Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay Part 32

This pa.s.sage, taken by itself, always struck me as the harshest, queerest, and most preposterous digression in the world. But there are several things in Pindar very like it. [Orelli makes an observation, much to the same effect, in his note on this pa.s.sage in his edition of 1850.]

You must excuse all this, for I labour at present under a suppression of Greek, and am likely to do so for at least three years to come. Malkin may be some relief; but I am quite unable to guess whether he means to come to Calcutta. I am in excellent bodily health, and I am recovering my mental health; but I have been sorely tried. Money matters look well.

My new brother-in-law and I are brothers in more than law. I am more comfortable than I expected to be in this country; and, as to the climate, I think it, beyond all comparison, better than that of the House of Commons.

Yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

Writing three days after the date of the foregoing letter, Macaulay says to his old friend Mr. Sharp: "You see that my mind is not in great danger of rusting. The danger is that I may become a mere pedant. I feel a habit of quotation growing on me; but I resist that devil, for such it is, and it flees from me. It is all that I can do to keep Greek and Latin out of all my letters. Wise sayings of Euripides are even now at my fingers' ends. If I did not maintain a constant struggle against this propensity, my correspondence would resemble the notes to the 'Pursuits of Literature.' It is a dangerous thing for a man with a very strong memory to read very much. I could give you three or four quotations this moment in support of that proposition; but I will bring the vicious propensity under subjection, if I can." [Many years later Macaulay wrote to my mother: "Dr. -- came, and I found him a very clever man; a little of a c.o.xcomb, but, I dare say, not the worse physician for that. He must have quoted Horace and Virgil six times at least a propos of his medical inquiries. Horace says, in a poem in which he jeers the Stoics, that even a wise man is out of sort when 'pituita molesta est;' which is, being interpreted, 'when, his phlegm is troublesome.' The Doctor thought it necessary to quote this pa.s.sage in order to prove that phlegm is troublesome;--a proposition, of the truth of which, I will venture to say, no man on earth is better convinced than myself."]

Calcutta, May 29, 1835.

Dear Ellis,--I am in great want of news. We know that the Tories dissolved at the end of December, and we also know that they were beaten towards the end of February. [In November 1834 the King called Sir Robert Peel to power; after having of his own accord dismissed the Whig Ministry. Parliament was dissolved, but the Tories did not succeed in obtaining a majority. After three months of constant and angry fighting, Peel was driven from office in April 1835.] As to what pa.s.sed in the interval, we are quite in the dark. I will not plague you with comments on events which will have been driven out of your mind by other events before this reaches you, or with prophecies which may be falsified before you receive them. About the final issue I am certain. The language of the first great reformer is that which I should use in reply to the exultation of our Tories here, if there were any of them who could understand it

sebou, proseukhou thopte ton kratount aei emoi d'ela.s.son Zeuos e meden melei.

drato krateito tonde ton brakhun khronon opes thelei daron gar ouk arksei theois

["Worship thou, adore, and flatter the monarch of the hour. To me Jove is of less account than nothing. Let him have his will, and his sceptre, for this brief season; for he will not long be the ruler of the G.o.ds."

It is needless to say that poor William the Fourth was the Jove of the Whig Prometheus.]

As for myself, I rejoice that I am out of the present storm. "Suave mari magno;" or, as your new Premier, if he be still Premier, construes. "It is a source of melancholy satisfaction." I may, indeed, feel the effects of the changes here, but more on public than private grounds. A Tory Governor-General is not very likely to agree with me about the very important law reforms which I am about to bring before the Council. But he is not likely to treat me ill personally; or, if he does,

all ou ti khairon, en tod orthothe Belos,

["It shall be to his cost, so long as this bow carries true."]

as Philoctetes says. In a few months I shall have enough to enable me to live, after my very moderate fashion, in perfect independence at home; and whatever debts any Governor-General may choose to lay on me at Calcutta shall be paid off, he may rely on it, with compound interest, at Westminster.

My time is divided between public business and books. I mix with society as little as I can. My spirits have not yet recovered,--I sometimes think that they will never wholly recover,--the shock which they received five months ago. I find that nothing soothes them so much as the contemplation of those miracles of art which Athens has bequeathed to us. I am really becoming, I hope not a pedant, but certainly an enthusiast about cla.s.sical literature. I have just finished a second reading of Sophocles. I am now deep in Plato, and intend to go right through all his works. His genius is above praise. Even where he is most absurd,--as, for example, in the Cratylus,--he shows an acuteness, and an expanse of intellect, which is quite a phenomenon by itself. The character of Socrates does not rise upon me. The more I read about him, the less I wonder that they poisoned him. If he had treated me as he is said to have treated Protagoras, Hippias, and Gorgias, I could never have forgiven him.

