What price glory?
,SIr: "It is said of Macaulay, idolator of uante, that his oratory represents the last sunset glories of the Augustan Style, although whether he was quite as bad as that posterity has no way of !cnoWing." I sincerely hope the above IS the most smug, stupid, and ignorant sentence ever printed in The Spectator. It is commonplace for Macaulay to be people who have denigrated by e patently never read his books — who believe that his History of England is Paisleyite propaganda — but Benny Green's sneer achieves a new level of rheapjack impudence. Mr Green has not thought it necessary to read the titles of Macaulay's books — one of Which, for his enlightenment, is called SPeechs. And what on Earth does "Idolater of L'ante" mean? Leaving aside that Macaulay was no more an idolater of oante than anybody is who subscribes to the view that Dante is one of the World's greatest poets, the phrase in context would only make sense if uante had been a great Augustan Wnter. Perhaps Mr Green believes that he was?
D. Watkins
GaYcroft, Laleston, Bridgend, Glamorgan
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