5 * V*^ <>"«••• ,0 *^, ' • • • 1^' *'*"%. '»wl^* '."'^ "-Pes ^c T. B. MACAULAY, Scenes and Characters FROM THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, BEINC A SELECTION OF J^is ^ost ^Eloquent 33assafles, CONTAINING SKETCHES OF ASSISOM, MArAME D'ARBLAY, BACON, BARERE, BOSWELL, BTJRKE, BOILEATT» BYRON, CHATHAJI, LORD CLIVE, CONGREVE, CRISP, DANTE, DRYDEN, FOX, FREDERICK THE GREAT, GARRICK, EARL GREY, GEORGE II., WARRBM HASTINGS, JOHNSON, IGNATIUS LOYOLA, MILTON, SIR JAMEg MACKINTOSH, MICHIAVELLI, MIRABEAU, POPE, SWIFT, SHERI- DAN, SIR WILLIAM TE^IPLE, VOLTAIRE, WALPOLK, And other eminent individuals. TO ■WHICH IS PREFIXED A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOU: BY B. H, HORNE, ESQ. NEW-YORK: TURNER & HAYDEN, 10 JOHN STREET ; H. & E. PHINNEY, COOPERSTOWN j I. TIFFANY, UTICA; C. MORSE, DETROIT. 184«. T^'^^^ Gift • Mrs. Hennen Jennings April 26, 1933 CONTENTS rASK. Sketch of the Author, . , , . , 7 Milton's Poetry, jl The Creations of iEschylus, 12 Miiton and Dante, 13 Character of the Puritans, 16 Milton, 20 Machiavelli, 22 Dryden, 25 Empire of the Caesars, 32 The Reformation, 35 Times of George II., 36 Burke, 39 Byron, , 40 Boswell's Life of Johnson, 42 Earl of Chatham, 49 Sir James Mackintosh, 52 Sir William Temple, ""55 The Roman Catholic Church, '56 Policy of the Church of England, 62 Protestantism and Catholicism, 65 Lord Clive,— a Boy, 67 Lord CHve, — a Man, 68 Decline of the Empire of Tamerlane, 69 The late Lord Holland, 73 Trial of Warren Hastings, 81 Warren Hastings, -, 88 Father of Frederic the Great, 90 IV. CONTENTS. PAOK Frederick the Great, '.. 91 Voltaire, 97 Anecdote of Garrick, ... | .... 105 Mr. Samuel Crisp, 105 Miss Bumey, (Madame D'Arblay,) 112 Addison's Visit to Boileau, 118 Origin of Addison's " Cato," 122 Character of Addison, 123 Anecdotes of Steele, 127 Addison's Humor, 129 Addison's " Spectator," 133 Addison and Swift, 136 One Phase of the Character of Pope, 139 Character of Barere, 140 Fall of the Girondists, 143 Character of the Terrorists, 144 Farewell to Barere, 146 Jeremy Bentham, 155 The French Legislature during the Revolution, 158 Louis the Fourteenth, 161 Horace Walpole, 163 Francis Bacon, 173 Congreve, the Dramatist, 1 77 Character of the Bengalees, 183 Sir Philip Francis, (Junius,) 185 Hyder Ali, 189 Mr. Burke and Warren Hastings, 191 Archbishop Laud and Earl Strafford, 196 Death of Hampden, 200 Nares' Memoirs of Lord Burghley, 204 The Elder Mr. Pitt in Parliament, 208 SKETCH OF T. B. MACAULAY. Thomas Babington Macaulay is the son of Zachary Macaulay, well known as^the friend of Wilberforce, and, though himself an African mer- chant, one of the most ardent abolitionists of slavery. In 1S18, T. B. Macaulay became a member of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his Bachelor's deo-ree in 1822. He distinoruished him- o o self as a student, having obtained a scholarship, twice gained the Chancellor's medal for English verse, and also gained the second Craven Scholar- ship, the highest honor in classics which the Uni- versity confers. Owing to his dislike of mathematics, he did not compete for honors at graduation, but nevertheless he obtained a Fellowship at the Octo- ber competition open to graduates of Trinity, which he appears to have resigned before his subsequent departure for India. He devoted much of his time to the " Union" Debating Society, where he was reckoned an eloquent speaker. Mr. Macaulay studied at Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1826. In the same year hia 8 SKETCH OF T. B. MAGAULAY. ** Essay on Milton" appeared in the "Edinburgh Review ;" and out of Lord (then Mr.) Jeffrey's admiration of that paper, arose an intimate friend- ship. Macaulay, visiting Scotland soon afterward, went the circuit with Mr. Jeffrey. His connection with the ** Edinburgh Review" has continued at intervals ever since. By the Whig administration Mr. Macaulay was appointed Commissioner of Bankrupts. He com- menced his parliamentary career about the same period, as member for Colne in the reform Parlia- ment of 1832, and again for Leeds in 1834, at which time he was secretary to the India Board. His seat was, however, soon relinquished, for in the same year he was appointed member of the Supreme Council in Calcutta, under the East India Compa- ny's new charter. Arriving in Calcutta, in September, 1834, Mr. Macaulay shortly assumed an important trust in addition to his seat at the Council. At the request of the Governor-general, Lord William Bentinck, he became President of the commission of five, appointed to frame a penal code for India; and the principal provisions of this code have been attributed to him. One of its enactments, in particular, was fio unpopular among the English inhabitants, as to SKii^TCH OF T. B. MACAULAY. Vl receive the appellation of the " Black Act." It abolished the right of appeal from the Local Courts to the Supreme Court at the Presidency, hitherto exclusively enjoyed by Europeans, and put them on the same footing v^^ith natives, giving to both an equal right of appeal to the highest Provincial Courts. Inconvenience and delay of justice had been caused by the original practice, even when India was closed against Europeans in general, but such practice was obviously incompatible vvdth the rights and property of the natives under the new system of opening the country to general resort. This measure of equal justice, however, exposed Mr. Macaulay, to whom it was universally attributed, to outrageous personal attacks in letters, pamphlets, and at public meetings. The various reforms and changes instituted by Lord W. Bentinck and Lord Auckland, were advo- cated in general by Mr. Macaulay. He returned to England in 1838. Mr. Macaulay was elected member for Edinburgh on the liberal interest in 1839 ; and being appointed Secretary at War, he was re-elected the following year, and again at the general election in 1841. No review of his political career is here intended ; although in relation to literature, it should b» men- 10 SKETCH OF T. B. MACAULAT. tioned that he opposed Mr. Serjeant Talfourd's Copyright Bill, and was the principal agent in de- feating it. As a public speaker, he usually displays extensive information, close reasoning, and elo- quence; and has recently bid fair to rival the greatest names among our English orators. Hia conversation in private is equally brilliant and instructive. Mr. Macaulay may fairly be regarded as the first critical and historical essayist of the time. It is not meant to be inferred that there are not other writers who display as much understanding and research, as great, perhaps greater capacity of appreciating excellence, as much acuteness and humor, and a more subtle power of exciting, or of measuring, the efforts of the intellect and the imagination, besides possessing an equal mastery of language in their own peculiar style ; but there is no other writer who combines so large an amount of all those qual- ities, with the addition of a mastery of style, at once highly classical and most extensively popular. His style is classical, because it is so correct ; and it is popular because it must be intelligible without effort to every educated understanding. MACAULAY'S MISCELLANIES. MILTON'S POETRY. 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 vmderstand 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 comprehend- ed or enjoyed, unless the mind of the reader co- operate with that of'the writer. He does not paint a finished picture, or play for a mere passive listen- er. He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the outline. He strikes the key-note, and expects his hearer to make out the melody. • We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression in general means nothing; but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is most appro- priate. His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But 12 macaulay's miscellanies. they are words of enchantment ; no sooner are they pronounced than the past is present, and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into exist- ence, and all the burial places of the memory give up tbeir dead. Cliange the structure of the sen- tence, substitute one synonyme for another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power; and he who should then hope to conjure with it, would fmd himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying, **Open Wheat," " Open Barley," to the door which obeyed no sound but " Open Sesame !" The miserable failure of Dryden, in his attempt to rewrite some parts of the Paradise Lost, is a remarkable instance of this. THE CPvEATIONS OF iESCHYLUS. His favorite gods are those of the elder genera- tions, — the sons of heaven and earth, compared with whom Jupiter himself was a stripling and an up- start — the gigantic Titans and the inexorable Furies. Foremost among his creations of this class stands Prometheus, half fiend, half redeemer, the friend of man, the sullen and implacable enemy of heaven. He bears undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to the Satan of Milton. In both we find the same impatience of control, the same ferocity, the same unconquerable pride. In both characters also are mingled, though in very different proportions, some kind and generous feelings. Prometheus, however, is hardly superhuman enough. He talks too much of his chains and his uneasy posture. He is rather *• MILTON AND DANTE. 13 too mucli depressed and agitated. His resolution seems to depend on the knowledge which he pos- sesses, that he holds the fate of his torturer in his hands, and that the hour of his release will surely come. But Satan is a creature of another sphere. The might of his intellectual nature is victorious over the extremity of pain. Amid agonies which cannot be conceived without horror, he deliberates, resolves, and even exults. Against the sword of Michael, against the thunder of Jehovah, aQ:ainsfe the flaming lake and the marl burning with solid fire, against the prospect of an eternity of uninter- mitteut misery, his spirit bears up unbroken, resting on its own innate energies, requiring no support from anything external, nor even from hope itself! MILTON AND DANTE. The character of Milton was peculiarly distin- guished by loftiness of thought; that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line of the Divine Comedy we discern the asperity which is produced by pride struggling with misery. There is perhaps no work in the world so deeply and uniformly sor- rowful. The melancholy of Dante was no fantastic caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance of time can be judged, the effect of external circum- stances. It was from within. Neither love nor glory, neither the conflicts of the earth nor the hope of heaven could dispel it. It twined every consola- tion and every pleasure into its own nature. It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense bitterness is said to have been perceptible 14 macaulay's miscellanies. even in its honey. His mind was, in the noble lan- guage of the Hebrew poet, *' a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and where the light was as dark- ness !" The gloom of his character discolors all the passions of men and all the face of nature, and tinges with it§ own lived hue the flowers of Para- dise and the glories of the Eternal Throne ! All the portraits of him are singularly characteristic. No person can look on the features, noble even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek, the haggard and woful stare of the eye, the sullen and contemptuous curve of the lip, and doubt that they belonged to a man too proud and too sensitive to be happy. Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover — and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambi- tion and in love. He had survived his health and his sight, the comforts of his home, and the prosper- ity 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 uncon- querable hatred of oppression; some were pining in dungeons ; and some had poured forth their blood on scaffolds. That hateful proscription, face- tiously 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 profli- gate court and an inconstant people ! Venial 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 sove- reign and the public. It was a loathsome herd— MILTON AND DANTE. 15 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 reehng in obscene dances. Amid 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 MlUon. But the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappoint- ments, 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 suffer- ings could render sullen or fretful. Such as 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 dis- graced, he retired to his hovel to die ! Hence it was, that though he wrote the Paradise Lost at a time of life when images of beauty and tenderness are in general beginning to fade, even from those minds in which they have not been effaced by anxiety and disappointment, he adorned it with all that is most lovely and delightful in the physical and in the moral world. Neither Theo- 16 macaulay's miscellanies. critus nor Ariosto had a finer or a more healthful sense of the pleasantness of external objects, or loved better to luxuriate anjidst sunbeams and flowers, the songs of nightingales, the juice of sum- mer fruits, and the coolness of shady fountains. His conception of love unites all the voluptuousness of the Oriental harem, and all the gallantry of the chivalric tournament, with all the pure and quiet affection of an English fire-side. His poetry re- minds us of the miracles of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairy land, are embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom unchilled on the verge of the avalanche. CHARACTER OF THE PURITANS. We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that' runs may read them ; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of letters ; they were as a body un- popular ; they could not defend themselves ; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, 10 the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists'. CnAKACTER OP THE PURITANS. 17 The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learnt. And he who approaches this subject should carefully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule, which has already misled so many excellent writers, " Ecco il fonte del rise, ed ecco il rio Che moitali perigli in se contiene : Hor qui tener a I'ren nostro a desio, Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene."* Those who roused the people to resistance — who directed their measures through a long series of eventful years — who formed out of the most un- promising 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 nam^e of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their ab- surdities were mere external badges, like the signs of free-masonry, or the dresses of friars. We regret that these badges were not more attractive. We regret that a body, to whose courage and talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations, had not the lofty elegance which distinguished some of th« ♦ Gerusalemme Liberata, xv. 57. 16 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANIES. adherents of Charles I., or the easy good-breeding for which the court of Charles II. was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets, which contain only the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix our choice on the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure. The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habiti::ially ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power no- thing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious hom- age which other sects substituted for the pure wor- ship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on the intolerable bright- ness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which separa- ted the whole race from him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognised no title to superiority but his favor; and confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and al] the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. CHARACTER OF THE PURITANS. 19 If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they felt assured that they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accom- panied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands : their diadems crowns of glory which should never fade away ! On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and pnests, they looked down with contempt : for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right of an ean'er creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mys- terious and terrible importance belonged — -on whose slightest action the Spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest— -who had been desti- ned, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had been rescued by no common de- liverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring Grod ! Such we believe to have been the character of 2 20 macaulay's miscellanies, the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We disUke the sullen gloom of their do^ mestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach. And we know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity—that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their Dun- stans and their De Montforts, their Dominies and their Escobars. Yet when all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to pro- nounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a useful body. MILTON. 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 contempora- ries of the great poet. We are transported a hun- dred 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 j that we are reading in the lines of his noble coun- MILTON. 21 tenance the proud and mournful history of his glory and his affliction ! We image to ourselres 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 con- solation, 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 Elvvood, the privilege of reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal ac- cents which flowed from his lips. These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we can- not be ashamed of them ; nor shall we be sorry if what we have written shall in any degree excite them in other minds. We are not much in the habit of idolising either the living or the dead. And we think that there is no more certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect, than that propensi- ty which, for want of a better name, we will venture to christen Bosivellism. But there are a few charac- ters 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 an?l 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 22 macaulay's miscellanies whicli the Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of Paradise to the earth, distin- guished 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 ele- vate and purify. Nor do we envy the man who can Btudy 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. MACHIAVELLL This digression will enable our readers to under- stand what we mean when we say that, in the Mandragola, Machiavelli has proved that he com- pletely understood the nature of the dramatic art, and possessed talents which would have enabled him to excel in it. By the correct and vigorous de- lineation of human nature, it produces interest with- out a pleasing or skilful plot, and laughter without the least ambition of wit. The lover, not a very delicate or generous lover, and his adviser the para- site, are drawn with spirit. The hypocritical con- fessor is an admirable portrait. He is, if we mistake not, the original of Father Dominic, the best comio MACHIAVELLI. 23 character of Dryden. But old Nicias is the glory of the piece. We cannot call to mind anything that resembles him. The follies which Moliere ridicules are those of affectation, not thos6 of fatuity. Coxcombs and pedants, not simpletons, are his game. Shakspeare has indeed a vast assortment of fools ; but the precise species of which we speak is not, if we remember right, to be found there. Shallow is a fool. But his animal spirits supply, to a certain degree, the place of cleverness. His talk is to that of Sir John what soda-water is to cham- pagne. It has the effervescence, though not the body or the flavor. Slender and Sir Andrew Ague- cheek are fools, troubled with an uneasy conscious- ness of their folly, which, in the latter, produces a most edifying meekness and docility, and in the former, awkwardness, obstinacy, and confusion. Cloton is an arrogant fool, Osric a foppish fool, Ajax a savage fool ,• but Nicias is, as Thercites says of Patroclus, a fool positive. His mind is occupied by no strong feeling ; it takes every character, and re- tains none ; its aspect is diversified, not by passions, but by faint and transitory semblances of passion, a mock joy, a mock fear, a mock love, a mock pride, which chase each other like shadows over its sur- face, and vanish as soon as they appear. He is just idiot enough to be an object, not of pity or horror, but of ridicule. He bears some resem- blance to poor Calandrino, whose mishaps, as re- counted by Boccaccio, have made all Europe merry for more than four centuries. He perhaps resem- bles still more closely Simon de Villa, to whom Bruno and Biiffulmacco promised the love of the M Countess Civillari * Nicias is, like Simon, of a learned profession ; and the dignity with which he wears the doctoral fur renders his absurdities infi- nitely more grotesque. The old Tuscan is the very language for such a being. Its peculiar simplicity gives even to the most forcible reasoning and the most brilliant wit an infantine air, generally delight- ful, but to a foreign reader sometimes a little ludi- crous. Heroes and statesmen seem to lisp when they use it. It becomes Nicias incomparably, and renders all his silliness infinitely more silly. The political correspondence of Machiavelli, first published in 1767, is unquestionably genuine, and highly valuable. The unhappy circumstances in which his country was placed, during the greater part of his public life, gave extraordinary encour- agement to diplomatic talents. From the moment that Charles the Eighth descended from the Alps, the whole character of Italian politics was changed. The governments of the Peninsula cease to form an independence system. Drawn from their old orbit by the attraction of the larger bodies which now ap- proached them, they became mere satellites of France and Spain. All their disputes, internal and external, were decided by foreign influence. The contests of opposite factions were carried on, not as formerly in the Senate-house, or in the market-place, but in the antechambers of Louis and Ferdinand. Under these circumstances, the prosperity of the Italian States depended far more on the ability of their foreign agents, than on the conduct of thosfe * Decameron, Glom. viii. Nov. 9. DRYDEN. 25 wlio were intrusted with the domestic administra- tion. The ambassador had to discharge functions far more dehcate than transmitting orders of knight- hood, introducing tourists, or presenting his brethren with the homage of his high consideration. He was an advocate to whose management the dearest in- terests of his cUents were intrusted, a spy clothed with an inviolable character. Instead of consulting the dignity of those whom he represented by a reserved manner and an ambiguous style, he was to plunge into all the intrigues of the court at which he resided, to discover and flatter every weakness of the prince who governed his employers, of the favorite who governed the prince, and of the lacquey who governed the favorite. He was to compliment the mistress and bribe the confessor, to panegyrise or supplicate, to laugh or weep, to accommodate himself to every caprice, to lull every suspicion, to treasure every hint, to be everything, to observe everything, to endure everything. High as the art of political intrigue had been carried in Italy, these were times which required it all. DPxYDEN.* The public voice has assigned to Dryden the first place in the second rank of our poets — no mean station in a table of intellectual precedency so rich in illustrious names. It is allowed that, even of the few who were his superiors in genius, none has ex- ercised a more extensive or permanent influence on * The Poetical Works of John Dryden. In two volumes. University Edition. London, 1826. 26 macaulay's miscellanies. the national habits of thought and expression. His life was commensurate with the period during which a great revolution in the public taste was effected ; and in that revolution he played the part of Crom- well. By unscrupulously taking the lead in its wildest excesses, he obtained the absolute guidance of it. By trampling on laws, he acquired the au- thority of a legislator. By signalising himself as the most daring and irreverent of rebels, he raised himself to the dignity of a recognised prince. He commenced his career by the most frantic outrages. He terminated it in the repose of established sove- reignty — the author of a new code, the root of a new dynasty. Of Dryden, however, as of almost every man who has been disting^uished either in the literary or in the political world, it may be said that the course which he pursued, and the effect which he produced, depended less on his personal qualities than on the circumstances in which he was placed. Those who have read history with discrimination know the fallacy of these panegyrics a^d invectives, which represent individuals as effecting great moral and intellectual revolutions, subverting established sys- tems, and imprinting a new character on their age. The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the superstitious crowd sup- poses. But the same feelings which, in ancient Rome, produced the apotheosis of a popular empe- ror, and, in modem Rome, the canonization of a devout prelate, lead men to cherish an illusion which furnishes them with something to adore. By a law of association, from the operation of which DRYDEN. 