"With respect to that poor heresy of might being the symbol of right 'to a certain great and venerable author,' I shall have to tell Lecky one day that quite the converse or reverse is the great and venerable author's real opinion,—namely, that right is the eternal symbol of might; ... in fact, he probably never met with a son of Adam more contemptuous of might except when it rests on the above origin."

Yet the impression of all his strongest work is the other way.

Certain other kindred doctrines may be inferentially drawn from Carlyle's defence of Cromwell; namely, that a popular assembly is incapable of guiding successfully the destinies of a nation; that behind all constitutions lies an ultimate law of force; that majorities, as such, have no more right to rule than kings and nobles; that the strongest are the best, and the best are the strongest; that the right to rule lies with those who are right in mind and heart, as he supposed Cromwell to be, and who can execute their convictions. Such teachings, it need not be shown, are at war with the whole progress of modern society and the enlightened opinion of mankind.

The great merit of Carlyle's History is in the clearness and vividness with which he paints his hero and the exposure of the injustice with which he has been treated by historians. It is an able vindication of Cromwell's character. But the deductions drawn from his philosophy lead to absurdity, and are an insult to the understanding of the world.

It was about this time, on the conclusion of the "Cromwell," when he was on the summit of his literary fame, and the world began to shower its favors upon him, that Carlyle's days were saddened by a domestic trouble which gave him inexpressible solicitude and grief. His wife, with whom he had lived happily for so many years, was exceedingly disturbed on account of his intimate friendship with Lady Ashburton. Nothing can be more plaintive and sadly beautiful than the letters he wrote to her on the occasion of her starting off in a fit of spleen, after a stormy scene, to visit friends at a distance; and what is singular is that we do not find in those letters, when his soul was moved to its very depths, any of his peculiarities of style. They are remarkably simple as well as serious.

Carlyle's friendship for one of the most brilliant and cultivated women of England, which the breath of scandal never for a moment assailed, was reasonable and natural, and was a great comfort to him. He persisted in enjoying it, knowing that his wife disliked it. In this matter, which was a cloud upon his married life, and saddened the family hearth for years, Mrs. Carlyle was doubtless exacting and unreasonable; though some men would have yielded the point for the sake of a faithful wife,—or even for peace. There are those who think that Carlyle was selfish in keeping up an intercourse which was hateful to his wife; but the Ashburtons were the best friends that Carlyle ever had, after he became famous,—and in their various country seats he enjoyed a hospitality rarely extended to poor literary men. There he met in enjoyable and helpful intercourse, when he could not have seen them in his own house, some of the most distinguished men of the day,—men of rank and influence as well as those of literary fame.

Until this intimacy with the Ashburtons, no domestic disturbances of note had taken place in the Carlyle household. The wife may occasionally have been sad and lonely when her husband was preoccupied with his studies; but this she ought to have anticipated in marrying a literary man whose only support was from his pen. Carlyle, too, was an inveterate smoker, and she detested tobacco, so that he did not spend as much time in the parlor as he did in his library, where he could smoke to his heart's content. On the whole, however, their letters show genuine mutual affection, and as much connubial happiness as is common to most men and women, with far more of intimate intellectual and spiritual congeniality. Carlyle, certainly, in all his letters, ever speaks of his wife with admiration and gratitude. He regarded her as not only the most talented woman that he had ever known, but as the one without whom he was miserable. They were the best of comrades and companions from first to last, when at home together.

For a considerable period after the publication of the Life of Cromwell, Carlyle was apparently idle. He wrote for several years nothing of note except his "Latter Day Pamphlets" (1850), and a Life of his friend John Sterling (1851), to whom he was tenderly attached. It would seem that he was now in easy circumstances, although he retained to the end his economical habits. He amused himself with travelling, and with frequent visits to distinguished people in the country. If not a society man, he was much sought; he dined often at the tables of the great, and personally knew almost every man of note in London. He sturdily took his place among distinguished men,—the intellectual peer of the greatest. He often met Macaulay, but was not intimate with him. I doubt if they even exchanged visits. The reason for this may have been that they were not congenial to each other in anything, and that the social position of Macaulay was immeasurably higher than Carlyle's. It would be hard to say which was the greater man.

It was not until 1852 or 1853, when Carlyle was fifty-eight, that he seriously set himself to write his Life of Frederic II., his last great work, on which he perseveringly labored for thirteen years. It is an exhaustive history of the Prussian hero, and is regarded in Germany as the standard work on that great monarch and general. The first volume came out in 1858, and the last in 1865. It is a marvel of industry and accuracy,—the most elaborate of all his works, but probably the least read because of its enormous length and scholastic pedantries. It might be said to bear the same relation to his "French Revolution" that "Romola" does to "Adam Bede." In this book Carlyle made no new revelations, as he did in his Life of Cromwell. He did not change essentially the opinion of mankind. Frederick the Great, in his hands, still stands out as an unscrupulous public enemy,—a robber and a tyrant. His crimes are only partially redeemed by his heroism, especially when Europe was in arms against him. There is the same defect in this great work that there is in the Life of Cromwell,—the inculcation of the doctrine that might makes right; that we may do evil that good may come,—thus putting expediency above eternal justice, and palliating crimes because of their success. It is difficult to account for Carlyle's decline in moral perceptions, when we consider that his personal life was so far above reproach.

Although the Life of Frederick is a work of transcendent industry, it did not add to Carlyle's popularity, which had been undermined by his bitter attacks on society in his various pamphlets. At this period he was still looked up to with reverence as a great intellectual giant; but that love for him which had been felt by those who were aroused to honest thinking by his earlier writings had passed away. A new generation looked upon him as an embittered and surly old man. His services were not forgotten, but he was no longer a favorite,—no longer an inspiring guide. His writings continued to stimulate thought, but were no longer regarded as sound. Commonplace people never did like him, probably because they never understood him. His admirers were among the young, the enthusiastic, the hopeful, the inquiring; and when their veneration passed away, there were few left to uphold his real greatness and noble character. One might suppose that Carlyle would have been unhappy to alienate so many persons, especially old admirers. In fact, I apprehend that he cared little for anybody's admiration or flattery. He lived in an atmosphere so infinitely above small and envious and detracting people that he was practically independent of human sympathies. Had he been doomed to live with commonplace persons, he might have sought to conciliate them; but he really lived in another sphere,—not perhaps higher than theirs, but eternally distinct,—in the sphere of abstract truth. To him most people were either babblers or bores. What did he care for their envious shafts, or even for their honest disapprobation!

Hence, the last days of this great man were not his best days, although he was not without honor. He was made Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh, and delivered a fine address on the occasion; and later, Disraeli, when prime minister, offered him knighthood, with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath and a pension, which he declined. The author of the "Sartor Resartus" did not care for titles. He preferred to remain simply Thomas Carlyle.

While Carlyle was in the midst of honors in Edinburgh, his wife, who had long been in poor health, suddenly died, April 21, 1866. This affliction was a terrible blow to Carlyle, from which he never recovered. It filled out his measure of sorrow, deep and sad, and hard to be borne. His letters after this are full of pathos and plaintive sadness. He could not get resigned to his loss, for his wife had been more and more his staff and companion as years had advanced. The Queen sent her sympathy, but nothing could console him. He was then seventy-one years old, and his work was done. His remaining years were those of loneliness and sorrow and suffering. He visited friends, but they amused him not. He wrote reminiscences, but his isolation remained. He sought out charities when he himself was the object of compassion,—a sad old man who could not sleep. He tried to interest himself in politics, but time hung heavy on his hands. He read much and thought more, but assumed no fresh literary work. He had enough to do to correct proof-sheets of new editions of his works. His fiercest protests were now against atheism in its varied forms. In 1870, Mr. Erskine, his last Scotch friend, died. In 1873 he writes: "More and more dreary, barren, base, and ugly seem to me all the aspects of this poor, diminishing quack-world,—fallen openly anarchic, doomed to a death which one can wish to be speedy."

