by Mr. Washington Irv- 
 ing, and by Mr. Forster. The diligence of Mr. Prior 
 deserves great praise ; the style of Mr. Washington Irving 
 is always pleasing ; but the highest place must in justice be 
 assigned to the eminently interesting work of Mr. Forster. 
 
MADAME D'ARBLAY. 
 
 (January, 1843.) 
 
 Though the world saw anci heard little of Madame 
 D'Arblay during the last forty years of her life, and though 
 that little did not add to her fame, there were thousands, 
 we believe, who felt a singular emotion when they learned 
 that she was no longer among us. The news of her death 
 carried the minds of men back at one leap over two genera- 
 tions, to the time when her first literary triumphs were 
 won. All those whom we had been accustomed to revere 
 as intellectual patriarchs seemed children when compared 
 with her ; for Burke had sat up all night to read her writ- 
 ings, and Johnson had pronounced her superior to Fielding, 
 when Rogers was still a school-boy, and Southey still in 
 petticoats. Yet more strange did it seem that we should 
 just have lost one whose name had been widely celebrated 
 before anybody had heard of some illustrious men who, 
 twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, were, after a long and 
 splendid career, borne with honor to the grave. Yet so it 
 was. Frances Burney was at the height of fame and popu- 
 larity before Cowper had published his first volume, before 
 Porson had gone up to college, before Pitt had taken his 
 seat in the House of Commons, before the voice of Erskine 
 had been once heard in Westminster Hall. Since the appear- 
 ance of her first work, sixty-two years had passed ; and this 
 interval had been crowded, not only with political, but also 
 with intellectual revolutions. Thousands of reputations 
 had, during that period, sprung up, bloomed, withered, and 
 disappeared. ■ New kinds of composition had come into 
 116 
 
Madame D'Arhlay. 117 
 
 fashion, had gone out of fashion, had been derided, had been 
 forgotten. The fooleries of Delhi Crusca, and the fooleries 
 of Kotzebue, had for a time bewitched the multitude, but 
 had left no trace behind them ; nor had misdirected genius 
 been able to save from decay the once flourishing schools of 
 Godwin, of Darwin, and of Eadcliffe. Many books, writ- 
 ten for temporary effect, had run through six or seven edi- 
 tions, and had then been gathered to the novels of Afra 
 Behn, and the epic poems of Sir Richard Blackmore. Yet 
 the early works of Madame D'Arblay, in spite of the lapse 
 of years, in spite of the change of manners, in spite of the 
 popularity deservedly obtained by some of her rivals, con- 
 tinued to hold a high place in the public esteem. She lived 
 to be a classic. Time set on her fame, before she went 
 hence, that seal which is seldom set except on the fame of 
 the departed. Like Sir Condy Rackrent in the tale, she 
 survived her own wake, and overheard the judgment of 
 posterity. 
 
 Having always felt a warm and sincere, though not a 
 blind, admiration for her talents, we rejoiced to learn that 
 her Diary was about to be made public. Our hopes, it is 
 true, were not unmixed with fears. We could not forget 
 the fate of the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, which were pub- 
 lished ten years ago. That unfortunate book contained 
 much that was curious and interesting. Yet it was received 
 with a cry of disgust, and was speedily consigned to obliv- 
 ion. The truth is, that it deserved its doom. It was written 
 in Madame D'Arblay's later style, the worst style that lias 
 ever been known among men. No genius, no information, 
 could save from proscription a book so written. We, there- 
 fore," opened the Diary with no small anxiety, trembling 
 lest we should light upon some of that peculiar rhetoric 
 which deforms almost every page of the Memoirs, and 
 which it is impossible to read without a sensation made up 
 of mirth, shame, and loathing. We soon, however, discov- 
 
118 Select Essays of Macaiday. 
 
 ered, to our great delight, that this Diary was kept before 
 Madame D'Arblay became eloquent. It is, for the most part, 
 written in her earliest and best manner, in true woman's 
 English, clear, natural, and lively. The two works are lying 
 side by side before us ; and we never turn from the Memoirs 
 to the Diary without a sense of relief. The difference is as 
 great as the difference between the atmosphere of a per- 
 fumer's shop, fetid with lavender-water and jasmine soap, 
 and the air of a heath on a fine morning in May. Both 
 works ought to be consulted by every 2:)erson who wishes to 
 be well acquainted with the history of our literature and 
 our manners. But to read the Diary is a pleasure ; to read 
 the Memoirs will always be a task. 
 
 We may, perhaps, afford some harmless amusement to 
 our readers if we attempt, with the help of these two books, 
 to give them an account of the most important years of 
 Madame D'Arblay's life. 
 
 She was descended from a family which bore the name of 
 Macburney, and which, though probably of Irish origin, had 
 been long settled in Shropshire, and was possessed of con- 
 siderable estates in that county. Unhappily, many years 
 before her birth, the Macburneys began, as if of set purpose 
 and in a spirit of determined rivalry, to expose and ruin 
 themselves. The heir-apparent, Mr. James Macburne}^, 
 offended his father by making a runaway match with an 
 actress from Goodman's Fields. The old gentleman could 
 devise no more judicious mode of wreaking vengeance on 
 his undutiful boy than by marrying the cook. The cook 
 gave birth to a son named Joseph, who succeeded to all the 
 lands of the family, while James was cut off with a shilling. 
 The favorite son, howqyer, was so extravagant that he soon 
 became as poor as his disinherited brother. Both were 
 forced to earn their bread by their labor. Joseph turned 
 dancing-master, and settled in Norfolk. James struck off 
 the Mac from the beginning of his name, and set up as a 
 
Madame D'Arhlay. 119 
 
 portrait-painter at Chester. Here he had a son named 
 Charles, well known as the author of the History of Music, 
 and as the father of two remarkable children, of a son dis- 
 tinguished by learning, and of a daughter still more honor- 
 ably distinguished by genius. 
 
 Cliarles early showed a taste for that art of which, at a 
 later period, he became the historian. He was apprenticed 
 to a celebrated musician in London, and applied himself to 
 study with vigor and success. He soon found a kind and 
 munificent patron in Fulk Greville, a high-born and high- 
 bred man, who seems to have had in large measure all the 
 accomplishments and all the follies, all the virtues and all 
 the vices, which, a hundred years ago, were considered as 
 making up the character of a fine gentleman. Under such 
 protection, the young artist had every prospect of a brilliant 
 career in the capital. But his health failed. It became 
 necessary for him to retreat from the smoke and river fog 
 of London to the pure air of the coast. He accepted the 
 place of organist at Lynn, and settled at that town with a 
 young lady who had recently become his wife. 
 
 At Lynn, in June 1752, Frances Burney was born. 
 Nothing in her childhood indicated that she would, while 
 still a young woman, have secured for herself an honorable 
 and permanent place among English writers. She was shy 
 and silent. Her brothers and sisters called her a dunce, and 
 not without some show of reason ; for at eight years old 
 she did not know her letters. 
 
 In 1760, Mr. Burney quitted Lynn for London, and took 
 a house in Poland Street, a situation which had been 
 fashionable in the reign of Queen Anne, but which, since 
 that time, had been deserted by most of its wealthy and 
 noble inhabitants. He afterward resided in St. Martin's 
 Street, on the south side of Leicester Square. His house 
 there is still well known, and will continue to be well known 
 as long as our island retains any trace of civilization ; for it 
 
120 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 was the dwelling of Newton, and the square turret which 
 distinguishes it from all the surrounding buildings was 
 Newton's observatory. 
 
 Mr. Burney at once obtained as many pupils of the most 
 respectable description as he had time to attend, and was 
 thus enabled to support his family, modestly indeed, and 
 frugally, but in comfort and independence. His professional 
 merit obtained for him the degree of Doctor of Music from 
 the University of Oxford; and his works on subjects con- 
 nected with his art gained for him a place, respectable, 
 though certainly not eminent, among men of letters. 
 
 The progress of the mind of Frances Burney, from her 
 ninth to her twenty-fifth year, well deserves to be recorded. 
 When her education had proceeded no farther than the 
 hornbook, she lost her mother, and thenceforth she educated 
 herself. Her father appears to have been as bad a father 
 as a very honest, affectionate, and sweet-tempered man can 
 well be. He loved his daughter dearly ; but it never seems 
 to have occurred to him that a parent has other duties to 
 perform to children than that of fondling them. It would 
 indeed have been impossible for him to superintend their 
 education himself. His professional engagements occuj^ied 
 him all day. At seven in the morning he began to attend 
 his pupils, and, when London was full, Was sometimes 
 employed in teaching till eleven at night. He Avas often 
 forced to carry in his pocket a tin box of sandwiches, and a 
 bottle of wine and water, on which he dined in a hacknej^- 
 coach, while hurrying from one scholar to another. Two 
 of his daughters he sent to a seminary at Paris ; but he 
 imagined that Frances would run some risk of being per- 
 verted from the Protestant faith if she were educated in a 
 Catholic country, and he therefore kept her at home. No 
 governess, no teacher of any art or of any language, was 
 provided for her. But one of her sisters showed her how 
 to write ; and, before she was fourteen, she began to find 
 l^leasure in reading. 
 
Madame B'Arhlay, 121 
 
 It was not, however, by reading that her intellect was 
 formed. Indeed, when her best novels were produced, her 
 knowledge of books was very small. When at the height 
 of her fame, she was unacquainted with the most celebrated 
 works of Voltaire and Moliere j and, what seems still more 
 extraordinary, had never heard or seen a line of Churchill, 
 who, when she was a girl, was the most popular of living 
 poets. It is particularly deserving of observation that she 
 appears to have been by no means a novel-reader. Her 
 father's library was large 5 and he had admitted i^ito it so 
 many books which rigid moralists generally exclude that he 
 felt uneasy, as he afterward owned, when Johnson began to 
 examine the shelves. But in the whole collection there 
 was only a single novel, Fielding's Amelia. 
 
 An education, however, which to most girls would have 
 been useless, but which suited Fanny's mind better than 
 elaborate culture, was in constant progress during her pas- 
 sage from childhood to womanhood. The great book of 
 human nature was turned over before her. Her father's 
 social position was very peculiar. He belonged in fortune 
 and station to the middle class. His daughters seem to 
 have been suffered to mix freely with those whom butlers 
 and waiting-maids call vulgar. We are told that they were 
 in the habit of playing with the children of a wig-maker 
 who lived in the adjoining house. Yet few nobles could 
 assemble, in the most stately mansions of Grosvenor Square 
 or St. James's Square, a society so various and so brilliant 
 as was sometimes to be found in Dr. Burney's cabin. His 
 mind, though not very powerful or capacious, was restlessly 
 active ; and, in the intervals of his professional pursuits, he 
 had contrived to lay up much miscellaneous information. 
 His attainments, the suavity of his temper, and the gentle 
 simplicity of his manners, had obtained for him ready 
 admission to the first literary circles. While he was still 
 at Lynn, he had won Johnson's heart by sounding with 
 
122 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 
 
 honest zeal the praises of the English Dictionary. In Lon- 
 don the two friends met frequently, and agreed most har- 
 moniously. One tie, indeed, was wanting to their mutual 
 attachment. Burney loved his own art passionately; and 
 Johnson just knew the bell of St. Clement's Church from 
 the organ. They had, however, many topics in common; 
 and on winter nights their conversations were sometimes 
 prolonged till the fire had gone out and the candles had 
 burned away to the wicks. Burney's admiration of the 
 powers which had produced Rasselas and The Rambler 
 bordered on idolatr}^ Johnson, on the other hand, conde- 
 scended to growl out that Burney was an honest fellow, a 
 man whom it was impossible not to like. 
 
 Garrick, too, was a frequent visitor in Poland Street and 
 St. Martin's Lane. That wonderful actor loved the society 
 of children, partly from good-nature, and partly from vanity. 
 The ecstasies of mirth and terror, which his gestures and 
 play of countenance never failed to produce in a nursery, 
 flattered him quite as much as the applause of mature 
 critics. He often exhibited all his powers of mimicry for 
 the amusement of the little Burneys, awed them by shud- 
 dering and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by 
 raving like a maniac in St. Luke's, and then at once became 
 an auctioneer, a chimney-sweeper, or an old woman, and 
 made them laugh till the tears ran down their cheeks. 
 
 But it would be tedious to recount the names of all the 
 men of letters and artists whom Frances Burney had an 
 opportunity of seeing and hearing. Colman, Twining, Har- 
 ris, Baretti, Hawkesworth, Reynolds, Barry, were among 
 those who occasionally surrounded the tea-table and supper- 
 tray at her father's modest dwelling. This was not all. The 
 distinction which Dr. Burney had acquired as a musician, 
 and as the historian of music, attra,cted to his house the 
 most eminent musical performers of that age. The greatest 
 Italian singers who visited England regarded him as the 
 
Madame D'Arhlay. 123 
 
 dispenser of fame in their art, and exerted themselves to 
 obtain his suffrage. Pachierotti became his intimate friend. 
 The rapacious Agujari, who sung for nobody else under fifty 
 pounds an air, sang her best for Dr. Burney without a fee : 
 and in the company of Dr. Burney even the haughty and 
 eccentric Gabrielli constrained herself to behave with civil- 
 ity. It was thus in his power to give, with scarcely any 
 expense, concerts equal to those of the aristocracy. On 
 such occasions the quiet street in which he lived was 
 blocked up by coroneted chariots, and his little drawing- 
 room was crowded with peers, peeresses, ministers, and 
 ambassadors. On one evening, of which we happen to have 
 a full account, there were present Lord Mulgrave, Lord 
 Bruce, Lord and Lady Edgecumbe, Lord Barrington from 
 the War-office, Lord Sandwich from the Admiralty, Lord 
 Ashburnham, with his gold key dangling from his pocket, 
 and the French ambassador, M. De Guignes, renowned for 
 his fine person and for his success in gallantry. But the 
 great show of the night was the Russian ambassador, Count 
 Orloff, whose gigantic figure was all in a blaze with jewels, 
 and in whose demeanor the untamed ferocity of the Scy- 
 thian might be discerned through a thin varnish of French 
 politeness. As he stalked about the small parlor, brushing 
 the ceiling with his toupee, the girls whispered to each 
 other, with mingled admiration and horror, that he had 
 borne the chief part in the revolution to which his august 
 mistress owed her throne ; and that his huge hands, now 
 glittering with diamond rings, had given the last squeeze to 
 the windpipe of her unfortunate husband. 
 
 With such illustrious guests as these were mingled all 
 the most remarkable specimens of the race of lions, a kind 
 of game which is hunted in London every spring with 
 more than Meltonian ardor and perseverance. Bruce, who 
 had washed down steaks cut from living oxen with water 
 from the fountains of the Nile, came to swagger and talk 
 
124 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 about his travels. Omai lisped broken English, and made 
 all the assembled musicians hold their ears by howling Ota- 
 heitan love-songs, such as those with which Oberea charmed 
 her Opano. 
 
 With the literary and fashionable society, which occasion- 
 ally met under Dr. Burney's roof, Frances can scarcely be 
 said to have mingled. She was not a musician, and could 
 therefore bear no part in the concerts. She was shy almost 
 to awkwardness, and scarcely ever joined in the conversa- 
 tion. The slightest remark from a stranger disconcerted 
 her ; and even the old friends of her father who tried to 
 draw her out could seldom extract more than a Yes or a No. 
 Her figure was small, her face not distinguished by beauty. 
 She was therefore suffered to withdraw quietly to the back- 
 ground, and, unobserved herself, to observe all that passed. 
 Her nearest relations were aware that she had good sense, 
 but seem not to have suspected that, under her demure and 
 bashful deportment, were concealed a fertile invention and 
 a keen sense of the ridiculous. She had not, it is true, an 
 eye for the fine shades of character ; but every marked 
 peculiarity instantly caught her notice, and remained en- 
 graven on her imagination. Thus, while still a girl, she 
 had laid up such a store of materials for fiction as few of 
 those who mix much in the world are able to accumulate 
 during a long life. She had watched and listened to people 
 of every class, from princes and great officers of State 
 down to artists living in garrets, and poets familiar with 
 subterranean cook-shops. Hundreds of remarkable persons 
 had passed in review before her, English, French, German, 
 Italian, lords and fiddlers, deans of cathedrals and managers 
 of theatres, travellers leading about newly caught savages, 
 and singing-women escorted by their husbands. 
 
 So strong was the impression made on the mind of Frances 
 by the society which she was in the habit of seeing and 
 hearing, that she began to write little fictitious narratives 
 
Madame D'Arblay. 125 
 
 as soon as she could use her pen with ease, which, as we 
 have said, was not very early. Her sisters were amused by 
 her stories ; but Dr. Burney knew nothing of their exist- 
 ence ; and in another quarter her literary propensities met 
 with serious discouragement. When she was fifteen, her 
 father took a second wife. The new Mrs. Burney soon 
 found out that her step-daughter was fond of scribbling, 
 and delivered several good-natured lectures on the subject. 
 The advice, no doubt, was well meant, and might have been 
 given by the most judicious friend; for at that time, from 
 causes to which we may hereafter advert, nothing could be 
 more disadvantageous to a young lady than to be known as 
 a novel-writer. Frances yielded, relinquished her favorite 
 pursuit, and made a bonfire of all her manuscripts. 
 
 She now hemmed and stitched from breakfast to dinner 
 with scrupulous regularity. But the dinners of that time 
 were early ; and the afternoon was her own. Though she 
 had given up novel-writing, she was still fond of using her 
 pen. She began to keep a diary, and she corresponded 
 largely with a person who seems to have had the chief 
 share in the formation of her mind. This was Samuel 
 Crisp, an old friend of her father. His name, well known, 
 near a century ago, in the most splendid circles of London, 
 has long been forgotten. His history is, however, so inter- 
 esting and instructive, that it tempts us to venture on a 
 digression. 
 
 Long before Frances Burney was born, Mr. Crisp had 
 made his entrance into the world, with every advantage. 
 He was well connected and well educated. His face and 
 figure were conspicuously handsome ; his manners were 
 polished ; his fortune was easy ; his character was without 
 stain ; he lived in the best society ; he had read much ; he 
 talked well; his taste in literature, music, painting, archi- 
 tecture, sculpture, was held in high esteem. Nothing that 
 the world can give seemed to be wanting to his happiness 
 
126 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 and respectability, except that he should understand the 
 limits of his powers, and should not throw away distinctions 
 which were within his reach in the pursuit of distinctions 
 which were unattainable. 
 
 " It is an uncontrolled truth," says Swift, " that no man 
 ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor 
 a good one who mistook them." Every day brings with it 
 fresh illustrations of this weight}^ s^yii^g ; but the best 
 commentary that we remember is the history of Samuel 
 Crisp. Men like him have their proper place, and it is a 
 most important one, in the Commonwealth of Letters. It 
 is by the judgment of such men that the rank of authors is 
 finally determined. It is neither to the multitude, nor to 
 the few who are gifted with great creative genius, that we 
 are to look for sound critical decisions. The multitude, 
 unacquainted with the best models, are captivated by what- 
 ever stuns and dazzles them. They deserted Mrs. Siddons 
 to run after Master Betty ; and they now prefer, we have 
 no doubt. Jack Sheppard to Van Artevelde. A man of 
 great original genius, on the other hand, a man who has 
 attained to mastery in some high walk of art, is by no 
 means to be implicitly trusted as a judge of the perform- 
 ances of others. The erroneous decisions pronounced by 
 such men are without number. It is commonly supposed 
 that jealous}^ makes them unjust. But a more creditable 
 exjDlanation may easily be found. The very excellence of 
 a work shows that some of the faculties of the author have 
 been developed at the expense of the rest ; for it is not 
 given to the human intellect to expand ttself widely in all 
 directions at once, and to be at the same time gigantic and 
 well-proportioned. Whoever becomes pre-eminent in any 
 art, nay, in any style of art, generally does so by devoting 
 himself with intense and exclusive enthusiasm to the pur- 
 suit of one kind of excellence. His perception of other 
 kinds of excellence is therefore too often impaired. Out of 
 
Madame I)\irhlay. 127 
 
 his own department he praises and blames at random, and 
 is far less to be trusted than the mere connoisseur, who pro- 
 duces nothing, and whose business is only to judge and 
 enjoy. One painter is distinguished by his exquisite finish- 
 ing. He toils day after day to bring the veins of a cabbage 
 leaf, the folds of a lace veil, the wrinkles of an old woman's 
 face, nearer and nearer to perfection. In the time which 
 he employs on a square foot of canvas, a master of a differ- 
 ent order covers the walls of a palace with gods burying 
 giants under mountains, or makes the cupola of a church 
 alive with seraphim and martyrs. The more fervent the 
 passion of each of these artists for his art, the higher the 
 merit of each in his own line, the more unlikely it is that 
 they will justly appreciate each other. Many persons who 
 never handled a pencil probably do far more justice to 
 Michael Angelo than would have been done by Gerard 
 Douw, and far more justice to Gerard Douw than would 
 have been done by Michael Angelo. 
 
