Studies in Early Victorian Literature Part 2

_oi peri_ Gardiner, a _Life of Cromwell_ may be finally composed.

It is true that Carlyle's determination to force Oliver upon us as perfect saint and infallible hero is irritating and sometimes laughable; it is true that his zeal to be-dwarf every one but Cromwell himself is unjust and untrue; and the depreciation of every man who declines to play into Oliver's hands is too often manifest. But, on the whole, the judgments are so sound, the supporting authorities are so overwhelming, the work of verification is so thorough, so scrupulous, so perfectly borne out by all subsequent research--that the future will no doubt look on the _Cromwell_, not only as the most extraordinary, but the most satisfactory and effective of all Carlyle's work; although for the reasons stated, it can never have the largest measure of his literary charm or possess the full afflatus of his poetic and mystical genius.

By the time that _Cromwell_ was published, Thomas Carlyle was turned of fifty, and had produced nearly two-thirds of his total work. It may be doubted if any later book will be permanently counted amongst his masterpieces. _Friedrich_, for reasons set forth, was an attempt in late life to repeat the feat of the _Cromwell_: it was a much less urgent task: and it was not so well performed. The _Latter-Day Pamphlets_ (1850) do not add much that is new to _Past and Present_ (1843) or to _Sartor_ (1831); and little of what they add is either needful or true. The world had been fully enlightened about Wind-bags, Shams, the approach to Tophet, Stump-orators, Palaver-Parliaments, Phantasm-Captains, and the rest of the Sartorian puppet-pantomime.

There was a profound truth in all of these invectives, warnings, and prophecies. But the prophet's voice at last got so shrieky and monotonous, that instead of warning and inspiring a second generation, these terrific maledictions began to pall upon a practical world. An ardent admirer of the prophet has said that, when he first heard Carlyle speak face to face, he could hardly resist the impression that he was listening to an actor personating the Sage of Chelsea, and mimicking the stock phrases of the _Latter-Day Pamphlets_. Certainly no man of sense can find any serious guidance on any definite social problem from these "Pamphlets" of his morbid decline. Carlyle at last sat eating his heart out, like Napoleon on St. Helena. His true friends will hasten to throw such a decent covering as j.a.phet and Shem threw around Noah, over the latest melancholy outbursts about Negroes, Reformers, Jamaica ma.s.sacres, and the antic.i.p.ated conflagration of Paris by the Germans. It is pitiful indeed to find in "the collected and revised works," thirty-six volumes, the drivel of his Pro-Slavery advocacy, and of ill-conditioned snarling at honest men labouring to reform ancient abuses.

It is perilous for any man, however consummate be his genius, to place himself on a solitary rock apart from all living men and defiant of all before him, as the sole source of truth out of his own inner consciousness. It is fatal to any man, however n.o.ble his own spirit, to look upon this earth as "one fuliginous dust-heap," and the whole human race as a mere herd of swine rushing violently down a steep place into the sea. Nor can the guidance of mankind be with safety entrusted to one who for eighty-six years insisted on remaining by his own hearth-stone a mere omnivorous reader and omnigenous writer of books.

Carlyle was a true and pure "man of letters," looking at things and speaking to men, alone in his study, through the medium of printed paper. All that a "man of letters," of great genius and lofty spirit, could do by consuming and producing mere printed paper, he did. And as the "supreme man of letters" of his time he will ever be honoured and long continue to be read. He deliberately cultivated a form of speech which made him unreadable to all except English-speaking readers, and intelligible only to a select and cultivated body even amongst them.

He wrote in what, for practical purposes, is a local, or rather personal, dialect. And thus he deprived himself of that world-wide and European influence which belongs to such men as Hume, Gibbon, Scott, Byron--even to Macaulay, Tennyson, d.i.c.kens, Ruskin, and Spencer. But his name will stand beside theirs in the history of British thought in the nineteenth century; and a devoted band of chosen readers, wherever the Anglo-Saxon tongue is heard, will for generations to come continue to drink inspiration from the two or three masterpieces of the Annandale peasant-poet.

III

LORD MACAULAY

Macaulay, who counted his years of life by those of this century, may fairly claim to have had the greatest body of readers, and to be the most admired prose-writer of the Victorian Age. It is now some seventy years since his first brilliant essay on "Milton" took the world by storm. It is half a century since that fascinating series of _Essays_ was closed, and little short of that time since his famous _History_ appeared. The editions of it in England and in America are counted by thousands; it has six translations into German, and translations into ten other European languages. It made him rich, famous, and a peer.