27 even minds the most strictly regulated by reason are not wholly exempt, misery disposes us to hatred, and happiness to love, although there may be no person to whom our misery or our happiness can be ascribed. The peevishness of an invalid vents itself even on those who alleviate his pain. The good humor of a man elated by success often dis- plays itself towards enemies. In the same manner, the feelings of pleasure and admiration, to which the contemplation of great events gives birth, make an object where they do not find it. Thus, nations descend to the absurdities of Egyptian idolatry, and worship stocks and reptiles — Sacheverells and Wil- keses. They even fall prostrate before a deity to which they have themselves given the form which commands their veneration, and which, unless fash- ioned by them, would have remained a shapeless block. They persuade themselves that they are the creatures of what they have themselves created. For, in fact, it is the age that fonns the man, not the man that forms the age. Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are ; but they only pay with interest what they have received. We extol Bacon, and sneer at Aquinas. But if their situations had been changed, Bacon might have been the Angelical Doctor, the most subtle Aristotelian of the schools ; the Domin- ican might have led forth the sciences from their house of bondage. If Luther had been born in the tenth century, he would have effected no reforma- tion. If he had never been born at all it is evident that the sixteenth century could not have elapsed without a great schism in the church. Voltaire, in b2 28 macaulay's miscellanies. the days of Louis the Fourteenth, would probably have been, hke most of the Kterary men of that time, a zealous Jansenist, eminent among the de- fenders of efficacious grace, a bitter assailant of the lax morality of the Jesuits, and the unreasonable decisions of the Sorbonne. If Pascal had entered on his literary career, when intelligence was more general, and abuses at the same time more flagrant, when the church was polluted by the Iscariot Du- bois, the court disgraced by the orgies of Canillac, and the nation sacrificed to the juggles of Law; if he had lived to see a dynasty of harlots, an empty treasury and a crowded harem, an army formidable only to those whom it should have protected, a priesthood just religious enough to be intolerant, he might possibly, like every man of genius in France, have imbibed extravagant prejudices against mo- narchy and Christianity, The wit which blasted the sophisms of Escobar, the impassioned eloquence which defended the sisters of Port Royal, the intel- lectual hardihood which was not beaten down even by Papal authority, might have raised him to the Patriarchate of the Philosophical Church. It was long disputed whether the honor of inventing the method of Fluxions belonged to Newton or to Leib- pitz. It is now generally allowed that these great men made the same discovery at the same time. Mathematical science, indeed, had then reached such a point, that if neither of them had ever exist- ed, the principle must inevitably have occun^ed to some person within a few years. So in our own time the doctrine of rent now universally received by political economists, was propounded almost at DRYDEN. 29 the same moment, by two writers unconnected with each other. Preceding speculators had long been blundering round about it ; and it could not possi- bly have been missed much longer by the most heedless inquirer. We are inclined to think that, with respect to every great addition which has been made to the stock of human knowledge, the case has been similar; that without Copernicus we should have been Copernicans, that without Columbus America would have been discovered, that without Locke we should have possessed a just theory of the origin of human ideas. Society indeed has its great men and its little men, as the earth has its mountains and its valleys. But the inequalities of intellect, like the inequalities of the surface of our globe, bear so small a proportion to the mass, that, in calculating its great revolutions, they may safely be neglected. The sun illuminates the hills, while it is still below the horizon ; and truth is discovered by the highest minds a little before it becomes man- ifest to the multitude. This is the extent of their superiority. They are the first to catch and reflect a light, which, without their assistance, must, in a short time, be visible to those who lie far beneath them. Some years before his death, Dryden altogether ceased to write for the stage. He had turned his powers in a new direction, with success the most splendid and decisive. His taste had gradually awakened his creative faculties. The first rank in poetry was beyond his reach, but he challenged and secured the most honorable place in the second. His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. 30 macaulay's miscellanies. It enabled him to run, though not to soar. When he attempted the highest flights, he became ridicu- lous ; but while he remained in a lower region, he outstripped all competitors. All his natural, and all his acquired powers, fitted him to found a good critical school of poetry. In- deed he carried his reforms too far for his age. After his death, our literature retrograded ; and a century was necessary to bring it back to the point at which he left it. The general soundness and healthfulness of his mental constitution ; his infor- mation, of vast superfices, though of small volume ; his wit, scarcely inferior to that of the most distin- guished followers of Donne ; his eloquence," grave, deliberate, and commanding, could not save him from disgraceful failure as a rival of Skakspeare, but raised him far above the level of Boileau. His command of language was immense. With him died the secret of the old poetical diction of England — the art of producing rich effects by familiar words. In the following century, it was as completely lost as the Gothic method of painting glass, and was but poorly Supplied by the laborious and tesselated imi- tations of Mason and Gray. On the other hand, he was the first writer under whose skilful manage- ment the scientific vocabulary fell into natural and pleasing verse. In this department, he succeeded as completely as his contemporary Gibbons succeed- ed in the similar enterprise of carving the most delicate flowers from heart of oak. The toughest and most knotty parts of language became ductile at his touch. His versification in the same manner, while it gave the first model of that neatness and DRYDEN. 31 precision which the following generation esteemed so highly, exhibited, at the same time, the last ex- amples of nobleness, freedom, variety of pause and cadence. His tragedies in rhyme, however worth- less in themselves, had at least served the purpose of nonsense-verses ; they had taught him all the arts of melody which the heroic couplet admits. For bombast, his prevailing vice, his new subjects gave little opportunity; his better taste gradually dis- carded it. He possessed, as we have said, in a pre-eminent degree, the power of reasoning in verse ; and this power was now peculiarly useful to him. His logic is by no means uniformly sound. On points of criticism, he always reasons ingeniously ; and, when he is disposed to be honest, correctly. But the the- ological and political questions, which he undertook to treat in verse, were precisely those which he understood least. His arguments, therefore, are often worthless. But the manner in which they are stated is beyond all praise. The style is transpa- rent. The topics follow each other in the happiest order. The objections are drawn up in such a manner, that the whole fire of the reply may be brought to bear on them. The circumlocutions which are substituted for technical phrases, are clear, neat, and exact. The illustrations at once adorn and elucidate the reasoning. The sparkling epi- grams of Cowley, and the simple garrulity of the burlesque poets of Italy, are alternately employed, in the happiest manner, to give effect to what is obvious ; or clearness to what is obscure. His literary creed was catholic, even to latitudi- 32 macaulay's miscellanies. narianism ; not from any want of acuteness, but from a disposition to be easily satisfied. He was quick to discern the smallest glimpse of merit ; he was indulgent even to gross improprieties, when accompanied by any redeeming talent. When he said a severe thing, it was to serve a temporary purpose, — to support an argument, ^ to tease a rival. Never was so able a critic so free from fastidiousness. He loved the old poets, especial- ly Shakspeare. He admired the ingenuity which Donne and Cowley had so wildly abused. He did justice, amid the general silence, to the memory of Milton. He praised to the skies the Schoolboy lines of Addison. Always looking on the fair side of every object, he admired extravagance, on ac- count of the invention which he supposed it to indi- cate ; he excused affectation in favor of wit ; he tolerated even tameness for the sake of the correct- ness which was its concomitant. DECLINE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. The vast despotism of the Caesars, gradually eifa- cing all national peculiarities, and assimilating the remotest provinces of the Empire to each other, augmented the evil. At the close of the third cen- tury after Christ, the prospects of mankind were fearfully dreary. A system of etiquette, as pom- pously frivolous as that of the Escurial, had been established. A sovereign almost invisible ; a crowd of dignitaries minutely distinguished by badges and titles ; rhetoricians who said nothing but what had been said ten thousand times j schools in which no- DECLINE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 33 thing was taught but what had been known for age?" — such was the machinery provided for the govern- ment and instruction of the most enHghtened part of the human race. That great community was then in danger of experiencing a calamity far more terrible than any of the quick, inflammatory, de- stroying maladies, to which nations are liable — a tottering, drivelling, paralytic longevity, the immor- tality of the Struldbrugs, a Chinese civilization. It would be easy to indicate many points of resem- blance between the subjects of Diocletian, and the people of that Celestial Empire, where, during many centuries, nothing has been learned or un- learned ; where government, where education, where the whole system of life is a ceremony; where knowledge forgets to increase and multiply, and, like the talent buried in the earth, or the pound wrapped up in the napkin, experiences neither waste nor augmentation. The torpor was broken by two great revolutions, the one moral, the other political; the one from within, the other from without. The victory of Christianity over Paganism, considered with rela- tion to this subject only, was of great importance. It overthrew the old system of morals ; and with it much of the old system of metaphysics. It furnish- ed the orator with new topics of declamation, and the logician with new points of controversy. Above all, it introduced a new principle, of which the ope- ration was constantly felt in every part of society. It stirred the stagnant mass from the inmost depths. It excited all the passions of a stormy democracy in the quiet and listless population of an overgrown 34 macaulay's miscellanies. empire. The fear of heresy did what the sense of oppression could not do ; it changed men, accus tomed to be turned over like sheep from tyiant to tyrant, into devoted partisans and obstinate rebels. The tones of an eloquence which had been silent for ages resounded from the pulpit of Gregory. A spirit which had been extinguished on the plains of Philippi, revived in Athanasius and Ambrose. Yet even this remedy was not sufficiently violent for the disease. It did not prevent the empire of Constantinople from relapsing, after a short parox- ysm of excitement, into a state of stupefaction, to which history furnishes scarcely any parallel. We there find that a polished society, a society in which a most intricate and elaborate system of jurispru- dence was established, in which the arts of luxury were well understood, in which the works of the great ancient writers were preserved and studied, existed for nearly a thousand years without making one great discovery in science, or producing one book which is read by any but curious enquirers. There were tumults, too, and controversies, and wars in abundance ; and these things, bad as they are in themselves, have generally been favorable to the progress of the intellect. But here they tor- mented without stimulating. The waters were troubled, but no healing influence descended. The agitations resembled the grinnings and writhings of a galvanised corpse, not the struggles of an athletic man. THE REFORMATION. 35 THE KEFORMATION. In Germany, in France, in Switzerland, and in Scotland, the contest against the Papal power was essentially a religious contest. In all these coun- tries, indeed, the cause of the Reformation, like every other great cause, attracted to itself many supporters influenced by no conscientious principle, many who quitted the Established Church only be- cause they thought her in danger, many who were weary of her restraints, and many who were greedy for her spoils. But it was not by these adherents that the separation was there conducted. They were welcome auxiliaries; their support was too often purchased by unworthy compliances; but, however exalted in rank or power, they were not the leaders in the enterprise. Men of a widely dif- ferent description, men who redeemed gi'eat in- firmities and errors by sincerity, disinterestedness, energy and courage ; men who, with many of the vices of revolutionary chiefs and of polemic divines, united some of the highest qualities of apostles, were the real directors. They might be violent in innovation, and scurrilous in controversy. They might sometimes act with inexcusable severity to- ward opponents, and sometimes connive disreputa- bly at the vices of powerful allies. But fear was not in them, nor hypocrisy, nor avarice, nor any petty selfishness. Their one great object was the demolition of the idols, and the purification of the sanctuary. If they were too indulgent to the fail- ings of eminent men, from whose patronage they 36 macaulay's miscellanies. expected advantage to the cliurch, they never flincli- ed before persecuting tyrants and hostile armies. If they set the hves of others at nought in compari- son of their doctrines, they were equally ready to throw away their own. Such were the authors of the great schism on the continent and in the north- ern part of this island. The Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, the Prince of Conde and the King of Navarre, Moray and Morton, might espouse the Protestant opinions, or might pretend to espouse them ; but it was from Luther, from Calvin, from Knox, that the Reformation took its character. TIMES OF GEORGE IL Already we seem to ourselves to perceive the signs of unquiet times, the vague presentiment of something great and strange which pervades the community ; the restless and turbid hopes of those who have everything to gain, the dimly-hinted fore- bodings of those who have everything to lose. Many indications might be mentioned, in them- selves indeed as insignificant as straws ; but even the direction of a straw, to borrow the illustration of Bacon, will show from what quarter the hurricane is setting in. A great statesman might, by judicious and timely reformations, by reconciling the two great branches of the natural aristocracy, the capitalists and the landowners, by so widening- the base of the govem- meht as to interest in its defence the whole of the middling class, that brave, honest, and sound-heart- TIMES OP GEORGE II. 37 ed class, which is as anxious for the maintenance of order, and the security of property, as it is hostile to corruption and oppression, succeed in averting a struggle to which no rational friend of liberty or of law can look forward without great apprehensions. There are those who will be contented with nothing but demolition ; and there are those who shrink from all repair. There are innovators who long for a President and a National Convention ; and there are bigots who, while cities larger and richer than the capitals of many great kingdoms are calling oiit for representatives to watch over their interests, select some hackneyed jobber in boroughs, some peer of the narrowest and sm.allest mind, as the fittest depositary of a forfeited franchise. Between these extremes there lies a more excellent way. Time is bringing around another crisis analogous to that which occurred in the seventeenth century. We stand in a situation similar to that in which our ancestors stood under the reign of James the First. It will soon again be necessary to reform, that we may preserve ; to save the fundamental principles of the constitution, by alterations in the subordinate parts. It will then be possible, as it was possible two hundred years ago, to protect vested rights, to secure every useful institution — every institution endeared by antiquity and noble associations ; and, at the same time, to introduce into the system im- provements harmonising with the original plan. It remains to be seen whether two hundred years have made us wiser. We know of no great revolution which might not have been prevented by compromise early and gra- 38 MACAULAY S MISCELLANIES. ciously made. Firmness is a great virtue in public affairs ; but it has its proper sphere. Conspiracies and insurrections in which small minorities are en- gaged, the outbreakings of popular violence uncon- nected with any extensive project or any durable principle, are best repressed by vigor and decision. To shrink from them is to make them formidable. But no wise ruler will confound the pervading taint with the slight local irritation. No wise ruler will treat the deeply seated discontents of a great party, as he treats the conduct of a mob which destroys mills and power looms. The neglect of this distinc- tion has been fatal even to governments strong in the power of the sword. The present time is in- deed a time of peace and order. But it is at such a time that fools are most thoughtless, and wise men most thoughtful. That the discontents which have agitated the country during the late and the present reign, and which, though not always noisy, are never wholly dormant, will again break forth with aggravated symptoms, is almost as certain as that the tides and seasons will follow their appointed course. But in all movements of the human mind which tend to great revolutions, there is a crisis at which moderate concession may amend, conciliate, and preserve. Happy will it be for England if, at that crisis, her interests be confided to men for whom history has not recorded the long series of human crimes and follies in vain. BURKE. 39 BURKE. Mr. Burke, assuredly, possessed an understanding admirably fitted for the investigation of truth — an understanding stronger than that of any statesman, active or speculative, of the eighteenth century- stronger than everything, except his own fierce and ungovernable sensibility. Hence, he generally chose his side like a fanatic, and defended it like a philosopher. His conduct, in the most important events of his life, at the time of the impeachment of Hastings, for example, and at the time of the French Revolution, seems to have been prompted by those feelings and motives which Mr. Coleridge has so happily described : " Stormy pity and the cherished lure Of pomp, and proud precipitance of soul." Hindostan, with its vast cities, its gorgeous pago- das, its infinite swarms of dusky population, its long-descended dynasties, its stately etiquette, exci- ted in a mind so capacious, so imaginative, and so susceptible, the most intense interest. The peculi- arities of the costume, of the manners, and of the laws, the very mystery which hung over the language and origin of the people seized his imagination. To plead in Westminster Hall, in the name of the English people, at the bar of the English nobles, for great nations and kings separated from him by half the world, seemed to him the height of human glory. Again, it is not difficult to perceive, that his hostility to the French Revolution principally arose 40 macaulay's miscellanies. from the vexation which he felt, at having all his old political associations disturbed, at seeing the "well-known boundary marks of states obliterated, and the names and distinctions with which the his- tory of Europe had been filled for ages, swept away. He felt like an antiquarian whose shield had been scoured, or a connoisseur who found his Titian re- touched. But however he came by an opinion, he had no sooner got it than he did his best to make out a legitimate title to it. His reason, like a spirit in the service of an enchanter, though spell-bound, was still mighty. It did whatever work his passions and his imagination might impose. But it did that work, however arduous, with marvellous dexterity and vigor. His course was not determined by ar- gument ; but he could defend the wildest course by arguments more plausible, than those by which common men support opinions which they have adopted after the fullest deliberation. Reason has scarcely ever displayed, even in those well constitu- ted minds of which she occupies the throne, so much power and energy as in the lowest offices of that imperial servitude. BYRON. His descriptions, great as was their intrinsic merit, derived their principal interest from the feeling which always mingled with them. He was himself the beginning, the middle, and the end of all his own poetry, the hero of every tale, the chief object in every landscape. Harold, Lara, Manfred, and a crowd of other characters, were universally consid- BVROJJ. 41 ered merely as loose incognitos of Byron ; and there is every reason to believe that he meant them to be so considered. The wonders of the outer world, the Tagus, with the mighty fleets of England riding on its bosom, the towers of Cintra overhanging the shaggy forest of cork-trees and willows, the glaring marble of Pentelicus, the banks of the Rhine, the glaciers of Clarens, the sweet Lake of Leman, the dell of Egeria, with its summer-birds and rustling lizards, the shapeless ruins of Rome, overgrown with ivy and wall-flowers, the stars, the sea, the mountains — all were mere accessaries — the back- ground to one dark and melancholy figure. Never had any writer so vast a command of the whole eloquence of scorn, misanthropy and despair. That Marah was never dry. No art could sweeten, no draughts could exhaust, its perennial waters of bitterness. Never was there such variety in mono- tony as that of Byron. From maniac laughter to piercing lamentation, there was not a single note of human anguish of which he was not master. Year after year, and month after month, he continued to repeat that to be wretched is the destiny of all; that to be eminently wretched, is the destiny of the eminent ; that all the desires by which we are cur- sed lead alike to misery ; — if they are not gratified, to the misery of disappointment ; if they are grati- fied, to the misery of satiety. His principal heroes are men who have arrived by different roads at the same goal of despair, who are sick of life, who are at war with society, who are supported in their an- guish only by an unconquerable pride, resembling that of Prometheus on the rock, or of Satan in the 42 macaulay's miscellanies. burning marl ; who can master their agonies by the force of their will, and who, to the last, defy the whole power of earth and heaven. He always de- scribed himself as a man of the same kind with his favorite creations, as a man whose heart had been withered, whose capacity for happiness was gone, and could not be restored ; but whose invincible spirit dared the worst that could befall him here or hereafter. BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON.. We are not sure that there is in the whole history of the human intellect so strange a phenomenon as this book. Many of the greatest men that ever lived have written biography. Boswell was one of tlie smallest men that ever lived ; and he has beaten them all. He was, if we are to give any credit to his own account, or to the united testimony of all who knew him, a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect. Johnson described him as a fellow who had missed his only chance of immortality, by not having been alive when the Dunciad was written. Beauclerk used his name as a proverbial expression for a bore. He was the laughing-stock of the whole of that brilliant society which has owed to him the greater part of its fame. He was always laying himself at the feet of some eminent man, and beg- ging to be spit upon and trampled upon. He was always earning some ridiculous nickname, and then " binding it as a crown unto him," — not merely in metaphor, but literally. He exhibited himself, at the Shakspeare Jubilee, to all the crowd which fill- BOSWELL's life op JOHNSON. 43 ed Stratford-on-Avon, with a placard around his hat, bearing the inscription of Corsica Boswell. In his Tour, he proclaimed to all the world, that at Edinburgh he was known by the appellation of Paoli Boswell. Servile and impertinent — shallow and pedantic — a bigot and a sot — -bloated with fam- ily pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of a born gentleman, yet stooping to be a talebear- er, an eavesdropper, a common butt in the taverns of London — so curious to know everybody who was talked about, that, Tory and High Churchman as he was, he manoeuvred, we have been told, for an introduction to Tom Paine — so vain of the most childish distinctions, that, when he had been to court, he drove to the office wliere his book was being printed without changing his clothes, and summoned all the printer's devils to admire his new ruffles and sword ; — such was this man :- — and such he was content and proud to be. Everything which another man would have hidden — everything, the publication of which would have made another man hang himself, was matter of gay and clamorous ex- ultation to his weak and diseased mind. What silly things he said — what bitter retorts he provoked — how at one place he was troubled with evil pre- sentiments which came to nothing' — how at another place, on waking from a drunken dose, he read the prayer-book, and took a hair of the dog that had bitten him — how he went to see men hanged, and came away maudlin — how he added five hundred pounds to the fortune of one of his babies, because she was not frightened at Johnson's ugly face — how he was frightened out of his wits at sea — and how 44 macaulay's miscellanies. the sailors quieted him as they would have quieted a child — how tipsy he was at Lady Cork's one eve- ning, and how much his merriment annoyed the ladies — how impertinent he was to the Duchess of Argyle, and with what stately contempt she put down his impertinence- — how Colonel Macleod sneered to his face at his impudent obtrusiveness — how his father and the very wife of his bosom laughed and fretted at his fooleries ; — all these things he proclaimed to all the world, as if they had been subjects for pride and ostentatious rejoicing. All the caprices of his temper, all the illusions of his vanity, all his hypochondriac whimsies, all his castles in the air, he displayed with a cool self-com- placency, a perfect unconsciousness that he was making a fool of himself, to which it' is impossible to find a parallel in the whole history of mankind. He has used many people ill, but assuredly he has used nobody so ill as himself That such a man should have written one of the best books in the world, is strange enough. In his early years he had occasionally seen the great ; but he had seen them as a beggar. He now came among them as a companion. The demand for amusement and instruction had, during the course of twenty years, been gradually increasing. The price of literary labor had risen ; and those ris- ing men of letters, with whom Johnson was hence- forth to associate, were for the most part persons widely different from those who had walked about with him all night in the streets, for want of a lodg- ing. Burke, Robertson, the Wartons, Gray, Mason, Gibbon, Adam Smith, Beattie, Sir William Jones, BOSWELL's life op JOHNSON. 