 It is the same with literature. Thousands, who have no 
 spark of the genius of Dryden or Wordsworth, do to 
 Dryden the justice which has never been done by Words- 
 worth, and to Wordsworth the justice which, we suspect, 
 would never have been done by Dryden. Gray, Johnson, 
 Eichardson, Fielding, are all highly esteemed by the great 
 body of intelligent and well-informed men. But Gray 
 could see no merit in Rasselas ; and Johnson could see 
 no merit in The Bard. Fielding thought Eichardson a 
 solemn prig ; and Eichardson perpetually expressed con- 
 tempt and disgust for Fielding's lowness. 
 
 Mr. Crisp seems, as far as we can judge, to have been a 
 man eminently qualified for the useful office of a connois- 
 seur. His talents and knowledge fitted him to appreciate 
 justly almost every species of intellectual superiority. As 
 an adviser he was inestimable. Nay, he might probably 
 have held a respectable rank as a writer, if he would have 
 
128 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 confined himself to some department of literature in which 
 nothing more than sense, taste, and reading were required. 
 Unhappily he set his heart on being a great poet, wrote a 
 tragedy in five acts on the death of Virginia, and offered it 
 to Garrick, who was his personal friend. Garrick read, 
 shook his head, and expressed a doubt whether it would be 
 wise in Mr. Crisp to stake a reputation, which stood high, 
 on the success of such a piece. But the author, blinded 
 by ambition, set in motion a machinery such as none could 
 long resist. His intercessors were the most eloquent man 
 and the most lovely woman of that generation. Pitt was 
 induced to read Virginia, and to pronounce it excellent. 
 Lady Coventry, with fingers which might have furnished a 
 model to sculptors, forced the manuscript into the reluctant 
 hand of the manager; and, in the year 1754,, the play was 
 brought forward. 
 
 Nothing that skill or friendship could do was omitted. 
 Garrick wrote both prologue and epilogue. The zealous 
 friends of the author filled every box ; and, by their stren- 
 uous exertions, the life of the play was prolonged during ten 
 nights. But, though there was no clamorous reprobation, 
 it was universally felt that the attempt had failed. When 
 Virginia was printed, the public disappointment was even 
 greater than at the representation. The critics, the Monthly 
 Reviewers in particular, fell on plot, characters, and diction 
 without mercy, but, we fear, not without justice. We have 
 never met with a copy of the play ; but, if we may judge 
 from the scene which is extracted in the Gentleman's Maga- 
 zine, and which does not appear to have been malevolently 
 selected, we should say that nothing but the acting of Gar- 
 rick, and the partiality of the audience, could have saved so 
 feeble and unnatural a drama from instant damnation. 
 
 The ambition of the poet was still unsubdued. When 
 the London season closed, he applied himself vigorously to 
 the work of removing blemishes. He does not seem to have 
 
Madame D'Arhlay. 129 
 
 suspected, what we are strongly inclined to suspect, that 
 the whole piece was one blemish, and that the passages 
 which were meant to be fine were, in truth, bursts of that 
 tame extravagance into which writers fall when they set 
 themselves to be sublime and pathetic in spite of nature. 
 He omitted, added, retouched, and flattered himself with 
 hopes of a complete success in the following year ; but in 
 the following year Garrick showed no disposition to bring 
 the amended tragedy on the stage. Solicitation and remon- 
 strances were tried in vain. Lady Coventry, drooping 
 under that malady which seems ever to select what is 
 loveliest for its prey, could render no assistance. The 
 manager's language was civilly evasive, but his resolution 
 was inflexible. 
 
 Crisp had committed a great error, but he had escaped 
 with a very slight penance. His play had not been hooted 
 from the boards. It had, on the contrary, been better re- 
 ceived than many very estimable performances have been, 
 than Johnson's Irene, for example, or Goldsmith's Good- 
 natured Man. Had Crisp been wise, he would have thought 
 himself happy in having purchased self-knowledge so cheap. 
 He would have relinquished, without vain repinings, the 
 hope of poetical distinction, and would have turned to the 
 many sources of happiness which he still possessed. Had 
 he been, on the other hand, an unfeeling and unblushing 
 dunce, he would have gone on writing scores of bad trage- 
 dies, in defiance of censure and. derision. But he had too 
 much sense to risk a second defeat, yet too little sense to 
 bear his first defeat like a man. The fatal delusion that he 
 was a great dramatist had taken firm possession of his 
 mind. His failure he attributed to every cause except the 
 true one. He complained of the ill-will of Garrick, who 
 appears to have done for the play everything that ability 
 and zeal could do, and who, from selfish motives, would, of 
 course, have been well pleased if Virginia had been as sue- 
 
130 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 cessful as the Beggar's Oj)era. ISTay, Crisp complained of 
 the languor of the friends whose partiality had given him 
 three benefit nights to which he had no claim. He com- 
 plained of the injustice of the spectators, when, in truth, 
 he ought to have been grateful for their unexampled pa- 
 tience. He lost his temper and spirits, and became a cynic 
 and a hater of mankind. From London he retired to Hamp- 
 ton, and from Hampton to a solitary and long-deserted man- 
 sion, built on a common in one of the wildest tracts of Sur- 
 rey. No road, not even a sheep-walk, connected his lonely 
 dwelling with the abodes of men. The place of his retreat 
 was strictly concealed from his old associates. In the spring 
 he sometimes emerged, and was seen at exhibitions and con- 
 certs in London. But he soon disappeared, and hid him- 
 self, with no society but his books, in his dreary hermitage. 
 He survived his failure about thirty years. A ncAV genera- 
 tion sprung up around him. No memory of his bad verses 
 remained among men. His very name was forgotten. How 
 completely the world had lost sight of him will appear from 
 a single circumstance. We looked for him in a copious 
 Dictionary of Dramatic Authors, published while he w^as 
 still alive, and we found only that Mr. Henry Crisp, of the 
 Custom-house, had written a play called Virginia, acted in 
 1754. To the last, however, the unhappy man continued to 
 brood over the injustice of the manager and the pit, and tried 
 to convince himself and others that he had missed the high- 
 est literary honors onty because he had omitted some fine 
 passages in compliance with Garrick's judgment. Alas for 
 human nature, that the wounds of vanity should smart and 
 bleed so much longer than the wounds of affection ! Few 
 people, we believe, whose nearest friends and relations died 
 in 1754, had any acute feeling of the loss in 1782. Dear 
 sisters, and favorite daughters, and brides snatched away 
 before the honey-moon was passed, had been forgotten, or 
 were remembered only wdth a tranquil regret. But Samuel 
 
Madame D'Arhlay. 131 
 
 Crisp was still mourning for his tragedy, like Rachel weep- 
 ing for her children, and would not be comforted. " Never," 
 such was his language twenty-eight years after his disaster, 
 "never give up or alter a tittle unless it perfectly coincides 
 with your own inward feelings. I can say this to my sor- 
 row and my cost. But mum ! " Soon after these words 
 were written, his life, a life which might have been emi- 
 nently useful and happy, ended in the same gloom in which, 
 daring more than a quarter of a century, it had been passed. 
 We have thought it worth while to rescue from oblivion 
 this curious fragment of literary history. It seems to us at 
 once ludicrous, melancholy, and full of instruction. 
 
 Crisp was an old and very intimate friend of the Burneys. 
 To them alone was confided the name of the desolate old 
 hall in which he hid himself like a wild beast in a den. 
 For them were reserved such remains of his humanity as 
 had survived the failure of his play. Frances Burney he 
 regarded as his daughter. He called her his Fannikin ; 
 and she, in return, called him her dear Daddy. In truth, he 
 seems to have done much more than her real parents for the 
 development of her intellect ; for though he was a bad poet, 
 he was a scholar, a thinker, and an excellent counsellor. 
 He was particularly fond of the concerts in Poland Street. 
 They had, indeed, been commenced at his suggestion ; and 
 when he visited London, he constantly attended them. 
 But when he grew old, and when gout, brought on partly by 
 mental irritation, confined him to his retreat, he was desir- 
 ous of having a glimpse of that gay and brilliant world 
 from which he was exiled, and he pressed Fannikin to send 
 him full accounts of her father's evening parties. A few of 
 her letters to him have been published ; and it is impossible 
 to read them without discerning in them all the powers 
 which afterward produced Evelina and Cecilia, the quick- 
 ness in catching every odd peculiarity of character and 
 manner, the skill in grouping, the humor, often richly 
 comic, sometimes even farcical. 
 
132 Select Essays of Macaiday. 
 
 Fanny's propensity to novel-writing had, for a time, been 
 kept down. Tt now rose up stronger than ever. The heroes 
 and heroines of the tales which had perished in the flames 
 were still present to the eye of her mind. One favorite 
 story, in particular, haunted her imagination. It was 
 about a certain Caroline Evelyn, a beautiful damsel who 
 made an unfortunate love-match, and died, leaving an infant 
 daughter. Frances began to inmge to herself the various 
 scenes, tragic and comic, through which the poor motherless 
 girl, highly connected on one side, meanly connected on the 
 other, might have to pass. A crowd of unreal beings, good 
 and bad, grave and ludicrous, surrounded the pretty, timid 
 young orphan : a coarse sea-captain ; an ugly, insolent fop, 
 blazing in a superb court-dress ; another fop, as ugly and as 
 insolent, but lodged on Snow Hill, and tricked out in sec- 
 ond-hand finery for the Hampstead ball : an old woman, all 
 wrinkles and rouge, flirting her fan with the air of a miss 
 of seventeen, and screaming in a dialect made up of vulgar 
 French and vulgar English ; a poet lean and ragged, with a 
 broad Scotch accent. By degrees these shadows acquired 
 stronger and stronger consistence ; the impulse which 
 urged Frances to write became irresistible ; and the result 
 was the history of Evelina. 
 
 Then came, naturally enough, a wish, mingled with many 
 fears, to appear before the public; for, timid as Frances 
 was, and basliful, and altogether unaccustomed to hear her 
 own praises, it is clear that she wanted neither a strong 
 passion for distinction, nor a just confidence in her own 
 powers. Her scheme was to become, if possible, a candidate 
 for fame, without running any risk of disgrace. She had 
 not money to bear the expense of printing. It was, there- 
 fore, necessary that some bookseller should be induced to 
 take the risk ; and such a bookseller was not readily found. 
 Dodsley refused even to look at the manuscript unless he 
 were intrusted with the name of the author. A publisher 
 
Madame B'Arhlay, 133 
 
 in Fleet Street, named Lowndes, was more complaisant. 
 Some correspondence took place between this person and 
 Miss Bnrney, who took the name of Grafton, and desired 
 that the letters addressed to her might be left at the 
 Orange Coffee-house. But, before the bargain was finally 
 struck, Fanny thought it her duty to obtain her father's 
 consent. She told him that she had written a book, that 
 she wished to have his permission to publish it anony- 
 mously, but that she hoped that he would not insist upon 
 seeing it. What followed may serve to illustrate what we 
 meant when we said that Dr. Burney was as bad a father as 
 so good-hearted a man could possibly be. It never seems to 
 have crossed his mind that Fanny was about to take a step 
 on which the whole happiness of her life might depend, a 
 step which might raise her to an honorable eminence, or 
 cover her with ridicule and contempt. Several people had 
 already been trusted, and strict concealment was therefore 
 not to be expected. On so grave an occasion, it was surely 
 his duty to give his best counsel to his daughter, to win her 
 confidence, to prevent her from exposing herself if her book 
 were a bad one, and, if it were a good one, to see that the 
 terms which she made with the publisher were likely to be 
 beneficial to her. Instead of this, he only stared, burst out 
 a-laughing, kissed her, gave her leave to do as she liked, and 
 never even asked the name of her work. The contract with 
 Lowndes was speedily concluded. Twenty pounds were 
 given for the copyright, and were accepted by Fanny with 
 delight. Her father's inexcusable neglect of his duty hap- 
 pily caused her no worse evil than the loss of twelve or fif- 
 teen hundred pounds. 
 
 After many dela3^s Evelina appeared in January 1778. 
 Poor Fanny was sick with terror, and durst hardly stir out 
 of doors. Some days passed before anything was heard of 
 the book. It had, indeed, nothing but its own merits to 
 push it into public favor. Its author was unknown. The 
 
134 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 house by which it was published was not, we believe, held 
 in high estimation. No body of partisans had been engaged 
 to applaud. The better class of readers expected little from 
 a novel about a young lady's entrance into the world. 
 There was, indeed, at that time a disposition among the 
 most respectable people to condemn novels generally : nor 
 was this disposition by any means without excuse; for 
 works of that sort were then almost always silly, and very 
 frequently wicked. 
 
 Soon, however, the first faint accents of praise began to 
 be heard. The keepers of the circulating libraries reported 
 that everybody was asking for Evelina, and that some per- 
 son had guessed Anstey to be the author. Then came a 
 favorable notice in the London Review ; then another still 
 more favorable in the Monthly. And now the book found 
 its way to tables which had seldom been polluted by marble- 
 covered volumes. Scholars and statesmen, who contemptu- 
 ously abandoned the crowd of romances to Miss Lydia 
 Languish and Miss Sukey Saunter, were not ashamed to 
 own that they could not tear themselves away from Eve- 
 lina. Fine carriages and rich liveries, not often seen east 
 of Temple Bar, were attracted to the publisher's shop in 
 Fleet Street. Lowndes was daily questioned about the 
 author, but was himself as much in the dark as any of the 
 questioners. The mystery, however, could not remain a 
 mystery long. It was known to brothers and sisters, aunts 
 and cousins ; and they were far too proud and too happy to 
 be discreet. Dr. Burney wept over the book in rapture. 
 Daddy Crisp shook his fist at his Fannikin in affectionate 
 anger at not having been admitted to her confidence. The 
 truth was whispered to Mrs. Thrale ; and then it began to 
 spread fast. 
 
 The book had been admired while it was ascribed to men 
 of letters long conversant with the world, and accustomed 
 to composition. But when it was known that a reserved, 
 
■Madame D'Arhlay. 135 
 
 silent young woman had produced the best work of fiction 
 that had appeared since the death of Smollett, the acclama- 
 tions were redoubled. What she had done was, indeed, 
 extraordinary. But, as usual, various reports improved the 
 story till it became miraculous. Evelina, it was said, was 
 the work of a girl of seventeen. Incredible as this tale 
 was, it continued to be repeated down to our own time. 
 Frances was too honest to confirm it. Probably she was 
 too much a woman to contradict it ; and it was long before 
 any of her detractors thought of this mode of annoyance. 
 Yet there was no want of low minds and bad hearts in the 
 generation which witnessed her first appearance. There 
 was the envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot, the asp 
 George Steevens, and the polecat John Williams. It did 
 not, however, occur to them to search the parish register of 
 Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit a lady with 
 having concealed her age. That truly chivalrous exploit 
 was reserved for a bad writer of our own time, whose spite 
 she had provoked by not furnishing him with materials for 
 a worthless edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, some 
 sheets of which our readers have doubtless seen round par- 
 cels of better books. 
 
 But we must return to our story. The triumph was 
 complete. The timid and obscure girl found herself on the 
 highest pinnacle of fame. Great men, on whom she had 
 gazed at a distance with humble reverence, addressed her 
 with admiration, tempered by the tenderness due to her sex 
 and age. Burke, Windham, Gibbon, Reynolds, Sheridan, 
 were among her most ardent eulogists. Cumberland ac- 
 knowledged her merit, after his fashion, by biting his lips 
 and wriggling in his chair whenever her name was men- 
 tioned. But it was at Streatham that she tasted, in the 
 highest perfection, the sweets of flattery, mingled with the 
 sweets of friendship. Mrs. Thrale, then at the height of 
 prosperity and popularity, with gay spirits, quick wit, 
 
136 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 
 
 sliowy though superficial acquirements, pleasing though not 
 refined manners, a singularly amiable temper, and a loving 
 heart, felt toward Fanny as toward a younger sister. With 
 the Thrales Johnson was domesticated. He was an old 
 friend of Dr. Burney ; but he had probably taken little 
 notice of Dr. Burney's daughters, and Fann}^, we imagine, 
 had never in her life dared to speak to him, unless to ask 
 whether he wanted a nineteenth or a twentieth cuj) of tea. 
 He was charmed by her tale, and preferred it to the novels of 
 Fielding, to whom, indeed, he had always been grossly unjust. 
 He did not, indeed, carry his partiality so far as to place 
 Evelina by the side of Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison ; 
 3' et he said that his little favorite had done enough to have 
 made even Eichardson feel uneasy. With Johnson's cordial 
 approbation of the book was mingled a fondness, half gal- 
 lant, half paternal, for the writer ; and this fondness his age 
 and character entitled him to show without restraint. He 
 began by putting her hand to his lips. But he soon clasped 
 her in his huge arms, and implored her to be a good girl. 
 She was his pet, his dear love, his dear little Burney, his 
 little character-monger. At one time, he broke forth in 
 praise of the good taste of her caps. At another time he 
 insisted on teaching her Latin. That, with all his coarse- 
 ness and irritability, he was a man of sterling benevolence 
 has long been acknowledged. But how gentle and endear- 
 ing his deportment could be was not known till the Eecol- 
 lections of Madame D'Arblay were published. 
 
 We have mentioned a few of the most eminent of those 
 who paid their homage to the author of Evelina. The 
 crowd of inferior admirers would require a catalogue as long 
 as that in the second book of the Iliad. In that cata- 
 logue would be Mrs. Cholmondeley, the sayer of odd things; 
 and Seward, much given to yawning ; and Baretti, who 
 slew the man in the Haymarket ; and Paoli, talking broken 
 English ; and Langton, taller by the head than any other 
 
Madame D'Arhlay. 137 
 
 member of the club; and Lady Millar, who kept a vase 
 wherein fools were wont to put bad verses ; and Jerning- 
 ham, who wrote verses fit to be put into the vase of Lady 
 Millar ; and Dr. Franklin, not, as some have dreamed, the 
 great Pennsylvanian Dr. Franklin, who could not then have 
 -paid his respects to Miss Burney without much risk of 
 being hanged, drawn, and quartered, but Dr. Franklin the 
 less, 
 
 Afas 
 jxe'nav, ovTL t6(Xos ye ocros TeXa/xwi'ios A^as, 
 dXXd TToXv jxeiojv. 
 
 It would not have been surprising if such success had 
 turned even a strong head, and corrupted even a generous 
 and affectionate nature. But, in the Diary, we can find 
 no trace of any fooling inconsistent with a truly modest 
 and amiable disposition. There is, indeed, abundant proof 
 that Frances enjoyed with an intense, though a troubled 
 joy, the honors which her genius had won 5 but it is equally 
 clear that her happiness sprung from the happiness of her 
 father, her sister, and her dear Daddy Crisp. While flat- 
 tered by the great, the opulent, and the learned, while 
 followed along the Steyne at Brighton, and the Pantiles at 
 Tunbridge Wells, by the gaze of admiring crowds, her heart 
 seems to have been still with the little domestic circle in 
 St. Martin's Street. If she recorded with minute diligence 
 all the compliments, delicate and coarse, which she heard 
 wherever she turned, she recorded them for the eyes of two 
 or three persons who had loved her from infancy, who had 
 loved her in obscurity, and to whom her fame gave the 
 purest and most exquisite delight. Nothing can be more 
 unjust than to confound these outpourings of a kind heart, 
 sure of perfect sympathy, with the egotism of a blue-stock- 
 ing, who prates to all who come near her about her own 
 novel or her own volume of sonnets. 
 
 It was natural that the triumphant issue of Miss Burney's 
 
138 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 first venture should tempt her to try a second. Evelina, 
 though it had raised her fame, had added nothing to her 
 fortune. Some of her friends urged her to write for the 
 stage. Johnson promised to give her his advice as to the 
 composition. Murphy, who was supposed to understand 
 the temper of the pit as well as any man of his time, under- 
 took to instruct her as to stage effect. Sheridan declared 
 that he would accept a play from her without even reading 
 it. Thus encouraged, she wrote a comedy named The 
 Witlings. Fortunately it was never acted or printed. We 
 can, we think, easily perceive, from the little which is said 
 on the subject in the Diary, that The Witlings would 
 have been damned, and that Murphy and Sheridan thought 
 so, though they were too polite to say so. Happily Frances 
 had a friend who was not afraid to give her pain. Crisp, 
 wiser for her than he had been for himself, read the manu- 
 script in his lonely retreat, and manfully told her that she 
 had failed, that to remove blemishes here and there would 
 be useless, that the piece had abundance of wit, but no 
 interest, that it was bad as a whole, that it would remind 
 every reader of the Femmes Savantes, which, strange to say, 
 she had never read, and that she could not sustain so close 
 a comparison with Moliere. This opinion, in which Dr. 
 Burney concurred, was sent to Frances, in what she called 
 "a hissing, groaning, catcalling epistle.'- But she had too 
 much sense not to know that it was better to be hissed and 
 catcalled by her Daddy than by a whole sea of heads in the 
 pit of Drury Lane Theatre ; and she had too good a heart 
 not to be grateful for so rare an act of friendshi]^. She re- 
 turned an answer, which shows how well she deserved to 
 have a judicious, faithful, and affectionate adviser. "I 
 intend." she wrote, " to console myself for your censure by 
 this greatest proof I have ever received of the sincerity, 
 candor, and, let me add, esteem, of my dear Daddy. And 
 as I happen to love myself more than my play, this con- 
 
Madame D'ArUay. 139 
 
 solation is not a very trifling one. This, however, seriously 
 1 do believe, that when my two daddies put their heads to- 
 gether to concert that hissing, groaning, catcalling epistle 
 they sent me, they felt as sorry for poor little Miss Bayes 
 as she could possibly do for herself. You see I do not at- 
 tempt to repay your frankness with an air of pretended 
 carelessness. But, though somewhat disconcerted just now, 
 I will promise not to let my vexation live out another day. 
 Adieu, my dear Daddy : I won't be mortified, and I won't 
 be downed; but I will be proud to find I have, out of my 
 own family, as well as in it, a friend who loves me well 
 enough to speak plain truth to me." 
 