Poor old man! He has survived his friends, his pleasures, his labors, almost his fame; he is sick, and weary of life, which to him has become a blank. Pity it is, he could not have died when "Cromwell" was completed. He drags on his forlorn life, without wife or children, and with only a few friends, in disease and ennui and discontent, almost alone, until he is eighty-five.

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps on this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

The relief came at last. It was on a cold day in February, 1881, that Lecky, Froude, and Tyndall, alone of his London friends, accompanied his mortal remains to Ecclefechan, where he was buried by the graves of his father and mother. He might have rested in the vaults of Westminster; but he chose to lie in a humble churchyard, near where he was born.

"In future years," says his able and interesting biographer, "Scotland will have raised a monument over his remains; but no monument is needed for one who has made an eternal memorial for himself in the hearts of all to whom truth is the dearest possession.

"'For, giving his soul to the common cause, he won for himself a wreath which will not fade, and a tomb the most honorable,—not where his dust is decaying, but where his glory lives in everlasting remembrance. For of illustrious men all the earth is the sepulchre; and it is not the inscribed column in their own land which is the record of their virtues, but the unwritten memories of them in the hearts and minds of all mankind.'" [1]

[Footnote 1: Quoted by Froude from the Funeral Oration of Pericles in honor of the Athenians slain during the first summer of the Peloponnesian War, as given by Thucydides,—"their," "they," etc. being changed to "his," "he," etc.]

Thomas Carlyle will always have an honorable place among the great men of his time. He was pre-eminently a profound thinker, a severe critic, a great word-painter,—a man of uncommon original gifts, who aroused and instructed his generation. In the literal sense, he was neither philosopher nor poet nor statesman, but a man of genius, who cast his searching and fearless glance into all creeds, systems, and public movements, denouncing hypocrisies, shams, and lies with such power that he lost friends almost as fast as he made them,—without, however, losing the respect and admiration of his literary rivals, or of the ablest and best men both in England and America. Although no believer in the scientific philosophies of our time, he was a great breaker of ground for them, having been a pioneer in the cause of honest thinking and plain speaking. His passion for truth, and courage in declaring his own vision of it, were potent for spiritual liberty. He stands as one of the earliest and stoutest champions of that revolt against authority in religious, intellectual, and social matters which has chiefly marked the Nineteenth Century.



LORD MACAULAY.

1800-1859.

ARTISTIC HISTORICAL WRITING.

Among the eminent men of letters of the present century, Thomas Babington Macaulay takes a very high position. In original genius he was inferior to Carlyle, but was greater in learning, in judgment, and especially in felicity of style. He was an historical artist of the foremost rank, the like of whom has not appeared since Voltaire; and he was, moreover, no mean poet, and might have been distinguished as such, had poetry been his highest pleasure and ambition. The same may be said of him as a political orator. Very few men in the House of Commons ever surpassed him in the power of making an eloquent speech. He was too impetuous and dogmatic to be a great debater, like Fox or Pitt or Peel or Gladstone; but he might have reached a more exalted and influential position as a statesman had he confined his remarkable talents to politics.

But letters were the passion of Macaulay, from his youth up; and his remarkably tenacious memory—abnormal, as it seems to me—enabled him to bring his vast store of facts to support plausibly any position he chose to take. At fifty years of age, he had probably read more books than any man in Europe since Gibbon and Niebuhr; he literally devoured everything he could put his hands upon, without cramming for a special object,—especially the Greek and Latin Classics, which he read over and over again, not so much for knowledge as for the pleasure it gave him as a literary critic and a student of artistic excellence.

Macaulay was of Scotch descent, like so many eminent historians, poets, critics, and statesmen who adorned the early and middle part of the nineteenth century,—Scott, Burns, Carlyle, Jeffrey, Dundas, Playfair, Wilson, Napier, Mackintosh, Robertson, Alison; a group of geniuses that lived in Edinburgh, and made its society famous,—to say nothing of great divines and philosophers like Chalmers and Stewart and Hamilton. Macaulay belonged to a good family, the most distinguished members of which were clergymen,—with the exception of his uncle, General Macaulay, who made a fortune in India; and his father, the celebrated merchant and philanthropist, Zachary Macaulay, who did more than any other man, Wilberforce excepted, to do away with the slave-trade, and to abolish slavery in the West India Islands.

Zachary Macaulay was the most modest and religious of men, and after an eventful life in Africa as governor of the colony of Sierra Leone, settled in Clapham, near London, with a handsome fortune. He belonged to that famous evangelical set who made Clapham famous, and whose extraordinary piety and philanthropy are commemorated by Sir James Stephen in one of his most interesting essays. They resembled in peculiarities the early Quakers and primitive Methodists, and though very narrow were much respected for their unostentatious benevolence, blended with public spirit.

Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire, Oct. 25, 1800, but it was at Clapham that his boyhood was chiefly spent. His precocity startled every one who visited his father's hospitable home. At the age of three he would lie at full length on the carpet eagerly reading. He was never seen without an open book in his hands, even during his walks. He cared nothing for the sports of his companions. He could neither ride, nor drive, nor swim, nor row a boat, nor play a game of tennis or foot-ball. He cared only for books of all sorts, which he seized upon with inextinguishable curiosity, and stored their contents in his memory. When a boy, he had learned the "Paradise Lost" by heart. He did not care to go to school, because it interrupted his reading. Hannah More, a frequent visitor at Clapham and a warm friend of the family, gazed upon him with amazement, but was too wise and conscientious to spoil him by her commendations. At eight years of age he also had great facility in making verses, which were more than tolerable.

Zachary Macaulay objected to his son being educated in one of the great schools in England, like Westminster and Harrow, and he was therefore sent to a private school kept by an evangelical divine who had been a fellow at Cambridge,—a good scholar, but narrow in his theological views. Indeed, Macaulay got enough of Calvinism before he went to college, and was so unwisely crammed with it at home and at school, that through life he had a repugnance to the evangelical doctrines of the Low Church, with which, much to the grief of his father, he associated cant, always his especial abhorrence and disgust. While Macaulay venerated his father, he had little sympathy with his views, and never loved him as he did his own sisters. He did his filial duty, and that was all,—contributed largely to his father's support in later life, treated him with profound respect, but was never drawn to him in affectionate frankness and confidence.

It cannot be disguised that Macaulay was worldly in his turn of mind, intensely practical, and ambitious of distinction as soon as he became conscious of his great powers, although in his school-days he was very modest and retiring. He was not religiously inclined, nor at all spiritually minded. An omnivorous reader seldom is narrow, and seldom is profound. Macaulay was no exception. He admired Pascal, but only for his exquisite style and his trenchant irony. He saw little in Augustine except his vast acquaintance with Latin authors. He carefully avoided writing on the Schoolmen, or Calvin, or the great divines of the seventeenth century. Bunyan he admired for his genius and perspicuous style rather than for his sentiments. Even his famous article on Bacon is deficient in spiritual insight; it is a description of the man rather than a dissertation on his philosophy. Macaulay's greatness was intellectual rather than moral; and his mental power was that of the scholar and the rhetorical artist rather than the thinker. In his masterly way of arraying facts he has never been surpassed; and in this he was so skilful that it mattered little which side he took. Like Daniel Webster, he could make any side appear plausible. Doubtless in the law he might have become a great advocate, had he not preferred literary composition instead. Had he lived in the times of the Grecian Sophists, he might have baffled Socrates,—not by his logic, but by his learning and his aptness of illustration.

Macaulay entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1818, being a healthy, robust young man of eighteen, after five years' training in Greek and Latin, having the eldest son of Wilberforce for a school companion. Among his contemporaries and friends at Cambridge were Charles Austin, Praed, Derwent Coleridge, Hyde Villiers, and Romilly; but I infer from his Life by Trevelyan that his circle of intimate friends was not so large as it would have been had he been fitted for college at Westminster or Eton. Nor at this time were his pecuniary circumstances encouraging. After he had obtained his first degree he supported himself, while studying for a fellowship, by taking a couple of pupils for L100 a year. Eventually he gained a fellowship worth L300 a year, which was his main support for seven years, until he obtained a government office in London. He probably would have found it easier to get a fellowship at Oxford than at Cambridge, since mathematics were uncongenial to him, his forte being languages. He was most distinguished at college for English composition and Latin declamation. In 1819 he wrote a poem, "Pompeii," which gained him the chancellor's medal,—a distinction won again in 1821 by a poem on "Evening," while the same year gave him the Craven scholarship for his classical attainments. He took his bachelor's degree in 1822, and was made a fellow of Trinity College. He did not obtain his fellowship, however, until his third trial, being no favorite with those who had prizes and honors to bestow, because of his neglect of science and mathematics.

