forced to swim and had been almost lost in the mud. As soon as the king was on firm ground," etc. It is not hard to see how ill this has been planned, and how irrelevant the old soldiers are. Excessive details are thrust into a composition that requires much fewer particulars, and a longer sweep of the narrative sentence. It is something more than an historical statement ; it is something less than epic. Almost all the prose that was written by Macaulay before his History, belongs more or less to the literature of discussion, to the province of debatable opinions. It is not in discussion that Macaulay is strongest, though his strength is great; but it is certainly the case that without the provocation of something to discuss, his narrative is apt to languish. His strength in history and in the description of characters is closely dependent upon his interest in debated questions. The satirist who cannot trust himself to conduct a story of his own, or to describe a character for its own sake, must have his general moral thesis or his particular aversion, as a beginning, before he can bring forward his character of Sporus or Avidien. Macaulay's passages of debating argument, whether in the Edinburgh Review or in the House of Commons, differ very greatly in their effective qualities. Perhaps he is at his best in his discussion of James Mill's theory of government in one kind, and in the speech on the gates of Somnauth in another. In the abstract and a priori political philosophy of the Utilitarians, he had the good fortune to find the direct opposite of his own intellectual habits, and exactly that form of sophistry, the antidote to which was provided by his reading of history and command of historical instances and historical judgment. In dealing with Lord Ellenborough's proclamation his luck was even better; his adversary's rhetoric was as ludicrous as Mr. Robert Montgomery's, while the questions involved in the proclamation of the GovernorGeneral of India were serious enough to bring out Macaulay's utmost energy. Macaulay in 1842 was a champion of the honour of England, an advocate speaking with the authority of experience in a debate where the whole Indian Empire, and nothing less, was to be disposed of. And it was by a vice of rhetoric, an absurd defect of taste in the Governor-General, that the Empire was being endangered; so that Macaulay's rhetorical skill in operating on bloated metaphors was here put at the service of his deepest political hopes and convictions, and helped to save the State. Macaulay's power in discussion is curiously uncertain and variable. His detachment from abstract principles and systems of philosophy, while it saves him from the fallacies of the pedants and formalists, the Idola Theatri, leaves him exposed to the many dangers of opportunism. Generally he was protected by the natural soundness of his disposition, and by his command of particular instances, from committing himself to fallacious positions. Sometimes, however, his wide knowledge of particulars and his rich and full appreciation of books and authors were not sufficient: the extent of his knowledge was not always enough to make up for the want of a philosophy. His contention in the second part of his essay on Bacon remains almost inexplicable. The fallacy in it is one of imagination rather than of logic, a fallacy that may seem to be too deeprooted in the nature of his mind to be cleared away by any process of apology or extenuation. It remains the most dangerous of all the pieces of evidence in the hands of the advocatus diaboli to disprove the greatness of Macaulay. In the essay on Bacon Macaulay was victimised by his love of clearness and of sharp contrasts. The talent that was rightly and effectively spent in the debates with James Mill or Lord Ellenborough is here wasted in a futile charge at a cloud of dust. In debating with James Mill, Macaulay had the full use of his historical knowledge and good sense to controvert a priori arguments about historical subjects. In criticising Lord Ellenborough he had, besides, the advantage of having been at the centre of things in India: he was talking of things that were part of his life. In the essay on Bacon he becomes the upholder of a commonplace thesis he is carried away, in a lapse of self-respect, by a movement of enthusiasm for things which his contemporaries were glad to see magnified out of all relation to their value. Some evil influence, like those which occasionally fetter and benumb the heroes in the Iliad, had impeded the movement of his mind, fixed him to one point of view, and made him argue for a single worthless conclusion without the power of changing his mental attitude or of getting round the question to see how it might look from the other side. It is unjust to take the essay on Bacon as representing Macaulay's theory of the value of knowledge. He had taken it into his head to match Bacon against the caricatures of ancient philosophers, the "budge doctors" of the satirists. That Macaulay should have found any amusement in this degrading exercise is sufficiently perplexing. It is not necessary to believe that his praise of everything alien to science is an expression of his real judgment. No ancient philosopher ever spoke with more conviction of the worthlessness of material things in comparison with the things of the mind than Macaulay after his reverse of fortune in the Edinburgh election. The whole of his life is a proof of the sincerity of that profession of faith. What remains to be charged against him on the score of the essay on Bacon is not that the opinions are his own, but that by some preoccupation or by some obtuseness of sense he allowed himself to support opinions unworthy of him and at variance with his true character. Macaulay was not proof against the infection of demagogy. He had a sympathy with many popular opinions about the relative values of things, opinions which were flourishing and strong enough without his encouragement. He did not always remember his obligations as a student. He allowed himself sometimes to sink to the position on which he had looked down with contempt when it was made ridiculous by the editor of Sir James Mackintosh's Remains. A gross contentment with modern progress and respectability received in this case its proper measure of correction from Macaulay. In other places he gave his countenance, apparently without qualms or scruples, to the "march of intellect" and its dismal and pusillanimous watchwords. His style, as well as his character as a reasoner, has suffered from these indulgences. His style seems to lose all its vigour when it is employed in congratulating the age on its useful knowledge and its handbooks of learning. Macaulay's weak places are those in which his memory fails to make up for the want of a philosophy. He did not feel the want of a theory of the universe, when he had his retentive and quick memory to supply him with images and ideas. There was no need for him to go burrowing and mining under the surface of phenomena; that painful work might be left to men who had not his range of vision on the whole field of history. He was not tempted to look for metaphysical explanations: he saw things framed in a large historical picture, and the picture was generally enough for him. His style was the style of a man singularly at ease in his own mind and in the command of his knowledge. He shows little trace of the sordid business of study, of the mechanical and laborious part of literary work. The picture of the world comes of itself before his mind, and flashes into vividness in this corner and in that, showing the relations of things to one another before he has had time to grow weary in puzzling them out. He can look down from his point of vantage on the crowd of antiquarian sappers and miners, creeping from fact to fact. His style reflects the cheerfulness of the mind that has secured itself in a specular tower, and has no need to vex itself about its point of view, or its principles of criticism. His view is its own justification, because it is a view full of light and variety, and different from that of the historical pioneer in his gallery underground. A mind of this sort, relying on extent of view, without special science, is not out of danger of fallacies. The wide view and the long memory are wonderful and glorious; but if ever a mist comes over them, or the telescopic sight is accidentally blurred or hindered, then the failure is more hopeless and absolute than the errors of duller men who without genius rely on their training and scientific instruments. In his discussion of Bacon's theory of knowledge, Macaulay had neglected to provide himself with any other than his ordinary methods of work, and unhappily in this case his ordinary methods failed him. Wherever Macaulay's view is restricted or prejudiced, it loses all light there is no spiritual zeal in his argument, such as enlivens the judgment of Carlyle, even when its historical soundness is questionable. No writer is placed at such a disadvantage as Macaulay, when his worst passages are taken up and criticised minutely. With no writer is criticism so apt to be unjust, simply because it is impossible to represent in detail a genius which was great by the extent of its empire, rather than by any mystery of its inner shrines. To remember particular bits of Macaulay's prose is not always as satisfactory as to remember his heroic ballads. But in the variegated mass of his writings, and in the impression of life and zest in all that he wrote, the particular faults and fallacies may easily and rightly pass out of notice. In the works that he wrote, as in his courageous and fortunate life, there is little claim to VOL. V 2E |