Class _7_Izlj: Book. * /* V-r Gopyiiglit}^?- COFXRIGHT DEPOSm SELECTIONS FROM THE PROSE OF MACAULAY EDITED BY LUCIUS HUDSON HOLT, Ph D LIEUTENANT COLONEL, UNITED STATES ARMY PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AND HISTORY UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY GINN AND COMPANY BOSTON . NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY LUCIUS HUDSON HOLT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ^v SEP -7 1916 CINN AND COMPANY • PRO- PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. ^CI,A437575 PREFACE These selections are chosen from the entire range of Macaulay's prose works with the exception of his speeches. Although the speeches were edited for publication, some of their individual characteristics of phrase and form were obviously intended for oral rather than for written expression. It is believed, therefore, that by restricting these selections to those compositions especially produced for the reading public, the best and most typical of Macaulay's literary work has been included. Lovers of Macaulay will undoubtedly miss some of their favorite Essays, — as, for example, the study of Bacon and the brilliant interpretation of Machiavelli's character and period, — but it is certain that the selections included will familiarize the reader with the breadth and variety of Macaulay's interests and the excellences of his style. L. H. H. West Point, N. Y. CONTENTS PAGE Introduction vii I. Life of Macaulay II. Personal Characteristics III. Macaulay's Prose Works Milton i Review of Joaruiis Afiltotn, Angli^ de Doctriiid Christiana libri duo posthunii. A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone. By John Milton, translated from the Original by Charles R. Sumner, M.A., etc., 1825. The essay appeared in the Edi)ibu7'gh Reviezu for August, 1825. History 55 From an essay by this title which appeared in the EdinburgJi Review for May, 1 828 ; suggested by Tlie Romance of History : England. By Henry Neele. London, 1828. Byron 66 From a review of Letters atid Jotirnals of Lo7-d Byron j with Notices of his Life. By Thomas Moore, Esq. 2 vols., 4to. Lon- don, 1830. The essay appeared in the Edinburgh Revieiu for June, 1 83 1. Samuel Johnson 92 From a review of TJie Life of Samuel foiinson^ LL.D. Lnclud- ing a fournal of a Tour to the Hebrides., by fames Boswell, Esq. A new Edition with nufnerous Additions and Notes. By John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S. 5 vols., 8vo. London, 1 83 1. The essay appeared in the Edinburgh Review for September, 1831. John Bunyan 122 From a review of The Pilgri7n''s P?vgress, with a Life of foJui Bunyan. By Robert Southey, Esq., LL.D., Poet Laureate. Illus- trated with Engravings. 8vo. London, 1831. The essay appeared in the Edinburgh Review for December, 1831. Lord Clive 135 From a review of The Life of Robert Lord Clive j collected from the Fa7nily Papers., comfHU?iicated by the Earl of Powis. By vi SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY PAGE Major-General Sir John Malcolm, K.C.B. 3 vols., 8vo. London, 1836. The essay appeared in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1840. Warren Hastings 188 From a review of Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastitigs, first Governor-General of Bengal. Compiled from Original Papers, by the Rev. G. R. Gleig, M.A. 3 vols., 8vo. London, 1 841. The essay appeared in the Edinbufgh Review for October, 1841. Frederic the Great 233 From a review of Frederic the G?'eat and his Ti/nes. Edited, with an Introduction, by Thomas Campbell, Esq. 2 vols., 8vo. London, 1 842. The essay appeared in the Edinburgh Review for April, 1842. Addison 287 From a review of The Life of foseph Addisott. By Lucy Aikin. 2 vols., 8vo. London, 1843. The essay appeared in the Edinburgh Re-view for July, 1843. History of England 353 Vols. I and II published in 1848; Vols. Ill and IV, 1855; Vol. V (edited by Lady Trevelyan), 1861. {a) William and Mary. (From Chapter VII.) 353 {b) Invitation to William. (From Chapter IX.) 366 {c) Revolution of 1688. (From Chapter X.) 379 (^) William and Mary in England. (From Chapter XL) . , 391 (e) The Toleration Act. (From Chapter XI.) 396 (/) The Relief of Londonderry. (From Chapter XII.) . . . 401 (,<;) The King's Touch for Scrofula. (From Chapter XIV.) . . 414 (//) Rise and Progress of Parliamentary Corruption. (From Chapter XV.) 417 (/) The Bank of England. (From Chapter XX.) 422 (/) The Death of Mary. (From Chapter XX.) 435 {k) (From Macaulay's notes, revised by him.) The A'isit of Peter the Great to London. (From Chapter XXIII.) . . . 441 (/) (From Macaulay's notes, not revised by him.) The Death of William. (From Chapter XXV.) 449 INTRODUCTION LIFE OF MACAULAY Thomas Babington Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple, Leices- tershire, October 25, 1800, the first of the children of Zachary Macaulay and Selina (Mills) Macaulay. Zachary Macaulay had already made his mark in that devoted band which did so much at the end of the eighteenth century to arouse public opinion in England against the continuation of the slave trade. He had been sent as a boy of sixteen to Jamaica to become a bookkeeper in the Jamaican office of a Scotch business firm, had become thoroughly disgusted with slavery by his enforced contact with conditions in the colony, surrendered his position after eight years of toil, and in 1792 returned to England with little money, no work, but unalterable convictions with respect to the iniquity of slavery. Always a man of singleness of purpose, he could see before him only the duty of throwing himself heart and soul into the aboli- tionist cause. Opportunity presented itself in the carrying out of a Utopian scheme for a colony at Sierra Leone to be peopled by liber- ated slaves. Zachary Macaulay accepted the post of member of the council in the far-away colony, became governor, toiled unceasingly and self-sacrificingly against every conceivable obstacle and disap- pointment, and at last, in 1799, after six long years, resigned his position and returned to England. Almost immediately he was ap- pointed secretary for the Sierra Leone company, a position which yielded him a comfortable income in return for much hard work in the company's business. Selina Mills, to whom Zachary Macaulay was married August 26, 1799, was of a Quaker family of Bristol. As a girl she was pretty ^ The facts and citations herein given are in the main taken from the authoritative " Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay," written by his nephew, G. Otto Trevelyan. viii SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY and attractive ; as a woman she was dignified and sensible. She was a most excellent wife and mother, devoted to her stern husband even during those later years when his interest in abolition had apparently absorbed every other interest in his life, ruling her children with for- bearance and tact and inspiring within them the deepest affection. We have attractive descriptions of the home in which Macaulay spent his youth. Younger brothers and sisters, five altogether, looked up to "Tom" as their leader in fun. His sister writes in later years: " His unruffled sweetness of temper, his unfailing flow of spirits, his amusing talk, all made his presence so delightful that his wishes and his tastes were our law. . . . My earliest recollections speak of the intense happiness of the holidays, beginning with finding him in papa's room in the morning ; the awe at the idea of his having reached home in the dark after we were in bed, and the Saturnalia which at once set in ; no lessons ; nothing but fun and merriment for the whole six weeks." And yet this boy who was at the head of the fun in his home had from an early age shown notable signs of precocity, " From the time he was three years old," writes his nephew and biographer, Trevelyan, " he read incessantly, for the most part lying on the rug before the fire, with his book on the ground, and a piece of bread-and-butter in his hand." When he was but eight years old he undertook to write a compendium of the world's history and actu- ally gave a coherent account of the great events from the creation to his own time. Inspired by Scott's " Lay of the Last Minstrel," he started a poem called " The Battle of Cheviot," finished nearly four hundred lines, and dropped it to compose an heroic poem entitled " Olaus the Great ; or. The Conquest of Mona." Naturally enough, the strict religious atmosphere of his home caused him to turn to hymn writing, also, and many of his productions were treas- ured by his mother during her whole life. Macaulay's precocity, how- ever, did not lead him to love the regular curriculum in his schools. He read continually, wrote persistently, but protested against going to school. His mother's kindly insistence forced him to school daily, overruling all excuses and pleadings. Indeed, too much credit cannot be given to the judicious care which his fond mother gave him : his evident precocity did not gain him the " spoiling " which might have followed ; his tastes were directed ; his compositions criticized ; his tendencies to haste and carelessness curbed. Another influence INTRODUCTION ix during his boyhood which may have played a significant part in the direction of his later life was the household discussion of political ques- tions of the day. To be sure, the discussions in which his father was so interested were mainly connected with the abolitionist move- ment, still they accustomed the boy to the thought of politics and opened to his active mind the methods by which political schemes were conceived and carried through. Yet, all in all, it must be ad- mitted that Macaulay was not a boy's boy. He did not like dogs, bird's-nesting, shooting, outdoor games, and the like. Leader of fun as he was at home, he directed the play along those channels that appealed to him most. " His notion of perfect happiness was to see us all working round him," writes his sister, " while he read aloud a novel." Capping verses, acting the scenes in books read, were favorite amusements with him even when he had become a grown young man. He had a very happy boyhood, but it was not that of a normal boy. In the fall of 1818 Macaulay matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge. In after years Macaulay's passionate love for his college was one of his striking characteristics. He did not do well in the academic work, failing to get honors, his failure being due largely to his detestation of the mathematical studies which formed such an essential part of the curriculum. " I can scarcely bear to write on mathematics or mathematicians," he once said in a letter from col- lege. " Oh for words to express my abomination of that science, if a name sacred to the useful and embellishing arts may be applied to the perception and recollection of certain properties in numbers and figures. . . . ' Discipline ' of the mind ! Say rather starvation, con- finement, torture, annihilation 1 " The comparative freedom of the college life, however, gave him the opportunity to indulge his love of society and his passion for reading. His genius for conversation and argument drew around him a brilliant group, the two Coleridges (Derwent and Henry), Villiers, Grey, Romilly, Praed, and Austin. " So long as a door was open or a light burning in any of the courts," writes Trevelyan, " Macaulay was always in the mood for conversa- tion and companionship. ... It must have been well worth the loss of sleep to hear Macaulay plying Austin with sarcasms upon the doctrine of the ' Greatest Happiness,' ^ which then had still some 1 Referring to the practical philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. X SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY gloss of novelty ; putting into an ever-fresh shape the time-honored jokes against the Johnians for the benefit of the Villierses ; and urging an interminable debate on Wordsworth's merits as a poet, in which the Coleridges, as in duty bound, were ever ready to engage. In this particular field he acquired a skill of fence which rendered him the most redoubtable of antagonists." Although he made no mark in the academic work, he succeeded better, as might have been expected, in debating and in literary work. He was a prominent figure in the debates of the Cambridge Union, he once gained the prize for Latin declamation, and twice the chancellor's medal for English verse. In spite of his failure to attain a high rank in the mathematical work, he received a university scholarship in 182 1 and was appointed a fellow in 1824. Looking back upon his college career in the last years of his life, he once wrote : " If a man brings away from Cambridge self-knowledge, accuracy of mind, and habits of strong intellectual exertion, he has gained more than if he had made a display of showy Etonian scholarship, got three or four Brown's medals, and gone forth into the world a school-boy, and doomed to be a school-boy to the last, , . . But I often regret, and even acutely, my want of a senior wrangler's knowledge of physics and mathematics ; and I regret still more some habits of mind which a senior wrangler is pretty certain to possess." In 1826 Macaulay was called to the bar. He went upon the Northern Circuit, but never took his legal work seriously. He had already achieved a success in literature which tempted him from the law, and had further conceived a strong interest in politics. The time which, had he intended himself for success in law, he should have spent in legal studies, he occupied in writing and in absorbed contem- plation of the procedure in the House of Commons from a seat in the galleries. Macaulay, while he was still an undergraduate at Cambridge, had contributed liberally to the magazines. From 1823 on his articles had been accepted. In 1825 he was immensely pleased with an invitation to write an article for the great liberal periodical, the Edinburgh Review. His response to this invitation was his essay on Milton, ap- pearing in August of the same year. No more immediate fame has been achieved by a literary man : the value of the article was recog- nized and interest in its author aroused. Invitations poured in upon INTRODUCTION xi him from all sides. He became, at the age of twenty-five, the literary lion of London. He was at this time a somewhat pudgy, unhandsome young man, vehement and overconfident in conversation, but blessed with an abounding good nature which won him many friends. Praed, writing of him, says : " There came up a short manly figure, marvellously upright, with a bad neck cloth, and one hand in his waistcoat-pocket. Of regular beauty he had little to boast ; but in faces where there is an expression of great power, or of great good-humor, or both, you do not regret its absence." In conversation he tended to assume the lead, confident of his own powers. Robinson, who met him about this time, jots down in his diary : "I had a most interesting compan- ion in young Macaulay, one of the most promising of the rising gen- eration I have seen for a long time. . . . Very eloquent and cheerful. Overflowing with words and not poor in thought." Just at this period Macaulay's father, who had spent his strength utterly in the antislavery cause to the neglect of his commercial in- terests, found himself heavily involved financially. The sufficient income which had so long supported the large family was checked, Zachary Macaulay was in no condition to straighten out his affairs and rebuild his fortune, and his son, who had lived in the expectation of a comfortable patrimony, suddenly faced the prospect of assuming the burden of support of his family. His attitude at this juncture is one of the best commentaries on his character. With perfect cheer- fulness he took up the task, planning to pay his father's debts, clear up the tangle, and set himself in a way to rehabilitate the family fortune. He was at the time in receipt of the income from his college fellowship, amounting to about three hundred pounds a year, of an amount from his contributions to the Editilmrgh Revie7v equal to as much more, and a few hundred pounds additional from occasional offices and literary work. This income was insufficient, however, for the comfortable maintenance of the family and the payment of his father's debts. He cast about, therefore, for a career which might give greater promise. Politics had, since his graduation from college, divided his interest with literature. His opportunity for entering upon a political career came just at this period. Lord Lansdowne offered him a seat in Par- liament for the pocket borough of Calne in February of 1S30. xii SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY • Macaulay entered Parliament at the most dramatic moment of a great political crisis in English domestic history. From 1S22 to 1829 George Canning had steered the Tory ministry into the paths of re- form after the long years of repression which had followed the fall of Napoleon. He and his colleagues had achieved a merciful revision of the criminal code, a wise reduction of certain import duties, a prac- tical nullification of the outgrown Navigation Acts, a removal of political disabilities . from certain of those sects not holding to the tenets of the established church, and a sliding scale of tariff on im- ported grain. It was an era of reform, and Canning's name is still revered by Englishmen. The greatest reform, however, had not been attempted by Canning. During all the years of minor reforms the demand for the reform of Parliament had been steadily increasing in force and violence. The people were brought to realize that the ancient and outworn system of parliamentary representation made liberal and popular government a mockery. The appointment of more than one half of the members of the House of Commons, the popular house of Parliament, was directly under the control of the great landholders. Populous cities in the manufacturing area, as Leeds and Birmingham, which had grown up since the last important change in representation, had no representatives at all, whereas the ownership of the green mound of Old Sarum entitled a man to ap- point two members in the House. Popular agitation had overwhelm- ingly demanded the revision of the representative system, directing its attack especially against the " rotten boroughs." The question was the chief issue before the House when Macaulay entered political life. Macaulay was a Whig and played an important part in the Whig campaign in Parliament which passed the Reform Bill. He made his maiden speech in the House April 5, 1830, and contributed very notably to the success of the Reform Bill by a speech March 2, 183 1. From 1831 to 1834 he devoted himself unsparingly to his parliamen- tary work, acquiring the reputation of being the most forceful and convincing of the Whig speakers. He played a leading part in the debates. His contemporaries bear witness to his power and success. Jeffrey writes : " It [Macaulay's speech] was prodigiously cheered, as it deserved, and, I think, puts him clearly at the head of the great speakers, if not the debaters, of the House." Sir James Mackintosh said, " Macaulay and Stanley have made two of the finest speeches INTRODUCTION xiii ever spoken in Parliament." He was called into consultation with the party leaders, he had a decided influence upon the progress of the liberal policies, he became one of the chief Whigs in the House. And he had the chance to share in the Whig triumphs : — " llien again the shouts broke out, and many of us shed tears," he wrote in a letter describing the parliamentary division on the bill ; "I could scarcely refrain. And the jaw of Peel fell ; and the face of Twiss was as the face of a damned soul ; and Herries looked like Judas taking his necktie off for the last operation. We shook hands, and clapped each other on the back, and went out laughing, crying, and huzzaing into the lobby." His parliamentary distinction kept him one of the social lions of London. He was dined and praised by all of his own party, but un- fortunately this did not help his finances. Although he knew that he was laying foundations for the future, the present expenses embar- rassed him. His office was swept away in a governmental house- cleaning, his fellowship at college expired, and he was actually forced at one time, a time too when he was at the height of his political fame, to sell the gold medals he had won at the university to get money for his immediate needs. His reward for the very important part he had taken in the House of Commons in the passage of the Reform Bill came to relieve forever his financial worries : he was appointed in 1832 one of the commissioners of the Board of Con- trol of Indian affairs, and then, in 1833, a member of the Supreme Council in India with a salary of ten thousand pounds a year. In February, 1834, Macaulay and his beloved sister Hannah sailed for Calcutta. Macaulay was in India four years. During that time his influence upon the conduct of Indian government was important and beneficial. By some of his policies he made many enemies among the English residents in India, but his reforms stood the test of time and ex- perience and enhanced his reputation in his home country. He was president of the Committee of Public Instruction and played a prin- cipal part in inaugurating a system of national education ; he drew up and submitted a draft of a penal code which, years later, formed the foundation of the penal code of India ; he upheld the liberty of the press, even when its attacks upon him personally were most viru- lent ; and he maintained the theory of the equality of Europeans and xiv SI':i,l':ci'I()NS I'ROM MACyVlIl^AV nalivcs before tlu- l;i\v. When he IclL liuli;i ;uul rclunicd to I'lnglaiul in 1H3S, he not only had restored the impaired fortunes of tlie Macaulay family hut had immensely raised his own reputation for ])raetieal slalesnianship and political saj^aeily. 'I'he years Ihal \vc have treated were the years of Maeaulay's political career: in the years that followed 1838 wo sec Macaulay definitely turninj; his ambitions from jjolitics to literature. He had indeed lirst drawn attention to himself by his writings, and his con- tributions to the great lidinbur}:;h Kaicoi:;)iita. . . . The materials for an amusing narrative are immense. J shall not be satisfied unless I jjroduce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies." In the opening words of the History itself he out- lines again the period he intends to cover : " I purpose to write the history of luigland from the accession of King James the Second down to a time which is within the memory of men still living." Although work on his History withdrew him more and more from public life, Macaulay enjoyed keenly the society of his intimate friends. He was always aminently a social being. In 1839 he had been elected a member of The Club, the lineal descendant of The C'lub of Johnson and his group, and with the company there assem- bled he enjoyed many hai^i^y Ji'Jurs- We have from Lord C'ailisle's journal entries showing how often Macaulay dined or breakfasted with his friends: "June 27, 1843. — I breakfasted with Hallam, John Russell, Macaulay, Everett, Van de Weyer, Mr. Hamilton, U.S., and Mahon. Never were such torrents of good talk as burst and sputtered over from Macaulay and Hallam." "February 12, 1849. — Breakfasted with Macaulay. There were Van de Weyer, Hallam, Charles Austin, Panizzi, (x)lonel 'J'hure, and Dicky Milnes." "May 25th [1849]. — Breakfasted with Rogers. . . . Macaulay was very severe on Cranmer." " October i ith [1849]. — [Dinner at Lord Carlisle's.] The evening went off very cosily and j)leasant!y, as must almost always hai)pen with Macaulay." " March 5th, 1850. — Dined at The Club. Dr. Holland in the chair. Lord Lansdowne, Bishop of xvi SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY London, Lord Mahon, Macaulay, Milman, Van de Weyer, I, David Dundas, Lord Harry Vane, Stafford O'Brien. . . . Macaulay's flow never ceased once during the four hours, but it is never overbearing." Even during the years when he was busy on his History, he found time to make important contributions to the Edinburgh Reviezv. His essay on Gladstone on Church and State appeared in the number for April, 1839 ; on Lord Clive, January, 1840 ; on Ranke's " History of the Popes," October, 1840 ; on Comic Dramatists, January, 1841 ; on Lord Holland, July, 1841 ; on Warren Hastings, October, 1841 ; on Frederick the Great, April, 1842 ; on Madame D'Arblay, January, 1843 ; on Addison, July, 1843 ; ^^d a second essay on Lord Chatham, October, 1844. The first volumes of his History appeared in the late autumn of 1848. Just before their appearance he wrote to his sister: "The state of my mind is this : when I compare my book with what I imagine history ought to be, I feel dejected and ashamed ; but when I compare it with some histories which have a high repute, I feel re- assured." These volumes won an immediate success. In addition to the bulletins from his English publishers, he received flattering reports of the popularity of the book in the United States : Harper's wrote him in the spring of 1849 announcing the sale of forty thousand' copies and predicting that within three months the number would reach the enormous total of two hundred thousand. " No work, of any kind," this publishing house wrote, " has ever so completely taken our whole country by storm." Macaulay comments humor- ously in some of his letters to his friend Ellis on his own growing fame : "At last I have attained true glory. As I walked through Fleet Street the day before yesterday, I saw a copy of Hume at a book-seller's window with the following label: ' Only £2 2s. Hume's " History of England," in eight volumes, highly valuable as an intro- duction to Macaulay.' " " I have seen the hippopotamus, both asleep and awake ; and I can assure you that, awake or asleep, he is the ugliest of the works of God. But you must hear of my triumphs. Thackeray swears that he was eye-witness and ear-witness of the proudest event of my life. Two damsels were just about to pass thaf door-way which we, on Monday, in vain attempted to enter, when I was pointed out to them. ' Mr. Macaulay ! ' cried the lovely pair. ' Is that Mr. Macaulay ? Never mind the hippopotamus.' And, having INTRODUCTION xvii paid a shilling to see Behemoth, they left him in the very moment at which he was about to display himself to them, in order to see — but spare my modesty." Honors now were freely offered to him. In November, 1848, he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow ; in the same year he was made a fellow of the Royal Society; in 1849 ^^ was offered the Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge ; in January, 1852, an attempt was made to gain him back to political life by the offer of a seat in the cabinet, but this he refused ; he was created a member of the Academies of Utrecht, Munich, and Turin, and, in 1853, a member of the Institute of France, and a Knight of the Prussian Order of Merit; in June, 1854, he was given the degree of Doctor of Civil Letters by Oxford, and was chosen presi- dent of the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh. In the meanwhile he had begun his work upon the succeeding volumes of his History. The record of day after day in his diary for 1849 begins with "My task," "Did my t^sk," etc. After 1853 he worked almost uninterruptedly upon his book, withdrawing even from those social relaxations which had delighted him for so many years. November 21, 1855, he entered in his diary the note: "I looked over and sent off the last twenty pages. My work is done, thank God ! and now for the result. On the whole I think that it cannot be very unfavorable." The date of publication was set for Monday, December 27th. The third and fourth volumes came up to the expectations aroused by the first two. The criticisms were uniformly favorable ; the sales were enormous. In England alone within a generation upwards of one hundred and forty thousand copies were sold ; in the United States " no book has ever had such a sale " wrote Everett, " except the Bible and one or two school-books of universal use " ; in foreign countries the sale was notably great, translations being made into German, Polish, Danish, Swedish, Italian, French, Dutch, Spanish, Hungarian, Russian, Bohemian, and Persian. His financial suc- cess was correspondingly noteworthy. He wrote in his journal for March 7, 1857: "Longman came, with a very pleasant announce- ment. He and his partners find that they are overflowing with money, and think that they cannot invest it better than by advancing to me — on the usual terms of course — part of what will be due to xviii SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY me in December. We agreed that they shall pay twenty thousand pounds into William's bank next week. What a sum to be gained by one edition of a book ! I may say, gained in one day. But that was harvest-day. The work had been near seven years in hand." Macaulay's health, which, up to the time he was fifty, had been most robust, had given unmistakable signs of weakening before the continual strain. As he began the third installment of his History, October i, 1856, he was forced to realize that it was improbable he would live to complete the design he had announced at the beginning. He bent every effort to finish the life of his great hero, William. In 1857 he was raised to the peerage. "I went, very low, to dinner," he notes in his diary for August 28th, " and had hardly begun to eat when a messenger came with a letter from Palmerston. An offer of a peerage ; the queen's pleasure already taken. I was very much surprised. Perhaps no such offer was ever made without the slightest solicitation, direct or indirect, to a man of humble origin and moderate fortune, who had long quitted public life. I had no hesitation about accepting, with many respectful and grateful expres- sions ; but God knows that the poor women at Delhi and Cawnpore are more in my thoughts than my coronet. It was necessary for me to choose a title off-hand. I determined to be Baron Macaulay of Rothley. I was born there ; I have lived much there ; I am named from the family which long had the manor ; my uncle was rector there." Macaulay did not live to finish even that part of the task he had set himself after he felt his strength failing. Through the month of December, 1859, his weakness became greater daily, resulting in a profound melancholy. An entry from his diary will show his condi- tion : "December, 19th. Still intense frost. I could hardly use my razor for the palpitation of the heart. I feel as if I were twenty years older since last Thursday — as if I were dying of old age. I am perfectly ready, and shall never be readier. A month more of such days as I have been passing of late would make me impatient to get to my little narrow crib, like a weary factory child." He died December 28th. January 9, i860, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the Poets' Corner, near the statue of Addison. The stone bears the following inscription : INTRODUCTION xix THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD MACAULAY Born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, October 25TH, 1800. Died at Holly Lodge, Campden Hill, December 28th, 1859. "His body is buried in peace, But his name liveth for evermore." II PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS Entering political life at thirty, during a period when partisan feel- ing was exceptionally bitter, Macaulay exposed himself to attacks from Tory pens and Tory tongues throughout his whole career. His statesmanship was reviled, his speeches scorned, his essays censured, his genius belittled. In all the range of criticism, however, no oppo- nent ever found a point of attack in Macaulay's character. He lived a blameless life in public and in private. Gladstone has well summed up his virtues by a categorical denial of faults : " Was he envious .