As a profession, Macaulay made choice of the law, being called to the bar in 1826, and at Leeds joined the Northern Circuit, of which Brougham was the leading star. But the law was not his delight. He did not like its technicalities. He spent most of his time in his chambers in literary composition, or in the galleries of the House of Commons listening to the debates. He never applied himself seriously to anything which "went against the grain." At Court he got no briefs, but his fellowship enabled him to live by practising economy. He also wrote occasional essays—excellent but not remarkable—for Knight's Quarterly Magazine. It was in this periodical, too, that his early poems were published; but he did not devote much time to this field of letters, although, as we have said, he might undoubtedly have succeeded in it. His poetry, if he had never written anything else, would not be considered much inferior to that of Sir Walter Scott, being full of life and action, and, like most everything else he did, winning him applause. Years later he felt the risk of publishing his "Lays of Ancient Rome;" but as he knew what he could do and what he could not do, or rather what would be popular, he was not disappointed. The poems were well received, for they were eminently picturesque and vital, as well as strong, masculine, and unadorned; the rhyme and metre were also felicitous. He had no obscurities, and the spirit of his Lays was patriotic and ardent, showing his love of liberty. I think his "Battle of Ivry" is equal to anything that Scott wrote. Yet Macaulay is not regarded by the critics as a true poet; that is, he did not write poetry because he must, like Burns and Byron. His poetry was not spontaneous; it was a manufactured article,—very good of its kind, but not such as to have given him the fame which his prose writings made for him.

It was not, however, until his article on Milton appeared in the Edinburgh Review in 1825, that Macaulay's great career began. Like Byron, he woke up one morning to find himself famous. Everybody read and admired an essay the style of which was new and striking. "Where did you pick up that style?" wrote Jeffrey to the briefless barrister. It transcended in brilliancy anything which had yet appeared in the Edinburgh or Quarterly. Brougham became envious, and treated the rising light with no magnanimity or admiration.

Of course, the author of such an uncommon article as that on Milton, the praise of which was in everybody's mouth, had invitations to dinner from distinguished people; and these were most eagerly accepted. Macaulay rapidly became a social favorite, sought for his brilliant conversation, which was as remarkable for a young man of twenty-six as were his writings in the foremost literary journal of the world. He was not handsome, and was carelessly dressed; but he had a massive head, and rugged yet benevolent features, which lighted up with peculiar animation when he was excited. One of the first persons of note to welcome him to her table was Lady Holland, an accomplished but eccentric and plain-spoken woman, who seems to have greatly admired him. He was a frequent guest at Holland House, where for nearly half-a-century the courtly and distinguished Lord Holland and his wife entertained the most eminent men and women of the time. This gratified young Macaulay's inordinate social ambition. He scarcely mentions in his letters at this time any but peers and peeresses.

And yet he did not court the society of those he did not respect. He was not a parasite or a flatterer even of the great, but met them apparently on equal terms, as a monarch of the mind. He was at home in any circle that was not ignorant or frivolous. He was more easy than genial, for his prejudices or intellectual pride made him unkind to persons of mediocrity. It was a bold thing to cross his path, for he came down like an avalanche on those who opposed him, not so much in anger as in contempt. I do not find that his circle of literary friends was large or intimate. He seldom alludes to Carlyle or Bulwer or Thackeray or Dickens. He has more to say of Rogers and Lord Jeffrey, and other pets of aristocratic circles,—those who were conventionally favored, like Sydney Smith; or those who gave banquets to people of fashion, like Lord Lansdowne. These were the people he loved best to associate with, who listened to his rhetoric with rapt admiration, who did not pique his vanity, and who had something to give to him,—position and eclat.

Macaulay was not a vain man, nor even egotistical; but he had a tremendous self-consciousness, which annoyed his equals in literary fame, and repelled such a giant as Brougham, who had no idea of sharing his throne with any one,—being more overbearing even than Macaulay, but more human. This new rival in the Edinburgh Review, of which for a long time Brougham had been dictator, was, much to Jeffrey's annoyance, not convivial. He did not drink two bottles at a sitting, but guarded his health and preserved his simple habits. Though he speaks with gusto of Lord Holland's turtle and turbot and venison and grouse, he was content when alone with a mutton-chop and a few glasses of sherry, or the October ale of Cambridge, which was a part of his perquisites as Fellow. He was very exclusive, in view of the fact that he was a poor man, without aristocratic antecedents or many powerful friends. Outside the class of rank and fashion, his friends seem to have been leading politicians of the Liberal school, the stanch Whigs who passed the Reform Bill, to whom he was true. To his credit, his happiest hours were spent with his sisters in the quiet seclusion of his father's modest home. All his best letters were to them; and in these he detailed his intercourse with the great, and the splendor of their banquets and balls.

Macaulay's rise, after he had written his famous article on Milton, was rapid. The article itself, striking as it is, must be confessed to be disappointing in so far as it attempted to criticise the "Paradise Lost" and Milton's other poems. Macaulay's genius was historical, not critical; and the essay is notable rather for its review of the times of Charles I. and Archbishop Laud, of the Puritans and the Royalists, than for its literary flavor, except as a brilliant piece of composition. It was, however, the picturesque style of the new writer which was the chief attraction, and the fact that the essay came from so young a man. Macaulay followed the Milton essay with others on Macchiavelli, Dryden, Hallam's "Constitutional History," and on history in general, which displayed to great advantage his unusual learning, his keen historic instinct, and his splendor of style. He became the most popular contributor to the Edinburgh Review, which was beginning to be dull and heavy; and this kept him before the eyes of politicians and professional men.

Macaulay's ambition was now divided between literature and politics. His first appearance as a public speaker was at an annual anti-slavery convention in London, in 1826, when he made a marked impression. He eagerly embraced the offer of a seat in the House of Commons, which was secured to him in 1830; and as soon as he entered Parliament he began to make speeches, which were carefully composed and probably committed to memory. At a single bound he became one of the leading orators of that renowned assembly. Some of his orations were masterpieces of argument and rhetoric in favor of reform, and of all liberal movements in philanthropy and education. In the opinion of eminent statesmen he was the most "rising" member of the House, and sure to become a leader among the Whigs. But he was poor, having only about L500 a year—the proceeds of his fellowship and his literary productions—to support his dignity as a legislator and meet the calls of society; so that in 1833 he was rewarded with an office in the Board of Control, which regulated the affairs of India; this doubled his income, and made him independent. But he wanted an office in which he could lay up money for future contingencies. Therefore, in 1834, he gladly resigned his seat in Parliament and accepted the situation of a member of the Supreme Council of India, on a salary of L10,000 a year, L7000 of which he continued to save yearly; so that at the end of four years, when he returned to England, he had become a rich man, or at least independent, with leisure to do whatever he pleased.

In India, as chairman of the Board of Education, as legal adviser of the Council, and in drafting a code of penal laws for that part of the Empire, he was very useful,—although as a matter of fact the new code was too theoretically fine to be practical, and was never put in force. His personal good sense was equal to his industry and his talents, and he preserved his health by strict habits of temperance. Even in that tropical country he presented a strong contrast to the sallow, bilious officials with whom he was surrounded, and in due time returned to England in perfect health, one of the most robust of men, capable of indefinite work, which never seemed to weary him.