45 Goldsmith, and Churchill, were the most distin- guished wnters of what may be called the second generation of the Johnsonian age. Of these men, Churchill was the only one in whom we can trace the stronger lineaments of that character, which, when Johnson first came up to London, was com- mon among authors. Of the rest, scarcely any had felt the pressure of severe poverty. All had been early admitted into the most respectable society on an equal footing. They were men of quite a differ- ent species from the dependants of Curll and Os- borne. Johnson came among them the solitary specimen of a past age — the last survivor of a genuine race of Grub street hacks ; the last of that generation of authors whose abject misery and whose dissolute manners had furnished inexhaustible matter to the satirical genius of Pope. From nature, he had re- ceived an uncouth figure, a diseased constitution, and an iriitable temper. The manner in which the earlier years of his manhood had been passed, had given to his demeanor, and even to his moral char- acter, some peculiarities, appalling to the civilised beings who were the companions of his old age. The perverse iiTegularity of his hours, the slovenli- ness of his person, his fits of strenuous exertion, in- terrupted by long intervals of sluggishness; his strange abstinence, and his equally strange voracity ; his active benevolence, contrasted with the constant rudeness and the occasional ferocity of his manners in society, made him, in the opinion of those with whom he lived during the last twenty years of his life, a complete original. An original he was, un- 46 macaulay's miscellanies. doubtedly, in some respects. But if we possessed full information concerning those who shared his early hardships, we should probably find, that what we call his singularities of manner, were, for the most part, failings which he had in common with the class to which he belonged. He ate at Streat- ham Park as he had been used to eat behind the screen at St. John's Gate, when he was ashamed to show his rasfffed clothes. He ate as it was natural that a man should eat who, during a great part of his life, had passed the morning in doubt whether he should have food for the afternoon. The habits of his early life had accustomed him to bear priva- tion with fortitude, but not to taste pleasure with moderation. He could fast : but when he did not fast, he tore his dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swelling on his forehead, and the perspi- ration running down his cheeks. He scarcely ever took wine. But when he drank it, he drank it greedily, and in large tumblers. These were, in fact, mitigated symptoms of that same moral dis- ease, which raged with such deadly malignity in his friends Savage and Boyce. The roughness and violence which he showed in society were to be ex- pected from a man whose temper, not naturally gentle, had been long tried by the bitterest calami- ties — by the want of meat, of fire, and of clothes ; by the importunity of creditors, by the insolence of booksellers, by the derision of fools, by the insin- cerity of patrons, by that bread which is the bitter- est of all food, by those stairs which are the most toilsome of all paths, by that deferred hope which makes the heart sick. Through all these things the BOSWELL S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 47 ill-dressed, coarse, ungainly pedant had struggled manfully up to eminence and command. It was natural, that, in the exercise of his power, he should be " eo immitior, quia toleraverat" — that though his heart was undoubtedly generous and humane, his demeanor in society should be harsh and despo- tic. For severe distress he had sympathy, and not only sympathy, but munificent relief. But for the suffering which a harsh word inflicts upon a delicate mind, he had no pity ; for it was a kind of suffering which he could scarcely conceive. He would carry home on his shoulders a sick and starving girl from the streets. He turned his house into a place of refuge for a crowd of wretched old creatures who could find no other asylum ; nor could all their peevishness and ingratitude weary out his benevo- lence. But the pangs of wounded vanity seemed to him ridiculous ; and he scarcely felt sufficient compassion even for the pangs of wounded affection. He had seen and felt so much of sharp misery, that he was not affected by paltry vexations ; and he seemed to think that everybody ought to be as much hardened to those vexations as himself. He was angry with Boswell for complaining of a headache ; with Mrs. Thrale for grumbling about the dust on the road, or the smell of the kitchen. These were, in his phrase, " foppish lamentations," which peo- ple ought to be ashamed to utter in a world so full of misery. Goldsmith crying because the Good-na- tured Man had failed, inspired him with no pity. Though his own health was not good, he detested and despised valetudinarians. Even great pecuni- ary losses, unless they reduced the loser absolutely 48 macaulay's miscellanies. to beggary, moved him very little. People whose hearts had been softened by prosperity might cry, he said, for such events ; but all that could be ex- pected of a plain man was not to laugh. The characteristic peculiarity of his intellect was the union of great powers with low prejudices. If we judged of him by the best parts of his mind, we should place him almost as high as he was placed by the idolatry of Boswell ; if by the worst parts of his mind, we should place him even below Boswell himself. Where he was not under the influence of some strange scruple, or some domineering pas- sion, which prevented him from boldly and fairly investigating a subject, he was a wary and acute reasoner, a little too much inclined to skepticism, and a little too fond of paradox. No man was less likely to be imposed upon by fallacies in argument, or by exaggerated statements of fact. But if, while he was beating down sophisms, and exposing false testimony, some childish prejudices, ciuch as would excite laughter in a well-managed nursery, came across him, he was smitten as if by enchantment. His mind dwindled away under the spell from gigantic elevation to dwarfish littleness. Those who had lately been admiring its amplitude and its force, were now as much astonished at its strange narrow- ness and feebleness, as the fisherman, in the Arabi- an tale, when he saw the genie, whose statue had overshadowed the whole seacoast, and whose might seemed equal to a contest with armies, contract himself to the dimensions of his small prison, and lie there the helpless slave of the charm of Solomon. What a singular destiny has been that of this re- EARL CHATHAM. 4^ markable man ! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion — to receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity — to be more intimately known to posteri- ty than other men are known to their contempora- ries ! That kind of fame which is commonly the most transient, is, in this case, the most durable. The reputation of those writings, which he probably expected to be immortal, is every day fading ; while those peculiarities of manner, and that careless table-talk, the memory of which, he probably thought, would die with him, are likely to be re- membered as long as the English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe. EARL CHATHAM. The truth is, that there scarcely ever lived a per- son who had so little claim to this sort of praise as Pitt. He was undoubtedly a great man. But his was not a complete and well-proportioned great- ness. The public life of Hampden, or of Somers, resembles a regular drama, which can be criticised as a whole, and every scene of which is to be viewed in connection with the main action. The public life of Pitt, on the other hand, is a rude though striking piece — a pie^e abounding in incon- gruities — a piece without any unity of plan, but re- deemed by some noble passages, the effect of which is increased by the tameness or extravagance of what precedes, and of what follows. His opinions were unfixed. His conduct at some of the most 50 macauLay's miscellanies. important conjunctures of his life was evidently de* termined by pride and resentment. He had on.e fault, which of all human faults is most rarely found in company with true greatness. He was extreme- ly affected. He was an almost solitary instance of a man of real genius, and of a brave, lofty, and commanding spirit, without simplicity of character. He was an actor in the closet, an actor at Council, an actor in Parliament ; and even in private society he could not lay aside his theatrical tones and atti- tudes. We know that one of the most distinguish- ed of his partisans often complained that he could never obtain admittance to Lord Chatham's room till everything was ready for the representation, till the dresses and properties were all correctly dispo- sed, till the light was thrown with Rembrandt-like effect on the head of the illustrious performer, till the flannels had been arranged with the air of a Grecian drapery, and the crutch placed as graceful- ly as that of Belisarius or Lear. Yet, with all his faults and affectations, Pitt had, in a very extraordinary degree, many of the ele- ments of greatness. He had splendid talents, strong passions, quick sensibility, and vehement enthusiasm for the grand and the beautiful. There was some- thing about him which ennobled tergiversation itself. He often went wrong, very wrong. But to quote the language of Wordsworth, " He still retained, 'Mid such abasement, what he had received From nature, an intense and glowing mind." In an age of low and dirty prostitution — in the EARL CHATHAM. 5l age of Doddington and Sandys — it was something to have a man who might, perhaps, under some strong excitement, have been tempted to ruin his country, but who never would have stooped to pilfer from her; — a man whose errors arose, not from a sordid desire of gain, but from a fierce thirst for power, for glory, and for vengeance. History owes to him this attestation — that, at a time when any- thing short of direct embezzlement of the public money was considered as quite fair in public men, he showed the most scrupulous disinterestedness ; that, at a time when it seemed to be generally taken for granted that government could be U23held only by the basest and most immoral arts, he appealed to the better and nobler parts of human nature ; that he made a brave and splendid attempt to do, by means of public opinion, what no other statesman of his day thought it possible to do, except by means of corruption ; that he looked for support, not like the Pelhams, to a strong Aristocratical connection, not, like Bute, to the personal favor of the sovereign, but to the middle class of Englishmen ; that he in- spired that class with a firm confidence in his inte- grity and ability ; that, backed by them, he forced an unwilHng court and an unwilling oligarchy to admit him to an ample share of power ; and that he used his power in such a manner as clearly proved that he had sought it, not for the sake of profit or patronage, but from a wish to establish for himself a great and durable reputation by means of eminent services rendered to the state. 52 macaulay's miscellanies. SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. His proper place was his library, a circle of men of letters, or a chair of moral and political philoso- phy. He distinguished himself highly in Parliament. But nevertheless Parliament was not exactly the sphere for him. The effect of his most successful speeches was small, when compared with the quan- tity of ability and learning which was expended on them. We could easily name men who, not pos- sessing a tenth part of his intellectual powers, hard- ly ever address the House of Commons without producing a greater impression than was produced by his most splendid and elaborate orations. His luminous and philosophical disquisition on the Re- form Bill was spoken to empty benches. Those, indeed, who had the wit to keep their seats, picked up hints which, skilfully used, made the fortune of more than one speech. But " it was caviare to the general." And even those who listened to Sir James with pleasure and admiration, could not but acknowledge that he rather lectured than debated. An artist who should waste on a panorama, on a scene, or on a transparency, the exquisite finishing which we admire in some of the small Dutch inte- riors, would not squander his powers more than this eminent man too often did. His audience lesem- bled the boy in the " Heart of Mid-Lothian," who pushes away the lady's guineas with contempt, and insists on having the white money. They preferred the silver with which they were familiar, and which they were constantly passing about from hand to Sm JAMES MACKINTOSH. 53 hand, to the gold which they had never before seen, and with the vahie of which they were unacquainted. It is much to be regretted, we think, that Sir James Mackintosh did not wholly devote his later years to philosophy and literature. His talents were not those which enable a speaker to produce with rapidity a series of striking but transitory im- pressions, — to excite the minds of five hundred gentlemen at midnight, without saying anything that any one of them will be able to remember in the morning. His arguments were of a very differ- ent texture from those which are produced in Par- liament at a moment's notice, — which puzzle a plain man who, if he had them before him in writing, would soon detect their fallacy, and which the great debater who employed them forgets within half an hour, and never thinks of again. Whatever was valuable in the compositions of Sir James Mackin- tosh, was the ripe fruit of study and of meditation. It was riie same with his conversation. In his most familiar talk there was no wildness, no inconsisten- cy, no amusing nonsense, no exaggeration for the sake of momentary effect. His mind was a vast magazine, admirably arranged; everything was there, and everything was in its place. His judg- ments on men, on sects, on books, had been often and carefully tested and weighed, and had then been committed, each to its proper receptacle, in the most capacious and accurately constructed me- mory that any human being ever possessed. It would have been strange, indeed, if you had asked for anything that was not to be found in that im- mense storehouse. The article which you required 64 MACAULAy's MISCELLANIESr. was not only there — it was ready. It was in its own proper compartment. In a moment it was brought down, unpacked, and displayed. If those who enjoyed the privilege, — for a privilege indeed it was, — of listening to Sir James Mackintosh, had been disposed to find some fault in his conversation, they might perhaps have observed that he yielded too little to the impulse of the moment. He seem- ed to be recollecting, not creating. He never ap- peared to catch a sudden glimpse of a subject in a new light. You never saw his opinions in the making, — still rude, still inconsistent, and requiring to be fashioned by thought and discussion. They came forth, like the pillars of that temple in which no sound of axes or hammers was heard, finished, rounded, and exactly euited to their places. What Mr. Charles Lamb has said, with much humor and some truth, of the conversation of Scotchmen in general, was certainly true of this eminent Scotch- man. He did not find, but bring. You could not cry halves to anything that turned up while you were in his company. The intellectual and moral qualities which are most important in a historian, he possessed in a very high degree. He was singularly mild, calm, and impartial in his judgments of men and of parties. Almost all the distinguished writers who have treat- ed of English history are advocates. Mr. Hallam and Sir James Mackintosh are alone entitled to be called judges. Bnt the extreme austerity of Mr. Hallam takes away something from the pleasure of reading his learned, eloquent, and judicious writings. He is a judge, but a hanging judge, the Page or SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 66 Buller of the high court of literary justice. His black cap is in constant requisition. In the long calendar of those whom he has tried, there is hard- ly one who has not, in spite of evidence to charac- ter and recommendations to mercy, been ^ntenced and left for execution, wr James, perhaps, erred a little on the other side. He liked a maiden assize, and came away with white gloves, after sitting in judgment on batches of the most notorious offenders. He had a quick eye for the redeeming parts of a character, and a large toleration for the infirmities of men exposed to strong temptations. But this lenity did not arise from ignorance or neglect of moral distinctions. Though he allowed, perhaps, too much weight to every extenuating circumstance that could be urged in favor of the transgressor, he never disputed the authority of the law, or showed his ingenuity by refining away its enactments. On every occasion he showed himself firm where prin- ciples were in question, but full of charity towards individuals. SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. He was no profound thinker. He was merely a man of lively parts and quick observation, — a man of the world among men of letters, — a man of let- ters among men of the world. Mere scholars were dazzled by the Ambassador and Cabinet councillor ; mere politicians by the Essayist and Historian. But neither as a writer nor as a statesman can we allot to him any very high place. As a man, he seems to us to have been excessively selfish, but very sober, 56 macaulay's miscellanies. wary, and far-sighted in his selfishness; — to have known better than most people know what he really wanted in life ; and to have pursued what he want- ed with much more than ordinary steadiness and sagacity; — never sufferiBg himself to be drawn aside either by bad or^ood feelings. It was his constitution to dread failure more than he desired success, — to prefer security, comfort, repose, lei- sure, to the turmoil and anxiety which are insepa- rable from greatness ; — and this natural languor of mind, when contrasted with the malignant energy of the keen and restless spirits among whom his lot was cast, sometimes appear to resemble the mode- ration of virtue. But we must own, that he seems to us to sink into littleness and meanness when we compare him — we do not say with any high ideal standard of morality, — but with many of those frail men who, aiming at noble ends, but often drawn from the right path by strong passions and strong temptations, have left to posterity a doubtful and chequered fame. THE JCDMAN CATHOLIC CHUECH. There is not, and there never was, on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving of exam- ination as the Roman Catholic Church. The histo* ry of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilisation. No other institution is left standing which cariies the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 57 are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That hne we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century, to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth ; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of • Venice came next in antiquity. But the republic of Venice was modern when compared wich the Papacy ; and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique ; but full of life and youthful vigor. The Catholic Church is still send- ing forth to the furthest ends of the world, mission- aries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustin ; and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number of her children is greater than in any- former age. Her acquisitions in the New World have more than compensated her for what she has lost in the Old. Her spiritual ascendency extend over the vast countries which lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape Horn — cofifttries which, a century hence, may not improbably contain a popu- lation as large as that which now inhabit Europe. The members of her community are certainly not fewer than a hundred and fifty millions ; and it will be difficult to show that all the other Christian sects united, amount to a hundred and twenty millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term of her long dominion is approaching. She saw the commencement of all the governments, and of all the ecclesiastical establishments, that now 58 macaulay's miscellanies. exist in the world ; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. Sh@ was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain — before the Frank had passed the Rhine — when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch — when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undi- minished vigor when some traveller from New Zea- land shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's. IGNATIUS LOYOLA. In the convent of the Theatines at Venice, under the eye of Caraffa, a Spanish gentleman took up his abode, tended the poor in the hospitals, went about in rags, starved himself almost to death, and often sallied into the streets, mounted on stones, and, waving his hat to invite the passers-by, began to preach in a strange jargon of mingled CastiHan and Tuscan. The Theatines were among the most zealous and rigid of men ; but to this enthusiastic neophyte their discipline seemed lax, and their movements sluggish ; for his own mind, naturally passionate and imaginative, had passed through a training which had given to all his peculiarities a morbid intensity ana energy. In his early life he had been the very prototype of the hero of Cervan- tes. The single study of the young Hidalgo had been chivalrous romance ; and his existence had been one gorgeous day-dream of princesses rescued and infidels subdued. He had chosen a Dulcinea, IGNATIUS X-OYOLA. S^ " no countess, no duchess" — these are his own words — " but one of far higher station ;" and he flattered himself with the hope of laying at her feet the keys of Moorish castles and the jewelled tur- bans of Asiatic kings. In the midst of these visions of martial glory and prosperous love, a severe wound stretched him on a bed of sickness. His constitution was shattered, and he was doomed to be a cripple for life. The palm of strength, grace, and skill in knightly exercises, was no longer for him. He could no longer hope to strike down gi- gantic soldans, or to find favor in the sight of beau- tiful women. A new vision then arose in his mind, and mingled itself with his old delusions in a manner which, to most Englishmen, must seem singular; but which those who know how close was the union between religion and chivalry in Spain, will be at no loss to understand. He would still be a soldier — he would still be a knight errant ; but the soldier and knight-errant of the spouse of Christ. He would smite the Great Red Dragon. He would be the champion of the Woman clothed with the Sun. He would break the charm under which false pro- phets held the souls of men in bondage. His rest- less spirit led him to the Syrian deserts, and to the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre. Thence he wander- ed back to the farthest west, and astonished the convents of Spain and the schools of France by his penance and vigils. The same lively imagination which had been employed in picturing the tumult of unreal battles, and the charms of unreal queens, now peopled his solitude with saints and angels. The Holy Virgin descended to commune with him. 60 macaulay's miscellanies. He saw the Saviour face to face vrith the eye of flesh. Even those mysteries of religion which are the hardest trial of faith, were in his case palpable to sig-ht. It is difficult to relate TN^thout a pit^-ing eraile, that, in the sacrifice of the mass, he saw transubstantiation take place ; and that, as he stood praying on the steps of St. Dominic, he saw the Trinity in Unity, and wept aloud wixh joy and won- der. Such was the celebrated Ignatius Loyola, who, in the great Catholic reaction, bore the same share which Luther bore in the great Protestant movement. Dissatisfied \%'ith the system of the Theatines, the enthusiastic Spaniard turned his face towaid Home. Poor, obscure, without a pati'on, without recommen- dations, he entered the city where now two princely temples, rich ^\-ith paintings and many-colored mar- ble, commemorate his great services to the Church ; where his form stands sculptured in massive silver; where his bones, enshrined amid jewels, are placed beneath the altar of God. His actirity and zeal bore down all opposition ; and under his rule the order of Jesuits begjan to exist, and grew rapidly to the full measure of its gigantic powers. With what vehemence, with vrhat policy, with what exact dis- cipline, ^^'ith what dauntless courage, vvixh. what self-denial, -with what forgetfulness of the dearest private ties, ^vith what intense and stubborn devo- tion to a single end, with what unscrupulous laxity and versatility in the choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battles of their church, is written in every page of the annals of Europe during several gene- rations. In the order of Jesus was concentrated IGNATIUS LOYOLA. 