Nothing has struck me so much in Plato's dialogues as the raillery.

At college, somehow or other, I did not understand or appreciate it. I cannot describe to you the way in which it now tickles me. I often sink forward on my huge old Marsilius Ficinus in a fit of laughter. I should say that there never was a vein of ridicule so rich, at the same time so delicate. It is superior to Voltaire's; nay, to Pascal's. Perhaps there are one or two pa.s.sages in Cervantes, and one or two in Fielding, that might give a modern reader a notion of it.

I have very nearly finished Livy. I never read him through before. I admire him greatly, and would give a quarter's salary to recover the lost Decades. While I was reading the earlier books I went again through Niebuhr. And I am sorry to say that, having always been a little sceptical about his merits, I am now a confirmed unbeliever. I do not of course mean that he has no merit. He was a man of immense learning, and of great ingenuity. But his mind was utterly wanting in the faculty by which a demonstrated truth is distinguished from a plausible supposition. He is not content with suggesting that an event may have happened. He is certain that it happened, and calls on the reader to be certain too, (though not a trace of it exists in any record whatever,) because it would solve the phenomena so neatly. Just read over again, if you have forgotten it, the conjectural restoration of the Inscription in page 126 of the second volume; and then, on your honour as a scholar and a man of sense, tell me whether in Bentley's edition of Milton there is anything which approaches to the audacity of that emendation. Niebuhr requires you to believe that some of the greatest men in Rome were burned alive in the Circus; that this event was commemorated by an inscription on a monument, one half of which is sill in existence; but that no Roman historian knew anything about it; and that all tradition of the event was lost, though the memory of anterior events much less important has reached our time. When you ask for a reason, he tells you plainly that such a thing cannot be established by reason; that he is sure of it; and that you must take his word. This sort of intellectual despotism always moves me to mutiny, and generates a disposition to pull down the reputation of the dogmatist. Niebuhr's learning was immeasurably superior to mine; but I think myself quite as good a judge of evidence as he was. I might easily believe him if he told me that there were proofs which I had never seen; but, when he produces all his proofs, I conceive that I am perfectly competent to p.r.o.nounce on their value.

As I turned over his leaves just now, I lighted on another instance of what I cannot but call ridiculous presumption. He says that Martial committed a blunder in making the penultimate of Porsena short. Strange that so great a scholar should not know that Horace had done so too!

Minacis aut Etrusca Porsenae ma.n.u.s.

There is something extremely nauseous to me in a German Professor telling the world, on his own authority, and without giving the smallest reason, that two of the best Latin poets were ignorant of the quant.i.ty of a word which they must have used in their exercises at school a hundred times.

As to the general capacity of Niebuhr for political speculations, let him be judged by the Preface to the Second Volume. He there says, referring to the French Revolution of July 1830, that "unless G.o.d send us some miraculous help, we have to look forward to a period of destruction similar to that which the Roman world experienced about the middle of the third century." Now, when I see a man scribble such abject nonsense about events which are pa.s.sing under our eyes, what confidence can I put in his judgment as to the connection of causes and effects in times very imperfectly known to us.

But I must bring my letter, or review, to a close. Remember me most kindly to your wife. Tell Frank that I mean to be a better scholar than he when I come back, and that he must work hard if he means to overtake me.

Ever, dear Ellis,

Your affectionate friend

T. B. MACAULAY.

Calcutta: August 25, 1835.

Dear Ellis,--Cameron arrived here about a fortnight ago, and we are most actively engaged in preparing a complete Criminal Code for India. He and I agree excellently. Ryan, the most liberal of Judges, lends us his best a.s.sistance. I heartily hope, and fully believe, that we shall put the whole Penal law, and the whole law of Criminal Procedure, into a moderately sized volume. I begin to take a very warm interest in this work. It is, indeed, one of the finest employments of the intellect that it is easy to conceive. I ought, however, to tell you that, the more progress I make as a legislator, the more intense my contempt for the mere technical study of law becomes.

I am deep in the examination of the political theories of the old philosophers. I have read Plato's Republic, and his laws; and I am now reading Aristotle's Politics; after which I shall go through Plato's two treatises again. I every now and then read one of Plutarch's Lives on an idle afternoon; and in this way I have got through a dozen of them. I like him prodigiously. He is inaccurate, to be sure, and a romancer; but he tells a story delightfully, and his ill.u.s.trations and sketches of character are as good as anything in ancient eloquence. I have never, till now, rated him fairly.