 Frances now turned from her dramatic schemes to an 
 undertaking far better suited to her talents. She deter- 
 mined to write a new tale, on a plan excellently contrived 
 for the display of the powers in which lier superiority to 
 other writers lay. It was, in truth, a grand and various 
 picture-gallery, which presented to the eye a long series of 
 men and women, each marked by some strong, peculiar 
 feature. There were avarice and prodigality, the pride of 
 blood and the pride of money, morbid restlessness and 
 morbid apathy, frivolous garrulity, supercilious silence, a 
 Democritus to laugh at everything, and a Heraclitus to 
 lament over everything. The work proceeded fast, and in 
 twelve months was completed. It wanted something of 
 the simplicity which had been among the most attractive 
 charms of Evelina ; but it furnished ample proof that the 
 four years which had elapsed since Evelina appeared had 
 not been unprofitably spent. Those who saw Cecilia 
 in manuscript pronounced it the best novel of the age. 
 Mrs. Thrale laughed and wept over it. Crisp was even 
 vehement in applause, and offered to insure the rapid and 
 complete success of the book for half a crown. What Miss 
 Burney received for the copyright is not mentioned in the 
 Diary ; but we have observed several expressions from 
 
140 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 which we infer that the sum was considerable. That the 
 sale would be great nobody could doubt ; and Frances now 
 had shrewd and experienced advisers, who would not suffer 
 her to wrong herself. We have been told that the pub- 
 lishers gave her two thousand pounds, and we have no 
 doubt that they might have given a still larger sum without 
 being losers. 
 
 Cecilia was published in the summer of 1782. The 
 curiosity of the town was intense. We have been informed 
 by persons who remember those days that no romance of 
 Sir Walter Scott was more impatiently awaited, or more 
 eagerly snatched from the counters of the booksellers. 
 High as public expectation was, it was amply satisfied ; 
 and Cecilia was placed, by general acclamation, among the 
 classical novels of England. 
 
 Miss Burney was now thirty. Her youth had been singu- 
 larly prosperous ; but clouds soon began to gather over that 
 clear and radiant dawn. Events deeply painful to a heart 
 so kind as that of Frances followed each other in rapid 
 succession. She was first called upon to attend the death- 
 bed of her best friend, Samuel Crisp. When she returned 
 to St. Martin's Street, after performing this melancholy 
 duty, she was appalled by hearing that Johnson had been 
 struck with paralysis ; and, not many mouths later, she 
 parted from him for the last time with solemn tenderness. 
 He wished to look on her once more ; and on the day before 
 his death she long remained in tears on the stairs leading 
 to his bedroom, in the hope that she might be called in to 
 receive his blessing. He was then sinking fast, and though 
 he sent her an affectionate message, was unable to see her. 
 But this was not the worst. There are separations far 
 more cruel than those which are made by death. She 
 might weep with proud affection for Crisp and Johnson. 
 She had to blush as well as to weep for Mrs. Thrale. 
 
 Life, however, still smiled upon Frances. Domestic hap- 
 
p 
 
 Madame D'Arhlay. 141 
 
 piness, friendship, independencej leisure, letters, all these 
 things were hers ; and she flung them all away. 
 
 Among the distinguished persons to whom she had been 
 introduced, none appears to have stood higher in her regard 
 than Mrs. Delany. This lady was an interesting and vener- 
 able relic of a past age. She was the niece of George 
 Granville, Lord Lansdowne, who, in his youth, exchanged 
 verses and compliments with Edmund Waller, and who was 
 among the first to applaud the opening genius of Pope. 
 She had married Dr. Delany, a man known to his contem- 
 poraries as a profound scholar and an eloquent preacher, 
 but remembered in our time chiefly as one of that small 
 circle in which the fierce spirit of Swift, tortured by disap- 
 pointed ambition, by remorse, and by the approaches of 
 madness, sought for amusement and repose. Dr. Delany 
 had long been dead. His widow, nobly descended, emi- 
 nently accomplished, and retaining, in spite of the infirmi- 
 ties of advanced age, the vigor of her faculties and the 
 serenity of her temper, enjoyed and deserved the favor of 
 the royal family. She had a pension of three hundred a 
 year ; and a house at AVindsor, belonging to the crown, had 
 been fitted up for her accommodation. At this house the 
 king and queen sometimes called, and found a very natural 
 pleasure in thus catching an occasional glimpse of the pri- 
 vate life of English families. 
 
 In December 1785, Miss Burney was on a visit to Mrs. 
 Delany at Windsor. The dinner was over. The old lady 
 was taking a nap. Her grandniece, a little girl of seven, 
 was playing at some Christmas game with the visitors, 
 when the door opened, and a stout gentleman entered un- 
 announced, with a star on his breast, and " What ? what ? 
 what ? " in his mouth. A cry of " The King ! " was set up. 
 A general scampering followed. Miss Burney owns that 
 she could not have been more terrified if she had seen a 
 ghost. But Mrs. Delany came forward to pay her duty to 
 
142 Select Essai/s of Maeaulay. 
 
 lier royal friend, and the disturbance was quieted. Frances 
 was then presented, and underwent a long examination and 
 cross-examination about all that she had written and all 
 that she meant to write. The queen soon made her appear- 
 ance, and his Majesty repeated, for the benefit of his con- 
 sort, the information which he had extracted from Miss 
 Burney. The good-nature of the royal pair might have 
 softened even the authors of the Probationary Odes, and 
 could not but be delightful to a young lady who had been 
 brought up a Tory. In a few days the visit was repeated. 
 Miss Burney was more at ease than before. His Majesty, 
 instead of seeking for information, condescended to impart 
 it, and passed sentence on many great writers, English and 
 foreign. Voltaire he pronounced a monster. Rousseau he 
 liked rather better. " But was there ever," he cried, " such 
 stuff as great part of Shakspeare ? Only one must not say 
 so. But what think you ? What ? Is there not sad stuff ? 
 What? What?" 
 
 The next day Frances enjoyed the privilege of listening 
 to some equally valuable criticism uttered by the queen 
 touching Goethe and Klopstock, and might have learned an 
 important lesson of economy from the mode in which her 
 Majesty's library had been formed. " I picked the book up 
 on a stall," said the queen. " Oh, it is amazing what good 
 books there are on stalls ! " Mrs. Delany, who seems to 
 have understood from these words that her Majesty was in 
 the habit of exploring the booths of Moorfields and Holy- 
 well Street in person, could not suppress an exclamation of 
 surprise. " Why," said the queen, " I don't jjick them up 
 myself. But I have a servant very clever ; and, if they are 
 not to be had at the booksellers, they are not for me more 
 than for another." Miss Burney describes this conversa- 
 tion as delightful ; and, indeed, we cannot wonder that, 
 with her literary tastes, she should be delighted at hearing 
 in how magnificent a manner the greatest lady in the land 
 encouraged literature. 
 
Madame D'Arblay. 143 
 
 The truth is, that Frances was fascinated by the conde- 
 scending kindness of the two great personages to whom she 
 had been presented. Her father was even more infatuated 
 than herself. The result was a step of which we cannot 
 think with patience, but which, recorded as it is, with all 
 its consequences, in these volumes, deserves at least this 
 praise, that it has furnished a most impressive warning. 
 
 A German lady of the name of Haggerdorn, one of the 
 keepers of the Queen's robes, retired about this time ; and 
 her Majesty offered the vacant post to Miss Burney. When 
 we consider that Miss Burney w^as decidedly the most pop- 
 ular writer of fictitious narrative then living ; that compe- 
 tence, if not opulence, was within her reach ; and that she 
 was more than usually happy in her domestic circle, and 
 when we compare the sacrifice which she was invited to 
 make with the remuneration which was held out to her, we 
 are divided between laughter and indignation. 
 
 What was demanded of her was that she should consent 
 to be almost as completely separated from her family and 
 friends as if she had gone to Calcutta, and almost as close a 
 prisoner as if she had been sent to jail for a libel ; that 
 with talents which had instructed and delighted the highest 
 living minds, she should now be employed only in mixing 
 snuff and sticking pins ; that she should be summoned by 
 a waiting-woman's bell to a waiting-woman's duties ; that 
 she should pass her whole life under the restraints of a 
 paltry etiquette, should sometimes fast till she was ready 
 to swoon wdth hunger, should sometimes stand till her 
 knees gave way with fatigue ; that she should not dare to 
 speak or move without considering how her mistress might 
 like her words and gestures. Instead of those distinguished 
 men and women, the flower of all political parties, with 
 whom she had been in the habit of mixing on terms of 
 equal friendship, she was to have for her perpetual com- 
 panion the chief keeper of the robes, an old hag from 
 
144 Select Essays of Macaulay, 
 
 Germany, of mean understanding, of insolent manners, and 
 of temper which, naturally savage, had now been exasper- 
 ated by disease. Now and then, indeed, poor Prances might 
 console herself for the loss of Burke's and Windham's soci- 
 ety, by joining in the " celestial colloquy sublime " of his 
 majesty's equerries. 
 
 And what was the consideration for which she was to sell 
 herself to this slavery ? A peerage in her own right ? A 
 pension of two thousand a year for life ? A seventy-four 
 for her brother in the navy ? A deanery for her brother in 
 the Church ? Not so. The price at which she was valued 
 was her board, her lodging, the attendance of a man-servant, 
 and two hundred pounds a year ! 
 
 The man who, even when hard pressed by hunger, sells 
 his birthright for a mess of pottage, is unwise. But what 
 shall we say of him who parts with his birthright, and does 
 not get even the pottage in return ? It is not necessary to 
 inquire whether opulence be an adequate compensation for 
 the sacrifice of bodily and mental freedom ; for Frances 
 Burney i)aid for leave to be a prisoner and a menial. It 
 was evidently understood as one of the terms of her engage- 
 ment, that, while she was a member of the royal household, 
 she was not to appear before the public as an author ; and, 
 even had there been no such understanding, her avocations 
 w^ere such as left her no leisure for any considerable intel- 
 lectual effort. That her place was incompatible Avith her 
 literary pursuits was, indeed, frankly acknowledged by the 
 king when she resigned. " She has given up," he said, 
 " five years of her pen." That during those five years she 
 might, without painful exertion, without any exertion that 
 would not have been a pleasure, have earned enough to buy 
 an annuity for life much larger than the precarious salary 
 which she received at court, is quite certain. The same 
 income, too, which in St. Martin's Street would have 
 afforded her every comfort, must have been found scanty 
 
Madame B'Arhlay. 145 
 
 at St. James's. We cannot venture to speak confidently of 
 the price of millinery and jewellery ; but we are greatly 
 deceived if a lady, who had to attend Queen Charlotte on 
 many public occasions, could possibly save a farthing out 
 of a salary of two hundred a year. The principle of the 
 arrangement was, in short, simply this, that Frances Burney 
 should become a slave, and should be rewarded by being 
 made a beggar. 
 
 With what object their majesties brought her to their 
 palace, we must own ourselves unable to conceive. Their 
 object could not be to encourage her literary exertions ; for 
 they took her from a situation in which it was almost cer- 
 tain that she would write, and put her into a situation in 
 which it was impossible for her to write. Their object 
 could not be to promote her pecuniary interest ; for they 
 took her from a situation where she was likely to become 
 rich, and put her into a situation in which she could not but 
 continue poor. Their object could not be to obtain an 
 eminently useful waiting-maid ; for it is clear that, though 
 Miss Burney was the only woman of her time who could 
 have described the death of Harrel, thousands might have 
 been found more expert in tying ribbons and filling snuff- 
 boxes. To grant her a pension on the civil list would have 
 been an act of judicious liberality, honorable to the court. 
 If this was impracticable, the next best thing was to let her 
 alone. That the king and queen meant her nothing but 
 kindness, we do not in the least doubt. But their kindness 
 was the kindness of persons raised high above the mass of 
 mankind, accustomed to be addressed with profound def- 
 erence, accustomed to see all who approached them mortified 
 by their coldness and elated by their smiles. They fancied 
 that to be noticed by them, to be near them, to serve them, 
 was in itself a kind of happiness ; and that Frances Burney 
 ought to be full of gratitude for being permitted to pur- 
 chase, by the surrender of health, wealth, freedom, domestic 
 
146 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 affection, and literary fame, the privilege of standing behind 
 a royal chair and holding a pair of royal gloves. 
 
 And who can blame them ? Who can wonder that princes 
 should be under such a delusion, when they are encouraged 
 in it by the very persons who suffer from it most cruelly ? 
 Was it to be expected that George the Third and Queen 
 Charlotte should understand the interest of Frances Burney 
 better, or promote it with more zeal than herself and her 
 father? No deception was practised. The conditions of 
 the house of bondage were set forth with all simplicity. 
 The hook was presented without a bait ; the net was spread 
 in sight of the bird; and the naked hook was greedily swal- 
 lowed, and the silly bird made haste to entangle herself in 
 the net. 
 
 It is not strange, indeed, that an invitation to court should 
 have caused a fluttering in the bosom of an inexperienced 
 young woman. But it was the duty of the parent to watch 
 over the child, and to show her that on one side were only 
 infantine vanities and chimerical hopes, on the other liberty, 
 peace of mind, affluence, social enjoyments, honorable dis- 
 tinctions. Strange to say, the only hesitation was on the 
 part of Frances. Dr. Burney was transported out of him- 
 self with delight. Not such are the raptures of a Circassian 
 father who has sold his pretty daughter well to a Turkish 
 slave-merchant. Yet Dr. Burney was an amiable man, a 
 man of good abilities, a man who had seen much of the 
 world. But he seems to have thought that going to court 
 was like going to heaven ; that to see princes and princesses 
 was a kind of beatific vision; that the exquisite felicity 
 enjoyed by royal persons was not confined to themselves, 
 but was communicated by some mysterious efflux or reflec- 
 tion to all who were suffered to stand at their toilets or to 
 bear their trains. He overruled all his daughter's objec- 
 tions, and himself escorted her to her prison. The door 
 closed. The key was turned. She, looking back with ten- 
 
Madame B'Arhlay. 147 
 
 der regret on all that she had left, and forward with anxiety 
 and terror to the new life on which she was entering, was 
 unable to speak or stand ; and he went on his way home- 
 ward rejoicing in her marvellous x^rosperity. 
 
 And now began a slavery of five years, of five years taken 
 from the best part of life, and wasted in menial drudgery or 
 in recreations duller than even menial drudgery, under gall- 
 ing restraints and amidst unfriendly or uninteresting com- 
 panions. The history of an ordinary day was this. Miss 
 Burney had to rise and dress herself early, that she miglit 
 be ready to answer the royal bell, which rang at half after 
 seven. Till about eight she attended in the queen's dress- 
 ing-room, and had the honor of lacing her august mistress's 
 stays, and of putting on the hoop, gown, and neck-hand- 
 kerchief. The morning was chiefly spent in rummaging 
 drawers and laying fine clothes in their proper places. 
 Then the queen was to be powdered and dressed for the 
 day. Twice a week her majesty's hair was curled and 
 craped ; and this operation ap]iears to have added a full 
 hour to the business of the toilet. It was generally three 
 before Miss Burney was at liberty. Then she had two 
 hours at her own disposal. To these hours we owe great 
 part of her Diary. At five she had to attend her col- 
 league, Madame Schwellenberg, a hateful old toad-eater, as 
 illiterate as a chamber-maid, as proud as a whole German 
 chapter, rude, peevish, unable to bear solitude, unable to 
 conduct herself with common decency in society. With 
 this delightful associate Frances Burney had to dine and 
 pass the evening. The pair generally remained together 
 from five to eleven, and often had no other company the 
 whole time, except during the hour from eight to nine, when 
 the equerries came to tea. If poor Frances attempted to 
 escape to her own apartment, and to forget her wretchedness 
 over a book, the execrable old woman railed and stormed, 
 and complained that she was neglected. Yet, when Frances 
 
148 Select Esmys of Macaulay. 
 
 stayed, she was constantly assailed with insolent reproaches. 
 Literary fame was, in the eyes of the German crone, a 
 blemish, a proof that the person who enjoyed it was meanly 
 born, and out of the pale of good society. All her scanty 
 stock of broken English was employed to express the con- 
 tempt with which she regarded the author of Evelina and 
 Cecilia. Frances detested cards, and indeed knew nothing 
 about them ; but she soon found that the least miserable 
 way of passing an evening with Madame Schwellenberg was 
 at the card-table, and consented, with patient sadness, to 
 give hours, which might have called forth the laughter and 
 the tears of many generations, to the king of clubs and the 
 knave of spades. Between eleven and twelve the bell rang 
 again. Miss Burney had to pass twenty minutes or half an 
 hour in undressing the queen, and was then at liberty to 
 retire, and to dream that she was chatting with her brother 
 by the quiet hearth in St. Martin's Street, that she was the 
 centre of an admiring assemblage at Mrs. Crewe's, that 
 Burke was calling her the first woman of the age, or that 
 Dilly was giving her a check for two thousand guineas. 
 
 Men, we must suppose, are less patient than women ; for 
 we are utterly at a loss to conceive how any human being 
 could endure such a life, while there remained a vacant gar- 
 ret in Grub Street, a crossing in want of a sweeper, a parish 
 workhouse, or a parish vault. And it was for such a life 
 that Frances Burney had given up liberty and peaee, a happy 
 fireside, attached friends, a wide and splendid circle of 
 acquaintance, intellectual pursuits in which she was quali- 
 fied to excel, and the sure hope of what to her would have 
 been afiiuence. 
 
 There is nothing new under the sun. The last great mas- 
 ter of Attic eloquence and Attic wit has left us a forcible 
 and touching description of the misery of a man of letters, 
 who, lured by hopes similar to those of Frances, had entered 
 the service of one of the magnates of Rome. ^' Unhappy 
 
I 
 
 Madame D'Arblay. 14*J 
 
 that 1 am ! " cries the victim of his own chiklish ambition : 
 •• would nothing content me but that I must leave mine old 
 pursuits and mine old companions, and the life which was 
 without care, and the sleep which had no limit save mine 
 own pleasure, and the walks which I was free to take where 
 I listed, and fling myself into the lowest pit of a dungeon 
 like this ? And, God ! for what ? Was there no way by 
 which I might have enjoyed in freedom comforts even 
 greater than those which I now earn by servitude ? Like 
 a lion which has been made so tame that men may lead him 
 about by a thread, I am dragged up and down, with broken 
 and humbled spirit, at the heels of those to whom, in mine 
 own domain, I should have been an object of awe and won- 
 der. And, worst of all, I feel that here I gain no credit, 
 that here I give no pleasure. The talents and accomplish- 
 ments, which charmed a far different circle, are here out of 
 place. I am rude in the arts of palaces, and can ill bear 
 comparison with those whose calling, from their youth up, 
 has been to flatter and to sue. Have I, then, two lives, 
 that, after I have wasted one in the service of others, there 
 may yet remain to me a second, which I may live unto 
 myself ? " 
 
 Now and then, indeed, events occurred which disturbed 
 the wretched monotony of Frances Burney's life. The court 
 moved from Kew to AVindsor, and from Windsor back to 
 Kew. One dull colonel went out of waiting, and another 
 dull colonel came into waiting. An impertinent servant 
 made a blunder about tea, and caused a misunderstanding 
 between the gentlemen and the ladies. A half-witted French 
 Protestant minister talked oddly about conjugal fidelity. 
 An unlucky member of the household mentioned a passage 
 in the jNIorning Herald reflecting on the queen ; and forth- 
 with Madame Schwellenberg began to storm in bad English, 
 and told him that he made her " what you call perspire ! " 
 
 A more important occurrence was the king's visit to 
 
150 Select Essays of Macaulay, 
 
 Oxford. Miss Burney went in the royal train to Nuneham, 
 was utterly neglected there in the crowd, and could with dif- 
 ficulty find a servant to show the way to her bedroom, or a 
 hairdresser to arrange her curls. She had the honor of 
 entering Oxford in the last of a long string of carriages 
 which formed the royal x^rocession, of walking after the 
 queen all day through refectories and chapels, and of stand- 
 ing, half dead with fatigue and hunger, while her august 
 mistress was seated at an excellent cold collation. At Mag- 
 dalene College, Frances was left for a moment in a parlor, 
 where she sank down on a chair. A good-natured equerry 
 saw that she was exhausted, and shared with her some 
 apricots and bread, which he had wisely put into his pockets. 
 At that moment the door opened ; the queen entered ; the 
 wearied attendants sprang up; the bread and fruit were 
 hastily concealed. " I found," says poor Miss Burney, 
 "that our appetites were to be supposed annihilated, at the 
 same moment that our strength was to be invincible." 
 