Has it given him a foremost place in English literature?

Here is a case where the judgment of the public and the judgment of experts is in striking contrast. The readers both of the Old and of the New World continue to give the most practical evidence that they love his books. Macaulay is a rare example of a writer all of whose works are almost equally popular, and believed by many to be equally good. _Essays, Lays, History, Lives_--all are read by millions: as critic, poet, historian, biographer, Macaulay has achieved world-wide renown. And yet some of our best critics deny him either fine taste, or subtlety, or delicate discrimination, catholic sympathies, or serene judgment. They say he is always more declaimer than thinker--more advocate than judge. The poets deny that the _Lays_ are poetry at all.

The modern school of scientific historians declare that the _History_ is a splendid failure, and it proves how rotten was the theory on which it is constructed. The purists in style shake their heads over his everlasting ant.i.theses, the mannerism of violent phrases and the perpetual abuse of paradox. His most indulgent friends admit the force of these defects, which they usually speak of as his "limitations" or his "methods." Here, indeed, is an opportunity for one of those long-drawn ant.i.theses of which Macaulay was so great a master. How he would himself have revelled in the paradox--"that books which were household words with every cow-boy in Nevada, and every Baboo in Bengal, were condemned by men of culture as the work of a Philistine and a mannerist"; "how ballads which were the delight of every child were ridiculed by critics as rhetorical jingles that would hardly win a prize in a public school"; "how the most famous of all modern reviewers scarcely gave us one example of delicate appreciation or subtle a.n.a.lysis"; how it comes about "that the most elaborate of modern histories does not contain an idea above the commonplaces of a crammer's textbook"--and so forth, in the true Black-and-White style which is so clear and so familiar. But let us beware of applying to Macaulay himself that tone of exaggeration and laborious ant.i.thesis which he so often applied to others. Boswell, he says, was immortal, "_because_ he was a dunce, a parasite, and a c.o.xcomb." It would be a feeble parody to retort that Macaulay became a great literary power "because he had no philosophy, little subtlety, and a heavy hand." For my part, I am slow to believe that the judgment of the whole English-speaking race, a judgment maintained over more than half a century, can be altogether wrong; and the writer who has given such delight, has influenced so many writers, and has taught so much to so many persons, can hardly have been a shallow mannerist, or an ungovernable partisan. No one denies that Macaulay had a prodigious knowledge of books; that in literary fecundity and in varied improvisation he has rarely been surpa.s.sed; that his good sense is unfailing, his spirit manly, just, and generous; and lastly, that his command over language had unequalled qualities of precision, energy, and brilliance. These are all very great and sterling qualities. And it is right to acknowledge them with no unstinted honour--even whilst we are fully conscious of the profound shortcomings and limitations that accompanied but did not destroy them.

In a previous paper we discussed the permanent contribution to English literature of Thomas Carlyle; and it is curious to note how complete a contrast these two famous writers present. Carlyle was a simple, self-taught, recluse man of letters: Macaulay was legislator, cabinet minister, orator, politician, peer--a pet of society, a famous talker, and member of numerous academies. Carlyle was poor, despondent, morbid, and cynical: Macaulay was rich, optimist, overflowing with health, high spirits, and good nature. The one hardly ever knew what the world called success: the other hardly ever knew failure. Carlyle had in him the elements that make the poet, the prophet, the apostle, the social philosopher. In Macaulay these were singularly wanting; he was the man of affairs, the busy politician, the rhetorician, the eulogist of society as it is, the believer in material progress, in the ultimate triumph of all that is practical and commonplace, and in the final discomfiture of all that is visionary and Utopian. The Teufelsdrockhian dialect is obscure even to its select students: the Macaulay sentence is plain as that of Swift himself. Carlyle's gospel is full of pa.s.sion, novelty, suggestion, theory, and social problems.

Macaulay turned his back on social problems and disdained any kind of gospel. He had no mission to tell the world how bad it is; on the contrary, he was never wearied with his proofs that it ought to be well satisfied with its lot and its vast superiority in all things to its ancestors.