As to Latin, I am just finishing Lucan, who remains pretty much where he was in my opinion; and I am busily engaged with Cicero, whose character, moral and intellectual, interests me prodigiously. I think that I see the whole man through and through. But this is too vast a subject for a letter. I have gone through all Ovid's poems. I admire him; but I was tired to death before I got to the end. I amused myself one evening with turning over the Metamorphoses, to see if I could find any pa.s.sage of ten lines which could, by possibility, have been written by Virgil.

Whether I was in ill luck or no I cannot tell; but I hunted for half an hour without the smallest success. At last I chanced to light on a little pa.s.sage more Virgilian, to my thinking, than Virgil himself. Tell me what you say to my criticism. It is part of Apollo's speech to the laurel

Semper habebunt Te coma, te citharae, te nostrae, laure, pharetrae Tu ducibus Latiis aderis, c.u.m laeta triumphum Vox canet, et longas visent Capitolia pompas.

Portibus Augustis cadem fidissima custos Ante fores stabis, mediamque tuebere querc.u.m.

As to other Latin writers, Sall.u.s.t has gone sadly down in my opinion.

Caesar has risen wonderfully. I think him fully ent.i.tled to Cicero's praise. [In the dialogue "De Claris Oratoribus" Cicero makes Atticus say that 'A consummate judge of style (who is evidently intended for Cicero himself,) p.r.o.nounces Caesar's Latin to be the most elegant, with one implied exception, that had ever been heard in the Senate or the Forum'.

Atticus then goes on to detail at full length a compliment which Caesar had paid to Cicero's powers of expression; and Brutus declares with enthusiasm that such praise, coming from such a quarter, is worth more than a Triumph, as Triumphs were then given; and inferior in value only to the honours which were voted to the statesman who had baffled Catiline. The whole pa.s.sage is a model of self-glorification, exquisite in skill and finish.] He has won the honour of an excellent historian while attempting merely to give hints for history. But what are they all to the great Athenian? I do a.s.sure you that there is no prose composition in the world, not even the De Corona, which I place so high as the seventh book of Thucydides. It is the ne plus ultra of human art.

I was delighted to find in Gray's letters the other day this query to Wharton: "The retreat from Syracuse--Is it or is it not the finest thing you ever read in your life?"

Did you ever read Athenaeus through? I never did; but I am meditating an attack on him. The mult.i.tude of quotations looks very tempting; and I never open him for a minute without being paid for my trouble.

Yours very affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

Calcutta: December 30, 1835,

Dear Ellis,--What the end of the Munic.i.p.al Reform Bill is to be I cannot conjecture. Our latest English intelligence is of the 15th of August.

The Lords were then busy in rendering the only great service that I expect them ever to render to the nation; that is to say, in hastening the day of reckoning. [In the middle of August the Irish t.i.the Bill went up to the House of Lords, where it was destined to undergo a mutilation which was fatal to its existence.] But I will not fill my paper with English politics.

I am in excellent health. So are my sister and brother-in-law, and their little girl, whom I am always nursing; and of whom I am becoming fonder than a wise man, with half my experience, would choose to be of anything except himself. I have but very lately begun to recover my spirits. The tremendous blow which fell on me at the beginning of this year has left marks behind it which I shall carry to my grave. Literature has saved my life and my reason. Even now, I dare not, in the intervals of business, remain alone for a minute without a book in my hand. What my course of life will be, when I return to England, is very doubtful. But I am more than half determined to abandon politics, and to give myself wholly to letters; to undertake some great historical work, which may be at once the business and the amus.e.m.e.nt of my life; and to leave the pleasures of pestiferous rooms, sleepless nights, aching heads, and diseased stomachs to Roebuck and to Praed.

In England I might probably be of a very different opinion. But, in the quiet of my own little gra.s.s-plot,--when the moon, at its rising, finds me with the Philoctetes or the De Finibus in my hand,--I often wonder what strange infatuation leads men who can do something better to squander their intellect, their health, their energy, on such subjects as those which most statesmen are engaged in pursuing. I comprehend perfectly how a man who can debate, but who would make a very indifferent figure as a contributor to an annual or a magazine,--such a man as Stanley, for example,--should take the only line by which he can attain distinction. But that a man before whom the two paths of literature and politics lie open, and who might hope for eminence in either, should choose politics, and quit literature, seems to me madness. On the one side is health, leisure, peace of mind, the search after truth, and all the enjoyments of friendship and conversation.

