THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, 1800-1859. DISTINGUISHED as a descriptive poet by his fine Lays of Ancient Rome, and yet more distinguished as a master of English prose by his Essays and his noble History of England, Thomas Babington Macaulay stands prominent as the most learned and eloquent of the essayists and critics of the nineteenth century. He was the son of Zachary Macaulay, known as the warm friend and co-laborer of Wilberforce and Clarkson, and was born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, October 25, 1800. In 1818 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1822. Here he gave proof of his great intellectual powers, obtaining a scholarship, and twice gaining the Chancellor's medal for a poem called Pompeii. To crown his triumphs, he secured a "Craven Scholarship," the highest distinction in classics which the university confers. After leaving the university he studied law at Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1826. It was in this year that his celebrated Essay on Milton ap peared in the Edinburgh Review; and thenceforth he contributed to that journal. from time to time, papers of such learning, eloquence, and power as to place him in the very first rank of reviewers. His Essays from the Edinburgh Review have been collected and published in three volumes, and have attained a popularity far greater than any other contributions to the periodical works of the day. In politics he espoused the Whig side, and was an able defender of their views. He was elected a member for Colne, of the first reformed Parliame in 1830, was then made Secretary to the India Board, and in 1834 was returned as member for Leeds. He resigned his seat the same year, on being appointed to the Supreme Council in Calcutta, under the East India Company's new charter. His principal business was the preparation of a new penal code of Indian law, the formation of which led him to the investigation of Indian history, a study which bore fine fruit in his essays on Lord Clive and Warres Hastings. He returned to England in 1838, with a high reputation for having administered his office in India with great justice and impartiality between the Europeans and the natives, as well as with great ability. The following year he was elected member of Parliament for Edinburgh, and took a leading position among the orators of that renowned assembly. Within a few years he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, and his address on the occasion was greatly admired. A distinguished French scholar, M. Mignet, of the French Academy, thus writes of Macaulay's History of England:-"In this fine history, which is epic in movement and resplendent in form, Macaulay sees through the tangle of events with a piercing eye, exposes them with consummate ability, and judges them as an able politician. His narrations carry you away by the life which he throws into them. He gives animation to every thing that he relates, and to the knowledge which gives accuracy he unites the art that makes interestng. He enables the reader to appreciate as well as to know; and, as a rule, his justice is equal to his clear-sightedness." As a poet, Macaulay is not so much known or admired, not because his Armada, his Battle of Ivry, and his Lays of Ancient Rome are not worthy of his genius,-for, had he written nothing else, he would be remembered for these,but because their lustre fades away before the exceeding brilliancy of his prose writings. Here he is unrivalled. His reading and erudition are immense. In questions of classical learning and criticism, in English poetry, philosophy, and history, in all the minutiae of biography and literary anecdote, in the principles and details of government, in the revolutions of parties and opinions, in the progress of science and philosophy,—in all these he seems equally conversant and equally felicitous as a critic. Perhaps he is most striking and original in his historical articles, which present complete pictures of the times of which he treats, adorned with portraits of the principal actors, and copious illustrations of contemporary events and characters in other countries. His reviews of Hallam's Constitutional History, and the memoirs of Lord Clive, Warren Hastings, Sir Robert Walpole, Sir William Temple, Sir Walter Raleigh, &c., contain a series of brilliant and copious historical retrospects unequalled in our literature. His eloquent papers on Lord Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Horace Walpole's Letters, Boswell's Johnson, Addison's Memoirs, and other philosophical and literary subjects, are also of first-rate excellence. Whatever topic he takes up he fairly exhausts: nothing is left to the imagination, and the most ample curiosity is gratified. But Macaulay's greatest work is his History of England from the Accession of James the Second, than which no other book of this century has been received with equal enthusiasm, and no one, certainly, is more secure of lasting fame." The plan was a great one. "I propose to write the History of England from the accession of King James the Second down to a time within the memory of men still living," are the opening words of the opening chapter. It is what a history ought to be,-A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE. It is written in a style of great clearness, force, and eloquence; and the scenes he describes he places, by the vividness of his pencil, directly before your eyes. You see them and feel them too. The third chapter of this great work, wherein he describes the advance of the people, for the last three centuries, from ignorance to knowledge, from barbarism to civilization, from serfdom to freedom, should be read by all, especially by those elderly gentlemen whose chief delight is to praise the "good old times." This history, however, noble as it is, must be considered only as a fragment. It was brought down only to the death of William the Third, as the illustrious author was removed by death on the 28th of December, 1859.3 1 Nerissa.-When the moon shone, we did not see the candle. A substitute shines brightly as a king, Merchant of Venice, Act v. Scene 1. With all its great merits, it has its imperfections, of course, as its author was subject to like passions and infirmities with other men. He has been accused of partiality and exaggeration, and of gratifying his passion for epigram at the expense of truth; and it must be acknowledged that his views are sometimes biassed (and whose are not?) by perRonal antipathies: such as his description of Scotland; his account of the massacre of Glencoe; his delineation of the character of the English Puritans and the Scotch Covenantere; and especially his portraiture of William Penn. The other side may be examined in William Hepworth Dixon's Life of William Penn, with a Reply to Macaulay's Charges; in the searching inquiry into the Charges brought by Lord Macaulay against William Penn, by John Puget, Burrister at Law; and in Hugh Miller's Reply in behalf of the Puritans and Covenanters. Read, also, a fine article on Macaulay, in Whipple's Essays; and in North British Review, Nos. 49 and 66. 