The great public, wherever English books penetrate, from the White Sea to Australia, from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, loves the brilliant, manly, downright optimist; the critics and the philosophers care more for the moody and prophetic pessimist. But this does not decide the matter; and it does not follow that either public or critic has the whole truth. If books were written only in the dialect, and with the apocalyptic spirit of _Sartor_, it is certain that millions would cease to read books, and could gain little from books if they did. And if the only books were such "purple patches" of history as Macaulay left us, with their hard and fast divisions of men into sheep and goats, and minute biographies of fops, pedants, and grandees, narrated in the same resonant, rhetorical, unsympathetic, and falsely emphatic style--this generation would have a very patchwork idea of past ages and a narrow sense of the resources of our English language.

There is room for both literary schools, and we need teachers of many kinds. We must not ask of any kind more than they can give. Macaulay has led millions who read no one else, or who never read before, to know something of the past, and to enjoy reading. He will have done them serious harm if he has persuaded them that this is the best that can be done in historical literature, or that this is the way in which the English language can be most fitly used. Let us be thankful for his energy, learning, brilliance. He is no priest, philosopher, or master. Let us delight in him as a fireside companion.

In one thing all agree--critics, public, friends, and opponents.

Macaulay's was a life of purity, honour, courage, generosity, affection, and manly perseverance, almost without a stain or a defect.

His life, it was true, was singularly fortunate, and he had but few trials, and no formidable obstacles. He was bred up in the comfortable egoism of the opulent middle cla.s.ses; the religion of comfort, _laisser-faire_, and social order was infused into his bones. But, so far as his traditions and temper would permit, his life was as honourable, as unsullied, and as generous, as ever was that of any man who lived in the fierce light that beats upon the famous. We know his nature and his career as well as we know any man's; and we find it on every side wholesome, just, and right. He has been fortunate in his biographers, and amply criticised by the best judges. His nephew, Sir George Trevelyan, has written his life at length in a fine book. Dean Milman and Mark Pattison have given us vignettes; Cotter Morison has adorned the _Men of Letters_ series with a delightful and sympathetic sketch; and John Morley and Leslie Stephen have weighed his work in the balance with judicial ac.u.men and temperate firmness. There is but one voice in all this company. It was a fine, generous, honourable, and sterling nature. His books deserve their vast popularity and may long continue to maintain it. But Macaulay must not be judged amongst philosophers--nor even amongst the real masters of the English language. And, unless duly corrected, he may lead historical students astray and his imitators into an obtrusive mannerism.

Let us take a famous pa.s.sage from one of his most famous essays, written in the zenith of his powers after his return from India, at the age of forty--an essay on a grand subject which never ceased to fascinate his imagination, composed with all his amazing resources of memory and his dazzling mastery of colour. It is the third paragraph of his well-known review of Von Ranke's _History of the Popes_. The pa.s.sage is familiar to all readers, and some of its phrases are household words. It is rather long as well as trite; but it contains in a single page such a profusion of historical suggestion; it is so vigorous, so characteristic of Macaulay in all his undoubted resources as in all his mannerism and limitations; it is so essentially true, and yet so thoroughly obvious; it is so grand in form, and yet so meagre in philosophic logic, that it may be worth while to a.n.a.lyse it in detail; and for that purpose it must be set forth, even though it convey to most readers little more than a sonorous truism.

There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilisation. No other inst.i.tution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But the republic of Venice was modern when compared with the Papacy; and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigour. The Catholic Church is still sending forth, to the farthest ends of the world, missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustin, and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number of her children is greater than in any former age. Her acquisitions in the New World have more than compensated her for what she has lost in the Old. Her spiritual ascendancy extends over the vast countries which lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape Horn, countries which, a century hence, may not improbably contain a population as large as that which now inhabits Europe. The members of her communion are certainly not fewer than a hundred and fifty millions; and it will be difficult to show that all the other Christian sects united amount to a hundred and twenty millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term of her long dominion is approaching. She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no a.s.surance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had crossed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished in Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.