But in Calcutta, as in London, he employed his leisure hours in writing for the Edinburgh Review, and gave an immense impulse to its sale, for which he was amply rewarded. Brougham complained to Jeffrey that his essays took up too much space in the Review, but the politic editor knew what was for its interest and popularity. Macaulay's long articles of sometimes over a hundred pages were received without a murmur; and every article he wrote added to his fame, since he always did his best. His essays in 1830 on Southey and Montgomery, and one in 1831 on Croker's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, were fierce, scathing onslaughts, even cruel and crushing,—revealing Macaulay's tremendous powers of invective and remorseless criticism, but reflecting little credit on his disposition or his judgment. His Hampden (1831) and his Burleigh (1832) remain among his finest and most inspiring historical paintings. His first essay on Lord Chatham (1834) is a notable piece of characterization; the one on Sir James Mackintosh (1835) is a most acute and brilliant historical criticism; the one on Lord Bacon (1837) is striking and has become famous, but shows Macaulay's deficiency in philosophic thought, besides being sophistical in spirit; and the article on Sir William Temple (1837)—really a history of England during the reign of William III.—is thoroughly fine.

Macaulay's residence in India, so far as political ambition was concerned, may have been a mistake. It withdrew him from an arena in which he could have risen to great distinction and influence as a parliamentary orator. He might have been a second Fox, whom he resembled in the impetuosity of his rhetoric, if he had also possessed Fox's talents as a debater. Yet he was not a born leader of men. As a parliamentary orator he was simply a speech-maker, like the Unitarian minister Fox, or that still abler man the Quaker Bright, both of whom were great rhetoricians. It is probable that he himself understood his true sphere, which was that of a literary man,—an historical critic, appealing to intelligent people rather than to learned pedants in the universities. His service in India enabled him to write for the remainder of his life with an untrammelled pen, and to live in comfort and ease, enjoying the otium cum dignitate, to which he attached supreme importance,—so different from Carlyle, who toiled in poverty at Chelsea to declare truth for truth's sake, grumbling, yet lofty in his meditations, the depth of which Macaulay was incapable of appreciating.

It is, then, as a man of letters rather than as a politician that our author merits his exalted fame. Respectable as a member of the House of Commons, or as a jurist in India in compiling a code of laws, yet neither as a statesman nor as a jurist was he in his right place. The leaders of his party may have admired and praised his oratory, but they wanted something more practical than orations,—they wanted the control of men; and so, too, the government demanded a code which would exact the esteem of lawyers and meet the wants of India rather than a composition which would read well. But as an historical critic and a luminous writer, Macaulay had no superior,—a fact which no one knew better than himself.

In 1838, on his return from India,—where he had regarded himself as in honorable exile,—Macaulay had accumulated a fortune of L30,000, to him more than a competency. This, added to the legacy of L10,000 which he had received from his uncle, General Macaulay, secured to him independence and leisure to pursue his literary work, which was paramount to every other consideration. If both from pleasure and ambition there ever was a man devoted heart and soul and body to a literary career, it was Macaulay. Nor would he now accept any political office which seriously interfered with the passion of his life. Still less would he waste his time at the dinner parties of the great, no longer to him a novelty. He was eminently social by nature, and fond of talk and controversy, with a superb physique capable of digesting the richest dishes, and of enduring the fatigues and ceremonies of fashionable life; but even the pleasures of the banquet and of cultivated society, to many a mere relaxation, were sacrificed to his fondness for books,—to him the greatest and truest companionship, especially when they introduced him to the life and manners of by-gone ages, and to communion with the master-minds of the world.

For relaxation, Macaulay preferred to take long walks; lounge around the book-stalls; visit the sights of London with his nieces; invite his intimate friends to simple dinners at The Albany; amuse himself with trifles, especially in company with those he loved best, in the domestic circle of his relatives, whom he treated ever with the most familiar and affectionate sympathy,—so that while they loved and revered him, they had no idea that "Uncle Tom" was a great man. His most interesting letters were to his sisters and nieces, whose amusement and welfare he had constantly in view, and who were more to him than all the world besides. Indeed, he did not write many letters except to his relatives, his publishers, and his intimate friends, who were few, considering the number of persons he was obliged to meet. He was a thoroughly domestic man, although he never married or wished to marry.

It surprises me that Macaulay's intercourse with eminent authors was so constrained. He saw very little of them; but while he did not avoid talking with them when thrown among them, and keeping up the courtesies of life even with those he thoroughly disliked, I cannot see any evidence that he sought the society of those who were regarded as his equals in genius. He liked Milman and Mackintosh and Napier and Jeffrey and Rogers, and a few others; but his intimate intercourse was confined chiefly to these and to his family.

Macaulay's fame, however, was substantially founded and built. Sydney Smith's witty characterization of him is worth recalling:—

"I always prophesied his greatness from the first moment I saw him, then a very young and unknown man on the Northern Circuit. There are no limits to his knowledge, on small subjects as well as great; he is like a book in breeches.

"Yes, I agree, he is certainly more agreeable since his return from India. His enemies might have said before (though I never did so) that he talked rather too much; but now he has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation perfectly delightful. But what is far better and more important than all this is, that I believe Macaulay to be incorruptible. You might lay ribbons, stars, garters, wealth, title, before him in vain. He has an honest, genuine love of his country; and the world could not bribe him to neglect her interests."

Macaulay now devoted several weeks of every year to travel, visiting different parts of England and the Continent as the mood took him. In the autumn of 1838 he visited Italy, it would seem for the first time, and was, of course, enchanted. He appreciated natural scenery, but was not enthusiastic over it; nor did it make a very deep impression on him except for the moment. He loved best to visit cities and places consecrated by classical associations.

While at Rome, Macaulay received from Lord Melbourne the offer of the office of Judge Advocate; but he unhesitatingly declined it. The salary of L2500 was nothing to a scholar who already had a comfortable independence; and the duties the situation imposed were not only uncongenial, but would interfere with his literary labors.

In February, 1839, he returned to London; and now the pressure on him by his political friends to re-enter public life was greater than he could resist. He was elected to Parliament as one of the members from Edinburgh, and gave his usual support to his party. In September he became War Secretary, with a seat in the Whig Cabinet under Lord Melbourne. Consequently he suspended for a while his literary tasks, conducting the business of his department with commendable industry, but without enthusiasm. In the session of 1840 and 1841, during the angry discussions pertaining to the registration of votes in Ireland, he gave proof of having profited by the severe legal training he had received from his labors in India. During these years he found time to write a few reviews, the one on Lord Olive being the most prominent.

The great subject of political agitation at this period was the repeal of the Corn Laws. The Whig leaders had lost the earnestness which had marked their grand efforts when they carried the Reform Bill of 1832, and were more indifferent to further reforms than suited their constituents; so that, at a dangerous financial crisis in 1841, the direction of public affairs fell into the hands of the Tories, under Sir Robert Peel. This great man not only rescued the nation from its fiscal embarrassments, but having been convinced by the arguments of Cobden of the necessity of repealing the Corn Laws, he carried through that great reform, to the disgust of his party and to his own undying fame. I have treated of this period more at large in another volume of this series.[2]

[Footnote 2: Beacon Lights of History: European Leaders.]

Macaulay was not much moved by the fall of the ministry to which he belonged, and gladly resumed his literary labors,—the first fruits of his leisure being an essay on Warren Hastings, a companion piece to the one on Clive.

These East Indian essays constitute the most picturesque and graphic account of British conquests in that ancient land that has been given to the public. Macaulay's intimate knowledge of the ground, and his literary resources, enabled him to picture the dazzling successes of Clive and Hastings; so that the careers of those superb military chieftains and commercial robber-statesmen, in securing for their country the control of a distant province larger than France, and in enriching the British Empire and themselves beyond all precedent in conquest, stand splendidly portrayed forever.