61 the quintessence of the Catholic spirit ; and the history of the order of Jesus is the history of the great Catholic reaction. That order possessed itself at once of all the strongholds which command the public juind — of the pulpit, of the press, of the confessional, of the academies. Wherever the Jesuit preached the church was too small for the audience. The name of Jesuit on a title-page, secured the circulation of a book. It was in the ears of the Jesuit that the powerful, the noble, and the beautiful, breathed the secret history of theii lives. It was at the feet of the Jesuit that the youth of the higher and middle classes were brought up from the first rudiments to the courses of rhetoric and philosophy. Literature and science, lately associated with infidelity or with heresy, now be- came the allies of orthodoxy. Dominant in the south of Europe, the great order soon went forth conquering and to conquer. In spite of oceans and deserts, of hunger and pesti- lence, of spies and penal laws, of dungeons and racks, of gibbets and quartering-blocks, Jesuits were to be found under every disguise, and in every coun- try — scholars, physicians, merchants, sei-ving-men ; in the hostile court of Sweden, in the old manor- houses of Cheshire, among the hovels of Connaught ; arguing, instructing, consoling, stealing away the hearts of the young, animating the courage of the timid, holding up the crucifix before the eyes of the dying. 62 macaulay's miscellanies. POLICY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND OF THE CHURCH OF ROME COMPARED. In England it not unfrequently happens that a tinker or a coal-heaver hears a sermon, or falls in with a tract, which alarms him about the state of his soul. If he be a man of excitable nerves and strong imagination, he thinks himself given over to the Evil Power. He doubts whether he has hot committed the unpardonable sin. He imputes every wild fancy that springs up in his mind to the whisper of a fiend. His sleep is broken by dreams of the great judgment-seat, the open books and the un- quenchable fire. If, in order to escape from these vexing thoughts, he flies to amusement or to licen- tious indulgence, the delusive relief only makes his misery darker and more hopeless. At length a turn takes place. He is reconciled to his offended Ma- ker. To borrow the fine imagery of one who had himself been thus tried, he emerges from the Valley of the Shadow of Death, from the dark land of gins and snares, of quagmires and precipices, of evil spirits and ravenous beasts. The sunshine is on his path. He ascends the Delectable Mountains, and catches from their summit a distant view of the shining city which is the end of his pilgrimage. Then arises in his mind a natural, and surely not a censurable desire to impart to others thoughts of which his own heart is full — to warn the careless, to comfort those who are troubled in spirit. The im- pulse which urges him to devote his whole life to the teaching of religion, is a strong passion in the THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 63 guise of a duty. He exhorts his neighbors ; and if he be a man of strong parts, he often does so with great effect. He pleads as if he were pleading for his life, with tears and pathetic gestures, and burn- ing words ; and he soon finds with delight, not per- haps wholly unmixed with the alloy of human infirmity, that his rude eloquence rouses and melts heroes who sleep very composedly while the rector preaches on the apostolical succession. Zeal for God, love for his fellow-creatures, pleasure in the exercise of his newly discovered powers, impel him to become a preacher. He has no quarrel with the establishment, no objection to its formulai'ies, its government, or its vestments. He would gladly be admitted among its humblest ministers. But, ad- mitted or rejected, his vocation is determined. His orders have come down to him, not through a long and doubtful series of Arian and Papist bishops, but direct from on high. His commission is the same that on the Mountain of Ascension was given to the Eleven. Nor will he, for lack of human creden- tials, spare to deliver the glorious message with which he is charged by the true Head of the Church. For a man thus minded, there is within the pale of the establishment no place. He has been at no college ; he cannot construe a Greek author, nor write a Latin theme ; and he is told that, if he remains in the communion of the Church, he must do so as a hearer, and that, if he is resolved to be a teacher, he must begin by being a schismatic. His choice is soon made. He harangues on Tower Hill or in Smithfield. A congregation is formed. A license is obtained. A plain brick building, with 64 macaulay's miscellanies. a desk ana benches, is run up, and named Ebenezer or Bethel. In a few weeks the Church has lost for ever a hundred families, not one of which entertain- ed the least scruple about her articles, her liturgy, her government, or her ceremonies. Far different is the policy of Rome. The igno- rant enthusiast, whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy, and, whatever the learned and polite may think, a most dangerous enemy, the Catholic Church makes a champion. She bids him nurse his beard, covers him with a gown and hood of coarse dark stuff, ties a rope round his waist, and sends him forth to teach in her name. He costs her no- thing. He takes not a ducat away from the reve- nues of her beneficed clergy. He lives by the alms of those who respect his spiritual character, and are grateful for his instructions. He preaches, not ex- actly in the style of Massillon, but in a way which moves the passions of uneducated hearers ; and all his influence is employed to strengthen the Church of which he is a minister. To that Church he be- comes as strongly attached as any of the cardinals, whose scarlet carnages and liveries crowd the en- trance of the palace on the Quirinal. In this way the Church of Rome unites in herself all the strength of estabUshment, and all the strength of dissent. With the utmost pomp of a dominant hierarchy above, she has all the energy of the voluntary sys- tem below. It would be easy to mention very re- cent instances in which the hearts of hundreds of thousands, estranged from her by the selfishness, sloth, and cowardice of the beneficed clergy, have been brought back by the zeal of the begging friars. PROTESTANTISM AND CATHOLICISM. 65 PROTESTANTISM AND CATHOLICISM. The geographical frontier between the two reli- gions has continued to run almost precisely where it ran at the close of the Thirty Years' War ; nor has Protestantism given any proofs of that " expan- sive power" which has been ascribed to it. But the Protestant boasts, and most justly, that wealth, civilisation, and intelligence, have increased far more on the northern than on the southern side of the boundary ; that countries so little favored by nature as Scotland and Prussia, are now among the most flourishing and best governed portions of the world — while the marble j^alaces of Genoa are de- serted — while banditti infest the beautiful shores of Campania — while the fertile sea-coast of the Ponti- fical State is abandoned to buffaloes and wild boars. It cannot be doubted, that since the sixteenth cen- tury, the Protestant nations^ — fair allowance being made for physical disadvantages — have made deci- dedly greater progress than their neighbors. The progress made by those nations in which Protestant- ism, though not finally successful, yet maintained a long sti'uggle, and left permanent traces, has gene- rally been considerable. But when we come to the Catholic Land, to the part of Europe in which the first spark of reformation was trodden out as soon as it appeared, and from which proceeded the im- pulse which drove Protestantism back, we find, at best, a very slow progress, and on the whole a re- trogi'ession. Compare Denmark and Portugal. When Luther began to preach, the superiority of 66 macaulay's miscellanies. the Portuguese was unquestionable. At present the superiority of the Danes is no less so. Compare Edinburgh and Florence. Edinburgh has owed less to climate, to soil, and to the fostering care of rulers, than any capital, Protestant or Catholic. In all these respects, Florence has been singularly happy. Yet whoever knows what Florence and Edinburgh were in the generation preceding the Reformation, and what they are now, will acknow- ledge that some great cause has, during the last three centuries, operated to raise one part of the European family, and to depress the other. Com- pare the history of England and that of Spain during the last century. In arms, arts, sciences, letters, commerce, agriculture, the contrast is most striking. The distinction is not confined to this side of the Atlantic. The colonies planted by England in America, have immeasurably outgrown in power those planted by Spain. Yet we have no reason to believe that, at the beginning of the sixteenth cen- tury, the Castilian was in any respect inferior to the Englishman. Our firm belief is, that the North owes its great civilisation and prosperity chiefly to the moral effect of the Protestant Reformation ; and that the decay of the Southern countries of Europe is to be mainly ascribed to the great Catho- lic revival. LORD CLIVE, A BOY. 0T LORD CLIVE, A BOY. Some lineaments of the character of the man were early discerned in the child. There remain letters written by his relations when he was in his seventh year ; and from these it appears that, even at that early age, his strong will, and his fiery pas- sions, sustained by a constitutional intrepidity, which sometimes seemed hardly compatible with sound- ness of mind, had begun to cause great uneasiness to his family. " Fighting," says one of his uncles, " to which he is out of measure addicted, gives his temper such a fierceness and imperiousness, that he flies out on every trifling occasion." The old peo- ple of the neighborhood still remember to have heard from their parents how Bob CUve climbed to the top of the lofty steeple of Market-Drayton, and with what terror the inhabitants saw him seated on a stone spout near the summit. They also relate how he formed all the good-for-nothing lads of the town into a kind of a predatory army, and compel- led the shopkeepers to submit to a tribute of apples and halfpence, in consideration of which he guaran- teed the security of their windows. He was sent from school to school, making very little progress in his learning, and gaining for himself everywhere the character of an exceedingly naughty boy. One of his masters, it is said, was sagacious enough to prophesy that the idle lad would make a great figure in the world. But the general opinion seems to have been, that poor Robert was a dunce, if not a reprobate. His family expected nothing good from 68 macaulay's miscellanies. sucli slender parts and such a headstrong temper. It is not strange, therefore, that they gladly accept- ed for him, when he was in his eighteenth year, a wi'itership in the service of the East India Compa- ny, and shipped him off to make a fortune, or to die of a fever at Madras. LORD CLIVE, A MAN. Clive was now twenty-five years old. After hesi- tating for some time between a military and a com- mercial life, he had at length been placed in a post which partook of both characters— that of commis- sary to the troops, with the rank of captain. The present emergency called forth all his powers. He represented to his superiors, that unless some vigor- ous effort were m.ade, Trichinopoly would fall, the house of Anaverdy Khan would perish, and the French would become the real masters *of the whole peninsula of India. It was absolutely necessary to strike some daring blow. If an attack were made on Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic, and the favor- ite residence of the Nabobs, it was not impossible that the siege of Trichinopoly would be raised. The heads of the English settlement, now thorough- ly alarmed by the success of Dupleix, and appre- hensive that, in the event of a new war between France and Great Britain, Madras would be instant- ly taken and destroyed, approved of Olive's plan, and intrusted the execution of it to himself. The young captain was put at the head of two hundred English soldiers, and three hundred sepoys armed and disciplined after the European fashioii. Of the DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE OF TAMERLANE. 69 eight officers who commanded this little force under him, not a single one had ever been in action, and four of the eight were factors of the Company, whom dive's example had induced to offer their services. The weather was stormy; but Clive pushed on, through thunder, lightning, and rain, to the gates of Arcot. The garrison, in a panic, evacuated the fort, and the English entered it without a blow. But Clive well knew that he would not be suffer- ed to retain undisturbed possession of his conquest. He instantly began to collect provisions, to throw up works, and to make preparations for sustaining a siege. The garrison, which had fled at his ap- proach, had now recovered from its dismay, and, having been swollen by large reinforcements from the neighborhood to a force of three thousand men, encamped close to the town. At dead of night, Clive marched out of the fort, attacked the camp by surprise, slew great numbers, dispersed the rest, and returned to his quarters without having lost a single man. DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE OF TAMERLANE. The empire which Baber and his Moguls reared in the sixteenth century, was long one of the most extensive and splendid in the world. In no Euro- pean kingdom was so large a population subject to a single prince, or so large a revenue poured into the treasury. The beauty and magnificence of the buildings erected by the sovereigns of Hindostan, amazed even travellers who had seen St, Peter's. The innumerable retinues and gorgeous decorations 70 macaulay's miscellanies. which surrounded the throne of Delhi, dazzled even eyes which were accustomed to the pomp of Ver- sailles. Some of the great viceroys, who held their posts by virtue of commissions from the Mogul, ruled as many subjects and enjoyed as large an income as the King of France or the Emperor of Germany. Even the deputies of these deputies might well rank, as^ to extent of territory and amount of reve- nue, with the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Elector of Saxony. There can be little doubt that this great empire, powerful and prosperous as it appears on a superfi- cial view, was yet, even in its best days, far worse governed than the worst governed parts of Europe now are. The administration was tainted with all the vices of Oriental despotism, and with all the vices inseparable from the domination of race over race. The conflicting pretensions of the princes of the royal house, produced a long series of crimes and public disasters. Ambitious lieutenants of the sovereign sometimes aspired to independence. Fierce tribes of Hindoos, impatient of a foreign yoke, frequently withheld tribute, repelled the ar- mies of the government from their mountain fast- nesses, and poured down in arms on the cultivated plains. In spite, however, of much constant mis- administration, in spite of occasional convulsions which shook the whole frame of society, this great monarchy, on the whole, retained, during some generations, an outward appearance of unity, ma- jesty, and energy. But, throughout the long reign of Aurungzebe, the state, notwithstanding all that the vigor and policy of the prince could effect, was iOECLINE OF THE EMPIRE OF TAMERLANE. 71 hastening to dissolution. After his death, which took place in the year 1707, the ruin was fearfully rapid. Violent shocks from without co-operated with an incurable decay which was fast proceeding within ; and in a few years the empire had under- gone utter decomposition. A series of nominal sovereigns, sunk in indolence and debauchery, sauntered away life in -secluded palaces, chewing bang, fondling concubines, and listening to buffoons. A series of ferocious inva- ders had descended through the western passes, to prey on the defenceless wealth of Hindostan. A Persian conqueror crossed the Indus, marched through the gates of Delhi, and bore away in tri- umph those treasures of which the magnificence had astounded Roe and Bernier ; — the Peacock Throne on which the richest jewels of Golconda had been disposed by the most skilful hands of Europe, and the inestimable Mountain of Light, which, after many strange vicissitudes, lately shone in the brace- let of Runjeet Sing, and is now destined to adorn the hideous idol of Orissa. The Afghan soon fol- lowed to complete the work of devastation which the Persian had begun. The warlike tribes of Raj- poots threw off" the Mussulman yoke. A band of mercenary soldiers occupied Rohilcund. The Seiks ruled on the Indus. The Jauts spread terror along the Jiimnah. The high lands which border on the western seacoast of India poured forth a yet more formidable race ; — a race which was long the terror of every native power, and which yielded only, after many desperate and doubtful struggles, to the for- tune and genius of England. It was under tha 72 macaulay's miscellanies. reign of Aurungzebe that this wild clan of plunder- ers first descended from the mountains ; and, soon after his death, every corner of his wide empire learned to tremble at the mighty name of the Mah- rattas. Many fertile viceroyalties were entirely subdued by them. Their dominions stretched across the peninsular from sea to sea. Their Cap- tains reigned at Poonah, at Gaulior, in Guzerat, in Berar, and in Tanjore. Nor did they, though they had become great sovereigns, therefore cease to be freebooters. They still retained the predatory habits of their forefathers. Every region which was not subject to their rule was wasted by their incursions. Wherever their kettledrums were heard, the peasant threw his bag of rice on his shoulder, hid his small savings in his girdle, and fled with his wife and children to the mountains or the jungles — to the milder neighborhood of the hy- aena and the tiger. Many provinces redeemed their harvests by the payment of an annual ransom. Even the wretched phantom who still bore the im- perial title, stooped to pay this ignominious *' black mail." The camp-fires of one rapacious leader were seen from the walls of the palace of Delhi. Another, at the head of his innumerable cavalry, descended year after year on the rice-fields of Ben- gal. Even the European factors trembled for their magazines. Less than a hundred years ago, it was thought necessary to fortify Calcutta against the horsemen of Berar ; and the name of the Mahratta ditch still preserves the memory of the danger. Wherever the viceroys of the Mogul retained au- thority they became sovereigns. They might still THE LATE LORD HOLLAND. 73 acknowledge in words the superiority of the house of Tamerlane ; as a Count of Flanders or a Duke of Burgundy would have acknowledged the superi- ority of the most hopeless driveller among the later Carlovingians. They might occasionally send to their titular sovereign a complimentary present, or solicit from him a title of honor. But they were in truth no longer lieutenants removable at pleasure, but independent hereditary princes. In this way originated those great Mussulman houses which for- merly ruled Bengal and the Carnatic, and those which still, though in a state of vassalage, exercise some of the powers of royalty at Lucknow and Hy- derabad. THE LATE LORD HOLLAND. The late Lord Holland succeeded to the talents and to the fine natural dispositions of his House. But his situation was very different from that of the two eminent men of whom we have spoken. In some important respects it was better ; in some it was worse than theirs. He had one great advan- tage over them. He received a good political edu- cation. The first lord was educated by Sir Robert Walpole. Mr. Fox was educated by his father. The late lord was educated by Mr. Fox. ^'he per- nicious maxims early imbibed by the fmt Lord Holland, made his great talents useless, and worse than useless, to the state. The pernicious maxims early imbibed by Mr. Fox, led him, at the com- mencement of his public life, into great faults, which, though afterward nobly expiated, were o 74 macaulay's miscellanies. never forgotten. To the very end of his career, small men, when they had nothing else to say in defence of their own tyranny, bigotry, and imbecil- ity, could always raise a cheer by some paltry taunt about the election of Colonel Luttrell, the imprison- ment of the lord mayor, and other measures in which the great Whig leader had borne a part at the age of one or two-and-twenty. On Lord Hol- land no such slur could be thrown. Those who most dissent from his opinions must acknowledge, that a public life, more consistent, is not to be found in our annals. Every part of it is in perfect harmo- ny with every other ; and the whole is in perfect harmony with the great principles of toleration and civil freedom. This rare felicity is in a great mea- sure to be attributed to the influence of Mr. Fox. Lord Holland, as was natural in a person of his talents and expectations, began at a very early age to take the keenest interest in politics ; and Mr. Fox found the greatest pleasure in forming the mind of so hopeful a' pupil. They corresponded largely on political subjects when the young lord was only sixteen ; and their friendship and mutual confidence continued to the day of that mournful separation at Chiswick. Under such training, such a man as Lord Holland was in no danger of falling into those faults which threw a dark shade over the whole ^reer of his grandfather, and from which the youth of his uncle was not wholly free. On the other hand, the late Lord Holland, as compared with his grandfather and his uncle, labor- ed under one great disadvantage. They were members of the House of Commons. He became THE LATE LORD HOLLAND. 75 a Peer while still an infant. When he entered public life, the House of Lords was a very small and a very decorous assembly. The minority to which he belonged was scarcely able to muster five or six votes on the most important nights, when eighty or ninety lords were present. Debate had accordingly become a mere form, as it was in the Irish House of Peers before the Union. This was a great misfortune to a man like Lord Holland. It was not by occasionally addressing fifteen or twenty solemn and unfriendly auditors, that his grandfather and his uncle attained their unrivalled parliamenta- ry skill. The former had learned his art in *' the great Walpolean battles," on nights when Onslow was in the chair seventeen hours without intermis- sion ; when the thick ranks on both sides kept un- broken order till long after the winter sun had risen upon them ; when the blind were led out by the hand into the lobby ; and the paralytic laid down in their bed-clothes on the benches. The powers of Charles Fox were, from the first, exercised in conflicts not less exciting. The great talents of the late Lord Holland had no such advantage. This was the more unfortunate, because the peculiar species of eloquence, which belonged to him in common with his family, required much practice to develope it. With strong sense, and the greatest readiness of wit, a certain tendency to hesitation was heriditary in the line of Fox. This hesitation arose, not from the poverty but from the wealtli of their vocabulary. They paused, not from the diffi- culty of finding one expression, but from the* difficulty of choosing between several. It was only t6 macaulay's miscellanies. by slow degrees, and constant exercise, that the first Lord Holland and his son overcame the defect. Indeed, neither of them overcame it completely. In statement, the late Lord Holland was not suc- cessful ; his chief excellence lay in reply. He had the quick eye of his House for the unsound parts of an argument, and a great felicity ^in exposing them. He was decidedly » more distinguished in debate than any Peer of his times who had not sat in the House of Commons. Nay, to find his equal among persons similarly situated, we must go back eighty years — to Earl Granville. For Mansfield, Thurlow, Loughborough, Grey, Grenville, Brough- am, Plunkett, and other eminent men, living and dead, whom we will not stop to enumerate, carried to the Upper House an eloquence formed and ma- tured in the Lower. The opinion of the most dis- cerning judges was, that Lord Holland's oratorical perfoimances, though sometimes most successftil, afforded no fair measure of his oratorical powers ; and that, in an assembly of which the debates were frequent and animated, he would have attained a very high order of excellence. It was, indeed, im- possible to converse with him without seeing that he was born a debater. To h m, as to his uncle, the exercise of the mind in discussion was a positive pleasure. With the greatest good nature and good breeding, he was the very opposite to an assenter. The word * disputatious' is generally used as a word of reproach; but we can express our meaning only' by saying that Lord Holland was most courteously and pleasantly disputatious. In truth, his quickness in discovering and apprehending distinctions and THE LATE LORD HOLLAND. 