Here we have Macaulay in all his strength and all his limitations. The pa.s.sage contains in the main a solid truth--a truth which was very little accepted in England in the year 1840--a truth of vast import and very needful to a.s.sert. And this truth is clothed in such pomp of ill.u.s.tration, and is hammered into the mind with such acc.u.mulated blows; it is so clear, so hard, so coruscating with images, that it is impossible to escape its effect. The paragraph is one never to be forgotten, and not easy to be refuted or qualified. No intelligent tiro in history can read that page without being set a-thinking, without feeling that he has a formidable problem to solve. Tens of thousands of young minds must have had that deeply-coloured picture of Rome visibly before them in many a Protestant home in England and in America. Now, all this is a very great merit. To have posed a great historical problem, at a time when it was very faintly grasped, and to have sent it ringing across the English-speaking world in such a form that he who runs may read--nay, he who rides, he who sails, he who watches sheep or stock _must_ read--this is a real and signal service conferred on literature and on thought. Compare this solid sense with Carlyle's ribaldry about "the three-hatted Papa," "pig's wash,"

"servants of the Devil," "this accursed nightmare," and the rest of his execrations--and we see the difference between the sane judgment of the man of the world and the prejudices of intolerant fanaticism.

But, unfortunately, Macaulay, having stated in majestic ant.i.theses his problem of "the unchangeable Church," makes no attempt to provide us with a solution. This splendid eulogium is not meant to convert us to Catholicism--very far from it. Macaulay was no Catholic, and had only a sort of literary admiration for the Papacy. As Mr. Cotter Morison has shown, he leaves the problem just where he found it, and such theories as he offers are not quite trustworthy. He does not suggest that the Catholic Church is permanent because it possesses truth: but, rather, because men's ideas of truth are a matter of idiosyncrasy or digestion. The whole essay is not a very safe guide to the history of Protestantism or of Catholicism, though it is full of brilliant points and sensible a.s.sertions. And in the end our essayist, the rebel from his Puritan traditions, and the close ally of sceptical Gallios, after forty pages of learned _pros_ and _cons_, declares that he will not say more for fear of "exciting angry feelings." He rather sneers at Protestant fervour: he declaims grand sentences about Catholic fervour.

He will not declare for either of them; and it does not seem to matter much in the long run for which men declare, provided they can be kept well in hand by saving common-sense. In the meantime the topic is a mine of paradox to the picturesque historian. This is not philosophy, it is not history, but it is full of a certain rich literary seed.

The pa.s.sage, though a truism to all thoughtful men, was a striking novelty to English Protestants fifty years ago. But it will hardly bear a close scrutiny of these sweeping, sharp-edged, "c.o.c.k-sure"

dogmas of which it is composed. The exact propositions it contains may be singly accurate; but as to the most enduring "work of human policy,"

it is fair to remember that the Civil Law of Rome has a continuous history of at least twenty-four centuries; that the Roman Empire from Augustus to the last Constantine in New Rome endured for fifteen centuries; and from Augustus to the last Hapsburg it endured for eighteen centuries. There is a certain ambiguity between the way in which Macaulay alternates between the Papacy and the Christian Church, which are not at all the same thing. The Papacy, as a European or cosmical inst.i.tution, can hardly be said to have more than twelve centuries of continuous history on the stage of the world. The religion and inst.i.tutions of Confucius and of Buddha have twice that epoch; and the religion and inst.i.tutions of Moses have thirty centuries; and the Califate in some form or other is nearly coeval with the Papacy. The judicious eulogist has guarded himself against denying in words any of these facts; but a cool survey of universal history will somewhat blunt the edge of Macaulay's trenchant phrases. After all, we must admit that the pa.s.sage as a whole, apart from the superlatives, is substantially true, and contains a most valuable and very striking thought.

Pa.s.sing from the thought to the form of this famous pa.s.sage, with what a wealth of ill.u.s.tration is it enforced, with what telling contrasts, with what gorgeous a.s.sociations! How vivid the images, how stately the personages, who are called up to heighten the lights of the tableau of the Vatican! Ancient and modern civilisation are joined by it; it recalls the Pantheon and the Colosseum; it gave sanction to the Empire of Charlemagne and to that of Napoleon, it inspired Augustin, and confronted Attila; Venice is a mere modern foundation; the Church is older than Hengist and Horsa, Clovis, or Mahomet; yet it stretches over the Atlantic continent from Missouri to Cape Horn, and still goes on conquering and to conquer. And the climax of this kaleidoscopic "symphony in purple and gold"--the New Zealander sketching the ruins of St. Paul's from a broken arch of London Bridge--has become a proverb, and is repeated daily by men who never heard of Macaulay, much less of Von Ranke, and is an inimitable bit of picturesque colouring. It is very telling, n.o.bly hyperbolic, no man can misunderstand it, or forget it. The most practised hand will not find it easy to "go one better than" Macaulay in a swingeing trope. It is a fascinating literary artifice, and it has fascinated many to their ruin. In feebler hands, it degenerates into what in London journalistic slang is known as "telegraphese." A pocket encyclopaedia and a copious store of adjectives have enabled many a youth to roar out brilliant articles "as gently as a sucking dove." But all men of power have their imitators, and are open to parody and spurious coining. Now, Macaulay, however brilliant and kaleidoscopic, is always using his own vast reading, his own warm imagination, his unfailing fecundity, and his sterling good sense.