Macaulay had now taken apartments in The Albany, on the second floor, to which he removed his large library, and in which he comfortably lived for fifteen years. His article on Warren Hastings was followed by that on Frederic the Great. His numerous articles in the Edinburgh Review had now become so popular that there was a great demand for them in a separate form. Curiously enough, as in the case of Carlyle, it was in America that the public appreciation of these essays first took the form of book publication; and Macaulay's "Miscellanies" were published in Boston in 1840, and in Philadelphia in 1842. As these volumes began to go to England, for Macaulay's own protection they were republished by Longman, revised by the author, in 1843, and obtained an immediate and immense sale,—reaching one hundred and twenty thousand copies in England,—which added to the fame and income of Macaulay. But he was never satisfied with the finish of his own productions; the only thing which seemed to comfort him was that the last essays were better than the first. In addition to his labors for the Edinburgh, was the publication of a volume of his poems in 1842, which was also enthusiastically received by his admirers. His last notable essays were a chivalrous article on Madame D'Arblay (January, 1843); an entirely charming account of Addison and the wits of Queen Anne's reign (July, 1843); an interesting review of the Memoirs of Barere, the French revolutionist and writer (April, 1844); and finally a second article on Lord Chatham (October, 1844), which is considered finer than the first one written twenty years earlier. More and more, however, the project of writing a History of England had taken possession of him, and he began now to forego all other literary occupation, and to devote all his leisure time to that great work.

During much of the time that Macaulay had continued writing his reviews, at the rate of about two in a year, he was an active member of Parliament, frequently addressing the House of Commons, and earning the gratitude of the country by his liberal and enlightened views,—especially those in reference to the right of Unitarians to their chapels, to the enlarged money-grant given to the Irish Roman Catholic Maynooth College, and to the extension of copyrights. He rarely spoke without careful preparation. His speeches were forcible and fine. In the higher field of debate, however, as we have already intimated, he was not successful. In 1845 Sir Robert Peel retired, the Whigs again coming into power; and in 1846 Macaulay accepted the office of Paymaster of the Forces, because its duties were comparatively light and would not much interfere with his literary labors, while it added L2000 a year to his income. During the session of 1846 and 1847, while still in Parliament, he spoke only five times, although the House was ever ready to listen to him.

In the year 1847 the disruption of the Scotch Church was effected, and in the bitterness engendered by that movement Macaulay lost his popularity with his Edinburgh constituents. He seemed indifferent to their affairs; he answered their letters irregularly and with almost contemptuous brevity. He had no sympathy with the radicals who at that time controlled a large number of votes, and he refused to contribute towards electioneering expenses. Above all, he was absorbed in his History, and had lost much of his interest in politics. In consequence he failed to be re-elected, and not unwillingly retired to private life.

Macaulay now concentrated all his energies on the History, which occupied his thoughts, his studies, and his pen for the most part during the remainder of his life. The first two volumes were published in the latter part of 1848; and the sale was immense, surpassing that of any historical work in the history of literature, and coming near to the sale of the novels of Sir Walter Scott. The popularity of the work was not confined to scholars and statesmen and critics, but it was equally admired by ordinary readers; and not in England and Scotland alone, but in the United States, in France, in Holland, in Germany, and other countries.

The labor expended on these books was prodigious. The author visited in person nearly all the localities in England and Ireland where the events he narrated took place. He ransacked the archives of most of the governments of Europe, and all the libraries to which he could gain access, public and private. He worked twelve hours a day, and yet produced on an average only two printed pages daily,—so careful was he in verifying his facts and in arranging his materials, writing and rewriting until no further improvement could be made.

This book was not merely the result of his researches for the last fifteen years of his life, but of his general reading for nearly fifty years, when everything he read he remembered. Says Thackeray, "He reads twenty books to write a sentence; he travels one hundred miles to make a line of description." The extent and exactness of his knowledge were not only marvellous, but almost incredible. Mr. Buckle declared that Macaulay was perfectly accurate in all the facts which Buckle had himself investigated to write his "History of Civilization;" and so particular was he in the selection of words that he never allowed a sentence to pass muster until it was as good as he could make it. "He thought little of reconstructing a paragraph," says his biographer, "for the sake of one happy illustration." He submitted to the most tiresome mechanical drudgery in the correction of his proof-sheets. The clearness of his thought amid the profusion of his knowledge was represented in his writing by a remarkable conciseness of expression. His short, vigorous sentences are compact with details of fact, yet rich with color. His terseness has been compared to that of Tacitus. His power of condensation, aptness of phrase and epithet, and indomitable industry made him a master of rhetorical effect, in the use of his multifarious learning for the illustration of his themes.

As soon as his last proof-sheet had been despatched to the printers, Macaulay at once fell to reading a series of historians from Herodotus downward, to measure his writings with theirs. Thucydides especially utterly destroyed all the conceit which naturally would arise from his unbounded popularity, as expressed in every social and literary circle, as well as in the Reviews. Like Michael Angelo, this Englishman was never satisfied with his own productions; and the only comfort he took in the impossibility of realizing his ideal was in the comparison he made of his own works with similar ones by contemporary authors. Then he was content; and then only appeared in his letters and diary that good-natured, self-satisfied feeling which arose from the consciousness that he was one of the most fortunate authors who had ever lived. There was nothing cynical in his sense of superiority, but an amiable self-assertion and self-confidence that only made men smile,—as when Lord Palmerston remarked that "he wished he was as certain of any one thing as Tom Macaulay was of everything." This self-confidence rarely provoked opposition, except when he was positive as to things outside his sphere. He wrote and talked sensibly and luminously on financial and social questions, on art, on poetry and the drama, on philosophy and theology; but on these subjects he was not an authority with specialists. In other words, he did not, so to speak, know everything profoundly, but only superficially; yet in history, especially English history, he was profound in analysis as well as brilliant in the narration of facts, even when there was disagreement between himself and others as to inductions he drew from those facts,—inductions colored by his strong prejudices and aristocratic surroundings.

Macaulay was not always consistent with his own theories, however. For instance, he was a firm believer in the progress of society and of civilization. He saw the enormous gulf between the ninth and the nineteenth centuries, and the unmistakable advance which, since the times of Hildebrand, the world had made in knowledge, in the arts, in liberty, and in the comforts of life, although the tide of progress had its ebb and flow in different ages and countries. Yet when he cast his eye on America, where perhaps the greatest progress had been made in the world's history within fifty years, he saw nothing but melancholy signs of anarchy and decay,—signs portending the collapse of liberty and the triumph of ignorance and crime. Thus he writes in 1857 to an American correspondent:—

"As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land, your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring population of the Old World; but the time will come when wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much, with you as with us. Then your institutions will fairly be brought to the test. Distress everywhere makes the laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to listen with eagerness to agitators who tell him that it is a monstrous iniquity that one man should have a million, while another cannot get a full meal. In bad years there is plenty of grumbling here, and sometimes a little rioting; but it matters little, for here the sufferers are not the rulers. The supreme power is in the hands of a class deeply interested in the security of property and the maintenance of order; accordingly the malcontents are restrained. But with you the majority is the government, and has the rich, who are always in a minority, absolutely at its mercy. The day will come when the multitude of people, none of whom has had more than a half a breakfast, or expects to have more than a half a dinner, will choose a legislature. Is it possible to doubt what sort of legislature will be chosen? On the one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of the public faith; and on the other a demagogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, and asking why anybody should be permitted to drink champagne and ride in a carriage, while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries: which of the two candidates is likely to be preferred by a working-man who hears his children cry for more bread? There will be, I fear, spoliation. The spoliation will increase the distress; the distress will produce fresh spoliation. There is nothing to stop you; your Constitution is all sail and no anchor. Either civilization or liberty will perish. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth."

I do not deny that there is great force in Macaulay's reasoning and prophecy. History points to decline and ruin when public virtue has fled and government is in the hands of demagogues; for their reign has ever been succeeded by military usurpers who have preserved civilization indeed, but at the expense of liberty. Yet this reasoning applies not only to America but to England as well,—especially since, by the Reform Bill and subsequent enactments of Parliament, she has opened the gates to an increase of suffrage, which now threatens to become universal. The enfranchisement of the people—the enlarged powers of the individual under the protection and control of the commonwealth—is the Anglo-Saxon contribution to progress. It is dangerous. So is all power until its use is learned. But there is no backward step possible; the tremendous experiment must go forward, for England and America alike.