 Yet Oxford, seen even under such disadvantages, "re- 
 vived in her," to use her own words, "a consciousness to 
 X:)leasure which had long lain nearly dormant." She forgot, 
 during one moment, that she was a waiting-maid, and felt 
 as a woman of true genius might be expected to feel amidst 
 venerable remains of antiquity, beautiful works of art, vast 
 repositories of knowledge, and memorials of the illustrious 
 dead. Had she still been what she was before her father 
 induced her to take the most fatal step of her life, we can 
 easily imagine what pleasure she would have derived from 
 a visit to the noblest of English cities. She might, indeed, 
 have been forced to travel in a hack chaise, and might not 
 have worn so fine a gown of Chambery gauze as that in 
 which she tottered after the royal party; but with what 
 delight would she have then paced the cloisters of Magda- 
 lene, compared the antique gloom of Merton with the 
 splendor of Christ Church, and looked down from the dome 
 
Madame D'Arhlay. 151 
 
 of the Radcliffe Library on the magnificent sea of turrets 
 and battlements below ! How gladly would learned men 
 have laid aside for a few hours Pindar's Odes and Aris- 
 totle's Ethics, to escort the author of Cecilia from college 
 to college ! What neat little banquets would she have 
 found set out in their monastic cells ! With what eager- 
 ness would pictures, medals, and illuminated missals have 
 been brought forth from the most mysterious cabinets for 
 her amusement ! How much she would have had to hear 
 and to tell about Johnson as she walked over Pembroke, 
 and about Reynolds in the antechapel of New College! But 
 these indulgences were not for one who had sold herself 
 into bondage. 
 
 About eighteen months after the visit to Oxford, another 
 event diversified the wearisome life which Frances led at 
 court. Warren Hastings was brought to the bar of the 
 House of Peers. The queen and princesses were present 
 when the trial commenced, and Miss Burney was permitted 
 to attend. During the subsequent proceedings a day rule 
 for the same purpose was occasionally granted to her ; for 
 the queen took the strongest interest in the trial, and, 
 when she could not go herself to Westminster Hall, liked 
 to receive a report of what had passed from a person who 
 had singular powers of observation, and who was, more- 
 over, acquainted with some of the most distinguished man- 
 agers. The portion of the Diary which relates to this 
 celebrated proceeding is lively and picturesque. Yet we 
 read it, we own, witlf pain ; for it seems to us to prove that 
 the fine understanding of Frances Burney was beginning to 
 feel the pernicious influence of a mode of life which is as 
 incompatible with health of mind as the air of the Pontine 
 marshes with health of body. From the first day she 
 espouses the cause of Hastings with a presumptuous vehe- 
 mence and acrimony quite inconsistent with the modesty 
 and suavity of her ordinary deportment. She shudders 
 
152 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 when Burke enters the Hall at the head of the Commons. 
 She pronounces him the cruel oppressor of an innocent 
 man. She is at a loss to conceive how the managers can 
 look at the defendant and not blush. Windham comes to 
 her from the managers' box, to offer her refreshment. 
 "But," says she, "I could not break bread with him." 
 Then, again, she exclaims, " Ah, Mr. Windham, how came 
 you ever engaged in so cruel, so unjust a cause ? " " Mr. 
 Burke saw me," she says, " and he bowed with the most 
 marked civility of manner." This, be it observed, was just 
 after his opening speech, a speech which had produced a 
 mighty effect, and which, certainly, no other orator that 
 ever lived could have made. "My courtesy," she continues, 
 " was the most ungrateful, distant, and cold ; I could not do 
 otherwise ; so hurt I felt to see him the head of such a 
 cause." Now, not only had Burke treated her with con- 
 stant kindness, but the very last act which he performed 
 on the day on which he Avas turned out of the Pay-oflice, 
 about four years before this trial, was to make Dr. Burney 
 organist of Chelsea Hospital. When, at the Westminster 
 election. Dr. Burney was divided between his gratitude for 
 this favor and his Tory opinions, Burke in the noblest man- 
 ner disclaimed all right to exact a sacrifice of principle. 
 " You have little or no obligations to me," he wrote ; "but 
 if you had as many as I really wish it were in my power, 
 as it is certainly in my desire, to lay on you, I hope you do 
 not think me capable of conferring them, in order to sub- 
 ject your mind or your affairs to a painful and mischievous 
 servitude." Was this a man to be uncivilly treated by a 
 daughter of Dr. Burney, because she chose to differ from 
 him respecting a vast and most complicated question, 
 which he had studied deeply during many years, and which 
 she had never studied at all ? It is clear, from Miss Bur- 
 ney's own narrative, that when she behaved so unkindly to 
 Mr. Burke, she did not even know of what Hastings was 
 
Madame D'Arlknj. 153 
 
 accused. One thing, however, she must have known, that 
 Burke had been able to convince a House of Commons, bit- 
 terly prejudiced against himself, that the charges were well 
 founded, and that Pitt and Dundas had concurred with Fox 
 and Sheridan in supporting the impeachment. Surely a 
 woman of far inferior abilities to Miss Burney might have 
 been expected to see that this never could have happened 
 unless there had been a strong case against the late gover- 
 nor-general. And there was, as all reasonable men now 
 admit, a strong case against him. That there were great 
 public services to be set off against his great crimes is per- 
 fectly true. But his services and his crimes were equally 
 unknown to the lady who so confidently asserted his per- 
 fect innocence, and imputed to his accusers, that is to say, 
 to all the greatest men of all parties in the State, not 
 merely error, but gross injustice and barbarity. 
 
 She had, it is true, occasionally seen Mr. Hastings, and 
 had found his manners and conversation agreeable. But 
 surely she could not be so weak as to infer, from the gentle- 
 ness of his deportment in a drawing-room, that he was 
 incapable of committing a great State crime, under the 
 influence of ambition and revenge. A silly miss, fresh 
 from a boarding-school, might fall into such a mistake 5 but 
 the woman who had drawn the character of Mr. Monckton 
 should have known better. 
 
 The truth is that she had been too long at court. She 
 was sinking into a slavery worse than that of the body. 
 The iron was beginning to enter into the soul. Accustomed 
 during many months to watch the eye of a mistress, to re- 
 ceive with boundless gratitude the slightest mark of royal 
 condescension, to feel wretched at every symptom of royal 
 displeasure, to associate only with spirits long tamed and 
 broken in, she was degenerating into something fit for her 
 place. Queen Charlotte was a violent partisan of Hastings. 
 The kino:, it was well known, took the same side. To the 
 
154 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 king and queen all the members of the household looked 
 submissively for guidance. The impeachment, therefore, 
 was an atrocious persecution ; the managers were rascals ; 
 the defendant was the most deserving and the worst used 
 man in the kingdom. This was the cant of the whole pal- 
 ace, from goldstick in waiting, down to the table-deckers 
 and yeomen of the silver scullery ; and Miss Burney canted 
 like the rest, though in livelier tones, and with less bitter 
 feelings. 
 
 The account which she has given of the king's illness 
 contains much excellent narrative and description, and will, 
 we think, be as much valued by the historians of a future 
 age as any equal portion of Pepys's or Evelyn's Diaries. 
 That account shows also how affectionate and compassionate 
 her nature was. But it shows also, we must say, that her 
 way of life was rapidly impairing her powers of reasoning 
 and her sense of justice. We do not mean to discuss, in 
 this place, the question, whether the views of Mr. Pitt or 
 those of Mr. Fox respecting the regency were the more cor- 
 rect. It is, indeed, quite needless to discuss that question ; 
 for the censure of Miss Burney falls alike on Pitt and Fox, 
 on majority and minority. She is angry with the House of 
 Commons for presuming to inquire whether the king w\as 
 mad or not, and whether there was a chance of his recover- 
 ing his senses. "A melancholy day," she writes; "news 
 bad both at home and abroad. At home the dear, unhappy 
 king still worse ; abroad new examinations voted of the 
 physicians. Good heavens ! what an insult does this seem 
 from Parliamentary power, to investigate and bring forth to 
 the world every circumstance of such a malady as is ever 
 held sacred to secrecy in the most private families ! How 
 indignant we all feel here no words can say." It is proper 
 to observe that the motion which roused all this indignation 
 at Kew was made by Mr. Pitt himself. We see, tlierefore, 
 that the loyalty of the minister, who was then generally re- 
 
Madame Jj'Arhlay. 155 
 
 garded as the most heroic champion of his prince, was luke- 
 warm indeed when compared with the boiling zeal which 
 hlled the pages of the back-stairs and the women of the 
 bedchamber. Of the Regency Bill, Pitt's own bill, Miss 
 Burney speaks with horror. " I shuddered," she says, " to 
 hear it named." And again, "Oh, how dreadful will be 
 the day when that unhappy bill takes place ! I cannot 
 approve the plan of it." The truth is that Mr. Pitt, 
 whether a wise and upright statesman or not, was a states- 
 man; and, whatever motives he might have for impos- 
 ing restrictions on the regent, felt that in some way or 
 other there must be some provision made for the execution 
 of some part of the kingly office, or that no government 
 would be left in the country. But this Avas a matter of 
 which the household never thought. It never occurred, as 
 far as we can see, to the exons and keepers of the robes, 
 that it was necessary that there should be somewhere or 
 other a power in the state to pass laws, to preserve order, 
 to pardon criminals, to fill up offices, to negotiate with for- 
 eign governments, to command the army and navy. Nay, 
 these enlightened politicians, and Miss Burney among the 
 rest, seem to have thought that any person who considered 
 the subject with reference to the public interest, showed 
 himself to be a bad-hearted man. Nobody wonders at this 
 in a gentleman-usher; but it is melancholy to see genius 
 sinking into such debasement. 
 
 During more than two years after the king's recovery, 
 Frances dragged on a miserable existence at the palace. 
 The consolations which had for a time mitigated the wretch- 
 edness of servitude were one by one withdrawn. Mrs. 
 Delany, whose society had been a great resource when the 
 court was at Windsor, was now dead. One of the gentle- 
 men of the royal establishment, Colonel Digby, appears to 
 have been a man of sense, of taste, of some reading, and of 
 prepossessing manners. Agreeable associates were scarce 
 
156 Select Essays of 3Iacaulay. 
 
 in the prison-house, and he and Miss Burney therefore nat- 
 urally became attached to each other. She owns that she 
 valued him as a friend ; and it would not have been strange 
 if his attentions had led her to entertain for him a senti- 
 ment warmer than friendship. He quitted the court, and 
 married in a way which astonished Miss Burney greatly, 
 and which evidently wounded her feelings, and lowered him 
 in her esteem. The palace grew duller and duller; Madame 
 Schwellenberg became more and more savage and insolent ; 
 and now the health of poor Frances began to give way ; and 
 all who saw her pale face, her emaciated figure, and her feeble 
 walk, predicted that her sufferings would soon be over. 
 
 Frances uniformly speaks of her royal mistress and of 
 the princesses with respect and affection. The princesses 
 seem to have well deserved all the praise which is bestowed 
 on them in the Diary. They were, we doubt not, most 
 amiable women. But "the sweet queen," as she is con- 
 stantly called in these volumes, is not by any means an 
 object of admiration to us. She had undoubtedly sense 
 enough to know what kind of deportment suited her high 
 station, and self-command enough to maintain that deport- 
 ment invariably. She was, in her intercourse with Miss 
 Burney, generally gracious and affable, sometimes, when 
 displeased, cold and reserved, but never, under any circum- 
 stances, rude, peevish, or violent. She knew how to dis- 
 pense, gracefully and skilfully, those little civilities which, 
 when paid by a sovereign, are prized at many times their 
 intrinsic value: how to pay a compliment; how to lend a 
 book ; how to ask after a relation. But she seems to have 
 been utterly regardless of the comfort, the health, the life 
 of her attendants, when her own convenience was concerned. 
 Weak, feverish, hardly able to stand, Frances had still to 
 rise before seven, in order to dress the sweet queen, and to 
 sit up till midnight, in order to undress the sweet queen. 
 The indisposition of the handmaid could not, and did not. 
 
Madame jyArhlay, 157 
 
 escape the notice of her royal mistress. But the established 
 doctrine of the court was, that all sickness was to be con- 
 sidered as a pretense until it proved fatal. The only waj^ 
 in which the invalid could clear herself from the suspicion 
 of malingering, as it is called in the army, was to go on lac- 
 ing and unlacing, till she fell down dead at the royal feet. 
 ^^ This," Miss Burney wrote, when she was suffering cruelly 
 from sickness, watcliing, and labor, " is by no means from 
 hardness of heart ; far otherwise. There is no hardness of 
 heart in any one of them ; but it is prejudice, and want of 
 personal experience." 
 
 Many strangers sympathized with the bodily and mental 
 sufferings of this distinguished woman. All who saw her 
 saw that her frame was sinking, that her heart was break- 
 ing. The last, it should seem, to observe the change was 
 her father. At length, in spite of himself, his eyes were 
 opened. In May 1790, his daughter had an interview of 
 three hours with him, the only long interview which they 
 had had since he took her to Windsor in 1786. She told 
 him that she was miserable, that she was worn with atten- 
 dance and want of sleep, that she had no comfort in life, 
 nothing to love, nothing to hope, that her family and friends 
 were to her as though they were not, and were remembered 
 by her as men remember the dead. From daybreak to mid- 
 night the same killing labor, the same recreations, more 
 hateful than labor itself, followed each other without 
 variety, without any interval of liberty and repose. 
 
 The doctor was greatly dejected by this news ; but was 
 too good-natured a man not to say that, if slie wished to 
 resign, his house and arms were open to her. Still, how- 
 ever, he could not bear to remove her from the court. His 
 veneration for royalty amounted in truth to idolatry. It 
 can be compared only to the grovelling superstition of those 
 Syrian devotees who made their children pass through the 
 fire to Moloch. When he induced his daughter to accept 
 
158 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 
 
 the place of keeper of the robes, he entertained, as she tells 
 us, a hope that some worldly advantage or other, not set 
 down in the contract of service, would be the result of her 
 connection with the court. What advantage he expected 
 we do not know, nor did he probably know himself. But, 
 whatever he expected, he certainly got nothing. Miss Bur- 
 ney had been hired for board, lodging, and two hundred a 
 year. Board, lodging, and two hundred a year she had duly 
 received. We have looked carefully through the Diary, in 
 the hope of finding some trace of those extraordinary bene- 
 factions on which the doctor reckoned. But we can discover 
 only a promise, never performed, of a gown ; and for this 
 promise Miss Burney was expected to return thanks, such 
 as might have suited the beggar with whom St. Martin, in 
 the legend, divided his cloak. The experience of four years 
 was, however, insufficient to dispel the illusion which had 
 taken possession of the doctor's mind; and, between the 
 dear father and the sweet queen, there seemed to be little 
 doubt that some day or other Frances woul^ drop down a 
 corpse. Six months had elapsed since the interview between 
 the parent and the daughter. The resignation was not sent 
 in. The sufferer grew worse and worse. She took bark; 
 but it soon ceased to produce a beneficial effect. She was 
 stimulated with wine ; she was soothed with opium ; but in 
 vain. Her breath began to fail. The whisper that she was 
 in a decline sjiread through the court. The pains in her 
 side became so severe that she was forced to crawl from the 
 card-table of the old fury to whom she was tethered, three 
 or four times in an evening, for the purpose of taking harts- 
 horn. Had she been a negro slave, a humane planter would 
 have excused her from work. But her majesty showed no 
 mercy. Thrice a day the accursed bell still rang; the queen 
 was still to be dressed for the morning at seven, and to be 
 dressed for the day at noon, and to be undressed at midnight. 
 But there had arisen, in literary and fashionable society, 
 
Madame D' Arhlay. 159 
 
 a general feeling of compassion for Miss Burney, and of 
 indignation against both her father and the queen. "Ts 
 it possible," said a great French lady to the doctor, " that 
 your daughter is in a situation where she is never allowed 
 a holiday ? " Horace Walpole wrote to Frances, to express 
 his sympathy. Boswell, boiling over with good-natured 
 rage, almost forced an entrance into the palace to see her. 
 "My dear ma'am, why do you stay ? It won't do, ma'am ; 
 you must resign. We can put up with it no longer. 
 Some very violent measures, I assure you, will be taken. 
 We shall address Dr. Burney in a body." Burke and Rey- 
 nolds, though less noisy, were zealous in the same cause. 
 Windham spoke to Dr. Burney, but found him still irreso- 
 lute. " I will set the club upon him," cried Windham ; 
 " Miss Burney has some very true admirers there, and I am 
 sure they will eagerly assist." Indeed, the Burney family 
 seem to have been apprehensive that some public affront 
 such as the doctor's unpardonable foil}', to use the mildest 
 term, had richly deserved, would be put upon him. The 
 medical men spoke out, and plainly told him that his 
 daughter must resign or die. 
 
 At last paternal affection, medical authority, and the 
 voice of all London, crying shame, triumphed over Dr. 
 Burney's love of courts. He determined that Frances should 
 write a letter of resignation. It was with difficulty that, 
 though her life was at stake, she mustered spirit to put the 
 paper into the queen's hands. " I could not," so runs the 
 Diary, " summon courage to present my memorial : my 
 heart always failed me from seeing the queen's entire free- 
 dom from such an expectation. For though I was frequently 
 so ill in her presence that I could hardly stand, I saw she 
 concluded me, while life remained, inevitably hers." 
 
 At last, with a trembling hand, the paper was delivered. 
 Then came the storm. Juno, as in the TEneid, delegated 
 the work of vengeance to Alecto. The queen was calm and 
 
160 Select Essay h of Macaulay. 
 
 gentle ; but Madame Scliwellenberg raved like a maniac in 
 the incurable ward of Bedlam ! Such insolence ! Such in- 
 gratitude ! Such folly ! Would Miss Burney bring utter 
 destruction on herself and her family ? Would she throw 
 away the inestimable advantage of royal protection ? Would 
 she part with privileges which, once relinquished, could 
 never be regained ? It was idle to talk of health and life. 
 If people could not live in the palace, the best thing that 
 could befall them was to die in it. The resignation was 
 not accepted. The language of the medical men became 
 stronger and stronger. Dr. Burney's parental fears were 
 fully roused ; and he explicitly declared, in a letter meant 
 to be shown to the queen, that his daughter must retire. 
 The Scliwellenberg raged like a wild-cat. " A scene almost 
 horrible ensued," says Miss Burney. " She was too much 
 enraged for disguise, and uttered the most furious expres- 
 sions of indignant contempt at our proceedings. I am sure 
 she would gladly have confined us both in the Bastile, had 
 England such a misery, as a fit place to bring us to our- 
 selves, from a daring so outrageous against imperial wishes," 
 This passage deserves notice, as being the only one in the 
 Diary, so far as we have observed, which shows Miss Bur- 
 ney to have been aware that she was a native of a free 
 country, that she could not be pressed for a waiting-maid 
 against her will, and that she had just as good a right to 
 live, if she chose, in St. Martin's Street, as Queen Charlotte 
 had to live at St. James's. 
 
 The queen promised that, after the next birthday. Miss 
 Burney should be set at liberty. But the promise was ill 
 kept, and her majesty showed displeasure at being reminded 
 of it. At length, Frances was informed that in a fortnight 
 her attendance should cease. " I heard this," she says, 
 "with a fearful presentiment I should surely never go 
 through another fortnight in so weak, and languishing, and 
 painful a state of health. ... As the time of separation 
 
Madame D'Arhlay. 161 
 
 approached, the queen's cordiality rather diminished, and 
 traces of internal displeasure appeared sometimes, arising 
 from an opinion I ought rather to have struggled on, live 
 or die, than to quit her. Yet I am sure she saw how poor 
 was my own chance, except by a change in the mode of life, 
 and at least ceased to wonder, though she could not ap- 
 prove." Sweet queen ! What noble candor, to admit that 
 the undutifulness of people who did not think the honor of 
 adjusting her tuckers worth the sacrifice of their own lives, 
 was, though highly criminal, not altogether unnatural ! 
 