On the other side is almost certain ruin to the const.i.tution, constant labour, constant anxiety. Every friendship which a man may have, becomes precarious as soon as he engages in politics. As to abuse, men soon become callous to it, but the discipline which makes them callous is very severe. And for what is it that a man who might, if he chose, rise and lie down at his own hour, engage in any study, enjoy any amus.e.m.e.nt, and visit any place, consents to make himself as much a prisoner as if he were within the rules of the Fleet; to be tethered during eleven months of the year within the circle of half a mile round Charing Cross; to sit, or stand, night after night for ten or twelve hours, inhaling a noisome atmosphere, and listening to harangues of which nine-tenths are far below the level of a leading article in a newspaper? For what is it that he submits, day after day, to see the morning break over the Thames, and then totters home, with bursting temples, to his bed? Is it for fame? Who would compare the fame of Charles Townshend to that of Hume, that of Lord North to that of Gibbon, that of Lord Chatham to that of Johnson? Who can look back on the life of Burke and not regret that the years which he pa.s.sed in ruining his health and temper by political exertions were not pa.s.sed in the composition of some great and durable work? Who can read the letters to Atticus, and not feel that Cicero would have been an infinitely happier and better man, and a not less celebrated man, if he had left us fewer speeches, and more Academic Questions and Tusculan Disputations; if he had pa.s.sed the time which he spent in brawling with Vatinius and Clodius in producing a history of Rome superior even to that of Livy? But these, as I said, are meditations in a quiet garden, situated far beyond the contagious influence of English action. What I might feel if I again saw Downing Street and Palace Yard is another question. I tell you sincerely my present feelings.

I have cast up my reading account, and brought it to the end of the year 1835. It includes December 1834; for I came into my house and unpacked my books at the end of November 1834. During the last thirteen months I have read Aeschylus twice; Sophocles twice; Euripides once; Pindar twice; Callimachus; Apollonius Rhodius; Quintus Calaber; Theocritus twice; Herodotus; Thucydides; almost all Xenophon's works; almost all Plato; Aristotle's Politics, and a good deal of his Organon, besides dipping elsewhere in him; the whole of Plutarch's Lives; about half of Lucian; two or three books of Athenaeus; Plautus twice; Terence twice; Lucretius twice; Catullus; Tibullus; Propertius; Lucan; Statius; Silius Italicus; Livy; Velleius Paterculus; Sall.u.s.t; Caesar; and, lastly, Cicero. I have, indeed, still a little of Cicero left; but I shall finish him in a few days. I am now deep in Aristophanes and Lucian.

Of Aristophanes I think as I always thought; but Lucian has agreeably surprised me. At school I read some of his Dialogues of the Dead when I was thirteen; and, to my shame, I never, to the best of my belief, read a line of him since. I am charmed with him. His style seems to me to be superior to that of any extant writer who lived later than the age of Demosthenes and Theophrastus. He has a most peculiar and delicious vein of humour. It is not the humour of Aristophanes; it is not that of Plato; and yet it is akin to both; not quite equal, I admit, to either, but still exceedingly charming. I hardly know where to find an instance of a writer, in the decline of a literature, who has shown an invention so rich, and a taste so pure. But, if I get on these matters, I shall fill sheet after sheet. They must wait till we take another long walk, or another tavern dinner, together; that is, till the summer of 1838.

I had a long story to tell you about a cla.s.sical examination here; but I have not time. I can only say that some of the compet.i.tors tried to read the Greek with the papers upside down; and that the great man of the examination, the Thirlwall of Calcutta, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, translated the words of Theophrastus, osas leitourgias leleitroupgeke "how many times he has performed divine service." ["How many public services he had discharged at his own expense." Macaulay used to say that a lady who dips into Mr. Grote's history, and learns that Alcibiades won the heart of his fellow-citizens by the novelty of his theories and the splendour of his liturgies, may get a very false notion of that statesman's relations with the Athenian public.]

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

That the enormous list of cla.s.sical works recorded in the foregoing letter was not only read through, but read with care, is proved by the pencil marks, single, double, and treble, which meander down the margin of such pa.s.sages as excited the admiration of the student; and by the remarks, literary, historical, and grammatical, with which the critic has interspersed every volume, and sometimes every page. In the case of a favourite writer, Macaulay frequently corrects the errors of the press, and even the punctuation, as minutely as if he were preparing the book for another edition. He read Plautus, Terence, and Aristophanes four times through at Calcutta; and Euripides thrice. [See the Appendix at the end.] In his copy of Quintus Calaber, (a versifier who is less unknown by the t.i.tle of Quintus Smyrnaeus,) appear the entries,

"September 22, 1833." "Turned over, July 13, 1837."

It may be doubted whether the Pandects would have attained the celebrity which they enjoy, if, in the course of the three years during which Justinian's Law Commission was at work, the president Tribonian had read Quintus Smyrnaeus twice.