Macaulay himself was one of the most prominent of English statesmen and orators, in 1830, 1831, and 1832, to advocate the extension of the right of suffrage and the increase of popular liberties. All his writings are on the side of liberty in England; and all are in opposition to the Toryism which was so triumphant during the reign of George III. Why did he have faith in the English people of England, and yet show so little in the English people of America? He believed in political and social progress for his own countrymen; why should he doubt the utility of the same in other countries? If vandalism is to be the fate of America, where education, the only truly conservative element, is more diffused than in England, why should it not equally triumph in that country when the masses have gained political power, as they surely will at some time, and even speedily, if the policy inaugurated by Gladstone is to triumph? For England Macaulay had unbounded hope, because he believed in progress,—in liberty, in education, in the civilizing influence of machinery, in the increasing comforts of life through the constant increase of wealth among the middle classes, and especially through the power of Christianity, in spite of the dissensions of sects, the attacks of crude philosophers, socialists, anarchists, scientists, and atheists, from one end of Christendom to the other. Why should he not have equal faith in American civilization, which, in spite of wars and strikes and commercial distresses and political corruption, has yet made a marked progress from the time of Jefferson, the apostle of equality, down to our day,—as seen especially in the multiplication of schools and colleges, in an untrammelled and watchful press, and in the active benevolence of the rich in the foundation of every kind of institution to relieve misery and want? The truth is that he, in common with most educated Englishmen of his day,—and of too many even of our own day,—cherished a silent contempt for Americans, for their literature and their institutions; and hence he was not only inconsistent in the principles which he advocated, but showed that he was not emancipated, with all his learning, from prejudices of which he ought to have been ashamed.

As time made inroads on Macaulay's strong constitution, he gave up both politics and society in the absorbing interest which he took in his History, confining himself to his library, and sometimes allowing months to pass without accepting any invitation whatever to a social gathering. No man was ever more disenchanted with society. He begrudged his time even when tempted by the calls of friendship. When visitors penetrated to his den, he bowed them out with ironical politeness. He had no favors to ask from friends or foes, for he declined political office, and was as independent as wealth or fame could make him. In 1849 he was made Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, and the acclamations following his address were prodigious. Lord John Russell gave to Macaulay's brother John a living worth L1100. Macaulay himself was offered the professorship of History at Cambridge. In one year he received for the first edition of his third and fourth volumes of the History, published in 1855, L20,000 in a single check from Longman. At the age of forty-nine, he writes in his diary: "I have no cause for complaint,—tolerable health, competence, liberty, leisure, dear relatives and friends, and a very great literary reputation."

With all this prosperity, Macaulay now naturally set up his carriage. He dined often with the Queen, and was a great man, according to English notions, more even from his wealth and social position than from his success in letters. Lord John Russell pressed him to accept a seat in his cabinet, but "I told him," Macaulay writes, "that I should be of no use,—that I was not a debater; that it was too late to become one; that my temper, taste, and literary habits alike prevented." He was, however, induced to become again a member of Parliament, and in 1852 was elected once more for Edinburgh, which had repented of its rejection of him in 1847. But he insisted on perfect independence to vote as he pleased. He regarded this re-entrance into public life as a great personal sacrifice, since it might postpone the appearance of his next two volumes of the History. His election, however, was received with great acclamation. Even Professor Wilson, the most conservative of Scotch Tories, voted for him. It was not a party victory, but purely a personal triumph.

A serious illness now follows,—a weakness of the heart, from the effects of which Macaulay died a few years afterwards. He retires to Clifton, and gives himself up to getting well, visiting Barley Wood, and driving in his private carriage among the most interesting scenery in the west of England. But he was never perfectly well again, although he continued to work on his History. His intimate friends saw the change in him with sadness, but he himself was serene and uncomplaining. Although he suffered from an oppression of the chest, he still on great occasions addressed the House. His mind was clear, but his voice was faint. The last speech he made was in behalf of the independence of the Scottish Church. The strain of the House of Commons proved to be too great for his now enfeebled constitution. "Nor could he conceal from himself and his friends," says Trevelyan, "that it was a grievous waste, while the reign of Anne still remained unwritten, for him to consume his scanty stock of vigor in the tedious and exhaustive routine of political existence; waiting whole evenings for the vote, and then ... trudging home at three in the morning through the slush of a February thaw." He therefore spared himself as a member of Parliament, and carefully husbanded his powers in order to work upon his book. He gave himself more time for his annual vacation, yet would write when he could on the subjects which engrossed his life. His labors were too severe for his strength, but he worked on, and even harder and harder.

At length on the 25th of November, 1855, Macaulay sent to the printer the last twenty pages of his History, and an edition of twenty-five thousand was ordered. Within a generation one hundred and forty thousand copies of the work were sold in the United Kingdom alone. Six rival translators were engaged in turning it into German; and it was published in the Polish, the Danish, the Swedish, the Italian, the French, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Hungarian, the Russian, and the Bohemian languages, to say nothing of its immense circulation in the United States. Such extraordinary literary popularity was accompanied by great honors. In 1857 Macaulay was created a British Peer and elected Lord High Steward of the borough of Cambridge. The academies of Utrecht, Munich, and Turin elected him to honorary membership. The King of Prussia made him a member of the Order of Merit. Oxford conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Civil Law, and he was elected president of the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh. He could have little more in the way of academic and governmental honors.

The failing health of Macaulay now compelled him to resign his seat in the House of Commons. It was also thought desirable for him to vacate his apartments at The Albany, which he had occupied for fifteen years, that he might be more retired and perhaps more comfortable. His friends, at the suggestion of Dean Milman, selected a house in Kensington, the rooms of which were small, except the library, which opened upon a beautiful lawn, adorned with flowers and shrubs; it was called Holly Lodge, and was very secluded and attractive. Here his latter days were spent, in the society of his nieces and a few devoted friends, and in dispensing simple hospitalities. His favorite form of entertainment was the breakfast, at which his guests would linger till twelve, enchanted by his conversation, for his mind showed no signs of decay.

From this charming retreat Lord Macaulay very seldom appeared in London society. Years passed without his even accepting invitations. An occasional night at a friend's house in the country, one or two nights at Windsor Castle, and one or two visits to Lord Stanhope's seat in Kent in order to consult his magnificent library, were the only visits which Macaulay made in the course of the year. He always had a dislike of visiting in private houses, much preferring hotels, where he could be free from conventional life.

Macaulay was always careful in his expenditures, wasting nothing that he might enjoy the pleasure of charity,—for he gave liberally, especially to needy and unfortunate men of letters. Once he gave L100 to a total stranger who implored his aid. In his household he was revered, for he was the kindest and most considerate of masters, while his relatives absolutely worshipped him. At home he made no claim to the privileges of genius; he had few eccentricities; he never interfered with the pleasures of others; he never obtruded his advice, or demanded that his own views or tastes should be consulted; he was especially careful not to wound the feelings of those with whom he lived. Children were his delight and solace. Over them he seemed to have unbounded influence. He would spend the half of a busy day in playing with them, and in inventing new games for their diversion. One of his pleasures was to take them to see the sights of London. His sympathies were quick and generous; although apparently so cynical in his opinions of books, he was always affected at any touches of pathos, even to tears.

It was hard for Macaulay to realize that the time had come when he must leave untold that portion of English history with which he was more familiar than any other living man; but he submitted to the inevitable without repining. He had done what he could. Even when he was compelled to give up his daily task, his love of reading remained; a book was his solace to the last. He had no extensive acquaintance with the works of some of the best writers of his own generation, preferring the classic authors of antiquity, and of England in the time of Anne. He did not relish Coleridge or Carlyle or Buckle or Ruskin, or indeed any writer who seemed to strain after originality of style, in defiance of the old and conservative canons. He preferred Miss Austen to Dickens. He felt that he owed a great debt to the master-minds of by-gone ages, who reached perfection of style, so far as it can be attained. Even the English writers of the reign of Anne, to his mind, have never been surpassed. His admiration for Addison was unbounded. Dryden and Pope to him were greater poets than any who have succeeded them. Such a poet as Tennyson or Wordsworth he pretended he did not understand. He wanted transparent clearness of expression. Browning would have been to him an abomination. He despised the poetry of his own age, with its involved sentences, its obscurity, and its strange metres. His own poetry was as direct as Homer, as simple as Chaucer, and as graphic as Scott.