 We perfectly understand her majesty's contempt for the 
 lives of others where her own pleasure was concerned. 
 But what pleasure she can have found in having Miss 
 Burney about her, it is not so easy to comprehend. That 
 Miss Burney was an eminently skilful keeper of the robes 
 is not very probable. Few women, indeed, had paid less 
 attention to dress. Now and then, in the course of five 
 years, she had been asked to read aloud or to write a copy 
 of verses. But better readers might easily have been found; 
 and her verses were worse than even the poet laureate's 
 birthday odes. Perhaps that economy which was among 
 her majesty's most conspicuous virtues had something to 
 do with her conduct on this occasion. Miss Burney had 
 never hinted that she expected a retiring pension, and, in- 
 deed, would gladly have given the little that she had for 
 freedom. But her majesty knew what the public thought, 
 and what became her own dignity. She could not, for very 
 shame, suffer a woman of distinguished genius, who had 
 quitted a lucrative career to wait on her, who had served 
 her faithfully for a pittance during five years, and whose 
 constitution had been impaired by labor and watching, to 
 leave the court without some mark of royal liberality. 
 George the Third, who, on all occasions where Miss Burney 
 was concerned, seems to have behaved like an honest, good- 
 natured gentleman, felt this, and said plainly that she was 
 
162 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 entitled to a provision. At length, in return for all the 
 misery which she had undergone, and for the health whicli 
 she had sacrificed, an annuity of one hundred pounds was 
 granted to her, dependent on the queen's pleasure. 
 
 Then the prison was opened, and Frances was free once 
 more. Johnson, as Burke observed, might have added a 
 striking page to his poem on the Vanity of Human AVishes, 
 if he had lived to see his little Burney as she went into the 
 palace and as she came out of it. 
 
 The pleasures, so long untasted, of liberty, of friendship, 
 of domestic affection, were almost too acute for her shat- 
 tered frame. But happy days and tranquil nights soon 
 restored the health which the queen's toilet and Madame 
 Schwellenberg's card-table had impaired. Kind and anxious 
 faces surrounded the invalid. Conversation the most pol- 
 ished and brilliant revived her spirits. Travelling was 
 recommended to her; and she rambled by easy journeys 
 from cathedral to cathedral, and from watering-place to 
 watering-place. She crossed the jSTew Forest, and visited 
 Stonehenge and Wilton, the cliffs of Lyme, and the beauti- 
 ful valley of Sidmouth. Thence she journeyed by Powder- 
 ham Castle, and by the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey to Bath, 
 and from Bath, when the winter was approaching, returned, 
 well and cheerful, to London. There she visited her old 
 dungeon, and found her successor already far on the way to 
 the grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till mid- 
 night, with a sprained ankle and a nervous fever. 
 
 At this time England swarmed with French exiles, driven 
 from their country b}^ the Kevolution. Such a woman as 
 Miss Burney could not long resist the fascination of that 
 remarkable society. She had lived with Johnson and Wind- 
 ham, with Mrs. Montague and Mrs. Thrale. Yet she was 
 forced to own that she had never heard conversation before. 
 The most animated eloquence, the keenest observation, the 
 most sparkling wit, the most courtly grace, were united to 
 
Bladame B'Arhlay. 163 
 
 charm her. For Madame de Stael was there, and M. de 
 Talleyrand. There, ^o, was M. de Narbonne, a noble rep- 
 resentative of French aristocracy ; and with M. de Narbonne 
 was his friend and follower General D'Arblay, an honorable 
 and amiable man, with a handsome person, frank, soldier- 
 like manners, and some taste for letters. 
 
 The prejudices which Frances had conceived against the 
 constitutional royalists of France rapidly vanished. She 
 listened with rapture to Talleyrand and Madame de Stael, 
 joined with M. D'Arblay in execrating the Jacobins and in 
 weeping for the unhappy Bourbons, took French lessons 
 from him, fell in love with him, and married him on no 
 better provision than a precarious annuity of one hundred 
 pounds. 
 
 Here the Diar}^ stops for the present. We will, therefore, 
 bring our narrative to a speedy close, by rapidly recounting 
 the most important events which we know to have befallen 
 Madame D'Arblay during the latter part of her life. 
 
 M. D'Arblay's fortune had perished in the general wreck 
 of the French Revolution ; and in a foreign country his 
 talents, whatever they may have been, could scarcely make 
 him rich. The task of providing for the family devolved 
 on his wife. In the year 1796, she published by subscrip- 
 tion her third novel, Camilla. It was impatiently exx)ected 
 by the public ; and the sum which she obtained for it was, 
 we believe, greater than had ever at that time been received 
 for a novel. We have heard that she cleared more than 
 three thousand guineas. But we give this merely as a 
 rumor. Camilla, however, never attained popularity like 
 that which Evelina and Cecilia had enjoyed ; and it must 
 be allowed that there was a perceptible falling off, not 
 indeed in humor or in power of portraying character, but in 
 grace and in purity of style. 
 
 We have heard that, about this time, a tragedy by Madame 
 D'Arblay was performed without success. We do not know 
 
164 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 whether it was ever printed ; nor indeed have we had time 
 to make any researches into its histoi*^^ or merits. 
 
 During the short truce which followed the treaty of 
 Amiens, M. D'Arblay visited France. Lauriston and La 
 Fayette represented his claims to the French Government, 
 and obtained a promise that he should be reinstated in his 
 military rank. M. D'Arblay, however, insisted that he 
 should never be required to serve against the countrymen 
 of his wife. The First Consul, of course, would not hear of 
 such a condition, and ordered the general's commission to 
 be instantly revoked. 
 
 Madame D'Arblay joined her husband at Paris a short 
 time before the war of 1803 broke out, and remained in 
 France ten years, cut off from almost all intercourse with 
 the land of her birth. At length, when Napoleon was on 
 his march to Moscow, she with great difficulty obtained 
 from his ministers permission to visit her own countr}'^, in 
 company with her son, who was a native of England. She 
 returned in time to receive the last blessing of her father, 
 who died in his eighty-seventh year. In 1814, she pub- 
 lished her last novel. The Wanderer, a book which no judi- 
 cious friend to her memory will attempt to draw from the 
 oblivion into which it has justly fallen. 
 
 We now turn from the life of Madame D'Arblay to her 
 writings. There can, we apprehend, be little difference of 
 opinion as to the nature of her merit, whatever differences 
 may exist as to its degree. She was emphatically what 
 Johnson called her, a character-monger. It was in the 
 exhibition of human passions and whims that her strength 
 lay ; and in this department of art she had, we think, very 
 distinguished skill. 
 
 But, in order that we may, according to our duty as kings 
 at arms, versed in the laws of literary precedence, marshal 
 her to the exact seat to which she is entitled, we must carry 
 our examination somewhat farther. 
 
3Iadame D'Arhlay. 165 
 
 There is, in one respect, a remarkable analogy between 
 the faces and the minds of men. No two faces are alike ; 
 and yet very few faces deviate very widely from the com- 
 mon standard. Among the eighteen hundred thousand 
 human beings who inhabit London, there is not one who 
 could be taken by his acquaintance for another; yet we 
 may walk from Paddington to Mile End without seeing one 
 person in whom any feature is so overcharged that we turn 
 round to stare at it. An infinite number of varieties lies 
 between limits which are not very far asunder. The speci- 
 mens which pass those limits on either side form a very 
 small minority. 
 
 It is the same with the characters of men. Here too 
 the variety passes all enumeration. But the cases in which 
 the deviation from the common standard is striking and 
 grotesque are very few. In one mind avarice predominates ; 
 in another, pride ; in a third, love of pleasure ; just as in 
 one countenance the nose is the most marked feature, while 
 in others the chief expression lies in the brow or in the 
 lines of the mouth. But there are very few countenances 
 in which nose, brow, and mouth do not contribute, though 
 in unequal degrees, to the general effect ; and so there are 
 very few characters in which one overgrown propensity 
 makes all others utterly insignificant. 
 
 It is evident that a portrait-painter, who was able only 
 to represent faces and figures such as those which we pay 
 money to see at fairs, would not, however spirited his exe- 
 cution might be, take rank among the highest artists. He 
 must always be placed below those who have skill to seize 
 peculiarities which do not amount to deformity. The 
 slighter those peculiarities, the greater is the merit of the 
 limner who can catch them and transfer them to his can- 
 vas. To paint Daniel Lambert or the living skeleton, the 
 pig-faced lady or the Siamese twins, so that nobody can 
 mistake them, is an exploit within the reach of a sign- 
 
166 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 painter. A third-rate artist might give us the squint of 
 Wilkes, and the depressed nose and protuberant cheeks of 
 Gibbon. It wouhl require a much higher degree of skill to 
 paint two such men as Mr. Canning and Sir Thomas Law- 
 rence, so that nobody who had ever seen them could for 
 a moment hesitate to assign each picture to its original. 
 Here the mere caricaturist would be quite at fault. He 
 would find in neither face anything on which he could lay 
 hold for the purpose of making a distinction. Two ample 
 bald foreheads, two regular profiles, two full faces of the 
 same oval form, would baffle his art; and he would be 
 reduced to the miserable shift of writing their names at 
 the foot of his picture. Yet there was a great difference ; 
 and a i)erson who had seen them once would no more have 
 mistaken one of them for the other than he would have 
 mistaken Mr. Pitt for Mr. Fox. But the difference lay in 
 delicate lineaments and shades, reserved for pencils of a 
 rare order. 
 
 This distinction runs through all the imitative arts. 
 Foote's mimicry was exquisitely ludicrous, but it was all 
 caricature. He could take off only some strange pecu- 
 liarity, a stammer or a lisp, a Northumbrian burr or an 
 Irish brogue, a stoop or a shuffle. " If a man," said John- 
 son, " hops on one leg, Foote can hop on one leg." Garrick, 
 on the other hand, could seize those differences of manner 
 and pronunciation, which, though highly characteristic, are 
 yet too slight to be described. Foote, we have no doubt, 
 could have made the Haymarket Theatre shake with laugh- 
 ter by imitating a conversation between a Scotchman and 
 a Somersetshireman. But Garrick could have imitated a 
 conversation between two fashionable men, both models of 
 the best breeding, Lord Chesterfield, for example, and Lord 
 Albemarle ; so that no person could doubt which was which, 
 although no person could say that, in any point, either Lord 
 Chesterfield or Lord Albemarle spoke or moved otherwise 
 than in conformity with the usages of the best society. 
 
Madame D'Arhlay. 167 
 
 The same distinction is found in the drama and in ficti- 
 tious narrative. Highest among those who have exhibited 
 human nature by means of dialogue stands Shakspeare. 
 His variety is like the variety of nature, endless diversity, 
 scarcely any monstrosity. The characters of which he has 
 given us an impression, as vivid as that which we receive 
 from the characters of our own associates, are to be reck- 
 oned by scores. Yet in all these scores hardly one charac- 
 ter is to be found which deviates widely from the common 
 standard, and which we should call very eccentric if we met 
 it in real life. The silly notion that every man has one 
 ruling passion, and that this clue, once known, unravels all 
 the mysteries of his conduct finds no countenance in the 
 plays of Shakspeare. There man appears as he is, made 
 up of a crowd of passions, which contend for the mastery 
 over him, and govern him in turn. What is Hamlet's rul- 
 ing passion ? Or Othello's ? Or Harry the Fifth's ? Or 
 Wolsey's ? Or Lear's ? Or Shylock's ? Or Benedick's ? 
 Or Macbeth's ? Or that of Cassius ? Or that of Falcon- 
 bridge ? But we might go on forever. Take a single ex- 
 ample, Shylock. Is he so eager for money as to be 
 indifferent to revenge ? Or so eager for revenge as to be 
 indifferent to jnoney ? Or so bent ou both together as to 
 be indifferent to the honor of his nation and the law of 
 Moses ? All his propensities are mingled with each other, 
 so that, in trying to apportion to each its proper part, we 
 find the same difficulty which constantly meets us in real 
 life. A superficial critic may say that hatred is Shylock's 
 ruling passion. But how many passions have amalgamated 
 to form that hatred ? It is partly the result of wounded 
 pride : Antonio has called him dog. It is partly the result 
 of covetousness : Antonio has hindered him of half a mil- 
 lion ; and, when Antonio is gone, there will be no limit to 
 the gains of usury. It is partly the result of national and 
 religious feeling: Antonio has spit on the Jewish gaberdine; 
 
168 Select Essays of Maeaiday. 
 
 and the oath of revenge has been sworn by the Jewish 
 Sabbath. We might go through all the characters which 
 we have mentioned, and through fifty more in the same 
 way ; for it is the constant manner of Shakspeare to repre- 
 sent the human mind as lying, not under the absolute 
 dominion of one despotic propensity, but under a mixed gov- 
 ernment, in which a hundred powers balance each other. 
 Admirable as he was in all parts of his art, we most admire 
 him for this, that while he has left us a greater number of 
 striking portraits than all other dramatists put together, he 
 has scarcely left us a single caricature. 
 
 Shakspeare has had neither equal nor second. But 
 among the writers who, in the point which we have noticed, 
 have approached nearest to the manner of the great master, 
 we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, a woman of 
 whom England is justly proud. She has given us a multi- 
 tude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace, all 
 such as we meet every day. Yet they are all as perfectly 
 discriminated from each other as if they were the most 
 eccentric of human beings. There are, for example, four 
 clergymen, none of whom we should be surprised to find in 
 any parsonage in the kingdom, Mr. Edward Eerrars, Mr. 
 Henry Tilney, Mr. Edmund Bertram, and Mr. Elton. 
 They are all specimens of the upper part of the middle 
 class. They have all been liberally educated. They all 
 lie under the restraints of the same sacred profession. 
 They are all young. They are all in love. Not one of 
 them has any hobby-horse, to use the phrase of Sterne. 
 Not one has a ruling passion, such as we read of in Pope. 
 Who would not have expected them to be insipid likenesses 
 of each other ? No such thing. Harpagon is not more 
 unlike to Jourdain, Joseph Surface is not more unlike to 
 Sir Lucius O'Trigger, than every one of Miss Austen's 
 young divines to all his reverend brethren. And almost all 
 this is done by touches so delicate that they elude analysis, 
 
 i 
 
Madame B'Arhlay. 169 
 
 that tliey defy the powers of description, and that we know 
 them to exist only by the general effect to which they have 
 contributed. 
 
 A line must be drawn, we conceive, between artists of this 
 class, and those poets and novelists whose skill lies in the 
 exhibiting of what Ben Jonson called humors. The words 
 of Ben are so much to the purpose that we will quote them : 
 
 *' When some one peculiar quality 
 Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw 
 All his affects, his spirits, and his powers, 
 In their confluxions all to run one way. 
 This may be truly said to be a humor." 
 
 There are undoubtedly persons, in whom humors such as 
 Ben describes have attained a complete ascendency. The 
 avarice of Elwes, the insane desire of Sir Egerton Brydges 
 for a barony to which he had no more right than to the 
 crown of Spain, the malevolence which long meditation on 
 imaginary wrongs generated in the gloomy mind of Belli ng- 
 ham, are instances. The feeling which animated Clarkson 
 and other virtuous men against the slave-trade and slavery 
 is an instance of a more honorable kind. 
 
 Seeing that such humors exist, we cannot deny that they 
 are proper subjects for the imitations of art. But we 
 conceive that the imitation of such humors, however skilful 
 and amusing, is not an achievement of the highest order ; 
 and, as such humors are rare in real life, they ought, we 
 conceive, to be sparingly introduced into works which pro- 
 fess to be pictures of real life. Nevertheless, a writer may 
 show so much genius in the exhibition of these humors as 
 to be fairly entitled to a distinguished and permanent rank 
 ^mong classics. The chief seats of all, however, the places 
 on the dais and under the canopy, are reserved for the few 
 who have excelled in the difficult art of portraying charac- 
 ters in which no single feature is extravagantly overcharged. 
 
 If we have expounded the law soundly, we can have no 
 
170 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 difficulty in applying it to the pcarticular case before us. 
 Madame D'Arblay has left us scarcely anything but humors. 
 Almost every one of her men and women has some one pro- 
 pensity developed to a morbid degree. In Cecilia, for 
 example, Mr. Delvile never opens his lips without some 
 allusion to his own birth and station ; or Mr. Briggs, with- 
 out some allusion to the hoarding of money ; or Mr. Hobson, 
 without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance of 
 a purse-proud upstart; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering 
 some sneaking remark for the purpose of currying favor 
 with his customers ; or Mr. Meadows, without expressing 
 apathy and weariness of life ; or Mr. Albany, without de- 
 claiming about the vices of the rich and the misery of the 
 poor ; or Mrs. Belfield, without some indelicate eulogy on 
 her son ; or Lady Margaret, without indicating jealousy of 
 her husband. Morrice is all skipping, officious imperti- 
 nence, Mr. Gosport all sarcasm, Lady Honoria all lively 
 prattle. Miss Larolles all silly prattle. If ever Madame 
 D'Arblay aimed at more, we do not think that she succeeded 
 well. 
 
 We are, therefore, forced to refuse to Madame D'Arblay a 
 place in the highest rank of art ; but we cannot deny that, 
 in the rank to which she belonged, she had few equals, and 
 scarcely any superior. The variety of humors which is to 
 be found in her novels is immense ; and though the talk of 
 each person separately is monotonous, the general effect is 
 not monotony, but a very lively and agreeable diversity. 
 Her plots are rudely constructed and improbable, if we 
 consider them in themselves. But they are admirably 
 framed for the purpose of exhibiting striking groups of 
 eccentric characters, each governed by his own peculiar 
 whim, each talking his own peculiar jargon, and each bring- 
 ing out by opposition the oddities of all the rest. AVe will 
 give one example out of many which occur to us. All 
 probability is violated in order to bring Mr. Delvile, Mr. 
 
Madame D'Arhlay. 171 
 
 Briggs, Mr. Hobson, and Mr. Albany into a room together. 
 But when we have them there, we soon forget probability in 
 the exquisitely ludicrous effect which is produced by the 
 conflict of four old fools, each raging with a monomania of 
 his own, each talking a dialect of his own, and each inflam- 
 ing all the others anew every time he opens his mouth. 
 
 Madame D'Arblay was most successful in comedy, and, 
 indeed, in comedy which bordered on farce. But we are in- 
 clined to infer from some passages, both in Cecilia and in 
 Camilla, that she might have attained equal distinction in 
 the pathetic. We have formed this judgment, less from 
 those ambitious scenes of distress which lie near the catas- 
 trophe of each of those novels, than from some exquisite 
 strokes of natural tenderness which take us here and there 
 by surprise. We would mention as examples, Mrs. Hill's 
 account of her little boy's death in Cecilia, and the parting 
 of Sir Hugh Tyrold and Camilla, when the honest baronet 
 thinks himself dying. 
 
 It is melancholy to think that the whole fame of Madame 
 D'Arblay rests on what she did during the earlier half of 
 her life, and that everything which she published during 
 the forty-three years which preceded her death lowered her 
 reputation. Yet we have no reason to think that at the 
 time when her faculties ought to have been in their matur- 
 ity they were smitten with any blight. In The Wanderer 
 we catch now and then a gleam of her genius. Even in the 
 Memoirs of her father there is no trace of dotage. They 
 are very bad ; but they are so, as it seems to us, not from 
 a decay of power, but from a total j^erversion of j^ower. 
 
 The truth is, that Madame D'Arblay's style underwent a 
 gradual and most pernicious change, a change which, in 
 degree at least, we believe to be unexampled in literary 
 history, and of which it may be useful to trace the progress. 
 
 When she wrote her letters to Mr. Crisp, her early 
 journals, and her first novel, her style was not indeed bril- 
 
172 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 liant or energetic ; but it was easy, clear, and free from all 
 offensive faults. When she wrote Cecilia she aimed higher. 
 She had then lived much in a circle of which Johnson was 
 the centre ; and she was herself one of his most submissive 
 worshippers. It seems never to have crossed her mind that 
 the style even of his best writings was by no means fault- 
 less, and that even had it been faultless, it might not be 
 wise in her to imitate it. Phraseology which is proper in 
 a disquisition on the Unities, or in a preface to a Diction- 
 ary, may be quite out of place in a tale of fashionable life. 
 Old gentlemen do not criticise the reigning modes, nor do 
 young gentlemen make love, with the balanced epithets 
 and sonorous cadences which, on occasions of great dignity, 
 a skilful writer may use with happy effect. 
 
 In an evil hour the author of Evelina took The Rambler 
 for her model. This would not have been wise even if she 
 could have imitated her pattern as well as Hawkesworth 
 did. But such imitation was beyond her power. She had 
 her own style. It Avas a tolerably good one; and might, 
 without any violent change, have been improved into a 
 very good one. She determined to throw it away, and to 
 adopt a style in which she could attain excellence only by 
 achieving an almost miraculous victory over nature and 
 over habit. She could cease to be Fanny Burney ; it was 
 not so easy to become Samuel Johnson. 
 
