BOOKS OF THE WEEK
"Babble-Tongue" - THE enormous popularity which the writings of Macaulay/once enjoyed seems in recent times to have declined 'greatly. How many people nowadays can remember the Lays of Ancient Rome as among their first experiences of poetry, or were from an earlyage instructed to admire and to emulate the style of the Essays? And then there is the History of England which was read so widely and so avidly for many years after the first two volumes appeared in 1848. Of Macaulay as a historian a modem encyclopaedia writes: "His work is now read rather for its literary style than for its historical value: his search for effect and his prejudices militate against accuracy." In recent years, too, he has come in for some very rough handling from Mr. Winston Churchill who, in his Marlborough, pursues a private vendetta with great vigour and ferocity. "It is beyond our hopes," writes Mr. Churchill, "to overtake Lord Macaulay. The grandeur and sweep of his story-telling style carries him swiftly along, and with every generation he enters new fields. We can only hope that Truth will follow swiftly enough to fasten the label 'Liar' to his genteel coat-tails." Macaulay is also, according to Mr. Churchill, a "word-spinner." These remarks are, incidentally, prefaced by an attack on Macaulay for "sneering."
Personally I know of no "objective" historian, except Thucydides, who is not intensely dull, and often misleading as well. I share many of Macaulay's "prejudices" and admire the vigour with which he expresses them. There may be qualities of subtlety and sympathy, both in thought and style, in which Macaulay is lacking. His merits may be those of the brilliant advocate rather than of the philosopher or the poet. But the brilliance and copiousness and scope of his mind are still astounding; the rapidity and skill of his narrative are unexampled among English historians; and, whether or not he was wholly fair in this instance or in that, it should be remembered that his convictions happen to have been both sincere and of very great consequence in a dangerous and formative period of English history.
The new addition to the already excellent Reynard Library contains 864 well-printed pages of Macaulay's prose and verse, selected by Mr. G. M. Young, who has modestly confined himself to some explanatory notes on the text and to a short and excellent introduction. I wish it had been longer. There are some two hundred pages from the History of England. All of this is excellent, and, to my mind, the passages dealing with Monmouth's campaign and with the arrival of William and flight of Jaines are some of the most vivid and exciting pieces of historical writing that exist. After the History comes a long section devoted to the Essays, beginning with that most brilliant and very early piece of work, the essay on Machiavelli. The most famous of the historical essays come next. Then there are two literary essays. Unfortunately, I think; Space has not been found here for that devastating attack on Mr. Robert Montgomery's poems, but, on the other hand, one would be sorry not to have had either of the two essays that are printed (on Moore's Life of Byron and on Samuel Johnson). Next come two controversial essays (Mill on government and Gladstone on Church and State), and the prose section of the book ends with some hundred pages of speeches and a short and most interesting extract from Macaulay's journals dealing with the examination before the Privy Council of Edward Oxford, who attempted to assassinate the Queen and was later found not guilty on the ground of insanity, although, in Macaulay's opinion, "the wretch is no more mad than I am."
In all this bulk of prose Macaulay is, I think, at his best when he is most involved in narrative, argument or controversy. Then his style is most rapid and incisive, and one can admire the force and vigour of an intellect that is not dissipating itself in what is often unsuccessful "word-spinning." "He looked like a great man, and not like a bad man." How much more effective are these monosyl- lables than is the famous sentence nearer the end of this same essay on Warren Hastings. "In that temple of silence and reconciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried, in the Great Abbey which has during many ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by the con- tentions of the Grefat Hall, the dust of the illustrious accused should have mingled with the dust of the illustrious- accusers." This is very beautiful so-far as the first comma; we then receive a misleading impression, since only a small minority of those buried in the Great Abbey have ever been, in any sense, "shattered" by the Great Hall; and the sentence concludes with a string of words which might well be offered to the consideration of the police, since no motorist even slightly under the influence of alcohol would be capable of pro- nouncing them at all.
Yet in the presentation of a definite scene, of a series of events or of an argument this coloured style is very imposing. It is a tub- thumping and an eager style. It pushes and pulls; it excites and it interests. It lacks the sobriety, the certainty and the inner integrity of the greatest styles; but in its own way it is immensely vital and effective. Only on the rare occasions when it settles heavily into an attitude of pomposity does it disguise or blur the coruscations of a most brilliant mind.
Much the same may be said of Macaulay's poetry, even though it is, by all standards, on a lower level than his prose. Yet I confess that I cannot read of Horatius or of Lake Regillus without a feeling of joy and of excitement, even though, as Mr. G. M. Young says, the verses of Macaulay "sometimes made Matthew Arnold cry out in pain." Lytton Strachey spoke of "the Philistine on Parnassus," but, as Mr. Young well says, "it was no Philistine who wrote:
" Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees."
Included among the poetry in this volume is The Marriage of Tirzah and Ahirad, which Mr. Young describes as "that strange piece." It certainly is. But there is only space here to repeat Mr. Young's words, that on this "every reader will judge for himself." I have not been able to do anything like justice to the fine selection of political speeches which this volume contains. I hope, however, that I have said enough to show that, in these expensive days, this book is very good value indeed for money. REX WARNER.
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