In 1859, Macaulay contrived to visit once more the English lakes and the western highlands, where he was received with great veneration, being recognized everywhere on steamers and railway stations. But his cheerfulness had now departed, although he made an effort to be agreeable. In December of this year he ceased writing in his diary. The physicians pretended to think that he was better, but fainting fits set in. On Christmas he said but little, and was constantly dropping to sleep. His relatives did not seem to think that he was in immediate danger, but the end was near. He died without pain, and was buried in Westminster Abbey on the 9th of January, 1860, having for pall-bearers the most illustrious men in England. He rests in the Poet's Corner, amid the tombs of Johnson and Garrick, Handel and Goldsmith, Gay and Addison, leaving behind him an immortal fame.

And what is this fame? It is not that of a philosophical historian like Guizot, for his History is not marked by profound generalizations, or even thoughtful reflections. He was not a judicial historian like Hallam, seeking to present the truth alone; for he was a partisan, full of party prejudices. Nor was he an historian like Ranke, raking out the hidden facts of a remote period, and unveiling the astute diplomacy of past ages. Macaulay was a great historical painter of the realistic school, whose pictures have never been surpassed, or even equalled, for vividness and interest. In this class of historians he stands out alone and peerless, the most exciting and the most interesting of all the historians who have depicted the manners, the events, and the characters of a former age,—never by any accident dull, but fatiguing, if at all, only by his wealth of illustration and the over-brilliancy of his coloring. He is the Titian of word-painting, and as such will live like that immortal colorist. Critics may say what they please about his rhetoric, about his partial statements, about his want of insight into deep philosophical questions; but as a painter who made his figures stand out on the historical canvas with unique vividness, Macaulay cannot fail to be regarded, as long as the English language is spoken or written, as one of the great masters of literary composition. This was the verdict pronounced by the English nation at large; and its great political and literary leaders expressed and confirmed it, when they gave him fortune and fame, elevated him to the peerage, bestowed on him stars and titles, and buried him with august solemnity among those illustrious men who gave to England its power and glory.



SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET.[3]

1564-1616.

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality. If we require the originality which consists in weaving, like a spider, their web from their own bowels; in finding clay and making bricks and building the house; no great men are original. Nor does valuable originality consist in unlikeness to other men. The hero is in the press of knights and the thick of events; and seeing what men want and sharing their desire, he adds the needful length of sight and of arm to come at the desired point. The greatest genius is the most indebted man. A poet is no rattle-brain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says everything, saying at last something good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. There is nothing whimsical and fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times.

[Footnote 3: Reprinted from "Representative Men," by permission of Messrs. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN, AND CO., publishers of Emerson's works.]

The Genius of our life is jealous of individuals, and will not have any individual great, except through the general. There is no choice to genius. A great man does not wake up on some fine morning and say, 'I am full of life, I will go to sea and find an Antarctic continent: to-day I will square the circle: I will ransack botany and find a new food for man: I have a new architecture in my mind: I foresee a new mechanic power:' no, but he finds himself in the river of the thoughts and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities of his contemporaries. He stands where all the eyes of men look one way, and their hands all point in the direction in which he should go. The Church has reared him amidst rites and pomps, and he carries out the advice which her music gave him, and builds a cathedral needed by her chants and processions. He finds a war raging: it educates him, by trumpet, in barracks, and he betters the instruction. He finds two counties groping to bring coal, or flour, or fish, from the place of production to the place of consumption, and he hits on a railroad. Every master has found his materials collected, and his power lay in his sympathy with his people and in his love of the materials he wrought in. What an economy of power! and what a compensation for the shortness of life! All is done to his hand. The world has brought him thus far on his way. The human race has gone out before him, sunk the hills, filled the hollows, and bridged the rivers. Men, nations, poets, artisans, women, all have worked for him, and he enters into their labors. Choose any other thing, out of the line of tendency, out of the national feeling and history, and he would have all to do for himself: his powers would be expended in the first preparations. Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive, in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.

Shakspeare's youth fell in a time when the English people were importunate for dramatic entertainments. The court took offence easily at political allusions and attempted to suppress them. The Puritans, a growing and energetic party, and the religious among the Anglican church, would suppress them. But the people wanted them. Inn-yards, houses without roofs, and extemporaneous enclosures at country fairs were the ready theatres of strolling players. The people had tasted this new joy; and, as we could not hope to suppress newspapers now,—no, not by the strongest party,—neither then could king, prelate, or puritan, alone or united, suppress an organ which was ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, lecture, Punch and library, at the same time. Probably king, prelate, and puritan all found their own account in it. It had become, by all causes, a national interest,—by no means conspicuous, so that some great scholar would have thought of treating it in an English history,—but not a whit less considerable because it was cheap and of no account, like a baker's-shop. The best proof of its vitality is the crowd of writers which suddenly broke into this field: Kyd, Marlow, Greene, Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Peele, Ford, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher.

The secure possession, by the stage, of the public mind, is of the first importance to the poet who works for it. He loses no time in idle experiments. Here is audience and expectation prepared. In the case of Shakspeare there is much more. At the time when he left Stratford and went up to London, a great body of stage-plays of all dates and writers existed in manuscript and were in turn produced on the boards. Here is the Tale of Troy, which the audience will bear hearing some part of, every week; the Death of Julius Caesar, and other stories out of Plutarch, which they never tire of; a shelf full of English history, from the chronicles of Brut and Arthur down to the royal Henries, which men hear eagerly; and a string of doleful tragedies, merry Italian tales, and Spanish voyages, which all the London 'prentices know. All the mass has been treated, with more or less skill, by every playwright, and the prompter has the soiled and tattered manuscripts. It is now no longer possible to say who wrote them first. They have been the property of the Theatre so long, and so many rising geniuses have enlarged or altered them, inserting a speech or a whole scene, or adding a song, that no man can any longer claim copyright in this work of numbers. Happily, no man wishes to. They are not yet desired in that way. We have few readers, many spectators and hearers. They had best lie where they are.

Shakspeare, in common with his comrades, esteemed the mass of old plays waste stock, in which any experiment could be freely tried. Had the prestige which hedges about a modern tragedy existed, nothing could have been done. The rude warm blood of the living England circulated in the play, as in street-ballads, and gave body which he wanted to his airy and majestic fancy. The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice, and in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination. In short, the poet owes to his legend what sculpture owed to the temple. Sculpture in Egypt and in Greece grew up in subordination to architecture. It was the ornament of the temple wall: at first a rude relief carved on pediments, then the relief became bolder and a head or arm was projected from the wall; the groups being still arranged with reference to the building, which serves also as a frame to hold the figures; and when at last the greatest freedom of style and treatment was reached, the prevailing genius of architecture still enforced a certain calmness and continence in the statue. As soon as the statue was begun for itself, and with no reference to the temple or palace, the art began to decline: freak, extravagance, and exhibition took the place of the old temperance. This balance-wheel, which the sculptor found in architecture, the perilous irritability of poetic talent found in the accumulated dramatic materials to which the people were already wonted, and which had a certain excellence which no single genius, however extraordinary, could hope to create.

In point of fact it appears that Shakspeare did owe debts in all directions, and was able to use whatever he found, and the amount of indebtedness may be inferred from Malone's laborious computations in regard to the First, Second, and Third parts of Henry VI., in which, "out of 6,043 lines, 1,771 were written by some author preceding Shakspeare, 2,373 by him, on the foundations laid by his predecessors, and 1,899 were entirely his own." And the proceeding investigation hardly leaves a single drama of his absolute invention. Malone's sentence is an important piece of external history. In Henry VIII. I think I see plainly the cropping out of the original rock on which his own finer stratum was laid. The first play was written by a superior, thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. I can mark his lines, and know well their cadence. See Wolsey's soliloquy, and the following scene with Cromwell, where, instead of the metre of Shakspeare, whose secret is that the thought constructs the tune, so that reading for the sense will best bring out the rhythm,—here the lines are constructed on a given tune, and the verse has even a trace of pulpit eloquence. But the play contains through all its length unmistakable traits of Shakspeare's hand, and some passages, as the account of the coronation, are like autographs. What is odd, the compliment to Queen Elizabeth is in the bad rhythm.