3I believe Macaulay to be incorruptible. You might lay ribbons, stars, garters, wealth, titles, before him in vain. He has an honest, gennine love of his country; and the world could not bribe him to neglect her interests." MILTON. It is not our intention to attempt any thing like a complete examination of the poetry of Milton. The public has long been agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, the incomparable harmony of the numbers, and the excellence of that style which no rival has been able to equal, and no parodist to degrade; which displays in their highest perfection the idiomatic powers of the English tongue, and to which every ancient and every modern language has contributed something of grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast field of criticism in which we are entering, innumerable reapers have already put their sickles. Yet the harvest is so abundant that the negligent search of a straggling gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf. The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton is the extreme remoteness of the associations by means of which it acts on the reader. Its effect is produced not so much by what it expresses as by what it suggests; not so much by the ideas which it directly conveys, as by other ideas which are connected with them. He electrifies the mind through conductors. The most unimaginative man must understand the Iliad. Homer gives him no choice, and requires from him no exertion, but takes the whole upon himself, and sets his images in so clear a light that it is impossible to be blind to them. The works of Milton cannot be comprehended or enjoyed, unless the mind of the reader cooperate with that of the writer. He does not paint a finished picture, or play for a mere passive listener. He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the outline. He strikes the key-note, and expects his hearer to make out the melody. * * * The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness of thought. He had survived his health and his sight, the comforts of his home and the prosperity of his party. Of the great men by whom he had been distinguished at his entrance into life, some had been taken away from the evil to come; some had carried into foreign climates their unconquerable hatred of oppression; some were pining in dungeons; and some had poured forth their blood on scaffolds. That hateful proscription, facetiously termed the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, had set a mark on the poor, blind, deserted poet, and held him up by name to the hatred of a profligate court and an inconstant people! Venal and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pander in the style of a bellman, were now the favorite writers of the sovereign and the public. It was a loathsome herd,-which could be compared to nothing so fitly as to the rabble of Comus,-grotesque monsters, half bestial, half human, dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling in obscene dances. Amidst these his Muse was placed, like the chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, and serene,to be chattered at, and pointed at, and grinned at, by the whole rabble of Satyrs and Goblins. If ever despondency and asperity could be excused in any man, it might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such it was when, on the eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes; such it continued to be when, after having experienced every calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die! * * * His public conduct was such as was to be expected from a man of a spirit so high and an intellect so powerful. He lived at one of the most memorable eras in the history of mankind; at the very crisis of the great conflict between Oromasdes and Arimanes, liberty and despotism, reason and prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single generation, for no single land. The destinies of the human race were staked on the same cast with the freedom of the English people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty principles which have since worked their way into the depths of the American forests; which have roused Greece from the slavery and degradation of two thousand years; and which, from one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, and loosed the knees of the oppressors with a strange and unwonted fear! * * * We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear ourselves away from the subject. The days immediately following the publication of this relic of Milton' appear to be peculiarly set apart and consecrated to his memory. And we shall scarcely be censured if, on this his festival, we be found lingering near his shrine, how worthless soever may be the offering which we bring to it. While this book lies on our table, we seem to be contemporaries of the great poet. We are transported a hundred and fifty years back. We can almost fancy that we are visiting him in his small lodging; that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath the faded green hangings; that we can catch the quick twinkle of his eyes rolling in vain to find the day; that we are reading in the lines of his noble countenance the proud and 1" A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone." mournful history of his glory and his affliction! We image to ourselves the breathless silence in which we should listen to his slightest word; the passionate veneration with which we should kneel to kiss his hand, and weep upon it; the earnestness with which we should endeavor to console him, if, indeed, such a spirit could need consolation, for the neglect of an age unworthy of his talents and his virtues; the eagerness with which we should contest with his daughters, or with his Quaker friend, Elwood, the privilege of reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal accents which flowed from his lips. * * * There are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the furnace, and have proved pure, which have been weighed in the balance, and have not been found wanting, which have been declared sterling by the general consent of mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image and superscription of the Most High. These great men we trust that we know how to prize; and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name, are refreshing to us. His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of Paradise to the earth, distinguished from the productions of other soils, not only by their superior bloom and sweetness, but by their miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to heal. They are powerful not only to delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he labored for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temptation and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame. THE PURITANS. We would first speak of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. *** Those who roused the people to resistance,—who directed their measures through a long series of eventful years, who formed, out of the most unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen,-who trampled down king, church, and aristocracy, who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth,—were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their absurdities were mere external badges, like the signs of freemasonry or the dresses of friars. We regret that these badges |