Turn to the style of the pa.s.sage--it is perfectly pellucid in meaning, rings on the ear like the crack of a rifle, is sonorous, rich, and swift. One can fancy the whole pa.s.sage spoken by an orator; indeed it is difficult to resist the illusion that it was "declaimed" before it was written. We catch the oratorial tags and devices, the repeated phrase, the incessant ant.i.thesis, the alternate rise and fall of eloquent speech. It is declamation--fine declamation--but we miss the musical undertones, the subtle involutions, the unexpected bursts, and mysterious cadences of really great written prose. The term "the Republic of Venice" is repeated three times in three lines: the term "the Papacy" is repeated three times in two lines. Any other writer would subst.i.tute a simple "it" for most of these; and it is difficult to see how the paragraph would lose. The orator aids his hearers by constant repet.i.tion of the same term; the writer avoids this lest he prove monotonous. The short sentences of four or five words interposed to break the torrent--the repet.i.tion of the same words--the see-saw of black and white, old and young, base and pure--all these are the stock-in-trade of the rhetorician, not of the master of written prose.

Now, Macaulay was a rhetorician, a consummate rhetorician, who wrote powerful invectives or panegyrics in ma.s.sive rhetoric which differed from speeches mainly in their very close fibre, in their chiselled phrasing, and above all in their dazzling profusion of literary ill.u.s.tration. If it was oratory, it was the oratory of a speaker of enormous reading, inexhaustible memory, and consummate skill with words.

There is nothing at all exceptional about this pa.s.sage which has been chosen for a.n.a.lysis. It is a fair and typical piece of Macaulay's best style. Indeed his method is so uniform and so mechanical that any page of his writing exhibits the same force and the same defects as any other. Take one of the most famous of his scenes, the trial of Warren Hastings, toward the end of that elaborate essay, written in 1841.

Every one knows the gorgeous and sonorous description of Westminster Hall, beginning--"The place was worthy of such a trial." In the next sentence the word "hall" recurs five times, and the relative "which"

occurs three times, and is not related to the same noun. Ten sentences in succession open with the p.r.o.noun "there." It is a perfect galaxy of varied colour, pomp, and ill.u.s.tration; but the effect is somewhat artificial, and the whole scene smells of the court upholsterer. The "just sentence of Bacon" pairs off with "the just absolution of Somers"; the "greatest painter" sits beside the "greatest scholar of the age"; ladies have "lips more persuasive than those of Fox"; there, too, is "the beautiful mother of a beautiful race." And in the midst of these long-drawn superlatives and glittering contrasts come in short martial phrases, as brief and sharp as a drill-sergeant's word of command. "Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting"--"The avenues were lined with grenadiers"--"The streets were kept clear by cavalry."

No man can forget these short, hard decisive sentences.

The artificial structure of his paragraphs grew upon Macaulay with age.

His _History of England_ opens with a paragraph of four sentences.

Each of these begins with "I purpose," "I shall"; and the last sentence of the four has ten clauses each beginning with "how." The next paragraph has four successive sentences beginning "It will be seen"--and the last sentence has again three clauses each beginning with "how." The fourth paragraph contains the word "I" four times in as many lines. This method of composition has its own merits. The repet.i.tion of words and phrases helps the perception and prevents the possibility of misunderstanding. Where effects are simply enumerated, the monotony of form is logically correct. Every successive sentence heralded by a repeated "how," or "there," or "I," adjusts itself into its proper line without an effort of thought on the reader's part. It is not graceful; it is pompous, and distinctly rhetorical. But it is eminently clear, emphatic, orderly, and easy to follow or to remember.