-' Never. Was he servile .'' No. Was he insolent ? No. Was he prodi- gal ? No, Was he avaricious .-• No. Was he selfish } No. Was he idle ? The question is ridiculous. Was he false ? No ; but true as steel and transparent as crystal. Was he vain ? We hold that he was not. At every point in the ugly list he stands the trial ; and though in his history he judges mildly some sins of appetite or passion, there is no sign in his life, or in his remembered character, that he was compounding for what he was inclined to." A bachelor, Macaulay lavished upon his sisters and his sisters' children the affection which he might have conceived for a family of his own. When the project of a seat in the Indian Council came up, requiring residence in India for a term of years, he wrote to his sister, outlining the position and its difficulties and begging her to accompany him : " Whether the period of my exile shall be one of comfort, and, after the first shock, even of happiness, depends on you. If, as I expect, this offer shall be made to me, will you go with me ? I know what a sacrifice I ask of you. I know how many dear XX SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY and precious ties you must, for a time, sunder. I know that the splendor of the Indian Court, and the gayeties of that brilliant society of which you would be one of the leading personages, have no temptation for you. I can bribe you only by telling you that, if you will go with me, I will love you better than I love you now, if I can." His nephew and biographer bears personal witness to Macaulay's affection for children. " Uncle Tom " was an avuncular deity to a devoted group of nephews and nieces, who, all innocent of his fame and of the value of his time, carried him off to the Zoo, to the botanical gardens, or to the museums with them. His tales of mythical heroes put a new life into the statues or the paintings in the museums, and his descriptions of unknown lands lent a new interest to the giraffe and the hippopotamus. " He was, beyond all comparison, the best of playfellows," writes Trevelyan, " unrivaled in the invention of games, and never wearied of repeating them. He had an inexhaustible repertory of small dramas for the benefit of his nieces, in which he sustained an endless variety of parts with a skill that, at any rate, was sufficient for his audience. . . . He was never so happy as when he could spend an afternoon in taking his nieces and nephews a round of London sights, until, to use his favorite ex- pression, they ' could not drag one leg after another.' If he had been able to have his own way, the treat would have recurred at least twice a week. On these occasions we drove into London in time for a sumptuous midday meal, at which everything that we liked best was accompanied by oysters, caviare, and olives, some of which deli- cacies he invariably provided with the sole object of seeing us reject them with contemptuous disgust. Then off we set under his escort, in summer to the bears and lions ; in winter to the Panorama of Waterloo, to the Colosseum in Regent's Park, or to the enjoyment of the delicioys terror inspired by Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors. When the more attractive exhibitions had been exhausted by too frequent visits, he would enliven with his irrepressible fun the dreary propriety of the Polytechnic, or would lead us through the lofty corridors of the British Museum, making the statues live and the busts speak by the spirit and color of his innumerable anecdotes, paraphrased off-hand from the pages of Plutarch and Suetonius." The most astonishing characteristics of Macaulay's mind were an abnormal memory, a voracious and indiscriminating appetite coupled INTRODUCTION xxi with a most effective digestion, and an extraordinary capacity for work. The words '' appetite " and " digestion " are used advisedly. He devoured everything in the line of reading, from philosophy and the classics down to. indescribable trash and nonsense ; but when he wrote, he sifted the vast amount of material stored in his memory until only the needful facts for his subject remained. Re- markable tales are told of his memory. Even when a mere child, his memory " retained without effort the phraseology of the book which he had been last engaged on." He learned Scott's " Lay of the Last Minstrel " by heart and the greater part of " Marmion." His own childish compositions were, of course, wholly memorized. As a grown man, Macaulay was proud of his memory and somewhat impatient with men who confessed a poor one. He was always ready to accept a test : " ' Can you say your Archbishops of Cantei'bury ? ' ' Any fool,' said Macaulay, ' could say his Archbishops of Canterbury back- ward ' ; and he went off at a score, drawing breath only once in order to remark on the oddity of there having been both an Archbishop Bancroft and an Archbishop Bancroft, until Sir David stopped him at Cranmer." " His memory is prodigious," writes Charles Sumner, " surpassing anything I have ever known, and he pours out its stores with an instructive but dinning prodigality. He passes from the minutest dates of English history or biography to a discussion of the comparative merits of different ancient orators, and gives you whole strophes from the dramatists at will." This memory he stored with wide reading. The enumeration of his reading for a given period will give the best illustration of the fact. To his friend Ellis he writes just after his arrival in India : " My power of finding amusement without companions was pretty well tried on my voyage. I read in- satiably ; the ' Iliad ' and ' Odyssey,' Virgil, Horace, Caesar's ' Com- mentaries,' Bacon, ' De Augmentis,' Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, ' Don Quixote,' Gibbon's ' Rome,' Mill's ' India,' all the seventy vol- umes of Voltaire, Sismondi's ' History of France,' and the seven thick folios of the ' Biographia Britannica.' " Again, to Ellis in 1835, he writes : " I have cast up my reading account, and brought it to the end of the year 1835. • • • During the last thirteen months I have read ^schylus twice ; Sophocles twice ; Euripides once ; Pindar twice ; Callimachus ; Apollonius Rhodius ; Quintus Calaber ; Theoc- ritus twice ; Herodotus ; Thucydides ; almost all Xenophon's works ; xxii SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY almost all Plato ; Aristotle's ' Politics,' and a good deal of his ' Orga- non,' besides dipping elsewhere in him ; the whole of Plutarch's ' Lives ' ; about half of Lucian ; two or three books of Athenaeus ; Plautus twice ; Terence twice ; Lucretius twice ; Catullus ; Tibullus ; Propertius ; Lucan ; Statius ; Silius Italicus ; Livy ; Velleius Pater- culus ; Sallust ; Caesar; and, lastly, Cicero." Macaulay was not fond of society in general, although his position at times made heavy demands upon him. He was, however, extremely fond of the society of his few intimate friends and seized all oppor- tunities of meeting with them. All reports of Ms appearance in society, at dinners, etc., emphasize the free flow of his conversation, at which the Tories are frankly bored, whereas the Whigs duly marvel. For example, Lord Brougham writes : " He is absolutely renowned in society as the greatest bore that ever yet appeared. I have seen people come in from Holland House, breathless and knocked up, and able to say nothing but ' Oh dear, oh mercy.' What 's the matter ? being asked. ' Oh, Macaulay.' Then every one said, ' That accounts for it — you're lucky to be alive.' " And Wilson's descrip- tion of him as "an ugly, cross-made, splay-footed, shapeless little dumpling of a fellow " and the statement that " what he says is sub- stantially, of course, mere stuff and nonsense " are famous. But both these men were Tories and their Tory convictions had no little effect upon their opinions of a leading Whig orator. He looked different to Whigs. "Went to Bowood to dinner," writes Tom Moore; "Macaulay wonderful ; never, perhaps, was there combined so much talent with so marvellous a memory. To attempt to record his conversation one must be as wonderfully gifted with memory as himself." Hawthorne in his " English Note- Books " records the appearance and manner of Macaulay in 1856: "He was a man of large presence — a portly personage, gray-haired, but scarcely as yet aged ; and his face had a remarkable intelligence, not vivid, not sparkling, but conjoined with great quietude, — and if it gleamed or brightened at one time more than another, it was like the sheen over a broad surface of the sea. There was a somewhat careless self-possession, large and broad enough to be called dignity. ... I began to listen to his conversa- tion, but he did not talk a great deal, — contrary to his usual custom; for I am told he is apt to engross all the talk to himself." Trevelyan remarks that Macaulay dressed badly but not poorly, and recalls the great number of articles of apparel his uncle possessed. INTRODUCTION xxiii Grenville Murray in his " Personal Reminiscences " tells of one occa- sion when Macaulay, an undergraduate in Cambridge, received from one of the dons an invitation to dinner. Macaulay was about to dis- patch his letter of regrets when " some comrades burst into his room, and being informed of the correspondence pending, told Macaulay that ' he must accept.' As the invitation was for that very day, they further decided that Macaulay must be washed, scrubbed for the occa- sion, for in those days he was excessively negligent of his personal appearance. And the thing was done vi et armisy This carelessness in dress characterized Macaulay all his life. Macaulay was notably charitable in nature. It is recorded that one of the last acts of his life was to dictate a letter to a poor curate and inclose twenty-five pounds. When his works had made him famous, appeals for help reached him from all sources. His diary records his generosity : " H called. I gave him three guineas for his library subscription. I lay out very little money with so much satisfaction. For three guineas a year, I keep a very good, intelligent young fellow out of a great deal of harm and do him a great deal of good." " I have sent her [Mrs. Z ] twenty pounds ; making up what she has had from me within a few months to a hundred and thirty pounds." " I sent some money to Miss , a middling writer, whom I relieved some time ago. I have been giving too fast of late — forty pounds in four or five days. I must pull in a little." We can best sum up the personal side of Macaulay in the words of Frederic Harrison : " In one thing all agree — critics, public, friends, and opponents. Macaulay's was a life of purity, honor, courage, generosity, affection, was manly perseverance, almost with- out a stain or defect. . . . We know his nature and his career as well as we know any man's ; and we find it on every side wholesome, just, and right." Ill MACAULAY'S PROSE WORKS It would be an interesting and perhaps not wholly uninstructive task to collect in parallel columns a series of judgments of Macaulay's work, placing to the one side the eulogies, and to the other the cen- sures. Rarely have the critics who pretend to utter the dictates of taste been so confounded by their own diversity. On the one hand xxiv SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Augustine Birrell says : " Macaulay's style — his much-praised style — is ineffectual for the purpose of telling the truth about anything. It is splendid, but splendide metidox, and in Macaulay's case the style was the man." Morison declares : " The chief complaint — and it is sufficiently grave — is of a constant and pervading want of depth, either of thought or sentiment. ... He never has anything to say on the deeper aspects and relations of life." William Watson writes, " The vice of Macaulay's style is its unrelieved facility, its uniform velocity " ; and Frederic Harrison adds, " Macaulay is brilliant and emphatic, but we weary at last of his everlasting staccato on the trumpet." On the other hand we may set over against these opinions the words of Freeman: " First of all, Macaulay is a model of style — of style not merely as a kind of literary luxury, but of style in its practical aspect. . . . Every one who wishes to write clear and pure English will do well to become, not Macaulay's ape, but Macaulay's disciple. Every writer of English will do well, not only to study Macaulay's writings, but to bear them in his mind, and very often to ask himself, not whether his writing is like Macaulay's writing, but whether his writing is such as Macaulay would have approved." Hunt adds : ^' The one who denies his claim to be ranked among the first examples of English style, must see to it that he be prepared to maintain his difficult position. . . . There are but few representative writers of English whose style so happily avoids the extreme of pedantry on the one hand, and that of purism on the other." And in an excellent summary Miss Vida D. Scudder states : " He had a wonderful memory, unfailing industry, a vivid conception of the past and a unique style ; and he was thoroughly interested in his subject. He said the things that the most intelligent people thought, so elo- quently and incisively that they began at once to pride themselves on their own cleverness." Thus both in point of matter and of style do the critics differ. However certain critics may carp at Macaulay's work, it is certain that it has stood that one test which is the final test of worth, namely, the test of time. Macaulay has been dead now for more than half a century, but his essays and his History are still widely read and his prose has a notable place of honor in the realm of English letters. Any historian of English literature of the first half of the eighteenth century who did not give a prominent place to Macaulay would lay INTRODUCTION xxv himself open to the most severe criticism. He has won his way to a firm place in the hearts of readers of English the world over. " A recent traveler in Avistralia informs us," says John Morley, " that the three books which he found on every squatter's shelf, and which at last he knew before he crossed the threshold that he should be sure to find, were Shakespeare, the Bible, and Macaulay's Essays." The severest critics of Macaulay censure him most often for the lack of virtues which he never himself pretended to possess. Macaulay did not aim to be a subtle analyst, bringing out with delicate artistry the shadowy nuances of words. He was rather a typical plain blunt Englishman writing for people of his own type. He never tried to convey to his readers an appreciation of the inexplicable mysteries of life, of the depths of passion or the heights of self-sacrifice ; spec- ulative philosophy held no attractions for him. As Emerson has expressed it : " The brilliant Macaulay, who expresses the tone of the English governing classes of the day, explicitly teaches that good means good to eat, good to wear, material commodity ; that the glory of modern philosophy is its direction on ' fruit ' ; to yield economical inventions ; and that its merit is to avoid ideas and avoid morals." It is undoubtedly true that Macaulay acted and wrote as though life was to him an open book easily read and understood. Here again, Macaulay was the typical Englishman writing for the people of his own class. Half jestingly, he gave his ideal in writing his History as the creation of an account which should replace upon young ladies' tables the latest fashionable novel. His degree of success in reaching this ideal is nearly the measure of his degree of success in accom- plishing what he purposed to do in all his writing. The faults which the critics point out in his work are faults inherent in the nature of the man, are failures to do something which he never tried to do. As a typical Englishman writing for others of his class, Macaulay excels by the bluntness, directness, simplicity, and interest of his nar- rative. His work is instinct with manliness, with those virtues which we associate with the English character. The judgments are always moral judgments ; courage and patriotism breathe from every page ; deeds of excitement and daring appeal to him as to a boy and are recounted with all the enthusiasm of youth. With bold partisanship he tends to exaggerate the faults of his villains and the virtues of his heroes, and carries his narrative on with a never ceasing rush and a xxvi SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY never failing interest. History had never been written that way before. It is a curious and noteworthy fact that a group of workingmen moved a vote of thanks to Mr. Macaulay for' having written a history that they could understand and appreciate. The supreme merit of Macaulay's style is its clearness. As Carlyle may be called the Browning of prose, Macaulay is its Tennyson. The reader may go over a sentence or a paragraph to admire its structure, but he need never do so to learn its meaning. Macaulay himself was especially proud of this characteristic of his writing. His nephew relates his pleasure at hearing of a man who commented upon the fact that he had read the entire published volumes of the History and had been forced to reread only one sentence for its meaning. This clearness is obtained by the repeated use of the simplest type of paragraph development. Macaulay's normal paragraph begins with a sentence which, like a good signboard, points the way directly to all that follows in that paragraph. The first sentence is truly the topic sentence ; the following sentences in the paragraph are devel- opment, illustration, or proof of the statement given in the first. Macaulay was not only clear, but uniformly interesting. He was, in the first place, a natural-born story-teller, gifted with marvelous facility in the selection of the strikingly important facts in his narra- tive, and with the touch of genius in the selection of the phrases in which he presented these facts. And in the second place, he was a most careful artist in his writing, using all the devices of antithesis, balanced sentences, abrupt transitions, and climax to relieve the pos- sible monotony of his prose. In a study of the English paragraph, Edwin H. Lewis writes : " The popular impression that Macaulay is the best of paragraphers is probably not far from the truth. The great rhetorician bestowed unlimited pains upon his paragraphs, and no preceding writer began to equal him in conscious appreciation of the importance of that structure. His unity is rhetorical, rather than logical ; but as such it is nearly always unimpeachable. ... In the matter of proportion by bulk he is nearly always admirable. He knows his principal point, and it is on this that he enlarges. His emphasis-proportion is consciously paragraphic. He reveals very great variability in sentence-length, and drives home his main topic and his main conclusion in simple sentences. When he masses clauses INTRODUCTION xxvii it is to relieve each of emphasis and show the unity of the group as amplifying some previous terse generalization." Furthermore, he was a past master of the art of illustrative com- parison for the adornment of his theme. A thorough master of the literature of ancient Greece and Rome, and of the modern litera- ture of France, Italy, and England, and possessed of a miraculous memory, Macaulay drew upon his vast storehouse to enliven his nar- rative. One critic (Payn) accuses Macaulay of being " the writer who has done most, without I suppose intending it, to promote hypocrisy in literature. . . . His ' every schoolboy knows ' has frightened thou- sands into pretending to know authors with whom they have not even a bowing acquaintance." The presumption of intention in pro- moting hypocrisy is, of course, absurd ; Macaulay never throughout his whole life realized how much more familiar he was with the liter- atures of ancient and modem times than were his contemporaries. No writer has drawn with greater facility or better judgment upon these literatures for the illustration of his own themes. Another means by which he maintained continued interest in his narrative was by the use of anecdotes in the identification of each place, incident, or personage in his account. Says Morison : " He hardly ever mentions a site, a town, a castle, a manor-house, he rarely introduces even a subordinate character, without bringing in a picturesque anecdote, an association, a reminiscence out of his bound- less stores of knowledge, which sparkles like a gem on the texture of his narrative. Nothing can exceed the skill with which these little vignettes are thrown in, and they are incessant ; yet they never seem to be in the way, or to hinder the main effect." These little " vignettes " serve to attach to the place or the personage a unique and individual interest. The reader feels the warmth of an intimate acquaintance at once. Macaulay writes always as a special pleader, an attitude derived per- haps from his law training and his services in Parliament. He is argu- ing a case before the jury of his countrymen ; he frames his argument for their ears ; he adjusts his style to their order. He lays himself open to the charges of partisanship — " historiographer in chief to the Whigs, and the great prophet of Whiggery," James Thomson called him — and to the unpardonable sin (in the eyes of literary critics) of commonplaceness. He gained and has retained, however, xxviii SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the attention of a greater audience than any other English historian. He made the seventeen years of which he wrote the best-known period of English history. He created the historical essay, a new type in literature. If he was partisan, his partisanship lent eloquence and fervor to his language ; it did not materially affect the truth of his account. He wrote a new kind of history, a kind which has been brilliantly and, perhaps, more scientifically developed since his own day but which, in its essential characteristics, has not been bettered. He had the historian's gift of perspective, of seeing and presenting historical incidents in their proper mutual relation. He painted on a huge canvas and kept all parts of his picture in view at once. Above all, Macaulay was always supremely patriotic. He was an Englishman, conscious and proud of the greatness of his race and its traditions of political liberty. His essays and his History are both in- herently a testimony to the true fame ot England and of English political institutions. " He had," writes Herbert Paul, " an almost passionate belief in the progress of society and in the greatness of England." And another critic in somewhat similar strain declares that " with Macaulay the love of country was a passion. How he kindles at each stirring or plaintive memory in the annals he was so glad to record." So Macaulay is wholesome reading. He is not endowed with a sense of the mystery of things which tempts speculative philosophy ; he was blunt, direct, and plain rather than delicate and complex ; he used the eloquence of a partisan. With all these failings, however, he made a definite selected bit of the past alive for us to-day as no other English historian had done before him. In his short essay on History he set forth his ideals of how history should be written ; in his " History of England" — and, indeed, in his historical essays — he attempted to reach his own ideal. With infinite patience and labor he collated his materials and framed his narrative. His success was deserved. " Macaulay is absolutely unrivalled in the art of arranging and com- bining his facts, and of presenting in a clear and vigorous narrative the spirit of the epoch he treats," says McMaster, and with this judgment we can all