77 analogies was such as a veteran judge mig'ht envy. The lawyers of the Duchy of Lancaster were aston- ished to find in an unprofessional man so strong a rehsh for the esoteric parts of their science ; and complained that as soon as they had sj)lit a hair, Lord Holland proceeded to split the filaments into filaments still finer. In a mind less happily consti- tuted, there might have been a risk that this turn for subtilty would have produced serious evil. But in the heart and understanding of Lord Holland there was ample security against all such danger. He was not a man to be the dupe of his own inge- nuity. He put his Logic to its proper use ; and in him the dialectician was always subordinate to the statesman. His political life is written in the chronicles of his country. Perhaps, as we have already intimated, his opinions on two or three great questions of For- eign Policy were open to just objection. Yet even his errors, if he erred, were amiable and respectable. We are not sure that we do not love and admire him the more because he was now and then sedu- ced from what we regard as a wise policy, by sym- pathy with the oppressed; by generosity towards the fallen ; by a philanthropy so enlarged, that it took in all nations ; by love of peace, which in him was second only to the love of freedom ; by the magnanimous credulity of a mind which was as in- capable of suspecting as of devising mischief We have hitherto touched almost exclusively on those parts of Lord Holland's character which were open to the observation of millions. How shall we express the feelings with which his memory is cher- 78 macaulay's miscellanies. ished by those who were honored with his friend- ship ] Or in what language shall we speak of that House, once celebrated for its rare attractions to the furthest ends of the ci\41ised world, and now silent and desolate as the grave ? That House was, a hundred and twenty years ago, apostrophised by a poet in tender and graceful lines, which have now acquired a new meaning not less sad than that which they originally bore : — '• Thou hill, whose brow the antique structures grace, Reared by bold chiefs of Warwick's noble race, Why, once so loved, whene'er thy bower appears. O'er my dim eyeballs glance the sudden tears ? How sweet were once thy prospects fresh and fair Thy sloping walks, and unpolluted air ! . How sweet the glooms beneath thine aged trees. Thy noon-tide shadow, and thine evening breeze : His image thy forsaken bowers restore ; Thy walks and airy prospects charm no more ; No more the summer in thy glooms allay'd. Thine evening breezes, and thy noon-day shade." Yet a few years, and the shades and structures may follow their illustrious masters. The wonder- ful city which, ancient and gigantic as it is, still continues to grow as fast as a young towTi of log- wood by a water-privilege in Michigan, may soon displace those tuirets and gardens which are associ- ated with so much that is interesting and noble — with the courtly magnificence of Rich — with the loves of Ormond — with the counsels of Cromwell— with the death of Addison. The time is coming when, perhaps, a few old men, the last survivors of our generation, will in vain seek, amidst new THE LATE LORD HOLLAND. 71 Streets, and squares, and rail-way stations, for the site of that dwelling which was in their youth the favorite resort of wits and beauties — of painters and poets — of scholars^ philosophers, and statesmen. They will then remember, with strange tenderness, many objects once familiar to them — the avenue and the terrace, the busts and the paintings ; the carving, the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatical mottoes. With peculiar fondness, they will recall that venerable chamber, in which all the antique gravity of a college library was so singularly blend- ed with all that female grace and wit could devise to embellish a drawing-room. They will recollect^ not unmoved, those shelves loaded with the varied learning of many lands and many ages ; those por- traits in which were preserved the features of the best and wisest Englishmen of two generations. They will recollect how many men who have guided the politics of Europe — who have moved great as- semblies by reason and eloquence — who have put life into bronze and canvass, or who have left to posterity things so written as it shall not willingly let them die — were there mixed with all that was loveliest and gayest in the society of the most splen- did of capitals. They will remember the singular character which belonged to that circle, in which every talent and accomplishment, every art and science, had its place. They will remember how the last debate was discussed in one corner, and the last comedy of Scribe in another ; while Wilkie gazed with modeet admiration on Reynolds' Barettij while Mackintosh turned over Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation; while Talleyrand related hia 80 macaulay's miscellanies. conversations with Barras at the Luxemburg, or his ride with Lannes over the field of Austerlitz. They will remember, above all, the grace — and the kind- ness, far more admirable than grace — with which the princely hospitality of that ancient mansion was dispensed. They will remember the venerable and benignant countenance, and the cordial voice of him who bade them welcome. They will remember that temper which years of pain, of sickness, of lameness, of confinement, seemed only to make sweeter and sweeter ; and that frank politeness, which at once relieved all the embarrassment of the youngest and most timid wiiter or artist, who found himself for the first time among Ambassadors and Earls. They will remember that constant flow of conversation, so natural, so animated, so various, so idch with observation and anecdote ; that wit which never gave a wound ; that exquisite mimicry which ennobled, instead of degrading ; that goodness of heart which appeared in every look and accent, and gave additional value to every talent and acquire- ment. They will remember, too, that he whose name they hold in reverence was not less distin- guished by the inflexible uprightness of his political conduct, than by his loving disposition and his win- ning manners. They will remember that, in the last lines which he traced, he expressed his joy that he had done nothing unworthy of the friend of Fox and Grey ; and they will have reason to feel similar joy, if, in looking back on many troubled years, they cannot accuse themselves of having done any- thing unworthy of men who were distinguished by the friendship of Lord Holland. TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS. 81 TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS. * In the mean time, the preparations for his trial had proceeded rapidly; and on the 13th of Februa- ry, 1788, the sittings of the Court commenced. There have been spectacles more dazzHng to the eye, more gorgeous with jewellery and cloth of gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that "which was then exhibited at Westminster ; but, perhaps, there never was a spectacle so well calcu lated to strike a highly cultivated, a reflecting, an imaginative mind. All the various kinds of interest which belong to the near and to the distant, to the present and to the past, were collected on one spot, and in one hour. All the talents and all the accom- plishments which are developed by liberty and civil- isation were now displayed, with every advantage that could be derived both from co-operation and from contrast. Every step in the proceedings canied the mind either backward, through many troubled centuries, to the days when the founda- tions of the constitution were laid; or far away, over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange characters from right to left. The High Court of Parliament was to sit, ac- cording to forms handed down from the days of the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exer- cising tyranny over the lord of the holy city of Benares, and the ladies of the princely house of Oude. The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the • Governor General of India. d* 82 MAC AUL ay's miscellanies. « great hall of William Rufus ; the hall which had resounded with acclamatioris at the inauguration of thirty kings ; the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers; the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a victorious party inflam- ed with just resentment ; the hall where Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage which has half redeemed his fame. Neither mihtary nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshalled by the heralds under Garter King-at-Arms. The judges, in their vestments of state, attended to give advice on points of law. Near a hundred and seventy Lords, three- fourths of the Upper House, as the Upper House then was, walked in solemn order from their usual place of assembling to ,the tribunal. The junior baron present led the way — Lord Heathfield, re- cently ennobled for his memorable defence of Gib- raltar against the fleets and armies of France and Spain. The long procession was closed by the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the realm, by the great dignitaries, and by the brothers and sons of the King. Last of all came the Prince of Wales, conspicuous by his fine person and noble bearing. The grey old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by such an audience as has rarely excited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered together, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous rdfeilm, grace and female loveliness, wit and learn- TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS. 83 ing, the representatives of every science and of every art. There were seated around the Queen the -fair-haired young daughters of the house of Brunswick. There the Ambassadors of great Kings and Commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other country in the world could present. There Siddons, in the prime of her ma- jestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene sur- passing all the imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres ; and when, before a senate which had still some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There were seen, side by side, the greatest painter and the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us the thouo-htful foreheads of so many writers and states- men, and the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to suspend his labors in that dark and profound mine from which he had extract- ed a vast treasure of erudition— a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudi- cious and inelegant ostentation ; but still precious, massive, and .splendid. There appeared the volup- tuous charms of her to whom the heir of the throne had in secret phghted his faith. There, too, was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the Saint CeciUa, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from the com- mon decay. There were the members of that bril- Uant society which quoted, criticised, and exchanged repartees, under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. 84 macaulay's miscellanies. Montague. And there the ladies, whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster election against palace and treasury, shone round Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire. The*^ Sergeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar and bent his knee. The cul- prit was indeed not unworthy of that great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous country, had made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and pulled down princes. And in his high place he had so borne himself, that all had feared him, that most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory, except virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like a bad man. A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage which, while it indicated' deference to the court, indicated also habitual self-possession and self-respect; — -a high and intellectual forehead; — a brow pensive, but not gloomy ; — a mouth of in- flexible decision ; a face pale and worn, but serene, on which was written, as legibly as under the great picture in the council-chamber at Calcutta, JVIens mqua in arduis ;— such was the aspect with which the great pro-consul presented himself to his judges. His counsel accompanied him, men all of whom were afterwards raised by their talents and learning to the highest posts in their profession, — the bold and strong minded Law^, afterwards Chief Justice of the King's Bench ; the more humane and eloquent Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas ; and Plomer, who, nearly twenty years later, successfully conducted in the same high court the defence of Lord Melville, and subsequently became Vice Chancellor and Master of the Rolls. TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS. 85 But neither the culprit nor his advocates attracted 80 much notice as the accusers. In the midst of the blaze of red drapery, a space had been fitted up with green benches and tables for the Commons. The managers, with Burke at their head, appeared in full dress. The collectors of gossip did not fail to remark that even Fox, generally so regardless of his appearance, had paid to the illustrious tribunal the complim_ent of wearing a bag and sword. Pitt had refused to be one of the conductors of the im- peachment; and his commanding, copious, and sonorous eloquence, was wanting to that great mus- ter of various talents. Age and blindness had unfit- ted Lord North for the duties of a public prosecutor j and his friends were left without the help of his ex- cellent sense, his tact, and his urbanity. But, in spite of the absence of these two distinguished members of the Lower House, the box in which the managers stood, contained an array of speakers such as perhaps had not appeared together since the great age of Athenian eloquence. There stood Fox and Sheridan, the English Demosthenes, and the English Hyperides. There was Burke, ignorant, indeed, or negligent of the art of adapting his rea- Bonings and his style to the capacity and taste of his hearers; but in aptitude of comprehension and richness of imagination superior to every orator, ancient or modern. There, with eyes reverentially fixed on Burke, appeared the finest gentleman of the age — his form developed by every manly exer- cise — his face beaming with intelligence and spirit —the ingenious, the chivalrous, the high-souled Windham. Nor, though surrounded by such men BG macaulay's miscellanxes. idid the youngest manager pass unnoticed. At an age when most of those who distinguish themselves in life are still contending for prizes and fellowships at college, he had won for himself a conspicuous place in ParHaraent. No advantage of fortune or connection was wanting that could set off to the height his splendid talents and his unblemished honor. At twenty-three he had been thought wor- thy to be ranked ^^'ith the veteran statesmen who appeared as the delegates of the British Commons, at the bar of the British nobility. All who stood at that bar, save him alone, are gone — culprit, advo- cates, accusers. To the generation which is now in the -s-igor of life, he is the sole representative of a great age which has passed av/ay. But those who, within the last ten years, have listened with delight, till the morning sun shone in upon the tapestries of the House of Lords, to the lofty and animated elo- quence of Charles Earl Grey, are able to form some estimate of the powers of a race of men among whom he was not the foremost. The charges and the answers of Hastings were first read. This ceremony occupied two whole days, and was rendered less tedious than it would othervrise have been, by the silver voice and just emphasis of Cowper, the clerk of the Court, a near relation of the amiable poet. On the third day Burke rose. Four sittings of the court were occu- pied by his opening speech, which was intended to ' be a general introduction to all the charges. With an exuberance of thought and a splendor of diction which more than satisfied the highly-raised expec- tation of the audience, he described the character TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS. 87 and institutions of the natives of India ; recounted the circumstances in which the Asiatic empire of Britain had originated ; and set forth the constitu- tion of the Company, and of the EngHsh Presiden- cies. Having thus attempted to communicate to his hearers an idea of Eastern society, as vivid as that which existed in his own mind , he proceeded to ar- raign the administration of Hastings, as systemati- cally conducted in defiance of morality and public law. The energy and pathos of the great orator extorted expressions of unwonted admiration even from the stern and hostile Chancellor ; and, for a moment, seemed to pierce even the resolute heart of the defendant. The ladies in the galleries, un- accustomed to such displays of eloquence, excited by the solemnity of the occasion, and perhaps not unwilling to display their taste and sensibility, were in a state of uncontrollable emotion. Handkerchiefs were pulled out; smelling-bottles were handed round ; hysterical sobs and screams were heard ; and Mrs. Sheridan was carried out in a fit. At length the orator concluded. Raising his voice till the old arches of Irish oak resounded — " My lords," said he, " these are the securities, which we have in all the constituent parts of the body of this house. "We know them, we reckon, we rest upon them, and commit safely the interests of India and of humanity into your hands. There- fore, it is with confidence, that, ordered by the CommoA, • ** I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors. ** I impeach him in the name of the Commons of 88 macaxjlay's miscellanies. Great Britain in parliament assembled, whose par- liamentary trust he has betrayed. " I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored. " I impeach him in the name of the people of In- dia, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subvert- ed ; whose properties he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate. " I impeach him in the name, and by virtue, of those eternal laws of justice, which he has violated. " I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed in both sexes, in every age, rank, situa- tion, and condition of life." WARREN HASTINGS. With all his faults — and they were neither few nor small — only one cemetery was worthy to con- tain his remains. In that temple of silence and reconciliation, where the enmities of twenty gene- rations lie buried, in the Great Abbey which has for ages afforded a quiet resting place to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by the con- tentions of the Great Hall, the dust of the illustrious accused should have been mingled with the dust of the illustrious accusers. This was not to be. Yet the place of interment was not ill chosen. Behind the chancel of the parish-church'of Dayl^ford, in earth which already held the bones of many chiefs of the house of Hastings, was laid the coffin of the great- est man who has ever borne that ancient and widely WARREN HASTINGS. 89 extended name. On that very spot probably, four- score years before, tie little Warren, meanly clad and scantily fed, had played with the children of plough' men. Even then his young mind had revolved plans which might be called romantic. Yet, however ro- mantic, it is not likely that they had been so strange as the truth. Not only had the poor orphan re- trieved the fallen fortunes of his line. Not only had he repurchased the old lands, and rebuilt the old dwelling. He had preserved and extended an em- pire. He had founded a polity. He had adminis- tered government and war with more than the capacity of Richelieu ; and had patronised learning with the judicious liberality of Cosmo. He had been attacked by the most formidable combination of enemies thaf ever sought the destruction of a single victim ; and over that combination, after a struggle of ten years, he had triumphed. He had at length gone down to his grave in the fulness of age — in peace, after so many troubles; in honor, after so much obloquy. Those who look on his character without favor oi malevolence, will pronounce that, in the two great elements of all social virtue — in respect for the rights of others, and in sympathy for the sufferings of others — he was deficient. His principles , were somewhat lax. His heart was somewhat hard. But while we cannot with truth describe him either as a righteous or as a merciful ruler, we cannot regard without'admiration the amplitude and fertility of his intellect-- his rare talents for command, for admin- istration and for controversy — his dauntless courage —his honorable poverty — his fervent zeal for the 90 MACAtLAY*S MiSCELLANtES. interests of the state — his noble equanimity, tried by both extremes of fortune, and never disturbed by either. FATHER OF FREDERIC THE GREAT. Frederic, surnamed the Great, son of Frederick "WiUiam, was born in January, 1712. It may safely be pronounced that he had received from nature a strong and sharp understanding, and a rare firmness of temper and intensity of will. As to the other parts of his character, it is difficult to say whether they are to be ascribed to nature, or to the strange training which he underwent. The history of his boyhood is painfully interesting. Oliver Twist in the parish workhouse, Smike at Dotheboys Hall, were petted children 'when compared with this wretched heir-apparent of a crown. The nature of Frederick William was hard and bad, and the habit of exercising arbitrary power had made him fright- fully savage. His rage constantly vented itself to right and left in curses and blows. When his ma- jesty took a walk, every human being fled before him, as if a tiger had broken loose from a menage- rie. If he met a lady in the street, he gave her a kick, and told her to go home and mind her brats. If he saw a clergyman staring at the soldiers, he admonished the reverend gentleman to betake him* self to study and prayer, and enforced this pious advice by a sound caning, administered on the spot. But it was in his own house that he was most un- reasonable and ferocious. His palace was hell, and he the most execrable of fiends — a cross between FREDERIC THE GREAT. 91 Moloch and Puck. His son Frederic and his daughter Wilhelmina, afterwards Margravine of Bareuth, were in an especial manner objects of his aversion. His own mind was uncultivated. He despised literature. He hated infidels, papists, and metaphysicians, and did not very well understand in what they differed from each other. The business of life, according to him, was to drill and to be drill- ed. The recreations suited to a piince, were to sit in a cloud of tobacco-smoke, to sip Swedish beer between the puffs of the pipe, to play backgammon for three-halfpence a rubber, to kill wild hogs, and to shoot partridges by the thousand. FREDERIC THE GREAT. He had from the commencement of his reign ap- plied himself to public business after a fashion unknown among kings. Louis XIV., indeed, had been his own prime minister, and had exercised a general superintendence over all the departments of the government; but this was not sufficient for Frederic. He was not content with being his own prime minister — he would be his own sole minister, tinder him there was no room, not merely for a Hichelieu or a Mazarin, but for a Colbert, a Lou- vois, or a Torcy. A love of labor for its own sake, a restless and insatiable longing to dictate, to inter- meddle, to make his power felt, a profound scorn and distrust of his fellow creatures, indisposed him to ask counsel, to confide important secrets, to dele- gate ample powers. The highest functionaries under his government were mere clerks, and wera 99 macaulay's miscellanies. not so much trusted by him as valuable clerks are often trusted by the heads of departments. He was his own treasurer, his own commander-in-chief, his own intendant of public works ; his own minister for trade and justice, for home affairs and foreign affairs ; his own master of the horse, steward, and chamberlain. Matters of which no chief of an office in any other government would ever hear, were in this singular monarchy, decided by the King in person. If a traveller wished for a good place to see a review, he had to write to Frederic, and recjeived next day, from a royal messenger, Freder- ic's answer signed by Frederic's own hand. Thi-s was an extravagant, a morbid activity. The public business would assuredly have been better done if each department had been put under a man of talents and integrity, and if the King had contented himself with a general control. In this manner the advantages which belong to unity of design, and the advantages which belong to the division of labor, would have been to a great extent combined. But such a system would not have suited the peculiar temper of Frederic. He could tolerate no will, no reason in the state, save his own. He wished for no abler assistance than that of penmen who had just understanding enough to translate, to tran- scribe, to make out his scrawls, and to put his con- cise Yes and No into an official form. Of the higher intellectual faculties, there is as much in a copying machine, or a lithographic press, as he required from a secretary of the cabinet. His own exertions were such as were hardly to be expected from a human body, or a human mind. FREDERIC THE GREAT. 93: At Potsdam, his ordinary residence, he rose at three in summer and four in winter. A page soon ap- peared, with a large basketful of all the letters which had arrived for the King by the last courier — despatches from ambassadors, reports from officers of revenue, plans of buildings, proposals for draining marshes, complaints from persons who thought themselves aggrieved, applications from persons who wanted titles, military commissions, and civil situations. He examined the seals with a keen eye ; for he was never for a moment free from the sus- picion that some fraud might be practised on him. Then he read the letters, divided them into several packets, and signified his pleasure, generally by a mark, often by two or three words, now and then by some cutting epigram. By eight he had gene- rally finished this part of his task. The adjutant- general was then in attendance, and received in- structions for the day as to all the military arrange- ments of the kingdom. Then the King went to review his guards, not as kings ordinarily review their guards, but with the minute attention and severity of an old drill-sergeant. In the mean time the four cabinet secretaries had been employed in answering the letters on which the King had that morning signified his will. These unhappy men were forced to work all the year round like negro- slaves in the time of the sugar-crop. They never had a holiday. They never knew what it was to dine. It was necessary that, before they stiiTed, they should finish the whole of their work. The King, always on his guard against treachery, took fiom the heap a handful at random, and looked into 94 macaulay's miscellanies. them to see whether his instructions had been exactly followed. This was no bad security against foul play on the part of the secretaries ; for if one of them were detected in a trick, he might think himself fortunate if he escaped with five years of imprisonment in a dungeon. Frederic then signed the replies, and all were sent off the same evening. The general principles on which this strange government was conducted, deserve attention. The policy of Frederic was essentially the same as his father's ; but Frederic, while he carried that policy to lengths to which his father never thought of car rying it, cleared it at the same time from the absurdities with which his father had encumbered it. The King's first object was to have a gi'eat, efficient, and well-trained army. He had a king- dom which in extent and population was hardly in the second rank of European powers ; and yet he aspired to a place not inferior to that of the sove- reigns of England, France, and Austria. For that end it was necessary that Prussia should be all sting. Louis XV., with five times as many subjects as Frederic, and more than five times as large a revenue, had not a more formidable army. The proportion which the soldiers in Prussia bore to the people, seems hardly credible. Of the males in the vigor of life, a seventh part were probably under arms ; and this great force had, by drilling, by re- viewing, and by the unsparing use of cane and scourge, been taught to perform all evolutions with a rapidity and a precision which would have aston- ished Villars or Eugene. The elevated feelings which are necessary to the best kind of army were FREDERIC THE GREAT. 