Hence it is unpleasing to the finely-attuned ear, and is counted somewhat vulgar by the trained lover of style, whilst it is immensely popular with those who read but little, and is able to give them as much pleasure as it gives instruction.

The famous pa.s.sage about Westminster Hall, written in 1841, may be compared with the equally known pa.s.sage on the Chapel in the Tower which occurs in the fifth chapter of the _History_, written in 1848.

It begins as all lovers of English remember--"In truth there is no sadder spot on the earth than this little cemetery." The pa.s.sage continues with "there" and "thither" repeated eight times; it bristles with contrasts, graces and horrors, ant.i.thesis, climax, and sonorous heraldries. "Such was the dust with which the dust of Monmouth mingled." It is a fine paragraph, which has impressed and delighted millions. But it is, after all, rather facile moralising; its rhetorical artifice has been imitated with success in many a prize essay and not a few tall-talking journals. How much more pathos is there in a stanza from Gray's _Elegy_, or a sentence from Carlyle's _Bastille_, or Burke's _French Revolution_!

The habit of false emphasis and the love of superlatives is a far worse defect, and no one has attempted to clear Macaulay of the charge. It runs through every page he wrote, from his essay on Milton, with which he astonished the town at the age of twenty-five, down to the close of his _History_ wherein we read that James II. valued Lord Perth as "author of the last improvements on the thumb-screw." Indeed no more glaring example of Macaulay's _megalomania_ or taste for exaggeration can be found than the famous piece in the _Milton_ on the Restoration of Charles II.

Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the days of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The king cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people, sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with complacent infamy, her degrading insults, and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots and the jests of buffoons regulated the policy of the State.

The government had just ability enough to deceive and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean.

In every high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch; and England propitiated these obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race, accursed of G.o.d and man, was a second time driven forth, to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a by-word and a shaking of the head to the nations.

This is vigorous invective, in the style of Cicero against Catiline, or Junius attacking a duke; it is brilliant rhetoric and scathing satire.

At bottom it has substantial truth, if the attention is fixed on Whitehall and the scandalous chronicle of its frequenters. It differs also from much in Macaulay's invectives in being the genuine hot-headed pa.s.sion of an ardent reformer only twenty-five years old. It is substantially true as a picture of the Court at the Restoration: but in form how extravagant, even of that! Charles II. is Belial; James is Moloch; and Charles is _propitiated_ by the blood of Englishmen!--Charles, easy, courteous, good-natured, profligate Charles. And all this of the age of the _Paradise Lost_ and the _Morning Hymn_, of Jeremy Taylor, Izaak Walton, Locke, Newton, and Wren! Watch Macaulay banging on his ant.i.thetic drum--"servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love"--"dwarfish talents and gigantic vices"--"ability enough to deceive"--"religion enough to persecute." Every phrase is a superlative; every word has its contrast; every sentence has its climax. And withal let us admit that it is tremendously powerful, that no one who ever read it can forget it, and few even who have read it fail to be tinged with its fury and contempt. And, though a tissue of superlatives, it bears a solid truth, and has turned to just thoughts many a young spirit p.r.o.ne to be fascinated by Charles's good-nature, and impressed with the halo of the divine consecration of kings.

But the savage sarcasms which are tolerable in a pa.s.sionate young reformer smarting under the follies of George IV., are a serious defect in a grave historian, when used indiscriminately of men and women in every age and under every condition. In his _Machiavelli_, Macaulay hints that the best histories are perhaps "those in which a little of fict.i.tious narrative is judiciously employed." "Much," he says, "is gained in effect." It is to be feared that this youthful indiscretion was never wholly purged out of him. Boswell, we know, was "a dunce, a parasite, and a c.o.xcomb"--_and therefore_ immortal. He was one of "the smallest men that ever lived," of "the meanest and feeblest intellect,"

"servile," "shallow," "a bigot and a sot," and so forth--and yet, "a great writer, _because_ he was a great fool." We all know what is meant; and there is a substratum of truth in this; but it is tearing a paradox to tatters. How differently has Carlyle dealt with poor dear Bozzy! Croker's _Boswell's Johnson_ "is as bad as bad can be," full of "monstrous blunders"--(he had put 1761 for 1766) "gross mistakes"--"for which a schoolboy would be flogged." Southey is "utterly dest.i.tute of the power of discerning truth from falsehood." He prints a joke which "is enough to make us ashamed of our species." Robert Montgomery pours out "a roaring cataract of nonsense." One of his tropes is "the worst similitude in the world." And yet Macaulay can rebuke Johnson for "big words wasted on little things"!