agree. SELECTIONS FROM THE PROSE OF MACAULAY MILTON Towards the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, deputy keeper of the state papers, in the course of his researches among the presses of his office, met with a large Latin manu- script. With it were found corrected copies of the foreign despatches written by Milton while he filled the ofhce of Sec- retary, and several papers relating to the Popish Trials and the Rye-house Plot. The whole was wrapped up in an enve- lope, superscribed To Mr. Skinner, Merchant. On examina- tion, the large manuscript proved to be the long-lost Essay on the Doctrines of Christianity, which, according to Wood and Toland, Milton finished after the Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, it is well known, held the same political opinions with his illustrious friend. It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that he may have fallen under the suspicions of the Government during that persecu- tion of the Whigs which followed the dissolution of the Oxford parliament, and that, in consequence of a general seizure of his papers, this work may have been brought to the office in which it has been found. But whatever the adventures of the manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist that it is a genuine relic of the great poet, Mr. Sumner who was commanded by his Majesty to edit and translate the treatise, has acquitted himself of his task in a manner honourable to his talents and to his character. His version is not indeed very easy or elegant ; but it is entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity. His notes abound with 2 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY interesting quotations, and have the rare merit of really eluci- dating the text. The preface is evidently the work of a sensi- ble and candid man, firm in his own religious opinions, and tolerant towards those of others. The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton. It is, like all his Latin works, well written, though not exactly in the style of the prize essays of Oxford and Cambridge. There is no elaborate imitation of classical antiquity, no scrupu- lous purity, none of the ceremonial cleanness which character- ises the diction of our academical Pharisees. The author does not attempt to polish and brighten his composition into the Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. He does not in short sacrifice sense and spirit to pedantic refinements. The nature of his subject compelled him to use many words That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp. But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin were his mother tongue ; and, where he is least happy, his failure seems to arise from the carelessness of a native, not from the ignorance of a foreigner. We may apply to him what Denham with great felicity says of Cowley : "He wears the garb, but not the clothes of the ancients." Throughout the volume are discernible the traces of a power- ful and independent mind, emancipated from the influence of authority, and devoted to the search of truth. Milton professes to form his system from the Bible alone ; and his digest of scriptural texts is certainly among the best that have appeared. But he is not always so happy in his inferences as in his citations. Some of the heterodox doctrines which he avows seemed to have excited considerable amazement, particularly his Arian- ism, and his theory on the subject of polygamy. Yet we can scarcely conceive that any person could have read the Pa?'adise Lost without suspecting him of the former ; nor do we think that any reader, acquainted with the history of his life, ought to be much startled at the latter. The opinions which he has MILTON 3 expressed respecting the nature of the Deity, the eternity of matter, and the observation of the Sabbath, might, we think, have caused more just surprise. But we will not go into the discussion of these points. The book, were it far more orthodox or far more heretical than it is, would not much edify or corrupt the present generation. The men of our time are not to be converted or perverted by quartos, A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Poptili to the dust and silence of the upper shelf. The name of its author, and the remarkable circumstances attending its publica- tion, will secure to it a certain degree of attention. For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing- room, and a few columns in every magazine ; and it will then, to borrow the elegant language of the play-bills, be withdrawn to make room for the forthcoming novelties. We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the interest, transient as it may be, which this work has excited. The dexterous Capuchins never choose to preach on the life and miracles of a saint, until they have awakened the devotional feelings of their auditors by exhibiting some relic of him, a thread of his garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop of his blood. On the same principle, we intend to take advantage of the late inter- esting discovery, and, while this memorial of a great and good man is still in the hands of all, to say something of his moral and intellectual qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will the severest of our readers blame us if, on an occasion like the present, we turn for a short time from the topics of the day, to commemorate, in all love and reverence, the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the statesman, the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the champion and the martyr of English liberty. It is by his poetry that Milton is best known ; and it is of his poetry that we wish first to speak. By the general suffrage of the civilised world, his place has been assigned among the greatest masters of the art. His detractors, however, though outvoted, have not been silenced. There are many critics, 4 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY and some of great name, who contrive in the same breath to extol the poems and to decry the poet. The works they acknowledge, considered in themselves, may be classed among the noblest productions of the human mind. But they will not allow the author to rank with those great men who, born in the infancy of civilisation, supplied, by their own powers, the want of instruction, and, though destitute of models themselves, bequeathed to posterity models which defy imitation. Milton, it is said, inherited what his predecessors created ; he lived in an enlightened age ; he received a finished education, and we must therefore, if we would form a just estimate of his powers, make large deductions in consideration of these advantages. We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with more unfavourable circumstances than Milton. He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he had not been born "an age too late." For this notion Johnson has thought fit to make him the butt of much clumsy ridicule. The poet, we believe, understood the nature of his art better than the critic. He knew that his poetical genius derived no advantage from the civilisa- tion which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired ; and he looked back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple words and vivid impressions. We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry almost neces- sarily declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that the most wonder- ful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilised age. We cannot understand why those who believe in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception. Surely the uniformity of the phaenomenon indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause. The fact is, that common observers reason from the prog- ress of the experimental sciences to that of imitative arts. The MILTON 5 improvement of the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more in separating and combining them. Even when a system has been formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily surpass them in actual attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet's little dialogues on Political Economy could teach Montague or Walpole many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely apply- ing himself for a few years to mathematics, learn more than the great Newton knew after half a century of study and meditation. But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with sculp- ture. Still less is it thus with poetry. The progress of refine- ment rarely supplies these arts with better objects of imitation. It may indeed improve the instruments which are necessary to the mechanical operations of the musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like indi- viduals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised people is poetical. This change in the language of men is partly the cause and partly the effect of a corresponding change in the nature of their intellectual operations, of a change by which science gains and poetry loses. Generalisation is necessary to the advance- ment of knowledge ; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems. They give us vague phrases instead of images, and 6 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY personified qualities instead of men. They may be better able to analyse human nature than their predecessors. But analysis is not the business of the poet. His office is to portray, not to dissect. He may believe in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury ; he may refer all human actions to self-interest, like Helvetius ; or he may never think about the matter at all. His creed on such subjects will no more influence his poetry, properly so called, than the- notions which a painter may have conceived respecting the lachrymal glands, or the circulation of the blood will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes of his Aurora. If Shakespeare had written a book on the motives of human actions, it is by no means certain that it would have been a good one. It is extremely improbable that it would have con- tained half so much able reasoning on the subject as is to be found in the Fable of the Bees. But could Mandeville have created an lago } Well as he knew how to resolve characters into their elements, would he have been able to combine those elements in such a manner as to make up a man, a real, living, individual man .? Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we mean not all writing in verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition excludes many metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to. produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colours. Thus the greatest of poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the vigour and felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on account of the just notion which they convey of the art in which he excelled : As the imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. MILTON 7 These are the fruits of the " fine frenzy " which he ascribes to the poet — a fine frenzy doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry ; but it is the truth of madness. The reasonings are just ; but the premises are false. After the first suppositions have been made, everything ought to be con- sistent ; but those first suppositions require a degree of credu- lity which almost amounts to a partial and temporary derange- ment of the intellect. Hence of all people children are the most imaginative. They abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to their mental eye produces on them the effect of reality. No man, whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Ham- let or Lear, as a little girl is affected by the story of poor Red Riding-hood. She knows that it is all false, that wolves can- not speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her knowledge she believes ; she weeps ; she trembles ; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the despotism of the imagination over uncultivated minds. In a rude state of society men are children with a greater variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society that we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its highest perfection. In an enlightened age there will be much intelli- gence, much science, much philosophy, abundance of just clas- sification and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good ones ; but little poetry. Men will judge and compare ; but they will not create. They will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and to a certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able to conceive the effect which poetry produced on their ruder an- cestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The Greek Rhapsodists, according to Plato, could scarce recite Homer without falling into convulsions. The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping knife while he shouts his death-song. The power which the ancient bards of Wales and Germany exer- cised over their auditors seems to modern readers almost 8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY miraculous. Such feelings are very rare in a civilized com- munity, and most rare among those who participate most in its improvements. They linger longest amongst the peasantry. Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a magic lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body. And, as the magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its purpose most completely in a dark age. As the light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of certainty become more and more definite, and the shades of probability more and more distinct, the hues and lineaments of the phantoms which the poet calls up grow fainter and fainter. We cannot unite the incompatible advantages of reality and deception, the clear discernment of truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction. He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet must first become a little child, he must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance to him. His difficulties will be proportioned to his proficiency in the pursuits which are fashionable among his contempo- raries ; and that proficiency will in general be proportioned to the vigour and activity of his mind. And it is well if, after all his sacrifices and exertions, his works do not resemble a lisp- ing man or a modern ruin. We have seen in our own time great talents, intense labour, and long meditation, employed in this struggle against the spirit of the age, and employed, we will not say absolutely in vain, but with dubious success and feeble applause. If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over greater difficulties than Milton. He received a learned educa- tion : he was a profound and elegant classical scholar : he had studied all the mysteries of Rabbinical literature : he was inti- mately acquainted with every language of modern Europe, from which either pleasure or information was then to be derived. He was perhaps the only great poet of later times who has been MILTON 9 distinguished by the excellence of his Latin verse. The genius of Petrarch was scarcely of the first order ; and his poems in the ancient language, though much praised by those who have never read them, are wretched compositions. Cowley, with all his admirable wit and ingenuity, had little imagination : nor indeed do we think his classical diction comparable to that of Milton. The authority of Johnson is against us on this point. But Johnson had studied the bad writers of the middle ages till he had become utterly insensible to the Augustan elegance, and was as ill qualified to judge between two Latin styles as a habitual drunkard to set up for a wine-taster. Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched, costly, sickly imitation of that which elsewhere may be found in healthful and spontaneous perfection. The soils on which this rarity flourishes are in general as ill suited to the produc- tion of vigorous native poetry as the flower-pots of a hot-house to the growth of oaks. That the author of the Paradise Lost should have written the Epistle to Manso was truly wonderful. Never before were such marked originality and such exquisite mimicry found together. Indeed in all the Latin poems of Milton the artificial manner indispensable to such works is admirably preserved, while, at the same time, his genius gives to them a peculiar charm, an air of nobleness and freedom, which distinguishes them from all other writings of the same class. They remind us of the amusements of those angelic warriors who composed the cohort of Gabriel : About him exercised heroic games The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads Celestial armoury, shields, helms, and spears Hung high, with diamond flaming, and with gold. We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the genius of Milton ungirds itself, without catching a glimpse of the gorgeous and terrible panoply which it is accustomed to wear. The strength of his imagination triumphed over every obstacle. So intense and ardent was the fire of his mind, that it not only was not suffocated beneath the weight of fuel, but lO SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY penetrated the whole superincumbent mass with its own heat and radiance. It is not our intention to attempt anything Hke a complete examination of the poetry of Milton. The public has long been agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, the incomparable harmony of the numbers, and the excellence of that style, which no rival has been able to equal, and no paro- dist to degrade, "which displays in their highest perfection the idiomatic powers of the English tongue, and to which every ancient and every modern language has contributed something of grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast field of criticism on which we are entering, innumerable reapers have already put their sickles. Yet the harvest is so abundant that the negligent search of a straggling gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf. The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton is the extreme remoteness of the associations by means of which it acts on the reader. Its effect is produced, not so much by what it expresses, as by what it suggests ; not so much by the ideas which it directly conveys, as by other ideas which are connected with them. He electrifies the mind through con- ductors. The most unimaginative man must understand the Iliad. Homer gives him no choice, and requires from him no exertion, but takes the whole upon himself, and sets the images in so clear a light, that it is impossible to be blind to them. The works of Milton cannot be comprehended or enjoyed, un- less the mind of the reader co-operate with that of the writer. He does not paint a finished picture, or play for a mere pas- sive listener. He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the outline. He strikes the keynote, 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 writ- ings of Milton, it is most appropriate. 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 MILTON I I more in his words than in other words. But 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 existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up their dead. Change the structure of the sen- tence ; substitute one synonym for another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power : and he who should then hope to conjure with it would find 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 translate into his own diction some parts of the Paradise Lost, is a remarkable instance of this. In support of these observations we may remark, that scarcely any passages in the poems of Milton are more generally known or more frequently repeated than those which are little more than muster-rolls of names. They are not always more appro- priate or more melodious than other names. Every one of them is the first link in a long chain of associated ideas. Like the dwelling-place of our infancy revisited in manhood, like the song of our country heard in a strange land, they produce upon us an effect wholly independent of their intrinsic value. One transports us back to a remote period of history. Another places us among the novel scenes and manners of a distant region. A third evokes all the dear classical recollections of childhood, the schoolroom, the dog-eared Virgil, the holiday, and the prize. A fourth brings before us the splendid phan- toms of chivalrous romance, the trophied lists, the embroidered housings, the quaint devices, the haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the achievements of enamoured knights, and the smiles of rescued princesses. In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar manner more happily displayed than in the Allegro and the Penseroso. It is impossible to conceive that the mechanism of language can be brought to a more exquisite degree of perfection. These poems differ from others, as attar of roses differs from ordinary rose 12 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY water, the close packed essence from the thin diluted mixture. They are indeed not so much poems, as collections of hints, from each of which the reader is to make out a poem for him- self. Every epithet is a text for a stanza. The Coinus and the Samson Agoiiistes are works which, though of very different merit, offer some marked points of resemblance. Both are lyric poems in the form of plays. There are perhaps no two kinds of composition so essentially dissimilar as the drama and the ode. The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken. The effect is as un- pleasant as that which is produced on the stage by the voice of a prompter or the entrance of a scene-shifter. Hence it was, that the tragedies of Byron were his least successful perform- ances. They resemble those pasteboard pictures invented by the friend of children, Mr. Newbery, in which a single moveable head goes round twenty different bodies, so that the same face looks out upon us successively, from the uniform of a hussar, the furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. In all the characters, patriots and tyrants, haters and lovers, the frown and sneer of Harold were discernible in an instant. But this species of egotism, though fatal to the drama, is the inspiration of the ode. It is the part of the lyric poet to abandon himself, without reserve, to his own emotions. Between these hostile elements many great men have en- deavoured to effect an amalgamation, but never with complete success. The Greek Drama, on the model of which the Samson was written, sprang from the Ode. The dialogue was ingrafted, on the chorus, and naturally partook of its character. The genius of the greatest of the Athenian dramatists co-operated with the circumstances under which tragedy made its first ap- pearance, ^schylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet. In his time, the Greeks had far more intercourse with the East than in the days of Homer ; and they had not yet acquired that immense superiority in war, in science, and in the arts, which, MILTON 1 3 in the following generation, led them to treat the Asiatics with contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus it should seem that they still looked up, with the veneration of disciples, to Eg}'pt and Assyria. At this period, accordingly, it was natural that the literature of Greece should be tinctured with the Orien- tal style. And that style, we think, is discernible in the works of Pindar and yEschylus. The latter often reminds us of the Hebrew writers. The book of Job, indeed, in conduct and dic- tion, bears a considerable resemblance to some of his dramas. Considered as plays, his works are absurd ; considered as choruses, they are above all praise. If, for instance, we exam- ine the address of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon on his return, or the description of the seven Argive chiefs, by the principles of dramatic writing, we shall instantly condemn them as mon- strous. But if we forget the characters, and think only of the poetry, we shall admit that it has never been surpassed in energy and magnificence. Sophocles made the Greek Drama as dramatic as was consistent with its original form. His por- traits of men have a sort of similarity ; but it is the similarity not of a painting, but of a bas-relief. It suggests a resemblance ; but it does not produce an illusion. Euripides attempted to carry the reform further. But it was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any powers. Instead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what was excellent. He substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for good odes. Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly, much more highly than, in our opinion, Euripides deserved. Indeed the caresses which this partiality leads our countryman to bestow on "sad Electra's poet," sometimes remind us of the beautiful Queen of Fairy-land kissing the long ears of Bottom. At all events, there can be no doubt that this veneration for the Athenian, whether just or not, was injurious to the Samson Agonistcs. Had Milton taken yEschylus for his model, he would have given himself up to the lyric inspiration, and poured out profusely all the treasures of his mind, without bestowing a thought on those dramatic proprieties which the 14 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY nature of the work rendered it impossible to preserve. In the attempt to reconcile things in their own nature inconsistent he has failed, as every one else must have failed. We cannot identify ourselves with the characters, as in a good play. We cannot identify ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. The conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed, neutralise each other. We are by no means insensible to the merits of this celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of the style, the graceful and pathetic solemnity of the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric melody which gives so striking an effect to the choral passages. But we think it, we confess, the least successful effort of the genius of Milton. The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian Masque, as the Samson is framed on the model of the Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the noblest performance of the kind which exists in any language. It is as far superior to the Faithful Shep- herdess as the Faithful Shepherdess is to the Aininta, or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton that he had here no Euripides to mislead him. He understood and loved the literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for it the same veneration which he entertained for the remains of Athenian and Roman poetry, consecrated by so many lofty and endearing recollections. The faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to which his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style ; but false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire ; but she turned with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing the severest test of the crucible. Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction which he afterwards neglected in the Samsoji. He made his Masque what it ought to be, essentially lyrical, and dramatic only in semblance. He has not attempted a fruitless struggle against a defect inherent in the nature of that species of composition ; MILTON 15 and he has therefore succeeded, wherever success was not im- possible. The speeches must be read as majestic sohloquies ; and he who so reads them will be enraptured with their elo- quence, their sublimity, and their music. The interruptions of the dialogue, however, impose a constraint upon the writer, and break the illusion of the reader. The finest passages are those which are lyric in form as well as in spirit. " I should much commend," says the excellent Sir Henry Wotton in a letter to Milton, "the tragical part if the lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your songs and odes, whereunto, I must plainly confess to you, I have seen yet noth- ing parallel in our language." The criticism was just. It is when Milton escapes from the shackles of the dialogue, when he is discharged from the labour of uniting two incongruous styles, when he is at liberty to indulge his choral raptures without reserve, that he rises even above himself. Then, like his own good Genius bursting from the earthly form and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth in celestial freedom and beauty ; he seems to cry exultingly, " Now my task is smoothly done, I can fly or I can run," to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia, which the musky winds of the zephyr scatter through the cedared alleys of the Hesperides. There are several of the minor poems of Milton on which we would willingly make a few remarks. Still more willingly would we enter into a detailed examination of that admirable poem, the Paradise Regained, which, strangely enough, is scarcely ever mentioned except as an instance of the blindness of the parental affection which men of letters bear towards the offspring of their intellects. That Milton was mistaken in pre- ferring this work, excellent as it is, to the Paradise Lost, we readily admit. But we are sure that the superiority of the Paradise Lost to the Paradise Regained is not more decided, i6 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY than the superiority of the Paradise Regained to every poem which has since made its appearance. Our hmits, however, prevent us from discussing the point at length. We hasten on to that extraordinary production which the general suffrage of critics has placed in the highest class of human compositions. The only poem of modern times which can be compared with the Paradise Lost is the Divine Comedy. The subject of Milton, in some ^points, resembled that of Dante ; but he has treated it in a widely different manner. We cannot, we think, better illustrate our opinion respecting our own great poet, than by contrasting him with the father of Tuscan literature. The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante, as the hier- oglyphics of Egypt differed from the picture-writing of Mexico. The images which Dante employs speak for themselves ; they stand simply for what they are. Those of Milton have a signifi- cation which is often discernible only to the initiated. Their value depends less on what they directly represent than on what they remotely suggest. However strange, however grotesque, may be the appearance which Dante undertakes to describe, he never shrinks from describing it. He gives us the shape, the colour, the sound, the smell, the taste ; he counts the numbers ; he measures the size. His similes are the illustrations of a traveller. Unlike those of other poets, and especially of Milton, they are introduced in a plain, business-like manner ; not for the sake of any beauty in the objects from which they are drawn ; not for the sake of any ornament which they may impart to the poem ; but simply in order to make the meaning of the writer as clear to the reader as it is to himself. The ruins of the precipice which led from the sixth to the seventh circle of hell were like those of the rock which fell into the Adige on the south of Trent. The cataract of Phlegethon was like that of Aqua Cheta at the monastery of St. Benedict. The place where the heretics were confined in burning tombs resembled the vast cemetery of Aries. Now let us compare with the exact details of Dante the dim intimations of Milton. We will cite a few examples. The MILTON 17 English poet has never thought of taking the measure of Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. In one passage the fiend lies stretched out huge in length, floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born enemies of Jove, or to the sea-monster which the mariner mistakes for an island. When he addresses himself to battle against the guardian angels, he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas : his stature reaches the sky. Contrast with these descriptions the lines in which Dante has described the gigantic spectre of Nimrod. " His face seemed to me as long and as broad as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome ; and his other limbs were in proportion ; so that the bank, which concealed him from the waist downwards, nevertheless showed so much of him, that three tall Germans would in vain have attempted to reach to his hair." We are sensible that we do no justice to the admirable style of the Florentine poet. But Mr. Gary's translation is not at hand ; and our version, however rude, is sufficient to illustrate our meaning. Once more, compare the lazar-house in the eleventh book of the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge in in- distinct but solemn and tremendous imagery. Despair hurrying from couch to couch to mock the wretches with his attendance, Death shaking his dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, delaying to strike. What says Dante.? "There was such a moan there as there would be if all the sick who, between July and September, are in the hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan swamps, and of Sardinia, were in one pit to- gether ; and such a stench was issuing forth as is wont to issue from decayed limbs." We will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of set- tling precedency between two such writers. Each in his own department is incomparable ; and each, we may remark, has wisely, or fortunately, taken a subject adapted to exhibit his peculiar talent to the greatest advantage. The Divine Comedy is a personal narrative. Dante is the eye-witness and ear-witness of that which he relates. He is the very man who has heard 1 8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the tormented spirits crying out for the second death, who has read the dusky characters on the portal within which there is no hope, who has hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, who has fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of Barbariccia and Draghignazzo. His own hands have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer. His own feet have chmbed the mountain of expiation. His own brow has been marked by the purifying angel. The reader would throw aside such a tale in incredulous disgust, unless it were told with the strongest air of veracity, with a sobriety even in its horrors, with the greatest precision and multiplicity in its details. The narrative of Milton in this respect differs from that of Dante, as the adventures of Amadis differ from those of Gulliver. The author of Amadis would have made his book ridiculous if he had introduced those minute particulars which give such a charm to the work of Swift, the nautical observations, the affected delicacy about names, the offlcial documents tran- scribed at full length, and all the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the court, springing out of nothing, and tending to nothing. We are not shocked at being told that a man who lived, nobody knows when, saw many very strange sights, and we can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of the romance. But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, resident at Rotherhithe, tells us of pygmies and giants, flying islands, and philosophising horses, nothing but such circumstantial touches could produce for a single moment a deception on the imagination. Of all the poets who have introduced into their works the agency of supernatural beings, Milton has succeeded best. Here Dante decidedly yields to him : and as this is a point on which many rash and ill-considered judgments have been pronounced, we feel inclined to dwell on it a little longer. The most fatal error which a poet can possibly commit in the man- agement of his machinery, is that of attempting to philosophise too much. Milton has been often censured for ascribing to spirits many functions of which spirits must be incapable. But these MILTON 19 objections, though sanctioned by eminent names, originate, we venture to say, in profound ignorance of the art of poetry. What is spirit ? What are our own minds, the portion of spirit with which we are best acquainted ? We observe certain phaenomena. We cannot explain them into material causes. We therefore infer that there exists something which is not material. But of this something we have no idea. We can define it only by negatives. We can reason about it only by symbols. We use the word ; but we have no image of the thing ; and the business of poetry is with images, and not with words. The poet uses words indeed ; but they are merely the instruments of his art, not its objects. They are the materials which he is to dispose in such a manner as to present a picture to the mental eye. And if they are not so disposed, they are no more entitled to be called poetry than a bale of canvas and a box of colours to be called a painting. Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multi- tude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle. The first inhabitants of Greece, there is reason to believe, worshipped one invisible Deity. But the necessity of having something more definite to adore produced, in a few centuries, the innumerable crowd of Gods and Goddesses. In like manner the ancient Persians thought it impious to exhibit the Creator under a human form. Yet even these transferred to the Sun the worship which, in speculation, they considered due only to the Supreme Mind. The history of the Jews is the record of a continued struggle between pure Theism, sup- ported by the most terrible sanctions, and the strangely fasci- nating desire of having some visible and tangible object of adoration. Perhaps none of the secondary causes which Gibbon has assigned for the rapidity with which Christianity spread over the world, while Judaism scarcely ever acquired a proselyte, operated more powerfully than this feeling. God, the uncre- ated, the incomprehensible, the invisible, attracted few worship- pers. A philosopher might admire so noble a conception ; but 20 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the crowd turned away in disgust from words which presented no image to their minds. It was before Deity embodied in a human form, walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of the Synagogue, and the doubts of the Academy, and the pride of the Portico, and the fasces of the Lictor, and the swords of thirty legions, were humbled in the dust. Soon after Christi- anity had achieved its triumph, the principle which had assisted it began to corrupt it. It became a new Paganism. Patron saints assumed the offices of household gods. St. George took the place of Mars. St. Elmo consoled the mariner for the loss of Castor and Pollux. The Virgin Mother and Cecilia suc- ceeded to Venus and the Muses. The fascination of sex and loveliness was again joined to that of celestial dignity ; and the homage of chivalry was blended with that of religion. Re- formers have often made a stand against these feelings ; but never with more than apparent and partial success. The men who demolished the images in cathedrals have not always been able to demolish those which were enshrined in their minds. It would not be difficult to show that in politics the same rule holds good. Doctrines, we are afraid, must generally be embodied before they can excite a strong public feeling. The multitude is more easily interested for the most unmeaning badge, or the most insignificant name, than for the most important principle. From these considerations, we infer that no poet, who should affect that metaphysical accuracy for the want of which Milton has been blamed, would escape a disgraceful failure. Still, how- ever, there was another extreme which, though far less danger- ous, was also to be avoided. The imaginations of men are in a great measure under the control of their opinions. The most exquisite art of poetical colouring can produce no illusion, when it is employed to represent that which is at once perceived to be incongruous and absurd. Milton wrote in an age of philoso- phers and theologians. It was necessary, therefore, for him to abstain from giving such a shock to their understanding as MILTON 21 might break the charm which it was his object to throw over their imaginations. This is the real explanation of the indis- tinctness and inconsistency with which he has often been reproached. Dr. Johnson acknowledges that it was absolutely necessary that the spirit should be clothed with material forms. " But," says he, " the poet should have secured the consistency of his system by keeping immateriality out of sight, and seducing the reader to drop it from his thoughts." This is easily said ; but what if Milton could not seduce his readers to drop im- materiality from their thoughts ? What if the contrary opinion had taken so full a possession of the minds of men as to leave- no room even for the half belief which poetry requires .'' Such we suspect to have been the case. It was impossible for the poet to adopt altogether the material or the immaterial system. He therefore took his stand on the debatable ground. He left the whole in ambiguity. He has doubtless, by so doing, laid himself open to the charge of inconsistency. But, though philosophically in the wrong, we cannot but believe that he was poetically in the right. This task, which almost any other writer would have found impracticable, was easy to him. The peculiar art which he possessed of communicating his meaning circuitously through a long succession of associated ideas, and of intimating more than he expressed, enabled him to disguise those incongruities which he could not avoid. Poetry which relates to the beings of another world ought to be at once mysterious and picturesque. That of Milton is so. That of Dante is picturesque indeed beyond any that ever was written. Its effect approaches to that produced by the pencil or the chisel. But it is picturesque to the exclusion of all mystery. This is a fault on the right side, a fault inseparable from the plan of Dante's poem, which, as we have already observed, rendered the utmost accuracy of description necessary. Still it is a fault. The supernatural agents excite an interest ; but it is not the interest which is proper to supernatural agents. We feel that we could talk to the ghosts and daemons, without any emotion of unearthly awe. We could, like Don Juan, ask 22 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY them to supper, and eat heartily in their company. Dante's angels are good men with wings. His devils are spiteful ugly executioners. His dead men are merely living men in strange situations. The scene which passes between the poet and Farinata is justly celebrated. Still, Farinata in the burning tomb is exactly what Farinata would have been at an atito da f(f. Nothing can be more touching than the first interview of Dante and Beatrice. Yet what is it, but a lovely woman chiding, with sweet austere composure, the lover 'for whose affection she is grateful, but whose vices she reprobates ? The feelings which give the passage its charm would suit the streets of Florence as well as the summit of the Mount of Purgatory. The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all other writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonderful creations. They are not metaphysical abstractions. They are not wicked men. They are not ugly beasts. They have no horns, no tails, none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso and Klopstock. They have just enough in common with human nature to be intelli- gible to human beings. Their characters are, like their forms, marked by a certain dim resemblance to those of men, but exag- gerated to gigantic dimensions, and veiled in mysterious gloom. Perhaps the gods and daemons of .^schylus may best bear a comparison with the angels and devils of Milton. The style of the Athenian had, as we have remarked, something of the Oriental character ; and the same peculiarity may be traced in his mythology. It has nothing of the amenity and elegance which we generally find in the superstitions of Greece. All is rugged, barbaric, and colossal. The legends of ^Fschylus seem to harmonise less with the fragrant groves and graceful porticoes in which his countrymen paid their vows to the God of Light and Goddess of Desire, than with those huge and grotesque labyrinths of eternal granite in which Egypt enshrined her mystic Osiris, or in which Hindustan still bows down to her seven-headed idols. His favourite gods are those of the elder generation, the sons of heaven and earth, compared with whom Jupiter himself was a stripling and an upstart, the MILTON 23 gigantic Titans, and the inexorable Furies. Foremost among his creations of this class stands Prometheus, half iiend, half redeemer, the friend of man, the sullen and implacable enemy of Heaven. Prometheus bears undoubtedly a considerable re- semblance to the Satan of Milton. In both we find the same impatience of control, the same ferocity, the same uncon- querable 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 too much depressed and agitated. His resolution seems to de- pend on the knowledge which he possesses 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. Amidst agonies which cannot be con- ceived without horror, he deliberates, resolves, and even exults. Against the sword of Michael, against the thunder of Jehovah, against the flaming lake, and the marl burning with solid fire, against the prospect of an eternity of uninter- mitted misery, his spirit bears up unbroken, resting on its own innate energies, requiring no support from anything external, nor even from hope itself. To return for a moment to the parallel which we have been attempting to draw between Milton and Dante, we would add that the poetry of these great men has in a considerable degree taken its character from their moral qualities. They are not egotists. They rarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on their readers. They have nothing in common with those modern beggars for fame, who extort a pittance from the compassion of the inexperienced by exposing the nakedness and sores of their minds. Yet it would be difficult to name two writers whose works have been more completely, though undesignedly, coloured by their personal feelings. The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness of spirit : that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In 24 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY every line of the Divine Comedy we discern the asperity which is produced by pride strugghng with misery. There is perhaps no work in the world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. 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 circumstances. It was from within. Neither love nor glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor the hope of heaven could dispel it. "It turned every consolation and every pleasure into its own nature. It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense bitterness is said to have been perceptible even in its honey. His mind was, in the noble language of the Hebrew poet, " a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and where the light was as darkness." The gloom of his character discolours all the passions of men, and all the face of nature, and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers of Paradise 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 woeful stare of the eye, the sullen and con- temptuous curve of the lip, and doubt that they belong 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 ambition and in love. He had survived his health and his sight, the comforts of his home, and the prosperity of his party. Of the great men by whom he had been distinguished at his entrance into life, some had been taken away from the evil to come ; some had carried into foreign climates their unconquerable hatred of oppression ; some were pining in dungeons ; and some had poured forth their blood on scaffolds. Venal and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pander in the style of a bellman, were now the favourite writers of the Sovereign and of the public. It was a loathsome herd, which could be compared to nothing so fitly as to the rabble of Comus, grotesque monsters, half bestial, half human, dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling in obscene MILTON 25 dances. Amidst these that fair 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 rout of Satyrs and Goblins. If ever despondency and asperity could be excused in any man, they might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor pro- scription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps stern ; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such 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 disgraced, 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 gen- eral 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 Theocritus nor Ariosto had a finer or a more healthful sense of the pleasant- ness of external objects, or loved better to luxuriate amidst sunbeams and flowers, the songs of nightingales, the juice of summer fruits, and the coolness of shady fountains. His con- ception 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 fireside. His poetry reminds 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 vergfe of the avalanche. 26 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of Milton may be found in all his works ; but it is most strongly displayed in the Sonnets. Those remarkable poems have been undervalued by critics who have not understood their nature. They have no epi- grammatic point. There is none o5 the ingenuity of Filicaja in the thought, none of the hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style. They are simple but majestic records of the feel- ings of the poet- as little tricked out for the public eye as his diary would have been. A victory, an unexpected attack upon the city, a momentary fit of depression or exultation, a jest thrown out against one of his books, a dream which for a short time restored to him that beautiful face over which the grave had closed for ever, led him to musings, which without effort shaped themselves into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity of style which characterise these little pieces remind us of the Greek Anthology, or perhaps still more of the Collects of the English Liturgy. The noble poem on the Massacres of Piedmont is strictly a collect in verse. The Sonnets are more or less striking, according as the occasions which gave birth to them are more or less interesting. But they are, almost without exception, dignified by a sobriety and greatness of mind to which we know not where to look for a parallel. It would, indeed, be scarcely safe to draw any decided inferences as to the character of a writer from passages directly egotistical. But the qualities which we have ascribed to Milton, though perhaps most strongly marked in those parts of his works which treat of his personal feelings, are distinguish- able in every page, and impart to all his writings, prose and poetry, English, Latin, and Italian, a strong family likeness. His public conduct was such as was to be expected from a man of a spirit so high and of an intellect so powerful. He lived at one of the most memorable eras in the history of man- kind, at the very crisis of the great conflict between Oromasdes and Arimanes, liberty and despotism, reason and prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single generation, for no single land. The destinies of the human race were staked on MILTON 27 the same cast with the freedom of the English people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty principles which have since worked their way into the depths of the American forests, which have roused Greece from the slavery and degradation of two thousand years, and which, from one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, and loosed the knees of the oppressors with an unwonted fear. Of those principles, then struggling for their infant existence, Milton was the most devoted and eloquent literary champion. We need not say how much we admire his public conduct. But we cannot disguise from ourselves that a large portion of his countrymen still think it unjustifiable. The civil war, in- deed, has been more discussed, and is less understood, than any event in English history. The friends of liberty laboured under the disadvantage of which the lion in the fable com- plained so bitterly. Though they were the conquerors, their enemies were the painters. As a body, the Roundheads had done their utmost to decry and ruin literature ; and literature was even with them, as, in the long-run, it always is with its enemies. The best book on their side of the question is the charming narrative of Mrs. Hutchinson. May's History of the Parliamejit is good ; but it breaks off at the most interesting crisis of the struggle. The performance of Ludlow is foolish and violent ; and most of the later writers who have espoused the same cause, Oldmixon for instance, and Catherine Macaulay, have, to say the least, been more distinguished by zeal than either by candour or by skill. On the other side are the most authoritative and the most popular historical works in our lan- guage, that of Clarendon, and that of Hume, The former is not only ably written and full of valuable information, but has also an air of dignity and sincerity which makes even the prej- udices and errors with which it abounds respectable. Hume, from whose fascinating narrative the great mass of the reading public are still contented to take their opinions, hated religion so much that he hated liberty for having been allied with 28 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY religion, and has pleaded the cause of tyranny with the dexterity of an advocate, while affecting the impartiality of a judge. The public conduct of Milton must be approved or con- demned according as the resistance of the people to Charles the First shall appear to be justifiable or criminal. We shall therefore make no apology for dedicating a few pages to the discussion of that interesting and most important question. We shall not argue -it on general grounds. We shall not recur to those primary principles from which the claim of any govern- ment to the obedience of its subjects is to be deduced. We are entitled to that vantage ground ; but we will relinquish it. We are, on this point, so confident of superiority, that we are not unwilling to imitate the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights, who vowed to joust without helmet or shield against all enemies, and to give their antagonists the advan- tage of sun and wind. We will take the naked constitutional question. We confidently affirm, that every reason which can be urged in favour of the Revolution of 1688 may be urged with at least equal force in favour of what is called the Great Rebellion. In one respect, only, we think, can the warmest admirers of Charles venture to say that he was a better sovereign than his son. He was not, in name and profession, a Papist ; we say in name and profession, because both Charles himself and his creature Laud, while they abjured the innocent badges of Popery, re- tained all its worst vices, a complete subjection of reason to authority, a weak preference of form to substance, a childish passion for mummeries, an idolatrous veneration for the priestly character, and, above