 In Cecilia the change of manner began to appear. But 
 in Cecilia the imitation of Johnson, though not always in 
 the best taste, is sometimes eminently happy ; and the 
 passages which are so verbose as to be positively offensive 
 are few. There were people who whispered that Johnson 
 had assisted his young friend, and that the novel owed all 
 its finest passages to his hand. This was merely the fabri- 
 cation of envy. Miss Burney's real excellences were as 
 much beyond the reach of Johnson as his real excellences 
 were beyond her reach. He could no more have written 
 
Madame D'Arhlay. 173 
 
 the Masquerade scene, or the Vauxhall scene, than she 
 could have written the Life of Cowley or the Eeview of 
 Soame Jenyns. But we have not the smallest doubt that 
 he revised Cecilia, and that he retouched the style of many 
 passages. We know that he was in the habit of giving 
 assistance of this kind most freely. Goldsmith, Hawkes- 
 worth, Boswell, Lord Hailes, Mrs. Williams, were among 
 those who obtained his help. Nay, he even corrected the 
 poetry of Mr. Crabbe, whom, we believe, he had never 
 seen. When Miss Burney thought of writing a comedy, 
 he promised to give her his best counsel, though he owned 
 that he was not particularly well qualified to advise on 
 matters relating to the stage. We therefore think it in the 
 highest degree improbable that his little Fanny, when 
 living in habits of the most affectionate intercourse with 
 him, would have brought out an important work without 
 consulting him; and, wdien we look into Cecilia, we see 
 such traces of his hand in the grave and elevated passages 
 as it is impossible to mistake. Before we conclude this 
 article, we will give two or three examples. 
 
 When next Madame D'Arblay appeared before the world 
 as a writer, she was in a very different situation. She 
 would not content herself with the simple English in 
 which Evelina had been written. She had no longer the 
 friend who, we are confident, had polished and strengthened 
 the style of Cecilia. She had to write in Johnson's man- 
 ner without Johnson's aid. The consequence was, that in 
 Camilla every passage which she meant to be fine is de- 
 testable ; and that the book has been saved from condem- 
 nation only by the admirable spirit and force of those 
 scenes in which she was content to be familiar. 
 
 But there was to be a still deeper descent. After the 
 publication of Camilla, Madame D'Arblay resided ten years 
 at Paris. During those years there was scarcely any inter- 
 course between France and England. It was with difficulty 
 
174 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 that a short letter could occasionally be transmitted. All 
 Madame D'Arblay's companions were French. She must 
 have written, spoken, thought, in French. Ovid expressed 
 his fear that a shorter exile might have affected the 
 purity of his Latin. During a shorter exile, Gibbon un- 
 learned his native English. Madame D'Arblay had carried 
 a bad style to France. She brought back a style which we 
 are really at a loss to describe. It is a sort of broken John- 
 sonese, a barbarous patois, bearing the same relation to the 
 language of Rasselas which the gibberish of the negroes of 
 Jamaica bears to the English of the House of Lords. Some- 
 times it reminds us of the finest, that is to say, the vilest 
 parts, of Mr. Gait's novels ; sometimes of the perorations of 
 Exeter Hall; sometimes of the leading articles of the Morn- 
 ing Post. But it most resembles the puffs of Mr. Kowland 
 and Dr. Goss. It matters not what ideas are clothed in 
 such a style. The genius of Shakspeare and Bacon united 
 would not save a work so written from general derision. 
 
 It is only by means of specimens that we can enable our 
 readers to judge how widely Madame D'Arblay's three 
 styles differed from each other. 
 
 The following passage was written before she became 
 intimate with Johnson. It is from Evelina : 
 
 " His son seems weaker in his understanding, and more gay in his 
 temper; but his gayety is that of a foohsh, overgrown school-boy, 
 whose mirth consists in noise and disturbance. He disdains his father 
 for his close attention to business and love of money, though he seems 
 himself to have no talents, spirit, or generosity to make him superior 
 to either. His chief delight appears to be in tormenting and ridiculing 
 his sisters, who in return most cordially despise him. Miss Branghton, 
 the eldest daughter, is by no means ugly ; but looks proud, ill-tempered, 
 and conceited. She hates the city, though without knowing why ; for 
 it is easy to discover she has lived nowhere else. Miss Polly Branghton 
 is rather pretty, very foolish, very ignorant, very giddy, and, I believe, 
 very good-natured," 
 
 This is not a fine style, but simple, perspicuous, and 
 
Madame D'Arhlay. 175 
 
 agreeable. We now come to Cecilia, written during Miss 
 Burney's intimacy witli Johnson ; and we leave it to our 
 readers to judge whether the following passage was not at 
 least corrected by his hand : 
 
 "It is rather an imaginary than an actual evil, and though a deep 
 wound to pride, no offence to morality. Thus have I laid open to you 
 my whole heart, confessed my perplexities, acknowledged my vain- 
 glory, and exposed with equal sincerity the sources of my doubts, and 
 the motives of my decision. But now, indeed, how to proceed I know 
 not. The difficulties which are yet to encounter I fear to enumerate, 
 and the petition I have to urge I have scarce courage to mention. My 
 family, mistaking ambition for honor, and rank for dignity, have long 
 planned a splendid connection for me, to which, though my invariable 
 repugnance has stopped any advances, their wishes and their views 
 immovably adhere. I am but too certain they will now listen to no 
 other. I dread, therefore, to make a trial where I despair of success. 
 I know not how to risk a prayer with those who may silence me by a 
 command." 
 
 Take now a specimen of Madame D'Arblay's later style. 
 This is the way in which she tells us that her father, on his 
 journey back from the Continent, caught the rheumatism : 
 
 " He was assaulted, during his precipitated return, by the rudest 
 fierceness of wintry elemental strife ; through which, with bad accom- 
 modations and innumerable accidents, he became a prey to the merci- 
 less pangs of the acutest spasmodic rheumatism, which barely suffered 
 him to reach his home, ere, long and piteously, it confined him, a tor- 
 tured prisoner, to his bed. Such was the check that almost instantly 
 curbed, though it could not subdue, the rising pleasure of his hopes of 
 entering upon a new species of existence — that of an approved man 
 of letters ; for it was on the bed of sickness, exchanging the light wines 
 of France, Italy, and Germany, for the black and loathsome potions of 
 the Apothecaries' Hall, writhed by darting stitches, and burning with 
 fiery fever, that he felt the full force of that sublunary equipoise that 
 seems evermore to hang suspended over the attainment of long-sought 
 and uncommon felicity, just as it is ripening to burst forth with enjoy- 
 ment ! " 
 
 Here is a second passage from Evelina : 
 
176 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 " Mrs. Selw^n is very kind and attentive to me. She is extremely 
 clever. Her understanding, indeed, may be called masculine ; but 
 unfortunately her manners deserve the same epithet ; for, in studying 
 to acquire the knowledge of the other sex, she has lost all the softness 
 of her own. In regard to myself, however, as I have neither courage 
 nor inclination to argue wdth her, I have never been personally hurt ai 
 her want of gentleness, a virtue which nevertheless seems so essential 
 a part of the female character, that I find myself more awkw^ard and 
 less at ease with a woman who wants it than I do with a man." 
 
 This is a good style of its kind ; and the following passage 
 from Cecilia is also in a good style, though not in a faultless 
 one. We say with confidence, either Sam Johnson or the 
 Devil : 
 
 " Even the imperious Mr. Del vile was more supportable here than in 
 London. Secure in his own castle, he looked round him with a pride 
 of power and possession which softened while it swelled him. His 
 superiority was undisputed ; his will was without control. He was 
 not, as in the great capital of the kingdom, surrounded by competitors. 
 No rivalry disturbed his peace ; no equality mortified his greatness. 
 All he saw were either vassals of his power or guests bending to his 
 pleasure. He abated, therefore, considerably the stern gloom of his 
 haughtiness, and soothed his proud mind by the courtesy of conde- 
 scension." 
 
 We will stake our reputation for critical sagacity on this, 
 that no such paragraph as that which we have last quoted 
 can be found in any of Madame D'Arblay's w^orks except 
 Cecilia. Compare with it the following sample of her later 
 style : 
 
 " If beneficence be judged by the happiness which it diffuses, whose 
 claim, by that proof, shall stand higher than that of Mrs. Montagu, 
 from the munificence with which she celebrated her annual festival for 
 those hapless artificers w^ho perform the most abject offices of any 
 authorized calling, in being the active guardians of our blazing hearths ? 
 Not to vainglory, then, but to kindness of heart, should be adjudged 
 the publicity of that superb charity which made its jetty objects, for 
 one bright morning, cease to consider themselves as degraded outcasts 
 from all society." 
 
Madame D^Arhlay. 177 
 
 We add one or two shorter samples. Sheridan refused to 
 permit his lovely wife to sing in public, and was warmly 
 praised on this account by Johnson. 
 
 " The last of men," says Madame D'Arblay, " was Dr. 
 Johnson to have abetted squandering the delicacy of integ- 
 rity by nullifying the labors of talents." 
 
 The Club, Johnson's Club, did itself no honor by reject- 
 ing on political grounds two distinguished men, one a Tory, 
 the other a Whig. Madame D'Arblay tells the story thus : 
 '^ A similar ebullition of political rancor with that which so 
 difficultly had been conquered for Mr. Canning foamed over 
 the ballot-box to the exclusion of Mr. Eogers." 
 
 An offense punishable with imprisonment is, in this lan- 
 guage, an offense " which produces incarceration." To be 
 starved to death is " to sink from inanition into nonentity." 
 Sir Isaac Newton is " the developer of the skies in their 
 embodied movements ; " and Mrs. Thrale, when a party of 
 clever people sat silent, is said to have been " provoked by 
 the dulness of a taciturnity that, in the midst of such re- 
 nowned interlocutors, produced as narcotic a torpor as could 
 have been caused by a dearth the most barren of all human 
 faculties." In truth, it is impossible to look at any page of 
 Madame D'Arblay's later works without finding flowers of 
 rhetoric like these. Nothing in the language of these jar- 
 gonists at whom Mr. Gosport laughed, nothing in the 
 language of Sir Sedley Clarendel, approaches this new 
 euphuism. 
 
 It is from no unfriendly feeling to Madame D'Arblay's 
 memory that we have expressed ourselves so strongly on 
 the subject of her style. On the contrary, we conceive that 
 we have really rendered a service to her reputation. That 
 her later works were complete failures is a fact too noto- 
 rious to be dissembled ; and some persons, we believe, have 
 consequently taken up a notion that she was from the first 
 an overrated writer, and that she had not the powers which 
 
178 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 were necessary to maintain her on the eminence on which 
 gooil-luck and fashion had placed her. We believe, on the 
 contrary, that her early popularity was no more than the 
 just reward of distinguished merit, and would never have 
 undergone an eclipse, if she had only been content to go on 
 writing in her mother-tongue. If she failed when she 
 quitted her own province, and attempted to occupy one in 
 which she had neither part nor lot, this reproach is common 
 to her with a crowd of distinguished men. Newton failed 
 when he turned from the courses of the stars, and the ebb 
 and flow of the ocean, to apocalyptic seals and phials. 
 Bentley failed when he turned from Homer and Aristoph- 
 anes, to edit the Paradise Lost. Inigo failed when he at- 
 tempted to rival the Gothic churches of the fourteenth 
 century. Wilkie failed when he took it into his head that 
 the Blind Fiddler and the Rent-Day were unworthy of his 
 powers, and challenged competition with Lawrence as a 
 portrait-painter. Such failures should be noted for the 
 instruction of posterity ; but they detract little from the 
 permanent reputation of those who have really done great 
 things. 
 
 Yet one word more. Tt is not only on account of the 
 intrinsic merit of Madame D'Arblay's early works that she 
 is entitled to honorable mention. Her appearance is an 
 important epoch in our literary history. Evelina was the 
 first tale written by a woman, and purporting to be a 
 picture of life and manners, that lived or deserved to live. 
 The Female Quixote is no exception. That work has un- 
 doubtedly great merit, when considered as a wild satirical 
 harlequinade ; but, if we consider it as a picture of life and 
 manners, we must pronounce it more absurd than any of 
 the romances which it was designed to ridicule. 
 
 Indeed, most of the popular novels which preceded Eve- 
 lina were such as no lady would have written ; and many 
 of them were such as no lady could, without confusion, own 
 
Madame D'Arblay. 179 
 
 that she had read. The very name of novel was held in 
 horror among religious people. In decent families, which 
 did not profess extraordinary sanctity, there was a strong 
 feeling against all such works. Sir Anthony Absolute, two 
 or three years before Evelina appeared, spoke the sense of 
 the great body of sober fathers and husbands, when he pro- 
 nounced the circulating library an evergreen tree of diaboli- 
 cal knowledge. This feeling on the part of the grave and 
 reflecting increased the evil from which it had sprung. 
 The novelist having little character to lose, and having few 
 readers among serious people, took without scruple liberties 
 which in our generation seem almost incredible. 
 
 Miss Burney did for the English novel what Jeremy 
 Collier did for the English drama; and she did it in a 
 better way. She first showed that a tale might be written 
 in which both the fashionable and the vulgar life of London 
 might be exhibited with great force and with broad comic 
 humor, and which yet should not contain a single line in- 
 consistent with rigid morality, or even with virgin delicacy. 
 She took away the reproach which lay on a most useful 
 and delightful species of composition. She vindicated the 
 right of her sex to an equal share in a fair and noble 
 province of letters. Several accomplished women have fol- 
 lowed in her track. At present, the novels which we owe 
 to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of 
 our country. No class of works is more honorably dis- 
 tinguished by fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by 
 pure moral feeling. Several among the successors of 
 Madame D'Arblay have equalled her ; two, we think, have 
 surpassed her. But the fact that she has been surpassed 
 gives her an additional claim to our respect and gratitude; 
 for, in truth, we owe to her not only Evelina, Cecilia, and 
 Camilla, but also Mansfield Park and The Absentee. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 MILTOlSr. 
 
 The best cheap edition of Milton's poetical works, both for contiini- 
 ous reading and for occasional reference, as well as for use in school 
 as a text- book, is the Globe, with introductions by Professor David 
 Masson. The Globe contains no notes, but abounds in interesting 
 critical, biographical, and expository matter. The best annotated edi- 
 tion is Masson's Poetical Works of John Milton, edited with memoir, 
 introductions, notes, and an essay on Milton's English and versifica- 
 tion ; 3 vols, octavo ; second edition, 1890. This is known as the 
 Libmrtj Edition. Every school should, if possible, possess a copy of 
 this beautiful and altogether satisfactory book. It will long remain 
 the standard edition of Milton's poetical works. Printed in much 
 smaller type than the foregoing, and not containing so much explan- 
 atory matter, but very much cheaper, is another edition by the same 
 editor, in three volumes of more convenient size. This book is within 
 the means of every school. 
 
 Masson's great Life of John Milton is too large to read and is very 
 expensive ; nor, until the index volume shall be published, can it easily 
 be referred to for special information. Access to it can usually be had 
 in the larger public libraries. A life of Milton quite within reach even 
 of the limited opportunity of high- school pupils is that by the Rev. 
 Mark Pattison in the English Men of Letters series. Another small 
 book suitable for young students is the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke's 
 Milton in the series of Classical Writers. 
 
 A valuable help in Milton study is a concordance, or verbal index, to 
 the poems. The presence of this feature in Cleveland's Milton's Poet- 
 ical Works makes it desirable to have this book in the class-room 
 accessible to pupils. 
 
 The proper time for classes to read Macaulay's essay is, naturally, 
 when they are reading Milton. When their interest in the poet is once 
 
 181 
 
182 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 aroused, then they should read as much of his poetry as possible, study 
 his life and times, and obtain such comprehension as they can of his 
 significance in English history and English literature. 
 
 The Essay on Milton was first published as an article in the Edin- 
 burgh Review, in August, 1825. "It excited," says Dean Milman, 
 " greater attention than any article which had ever appeared not 
 immediately connected with the politics of the day." Canning says 
 of it, "Considering its length, it is perhaps one of the most pleasing 
 and brilliant essays in the English Language," 
 
 P. 1. Cyriac Skinner. See Milton's Sonnets and the intro- 
 ductions to them in the Globe edition. 
 
 P. 2. Find the quoted verse in the Sonnets. 
 
 P. 3. an age too late. Find in Paradise Lost the famous pas- 
 sage in which the quoted words occur. Macaulay's doctrine, tliat 
 " as civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines," muv 
 profitably be discussed in the class. In connection with this subject 
 see Channing's essay, Remarks on the Character and Writings of 
 John Milton. 
 
 P. 6. the greatest of poets. This indirect, allusive kind of 
 reference is a favorite device of Macaulay. It gives the reader, as 
 it were, an enigma for solution, and thus keeps his faculties on the 
 alert. Sometimes the enigma is not easy to solve at once. To be 
 compelled to stop reading and engage in a little research is an 
 excellent stimulus. In this case no one can doubt a moment what 
 poet is meant. — Find the quoted lines in the works of this poet, 
 and present the entire passage in the class. 
 
 P. 7. the ancient bards of Wales and Germany. Recollect- 
 ing that the people of AVales are Celtic, and those of Germany 
 Teutonic, consider whether Macaulay is not, in this passage, 
 partially in error. To become satisfied on this point, read what 
 you can find under the word hard in encyclopcedias and diction- 
 aries. Read also Gray's Bard. 
 
 P. 9. the Epistle to Manso. As the text shows, this is one of 
 Milton's Latin poems. Do not fail to look it up, either in tlie 
 Latin or in the translation given by Masson in his Library edition, 
 Vol. I. Translations of all Milton's Latin, Greek, and Italian 
 poems are given by the poet Cowper. 
 
 P. 10. Young people should of course read Homer. There are 
 several translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey as distinctly 
 
Notes. 183 
 
 belonging to English literature as the great original creations of 
 the Anglo-Saxon mind. All the European peoples have, from 
 time immemorial, read the Homeric poems, and an acquaintance 
 with them is fundamental to the study of English or of any other 
 modern literature. 
 
 P. 11. Modern writers of every nationality are wont to assume, 
 in readers of every class, an acquaintance with the Arabian Nights. 
 
 P. 12. The chapter on the Origin of Ancient Tragedy in Moul- 
 ton's Ancient Classical Drama is short and interesting. 
 
 P. 13. It should be remembered that the Greek tragedies have 
 all been translated and published in cheap forms. A notable 
 translation of the Agamenmon of JEschylus is that by the poet 
 Browning. 
 
 P. 11. sad Electra's poet. This, like all other quotations from 
 Milton, should be searched for till found. 
 
 The Faithful Shepherdess, the Aminta, the Pastor Fido. 
 These are the titles of pastoral dramas, composed, respectively, by 
 the Elizabethan dramatist, Fletcher, and by the Italian poets, 
 Tasso and Guarini. They need not be looked up. 
 
 P. 15. Dorique delicacy. To understand tlie adjective Doric, 
 or Dorian, one must consider that the Greek poet, Theocritus, the 
 great original and pattern of all the pastoral poets since his day, 
 wrote in the Doric dialect : but it will not be possible to appreciate 
 the connotations of the word without some acquaintance with the 
 idyls of the ancient poet himself. This the pupil will find it easy 
 and pleasant to obtain, either from the prose translation of Theoc- 
 ritus by Mr. Andrew Lang, or from the translation in verse by Mr. 
 C. S. Calverley. The pupil should also note Milton's use of the 
 word in Lycidas and elsewhere. 
 
 P. 16. "A warm admirer of Robert Hall, Macaulay heard with 
 pride how the great preacher, then well-nigh worn out with that 
 long disease, his life, was discovered lying on the floor, employed 
 in learning by aid of grammar and dictionary enough Italian to 
 enable him to verify the parallel between Milton and Dante." — 
 Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay. But it is easy for the high-school 
 pupil to-day to become acquainted with the Divine Comedy with- 
 out learning Italian, for Longfellow's translation is peculiarly clear 
 and simple, and is abundantly furnished with explanatory helps. 
 
 P. 19. the fee-faw-fum of Tasso and Klopstock. A speci- 
 
184 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 men of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso can easily be seen in Wiffen's 
 translation of the Jerusalem Delivered, Canto IV., stanzas 4-8. 
 Klopstock's description of the devils is to be found in the second 
 canto of the INIessias, for whoever reads German. 
 
 obtrude their idiosyncrasies. There are three conspicuous 
 passages in Paradise Lost where Milton speaks of himself. Find 
 them. 
 
 those modern beggars for fame, "who, etc. Read Macaulay's 
 essay on Moore's Life of Lord Byron, and it will become clear that 
 by "those modern beggars for fame" the essayist means Byron 
 and the poets of Byronisni, who proclaim to the world their misery, 
 their despair, their discontent with life. 
 
 r. 22. A victory, etc. Find each sonnet thus alluded to. 
 
 loosed the knees : an Homeric expression of frequent occur- 
 rence in the battle-scenes of the Iliad. 
 
 PP. 27, 28. Book of Life. Legions of angels, not made 
 with hands. Find the originals of these expressions. 
 
 P. 28. Beatific Vision. See Revelation, Chap. XXL 
 
 P. 30. doubting Thomases or careless Gallios. Do not fail 
 to verify these references from the New Testament. 
 
 Brissotines. See any history of the French Revolution, or any 
 eticyclopfedia, article Brh»ot. 
 
 W^hitefriars. See JNLacaulay's History, Chap. III. 
 
 P. 32. the hero of Homer. Ulysses in the Odyssey. 
 
 P. 34. the licensing system. Extracts from the prose work 
 of Milton here referred to should be selected by pupils, with the 
 aid of the teacher, and read in the class. 
 
 P. 36. Verify the biographical allusions by reference to any life 
 of the poet. 
 
Notes. 185 
 
 JOHN BUNYAN. 
 