95 tlien wanting to the Prussian service. In those ranks were not found the rehgious and political enthusiasm which inspired the pikemen of Crom- well — the patriotic ardor, the thirst of glory, the devotion to a great leader, which inflamed the Old Guard of Napoleon. But in all the mechanical parts of the military calling, the Prussians were as superior to the English and French troops of that day, as the English and French troops to a rustic militia. Though the pay of the Prussian soldier was small, though every rixdollar of extraordinary charge was scrutinised by Frederic with a vigilance and suspicion such as Mr. Joseph Hume never brought to the examination of an army-estimate, the expense of such an establishment was, for the means of the country, enormous. In order that it might not be utterly ruinous, it was necessary that every other expense should be cut down to the lowest possible point. Accordingly Frederic, though his dominions bordered on the sea, had no navy. He neither had nor wished to have colonies. His judges, his fiscal officers, were meanly paid. His ministers at foreign courts walked on foot, or drove shabby old carriages till the axletrees gave way. Even to his highest diplomatic agents, who resided at London and Paris, he allowed less than a thou- sand pounds sterling a year. The royal household was managed with a frugality unusual in the estab- lishments of opulent subjects — unexampled in any other palace. The king loved good eating and drinking, and during great part of his life took pleasui'e in seeing his table surrounded by guests , 96 macaulay's miscellanies. yet the whole charge of his kitchen was brought within the sum of two thousand pounds sterling a year. He examined every extraordinary item with a care which might be thought to suit the mistress of a boarding-house better than a great prince. When more than four rixdollars were asked of him for a hundred oysters, he stormed as if he had heard that one of his generals had sold a fortress to the Empress-Queen. Not a bottle of champagne was uncorked without his express order. The game of the royal parks and forests, a serious head of expenditure in most kingdoms, was to him a source of profit. The whole was farmed out ; and though the farmers were almost ruined by their contract, the king would grant them no remission. His wardrobe consisted of one fine gala dress, which lasted him all his life ; of two or three old coats fit for Monmouth Street, of yellow waistcoats soiled with snuff, and of huge boots embrowned by time. One taste alone sometimes allured him beyond the limits of parsimony, nay, even beyond the limits of prudence — the taste for building. In all other things his economy was such as we might call by a harsher name, if we did not reflect that his funds were drawn from a heavily taxed people, and that it was impossible for him, without excessive tyranny, to keep up at once a formidable army and a splen- did court. VOLTAIRE. 97 VOLTAIRE. Potsdam*was, in truth, what it was called by one of its most illustrious inmates, the palace of Alcina. At the first glance it seemed to be a delightful spot, where every intellectual and physical enjoyment awaited the happy adventurer. Every new comer was received with eager hospitality, intoxicated with flattery, encouraged to expect prospeiity and great- ness. It was in vain that a long succession of favorites who had entered that abode with delight and hope, and who, after a short term of delusive happiness, had been doomed to expiate their folly by years of wretchedness and degradation, raised their voices to warn the aspirant who approached the charmed threshold. Some had wisdom enough to discover the truth early, and spiiit enough to fly without looking back ; others lingered on to a cheer- less and unhonored old age. We have no hesita- tion in saying that the poorest author of that time in London, sleeping on a bulk, dining in a cellar, with a cravat of paper, and a skewer for a shirt-pin, was a happier man than any of the literary inmates of Frederic's Court. But of all who entered the enchanted garden in the inebriation of dehght, and quitted it in agonies of rage and shame, the most remarkable was Vol- taire. Many circumstances had made him desirous of finding a home at a distance from his country. His fame had raised him up enemies. His sensi- bihty gave them a formidable advantage over him. They were, indeed, contemptible assailants. Of all • The residence of the Kinga of Truseia. e 08 macaulay's miscellanies. that they wrote against him, nothing has survived except vv^hat he has himself preserved. But the constitution of his mind resembled the constitution of those bodies in which the shghtest scratch of a bramble, or the bite of a gnat, never fails to fester. Though his reputation was rather raised than low- ered by the abuse of such writers as Freron and Desfontaines — though the vengeance which he took on Freron and Desfontaines was such, that scourging, branding, pillorying, would have been a trifle to it — there is reason to believe that they gave him far more pain than he ever gave them. Though he enjoyed during his own lifetime the reputation of a classic — though he was extolled by his contempora- ries above all poets, philosophers, and historians — though his works were read with as much delight and admiration at Moscow and Westminster, at Florence and Stockholm, as at Paris itself, he was yet tormented by that restless jealousy which should seem to belong only to minds burning with the de- sire of fame, and yet conscious of impotence. To men of letters who could by no possibility be his rivals, he was, if they behaved well to him, not merely just, not merely courteous, but often a hearty friend and a munificent benefactor. But to every writer who rose to a celebrity approaching his own, he became either a disguised or an avowed enemy. He slyly depreciated Montesquieu and Buffon. He publicly, and with violent outrage, made war on Jean Jacques. Nor had he the art of hiding his feelings under the semblance of good- humor or of contempt. "With all his great talents, and all his long experience of the world, he had no VOLTAIRE. 99 more self-command than a petted child or a hyster- ical woman. Whenever he was mortified, he ex- hausted the whole rhetoric of anger and sorrow to express his mortification. His torrents of bitter words — his stamping and cursing — his grimaces and his tears of rage — were a rich feast to those abject natures, whose delight is in the agonies of powerful spirits and in the abasement of immortal names. These creatures had now found out a way of galling him to the very quick. In one walk, at least, it had been admitted by envy itself that he was without a living competitor. Since Racine had been laid among the great men whose dust made the holy precinct of Port-Royal holier, no' tragic poet had appeared who could contest the palm with the author of Zaire, of Jllzirey and of JMerojje. At length a rival was announced. Old Crebillon, who, many years before, had obtained some theatrical success, and who had long been forgotten, came forth from his garret in one of the meanest lanes near the Rue St. Antoine, and was welcomed by the acclamations of envious men of letters, and of a ca^Dricious populace. A thing called Calaline, which he had written in his retirement, was acted with boundless applause. Of this execrable piece it is sufficient to say, that the plot turns on a love affair, carried on in all the forms of Scudery, between Catiline, whose confidant is the Pr8etor Lentulus, and Tullia, the daughter of Cicero. The theatre resounded with acclamations. The king pensioned the successful poet ; and the coffee-houses pro- nounced that Voltaire was a clever man, but that the real tragic inspiration, the celestial fire which 100 macaulay's miscellanies. glowed in Corneille and Racine, was to be found in Crebillon alone. The blow went to Voltaire's heart. Had his wisdom and fortitude been in proportion to the fer- tility of his intellect, and to the brilliancy of his wit, he would have seen that it was out of the power of all the puffers and detractors in Europe to put Cat- iline above Zaire ; but he had none of the magnan- imous patience with which Milton and Bentley left their claims to the unerring judgment of time. He eagerly engaged in an undignified competition with Crebillon, and produced a series of plays on the same subjects which his rival had treated. These pieces were coolly received. Angry with the court, angry with the capital, Voltaire began to find plea- sure in the prospect of exile. His attachment for Madame de Chatelet long prevented him from exe- cuting his purpose. Her death set him at liberty ; and he determined to take refuge at Berlin. To Berlin he was invited by a series of letters, couched in terms of the most enthusiastic friendship and admiration. For once the rigid parsimony of Frederic seemed to have relaxed. Orders, honora- ble offices, a liberal pension, a well-served table, stately apartments under a royal roof, were offered in return for the pleasure and honor which were expected from the society of the first wit of the age. A thousand louis were remitted for the charges of the journey. No ambassador setting out from Bei« lin for a court of the first rank, had ever been more amply supplied. But Voltaire was not satisfied. At a later period, when he possessed an ample for- tune, he was one of the most liberal of men ; but VOtTAIRfi. ' 101 till iiis means had become equal to his wishes, hia greediness for lucre was unrestrained either by jus- tice or by shame. He had the effrontery to ask for a thousand louis more, in order to enable him to bring his niece, Madame Denis, the ugliest of co- quettes, in his company. The indelicate rapacity of the poet produced its natural effect on the severe and frugal king. The answer was a dry refusal. " I did not," said his Majesty, ** solicit the honor of the lady's society." On this, Voltaire went off in a paroxysm of childish rage. " Was there ever such avarice 1 He has hundreds of tubs full of dollars in his vaults, and haggles with me about a poor thou- sand louis." It seemed that the negotiation would be broken off; but Frederic, wdth great dexterity, affected indifference, and seemed inclined to trans- fer his idolatry to Baculard d'Arnaud. His Majesty even wrote some bad verses, of which the sense was, that Voltaire was a setting sun, and that Ar- naud was rising. Good-natured friends soon carried the lines to Voltaire. He was in his bed. He jumped out in his shirt, danced about the room with rage, and sent for his passport and his post- horses. It was not difficult to foresee the end of a connection which had such a beginning. It was in the year 1750 that Voltaire left the great capital, which he was not to see again till, after the lapse of nearly thirty years, he returned, bowed down by extreme old age, to die in the midst of a splendid and ghastly triumph. His reception in Prussia was such as might well have elated a less vain and excitable mind. He wrote to his friends at Paris, that the kindness and the attention 102 MACAULAY's MISCtiLLANiES, with which he had been welcomed surpassed de* scription — that the king was the most amiable of men — -that Potsdam was the Paradise of philoso phers. He was created chamberlain, and received, together with his gold key, the cross of an order, and a patent ensuring to him a pension of eight hundred pounds sterling a year for life. A hundred and sixty pounds a year were promised to his niece if she survived him. The royal cooks and coach- men were put at his disposal. He was lodged in the same apartments in which Saxe had lived, when, at the height of power and glory, he visited Prussia. Frederic, indeed, stooped for a time even to use the language of adulation. He pressed to his lips the meagre hand of the little grinning skeleton, whom he regarded as the dispenser of immortal renown. He would add, he said, to the titles which he owed to his ancestors and his sword, another title, derived from his last and proudest acquisition. His style should run thus : — -Frederic, King of Prussia, Mar- grave of Brandenburg, Sovereign Duke of Silesia, Possessor of Voltaire. But even amid the delights of the honey-moon, Voltaire's sensitive vanity beg^n to take alarm. A few days after his arrival, he could not help telling his niece, that the amiable king had a trick of giving a sly scratch with one band while patting and stroking with the other. Soon came hints not the less alarming because mys- terious. " The supper parties are -delicious. The king is the life of the company. But — I have operas and comedies, reviews and concerts, my studies and books. But — but — Berlin is fine, the princess charming, the maids of honor handsome. But" VOLTAIRE. 103 This eccentric friendship was fast cooling. Never had there met two persons so exquisitely fitted to plague each other. Each of them had exactly the fault of which the other was most impatient ; and they were, in different ways, the most impatient of mankind. Frederic was frugal, almost niggardly. When he had secured his plaything, he began to think that he had bought it too dear. Voltaire, on the other hand, was greedy, even to the extent of impudence and knavery; and conceived that the favorite of a monarch, who had barrels full of gold and silver laid up in his cellars, ought to make a fortune which a receiver-general might envy. They soon discovered each other's feelings. Both were angry, and a war began, in which Frederic stoop- ed to the part of Harpagon, and Voltaire to that of Scapin. It is humiliating to relate, that the great warrior and statesman gave orders that his guest's allowance of sugar and chocolate should be curtail- ed. It is, if possible, a still more humiliating fact, that Voltaire indemnified him_self by pocketing the wax-candles in the royal antechamber. Disputes about money, however, were not the most seiious disputes of these extraordinary associates. The sarcasms soon galled the sensitive temper of the poet. D'Arnaud and D'Argens, Guichard and La Metrie, might, for the sake of a morsel of bread, be willing to bear the insolence of a master ; but Vol- taire was of another order. He knew that he was a potentate as well as Frederic; that his European reputation, and his incomparable power of covering whatever he hated with ridicule, made him an object of dread even to the leaders of armies and the rulers 1G4 macaulay's miscellanies. of nations. In truth, of all the intellectual weapons which have ever been wielded by man, the most terrible was the mockery of Voltaire. Bigots and tyrants, who had never been moved by the wailing and cursing of millions, turned pale at his name. Principles unassailable by reason, principles which had withstood the fiercest attacks of power, the most valuable truths, the most generous sentiments, the noblest and most graceful images, the purest repu- tations, the most august institutions, began to look mean and loathsome as soon as that withering smile was turned upon them. To eveiy opponent, how- ever strong in his cause and his talents, in his station and his character, who ventured to encounter the great scoffer, might be addressed the caution which was given of old to the Archangel :■ — " I forewarn thee, shun His deadly arrow ; neither vainly hope To be invulnerable in those bright arms, Though temper'd heavenly ; for tbat fatal dint, Save Him who reigns above, none can resist." We cannot pause to recount how often that rare talent was exercised against rivals worthy of esteem — how often it was used to crush and torture ene- mies worthy only of silent disdain — how often it was perverted to the more noxious purpose of de- stroying the last solace of earthly misery, and the last restraint on earthly power. Neither can we pause to tell how often it was used to vindicate jus- tice, humanity, and toleration — the principles of sound philosophy, the principles of free government. This is not the place for a full character of Voltaire. SAMUEL CRISP. 10^ ANECDOTE OF GAKRICK. Garrick, too, was a frequent visitor in Poland Street and St. Martin's Lane. That wonderful ac- tor loved the society of children, partly from good- nature, and partly from vanity. The ecstacies of mirth and terror which his gestures and play of countenance never failed to produce in a nursery, flattered him quite as much as the applause of ma- ture critics. He often exhibited all his powers of mimicry for the amusement of the little Burneys, awed them by shuddering and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by raving Hke a maniac in St. Luke's, and then at once became an auction- eer, a chimney-sweeper, or an old woman, and made them laugh till the tears ran down their cheeks. *MR. SAMUEL CRISP. Long before Frances Burney was born, Mr. Crisp had made his entrance into the world with every advantage. He was well connected and well edu- cated. His face and figure were conspicuously handsome ; his manners were polished ; his fortune was easy ; his character was without stain ; he lived in the best society ; he had read much ; he talked well ; his taste in literature, music, painting, archi- tecture, sculpture, was held in high esteem. No- thing that the world can give seemed to be wanting to his happiness and respectability, except that he should understand the limits of his poweis, and E* 106 MAC AUL ay's miscellanies. should not throw away distinctions which were within his reach, in the j)ursuit of distinctions which were unattainable. '' It is an uncontrolled truth," says Swift, *' that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.'* Every day brings with it- fresh illustrations of this weighty saying; but the best commentary that we remember is the history of Samuel Crisp. Men like him have their proper place, and it is a most im- portant one in the Commonwealth of Letters. It is by the judgment of such men that the rank of authors is finally determined. It is neither to the multitude, nor to the few who are gifted with great creative genius, that we are to look for sound criti- cal decisions. The multitude, unacquainted with the best models, are captivated by whatever stuns and dazzles them. They deserted Mrs. Siddons to run after Master Betty ; and they now prefer, we have no doubt, Jack Sheppard to Von Artevelde. A man of great original genius, on the other hand, a man who has attained to mastery in some high walk of art, is by no means to be implicitly trusted as a judge of the performances of others. The erro- neous decisions pronounced by such men are with- out number. It is commonly supposed that jealousy makes them unjust. But a more creditable expla- nation may easily be found. The very excellence of a work shows that some of the faculties of the author have been developed at the expense of the rest ; for it is not given to the human intellect to expand itself widely in all directions at once, and to be at the same time gigantic and well-proporiion- MR. SAMUEL CRISP. 107 ed. Whoever becomes pre-eminent in any art, nay, in any style of art, generally does so by devoting himself with intense and exclusive enthusiasm to the pursuit of one kind of excellence. His percep- tion of other kinds of excellence is therefore too often impaired. Out of his own department he praises and blames at random, and is far less to be trusted than the mere connoisseur, who produces nothing, and whose business is only to judge and enjoy. One painter is distinguished by his exquisite finishing. He toils day after day to bring the veins of a cabbage-leaf, the folds of a lace veil, the wrinkles of an old woman's face, nearer and nearer to perfection. In the time which he employs on a square foot of canvass, a master of a different order covers the walls of a palace with gods burying giants under mountains, or makes the cupola of a church alive with seraphim and martyrs. The more fervent the passion of each of these artists for his art, the higher the merit of each in his own line, the more unlikely it is that they Mdll justly appreci- ate each other. Many persons who never handled a pencil, probably do far more justice to Michael Angelo than would have been done by Gerhard Douw, and far more justice to Gerhard Douw than would have been done by Michael Angelo. It is the same with literature. Thousands who have no spark of the genius of Dryden or "Words- worth, do to Dryden the justice which has never been done by Wordsworth, and to Wordsworth the justice which, we suspect, would never have been done by Dryden. Gray, Johnson, Richardson, Fielding, are all highly esteemed by the great body 108 macaulay's miscellanies. of intelligent and well-informed men. But Gray could see no merit in Rasselas ; and Johnson could see no merit in the Bard. Fielding thought Rich- ardson a solemn prig ; and Richardson perpetually expressed contempt and disgust for Fielding's lowness. Mr. Crisp seems, as far as we can judge, to have been a man eminently qualified for the useful office of a connoisseur. His talents and knowledge fitted him to appreciate justly almost every species of in- tellectual superiority. As an adviser he was inesti- mable. Nay, he might probably have held a respectable rank as a wiiter if he would have con- fined himself to some department of literature^ in which nothing more than sense, taste, and reading was required. Unhappily he set his heart on being a great poet, wrote a tragedy in five acts on the death of Virginia, and offered it to Garrick, who was his personal friend. Garrick read it, shook his head, and expressed a doubt whether it would be wise in Mr. Crisp to stake a reputation, which stood high, on the success of such a piece. But the author, blinded by self-love, set in motion a machinery such as none could long resist. His intercessors were the most eloquent man and the most lovely woman of that generation. Pitt was induced to read Vir- ginia, and to pronounce it excellent. Lady Coven- try, with fingers which might have furnished a model to sculptors, forced the manuscript into the reluctant hand of the manager ; and, in the year 1754, the play was brought forward. Nothing that skill or friendship . could do was omitted. Garrick wrote both prologue and epilogue. MR. SAMUEL CRISP. 109 The zealous friends of the author filled every box ; and, by their strenuous exertions, the life of the play was prolonged during ten nights. But, though there was no clamorous reprobation, it was univer- sally felt that the attempt had failed. When Vir- ginia was printed, the public disappointment was even greater than at the representation. The critics, the Monthly Reviewers in particular, fell on plot, characters, and diction without mercy, but, we fear, not without justice. We have never met with a copy of the play ; but, if we may judge from the lines which are extracted in the Gentleman's Maga- zine, and which do not appear to have been ma- levolently selected, we should say that nothing but the acting of Garrick, and the partiality of the audience, could have saved so feeble and unnatural a drama from instant damnation. The ambition of the poet was still unsubdued. When the London season closed, he applied him- self vigorously to the work of removing blemishes. He does not seem to have suspected, what we are strongly inclined to suspect, that the whole piece was one blemish, and that the passages which were meant to be fine, were, in truth, bursts of that tame extravagance into which writers fall, when they set themselves to be sublime and pathetic in spite of nature. He omitted, added, retouched, and flatter- ed himself with hopes of a complete success in the following year ; but, in the following year, Garrick showed no disposition to bring the amended trage- dy on the stage. Solicitation and remonstrance wer%tried in vain. Lady Coventry, drooping under tilit malady which seems ever to select what is 110 macaulay's miscellanies. lovllest for its prey, could render no assistance. The manager's language was civilly evasive, but his resolution was inflexible. Crisp had committed a great error ; but he had escaped with a very slight penance. His play had not been hooted from the boards. It had, on the contrary, been better received than many very esti- mable performances have been — than Johnson's Irene, for example, and Goldsmith's Good-Natured Man. Had Crisp been wise, he would have thought himself happy in having purchased self-knowledge so cheap. He would have relinquished without vain repinings the hope of poetical distinction, and would have turned to the many sources of happi- ness which he still possessed. Had he been, on the other hand, an unfeeling and. unblushing dunce, he would have gone on writing scores of bad tragedies in defiance of censure and derision. But he had too much sense to risk a second defeat, yet too little to bear his first defeat like a man. The fatal delu- sion that he was a great dramatist had takea firm possession of his mind. His failure he attributed to every cause except the true one. He complain- ed of the ill-will of Garrick, who appears to have done every thing that ability and zeal could do; and who, from selfish motives, would of course have been well pleased if Virginia had been as success- ful as the Beggar's Opera. Nay, Crisp complained of the languor of the friends whose partiality had given him three benefit-nights to which he had no claim. He complained of the injustice of the spec- tators, when, in truth, he ought to have been grate- ful for their unexampled patience. He lost j|||( MR. SAMUEL CRISP. Ill temper and spirits, and became a cynic and a hater of mankind. From London he retired to Hampton, and from Hampton to a solitary and long-deserted mansion, built on a common in one of the wildest tracts of Surrey. No road, not even a sheep-walk, connected his lonely dwelhng with the abodes of men. The place of his retreat was strictly con- cealed from his old associates. In the spring he sometimes emerged, and was seen at exhibitions and concerts in London. But he soon disappeared and hid himself, with no society but his books, in his dreary hermitage. He survived his failure about thirty years. A new generation sprang up around him. No memory of his bad verses remained among him. How completely the world had lost sight of him, will appear from a single circumstance. We looked for his name in a copious Dictionary of Dramatic Authors published while he was still alive, and we found only that Mr. Samuel Crisp, of the Custom-House, had written a play called Virginia, acted in 1754. To the last, however, the unhappy man continued to brood over the injustice of the manager and the pit, and tried to convince himself and others that he had missed the highest literary honors only because he had omitted some fine pas- sages in compliaace with Garrick's judgment. Alas, for human nature ! that the wounds of vanity should smart and bleed so much longer than the wounds of affection ! Few people, we believe, whose near- est friends and relations died in 1754, had any acute feeling of the loss in 1782. Dear sisters and favor- ite daughters, and brides snatched away before the honey-moon was passed, had been forgotten, or 112 MAGAULAY's MISCELLANIEg. were remembered only with a tranquil regret. But Samuel Crisp was still mourning for his tragedy like Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted. " Never," such was his language twenty-eight years after his disaster, " never give up or alter a tittle unless it perfectly coincides with your own inward feelings. I can say this to my sorrow and my cost. But, mum !" Soon after these words were written, his life — a life which might have been eminently useful and happy — ended in the same gloom in which, during more than a quarter of a century, it had been jjassed. We have thought it worth while to rescue from oblivion this curious fragment of literary history. It seems to us at once ludicrous, melancholy, and full of instruction. CHARACTER OF MISS BURNEY'S (MADAME D'AR BLAY) WRITINGS. Madame D'Arblay has left us scarcely any thing but humors. Almost every one of her men and women has some one propensity developed to a morbid degree. In Cecilia, for example, Mr. Del- ville never opens his lips without some allusion to his own birth and station ; or Mr. Briggs, without some allusion to the hoarding of money; or Mr, Hobson, without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance of a purse-proud upstart ; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering some sneaking remark for the purpose of currying favor with his customers; or Mr. Meadows, without expressing apathy and weariness of life j or Mr. Albany without declaim- MADAME d'aRBLAY. 