Shakespeare knew that tradition supplies a better fable than any invention can. If he lost any credit of design, he augmented his resources; and, at that day, our petulant demand for originality was not so much pressed. There was no literature for the million. The universal reading, the cheap press, were unknown. A great poet who appears in illiterate times, absorbs into his sphere all the light which is anywhere radiating. Every intellectual jewel, every flower of sentiment it is his fine office to bring to his people; and he comes to value his memory equally with his invention. He is therefore little solicitous whence his thoughts have been derived; whether through translation, whether through tradition, whether by travel in distant countries, whether by inspiration; from whatever source, they are equally welcome to his uncritical audience. Nay, he borrows very near home. Other men say wise things as well as he; only they say a good many foolish things, and do not know when they have spoken wisely. He knows the sparkle of the true stone, and puts it in high place, wherever he finds it. Such is the happy position of Homer perhaps; of Chaucer, of Saadi. They felt that all wit was their wit. And they are librarians and historiographers, as well as poets. Each romancer was heir and dispenser of all the hundred tales of the world,—

"Presenting Thebes' and Pelops' line And the tale of Troy divine."

The influence of Chaucer is conspicuous in all our early literature; and more recently not only Pope and Dryden have been beholden to him, but, in the whole society of English writers, a large unacknowledged debt is easily traced. One is charmed with the opulence which feeds so many pensioners. But Chaucer is a huge borrower. Chaucer, it seems, drew continually, through Lydgate and Caxton, from Guido di Colonna, whose Latin romance of the Trojan war was in turn a compilation from Bares Phrygius, Ovid and Statius. Then Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the Provencal poets are his benefactors; the Romaunt of the Rose is only judicious translation from William of Lorris and John of Meung; Troilus and Creseide, from Lollius of Urbino; The Cock and the Fox, from the Lais of Marie; The House of Fame, from the French or Italian; and poor Gower he uses as if he were only a brick-kiln or stone-quarry out of which to build his house. He steals by this apology,—that what he takes has no worth where he finds it and the greatest where he leaves it. It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature, that a man having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion. Thought is the property of him who can entertain it and of him who can adequately place it. A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them they become our own.

Thus all originality is relative. Every thinker is retrospective. The learned member of the legislature, at Westminster or at Washington, speaks and votes for thousands. Show us the constituency, and the now invisible channels by which the senator is made aware of their wishes; the crowd of practical and knowing men, who, by correspondence or conversation, are feeding him with evidence, anecdotes, and estimates, and it will bereave his fine attitudes and resistance of something of their impressiveness. As Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Webster vote, so Locke and Rousseau think, for thousands; and so there were fountains all around Homer, Manu, Saadi, or Milton, from which they drew; friends, lovers, books, traditions, proverbs,—all perished—which, if seen, would go to reduce the wonder. Did the bard speak with authority? Did he feel himself overmatched by any companion? The appeal is to the consciousness of the writer. Is there at last in his breast a Delphi whereof to ask concerning any thought or thing, whether it be verily so, yea or nay? and to have answer, and to rely on that? All the debts which such a man could contract to other wit would never disturb his consciousness of originality; for the ministrations of books and of other minds are a whiff of smoke to that most private reality with which he has conversed.

It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no man's work, but came by wide social labor, when a thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse. Our English Bible is a wonderful specimen of the strength and music of the English language. But it was not made by one man, or at one time; but centuries and churches brought it to perfection. There never was a time when there was not some translation existing. The Liturgy, admired for its energy and pathos, is an anthology of the piety of ages and nations, a translation of the prayers and forms of the Catholic church,—these collected, too, in long periods, from the prayers and meditations of every saint and sacred writer all over the world. Grotius makes the like remark in respect to the Lord's Prayer, that the single clauses of which it is composed were already in use in the time of Christ, in the Rabbinical forms. He picked out the grains of gold. The nervous language of the Common Law, the impressive forms of our courts and the precision and substantial truth of the legal distinctions, are the contribution of all the sharp-sighted, strong-minded men who have lived in the countries where these laws govern. The translation of Plutarch gets its excellence by being translation on translation. There never was a time when there was none. All the truly idiomatic and national phrases are kept, and all others successively picked out and thrown away. Something like the same process had gone on, long before, with the originals of these books. The world takes liberties with world-books. Vedas, Aesop's Fables, Pilpay, Arabian Nights, Cid, Iliad, Robin Hood, Scottish Minstrelsy, are not the work of single men. In the composition of such works the time thinks, the market thinks, the mason, the carpenter, the merchant, the farmer, the fop, all think for us. Every book supplies its time with one good word; every municipal law, every trade, every folly of the day; and the generic catholic genius who is not afraid or ashamed to owe his originality to the originality of all, stands with the next age as the recorder and embodiment of his own.

We have to thank the researches of antiquaries, and the Shakspeare Society, for ascertaining the steps of the English drama, from the Mysteries celebrated in churches and by churchmen, and the final detachment from the church, and the completion of secular plays, from Ferrex and Porrex, and Gammer Gurton's Needle, down to the possession of the stage by the very pieces which Shakspeare altered, remodelled, and finally made his own. Elated with success and piqued by the growing interest of the problem, they have left no bookstall unsearched, no chest in a garret unopened, no file of old yellow accounts to decompose in damp and worms, so keen was the hope to discover whether the boy Shakspeare poached or not, whether he held horses at the theatre door, whether he kept school, and why he left in his will only his second-best bed to Anne Hathaway, his wife.

There is something touching in the madness with which the passing age mischooses the object on which all candles shine and all eyes are turned; the care with which it registers every trifle touching Queen Elizabeth and King James, and the Essexes, Leicesters, Burleighs, and Buckinghams; and lets pass without a single valuable note the founder of another dynasty, which alone will cause the Tudor dynasty to be remembered,—the man who carries the Saxon race in him by the inspiration which feeds him, and on whose thoughts the foremost people of the world are now for some ages to be nourished, and minds to receive this and not another bias. A popular player;—nobody suspected he was the poet of the human race; and the secret was kept as faithfully from poets and intellectual men as from courtiers and frivolous people. Bacon, who took the inventory of the human understanding for his times, never mentioned his name. Ben Jonson, though we have strained his few words of regard and panegyric, had no suspicion of the elastic fame whose first vibrations he was attempting. He no doubt thought the praise he has conceded to him generous, and esteemed himself, out of all question, the better poet of the two.

If it need wit to know wit, according to the proverb, Shakspeare's time should be capable of recognizing it. Sir Henry Wotton was born four years after Shakspeare, and died twenty-three years after him; and I find, among his correspondents and acquaintances, the following persons: Theodore Beza, Isaac Casaubon, Sir Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Milton, Sir Henry Vane, Isaac Walton, Dr. Donne, Abraham Cowley, Bellarmine, Charles Cotton, John Pym, John Hales, Kepler, Vieta, Albericus Gentilis, Paul Sarpi, Arminius; with all of whom exists some token of his having communicated, without enumerating many others whom doubtless he saw,—Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, Beaumont, Massinger, the two Herberts, Marlow, Chapman and the rest. Since the constellation of great men who appeared in Greece in the time of Pericles, there was never any such society;—yet their genius failed them to find out the best head in the universe. Our poet's mask was impenetrable. You cannot see the mountain near. It took a century to make it suspected; and not until two centuries had passed, after his death, did any criticism which we think adequate begin to appear. It was not possible to write the history of Shakspeare till now; for he is the father of German literature: it was with the introduction of Shakspeare into German, by Lessing, and the translation of his works by Wieland and Schlegel, that the rapid burst of German literature was most intimately connected. It was not until the nineteenth century, whose speculative genius is a sort of living Hamlet, that the tragedy of Hamlet could find such wondering readers. Now, literature, philosophy, and thought, are Shakspearized. His mind is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do not see. Our ears are educated to music by his rhythm. Coleridge and Goethe are the only critics who have expressed our convictions with any adequate fidelity: but there is in all cultivated minds a silent appreciation of his superlative power and beauty, which, like Christianity, qualifies the period.