MACAULAY.
MACAITIAY will be attended to his grave by something more than a national regret. Not only wherever the English lan- guage guage is spoken," but wherever it s understood, his loss will be mourned. He has been mentioned as being in an important re- spect the most signal instance of success in literature : he is the one English Peer created a Baron on account of his literary re- pute ; and some of the circumstances attending his elevation to the Peerage rendered it even more remarkable. He was called to the Upper House, far less to convey benefit and honour to him, than to confer elevation and advantage on the Senate. And the distinction was viewed without envy by rivals, without disapproba- tion by party opponents. Macaulay's great history sold " like a novel.' He found himself courted in every sphere where he ap- peared,—the bar, the Parliament, the library, the drawing-room. He handled the great test of success—money—in all walks to which he devoted himself,—law, literature, politics. And he crowned these brilliant successes with the 'Peerage avowedly that Parliament and the country might, when it pleased him, have the benefit of his voice. It was an unique tribute to mind ; but it was a tribute which marked the progress of the community which rendered it.
In compliance with the standing custom' the death of Macaulay was no sooner announced than there were the usual biographical notices in the papers,—this time necessarily of a more than com- monly critical order. But the criticism appears to us to have been singularly undiscriminating. It is all eulogy ; except that in one instance we have had a very severe measure, not only of Macaulay's attainments and achievements, but of his personal qualities. In that sterner aspect he is described as being, like so many sons, the reactionary opposite to his father, Zachary Mac- aulay, the well-known Anti-Slavery agitator. As Zachary was "all heart," so' we are told, Thomas Babington had no heart, or but a cold sort of kindliness without warmth or personal affec- tion. The majority of the critics have eulogized the departed litterateur in a style which can only be described by the vulgar- ism "laying it on, His conversation is remarked for its extra- ordinary power of memory, its command of language, and its en- cycloptecliacal knowledge ; his poetry is described as a creation, his oratory as the highest statesmanship, his history as faultless. Yet, in the same breath, we have the confession that it was "in- accurate." His influence in Parliament was confessedly not great ; in his own profession—the law—he was a kind of splendid and majestic failure ; and it would be difficult for any of his most ardent friends to point out something that Macaulay originated. He first attained his repute as an essayist by a paper on Milton, which he himself described as " gaudy ' and "overloaded with ornament." He achieved his highest repute as an essayist, and an essayist he remained. If you met him in company he seasoned the dinner-table with essays. If he rose to speak in the House of Commons, the oration which flowed from his almost motionless figure was the outflow of an essay. And, true to the bent of his genius, his history was essay-writing. His very eulogists confess that it was not correct ; and it has, we think, been shown that the inaccuracy was attended by an unusual amount of dogmatic force in assertion, without the usual amount of care in justifying the conclusions. It was so in the case of William Penn ; while representations combating his opinions were certainly not received with the spontaneous and eager reconsideration generally charac- terizing candour. No; Macaulay went to the duty of recording history with preconceived ideas. He was a Whig, and he wrote like a Whig,—with immense vigour, with wonderful command of language, surprising memory and power of graphic representa- tion, but still in great part to make out the history of England as he supposed it had been,—or ought to have been.
There is something very remarkable in this signal and success- ful non-success. One of his most powerful eulogists boasts for him, in effect, that he heard more than any other man the voice of applause.
"The purest moral tone pervades the fearless controversial discussion of the most difficult, social, moral, and religious questions. By no one have the principles of toleration been so ably and clearly expounded, by no one has the dividing line between religion and superstition been so fearlessly drawn. No author rests so entirely on a solid and manly good sense. Lord Macaulay never wasted his Sue faculties and splended powers of exposition on the barren subtleties of metaphysics or the abstract dogmas of polemics. A true friend of liberty, he preferred to deduce it from the immemorial prac- tice of our ancient Monarchy instead of from the fallacious doctrines of na- tural right."
Another writer, who also eulogizes the departed litterateur with no cold pen, likens Macaulay to Mackintosh and Burke, and the resemblance is considerable, although it instantly suggests dif- ferences in the ease of Burke particularly. Macaulay ever would have been driven to such fantastic extravagancies as the throwing of a dagger on to the floor of the House of Commons ; but, on the other hand, Macaulay was never the formidable oppo- nent that Burke was to English party, or to Indian satraps ; and nowhere in Macaulay's writings can there be found an approach to the originality even of the essay on "The Sublime and Beautiful." Yet Burke was only "the Right Honourable" and Mackintosh only "Sir James ; " while Macaulay was invited to take his place amongst the Barons precisely on account of his literary distinction. Of course there were reasons for this triumph over non-success. For we cannot help insisting that in the specific vocations that he undertook Macaulay failed. His essays in Parliament were ever regarded with admiration, but they did not materially influence the division ; his grand essay on law making, the Indian Code, is only the subject of excusatory reminiscences. Whether at the Board of Control, or in the Indian Council, or in any other official position, Macaulay was not recognized as a working statesman. But in all these positions he brought to bear upon the work which he undertook an extraordinary amount of literary power, though still not inspired by originality. For what, then, was it remark- able ? Particularly, we conceive, for this,—that it collected to-
gether in the main the thoroughly received, recognized, and esta- blished opinions of the educated classes, and presented those opinions with a power of language and a force of illustration which imparted to them for the day an animation and an appear- ance of originality highly gratifying to the educated republic, which thus saw its mind reflected in an intense and imposing aspect. Macaulay was, so to speak, the most brilliant mirror to the constituted authority of intellect in his time.
And if admiration for so brilliant an exponent of constituted opinion rose to affection, there was not a trait in the man's nature calculated to abate that feeling. According to all accounts cf him, it would be difficult to find one whose life, actions, and feel- ings were more absolutely blameless. Constituted opinion ran into his morals, and he certainly startled nobody by the originality of his views upon such complicated and difficult subjects. Tho- roughly conscientious, he obeyed his sense of right,—and his sense of right is that which is ordinarily received. Hence not a theoretical doubt could exist to diminish the practical admiration for his practical conduct. As to his "coldness of heart," it exists only in inferences from the fact that his life was apparently solitary. But it was not so in truth. Few men lived in a more constant intercourse with mind and with affection. Although his life had not been imprudent, his kindness ex- tended beyond the ordinary bounds of personal friendship ; his zeal for others was attested by practical sacrifices ; and few have shown more sterling warmth of heart, more generous con-
sideration for the pe feelings of others, or more unobtrusive generosity.
Previous page