all, a merciless intolerance. This, however, we waive. We will concede that Charles was a good Protestant ; but we say that his Protestantism does not make the slightest distinction between his case and that of James. The principles of the Revolution have often been grossly misrepresented, and never more than in the course of the present year. There is a certain class of men, who, while they profess to hold in reverence the great names and great actions MILTON 29 of former times, never look at them for any other purpose than in order to find in them some excuse for existing abuses. In every venerable precedent they pass by what is essential, and take only what is accidental : they keep out of sight what is beneficial, and hold up to public imitation all that is defec- tive. If, in any part of any great example, there be any thing unsound, these flesh-flies detect it with an unerring instinct, and dart upon it with a ravenous delight. If some good end has been attained in spite of them, they feel, with their prototype, that Their labour must be to pervert that end, And out of good still to find means of evil. To the blessings which England has derived from the Revo- lution these people are utterly insensible. The expulsion of a tyrant, the solemn recognition of popular rights, liberty, se- curity, toleration, all go for nothing with them. One sect there was, which, from unfortunate temporary causes, it was thought necessary to keep under close restraint. One part of the empire there was so unhappily circumstanced, that at that time its misery was necessary to our happiness, and its slavery to our freedom. These are the parts of the Revolution which the politicians of whom we speak love to contemplate, and which seem to them not indeed to vindicate, but in some degree to palliate, the good which it has produced. Talk to them of Naples, of Spain, or of South America. They stand forth zealots for the doctrine of Divine Right which has now come back to us, like a thief from transportation, under the alias of Legitimacy. But mention the miseries of Ireland. Then William is a hero. Then Somers and Shrewsbury are great men. Then the Revolution is a glorious era. The very same persons, who, in this country never omit an opportunity of reviving every wretched Jacobite slander respecting the Whigs of that period, have no sooner crossed St. George's Channel, than they begin to fill their bumpers to the glorious and im- mortal memory. They may truly boast that they look not at 30 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY men, but at measures. So that evil be done, they care not who does it ; the arbitrary Charles, or the liberal William, Ferdinand the Catholic, or Frederic the Protestant. On such occasions their deadliest opponents may reckon upon their can- did construction. The bold assertions of these people have of late impressed a large portion of the public with an opinion that James the Second was expelled simply because he was a Catholic, and that the Revolution was essentially a Protestant Revolution. But this certainly was not the case ; nor can any person who has acquired more knowledge of the history of those times than is to be found in Goldsmith's Abridgment believe that, if James had held his own religious opinions without wish- ing to make proselytes, or if, wishing even to make proselytes, he had contented himself with exerting only his constitutional influence for that purpose, the Prince of Orange would ever have been invited over. Our ancestors, we suppose, knew their own meaning ; and, if we may believe them, their hos- tility was primarily not to popery, but to tyranny. They did not drive out a tyrant because he was a Catholic ; but they excluded Catholics from the crown, because they thought them likely to be tyrants. The ground on which they, in their famous resolution, declared the throne vacant, was this, " that James had broken the fundamental laws of the king- dom." Every man, therefore, who approves of the Revolution of 1688 must hold that the breach of fundamental laws on the part of the sovereign justifies resistance. The question, then, is this : Had Charles the First broken the fundamental laws of England } No person can answer in the negative, unless he refuses credit, not merely to all the accusations brought against Charles by his opponents, but to the narratives of the warmest Royal- ists, and to the confessions of the King himself. If there be any truth in any historian of any party, who has related the events of that reign, the conduct of Charles, from his acces- sion to the meeting of the Long Parliament, had been a con- tinued course of oppression and treachery. Let those who MILTON 31 applaud the Revolution and condemn the Rebellion, mention one act of James the Second to which a parallel is not to be found in the history of his father. Let them lay their fingers on a single article in the Declaration of Right, presented by the two Houses to William and Mary, which Charles is not acknowledged to have violated. He had, according to the tes- timony of his own friends, usurped the functions of the legis- lature, raised taxes without the consent of parliament, and quartered troops on the people in the most illegal and vexa- tious manner. Not a single session of parliament had passed without some unconstitutional attack on the freedom of debate ; the right of petition was grossly violated ; arbitrary judgments, exorbitant fines, and unwarranted imprisonments were griev- ances of daily occurrence. If these things do not justify re- sistance, the Revolution was treason ; if they do, the Great Rebellion was laudable. But it is said, why not adopt milder measures ? Why, after the King had consented to so many reforms, and renounced so many oppressive prerogatives, did the Parliament continue to rise in their demands at the risk of provoking a civil war ? The ship-money had been given up. The Star-Chamber had been abolished. Provision had been made for the frequent convocation and secure deliberation of parliaments. Why not pursue an end confessedly good by peaceable and regular means } We recur again to the analogy of the Revolution, Why was James driven from the throne ? Why was he not retained upon conditions } He too had offered to call a free parliament and to submit to its decision all the matters in dispute. Yet we are in the habit of praising our forefathers, who preferred a revolution, a disputed succession, a dynasty of strangers, twenty years of foreign and intestine war, a standing arrru/, and a national debt, to the rule, however restricted, of a tried and proved tyrant. The Long Parliament acted on the same principle, and is entitled to the s'ame praise. They could not trust the King. He had no doubt passed salutary laws ; but what assurance was there that he would not break them ? 32 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY He had renounced oppressive prerogatives ; but where was the security that he would not resume them ? The nation had to deal with a man whom no tie could bind, a man who made and broke promises with equal facility, a man whose honour had been a hundred times pawned, and never redeemed. Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still stronger ground than the Convention of 1688. No action of James can be compared to the conduct of Charles with respect to the Petition of Right. The Lords and Commons present him with a bill in which the constitutional limits of his power are marked out. He hesitates ; he evades ; at last he bargains to give his assent for five subsidies. The bill receives his solemn assent ; the subsidies are voted ; but no sooner is the tyrant relieved, than he returns at once to all the arbitrary measures which he had bound himself to abandon, and violates all the clauses of the very Act which he had been paid to pass. For more than ten years the people had seen the rights which were theirs by a double claim, by immemorial inherit- ance and by recent purchase, infringed by the perfidious king who had recognised them. At length circumstances compelled Charles to summon another parliament : another chance was given to our fathers : were they to throw it away as they had thrown away the former .? Were they again to be cozened by le Roi le vent? Were they again to advance their money on pledges which had been forfeited over and over again .? Were they to lay a second Petition of Right at the foot of the throne, to grant another lavish aid in exchange for another unmeaning ceremony, and then to take their departure, till, after ten years more of fraud and oppression, their prince should again require a supply, and again repay it with a per- jury 1 They were compelled to choose whether they would trust a tyrant or conquer him. We think that they chose wisely and nobly. The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other male- factors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content MILTON 33 themselves with calhng testimony to character. He had so many private virtues ! And had James the Second no private virtues ? Was Ohver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues ? And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles ? A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half the tomb- stones in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father ! A good husband ! Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood ! We charge him with having broken his coronation oath ; and we are told that he kept his marriage vow ! We accuse him of having given up his people to the merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates ; and the defence is, that he took his little son on his knee and kissed him ! We censure him for having violated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good and valuable consid- eration, promised to observe them ; and we are informed that he was accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morn- ing ! It is to such considerations as these, together with his Vandyck dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity with the present generation. For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the com- mon phrase, a good man, but a bad king. We can as easily conceive a good man and an unnatural father, or a good man and a treacherous friend. We cannot, in estimating the char- acter of an individual, leave out of our consideration his con- duct in the most important of all human relations ; and if in that relation we find him to have been selfish, cruel, and de- ceitful, we shall take the liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of all his temperance at table, and all his regularity at chapel. We cannot refrain from adding a few words respecting a topic on which the defenders of Charles are fond of dwelling. If, they say, he governed his people ill, he at least governed them after the example of his predecessors. If he violated 34 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY their privileges, it was because those privileges had not been accurately defined. No act of oppression has ever been imputed to him which has not a parallel in the annals of the Tudors. This point Hume has laboured, with an art which is as dis- creditable in a historical work as it would be admirable in a forensic address. The answer is short, clear, and decisive. Charles had assented to the Petition of Right. He had re- nounced the oppressive powers said to have been exercised by his predecessors, and he had renounced them for money. He was not entitled to set up his antiquated claims against his own recent release. These arguments are so obvious, that it may seem superflu- ous to dwell upon them. But those who have observed how much the events of that time are misrepresented and misunder- stood will not blame us for stating the case simply. It is a case of which the simplest statement is the strongest. The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely choose to take issue on the great points of the question. They content themselves with exposing some of the crimes and follies to which public commotions necessarily give birth. They bewail the unmerited fate of Strafford. They execrate the lawless violence of the army. They laugh at the Scriptural names of the preachers. Major-generals fleecing their districts ; soldiers revelling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry ; upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking possession of the hospitable fire- sides and hereditary trees of the old gentry ; boys smashing the beautiful windows of cathedrals ; Quakers riding naked through the market-place ; Fifth-monarchy-men shouting for King Jesus ; agitators lecturing from the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag ; — all these, they tell us, were the offspring of the Great Rebellion. Be it so. We are not careful to answer in this matter. These charges, were they infinitely more important, would not alter our opinion of an event which alone has made us to differ from the slaves who crouch beneath despotic sceptres. Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil war. They MILTON 35 were the price of our liberty. Has the acquisition been worth the sacrifice ? It is the nature of the Devil of tyranny to tear and rend the body which he leaves. Are the miseries of continued possession less horrible than the struggles of the tremendous exorcism .? If it were possible that a people brought up under an intolerant and arbitrary system could subvert that system with- out acts of cruelty and folly, half the objections to despotic power would be removed. We should, in that case, be com- pelled to acknowledge that it at least produces no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral character of a nation. We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary. The violence of those outrages will always be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people ; and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live. Thus it was in our civil war. The heads of the church and state reaped only that which they had sown. The Government had prohibited free discussion : it had done its best to keep the people unac- quainted with their duties and their rights. The retribution was just and natural. If our rulers suffered from popular igno- rance, it was because they had themselves taken away the key of knowledge. If they were assailed with blind fury, it was because they had exacted an equally blind submission. It is the character of such revolutions that we always see the worst of them at first. Till men have been some time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine countries are generally sober. In climates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly liberated people may be compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxi- cation. Soon, however, plenty teaches discretion ; and, after 36 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY wine has been for a few months their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever been in their own country. In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, scepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice ; they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance ; and then ask in scorn where the promised splendour and comfort is to be found. If such miserable sophisms were to prevail, there would never be a good house or a good government in the world. Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some mysteri- ous law of her nature, was condemned to appear at certain seasons in the form of a foul and poisonous snake. Those who injured her during the period of her disginse were for ever ex- cluded from participation in the blessings which she bestowed. But to those who, in spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterwards revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial form which was natural to her, accompanied their steps, granted all their wishes, filled their houses with wealth, made them happy in love and victorious in war. Such a spirit is Liberty. At times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But woe to those who in disgust shall venture to crush her ! And happy are those who, having dared to receive her in her degraded and frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by her in the time of her beauty and her glory ! There is only one cure for the evils which newly-acquired freedom produces ; and that cure is freedom. When a pris- oner first leaves his cell, he cannot bear the light of day : he is unable to discriminate colours or recognise faces. But the remedy is, not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accus- tom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become MILTON 37 half blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason. The extreme violence of opinion subsides. Hostile theories correct each other. The scattered elements of truth cease to contend, and begin to coalesce ; and at length a system of justice and order is educed out of the chaos. Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever. Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the conduct of Milton and the other wise and good men who, in spite of much that was ridiculous and hateful in the conduct of their associ- ates, stood firmly by the cause of Public Liberty. We are not aware that the poet has been charged with personal partici- pation in any of the blameable excesses of that time. The favourite topic of his enemies is the line of conduct which he pursued with regard to the execution of the King. Of that celebrated proceeding we by no means approve. Still we must say, in justice to the many eminent persons who concurred in it, and in justice more particularly to the eminent person who defended it, that nothing can be more absurd than the imputa- tions which, for the last hundred and sixty years, it has been the fashion to cast upon the Regicides. We have throughout abstained from appealing to first principles. We will not ap- peal to them now. We recur again to the parallel case of the Revolution. What essential distinction can be drawn between the execution of the father and the deposition of the son ? What constitutional maxim is there which applies to the former and not to the latter ? The King can do no wrong. If so, James was as innocent as Charles could have been. The min- ister only ought to be responsible for the acts of the Sovereign. If so, why not impeach Jeffreys and retain James ? The person 38 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY of a king is sacred. Was the person of James considered sacred at the Boyne ? To discharge cannon against an army in which a king is known to be posted is to approach pretty near to regicide. Charles, too, it should always be remembered, was put to death by men who had been exasperated by the hostili- ties of several years, and who had never been bound to him by any other tie than that which was common to them with all their fellow-citizens. Those who drove James from his throne, who seduced his army, who alienated his friends, who first im- prisoned him in his palace, and then turned him out of it, who broke in upon his very slumbers by imperious messages, who pursued him with fire and sword from one part of the empire to another, who hanged, drew, and quartered his adherents, and attainted his innocent heir, were his nephew and his two daughters. When we reflect on all these things, we are at a loss to conceive how the same persons who, on the fifth of November, thank God for wonderfully conducting his servant William, and for making all opposition fall before him until he became our King and Governor, can, on the thirtieth of January, contrive to be afraid that the blood of the Roval Martyr may be visited on themselves and their children. We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of Charles ; not because the constitution exempts the King from responsibility, for we know that all such maxims, however excellent, have their exceptions ; nor because we feel any peculiar interest in his character, for we think that his sentence describes him with perfect justice as " a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy " ; but because we are convinced that the measure was most injurious to the cause of freedom. He whom it removed was a captive and a hostage : his heir, to whom the allegiance of every Royalist was instantly transferred, was at large. The Presbyterians could never have been perfectly reconciled to the father : they had no such rooted enmity to the son. The great body of the people, also, contemplated that proceeding with feelings which, however unreasonable, no government could safely venture to outrage. MILTON 39 But though we think the conduct of the Regicides blameable, that of Milton appears to us in a very different hght. The deed was done. It could not be undone. The evil was incurred ; and the object was to render it as small as possible. We cen- sure the chiefs of the army for not yielding to the popular opinion ; but we cannot censure Milton for wishing to change that opinion. The very feeling which would have restrained us from committing the act would have led us, after it had been committed, to defend it against the ravings of servility and superstition. For the sake of public liberty, we wish that the thing had not been done, while the people disapproved of it. But, for the sake of public liberty, we should also have wished the people to approve of it when it was done. If anything more were wanting to the justification of Milton, the book of Salmasius would furnish it. That miserable performance is now with justice considered only as a beacon to word-catchers, who wish to become statesmen. The celebrity of the man who refuted it, the " ALneas: magni dextra," gives it all its fame with the present generation. In that age the state of- things was different. It was not then fully understood how vast an interval separates the mere classical scholar from the political philosopher. Nor can it be doubted that a treatise which, bear- ing the name of so eminent a critic, attacked the fundamental principles of all free governments, must, if suffered to remain unanswered, have produced a most pernicious effect on the public mind. We wish to add a few words relative to another subject, on which the enemies of Milton delight to dwell, his conduct during the administration of the Protector, That an enthusi- astic votary of liberty should accept office under a military usurper seems, no doubt, at first sight, extraordinary. But all the circumstances in which the country was then placed were extraordinary. The ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never seems to have coveted despotic power. He at first fought sincerely and manfully for the Parliament, and never deserted it till it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by 40 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY force, it was not till he found that the few members who re- mained after so many deaths, secessions, and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate to themselves a power which they held only in trust, and to inflict upon England the curse of a Vene- tian oligarchy. But even when thus placed by violence at the head of affairs, he did not assume unlimited power. He gave the country a constitution far more perfect than any which had at that time been known in the world. He reformed the representative system in a manner which has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon. For himself he demanded, indeed, the first place in the commonwealth ; but with powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder, or an American presi- dent. He gave the parliament a voice in the appointment of ministers, and left to it the whole legislative authority, not even reserving to himself a veto on its enactments ; and he did not require that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his family. Thus far, we think, if the circumstances of the time and the opportunities which he had of aggrandizing himself be fairly considered, he will not lose by comparison with Wash- ington or Bolivar. Had his moderation been met by corre- sponding moderation, there is no reason to think that he would have overstepped the line which he had traced for himself. But when he found that his parliaments questioned the authority under which they met, and that he was in danger of being de- prived of the restricted power which was absolutely necessary to his personal safety, then, it must be acknowledged, he adopted a more arbitrary policy. Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Cromwell were at first honest, though we believe that he was driven from the noble course which he had marked out for himself by the almost irresistible force of circumstances, though we admire, in common with all men of all parties, the ability and energy of his splendid administration, we are not pleading for arbitrary and lawless power, even in his hands. We know that a good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot. But we suspect that, at the time of which we speak, the violence of MILTON 41 religious and political enmities rendered a stable and happy settlement next to impossible. The choice lay, not between Cromwell and liberty, but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That Milton chose well, no man can doubt who fairly compares the events of the protectorate with those of the thirty years which succeeded it, the darkest and most disgraceful in the English annals. Cromwell was evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, the foundations of an admirable system. Never before had religious liberty and the freedom of discus- sion been enjoyed in a greater degree. Never had the national honour been better upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled at home. And it was rarely that any opposition which stopped short of open rebellion provoked the resentment of the liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institutions which he had established, as set down in the Instrument of Govern- ment, and the Humble Petition and Advice, were excellent. His practice, it is true, too often departed from the theory of these institutions. But, had he lived a few years longer, it is probable that his institutions would have survived him, and that his arbitrary practice would have died with him. His power had not been consecrated by ancient prejudices. It was upheld only by his great personal qualities. Little, therefore, was to be dreaded from a second protector, unless he were also a second Oliver Cromwell. The events which followed his decease are the most complete vindication of those who exerted themselves to uphold his authority. His death dissolved the whole frame of society. The army rose against the Parlia- ment, the different corps of the army against each other. Sect raved against sect. Party plotted against party. The Presby- terians, in their eagerness to be revenged on the Independents, sacrificed their own liberty, and deserted all their old principles. Without casting one glance on the past, or requiring one stipulation for the future, they threw down their freedom at the feet of the most frivolous and heartless of tyrants. Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the days of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without 42 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The King cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people, sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with complacent infamy, her degrading insults, and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots, and the jests of buffoons, regulated the policy of the State. The government had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Mara- natha of every fawning dean. In every high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch ; and England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race accursed of God and man was a second time driven forth, to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a by-word and a shaking of the head to the nations. Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the public character of Milton, apply to him only as one of a large body. We shall proceed to notice some of the peculiarities which distinguished him from his contemporaries. And for that purpose it is necessary to take a short survey of the parties into which the political world was at that time divided. We must premise that our observations are intended to apply only to those who adhered, from a sincere preference, to one or to the other side. In days of public commotion, every faction, like an Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp- followers, an useless and heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of march in the hope of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in the day of battle, and often join to exterminate it after a defeat. England, at the time of which we are treating, abounded with fickle and selfish politicians, who transferred their support to every government as it rose, who kissed the hand of the King in 1640, and spat in his face in 1649, who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell was MILTON 43 inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn, who dined on calves' heads, or stuck up oak branches, as circumstances altered, without the slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave out of the account. We take our estimate of parties from those who really deserved to be called partisans. 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, unpopular ; they could not defend themselves ; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. 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 learn- ing, 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 learned. 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 fontc del riso, ed ecco il rio Che mortali perigli in se contiene : Hor qui tcner a fren nostro 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 unpromising materials, the finest army 44 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY that Europe had ever seen, who trampled down King, Church, and Aristocracy, who, in the short intervals of domestic sedi- tion and rebellion, made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their absurdities were mere external badges, like the signs of Freemasonry, or the dresses of friars. We regret that these badges 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 the adherents of Charles the First, or the easy good- breeding for which the court of Charles the Second 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 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 habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing 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 homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intolerable brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from Him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognized no title to superiority but his favour ; and, confident of that favour, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in MILTON 45 the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied 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 priests, 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 earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had been destined, 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 wrested by no common deliverer 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 risen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God. Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men - — the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion ; the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker : but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement he prayed with con- vulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting 46 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitter- ness of his soul that God had hid his face from him. But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no per- ceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans- and their whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other. One over- powering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went through the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppres- sors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities ; insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain ; not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier. Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic 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, MILTON 47 that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their De Montforts, their Dominies and their Escobars. Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consid- eration, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and an useful body. The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly because it was the cause of religion. There was another party, by no means numerous, but distinguished by learning and ability, which acted with them on very different principles. We speak of those whom Cromwell was accustomed to call the Heathens — men who were, in the phraseology of that time, doubting Thomases or careless Gallios with regard to religious subjects, but passionate worshippers of freedom. Heated by the study of ancient literature, they set up their country as their idol, and proposed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples. They seem to have borne some resem- blance to the Brissotines of the French Revolution. But it is not very easy to draw the line of distinction between them and their devout associates, whose tone and manner they sometimes found it convenient to affect, and sometimes, it is probable, imperceptibly adopted. We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt to speak of them, as we have spoken of their antagonists, with perfect candour. We shall not charge upon a whole party the profli- gacy and baseness of the horse-boys, gamblers, and bravoes, whom the hope of licence and plunder attracted from all the dens of Whitefriars to the standard of Charles, and who dis- graced their associates by excesses which, under the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary armies, were never tolerated. We will select a more favourable specimen. Thinking as we do that the cause of the King was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain from looking with compla- cency on the character of the honest old Cavaliers. We feel a national pride in comparing them with the instruments which the despots of other countries are compelled to employ, with the mutes who throng their antechambers, and the Janissaries 48 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY who mount guard at their gates. Our royahst countrymen were not heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing at every step and simpering at every word. They were not mere machines for destruction dressed up in uniforms, caned into skill, in- toxicated into valour, defending without love, destroying without hatred. There was a freedom in their subserviency, a nobleness in their very degradation. The sentiment of indi- vidual independence was strong within them. They were indeed misled, but by no base or selfish motive. Compassion and romantic honour, the prejudices of childhood, and the venerable names of history, threw over them a spell potent as that of Duessa ; and, like the Red-Cross Knight, they thought that they were doing battle for an injured beauty, while they defended a false and loathsome sorceress. In truth, they scarcely entered at all into the merits of the political question. It was not for a treacherous king or an intolerant church that they fought, but for the old banner which had waved in so many battles over the heads of their fathers, and for the altars at which they had received the hands of their brides. Though nothing could be more erroneous than their political opinions, they possessed, in a far greater degree than their adversaries, those qualities which are the grace of private life. With many of the vices of the Round Table, they had also many of its virtues, courtesy, generosity, veracity, tenderness, and respect for women. They had far more both of profound and of polite learning than the Puritans. Their manners were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their tastes more elegant, and their households more cheerful. Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes which we have described. He was not a Puritan. He was not a freethinker. He was not a Royalist. In his character the noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmonious union. From the Parliament and from tlie Court, from the con- venticle and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew MILTON . 49 to itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like the Puritans, he lived As ever in his great taskmaster's eye. Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. And hence he acquired their contempt of external circumstances, their fortitude, their tran- quillity, their inflexible resolution. But not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless all the estimable and ornamental qualities which were almost entirely monopolized by the party of the tyrant. There was none who had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer relish for every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of honour and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes and his associations were such as harmonize best with monarchy and aristocracy. He was under the influence of all the feelings by which the gallant Cavaliers were misled. But of those feelings he was the master, and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of fascination : but he was not fascinated. He listened to the song of the sirens ; yet he glided by without being seduced to their fatal shore. He tasted the cup of Circe ; but he bore about him a sure anti- dote against the effects of its bewitching sweetness. The illusions which captivated his imagination never impaired his reasoning powers. The statesman was proof against the splen- dour, the solemnity, and the romance which enchanted the poet. Any person who will contrast the sentiments expressed in his treatises on Prelacy with the exquisite lines on eccle- siastical architecture and music in the Petiseroso, which was published about the same time, will understand our meaning. This is an inconsistency which, more than anything else, 50 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY raises his character in our estimation, because it shows how many private tastes and feehngs he sacrificed, in order to do what he considered his duty to mankind. It is the very struggle of the noble Othello. His heart relents ; but his hand is firm. He does naught in hate, but all in honour. He kisses the beautiful deceiver before he destroys her. That from which the public character of Milton derives its great and peculiar splendour still remains to be mentioned. If he exerted himself to overthrow a forsworn king and a persecuting hierarchy, he exerted himself in conjunction with others. But the glory of the battle which he fought for the species of freedom which is the most valuable, and which was then the least understood, the freedom of the human mind, is all his own. Thousands and tens of thousands among his contemporaries raised their voices against ship-money and the Star-chamber ; but there were few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral and intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would result from the liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of private judgment. These were the objects which Milton justly conceived to be the most im- portant. He was desirous that the people should think for themselves as well as tax themselves, and should be eman- cipated from the dominion of prejudice as well as from that of Charles. He knew that those who, with the best intentions, overlooked these schemes of reform, and contented themselves with pulling down the King and imprisoning the malignants, acted like the heedless brothers in his own poem, who, in their eagerness to disperse the train of the sorcerer, neglected the means of liberating the captive. They thought only of conquering when they should have thought of disenchanting. Oh, ye mistook ! Ye should have snatched his wand And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed, And backward mutters of dissevering power, We cannot free the lady that sits here Bound in strong fetters fixed and motionless. MILTON 5 1 To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to break the ties which bound a stupefied people to the seat of enchant- ment, was the noble aim of Milton. To this all his public conduct was directed. For this he joined the Presbyterians : for this he forsook them. He fought their perilous battle ; but he turned away with disdain from their insolent triumph. He saw that they, like those whom they had vanquished, were hostile to the liberty of thought. He therefore joined the Independents, and called upon Cromwell to break the secular chain, and to save free conscience from the paw of the Presbyterian wolf. With a view to the same great object, he attacked the licensing system, in that sublime treatise which every statesman should wear as a sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his eyes. His attacks were, in general, di- rected less against particular abuses than against those deeply- seated errors on which almost all abuses are founded — the servile worship of eminent men and the irrational dread of innovation. That he might shake the foundations of these debasing sentiments more effectually, he always selected for himself the boldest literary services. He never came up in the rear, when the outworks had been carried and the breach entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. At the beginning of the changes, he wrote with incomparable energy and eloquence against the bishops. But, when his opinion seemed likely to prevail, he passed on to other subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the crowd of writers who now hastened to insult a falling party. There is no more hazardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth into those dark and infected recesses in which no light has ever shone. But it was the choice and the pleasure of Milton to penetrate the noisome vapours and to brave the terrible explosion. Those who most disapprove of his opinions must respect the hardihood with which he main- tained them. He, in general, left to others the credit of ex- pounding and defending the popular parts of his religious and 52 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY political creed. He took his own stand upon those which the great body of his countrymen reprobated as criminal or derided as paradoxical. He stood up for divorce and regicide. He attacked the prevailing systems of education. His radiant and beneficent career resembled that of the god of light and fertility. Nitor in adversum ; nee me, qui caetera, vincit Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi. It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should, in our time, be so little read. As compositions, they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full power of the English language. They abound with passages compared with which the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier books of the Paradise Lost has the great poet ever risen higher than in those parts of his controversial works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic language, "a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies." We had intended to look more closely at these performances, to analyze the peculiarities of the diction, to dwell at some length on the sublime wisdom of the Areopagitica and the nervous rhetoric of the Iconoclast, and to point out some of those magnificent passages which occur in the Treatise of Reformation, and the Animadversions on the Remonstrant. But the length to which our remarks have already extended renders this impossible. 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 MILTON 53 contemporaries of the writer. We are transported a hundred and fifty years back. We can ahiiost fancy that we are visiting him in his small lodging ; that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath the faded green hangings ; that we can catch the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vain to find the day ; that we are reading in the lines of his noble countenance the proud and mournful history of his glory and his affiiction. We image to ourselves the breathless silence in which we should listen to his slightest word, the passionate veneration with which we should kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it, the earnestness with which we should endeavour to console him, if indeed such a spirit could need consolation, for the neglect of an age unworthy of his talents and his virtues, the eagerness with which we should contest with his daughters, or with his Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege of reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal accents which flowed from his lips. These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot 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 idolizing 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 propensity which, for want of a better name, we will venture to christen Boswellism. But there are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the furnace and have proved pure, which have been weighed in the balance and have not been found wanting, which have been declared sterling by the general consent of mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image and superscription of the Most High. These great men we trust that we know how to prize ; and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name, are pleasant to us. His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits a"nd flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of Paradise to the earth, and which were distinguished from the productions 54 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY of other soils, not only by superior bloom and sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to heal. They are powerful, not only to delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he laboured for the public good, the .fortitude with which he endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temp- tations 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. HISTORY The best historians of later times have been seduced from truth, not by their imagination, but by their reason. They far excel their predecessors in the art of deducing general princi- ples from facts. But unhappily they have fallen into the error of distorting facts to suit general principles. They arrive at a theory from looking at some of the phenomena ; and the remaining phenomena they strain or curtail to suit the theory. For this purpose it is not necessary that they should assert what is absolutely false ; for all questions in morals and politics are questions of comparison and degree. Any proposition which does not involve a contradiction in terms may by possibility be true ; and if all the circumstances which raise a probability in its favour be stated and enforced, and those which lead to an opposite conclusion be omitted or lightly passed over, it may appear to be demonstrated. In every human character and transaction there is a mixture of good and evil : a little exag- geration, a little suppression, a judicious use of epithets, a watchful and searching scepticism with respect to the evidence on one side, a convenient credulity with respect to every report or tradition on the other, may easily make a saint of Laud, or a tyrant of Henry the Fourth. This species of misrepresentation abounds in the most valu- able works of modern historians. Herodotus tells his story like a slovenly witness, who, heated by partialities and preju- dices, unacquainted with the established rules of evidence, and uninstructed as to the obligations of his oath, confounds what he imagines with what he has seen and heard, and brings out facts, reports, conjectures, and fancies, in one mass. Hume is an accomplished advocate. Without positively asserting much more than he can prove, he gives prominence to all the circum- gtances which support his case ; he glides lightly over those 55 56 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY which are unfavourable to it ; his own witnesses are applauded and encouraged ; the statements which seem to throw discredit on them are controverted ; the contradictions into which they fall are explained away ; a clear and connected abstract of their evidence is given. Everything that is offered on the other side is scrutinised with the utmost severity ; every suspicious circum- stance is a ground for comment and invective ; what cannot be denied is extenuated or passed by without notice ; conces- sions even are sometimes made : but this insidious candour only increases the effect of the vast mass of sophistry. We have mentioned Hume as the ablest and most popular writer of his class ; but the charge which we have brought against him is one to which all our most distinguished histo- rians are in some degree obnoxious. Gibbon, in particular, deserves very severe censure. Of all the numerous culprits, however, none is more deeply guilty than Mr. Mitford. We willingly acknowledge the obligations which are due to his talents and industry. The modern historians of Greece had been in the habit of writing as if the world had learned noth- ing new during the last sixteen hundred years. Instead of illustrating the events which they narrated by the philosophy of a more enlightened age, they judged of antiquity by itself alone. They seemed to think that notions, long driven from every other corner of literature, had a prescriptive right to occupy this last fastness. They considered all the ancient historians as equally authentic. They scarcely made any dis- tinction between him who related events at which he had himself been present, and him who, five hundred years after, composed a philosophic romance for a society which had in the interval undergone a complete change. It was all Greek, and all true ! The centuries which separated Plutarch from Thucydides seemed as nothing to men who lived in an age so remote. The distance of time produced an error similar to that which is sometimes produced by distance of place. There are many good ladies who think that all the people in India live together, and who charge a friend setting out for Calcutta HISTORY 57 with kind messages to Bombay. To Rollin and Barthelemi, in the same manner, all the classics were contemporaries, Mr. Mitford certainly introduced great improvements ; he showed us that men who wrote in Greek and Latin sometimes told lies ; he showed us that ancient history might be related in such a manner as to furnish not only allusions to schoolboys, but important lessons to statesmen. From that love of theat- rical effect and high-flown sentiment which had poisoned almost every other work on the same subject his book is perfectly free. But his passion for a theory as false, and far more ungen- erous, led him substantially to violate truth in every page. Statements unfavourable to democracy are made with unh'esi- tating confidence, and with the utmost bitterness of language. Every charge brought against a monarch or an aristocracy is sifted with the utmost care. If it cannot be denied, some pal- liating supposition is suggested ; or we are at least reminded that some circumstances now unknown may have justified what at present appears unjustifiable. Two events are reported by the same author in the same sentence ; their truth rests on the same testimony ; but the one supports the darling hypoth- esis, and the other seems inconsistent with it. The one is taken and the other is left. The practice of distorting narrative into a conformity with theory is a vice not so unfavourable as at first sight it may appear to the interests of political science. We have compared the writers who indulge in it to advocates ; and we may add, that their conflicting fallacies, like those of advocates, correct each other. It has always been held, in the most enlightened nations, that a tribunal will decide a judicial question most fairly when it has heard two able men argue, as unfairly as possible, on the two opposite sides of it ; and we are inclined to think that this opinion is just. Sometimes, it is true, superior eloquence and dexterity will make the worse appear the better reason ; but it is at least certain that the judge will be compelled to contemplate the case under two different aspects. It is certain that no important consideration will altogether escape notice. 