 The essay here reprinted first appeared as an article in the Encyclo- 
 psedia Britannica hi 1854. In connection with it the student should 
 read Macaulay's essay reviewing Southey's edition of the Pilgrim's 
 Progress with its Life of John Bunyan. This life by Southey will 
 also be found readable. The Bunyan in the English Men of Letters 
 series is from the pen of the historian, J. A, Froude. Everywhere 
 interesting and appreciative, this is perhaps the book chiefly to recom- 
 mend to the young student as collateral reading on Bunyan. 
 
 But whatever life of Bunyan, or book about Bunyan, the student 
 reads, he should by no means fail to read Pilgrim's Progress. The 
 great allegory is still profoundly interesting, and allusions to it abound 
 throughout recent Phiglish literature. Editions of the Pilgrim's Prog- 
 ress are numerous. It is only necessary to caution the reader against 
 choosing a text in which Bunyan's homely phraseology has been 
 altered to make it conform to some modern editor's idea of refinement 
 and elegance. For one of the chief objects which the scholar to-day 
 has in view in reading Bunyan is to karn how the English language 
 of the seventeenth century shaped itself in the speech of uneducated 
 Englishmen. To the student of language the diction and the style of 
 the illiterate are peculiarly interesting. The prose of Milton and the 
 prose of Clarendon are not more important in their way than is the 
 prose of Bunyan in its way. " The style of Bunyan," says Macaulay, 
 "is delightful to every reader, and invakiable as a study to eveiy 
 person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English lan- 
 guage. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. 
 There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of 
 theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant, AYe have observed 
 several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two 
 syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. 
 For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle 
 disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, 
 this homely dialect, the dialect of plain working men, was perfectly 
 sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we would so 
 readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted English language, no book 
 which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, 
 and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed." 
 
 Besides Southey's edition, above mentioned, there may be recom- 
 mended to the young reader the Pilgrim's Progress in the Golden 
 Treasury series, and the volume, edited Ijy the Pev. Etlnnmd Venn- 
 
186 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 bles for the Clarendon Press, containing not only the Pilgrim's 
 Progress, but two other interesting works of Bunyan, the Grace 
 Abounding and A Relation of his Imprisonment, with biographical 
 introduction and notes. 
 
 P. 39. Titus Oates or Mrs. Brownrigg. Titus Gates figures 
 conspicuously at a certain period iu the reigns of Charles II. and 
 flames II. Do not fail to read about him in Macaulay 's History. 
 Of Mrs. Elizabeth Brownrigg, of the shocking cruelties she prac- 
 tised on her victims, of her trial for murder, and of her execution 
 in 1767, see a full account in Celebrated Trials, Vol. IV. 
 
 P. 40. a village Rochester. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, 
 was " one of the most brilliant libertines of the age " of Charles 
 II. See Encyclo. Brit. 
 
 P. 42. Bedlam: a most interesting word. Do not fail to look 
 up its history. The account of it in the New English Dictionary is 
 very full. 
 
 P. 43. the lamentable end of Francis Spira. Francis Spira 
 was a lawyer in good standing and a respectable citizen of Venice. 
 Having professed Protestantism, he was brought before the ecclesi- 
 astical authorities and compelled to recant his heresy. This recan- 
 tation so wi-ought upon his mind that he fell into a lamentable 
 state of remorse and despair, and suffered the most dreadful 
 agonies until his death in 1548. The fate of Spira made a pro- 
 found impression upon the Protestants of that day. It was made 
 the subject of a drama, the Conflict of Conscience, by Nathaniel 
 Woodes, in 1581, and in our own day Mr. J. Hain Friswell has 
 taken it as the theme of his poem entitled Francis Spira. 
 
 P. 46. Fox's Book of Martyrs is to be found, at least in an 
 abridged form, in many public libraries. Inquisitive pupils can 
 easily look it up. 
 
 P. 47. that humane and generous Persian king. See Ezra, I. 
 
 P. 49. "Will's. See Macaulay's account of the London coffee- 
 houses in the famous Chapter III. of his History. 
 
 P. 52. the Spiritual Quixote. Macaulay probably refers to a 
 work bearing this title published in 1772 by Richard Graves, in 
 which he " ridiculed the intrusion of the laity into spiritual func- 
 tions and the ' enthusiasm ' of the Methodists with a severity 
 asserted even then to be excessive." 
 
Notes, 187 
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 
 Complete editions of Johnson's works are no longer in great re- 
 quest, and may perhaps not easily he found in the bookstores, but 
 are to he seen in the public libraries. The Easselas has often been 
 reprinted. Every pupil should read this little story. As a specimen 
 of Johnson's prose it may, for the time being, be sufficient for the 
 young student. It is one of those books that absolutely cannot be 
 spared from even a decent education in English literature. Erom the 
 Lives of the Poets a selection comprising six of the most important 
 ones has been edited, with preface and notes, by Matthew Arnold. 
 This book should be in the school library. The Rambler and the 
 Idler are still to be found separately printed in the series of British 
 Essayists. Of Johnson's poetry a sufficient sf)ecimen is accessible in 
 the reprint of the London and the Vanity of Human Wishes in Hales's 
 Longer English Poems. 
 
 Many young people have read with delight Boswell's Life of John- 
 son. This book never goes out of fashion. But very recently a 
 beautiful edition of it has been issued by Mr. Birkbeck Hill, who is 
 pre-eminently the Johnson specialist of this generation, as Professor 
 Masson is its Milton specialist. Mr. Hill's edition of Boswell, with 
 its full and minute notes, is one of the very best books illustrating 
 eighteenth century life and literature. Large as it is, it is not too 
 large for the high-school library, where it would be a source of peren- 
 nial interest both for reading and for reference. Croker's Boswell, 
 "with upwards of fifty engravings," can always be had in Bohn's 
 " Cheap Series." The Johnson in the Men of Letters series is by that 
 very competent writer, Mr. Leslie Stephen. The famous essay by 
 Carlyle on Croker's Boswell is really an essay on Johnson, and must 
 not be omitted from any course of reading on the great literary auto- 
 crat. Carlyle's essay is easily accessible. The American publishers 
 of Matthew Arnold's Six Chief Lives, above referred to, have included 
 it in their edition of this book. 
 
 Like the essays on Bunyan and Goldsmith in this volume, this 
 admirable summary of Johnson's life appeared originally as an article 
 in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Another essay of Macaulay review- 
 ing Croker's Boswell is closely related to this and should be read in 
 connection with it. 
 
188 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 P, 55. the- royal touch. Queen Anne was the last English 
 sovereign who touched for the " king's evil." Find from Macbeth 
 who was the first. 
 
 P. 60. usher of a grammar school. Be sure you understand 
 the meaning of the expression grammar school as used in England. 
 
 Mrs. Elizabeth Porter is said to have been born in 1689. 
 
 the Queensberrys and Lepels, families of high rank in the 
 English nobility; not worth looking up. 
 
 Titty, a nickname for Elizabeth. 
 
 P. 62. The Seasons is still in many libraries. 
 
 The Beggar's Opera is no longer read, nor deserves to be ; 
 though the same writer's Fables continue to be reprinted. 
 
 P. 63. ordinaries. We still have the thing, though not the name. 
 
 the Harleian Library ; that is, the library collected by Robert 
 Ilarley, Earl of Oxford, which Osborne bought and employed 
 Johnson to catalogue. See Encyclo. Brit, under Oxford. 
 
 P. 64. the Blues of the Roman Circus against the Greens. 
 See Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Chap. XL. 
 
 P. 65. his own Tom Tempest. See Idler, No. 10. 
 
 P. 68. "Grub Street, the name of a street in London much in- 
 habited by writers of small histories, dictionaries and temporary 
 poems ; whence any mean production is called Grub street." — Jofin- 
 son's Dictionary. 
 
 'Warburton. See in the Life of Pope a characteristic sketch of 
 Warburton by Johnson himself. 
 
 P. 69. Chesterfield's Letters to his Son is stiM a much esteemed 
 and often reprinted classic. Johnson very properly says of it, 
 " Take out the immorality, and M> should be put into the hands of 
 every young gentleman." The pupil may be referred to the vol- 
 ume in the Knickerbocker Nugget series, — Letters, Sentences, and 
 Maxims by Lord Chesterfield. 
 
 P. 70. his tragedy. See page 61. L-ene is no longer read. 
 The story on which it is founded is thus given in Hawkins's Life 
 of Johnson : — 
 
 Mahomet the Great, first emperor of the Turks, in the year 1453 laid 
 siege to the city of Constantinople, then possessed by the Greeks, and, 
 after an obstinate resistance, took and sacked it. Among the many yonng 
 women whom his commanders thouglit fit to lay hands on and present to 
 him was one named Irene, a Greek, of incomparable beanty and sncli rare 
 
Notes, 180 
 
 perfection of body and mind, that the emperor, becoming enamored of her, 
 neglected the care of his government and empire for two whole years, and 
 thereby so exasperated the Janizaries, that they mutinied and threatened 
 to dethrone him. To prevent this mischief, Mustapha Bassa, a person of 
 great credit with him, undertook to represent to him the great danger to 
 which he lay exposed by the indulgence of his passion : he called to his 
 remembrance the character, actions, and achievements of his predecessors, 
 and the state of his government; and, in short, so roused him from his 
 lethargy, that he took a horrible resolution to silence the clamors of his 
 people by the sacrifice of this admirable creature. Accordingly, he com- 
 manded her to be dressed and adorned in the richest manner that she and 
 her attendants could devise, and against a certain hour issued orders for 
 the nobility and leaders of his army to attend him in the great hall of his 
 palace. When they were all assembled, himself appeared with great pomp 
 and magnificence, leading his captive by the hand, unconscious of guilt 
 and ignorant of his design. With a furious and menacing look, he gave 
 the beholders to understand that he meant to remove the cause of their 
 discontent; but bade them first view that lady, whom he held with his 
 left hand, and say wiiether any of them, possessed of a jewel so rare and 
 precious, would for any cause forego her; to which they answered that he 
 had great reason for his affection toward her. To this the emperor replied, 
 that he would convince them that he was yet master of himself. And 
 having so said, presently, with one of his hands catching the fair Greek by 
 the hair of the head, and drawing his falchion with the other, he, at one 
 blow, struck off her head, to the great terror of them all ; and having so 
 done, he said unto them, " Now by this judge whether your emperor is 
 able to bridle his affections or not." 
 
 P. 72. Bubb Dodington.; a statesman of inferior note in the 
 reigns of the second and third Georges. See a characteristic slur- 
 ring allusion to him in Macaulay's essay on the Earl of Cliatham. 
 
 P. 73. Sir Roger, etc. Everybody should be able to identify 
 these allusions. They may be looked up in any edition of the 
 Spectator by means of the index. 
 
 Squire Bluster, etc. It will be interesting to look these up in 
 the Rambler. 
 
 P. 74. a letter written with singular energy and dignity. 
 
 Johnson's letter to Lord Chesterfield is an excellent specimen both 
 
 of the writer's moral quality and of his English style. We give it 
 
 entire. 
 
 To the Right Honorable the Earl of Chesterfield. 
 
 ,, -. - February 7, 1755. 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of the World, that two 
 
 papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the public, were written 
 
190 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 by yoiu' Lordship. To be so distinguished, is au honor, which, being very 
 little accustomed to favors from the great, I know not well how to receive, 
 or in what terms to acknowledge. 
 
 AVhen, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your Lordship, I 
 was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your 
 address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself Le vain- 
 queur dii vainqneur de la terre ; — that I might obtain that regard for 
 which I saw the world contending ; but I found my attendance so little en- 
 couraged, that neither jjride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. 
 When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted all 
 the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I 
 had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all 
 neglected, be it ever so little. 
 
 Seven years, my Lord, have now past, since I waited in your outward 
 rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been 
 pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, 
 and have brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of 
 assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treat- 
 ment I did not expect, for I never had a Patron before. 
 
 The Shepherd of Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found 
 him a native of the rocks. 
 
 Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man 
 struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encum- 
 bers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of 
 my labors, had it been early, had been kind ; but it has been delayed till 1 
 am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart 
 it ; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asper- 
 ity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be 
 unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a Patron, 
 which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. 
 
 Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any 
 favoi-er of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, 
 if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that 
 dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exaltation, my 
 Lord, 
 
 Your Lordship's most humble, 
 
 Most obedient servant, 
 
 Sam. Johnson. 
 
 In the preface the author truly declared, etc. The passage 
 which thus moved Home Tooke was the following : — 
 
 In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not 
 be forgotten that much likewise is performed ; and though no book was 
 ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is little solici- 
 
Notes. 191 
 
 tous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns ; yet 
 it may gratify curiosity to inform it tliat the English Dictionary was 
 written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of 
 the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of 
 academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness 
 and in sorrow. It may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to ob- 
 serve, that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in 
 an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexi- 
 cons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few vol- 
 umes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive ; if 
 the aggregated knowledge, and co-operating diligence of the Italian acade- 
 micians, did not secure them from the censure of Beni ; if the embodied 
 critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were 
 obliged to change its economy, and give their second edition another form, 
 I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which, if I 
 could obtain, in this gloom of solitude, what could it avail me? I have 
 protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk 
 into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds : I therefore 
 dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from cen- 
 sure or from praise. 
 
 P. 75. Junius and Skinner ; seventeenth-century scholars who 
 devoted themselves to the study of Old English and the other 
 Teutonic languages. Of scientific philology as now understood 
 little was known in their day, or in Johnson's. 
 
 Spunging-houses. When was imprisonment for debt abolished 
 in England ? 
 
 P. 78. made Hector quote Aristotle, etc. It will be an easy 
 and pleasant search to verify these references. 
 
 the Lord Privy Seal at this time was Lord Gower. In a con- 
 versation with Boswell on the political allusions which he had in- 
 serted in his Dictionary Johnson said : " You know, Sir, Lord 
 Gower forsook the old Jacobite interest. When I came to the 
 word Renegado, after telling that it meant ' one who deserts to the 
 enemy, a revolter,' I added, sometimes we say a Gower. Thus it 
 went to the press : but the printer had more wit than I, and struck 
 it out." 
 
 P. 82. formed themselves into a club. The club thus formed 
 still flourishes. In 1861: it celebrated its centennial with great 
 eclat. It is interesting to note that Johnson defines a club as " an 
 assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions." To 
 describe a man fitted by temperament to be a congenial member of 
 a club, he invented the adjective clubbable. 
 
192 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 P. 84. Whitefield. Refer to Franklin's Autobiography for in- 
 teresting matter concerning this famous preacher. 
 
 P. 8(5. Buck and Maccaroni. Do you fully agree witli Macau- 
 lay's incidental remark about these words? 
 
 P. 88. Journey to the Hebrides. Do not fail to look up at 
 least the beautiful passage in this work in which Johnson describes 
 his emotions on visiting lona. 
 
 P. 89. Maophersoii. Extracts from Ossian can be easily- looked 
 up and brought into the class. The standing of Macpherson in 
 English literature should be investigated and reported on. 
 
 P. 92. Gilbert Walmsley; see P. GO. 
 
 Button had been, earlier in the century, proprietor of a coffee 
 house which was the resort of political and literary celebrities. The 
 other allusions can easily be verified and explained. 
 
 P. 95. in a solemn and tender prayer. This prayer can be 
 given from Boswell : '' Almighty God, Father of all mercy, heljt 
 me by thy grace, that I may, with humble and sincere thankfulness, 
 remember the comforts and conveniences which I have enjoyed at 
 this place ; and that I may resign them with holy submission, 
 equally trusting in thy protection when thou givest and when thou 
 takest away. Have mercy upon me, O Lord, have mercy upon me. 
 To thy fatherly protection, O Lord, I commend this family. Bless, 
 guide, and defend them, that they may so pass through this world, 
 as finally to enjoy thy everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ's sake, 
 Amen." 
 
 had married an Italian fiddler, etc. By this marriage Mrs. 
 Thrale became Mrs. Piozzi. Lookup, as e.g., in the Encyclo. Brit., 
 the dates of Mr. Thrale's death and of Mrs. Thrale's marriage, 
 and note what is said of the character of Mr. Piozzi : then con- 
 sider if you agree with Macaulay's contemptuous way of speaking 
 of this second marriage. Look up, also, the letters that passed be- 
 tween Johnson and Mrs. Thrale at this time. These may be found 
 in Four Centuries of English Letters, by W. Baptiste Scoones. 
 
 allusions to the Ephesian matron, and the two pictures 
 in Hamlet. The story of the Ephesian matron, originally told by 
 the Latin writer, Petronius, can be read in Jeremy Taylor's Holy 
 Dying, last chapter. It is also the subject of a "comic serenata" 
 by Isaac Bickerstaff, 1769. The allusion to the two ])iclw'es the 
 learner can verify without help. 
 
I 
 
 Notes. 193 
 
 P. 96. Frances Barney stood weeping at the door. See 
 the essay on Madame D 'Aiblay, in this volume, page 140. 
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 
 
 Of the works of Goldsmith the popular ones are very popular 
 indeed, and are kept constantly in print in every variety of form, 
 often with abundant annotation and illustration. Everybody is ex- 
 pected to be acquainted with the Vicar of Wakefield, the Deserted 
 Village, and the Traveller, and with the Comedies. But there are 
 other productions of this pleasing writer that may still be read with 
 interest. A good Goldsmith for the school library should contain all 
 the poetical and dramatic writings and, with due expurgation, such of 
 the prose pieces as are most original and most characteristic of the 
 genius of the autlior. The Globe Goldsmith, edited by Professor 
 Masson, is not planned for scliool use. Besides the better known 
 works named above, the Globe contains the Citizen of the World, 
 Essays, The Bee, An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learn- 
 ing, the biographies of Bolingbroke, Parnell, Voltaire, and Nash, and 
 all the minor and miscellaneous poems. In no other volume are all 
 these writings so easily accessible. 
 
 The famous biographies of Goldsmith are named and characterized 
 by Macaulay in his essay. To these we may now add the life by Mr. 
 William Black in the Men of Letters series, and that by Mr. Austin 
 Dobson in the series of Great Writers. Professor Masson's memoir 
 in the Globe is briefer than the standard lives of the poet, but in ani- 
 mation and beauty of style and in sustained interest, quite worthy to 
 be named in their company. Pupils will find especially attractive, in 
 any of the biographies, the famous Goldsmith anecdotes, so illustra- 
 tive of the poet's temperament as well as of the lives and manners of 
 the notable men with whom he associated, 
 
 P. 99. banshees. See this word, differently spelled, in the Lady 
 of the Lake, III. vii. See also Scott's note on the passage. 
 
 In what war had the " old quartermaster " fought ? 
 
 the glorious and immortal Memory : a standard form of 
 toast used in drinking to the memory of William III. 
 
 P. 103. letters purporting to be addressed by a Chinese 
 traveller, etc. It was the Chinese letters that, collected and re- 
 
194 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 
 
 printed, atteiwaids formed the Citizen of the World. This work, 
 and the Life of Beau Nash, are to be found in the Globe Goldsmith. 
 
 P. 104. the nine original members of the Club were Joshua 
 Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Dr. Nugent, Anthony Chamier, Topham 
 Beauclerk, Bennett Langton, John Hawkins, Samuel Johnson, and 
 Oliver Goldsmith. Four of these men are distinct and conspic- 
 uous personalities in eighteenth-century history and literature : 
 they should be looked up and reported on in the class. Garrick and 
 Boswell were later accessions to the Club. 
 
 P. 105. had taken chambers in the more civilized region 
 of the Inns of Court. To understand references to localities in 
 London, the student should consult Baedeker's London or Hare's 
 Walks in London. The chambers which Goldsmith took on this 
 occasion were in Wine Office Court in Fleet St. It was not till 
 he received his payment for The Goodnatured Man ( p. 107) that 
 he fitted up the rooms in the Temple, referred to on page 113. 
 
 P. 107. Bayes in the Rehearsal. Look up these names in 
 Adams's Dictionary of English Literature. 
 
 The finest poem in the Latin language. Maeaulay probably 
 refers to Lucretius's De Rerum Natura. 
 
 P. 109. He -was very nearly hoaxed, etc. By whom? 
 
 P. 110. Which was in the right, Maupertuis or Goldsmith? 
 
 P. 113. A single man living in the Temple, etc. 
 
 On the first floor of No. 2, Brick Court, Middle Temple, lived the 
 learned Blackstone. Here the great lawyer was immersed in writing the 
 fourth volume of his famous Commentaries; hut in his calculation of 
 the trials of a legal life, there was one which he had not foreseen. Oliver 
 Goldsmith had taken the rooms above him, and sorely was he disturbed by 
 the roaring comic songs in which the author of The Vicar of Wakefield was 
 wont to indulge, and by the frantic games of blind-man's-buft which preceded 
 his supper parties, and the dancing which followed them. Here Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds, coming in suddenly, found the poet engaged in furiously kicking 
 round the room a parcel containing a masquerade dress which he had 
 ordered and had no money to pay for; and here, on April 4, 1774, poor 
 Goldsmith died, from taking too many James's powders, when he had 
 been forbidden to do so by his doctor, — died, dreadfully in debt, though 
 attended to the grave by numbers of the poor in the neighborhood, to whom 
 he had never failed in kindness and charity. — Harems Walks in London. 
 