113 ing about the vices of the rich and the misery of the poor ; or Mrs. Belfield, without some indelicate eu- logy on her son ; or Lady Margaret, without indi- cating jealousy of her husband. Morrice is all skipping, officious impertinence, Mr. Gosport all sarcasm, Lady Honoria all lively prattle, Miss La- rolles all silJy prattle. If ever Madame D'Arblay aimed at more, as in the character of Monckton, we do not think that she succeeded well. We are, therefore, forced to refuse Madame D'Arblay a place in the highest rank of art; but we cannot deny that, in the rank to which she be- longed, she had few equals, and scarcely any supe- rior. The variety of humors which is to be found in her novels is immense ; and though the talk of each person separately is monotonous, the general effect is not monotony, but a very lively and agree- able diversity. Her plots are rudely constructed and improbable, if we consider them in themselves. But they are admirably framed for the purpose of exhibiting striking groups of eccentric characters, each governed by his own peculiar whim, each talking his own peculiar jargon, and each bringing out by opposition the peculiar oddities of all the rest. We will give one example out of many which occur to us. All probability is violated in order to bring Mr, Delvile, Mr. Briggs, Mr. Hobson, and Mr. Albany into a room together. But when we have them there, we soon forget probability in the exqui- sitely ludicrous effect which is produced by the conflict of four old fools, each raging with a mono- mania of his own, each talking a dialect of his own, and each inflaming all the others anew every time he opens his mouth. 114 macaulay's miscellanies. Madame D'Arblay was most successful in come dy, and indeed in comedy which bordered on farce But we are inclined to infer from some passages, both in Cecilia and Camilla, that she might have attained equal distinction in the pathetic. W© have formed this judgment less from those ambi tious scences of distress which lie near the catas- trophe of each of those novels than from some exquisite strokes of natural tenderness which take us here and there by surprise. We would mention as examples, Mrs. Hill's account of her little boy's death in Cecilia, and the parting of Sir Hugh Tyrold and Camilla, when the honest baronet thinks himself dying. It is melancholy to think that the whole fame of Madame D'Arblay rests on what she did during the early half of her life, and that every thing which she published during the forty-three years which preceded her death, lowered her reputation. Yet we have no reason to think that at the time when her faculties ought to have been in their maturity, they were smitten with any blight. In the Wan- derer, we catch now and then a gleam of her genius. Even in the Memoirs of her Father, there is no trace of dotage. They are very bad ; but they are so, as it seems to us, not from a decay of power, but from a total perversion of power. The truth is, that Madame D'Arblay's style underwent a gradual and most pernicious change — a change which, in degree at least, we believe to be unexampled in literary history, and of which it may be useful to trace the progress. When she wrote her letters to Mr. Crisp, her MADAME d'aRBLAY. 115 early journals, and the novel of Evelina, her style was not indeed brilliant or energetic; but it was easy, clear, and free from all offensive faults. When she Avrote Cecilia she aimed higher. She had then lived much in a circle of which Johnson was the centre ; and she was herself one of his most submissive worshippers. It seems never to have crossed her mind that the style even of his best writings was by no means faultless, and that even had it been faultless, it might not be wise in her to imitate it. Phraseology which is proper in a dis- quisition on the Unities, or in a preface to a diction- ary, may be quite out of place in a tale of fashionable life. Old gentlemen do not criticise the reigning modes, nor do young gentlemen make love with the balanced epithets and sonorous cadences which, on occasions of great dignity, a skilful writer may use with happy effect. In an evil hour the authoress of Evelina took the "Rambler for her model. This would not have been wise even if she could have imitated her pattern as well as Hawkesworth did. But such imitation was beyond her power. She had her own style. It was a tolerably good one ; one which might, without any violent change, have been improved into a very good one. She determined to throw it away, and to adopt a style in which she could attain excellence only by achieving an almost miraculous victory over nature and over habit. She could cease to be Fanny Burney; it was not po easy to become Samuel Johnson. In Cecilia the change of manner began to appear. But in Cecilia the imitation of Johnson, though not 116 macatilay's miscellanies. always in the best taste, is sometimes eminently happy ; and the passages which are so verbose as to be positively offensive, are few. There were people who whispered that Johnson had assisted his young friend, and that the novel owed all its finest passages to his hand. This was merely a fabrication of envy. Miss Barney's real excellences were as much beyond the reach of Johnson as his real excellences were beyond her reach. He could no more have written the masquerade scene, or the Vauxhall scene, than she could have written the Life of Cowley or the Review of Soame Jenyns. But we have not the smallest doubt that he revised Cecilia, and that he retouched the style of many passages. We know that he was in the habit of giving assistance of this kind most freely. Gold- smith, Hawkesworth, Boswell, Lord Hailes, Mrs. Williams, were among those who obtained his help. Nay, he even corrected the poetry of Mr. Crabbe, whom, we believe, he had never seen. When Miss Burney thought of writing a comedy, he promised to give her his best counsel, though he owned that he was not particularly well qualified to advise on matters relating to the stage. We therefore think it in the highest degree improbable that his little Fanny, when living in habits of the most affectionate intercourse with him, would have brought out an important work without consulting him ; and, when we look into Cecilia, we see such traces of his hand in the grave and elevated passages as it is impossi- ble to mistake. When next Madame D'Arblay appeared before the world as a writer, she was in a very different MADAME d'aRBLAY. 117 situation. She would not content herself with the simple English in which Evelina had been written. She had no longer the friend who, we are confident, had polished and strengthened the style of Cecilia. She had to write in Johnson's manner without Johnson's aid. The consequence yyas, that in Camilla every passage which she meant to be fine is detestable ; and that the book has been saved from condemnation only by the admirable spirit and force of those scenes in which she was content to be familiar. But there was to be a still deeper descent. After the publication of Camilla, Madame D'Arblay re- sided ten years at Paris. During those years there was scarcely any intercourse between France and England. It waS with difficulty that a short letter could occasionally be ti^ansmitted. All Madame D'Arblay's companions were French. She must have written, spoken, thought, in French. Ovid expressed his fear that a shorter exile might have affected the purity of his Latin. During a shorter exile. Gibbon unlearned his native English. Ma- dame D'Arblay had carried a bad style to France. She brought back a style which we are really at a loss to describe. It is a sort of broken Johnsonese, a barbarous patois^ bearing the same relation to the language of Rasselas which the gibberish of the negroes of Jamaica bears to the English of the House of Lords. Sometim^es it reminds us of the finest, that is to say, the vilest parts, of Mr. Gait's novels; sometimes of the perorations of Exeter Hall ; sometimes of the leading articles of the Morn- ing Post. But it most resembles the puffs of Mr. 118 macaulay's miscellanies. Rowland and Dr. Gross. It matters not what ideas are clothed in such a style. The genius of Shak- speare and Bacon united would not save a work so written from derision. ADDISON'S VISIT TO BOILEAU. Addison's modesty restrained him from fully re lating the circumstances of his introduction to Boileau. Boileau, having survived the friends and rivals of his youth, old, deaf, and melancholy, lived in retirement, seldom went either to court or to the academy, and was almost inaccessible to strangers. Of the English and of English literature he knew nothing. He had hardly heard the name of Dry- den. Some of our countrymen, in the warmth of their patriotism, have asserted that this ignorance must have been affected. We own that we see no ground for such a supposition. English literature was to the French of the age of Louis XIV. what German literature was to our own grandfathers. Very few, we suspect, of the accomplished men who, sixty or seventy years ago, used to dine in Leicester Square with Sir Joshua, or at Streatham with Mrs. Thrale, had the shghtest notion that Wieland was one of the first wits and poets, and Lessing, beyond all dispute, the first critic in Europe. Boileau knew just as little about the " Paradise Lost," and about " Absalom and Ahitophel ;" but he had read Addi- son's Latin poems, and admired them greatly. They had given him, he said, quite a new notion of the state of learning and taste among the English. Johnson will have it that these praises are insincere. Addison's visit to boileau. 119 " Nothing," says he, " is better known of Boileau than that he had an injudicious and peevish con- tempt of modern Latin; and therefore his profession of regard was probably the effect of his civility rather than approbation." Now nothing is better known of Boileau than that he was singularly sparing of compliments. We do not remember that either friendship or fear ever induced him to bestow praise on any composition v/hich he did not approve. On literary questions, his caustic, disdain- ful, and self-confident spirit rebelled against that authority to which every thing else in France bowed down. He had the spirit to tell Louis XIV. firmly, and even rudely, that his majesty knew nothing about poetry, and admired verses which were detestable. What was there in Addison's position that could in- duce the satirist, whose stern and fastidious temper had been the dread of two generations, to turn sycophant for the first and last time ? Nor wag Boileau's contempt of modern Latin either injudi- cious or peevish. He thought, indeed, that no poem of the first order would ever be written in a dead language. And did he think amiss ? Has not the experience of centuries confirmed his opinion 1 Boileau also thought it probable that, in the best modern Latin, a writer of the Augustan age would have detected ludicrous improprieties. And who can think otherwise ? What modern scholar can honestly declare that he sees the smallest impurity in the style of Livy? Yet is it not certain that, in the style of Livy, Pollio, whose taste had been formed on the banks of the Tiber, detected the in- elegant idiom of the Po ] Has any modern scholar ISO macaulay's miscellanies. understood Latin better than Frederic the Great understood French 1 Yet is is not notorious that Frederic the Great, after reading, speaking, wri- ting French, and nothing but French, during more than half a century — -after unlearning his mother tongue in order to learn French, after living famil iarly during many years with French associates — could not, to the last, compose in French, without imminent risk of committing some mistake which would have moved a smile in the literary circles of Paris 1 Do we believe that Erasmus and Fracas- torius wrote Latin as well as Dr. Robertson and Sir Walter Scott wrote English '? And are there not in the Dissertation on India, (the last of Dr. Robertson's works,) in Waverley, in Marmion, Scotticisms at which a London apprentice would laugh ? But does it follow, because we think thus, that we can find nothing to admire in the noble alcaics of Gray, or in the playful elegiacs of Vincent Bourne ? Surely not. Nor was Boileau so igno- rant or tasteless as to be incapable of appreciating good modem Latin. In the very letter to which Johnson alludes, Boileau says — " Ne croyez paa pourtant que je veuille par la blamer les vers Latins que vous m'avez envoyes d'un de vos illustres academiciens. Je les ai trouves fort beaux, et dignes de Vida et de Sannazar, mais non pas d'Horace et de Virgile." Several poems, in modern Latin, have been praised by Boileau quite as liberally as it was his habit to praise any thing. He says, for exam- ple, of Pere Fraguier's epigrams, that Catullus seems to have come to life again. But the best proof that Boileau did not feel the undiscerning Addison's visit to boileau. 121 contempt for modern Latin verses which has been imputed to him, is, that he wjtote and pubHshed Latin verses in several metres. Indeed, it hap- pens, curiously enough, that the most severe cen- sure ever pronounced by him on modern Latin, is conveyed in Latin hexametres. We allude to the fragment which begins — « Quid numeis iterum me balbutire Latinis, Longe Alpes citra natum de patre Sicambro, Musa, jubes ?" For these reasons we feel assured that the praise which Boileau bestowed on the Machince. Gesticiir- lantes, and the Gerano-Pygmceomachia, was sincere. He certainly opened himself to Addison with a freedom which was a sure indication of esteem. Literature was the chief subject of conversation. The old man talked on his favorite theme much and well ; indeed, as his young hearer thought, in- comparably well. Boileau had undoubtedly some of the qualities of a great" critic. He wanted imagi- nation, but he had strong sense. His literary code was formed on narrow principles ; but in applying it, he showed great judgment and penetration. In mere style, abstracted from the ideas of which style is the garb, his taste was excellent. He was well acquainted with the great Greek writers ; and, though unable fully to appreciate their creative ge- nius, admired the majestic simplicity of their man- ner, and had learned from them to despise bombast and tinsel. It is easy, we think, to discover, in the " Spectator'' and the " Guai'dian," traces of the in- 122 macaulay's miscellanies. fluence, in part salutary and in part pernicious, which the mind of Boileau had on the mind of Ad- dison. ORIGIN OF ADDISON'S CATO.— ANECDOTE. At Venice, then the gayest spot in Europe, the traveller spent the Carnival, the gayest season of the year, in the midst of masques, dances, and sere- nades. Here he Vv'as at once diverted and provoked by the absurd dramatic pieces which then disgraced the Italian stage. To one of those pieces, however, he was indebted for a valuable hint. He was pre- sent when a ridiculous play on the death of Cato was performed. Cato, it seems, was in love with a daughter of Scipio. The lady had given her heart to Caesar. The rejected lover determined to destroy himself. He appeared seated in his library, a dagger in his hand, a Plutarch and a Tasso before him ; and, in this position, he pronounced a solilo- quy before he struck the blow. We are surprised that so remarkable a circumstance as this should have escaped the notice of all Addison's biographers. There cannot, we conceive, be the smallest doubt that this scene, in spite of its absurdities and ana- chronisms, struck the traveller's imagination, and suggested to him the thought of bringing Cato on the English stage. It is well known that about this time he began his tragedy, and that he finished the first four acts before he returned to England. CHARACTER OP ADDISON. 128 CHARACTER OF ADDISON. To the influence which Addison derived from his literary talents, was added all the influence which arises from character. The world, always ready to think the worst of needy political adventurers, was forced to make one exception. Restlessness, vio- lence, audacity, laxity of principle, are the vices ordinarily attributed to that class of men. But fac- tion itself could not deny that Addison had, through all changes of fortune, been strictly faithful to his early opinions, and to his early friends ; that his integrity was without stain ; that his whole deport- ment indicated a fine sense of the becoming; that, in the utmost heat of controversy, his zeal was tem- pered by a regard for truth, humanity, and social decorum ; that no outrage could ever provoke him to retaliation unworthy of a Christian and a gentle- man ; and that his only faults were a too sensitive delicacy, and a modesty which amounted to bash- fulness. He was undoubtedly one of the most popular men of his time ; and much of his popularity he owed, we believe, to that very timidity which his friends lamented. That timidity often prevented him from exhibiting his talents to the best advan- tage. But it propitiated Nemesis. It averted that envy which would otherwise have been excited by fame so splendid, and by so rapid an elevation. No man is so great a favorite v^dth the public, as he who is at once an object of admiration, of respect, and of pity J and such were the feelings which Addison 124 macaulay's miscellanies. inspired. Those who enjoyed the privilege of hear- ing his famihar conversation, declared with one voice that it was superior even to his writings. The brilliant Mary Montagu said, that she had known all the wits, and that Addison was the best company in the world. The malignant Pope was forced to own, that there was a charm in Addison's talk which could be found nowhere else. Swift, when burning with animosity against the whigs, could not but confess to Stella, that, after all, he had never known any associate so agreeable as Ad- dison. Steele, an excellent judge of lively conver- sation, said, that the conversation of Addison was at once the most polite, and the most mirthful, that could be imagined; — that it was Terence and Catullus in one, heightened by an exquisite some- thing which was neither Terence nor Catullus, but Addison alone. Young, an excellent judge of seri- ous conversation, said, that when Addison was at his ease, he went on in a noble strain of thought and language, so as to chain the attention of every hearer. Nor were his great colloquial powers more admirable than the courtesy and softness of heart which appeared in his conversation. At the same time, it would be too much to say that he was wholly devoid of the malice which is, perhaps, inseparable from a keen sense of the ludicrous. He had one habit which both Swift and Stella applauded, and which we hardly know how to blame. If his first attempts to set a blundering dunce right were ill received, he changed his tone, " assented with civil Jeer," and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and deeper into absurdity. That such was his practice CHARACTER OP ADDISON. 12^ we should, we think, have guessed from his works. The Tatler's criticisms on Mr. Softly 's sonnet, and the Spectator's dialogue with the politician, who is 80 zealous for the honor of Lady Q — p — t — s, are excellent specimens of this innocent mischief. »■ Such were Addison's talents for conversation. But his rare gifts were not exhibited to crowds or to strangers. As soon as he entered a large com- pany, as soon as he saw an unknown face, his lipa were sealed, and his manners became constrained. None who met him only in great assemblies, would have been able to believe that he was the same man Who had often kept a few friends listening and laughing round a table, from the time when the play ended, till the clock of St. Paul's in Covent- Garden struck four. Yet, even at such a table, he was not seen to the best advantage. To enjoy his conversation in the highest perfection, it was neces- sary to be alone with him, and to hear him, in hia own phrase, think aloud. " There is no such thing," he used to say, " as real conversation, but between two persons." This timidity, a timidity surely neither ungrace- ful nor unamiable, led Addison into the two most serious faults which can with justice be imputed to him. He found that wine broke the spell which lay on his fine intellect, and was therefore too easily seduced into convivial excess. Such excess was in that age regarded, even by grave men, as the most venial of all peccadilloes ; and was so far from be- ing a mark of ill-breeding that it was almost essen- tial to the character of a fine gentleman. But the- smallest speck is seen on a white ground; and 126 macaulay's miscellanies. almost all the biographers of Addison have said something about this failing. Of any other states- man or writer of Queen Anne's reign, we should no more think of saying that he sometimes took too much wine, than that he wore a long wig and a 6 word. To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature, we must ascribe another fault which generally arises from a very different cause. He became a little too fond of seeing himself surrounded by a small circle of admirers, to whom he was as a king or rather as a god. All these men were far inferior to him in ability, and some of them had very serious faults. Nor did those faults escape his observation; for, if ever there was an eye which saw through and through men, it was the eye of Addison. But with the keenest observation, and the finest sense of the ridiculous, he had a large charity. The feel ing with which he looked on most of his humble companions was one of benevolence) slightly tinc- tured with contempt. He was at perfect ease in their company ; he was grateful for their devoted attachment; and he loaded them with benefits. Their veneration for him appears to have exceeded that with which Johnson was regarded by Bos well, or Warburton by Hurd. It was not in the power of adulation to turn such a head, or deprave such a heart as Addison's. But it must in candor be ad- mitted, that he contracted some of the faults which can scarcely be avoided by any person who is so unfortunate as to be the oracle of a small literary coterie. ANECDOTES OP STEELE. 127 ANECDOTES OF STEELE. Steele liad known Addison from childhood. They had been together at the Charter House and at Ox- ford ; but circumstances had then, for a time, sepa- rated them widely. Steele had left college without taking a degree, had been disinherited by a rich relation, had led a vagrant life, had served in the army, had tried to find the philosopher's stone, and had written a religious treatise and several come- dies. He was one of those people whom it is impossible either to hate or to respect. His temper was sweet, his affections warm, his spirits lively, his passions strong, and his principles weak. His life was spent in sinning and repenting ; in inculcating what was right, and doing what was wrong. In speculation, he was a man of piety and honor ; in practice, he was much of the rake and a little of the swindler. He was, however, so good-natured that it was not easy to be seriously angry with him, and that even rigid moralists felt more inclined to pity than to blame him, when he diced himself into a spunging-house, or drank himself into a fever. Ad- dison regarded Steele with kindness not unmingled with scorn — tried, with little success, to keep him out of scrapes, introducing him to the great, prd'- cured a good place for him, corrected his plays, and, though by no means rich, lent him large sums of money. One of these loans appears, from a let- ter dated in August 1708, to have amounted to a thousand pounds. These pecuniary transactions probably led to frequent bickerings. It is said that, 128 macaulay's miscellanies* on one occasion, Steele's negligence, or dishonesty, provoked Addison to repay himself by the help of a bailiff. We cannot join with Miss Aikin in reject- ing this story. Johnson heard it from Savage, who heard it from Steele. Few private transactions which took place a hundred and twenty years ago, are proved by stronger evidence than this. But we can by no means agree with those who condemn Addison's severity. The most amiable of mankind may well be moved to indignation, when what he has earned hardly, and lent with great inconve- nience to himself, for the purpose of relieving a friend in distress, is squandered with insane profu- sion. We will illustrate our meaning by an exam- ple, which is not the less striking because it is taken from fiction. Dr. Harrison, in Fielding's "Amelia," is represented as the most benevolent of human beings ; yet he takes in execution, not only the goods, but the person of his friend Booth. Dr. Harrison resorts to this strong measure because he has been informed that Booth, while pleading poverty as an excuse for not paying just debts, has been buying fine jewellery, and setting up a coach. No person who is well acquainted with Steele's life and correspondence, can doubt that he behaved quite as ill to Addison as Booth was accused of be- having to Dr. Harrison. The real history, we have little douht, was something like this :— A letter comes to Addison, imploring help in pathetic terms, and promising reformation and speedy repayment. Poor Dick declares that he has not an inch of can- dle, or a bushel of coals, or credit with the butcher for a shoulder of mutton. Addison is moved. He Addison's humor. 