58 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY This is at present the state of history. The poet laureate appears for the Church of England, Lingard for the Church of Rome. Brodie has moved to set aside the verdicts obtained by Hume ; and the cause in which Mitford succeeded is, we understand, about to be reheard. In the midst of these dis- putes, however, history proper, if we may use the term, is disappearing. The high, grave, impartial summing up of Thucydides is nowhere to be found. While our historians are practising all the arts of contro- versy, they miserably neglect the art of narration, the art of interesting the affections and presenting pictures to the imagi- nation. That a writer may produce these effects without violat- ing truth is sufficiently proved by many excellent biographical works. The immense popularity which well-written books of this kind have acquired deserves the serious consideration of historians. Voltaire's Charles the TtvclftJi, Marmontel's Mem- oirs, Boswell's Life of Johnson, Southey's account of Nelson, are perused with delight by the most frivolous and indolent. Whenever any tolerable book of the same description makes its appearance the circulating libraries are mobbed ; the book societies are in commotion ; the new novel lies uncut ; the mag- azines and newspapers fill their columns with extracts. In the meantime histories of great empires, written by men of eminent ability, lie unread on the shelves of ostentatious libraries. The writers of history seem to entertain an aristocratical contempt for the writers of memoirs. They think it beneath the dignity of men who describe the revolutions of nations to dwell on the details which constitute the charm of biography. They have imposed on themselves a code of conventional decencies as absurd as that which has been the bane of the French drama. The most characteristic and interesting cir- cumstances are omitted or softened down, because, as we are told, they are too trivial for the majesty of history. The maj- esty of history seems to resemble the majesty of the poor King of Spain, who died a martyr to ceremony because the proper dignitaries were not at hand to render him assistance. HISTORY 59 That history would be more amusing if this etiquette were relaxed, will, we suppose, be acknowledged. But would it be less dignified or less useful ? What do we mean when we say that one past event is important and another insignificant ? No past event has any intrinsic importance. The knowledge of it is valuable only as it leads us to form just calculations with respect to the future. A history which does not serve this purpose, though it may be filled with battles, treaties, and commotions, is as useless as the series of turnpike tickets collected by Sir Matthew Mite. Let us suppose that Lord Clarendon, instead of filling hun- dreds of folio pages with copies of state papers, in which the same assertions and contradictions are repeated till the reader is overpowered with weariness, had condescended to be the Boswell of the Long Parliament. Let us suppose that he had exhibited to us the wise and lofty self-government of Hampden, leading while he seemed to follow, and propounding unanswer- able arguments in the strongest forms with the modest air of an inquirer anxious for information : the delusions which mis- led the noble spirit of Vane ; the coarse fanaticism which con- cealed the yet loftier genius of Cromwell, destined to control a mutinous army and a factious people, to abase the flag of Holland, to arrest the victorious arms of Sweden, and to hold the balance firm between the rival monarchies of France and Spain. Let us suppose that he had made his Cavaliers and Roundheads talk in their own style ; that he had reported some of the ribaldry of Rupert's pages, and some of the cant of Harrison and Fleetwood. Would not his work in that case have been more interesting ? Would it not have been more accurate ? A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false. The circumstances which have most influence on the happiness of mankind, the changes of manners and morals, the transition of communities from pov- erty to wealth, from ignorance to knowledge, from ferocity to humanity — these are, for the most part, noiseless revolutions. Their progress is rarely indicated by what historians are pleased 6o SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY to call important events. They are not achieved by armies, or enacted by senates. They are sanctioned by no treaties, and re- corded in no archives. They are carried on in every school, in every church, behind ten thousand counters, at ten thousand firesides. The upper-current of society presents no certain cri- terion by which we can judge of the direction in which the under-current flows. We read of defeats and victories. But we know that nations may be miserable amidst victories and pros- perous amidst defeats. We read of the fall of wise ministers and of the rise of profligate favourites. But we must remem- ber how small a proportion the good or evil effected by a single statesman can bear to the good or evil of a great social system. Bishop Watson compares a geologist to a gnat mounted on an elephant and laying down theories as to the whole inter- nal structure of the vast animal, from the phenomena of the hide. The comparison is unjust to the geologists ; but is very applicable to those historians who write as if the body politic were homogeneous, who look only on the surface of affairs, and never think of the mighty and various organization which lies deep below. In the works of such writers as these, England, at the close of the Seven Years' War, is in the highest state of prosperity : at the close of the American war she is in a miserable and degraded condition ; as if the people were not on the whole as rich, as well governed, and as well educated at the latter period as at the former. We have read books called Histories of England, under the reign of George the Second, in which the rise of Methodism is not even mentioned. A hundred years hence this breed of authors will, we hope, be extinct. If it should still exist, the late ministerial interregnum will be described in terms which will seem to imply that all government was at an end ; that the social contract was annulled ; and that the hand of every man was against his neighbour, until the wisdom and virtue of the new cabinet educed order out of the chaos of anarchy. We are quite certain that misconceptions as gross prevail at this moment respecting many important parts of our annals. HISTORY 6l The effect of historical reading is analogous, in many re- spects, to that produced by foreign travel. The student, like the tourist, is transported into a new state of society. He sees new fashions. He hears new modes of expression. His mind is enlarged by contemplating the wide diversities of laws, of morals, and of manners. But men may travel far, and return with minds as contracted as if they had never stirred from their own market-town. In the same manner, men may know the dates of many battles and the genealogies of many royal houses, and yet be no wiser. Most people look at past times as princes look at foreign countries. More than one illustrious stranger has landed on our island amidst the shouts of a mob, has dined with the king, has hunted with the master of the stag-hounds, has seen the guards reviewed, and a knight of the garter installed ; has cantered along Regent Street, has visited Saint Paul's, and noted down its dimensions ; and has then departed, thinking that he has seen England, He has, in fact, seen a few public buildings, public men, and public ceremonies. But of the vast and complex system of society, of the fine shades of national character, of the practical opera- tion of government and laws, he knows nothing. He who would understand these things rightly must not confine his observations to palaces and solemn days. He must see ordi- nary men as they appear in their ordinary business and in their ordinary pleasures. He must mingle in the crowds of the exchange and the coffee-house. He must obtain admit- tance to the convivial table and the domestic hearth. He must bear with vulgar expressions. He must not shrink from ex- ploring even the retreats of misery. He who wishes to under- stand the condition of mankind in former ages must proceed on the same principle. If he attends only to public transac- tions, to wars, congresses, and debates, his studies will be as unprofitable as the travels of those imperial, royal, and serene sovereigns who form their judgment of our island from having gone in state to a few fine sights, and from having held formal conferences with a few great officers. 62 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and spirit of an age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact, he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not au- thenticated by sufficient testimony. But, by judicious selection, rejection, and arrangement, he gives to truth those attractions which have been usurped by fiction. In his narrative a due subordination is observed : some transactions are prominent ; others retire. But the scale on which he represents them is increased or diminished, not according to the dignity of the persons concerned in them, but according to the degree in which they elucidate the condition of society and the nature of man. He shows us the court, the camp, and the senate. But he shows us also the nation. He considers no anecdote, no peculiarity of manner, no familiar saying, as too insignificant for his notice which is not too insignificant to illustrate the operation of laws, of religion, and of education, and to mark the progress of the human mind. Men will not merely be de- scribed, but will be made intimately known to us. The changes of manners will be indicated, not merely by a few general phrases or a few extracts from statistical documents, but by appropriate images presented in every line. If a man, such as we are supposing, should write the history of England, he would assuredly not omit the battles, the sieges, the negotiations, the seditions, the ministerial changes. But with these he would intersperse the details which are the charm of historical romances. At Lincoln Cathedral there is a beauti- ful painted window, which was made by an apprentice out of the pieces of glass which had been rejected by his master. It is so far superior to every other in the church that, according to the tradition, the vanquished artist killed himself from morti- fication. Sir Walter Scott, in the same manner, has used those fragments of truth which historians have scornfully thrown be- hind them in a manner which may well excite their envy. He has constructed out of their gleanings works which, even con- sidered as histories, are scarcely less valuable than theirs. But a truly great historian would reclaim those materials which the HISTORY 63 novelist has appropriated. The history of the government, and the history of the people, would be exhibited in that mode in which alone they can be exhibited justly, in inseparable con- junction and intermixture. We should not then have to look for the wars and votes of the Puritans in Clarendon, and for their phraseology in Old Mortality; for one half of King James in Hume, and for the other half in the Fortunes of Nigel. The early part of our imaginary history would be rich with colouring from romance, ballad, and chronicle. We should find ourselves in the company of knights such as those of Froissart, and of pilgrims such as those who rode with Chaucer from the Tabard. Society would be shown from the highest to the lowest — from the royal cloth of state to the den of the outlaw; from the throne of the legate to the chimney-corner where the beg- ging friar regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels, crusaders — the stately monastery, with the good cheer in its refectory and the high-mass in its chapel — the manor-house, with its hunting and hawking — the tournament, with the heralds and ladies, the trumpets and the cloth of gold — would give truth and life to the representation. We should perceive, in a thousand slight touches, the importance of the privileged burgher, and the fierce and haughty spirit which swelled under the collar of the de- graded villain. The revival of letters would not merely be de- scribed in a few magnificent periods. We should discern, in innumerable particulars, the fermentation of mind, the eager appetite for knowledge, which distinguished the sixteenth from the fifteenth century. In the Reformation we should see, not merely a schism which changed the ecclesiastical constitution of England and the mutual relations of the European powers, but a moral war which raged in every family, which set the father against the son and the son against the father, the mother against the daughter and the daughter against the mother. Henry would be painted with the skill of Tacitus. We should have the change of his character from his profuse and joyous youth to his savage and imperious old age. We should perceive the gradual progress of selfish and tyrannical passions in a 64 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY mind not naturally insensible or ungenerous ; and to the last we should detect some remains of that open and noble temper which endeared him to a people whom he oppressed, struggling with the hardness of despotism and the irritability of disease. We should see Elizabeth in all her weakness and in all her strength, surrounded by the handsome favourites whom she never trusted, and the wise old statesmen whom she never dismissed, uniting in herself the most contradictory qualities of both her parents — the coquetry, the caprice, the petty malice of Anne — the haughty and resolute spirit of Henry. We have no hesitation in saying that a great artist might pro- duce a portrait of this remarkable woman at least as striking as that in the novel of Kenilworth, without employing a single trait not authenticated by ample testimony. In the meantime, we should see arts cultivated, wealth accumulated, the conven- iences of life improved. We should see the keeps, where nobles, insecure themselves, spread insecurity around them, gradually giving place to the halls of peaceful opulence, to the oriels of Longleat, and the stately pinnacles of Burleigh. We should see towns extended, deserts cultivated, the hamlets of fishermen turned into wealthy havens, the meal of the peasant improved, and his hut more commodiously furnished. We should see those opinions and feelings which produced the great struggle against the House of Stuart slowly growing up in the bosom of private families, before they manifested them- selves in parliamentary debates. Then would come the civil war. Those skirmishes on which Clarendon dwells so minutely would be told, as Thucydides would have told them, with per- spicuous conciseness. They are merely connecting links. But the great characteristics of the age, the loyal enthusiasm of the brave English gentry, the fierce licentiousness of the swearing, dicing, drunken reprobates, whose excesses disgraced the royal cause — the austerity of the Presbyterian Sabbaths in the city, the extravagance of the independent preachers in the camp, the precise garb, the severe countenance, the petty scruples, the affected accent, the absurd names and phrases which marked HISTORY 65 the Puritans — the valour, the pohcy, the pubhc spirit, which lurked beneath these ungraceful disguises — the dreams of the raving Fifth-monarchy-man, the dreams, scarcely less wild, of the philosophic Republican — all these would enter into the rep- resentation, and render it at once more exact and more striking. The instruction derived from history thus written would be of a vivid and practical character. It would be received by the imagination as well as by the reason. It would be not merely traced on the mind, but branded into it. Many truths, too, would be learned, which can be learned in no other manner. As the history of states is generally written, the greatest and most momentous revolutions seem to come upon them like supernatural inflictions, without warning or cause. But the fact is, that such revolutions are almost always the consequences of moral changes, which have gradually passed on the mass of the community, and which originally proceed far before their prog- ress is indicated by any public measure. An intimate knowl- edge of the domestic history of nations is therefore absolutely necessary to the prognosis of political events. A narrative defective in this respect is as useless as a medical treatise which should pass by all the symptoms attendant on the early stage of a disease, and mention only what occurs when the patient is beyond the reach of remedies. A historian, such as we have been attempting to describe, would indeed be an intellectual prodigy. In his mind powers scarcely compatible with each other must be tempered into an exquisite harmony. We shall sooner see another Shakspeare or another Homer. The highest excellence to which any single faculty can be brought would be less surprising than such a happy and delicate combination of qualities. Yet the contem- plation of imaginary models is not an unpleasant or useless employment of the mind. It cannot, indeed, produce perfec- tion ; but it produces improvement and nourishes that generous and liberal fastidiousness which is not inconsistent with the strongest sensibility to merit, and which, while it exalts our conceptions of the art, does not render us unjust to the artist. BYRON It is always difficult to separate the literary character of a man who lives in our own time from his personal character. It is peculiarly difficult to make this separation in the case of Lord Byron ; -for it is scarcely too much to say that Lord Byron never wrote without some reference, direct or indirect, to himself. The interest excited by the events of his life mingles itself in our minds, and probably in the minds of almost all our readers, with the interest which properly belongs to his works. A generation must pass away before it will be possible to form a fair judgment of his books, considered merely as books. At present they are not only books, but relics. We will, however, venture, though with unfeigned diffidence, to offer some desultory remarks on his poetry. His lot was cast in the time of a great literary revolution. That poetical dynasty which had dethroned the successors of Shakspeare and Spenser was, in its turn, dethroned by a race who represented themselves as heirs of the ancient line, so long dispossessed by usurpers. The real nature of this revolution has not, we think, been comprehended by the great majority of those who concurred in it. Wherein especially does the poetry of our times differ from that of the last century ? Ninety-nine persons out of a hun- dred would answer that the poetry of the last century was correct, but cold and mechanical, and that the poetry of our time, though wild and irregular, presented far more vivid images, and excited the passions far more strongly than that of Parnell, of Addison, or of Pope. In the same manner we constantly hear it said that the poets of the age of Elizabeth had far more genius, but far less correctness, than those of the age of Anne. It seems to be taken for granted that there is some incompatibility, some antithesis between correctness 66 BYRON 67 and creative power. We rather suspect that this notion arises merely from an abuse of words, and that it has been the parent of many of the fallacies which perplex the science of criticism. What is meant by correctness in poetry .? If by correctness be meant the conforming to rules which have their foundation in truth and in the principles of human nature, then correct- ness is only another name for excellence. If by correctness be meant the conforming to rules purely arbitrary, correctness may be another name for dulness and absurdity. A writer who describes visible objects falsely and violates the propriety of character, a writer who makes the mountains "nod their drowsy heads" at night, or a dying man take leave of the world with a rant like that of Maximin, may be said, in the high and just sense of the phrase, to write incor- rectly. He violates the first great law of his art. His imitation is altogether unlike the thing imitated. The four poets who are most eminently free from incorrectness of this description are Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton, They are, there- fore, in one sense, and that the best sense, the most correct of poets. When it is said that Virgil, though he had less genius than Homer, was a more correct writer, what sense is attached to the word correctness } Is it meant that the story of the ^neid is developed more skilfully than that of the Odyssey ? that the Roman describes the face of the external world, or the emotions of the mind, more accurately than the Greek .? that the characters of Achates and Mnestheus are more nicely discriminated, and more consistently supported, than those of Achilles, of Nestor, and of Ulysses .? The fact incontestably is that, for every violation of the fundamental laws of poetry which can be found in Homer, it would be easy to find twenty in Virgil. Troilus and Cressida is perhaps of all the plays of Shakspeare that which is commonly considered as the most incorrect. Yet it seems to us infinitely more correct, in the 68 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY sound sense of the term, than what are called the most correct plays of the most correct dramatists. Compare it, for example, with the IpJdgcnie of Racine. We are sure that the Greeks of Shakspeare bear a far greater resemblance than the Greeks of Racine to the real Greeks who besieged Troy ; and for this reason, that the Greeks of Shakspeare are human beings, and the Greeks of Racine mere names, mere words printed in capitals at the head of paragraphs of declamation. Racine, it is true, would have shuddered at the thought of making a warrior at the siege of Troy quote Aristotle. But of what use is it to avoid a single anachronism, when the whole play is one anachronism, the sentiments and phrases of Versailles in the camp of Aulis } In the sense in which we are now using the word correct- ness, we think that Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Coleridge, are far more correct poets than those who are commonly extolled as the models of correctness — Pope, for example, and Addison. The single description of. a moonlight night in Pope's Iliad contains more inaccuracies than can be found in all the Excursion. There is not a single scene in Cato, in which all that conduces to poetical illusion, all the propriety of character, of language, of situation, is not more grossly violated than in any part of the Lay of the Last Minstfcl. No man can possibly think that the Romans of Addison resemble the real Romans so closely as the moss- troopers of Scott resemble the real moss-troopers. Wat Tinlinn and William of Deloraine are not, it is true, persons of so much dignity as Cato. But the dignity of the persons represented has as little to do with the correctness of poetry as with the correctness of painting. We prefer a gipsy by Reynolds to his Majesty's head on a sign-post, and a Borderer by Scott to a Senator by Addison. In what sense, then, is the word correctness used by those who say, with the author of the Pursuits of Literature, that Pope was the most correct of English Poets, and that next to Pope came the late Mr. Gifford ? What is the nature and BYRON 69 value of that correctness, the praise of which is denied to Macbeth, to Lear, and to Othello, and given to Hoole's trans- lations and to all the Seatonian prize-poems ? We can dis- cover no eternal rule, no rule founded in reason and in the nature of things, which Shakspeare does not observe much more strictly than Pope. But if by correctness be meant the conforming to a narrow legislation which, while lenient to the mala in se, multiplies, without a shadow of a reason, the mala prohibita — if by correctness be meant a strict attention to certain ceremonious observances, which are no more essential to poetry than etiquette to good government, or than the washings of a Pharisee to devotion — then, assuredly, Pope may be a more correct poet than Shakspeare ; and, if the code were a little altered, Colley Gibber might be a more correct poet than Pope. But it may well be doubted whether this kind of correctness be a merit, nay, whether it be not an absolute fault. It would be amusing to make a digest of the irrational laws which bad critics have framed for the government of poets. First in celebrity and in absurdity stand the dramatic unities of place and time. No human being has ever been able to find anything that could, even by courtesy, be called an argument for these unities, except that they have been deduced from the general practice of the Greeks. It requires no very profound examination to discover that the Greek dramas, often admirable as compositions, are, as exhibitions of human character and human life, far inferior to the English plays of the age of Elizabeth. Every scholar knows that the dramatic part of the Athenian tragedies was at first subordinate to the lyrical part. It would, therefore, have been little less than a miracle if the laws of the Athenian stage had been found to suit plays in which there was no chorus. All the greatest masterpieces of the dramatic art have been composed in direct violation of the unities, and could never have been composed if the unities had not been violated. It is clear, for example, that such a character as that of Hamlet could never have been developed within the 70 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY limits to which Alfieri confined himself. Yet such was the reverence of literary men during the last century for these unities that Johnson, who, much to his honour, took the oppo- site side, was, as he says "frightened at his own temerity," and " afraid to stand against the authorities which might be produced against him," There are other rules of the same kind without end. " Shakspeare," says Rymer, "ought not to have made Othello black ; for the hero of a tragedy ought always to be white." " Milton," says another critic, " ought not to have taken Adam for his hero ; for the hero of an epic poem ought always to be victorious." "Milton," says another, "ought not to have put so many similes into his first book ; for the first book of an epic poem ought always to be the most unadorned. There are no similes in the first book of the Iliad!' " Milton," says another, " ought not to have placed in an epic poem such lines as these : While thus I called, and strayed I knew not whither." And why not } The critic is ready with a reason, a lady's reason, "Such lines," says he, "are not, it must be allowed, unpleasing to the ear ; but the redundant syllable ought to be confined to the drama, and not admitted into epic poetry," As to the redundant syllable in heroic rhyme on serious sub- jects, it has been, from the time of Pope downward, proscribed by the general consent of all the correct school. No magazine would have admitted so incorrect a couplet as that of Drayton : As when we lived untouch 'd with these disgraces, When as our kingdom was our dear embraces. Another law of heroic rhyme, which fifty years ago was con- sidered as fundamental, was that there should be a pause, a comma at least, at the end of every couplet. It was also provided that there should never be a full stop except at the end of a line. Well do we remember to have heard a most correct judge of poetry revile Mr, Rogers for the incorrectness of that most sweet and graceful passage : . BYRON 71 Such grief was ours — it seems but yesterday — When in thy prime, wishing so much to stay, 'T was thine, Maria, thine without a sigh At midnight in a sister's arms to die. Oh thou wert lovely ; lovely was thy frame. And pure thy spirit as from heaven it came : And when recalled to join the blest above Thou diedst a victim to exceeding love. Nursing the young to health. In happier hours, When idle Fancy wove luxuriant flowers. Once in thy mirth thou badst me write on thee ; And now I write what thou shalt never see. Sir Roger Newdigate is fairly entitled, we think, to be ranked among the great critics of this school. He made a law that none of the poems written for the prize which he established at Oxford should exceed fifty lines. This law seems to us to have at least as much foundation in reason as any of those which we have mentioned ; nay, much more, for the world, we believe, is pretty well agreed in thinking that the shorter a prize-poem is, the better. We do not see why we should not make a few more rules of the same kind ; why we should not enact that the number of scenes in every act shall be three or some multiple of three, that the number of lines in every scene shall be an exact square, that the dramatis personcE shall never be more or fewer than sixteen, and that, in heroic rhymes, every thirty-sixth line shall have twelve syllables. If we were to lay down these canons, and to call Pope, Goldsmith, and Addison incorrect writers for not having complied with our whims, we should act precisely as those critics act who find incorrectness in the magnificent imagery and the varied music of Coleridge and Shelley. The correctness which the last century prized so much resembles the correctness of those pictures of the garden of Eden which we see in old Bibles. We have an exact square enclosed by the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates, each with a convenient bridge in the centre, rectangular beds 72 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY of flowers, a long canal, neatly bricked and railed in, the tree of knowledge clipped like one of the limes behind the Tuilleries, standing in the centre of the grand alley, the snake twined round it, the man on the right hand, the woman on the left, and the beasts drawn up in an exact circle round them. In one sense the picture is correct enough. That is to say, the squares are correct ; the circles are correct ; the man and the woman are in a most correct line with the tree ; and the snake forms a most correct spiral. But if there were a painter so gifted that he could place on the canvas that glorious paradise seen by the interior eye of him whose outward sight had failed with long watching and labouring for liberty and truth — if there were a painter who could set before us the mazes of the sapphire brook, the lake with its fringe of