 Lord Clive — Sir La-wrence Dundas. The former name is a 
 celebrated one in English history. See JNIacaulay's essay, Lord Clive. 
 
Notes. 195 
 
 Sir Lawrence Diindas "acquired an immense fortune as commissary 
 to the army in Germany, which procured for him the title of 
 Baronet." 
 
 P. 114. the spot was not marked by any inscription, etc. 
 The flat stone bearing the inscription " Here lies Oliver Goldsmith," 
 which visitors to London now see by the side of the walk along the 
 north side of the Temple Church, was placed there in 1860, as 
 near as possible to where the remains are supposed to lie. 
 
 P. 115. Johnson \vrote the inscription. Do not fail to look 
 up this inscription in the biographies. It is a notable piece of 
 epitaphian Latin. Certain lines of it are often quoted. 
 
 MADAME D'ARBLAY. 
 
 As compared with the subjects of the four preceding essays in this 
 volume, Madame D'Arblay is an unimportant figure in English litera- 
 ture. In the immense development of the literature of fiction in this 
 century EveUna and Cecilia have relatively lost in attractiveness for 
 the multitude, and only novel-readers of unusual enterprise, drawn 
 perhaps by Macaulay's sympathetic essay, are apt to find them out 
 and to learn from experience that even these old stories still possess a 
 charm of their own. But to the student of eighteenth-century life 
 and manners both the Novels and the Diary are indispensable. With 
 the increasing interest in historical studies such books as the Diary 
 will gain in importance. The young student who desires to read 
 beyond the dry text-books and abridgments of history will find in 
 Madame D'Arblay's Diary both entertainment and instruction in 
 ample measure. 
 
 Evelina can be obtained in inexpensive form in the Tauchnitz Col- 
 lection of British Authors, and both Evelina and Cecilia are to be had 
 in Bohn's Novelists' Library. The Diary is reprinted in various forms 
 and will be found in the public libraries. Especial mention should be 
 made of The Early Diary of Frances Burney, 1768-1778, with a selec- 
 tion from her correspondence, and from the journals of her sisters, Susan 
 and Charlotte Burney : edited by Annie Raine Ellis, London, 1889. 
 
 P. 116. The numerous allusions in the first paragraph can easily 
 be looked up by the pupil. Such as have reference to the ages of 
 writers should be carefully verified by noting dates. 
 
196 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 The fooleries of Delia Crusca. Look up this name in Adams's 
 Dictionary of English Literature. See also Encyclo. Brit, under 
 the word Academy, Vol. I. p. 73. Read up also on William Git- 
 ford. If you read French, and have access to Littre's large French 
 Dictionary, see what he says under the word Crusca. 
 
 P. 122. Colman, Twining, etc. Most of these names will be 
 found in easily accessible books. Thomas Twining, born in 1734, 
 was famous in his day as translator of Aristotle's Poetics. James 
 Harris, 1700-1780, was the author of Hermes, a well-known work 
 on language. Giuseppe Baretti was an Italian scholar, long resi- 
 dent in London, and the author of an Italian-English dictionary, 
 still in use. John Hawkesworth published, among other things, 
 an account of the voyages of the fatuous navigators, Byron, Wall is, 
 Carteret, and Cook. 
 
 P. 123. Meltonian ardor. Read in the Encyclo. Brit, the 
 article on the town of INlelton-Mowbray, and see if you get any 
 light on the meaning of this epithet. 
 
 The Italian singers and the peers and peeresses whose names 
 appear on this page all figure in Frances Barney's Early Diary, 
 and it would be of no use to look them up elsewhere. Macaulay 
 mentions Lord Ashburnham's gold key because Fanny herself men- 
 tions it in connection with this nobleman's office as Groom of the 
 Stole and First Lord of the Bedchamber. See Encyclo. Brit, 
 under Royal Household. 
 
 Bruce was the great African traveller of that day. He is con- 
 spicuous in the Diary. 
 
 P. 124. Omai was an Otaheitan whom Captain Cook, tlie great 
 navigator, brought to England on his first voyage. He was a 
 great lion in London society. He is often mentioned in the Diary ; 
 Boswell reports a speech of Johnson about him ; and JNIacaulay 
 tells a little anecdote of him in his essay on the Principal Italian 
 Writers. The reference to Oberea, queen of Otaheite, and to 
 Opano is also to be explained from the Diary. Opano is Sir 
 Joseph Banks, who visited Otaheite in the capacity of naturalist 
 to Captain Cook's first expedition. Banks was much admired by 
 Oberea. The stories about Mr. Banks and the dusky queen greatly 
 amused the London public, and there was much jesting on the 
 subject. 
 
 P. 12G. Master Betty, sometimes called the Young Roscius, 
 
Notes. 107 
 
 was born in 1791. In his early teens he developed a marvellous 
 talent for the stage, and astonished and delighted the London 
 theatre-goers of his day by his success in playing the most difficult 
 roles of the standard drama. During his brief career as a boy 
 actor he laid up a fortune, on which he lived during a long life of 
 obscurity. 
 
 Van Artevelde, a tragedy by Sir Henry Taylor, published in 
 1834. 
 
 Jack Sheppard, a bad, sensational play by J. B. Buckstone. 
 Both this and the novel of the same name by W. Harrison Ains- 
 worth, are founded on the career of John Shepherd, a celebrated 
 criminal, who was executed in 1724. 
 
 P. 128. Lady Coventry (Maria Gunning), "as Garrick often 
 related, drove to his house, and sent in word that she had a 
 moment's business. He went to the side of her carriage : ' There, 
 Mr. Garrick,' said Lady Coventry, 'I put into your hands a 
 play which the best judges tell me will do honor to you and the 
 author.' It was not necessary for her to say more. Garrick 
 obeyed as if she had been the tenth Muse, and prepared the play 
 with the utmost despatch." — Appendix to Annie Raine Ellis's edi- 
 tions of the Early Diary of Frances Burney. 
 
 P. 132. Hampstead, a northern suburb of London, formerly 
 had mineral wells and was a place of fashionable resort. 
 
 P. 134. Miss Lydia Languish and Miss Sukey Saunter are 
 to be found in Sheridan's Rivals. Do not fail to read this famous 
 play. It was first acted three years before the publication of 
 Evelina. 
 
 P. 135. jfcenrick, Wolcot, George Steevens, can easily be 
 looked up. Wolcot wrote under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar. 
 In his " Lousiad " he thus makes mention of Fanny Burney : — 
 
 As careless as the artist, trunks designing, 
 About the trifling circumstance of lining; 
 Whether of Cumberland he use the plays, 
 Miss Burney's novels, or Miss Seward's lays. 
 
 The "polecat John Williams" may be seen, with yet another 
 zoological metaphor attached to his name, in Macaulay's essay on 
 Warren Hastings, near the end. This should suffice for him. 
 
 a bad writer of our time. The opening pages of Macaulay's 
 
198 Select Essays of Macaulay. 
 
 essay on Croker's edition of Bos well will show who is meant. The 
 animosity between this " bad writer " and Macaulay is shown in 
 many ways in the writings of each. 
 
 P. 136. The croAvd of inferior admirers. For interesting ref- 
 erences to these persons, see the Diary. 
 
 P. 137. The Greek verses are from the Iliad, II. 527-529, and 
 mean, — " Ajax the less, that was not so great as was the Telamo- 
 nian Ajax, but far less." " Dr. Thomas Francklin, some time Greek 
 professor at Cambridge. We find Fanny describing him in 1779 
 as a 'square old gentleman, well-wigged, formal, grave, and impor- 
 tant,' \vho asked her, ' Is not your name Evelina, Ma'am ? ' " — Annie 
 Raine Ellis, Early Diary of Frances Burney. 
 
 P. 139. Miss Bayes. The fitness of the name which Fanny 
 applies to herself is easily seen. For a hundred years the Rehearsal, 
 a farce written by the Duke of Buckingham in 1671, had main- 
 tained its popularity, and had recently been revived by Garrick. 
 The original purpose of this farce had been to satirize the poet 
 Dryden, w^ho was especially conspicuous as a writer for the stage. 
 The chief character in the play was Bayes, who stands therefore as 
 a ridiculed and humiliated aspirant to dramatic honors. Long after 
 Dryden had ceased to be thought of as the object of the satire, the 
 fai'ce continued to be played because its motive continued to be 
 appreciated. Bayes was the type of a vain, would-be dramatist 
 properly brought to grief. 
 
 P. 140. She had to blush, etc. See the essay on Samuel 
 Johnson. 
 
 P. 142. The Probationary Odes were anonymous satires by 
 various persons, published in 1774, on the occasion of the appoint- 
 ment of Thomas Warton to the Poet Laureateship. The bold 
 mockery of these satires did not spare even the royal family. 
 
 P. 145. St, James's Palace was the chief residence of the Eng- 
 lish sovereigns from William III. to George IV. 
 
 P. 145. the death of Harrel, in Cecilia. 
 
 P. 148. The last great master of Attic eloquence, etc. The 
 reference is to Lucian, a Greek writer of the second century a.d., 
 from whose essay, — On those employed for hire as compayiions of per- 
 sons of rank, the passage is quoted. This essay was written by Lucian 
 "to dissuade a Greek philosopher from accepting a place in a 
 Roman household, by giving a humorous description of the miseries 
 attending it." 
 
Notes. 199 
 
 P. 151. about Reynolds in the antechapel of New College. 
 
 See any account of Reynolds's works, as e.g., in the Encyclo. Brit. 
 
 P. 154. the King's illness and the vehement debates in Par- 
 liament concerning the regency may be looked up in any history 
 of England, as e.g., in Knight. But do not fail to read the pages 
 referring to it in Macaulay's essay on William Pitt. 
 
 P. 165. Daniel Lambert. See Encyclo. Brit., article Corpulency. 
 
 P. 169. The quoted verses are from Jonson's Every Man out of 
 his Humor, prologue. 
 
 P. 169. The avarice of Elwes. John Elwes, an English gen- 
 tleman of rank, was a notorious miser. He died in 1789. " His 
 name has become a byword for sordid penury." Sir Egerton 
 Brydges has sufficient literary and historical prominence to be 
 easily looked up. To understand the reference to Bellingham, 
 read up the assassination of Mr. Perceval in Knight's, or any 
 other, history of England. This occurred in 1812. Of Clarkson, 
 the great abolitionist, you will find it easy to read in any history 
 or encyclopaedia. 
 
 P. 174. Exeter Hall in London has been for many years the 
 great meeting place for religious and philanthropic societies. 
 
 Mr. Ro-wland and Dr. Goss were conspicuous advertisers in 
 the newspapers of Macaulay's day. 
 
 P. 177. Mr. Gosport, in Cecilia; Sir Sedley Clarendel, in 
 Camilla. 
 
 P. 178. Bentley, Inigo, Wilkie, Lawrence, can be easily looked 
 up. Look for Liigo under his surname, Jones. 
 
 The Female Quixote is a novel by Mrs. Charlotte Lennox. It 
 was published in 1752, and may still be looked up in the libraries. 
 
 P. 179. Sir Antony Absolute. See Rivals. 
 
 what Jeremy Collier did for the English drama. See an 
 extremely interesting account of Jeremy Collier and what he did 
 for the English drama, in Macaulay's essay on the Comic Drama- 
 tists of the Restoration. 
 
 The writings of Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth should not 
 be allowed, in this generation, to become entirely forgotten. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 The following extracts from Macaulay's correspondence 
 will be found interesting and instructive as showing how a 
 great master of diction conceived the duty of a writer as 
 regards choice of words and phrases. The first extract is 
 from a letter to Napier, editor of the Edinburgh Review, 
 and the second is the letter to Leigh Hunt there referred 
 to. 
 
 (Macaulay to Napier.) 
 
 And now a few words about Leigh Hunt. He wrote to me yester- 
 day in great distress, and enclosed a letter which he had received from 
 you, and which had much agitated him. In truth, he misunderstood 
 you ; and you had used an expression which was open to some little 
 misconstruction. You told him that you should he glad to have a 
 "gentlemanlike" article from him, and Hunt took this for a reflection 
 on his birth. He implored me to tell him candidly whether he had 
 given you any offence, and to advise him as to his course. I replied 
 that he had utterly misunderstood you ; that I was sure you meant a 
 literary criticism ; that your taste in composition was more severe than 
 his, more indeed than mine ; that you were less tolerant than myself 
 of little mannerisms springing from peculiarities of temper and train- 
 ing ; that his style seemed to you too colloquial ; that I myself thought 
 that he was in danger of excess in that direction ; and that, when you 
 received a letter from him promising a very " chatty " article, I was 
 not surprised that you should caution him against his besetting sin. I 
 said that I was sure that you wished him well, and would be glad of his 
 assistance ; but that he could not expect a person in your situation to 
 pick his words very nicely ; that you had during many years superin- 
 tended great literary undertakings ; that you had been under the neces- 
 sity of collecting contributions from great numbers of writers, and that 
 you were responsible to the public for the whole. Your credit was so 
 deeply concerned that you must be allowed to speak plainly. I knew 
 
 201 
 
202 Appendix. 
 
 that you had spoken to men of the first consideration quite as plainly 
 as to him. I knew that you had refused to insert passages written by 
 so great a man as Lord Brougham. I knew that you had not scrupled 
 to hack and hew articles on foreign politics which had been concocted 
 ill the Hotels of Ambassadors, and had received the imprimatur of 
 Secretaries of State. I said that therefore he must, as a man of sense, 
 suffer you to tell him what you might think, whether rightly or wrongly, 
 to be the faults of his style. As to the sense which he had put on one 
 or two of your expressions, I took it on myself, as your friend, to affirm 
 that he had mistaken their meaning, and that you would never have 
 used those words if you had foreseen that they would have been so 
 understood. Between ourselves, the w^ord "gentlemanlike" was used 
 in rather a harsh way. Now I have told you what has passed between 
 him and me ; and I leave you to act as you think fit. I am sure that 
 you will act properly and humanely. But I must add that I think you 
 are too hard on his article. 
 
 (Macaulay to Leigh Hunt.) 
 
 Albany, October 29, 1841. 
 My Dear Sir, — I do not wonder that you are hurt by Napier's 
 letter, but I think that you a little misunderstand him. I am confident 
 that he has not taken any part of your conduct ill, and equally confi- 
 dent that by the expression gentlemanlike^ which certainly he might 
 have spared, he meant not the smallest reflection either on your char- 
 acter or manners. I am certain that he means merely a literary criti- 
 cism. His taste in composition is what would commonly be called 
 classical, not so catholic as mine, nor so tolerant of those mannerisms 
 which are produced by the various tempers and trainings of men, and 
 which, within certain limits, are, in my judgment, agreeable. Napier 
 would thoroughly appreciate the merits of a writer like Bolingbroke or 
 Kobertson ; but would, I think, be unpleasantly affected by the pecu- 
 liarities of such a writer as Burton, Sterne, or Charles Lamb. He 
 thinks your style too colloquial ; and, no doubt, it has a very colloquial 
 character. I wish it to retain that character, which to me is exceed- 
 ingly pleasant. But I think that the danger against which you have 
 to guard is excess in that direction. Napier is the very man to be 
 startled by the smallest excess in that direction. Therefore I am not 
 surprised that, when you proposed to send him a chatty article, he took 
 fright, and recommended dignity and severity of style ; and care to 
 avoid what he calls vulgar expressions, such as hit. The question is 
 
Appendix. 203 
 
 purely one of taste. It has nothing to do with the morals or the 
 honor. 
 
 As to the tone of Napier's criticism, you must remember that his 
 position with regard to the Revieiv, and the habits of his life, are such 
 that he cannot be expected to pick his words very nicely. He has 
 superintended more than one great literary undertaking, — the En- 
 cijclopoidia Britannica, for example. He has had to collect contri- 
 butions from hundreds of men of letters, and has been answerable to 
 the publishers and to the public for the whole. Of course he has been 
 under the necessity of very frequently correcting, disapproving, and 
 positively rejecting articles; and is now as little disturbed about such 
 things as Sir Benjamin Brodie about performing a surgical operation. 
 To my own personal knowledge, he has positively refused to accept 
 papers even from so great a man as Lord Brougham. He only a few 
 months ago received an article on foreign politics from an eminent 
 diplomatist. The style was not to his taste ; and he altered it to an 
 extent which greatly irritated the author. Mr. Carlyle formerly wrote 
 for the Review, — a man of talents, though, in my opinion, absurdly 
 overpraised by some of his admirers. I believe, though I do not know, 
 that he ceased to write because the oddities of his diction and his new 
 words, compounded a la Teutonique, drew such strong remonstrances 
 from Napier. I could mention other instances, but these are sufficient 
 to show you what I mean. He is really a good, friendly, and honor- 
 able man. He wishes for some assistance, but he thinks your style 
 too colloquial. He conceives that, as editor of the Bevieiv, he ought to 
 tell you what he thinks. And, having during many years been in the 
 habit of speaking his whole mind on such matters almost weekly to all 
 sorts of people, he expresses himself with more plainness than delicacy. 
 I shall probably have occasion to write him in a day or two. I will 
 tell him that one or two of his phrases have hurt your feelings, and 
 that, I think, he would have avoided them if he had taken time to 
 consider. 
 
 If you ask my advice, it is this. Tell him that some of his expres- 
 sions have given you pain ; but that you feel that you have no right to 
 resent a mere difference of literary taste ; that to attempt to unlearn a 
 style already formed and to acquire one completely different, would, as 
 he must feel, be absurd, and that the result would be something intol- 
 erably stiff and unnatural ; but that, as he thinks that a tone rathe^ 
 less colloquial would suit better with the general character of the 
 Beview, you will, without quitting the easy and familiar manner which 
 is natural to you, avoid whatever even an unreasonably fastidious taste 
 
2U4 Appetultx. 
 
 could regard as vulgarity. This is my honest advice. You may easily 
 imagine how disagreeable it is to say anything about a difference 
 between two persons for both of whom I entertain a sincere regard. 
 
 Of Macaulay's habit of illustrating his writing with allu- 
 sions Thackeray writes as follows : — 
 
 Take at hazard any three pages of the Essays or the History : and, 
 glimmering below the stream of the narrative, you, an average reader, 
 see one, two, three, half a score of allusions to other historic facts, 
 characters, literature, poetry, with which you are acquainted. Your 
 neighbor, wlio has his reading and his little stock of literature stowed 
 away in his mind, shall detect more points, allusions, happy touches, 
 indicating, not only the prodigious memory and vast learning of this 
 master, but the wonderful industry, the honest, humble, precious toil, 
 of this great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence ; he 
 travels a hundred miles to make a line of description. 
 
 The following quotations from Trevelyan's Life of Macau- 
 lay show that the great writer owed his success in literature 
 chiefly to his capacity for work, to his habit of self-correc- 
 tion and of endless painstaking : — 
 
 The main secret of INIacaulay's success lay in this, that to extraordi- 
 dary fluency and facility he united patient, minute, and persistent dili- 
 gence. He well knew, as Chaucer knew before him, that 
 
 There is na workeman 
 That cau bothe worken wel and hastilie. 
 This must be done at leisure parfaitlie. 
 
 If his method of composition ever comes into fashion, books prob- 
 ably will be better, and undoubtedly will be shorter. As soon as he 
 had got into his head all the information relating to any particular epi- 
 sode m his history (such, for instance, as Argyll's expedition to Scot- 
 land, or the attainder of Sir John Fenwick, or the calling in of the 
 clipped coinage), he would sit down and write off the whole story at a 
 headlong pace ; sketching in the outlines under the genial and auda- 
 cious impulse of a first conception; and securing in black and white 
 each idea, and epithet, and turn of phrase, as it flowed straight from 
 his busy brain to his rapid fingers. His manuscript, at this stage, to 
 
Appendix. 205 
 
 the eyes of any one but himself, appeared to consist of cokimn after 
 column of dashes and flourishes, in which a straight line, with a half- 
 formed letter at each end, and another in the middle, did duty for a 
 word. 
 
 As soon as Macaulay had finished his rough draft, he began to fill it 
 in at the rate of six sides of foolscap every morning ; written in so 
 large a hand, and with such a multitude of erasures, that the whole six 
 pages were, on an average, compressed into two pages of print. This 
 portion he called his 'task,' and he was never quite easy unless he 
 completed it daily. More he seldom sought to accomplish ; for he had 
 learned by long experience that this was as much as he could do at his 
 best ; and except when at his best, he never would work at all. 
 
 Macaulay never allowed a sentence to pass muster until it was afj 
 good as he could make it. He thought little of recasting a chapter in 
 order to obtain a more lucid arrangement, and nothing whatever of 
 reconstructing a paragraph for the sense of one happy stroke or apt 
 illustration. Whatever the worth of his labor, at any rate it was a 
 labor of love. 
 

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