Neither Cicero, Milton, Swift, nor Junius ever dealt in more furious words than Macaulay, who had not the excuse of controversy or pa.s.sion.

Frederick William of Prussia was "the most execrable of fiends, a cross between Moloch and Puck"; "his palace was h.e.l.l"; compared with the Prince, afterwards Frederick the Great, "Oliver Twist in the workhouse, and Smike at Dotheboys Hall were petted children." It would be difficult for Mark Twain to beat that. "The follies and vices of King John _were the salvation_ of England." Cranmer was peculiarly fitted to organise the Church of England by being "unscrupulous, indifferent, a coward, and a time-server." James I. was given to "stammering, s...o...b..ring, shedding unmanly tears," alternating between the buffoon and the pedagogue. James II. "amused himself with hearing Covenanters shriek"; he was "a libertine, singularly slow and narrow in understanding, obstinate, harsh, and unforgiving." The country gentleman of that age talked like "the most ignorant clown"; his wife and daughter were in taste "below a stillroom maid of the present day."

The chaplain was a mere servant, and was expected to marry a servant girl whose character had been blown upon.

But it ought to be remembered that all of these descriptions are substantially true. Macaulay's pictures of the Stuarts, of Cromwell, of the Restoration and its courtiers, of Milton, of William III., are all faithful and just; Boswell _was_ often absurd; Southey _was_ shallow; Montgomery _was_ an impostor; Frederick William _did_ treat his son brutally; the country squire and the parson two centuries ago were much rougher people than they are to-day. And if Macaulay had simply told us this in measured language of this kind, he would have failed in beating his lesson into the mind. Not only was "a little of fict.i.tious narrative judiciously employed," but not a little of picturesque exaggeration and redundant superlatives. Carlyle is an even worse offender in this line. Did he not call Macaulay himself "squat, low-browed, commonplace"--"a poor creature, with his dictionary literature and his saloon arrogance"--"no vision in him"--"will neither see nor do any great thing"?[1] Ruskin, Freeman, Froude, and others have been tempted to deal in gross superlatives. But with all these it has been under the stimulus of violent indignation. With Macaulay the superlatives pour out as his native vernacular without heat or wrath, as a mere rhetorician's trick, as the favourite tones of a great colourist. And though the trick, like all literary tricks, grows upon the artist, and becomes singularly offensive to the man of taste, it must always be remembered that, with Macaulay, the praise or blame is usually just and true; he is very rarely grossly unfair and wrong, as Carlyle so often is; and if Macaulay resorts too often to the superlative degree, he is usually ent.i.tled to use the comparative degree of the same adjective.

The style, with all its defects, has had a solid success and has done great things. By clothing his historical judgments and his critical reflections in these cutting and sonorous periods, he has forced them on the attention of a vast body of readers wherever English is read at all, and on millions who have neither time nor attainments for any regular studies of their own. How many men has Macaulay succeeded in reaching, to whom all other history and criticism is a closed book, or a book in an unknown tongue! If he were a sciolist or a wrong-headed fanatic, this would be a serious evil. But, as he is substantially right in his judgments, brimful of saving common-sense and generous feeling, and profoundly well read in his own periods and his favourite literature, Macaulay has conferred most memorable services on the readers of English throughout the world. He stands between philosophic historians and the public very much as journals and periodicals stand between the ma.s.ses and great libraries. Macaulay is a glorified journalist and reviewer, who brings the matured results of scholars to the man in the street in a form that he can remember and enjoy, when he could not make use of a merely learned book. He performs the office of the ballad-maker or story-teller in an age before books were known or were common. And it is largely due to his influence that the best journals and periodicals of our day are written in a style so clear, so direct, so resonant. We need not imitate his mannerism; we may all learn to be outspoken, lucid, and brisk.