129 determines to deny himself some medals which are wanting to his series of the Twelve Caesars ; to put off buying the new edition of " Bayle's Dictionary;" and .to wear his old sword and buckles another year. In this way he manages to send a hundred pounds to his friend. The next day he calls on Steele, and finds scores of gentlemen and ladies as- sembled. The fiddles are playing. The table is groaning under Champagne, Burgundy, and pyra- mids of sweetmeats. Is it strange that a man whose kindness is thus abused, should send sheriff's officers to reclaim what is due to him ] ADDISON'S HUMOR. But what shall we say of Addison's humor, of his sense of the ludicrous, of his power of awakening that sense in others, and of drawing mirth from in- cidents which occur every day, and from little pecu- liarities of temper and manner, such as may be found in every man ] We feel the charm. We give ourselves up to it. But we strive in vain to analyze it. Perhaps the best way of describing Addison's peculiar pleasantry, is to compare it with the plea- santry of some other great satirist. The three most eminent masters of the art of ridicule, during the eighteenth century, were, we conceive, Addison, Swift, and Voltaire. Which of the three had the greatest power of moving laughter may be question- ed. But each of them, within his own domain, was supreme. Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merriment is without disguise or restraint. He F* 130 macaulay's miscellanies. gambols ; he grins ; he shakes his sides ; he points the finger ; he turns up the nose ; he shoots out the tongue. The manner of Swift is the very opposite to this. He moves laughter, but never joins in it. He appears in his vv^orks such as he appeared in society. All the company are convulsed v^ith mer- riment while the dean, the author of all the mirth, preserves an invincible gravity, and even sourness of aspect ; and gives utterance to the most eccentric and ludicrous fancies, with the air of a man reading the commination-service. The manner of Addison is as remote from that EATH OF HAMPDEN. 201 volunteered to follow him. He was not their com- mander. He did not even belong to their branch of the service. But "he was," says Lord Clarendon, " second to none but the General himself in the ob- servance and application of all men." On the field of Chalgrove he came up with Rupert. A fierce ■kirmish ensued. In the first charge, Hampden was struck in the shoulder by two bullets, which brok^ the bone, and lodged in his body. The troops of the Parliament lost heart and gave way. Rupert, after pursuing them for a short time, hastened to cross the bridge, and made his retreat unmolested to Oxford. Hampden, with his head drooping, and his hands leaning on his horse's neck, moved feebly out of the battle. The mansion which had been inhabited by his father-in-law, and from which in his youth he had carried home his bride, Elizabeth, was in sight. There still remains an affecting tradition, that he looked for a moment toward that beloved house, and made an effort to go thither to die. But the enemy lay in that direction. He turned his horse toward Thame, where he arrived almost fainting with ago- ny. The surgeons dressed his wounds. But there was no hope. The pain which he suffered was most excruciating. But he endured it with admirable firmness and resio^nation. His first care was for his country. He wrote from his bed several letters to London- concerning pubHc affairs, and sent a last pressing message to the headquarters, recommend- ing that the dispersed forces should be concentrated. When his last pubHc duties wer<3 jierformed, he calmly prepared himself to die. He was attended 202 macaulay's miscellanies. by a clergyman of the Church of England, with whom he had lived in habits of intimacy, and by the chaplain of the Buckinghamshire Green-coats, Dr. Spurton, whom Baxter describes as a famous and excellent divine. A short time before his death, the sacrament was administered to him. He declared that, though he disliked the government of the Church of England, he yet agreed with that Church as to all essential matters of doctrine. His intellect remained un- clouded. When all was nearly over, he lay mur- muring faint prayers for himself, and for the cause in which he died. " Lord Jesu5," he exclaimed, in the moment of the last agony, " receive my soul — O Lord, save my country — O Lord, be merciful to ." In that broken ejaculation passed away his noble and fearless spirit. He was buried in the parish church of Hampden. His soldiers, bareheaded, with reversed arms, and muffled drums, and colors, escorted his body to the grave, singing, as they marched, that lofty and me- lancholy psalm, in which the fragility of human life is contrasted with the immutability of Him, in whose sight a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is passed, and as a watch in the night. The news of Hampden's death produced as great a consternation in his party, according to Clarendon, as if their whole army had been cut off. The jour- nals of the time amply prove that the Parliament and all its friends were filled with grief and dismay. Lord Nugent has quoted a remarkable passage from the next Weekly Intelligencer. " The loss of Colonel Hampden goeth near the heart of every man that DEATH OP HAMPDEN. 208 loves the good of his king and country, and makes some conceive little content to be at the army now that he is gone. The memory of this deceased colonel is such, that in no age to come but it will more and more be had in honor and esteem; — a man so religious, and of that prudence, judgment, temper, valor and integrity, that he hath left few his like behind him." He had indeed left none his like behind him. There still remained, indeed, in his party, many acute intellects, many eloquent tongues, many brave and honest hearts. There still remained a rugged and clownish soldier, half-fanatic, half-buffoon, whose talents, discerned as yet only by one penetrating eye, were equal to all the highest duties of the soldier and the prince. But in Hampden, and in Hampden alone, were united all the qualities which at such a crisis, were necessary to save the state— the valor and energy of Cromwell, the discernment and eloquence of Vane, the humanity and modera- tion of Manchester, the stern integrity of Hale, the ardent public spirit of Sidney. Others might pos- sess the qualities which were necessary to save the popular party in the crisis of danger ; he alone had both the power and the inclination to restrain its excesses in the hour of triumph. Others could con- quer ; he alone could reconcile. A heart as bold as his brought up the cuirassiers who turned the tide of battle on Marston Moor. As skilful an eye as his watched the Scotch army descending from the heights over Dunbar. But it was when, to the sul- len tyranny of Laud and Charles, had succeeded the fierce conflict of sects and factions, ambitious 204 macaulay's miscellanies. of ascendancy and burning for revenge ; it was when the vices and ignorance which the old tyran- ny had generated, threatened the new freedom with destruction, that England missed that sobriety, that self-com.mand, that peifect soundness of judgment, that perfect rectitude of intention, to which the his- tory of revolutions furnishes no parallel, or furnishes a parallel in Washington alone. NARES' MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. The work of Doctor Nares has filled us with as- tonishment similar to that which Captain Lemuel Gulliver felt, when first he landed in Brobdignag, and saw corn as high as the oaks in the New Fo- rest, thimbles as large as buckets, and wrens of the bulk of turkeys. The whole book, and every com- ponent part of it, is on a gigantic scale. The title is as long as an ordinary preface. The prefatory matter would furnish out an ordinary book; and the book contains as much reading as an ordinary libra- ry. We cannot Sum up the merits of the stupen- dous mass of paper which lies before us, better than by saying, that it consists of about two thousand closely printed pages, that it occupies fifteen hun- dred inches cubic measure, and that it weighs sixty pounds avoirdupois. Such a book might, before the deluge, have been considered as light reading by Hilpa and Shallum. But unhappily the life of man is now threescore years and ten ; and we cannot but think it somewhat unfair in Doctor Nares to demand from us so large a portion of so short an existence. • Prime minister of Queen Elizabeth. NARES MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 205 Compared witli the labor of reading through these volumes, all other labors — tlie labor of thieves on the tread-mill, of children in factories, of negroes in sugar plantations — is an agreeable recreation. There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his choice between G-uicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind, and went to the oar. Guicciardini, though certainly not the most amusing. of writers, is a He- rodotus, or a Froissart, when compared with Doctor Nares. It is not merely in bulk, but in specific gravity also, that these memoirs exceed all other human compositions. On every subject which the professor discusses, he produces three times as ma- ny pages as another man ; and one of his pages is as tedious as another man's three. *His book is swelled to its vast dimensions by endless repetitions, by episodes which have nothing to do with the main action, by quotations from books which are in every circulating Hbrary, and by reflections which, when they happen to be just, are so obvious that they must necessarily occur to the mind of every reader. He employs more words in expounding and defend- ing a truism, than any other writer would employ in supporting a paradox. Of the rules of historical perspective he has not the faintest notion. There is neither foreground nor background in his delinea- tion. The wars of Charles the Fifth in Germany are detailed at almost as much length as in Robert- son's Life of that prince. The troubles of Scotland are related as fully as in M'Crie's Life of John Knox. It would be most unjust to deny that Doc- 206 macaulay's miscellanies. tor Nares is a man of gr^at industry and research ; but be is so utterly incompetent to arrange the ma- terials wbich be bas collected, tbat be migbt as well have left tbem in tbeir original repositories. Neither the facts which Doctor Nares bas discov- ered, nor the arguments which he urges, will, we apprehend, materially alter the' opinion generally entertained by judicious readers of history concern- ing his hero.. Lord Burgbley can hardly be called a great man. He was not one of those whose ge- nius and energy change the fate of empires. He was by nature and habit one of those who follow, not one of those who lead. Nothing that is re- corded, either of bis words or of bis actions, indicates intellectual or moral elevation. But bis talents, though not brilliant, were of an eminently useful kind ; and bis principles, though not inflexible, were not more relaxed than those of his associates and competitors. He bad a cool temper, a sound judgment, great powers of application, and a con- stant eye to the main chance. In his youth be was, it seems, fond of practical jokes. Yet even out of these he contrived to extract some pecuniary profit. When be was studying the law at Gray's Inn, be lost all bis furniture and books to bis companion at the gaming-table. He accordingly bored a hole in the wall which separated bis chambers from those of bis associate, and at midnight bellowed through this passage threats of damnation, and calls to re- pentance in the ears of the victorious gambler, who lay sweating with fear all night, and refunded his winnings on bis knees next day. " Many other the like merry jests," says bis old biographer, " I have NARES' MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 207 heard him tell, too long to be here noted." To the last, Burghley was somewhat jocose ; and some of his sportive sayings have been recorded by Bacon. They show much more shrewdness than generosity; and are, indeed, neatly expressed reasons for exact- ing money rigorously, and for keeping it carefully. It must, however, be acknowledged, that he was rigorous and careful for the public advantage, as well as for his own. To extol his moral character, as Doctor Nares has extolled it, would be absurd. It would be equally absurd to represent him as a corrupt, rapacious, and bad-hearted man. He paid great attention to the interest of the state, and great attention also to the interest of his own family. He never deserted his friends till it was very inconve- nient to stand by them ; he was an excellent Pro- testant when it was not very advantageous to be a Papist ; recommended a tolerant policy to his mis- tress as strongly as he could recommend it without hazarding her favor ; never put to the rack any per- son from whom it did not seem probable that very useful information might be derived ; and was so moderate in his desires, that he left only three hun- dred distinct landed estates, though he might, as his honest servant assures us, have left much more, " if he would have taken money out of the Exchequer for his own use, as many treasurers have done." We had intended to say something concerning the dexterous Walsingham, the impetuous Oxford, the elegant Sackville, the all-accomplished Sidney; concerning Essex, the ornament of the court and of the camp, the model of chivalry, the munificent patron of genius, whom great virtues, great cour- 208 macaulay's miscellanies. age, great talents, the favor of liis sovereign, the love of bis countrymen — all that seemed to insure a happy and glorious life, led to an early and an ig- nominious death ; concerning Raleigh, the soldier, the sailor, the scliolar, the courtier, the orator, the poet, the historian, the philosopher, sometimes re- viewing the Queen's guards, sometimes giving chase to a Spanish galleon, then answering the chiefs of the country party in the House of Com- mons, then again murmuring one of his sweet love- songs too near the ears of her Highness' maids of honor, and soon after poring over the Talmud, or collating Polybius with Livy. We had intended also to say something concerning the literature of that splendid period, and especially concerning those two incomparable men, the Prince of Poets, and the Prince of Philosophers, who have made the .Eliza- bethan age a more glorious and important era in the histoiy of the human mind, than the age of Pericles, of Augustus, or of Leo. But subjects so vast require a space far larger than we can at present afford. We therefore stop here, fearing that, if we proceed, our article may swell to a bulk exceeding that of all other reviews, as much as Doctor Nares' book ex- xeeds the bulk of all other histories. THE ELDER MR. PITT IN PARLIAMENT. • In April, 1736, Frederic was married to the Prin- cess of Saxe-Gotha, with whom he afterwards lived on terms very similar to those on which his father nad lived with Queen Caroline. The Prince adored nis wife, and thought her in mind and person the PITT IN PARLIAMENT. 209 • most attractive of her sex. But he thought that conjugal fidelity was an unprincely virtue ; and, in order to be like Henry the Fourth, and the Regent Orleans, he affected a libertinism for which he had no taste, and frequently quitted the only woman whom he loved for ugly and disagreeable mistresses. The address which the House of Commons pre- sented to the Iving on occasion of the Prince's mar- riage, was moved, not by the minister, but by Pul- teney, the leader of the Whigs in Opposition. It was on this motion that Pitt, who had not broken silence during the session in which he took his seat, addressed the House for the first time. "A contem- porary historian," says Mr. Thackeray, "describes Mr. Pitt's first speech as superior even to the mo- dels of ancient eloquence. According to Tindal, it was more ornamented than the speeches of Demos- thenes, and less diffuse than those of Cicero." This unmeaning phrase has been a hundred times quoted. That it should ever have been quoted, except to be laughed at, is strange. The vogue which it has ob- tained, may serve to show in how slovenly a way most people are content to think. Did Tindal, who first used it, or Archdeacon Coxe, or Mr. Thackeray, who have borrowed it, ever in their lives hear any speaking which did not deserve the same compli- ment] Did they ever hear speaking less ornament- ed than that of Demosthenes, or more diffuse than that of Cicero] We know no living orator, from Lord Brougham down to Mr. Hunt, who is not enti- tled to the same magnificent eulogy. It would be no very flattering compliment to a man's figure to say, that he was taller than the Polish Count, and short- 210 macaulay's miscellanies. er than Giant O'Brien ; — fatter than the Jlnatomie Vivante, and more slender than Daniel Lambert. Pitt's speech, as it is reported in the Gentleman's Magazine, certainly deserves Tindal's compliment, and deserves no other. It is just as empty and wordy as a maiden speech on such an occasion might be expected to be. But the fluency and the person- al advantages of the young orator instantly caught the ear and eye of his audience. He was, from the day of his first appearance, always heard with atten- tion ; and exercise soon developed the great powers which he possessed. In our time, the audience of a member of parlia- ment is the nation. The three or four hundred persons who may be present while a speech is de- livered, may be pleased or disgusted by the voice and action of the orator ; but in the reports which are read the next day by hundreds of thousands, the difference between the noblest and the meanest fig- ure, between the richest and the shrillest tones, be- tween the most graceful and the most uncouth ges- ture, altogether vanishes. A hundred years ago, scarcely any report of what passed within the walls of the House of Commons was suffered to get abroad. In those times, therefore, the impression which a speak- er might make on the persons who actually heard him was everything. The impression out of doors was hardly worth a thought. In the parliaments of that tizne, therefore, as in the ancient commonwealths, those qualifications which enhance the immediate effect of a speech, v/ere far more important ingre- dients in the composition of an oiator than they would appear to be in our time. All those qualifi- MR. PITT IN PARLIAMENT. !J11 cations Pitt possessed in the highest degree. On the stage, he would have been the finest Brutus or Coriolanus ever seen. Those who saw him in his decay, when his health was broken, when his mind was jangled, when he had been removed from that stormy assembly of which he thoroughly knew the temper, and over which he possessed unbound- ed influence, to a small, a torpid, and an unfriendly audience, say that his speaking was then, for the most part, a low, monotonous muttering, audible only to those who sat close to him — that, when vio- lently excited, he sometimes raised his voice for a few minutes, but that it soon sank again into an un- intelligible murmur. Such was the Earl of Chat- ham ; but such was not William Pitt. Plis figure, when he first appeared in Parliament, was striking- ly graceful and commanding, his features high and noble, his eye full of fire. His voice, even when it sank to a whisper, was heard to the remotest bench- es ; when he strained it to its full extent, the sound rose like the swell of the organ of a great cathedral, shook the house with its peal, and was heard through lobbies and down staircases, to the Court of Requests and the precincts of Westminster liall. Pie cultivat- ed all these eminent advantages with the most assidu- ous care. His action is described by a yery mafig- nant observer as equal to that of Garrick. His play of countenance was wonderful ; he frequently dis- concerted a hostile orator by a single glance of in- dignation or scorn. Every tone, from the impas- sioned cry to the thrilling aside, was perfectly at his command. It is by no means improbable that the pains which he took to improve his great personal 212 macaulay's Miscellanies. advantages had, in some respects, a prejudicial op* eration, and tended to nourish in him that passion for theatrical effect, which, as we have already re- marked, was one of the most conspicuous blemishes in his character. But it was not solely or principally to outward accomplishments that Pitt owed the vast influence which, during nearly thirty years, he exercised over the House of Commons. He was undoubtedly a great orator ; and, from the descriptions of his con- temporaries, and the fragments of his speeches which still remain, it is not diflacult to discover the nature and extent of his oratorical powers. He was no speaker of set speeches. His few prepared discourses were complete failures. The elaborate panegyric which he pronounced on Gen- ral Wolfe was considered as the very worst of all his performances. " No man," says a critic who had often heard him, " ever knew so little what he was going to say." Indeed his facility amounted to a vice. He was not the master, but the slave of his own speech. So little self-command had he when once he felt the impulse, that he did not like to take part in a debate when his mind was full of an important secret of state. " I must sit still," he once said to Lord Shelburne on such an occasion ; " for when once I am up, every thing that is in my mind comes out." Yet he was not a great debater. That he should not have been so when first he entered the House of Commons is not strange. Scarcely any person had ever become so without long practice, and ma- ny failures. It was by slow degrees, as Burke said, MR. PITT IN PARLIAMENT. 213 that the late Mr. Fox became the most brilliant and powerful debater that ever Parliament saw. Mr. Fox himself attributed his own success to the reso- lution which he formed when very young, of speak- ing, well or ill, at least once every night. "During five whole sessions," he used to say, *'I spoke every night but one, and I regret only that I did not speak on that night too." Indeed it would be difficult to name any great debater, except Mr. Stanley, whose knowledge of the science of parliamentary defence resembles an instinct, who has not made himself a master of his art at the expense of his audience. But as this art is one which even the ablest men have seldom acquired without long practice, so it is one which men of respectable abilities, with assi- duous and intrepid practice, seldom fail to acquire. It is singular that in such an art, Pitt, a man of splendid talents, of gTeat fluency, of great boldness — a man whose whole life was passed in parlia- mentary conflict — a man who, during several years, was the leading minister of the Crown in the House of Commons — should never have attained to high excellence. He spoke without premeditation ; but his speech followed the course of his own thoughts, and not the course of the previous discussion. He could, indeed, treasure up in his memory some de- tached exj)ression of a hostile orator, and make it the text for sparkling lidicule or burning invective. Some of the most celebrated bursts of his eloquence were called forth by an unguarded word, a laugh or a cheer. But this was the only sort of reply ia which he appears to have excelled. He was per- haps the only great English orator who did not 214 macaulay's miscellanies. think it any advantage to have the last word : and who generally spoke by choice before his most for- midable opponents. His merit was almost entirely rhetorical. He did not succeed either in expositi or in refutation ; but his speeches abounded witn lively illustrations', striking apophthegms, well-told anecdotes, happy allusions, passionate appeals. His invective and sarcasm were tremendous. Perhaps no English orator was ever so much feared. But that which gave most effect to his declama- tion, was the air of sincerity, of vehement feeling, of moral elevation, which belonged to all that he said. His style was not always in the purest taste. Seve- ral contemporary judges pronounced it too florid. Walpole, in the midst of the rapturous eulogy which he pronounces on one of Pitt's greatest orations, owns that some of the metaphors were too forced. The quotations and classical stones of the great ora- tor are sometimes too trite for a clever schoolboy. But these were niceties for which the audience cared little. The enthusiasm of the orator infected all who were near him ; his ardor and his noble bearing put fire into the most frigid conceit, and gave dignity to the most puerile allusion. THE END. H ^51 B5 '^ Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. "S^ V^ Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide *^^/f V TrPfltmftnt Date: Aoril 2009 Treatment Date: April 2009 '♦* ^^"^ PreservationTechnologies * ^ ^ A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION *^«< 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111 O > ^'^^ff^' i,^' ^^ t — />»i- N. MANCHESTER, ^ss»' INDIANA 46962 ' \..<