It is the very perfection of his qualities in rousing the interest of the great public which has drawn down on Macaulay the grave rebukes of so many fine judges of the higher historical literature. Cotter Morison, Mark Pattison, Leslie Stephen, and John Morley all agree that his style has none of the subtler charms of the n.o.blest prose, that his conception of history is radically unsound, that, in fact, it broke down by its own unwieldy proportions. Mr. Morison has very justly remarked that if the _History of England_ had ever been completed on the same scale for the whole of the period as originally designed, it would have run to fifty volumes, and would have occupied in composition one hundred and fifty years. As it is, the eight duodecimo volumes give us the events of sixteen years, from 1685 to 1701; so that the history of England from Alfred would require five hundred similar volumes. Now, Gibbon's eight octavo volumes give us the history of the world for thirteen centuries; that is to say, Gibbon has recounted the history of a century in nearly the same s.p.a.ce that Macaulay records the history of a year. There cannot be a doubt that Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_ is immeasurably superior to Macaulay's fragment, in thought, in imagination, in form, in all the qualities of permanent history; it stands on a far higher plane; it will long outlast and overshadow it.

Compared with this, Macaulay's delightful and brilliant pictures are mere glorified journalism.

Macaulay, who was no braggart, has put it on record that his conception of history was more just than that of Hume, Robertson, Voltaire, and Gibbon. It is perfectly true that his conception was different from theirs, his execution was different, and he does not address the same cla.s.s of readers. But his conception of history was not just; it was a mistake. His leading idea was to make history a true romance. He has accomplished this; and he has given us _a historical novel drawn from authentic doc.u.ments_. This is, no doubt, a very useful thing to do, a most interesting book to read; it is very pleasant literature, and has a certain teaching of its own to a certain order of readers. But it is not history. It sacrifices the breadth of view, the organic life, the philosophy, the grand continuity of human society. It must be a sectional picture of a very limited period in a selected area; it can give us only the external; it inevitably tends to trivial detail and to amusing personalities; it necessarily blinds us to the slow sequence of the ages. Besides this, it explains none of the deeper causes of movement; for, to make a picture, the artist must give us the visible and the obvious. History, in its highest sense, is the record of the evolution of humanity, in whole or in part. To compose an historical novel from doc.u.ments is to put this object aside. History, said Macaulay in his _Hallam_, "is a compound of poetry and philosophy." But in practice, he subst.i.tuted word-painting for poetry, and anecdote for philosophy. His own delightful and popular _History of England_ is a compound of historical romance and biographical memoir.

Macaulay's strong point was in narrative, and in narrative he has been surpa.s.sed by hardly any historian and even by few novelists. Scott and Victor Hugo have hardly a scene more stirring than Macaulay's death of Charles II., Monmouth's rebellion, the flight of James II., the trial of t.i.tus Gates, the inner life of William III. This is a very great quality which has deservedly made him popular. And if Macaulay had less philosophy than almost any historian of the smallest pretension, he has a skill in narration which places him in a fair line with the greatest. Unfortunately, this superb genius for narration has rarely been devoted to the grander events and the n.o.blest chiefs in history.

Even his hero William III. hardly lives in his canvas with such a glowing light as Charles II., Monmouth, and Jeffreys. The expulsion of James II. was a very poor affair if compared with the story of Charles I. and the Parliament. If Macaulay had painted for us the Council Chamber of Cromwell as he has painted the Whitehall of Charles II.; if he had described the battle of Naseby as well as he has pictured the fight of Sedgemoor; if he had narrated the campaigns of Marlborough as brilliantly as he has told that which ended at the Boyne--how much should we have had!

But it could not be. His own conception of history made this impossible. It is well said that he planned his history "on the scale of an ordnance map." He did what a German professor does when he tries to fathom English society by studying the _Times_ newspaper day by day.

The enormous ma.s.s of detail, the infinitesimal minuteness of view, beat him. As he complained about Samuel Johnson, he runs into "big words about little things." Charles's mistress, her pug-dog, the page-boy who tended the dog, nay, the boy's putative father, occupy the foreground: and the poet, the statesman, and the hero retire into the middle distance or the background. What would we not have given to have had Macaulay's _History of England_ continued down to his own time, the wars of Marlborough, the reign of Anne, the poets, wits, romancers, inventors, reformers, and heroes of the eighteenth century, the careers of Walpole, Chatham, Pitt, Burke, Fox, Nelson, Wellington, Brougham, Bentham, and Canning--the formation of the British Empire--the great revolutionary struggle in Europe! The one thought which dims our enjoyment of this fascinating collection of memoirs, and these veracious historical romances, is the sense of what we might have had, if their author had been a great historian as well as a magnificent literary artist.