myrtles, the flowery meadows, the grottoes overhung by vines, the forests shining with Hesperian fruit and with the plumage of gorgeous birds, the massy shade of that nuptial bower which showered down roses on the sleeping lovers — what should we think of a connoisseur, who should tell us that this painting, though finer than the absurd picture in the old Bible, was not so correct ? Surely we should answer. It is both finer and more correct ; and it is finer because it is more correct. It is not made up of correctly drawn diagrams ; but it is a correct painting, a worthy representation of that which it is intended to represent. It is not in the fine arts alone that this false correctness is prized by narrow-minded men — by men who cannot distinguish means from ends, or what is accidental from what is essential. M. Jourdain admired correctness in fencing. "You had no business to hit me then. You must never thrust in quart till you have thrust in tierce." M. Tomes liked correctness in medical practice. " I stand up for Artemius. That he killed his patient is plain enough. But still he acted quite according to rule. A man dead is a man dead, and there is an end of the matter. But if rules are to be broken, there is no saying what consequences may follow." We have heard of an old BYRON 73 German officer who was a great admirer of correctness in military operations. He used to revile Bonaparte for spoiling the science of war, which had been carried to such exquisite perfection by Marshal Daun. " In my youth we used to march and countermarch all the summer without gaining or losing a square league, and then we went into winter-quarters. And now comes an ignorant, hot-headed young man, who flies about from Boulogne to Ulm, and from Ulm to the middle of Moravia, and fights battles in December. The whole system of his tactics is monstrously incorrect." The world is of opinion, in spite of critics like these, that the end of fencing is to hit, that the end of medicine is to cure, that the end of war is to conquer, and that those means are the most correct which best accomplish the ends. And has poetry no end, no eternal and immutable prin- ciples ? Is poetry, like heraldry, mere matter of arbitrary regulation ? The heralds tell us that certain scutcheons and bearings denote certain conditions, and that to put colours on colours, or metals on metals, is false blazonry. If all this were reversed, if every coat of arms in Europe were new-fashioned, if it were decreed that or should never be placed but on argent, or argent but on or, that illegitimacy should be denoted by a lozenge, and widowhood by a bend, the new science would be just as good as the old science, because both the new and the old would be good for nothing. The mummery of Portcullis and Rouge Dragon, as it has no other value than that which caprice has assigned to it, may well submit to any laws which caprice may impose on it. But it is not so with that great imitative art, to the power of which all ages, the rudest and the most enlightened, bear witness. Since its first great masterpieces were produced, everything that is changeable in this world has been changed. Civilisation has been gained, lost, gained again. Religions, and languages, and forms of government, and usages of private life, and modes of thinking, all have undergone a succession of revolutions. Everything has passed away but the great features of nature, and the 74 SELECTIONS P^ROM MACAULAY heart of man, and the miracles of that art of which it is the office to reflect back the heart of man and the features of nature. Those two strange old poems, the wonder of ninety generations, still retain all their freshness. They still command the veneration of minds enriched by the literature of many nations and ages. They are still, even in wretched translations, the delight of school-boys. Having survived ten thousand capricious fashions, having seen successive codes of criticism become obsolete,- they still remain to us, immortal with the immortality of truth, the same when perused in the study of an English scholar, as when they were first chanted at the banquets of the Ionian princes. Poetry is, as was said more than two thousand years ago, imitation. It is an art analogous in many respects to the art of painting, sculpture, and acting. The imitations of the painter, the sculptor, and the actor are, indeed, within certain limits, more perfect than those of the poet. The machinery which the poet employs consists merely of words ; and words cannot, even when employed by such an artist as Homer or Dante, present to the mind images of visible objects quite so lively and exact as those which we carry away from looking on the works of the brush and the chisel. But, on the other hand, the range of poetry is infinitely wider than that of any other imitative art, or than that of all the other imitative arts together. The sculptor can imitate only form ; the painter only form and colour ; the actor, until the poet supplies him with words, only form, colour, and motion. Poetry holds the outer world in common with the other arts. The heart of man is the province of poetry, and of poetry alone. The painter, the sculptor, and the actor can exhibit no more of human passion and character than that small portion which overflows into the gesture and the face, always an imperfect, often a deceitful, sign of that which is within. The deeper and more complex parts of human nature can be exhibited by means of words alone. Thus the objects of the imitation of poetry are the whole external and the whole internal universe, the face of nature, BYRON 75 the vicissitudes of fortune, man as he is in himself, man as he appears in society, all things which really exist, all things of which we can form an image in our minds by combining together parts of things which really exist. The domain of this imperial art is commensurate with the imaginative faculty. An art essentially imitative ought not surely to be subjected to rules which tend to make its imitations less perfect than they otherwise would be ; and those who obey such rules ought to be called, not correct, but incorrect artists. The true way to judge of the rules by which English poetry was governed during the last century is to look at the effects which they produced. It was in 1780 that Johnson completed his Lives of the Poets. He tells us in that work that, since the time of Dryden, English poetry had shown no tendency to relapse into its original savageness, that its language had been refined, its numbers tuned, and its sentiments improved. It may perhaps be doubted whether the nation had any great reason to exult in the refine- ments and improvements which gave it Douglas for Othello, and the Tritimphs of Temper for the Fairy Queen. It was during the thirty years which preceded the appearance of Johnson's Lives that the diction and versification of English poetry were, in the sense in which the word is commonly used, most correct. Those thirty years are, as respects poetry, the most deplorable part of our literary history. They have indeed bequeathed to us scarcely any poetry which deserves to be remembered. Two or three hundred lines of Gray, twice as many of Goldsmith, a few stanzas of Beattie and Collins, a few strophes of Mason, and a few clever prologues and satires, were the masterpieces of this age of consummate excellence. They may all be printed in one volume, and that volume would be by no means a volume of extraordinary merit. It would contain no poetry of the very highest class, and little which could be placed very high in the second class. The Paradise Regained or Coinus would outweigh it all. At last, when poetry had fallen into such utter decay that Mr. Hayley was thought a great poet, it began to appear that 'je SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the excess of the evil was about to work the cure. Men became tired of an insipid conformity to a standard which derived no authority from nature or reason. A shallow criticism had taught them to ascribe a superstitious value to the spurious correctness of poetasters. A deeper criticism brought them back to the true correctness of the first great masters. The eternal laws of poetry regained their power, and the temporary fashions which had superseded those laws went after the wig of Lovelace and. the hoop of Clarissa. It was in a cold andi barren season that the seeds of that rich harvest which we have reaped were first sown. While poetry was every year becoming more feeble and more mechanical ; while the monotonous versification which Pope had introduced, no longer redeemed by his brilliant wit and his compactness of expression, palled on the ear of the public ; the great works of the old masters were every day attracting more and more of the admiration which they deserved. The plays of Shak- speare were better acted, better edited, and better known than they had ever been. Our fine ancient ballads were again read with pleasure, and it became a fashion to imitate them. Many of the imitations were altogether contemptible ; but they showed that men had at least begun to admire the excellence which they could not rival. A literary revolution was evidently at hand. There was a ferment in the minds of men, a vague craving for something new, a disposition to hail with delight anything which might at first sight wear the appearance of originality. A reforming age is always fertile of impostors. The same excited state of public feeling which produced the great separation from the see of Rome produced also the excesses of the Anabaptists. The same stir in the public mind of Europe which overthrew the abuses of the old French Government produced the Jacobins and Theophilanthropists. Macpherson and Delia Crusca were to the true reformers of English poetry what Knipperdoling was to Luther, or Clootz to Turgot. The success of Chatterton's forgeries and of the far more contemptible forgeries Of Ireland showed that people BYRON jy had begun to love the old poetry well, though not wisely. The public was never more disposed to believe stories without evidence, and to admire books without merit. Anything which could break the dull monotony of the correct school was acceptable. The forerunner of the great restoration of our literature was Cowper. His literary career began and ended at nearly the same time with that of Alfieri. A comparison between Alfieri and Cowper may at first sight appear as strange as that which a loyal Presbyterian minister is said to have made in 1745 between George the Second and Enoch. It may seem that the gentle, shy, melancholy Calvinist, whose spirit had been broken by fagging at school, who had not courage to earn a livelihood by reading the titles of bills in the House of Lords, and whose favourite associates were a blind old lady and an evangelical divine, could have nothing in common with the haughty, ardent, and voluptuous nobleman, the horse-jockey, the libertine, who fought Lord Ligonier in Hyde Park, and robbed the Pretender of his queen. But though the private lives of these remarkable men present scarcely any points of resemblance, their literary lives bear a close analogy to each other. They both found poetry in its lowest state of degrada- tion, feeble, artificial, and altogether nerveless. They both possessed precisely the talents which fitted them for the task of raising it from that deep abasement. They cannot, in strict- ness, be called great poets. They had not in any very high degree the creative power. The vision and the faculty divine ; but they had great vigour of thought, great v.'armth of feeling, and what, in their circumstances, was above all things impor- tant — a manliness of taste which approached to roughness. They did not deal in mechanical versification and conventional phrases. They wrote concerning things the thought of which set their hearts on fire ; and thus what they wrote, even when it wanted every other grace, had that inimitable grace which 78 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY sincerity and strong passion impart to the rudest and most homely compositions. Eacli of them sought for inspiration in a noble and affecting subject, fertile of images which had not yet been hackneyed. Liberty was the muse of Alfieri ; Religion was the muse of Cowper. The same truth is found in their lighter pieces. They were not among those who deprecated the severity, or deplored the absence, of an unreal mistress in melodious commonplaces. Instead of raving about imaginary Chloes and Sylvias, Cowper wrote of Mrs. Unwin's knitting- needles. The only love-verses of Alfieri were addressed to one whom he truly and passionately loved. " Tutte le rime amorose che seguono," says he, "tutte sono per essa, e ben sue, e di lei solamente ; poiche mai d'altra donna per certo con cantero." These great men were not free from affectation ; but their affectation was directly- opposed to the affectation which generally prevailed. Each of them expressed in strong and bitter language the contempt which he felt for the effeminate poetasters who were in fashion both in England and in Italy. Cowper complains that Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ, The substitute for genius, taste, and wit. He praised Pope ; yet he regretted that Pope had Made poetry a mere mechanic art, And every warbler had his tune by heart. Alfieri speaks with similar scorn of the tragedies of his prede- cessors. " Mi cadevano dalle mani per la languidezza, trivialita e prolissita dei modi e del verso, senza parlare poi della sner- vatezza dei pensieri. Or perche mai questa nostra divina lingua, si maschia anco, ed energica, e feroce, in bocca di Dante, dovra ella farsi cosi sbiadata ed eunuca nel dialogo tragico ? " To men thus sick of the languid manner of their contem- poraries ruggedness seemed a venial fault, or rather a positive merit. In their hatred of meretricious ornament, and of what Cowper calls " creamy smoothness," they erred on the opposite BYRON 79 side. Their style was too austere, their versification too harsh. It is not easy, however, to overrate the service which they rendered to Hterature. The intrinsic value of their poems is considerable. But the example which they set of mutiny against an absurd system was invaluable. The part which they performed was rather that of Moses than that of Joshua. They opened the house of bondage, but they did not enter the promised land. During the twenty years which followed the death of Cow- per the revolution in English poetry was fully consummated. None of the writers of this period, not even Sir Walter Scott, contributed so much to the consummation as Lord Byron. Yet Lord Byron contributed to it unwillingly, and with constant self-reproach and shame. All his tastes and inclinations led him to take part with the school of poetry which was going out against the school which was coming in. Of Pope himself he spoke with extravagant admiration. He did not venture directly to say that the little man of Twickenham was a greater poet than Shakspeare or Milton, but he hinted pretty clearly that he thought so. Of his contemporaries, scarcely any had so much of his admiration as Mr. Gifford, who, considered as a poet, was merely Pope, without Pope's wit and fancy, and whose satires are decidedly inferior in vigour and poignancy to the very imperfect juvenile performance of Lord Byron him- self. He now and then praised Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Coleridge, but ungraciously and without cordiality. When he attacked them he brought his whole soul to the work. Of the most elaborate of Mr. Wordsworth's poems he could find noth- ing to say, but that it was " clumsy, and frowsy, and his aver- sion." Peter Bell excited his spleen to such a degree that he evoked the shades of Pope and Dryden, and demanded of them whether it were possible that such trash could evade contempt .? In his heart he thought his own Pilgrimage of Harold inferior to his Imitation of Horace' s Art of Poetry, a feeble echo of Pope and Johnson. This insipid performance he repeatedly designed to publish, and was withheld only by So SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the solicitations of his friends. He has distinctly declared his approbation of the unities, the most absurd laws by which gen- ius was ever held in servitude. In one of his works — we think in his letter to Mr. Bowles — he compares the poetry of the eighteenth century to the Parthenon, and that of the nineteenth to a Turkish mosque, and boasts that, though he had assisted his contemporaries in building their grotesque and barbarous edifice, he had never joined them in defacing the remains of a chaster and more graceful architecture. In another letter he compares the change which had recently passed on English poetry to the decay of Latin poetry after the Augustan age. In the time of Pope, he tells his friend, it was all Horace with us. It is all Claudian now. For the great old masters of the art he had no very enthu- siastic veneration. In his letter to Mr. Bowles he uses expres- sions which clearly indicate that he preferred Pope's Iliad to the original. Mr. Moore confesses that his friend was no very fervent admirer of Shakspeare. Of all the poets of the first class Lord Byron seems to have admired Dante and Milton most. Yet in the fourth canto of CJiildc Harold, he places Tasso, a writer not merely inferior to them, but of quite a different order of mind, on at least a footing of equality with them. Mr. Hunt is, we suspect, quite correct in saying that Lord Byron could see little or no merit in Spenser. But Byron the critic and Byron the poet were two very dif- ferent men. The effects of the noble writer's theory may in- deed often be traced in his practice. But his disposition led him to accommodate himself to the literary taste of the age in which he lived ; and his talents would have enabled him to accommodate himself to the taste of any age. Though he said much of his contempt for mankind, and though he boasted that amidst the inconstancy of fortune and of fame he was all- sufficient to himself, his literary career indicated nothing of that lonely and unsocial pride which he affected. We cannot conceive him, like Milton or Wordsworth, defying the criticism of his contemporaries, retorting their scorn, and labouring on BYRON 8 I a poem in the full assurance that it would be unpopular, and in the full assurance that it would be immortal. He has said, by the mouth of one of his heroes, in speaking of political greatness, that "he must serve who fain would sway"; and this he assigns as a reason for not entering into political life. He did not consider that the sway which he had exercised in literature had been purchased by servitude, by the sacrifice of his own taste to the taste of the public. He was the creature of his age ; and whenever he had lived he would have been the creature of his age. Under Charles the First, Byron would have been more quaint than Donne. Under Charles the Second, the rants of Byron's rhyming plays would have pitted it, boxed it, and galleried it, with those of any Bayes or Bilboa. Under George the First, the monotonous smoothness of Byron's versification and the terseness of his expression would have made Pope himself envious. As it was, he was the man of the last thirteen years of the eighteenth century, and of the first twenty-three years of the nineteenth century. He belonged half to the old, and half to the new school of poetry. His personal taste led him to the former ; his thirst of praise to the latter ; his talents were equally suited to both. His fame was a common ground on which the zealots on both sides — Gifford for example, and Shelley — might meet. He was the representative, not of either literary party, but of both at once, and of their conflict, and of the victory by which that conflict was. terminated. His poetry fills and measures the whole of the vast interval through which our literature has moved since the time of Johnson. It touches the Essay on Man at the one extremity, and the Excursion at the other. There are several parallel instances in literary history. Voltaire, for example, was the connecting link between the France of Louis the Fourteenth and the France of Louis the Sixteenth, between Racine and Boileau on the one side, and Condorcet and Beaumarchais on the other. He, like Lord Byron, put himself at the head of an intellectual revolution, 82 SELECTION^ FROM MACAULAY dreading it all the time, murmuring at it, sneering at it, yet choosing rather to move before his age in any direction than to be left behind and forgotten. Dryden was the connecting link between the literature of the age of James the First and the literature of the age of Anne. Oromasdes and Arimanes fought for him. Arimanes carried him off. But his heart was to the last with Oromasdes. Lord Byron was, in the same manner, the mediator between two generations, between two hostile poetical sects. Though always sneering at Mr. Words- worth, he was yet, though perhaps unconsciously, the inter- preter between Mr. Wordsworth and the multitude. In the Lyrical Ballads and the Exciirsion Mr. Wordsworth appeared as the high-priest of a worship of which nature was the idol. No poems have ever indicated a more exquisite perception of the beauty of the outer world or a more passionate love and reverence for that beauty. Yet they were not popular ; and it is not likely that they ever will be popular as the poetry of Sir Walter Scott is popular. The feeling which pervaded them was too deep for general sympathy. Their style was often too mysterious for general comprehension. They made a few esoteric disciples, and many scoffers. Lord Byron founded what may be called an exoteric Lake school ; and all the readers of verse in England, we might say in Europe, hastened to sit at his feet. What Mr. Wordsworth had said like a recluse. Lord Byron said like a man of the world, with less profound feeling, but with more perspicuity, energy, and con- ciseness. We would refer our readers to the last two cantos of CJiilde Harold ^nd to Manfred, in proof of these observations. Lord Byron, like Mr. Wordsworth, had nothing dramatic in his genius. He was, indeed, the reverse of a great dramatist, the very antithesis to a great dramatist. All his characters — Harold looking on the sky, from which his country and the sun are disappearing together, the Giaour standing apart in the gloom of the side aisle, and casting a haggard scowl from under his long hood at the crucifix and the censer, Conrad leaning on his sword by the watch-tower, Lara smiling on the BYRON 83 dancers, Alp gazing steadily on the fatal cloud as it passes before the moon, Manfred wandering among the precipices of Berne, Azzo on the judgment-seat, Ugo at the bar, Lambro frowning on the siesta of his daughter and Juan, Cain present- ing his unacceptable offering — are essentially the same. The varieties are varieties merely of age, situation, and outward show. If ever Lord Byron attempted to exhibit men of a dif- ferent kind, he always made them either insipid or unnatural. Selim is nothing. Bonnivart is nothing. Don Juan, in the first and best cantos, is a feeble copy of the Page in the Marriage of Figaro. Johnson, the man whom Juan meets in the slave-market, is a most striking failure. How differently would Sir Walter Scott have drawn a bluff, fearless English- man in such a situation ! The portrait would have seemed to walk out of the canvas. Sardanapalus is more closely drawn than any dramatic per- sonage that we can remember. His heroism and his effem- inacy, his contempt of death and his dread of a weighty helmet, his kingly resolution to be seen in the foremost ranks, and the anxiety with which he calls for a looking-glass that he may be seen to advantage, are contrasted, it is true, with all the point of Juvenal. Indeed the hint of the character seems to have been taken from what Juvenal says of Otho : Speculum civilis sarcina belli. Nimirum summi duels est occidere Galbam, Et curare cutem summi constantia civis, Bedriaci in campo spolium affectare Palati, Et pressum in faciem digitis extendere panem. These are excellent lines in a satire. But it is not the business of the dramatist to exhibit characters in this sharp antithetical way. It is not thus that Shakspeare makes Prince Hal rise from the rake of Eastcheap into the hero of Shrews- bury, and sink again into the rake of Eastcheap. It is not thus that Shakspeare has exhibited the union of effeminacy and valour in Antony. A dramatist cannot commit a greater error than that of following those pointed descriptions of character 84 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY in which satirists and historians indulge so much. It is by rejecting what is natural that satirists and historians produce these striking characters. Their great object generally is to ascribe to every man as many contradictory qualities as pos- sible : and this is an object easily attained. By judicious selec- tion and judicious exaggeration, the intellect and the disposi- tion of any human being might be described as being made up of nothing but startling contrasts. If the dramatist attempts to create a being answering to one of these descriptions, he fails, because he reverses an imperfect analytical process. He produces, not a man, but a personified epigram. Very eminent writers have fallen into this snare. Ben Jonson has given us a Hermogenes, taken from the lively lines of Horace ; but the inconsistency which is so amusing in the satire appears un- natural and disgusts us in the play. Sir Walter Scott has com- mitted a far more glaring error of the same kind in the novel of Pcveril. Admiring, as every judicious reader must admire, the keen and vigorous lines in which Dryden satirized the Duke of Buckingham, Sir Walter attempted to make a Duke of Buckingham to suit them, a real living Zimri ; and he made, not a man, but the most grotesque of all monsters. A writer who should attempt to introduce into a play or a novel such a Wharton as the Wharton of Pope, or a Lord Hervey answer- ing to Sporus, would fail in the same manner. But to return to Lord Byron ; his women, like his men, are all of one breed. Haidee is a half-savage and girlish Julia ; Julia is a civilised and matronly Haidee. Leila is a wedded Zuleika, Zuleika a virgin Leila. Gulnare and Medora appear to have been intentionally opposed to each other ; yet the difference is a difference of situation only. A slight change of circumstances would, it should seem, have sent Gulnare to the lute of Medora, and armed Medora with the dagger of Gulnare. It is hardly too much to say, that Lord Byron could exhibit only one man and only one woman — a man, proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of BYRON 85 deep and strong affection ; a woman all softness and gentle- ness, loving to caress and to be caressed, but capable of being transformed by passion into a tigress. Even these two characters, his only two characters, he could not exhibit dramatically. He exhibited them in the manner, not of Shakspeare, but of Clarendon. He analysed them ; he made them analyse themselves ; but he did not make them show themselves. We are told, for example, in many lines of great force and spirit, that the speech of Lara was bitterly sarcastic, that he talked little of his travels, that if he was much questioned about them, his answers became short, and his brow gloomy. But we have none of Lara's sarcastic speeches or short answers. It is not thus that the great masters of human nature have portrayed human beings. Homer never tells us that Nestor loved to relate long stories about his youth. Shak- speare never tells us that in the mind of lago everything that is beautiful and endearing was associated with some filthy and debasing idea. It is curious to observe the tendency which the dialogue of Lord Byron always has to lose its character of a dialogue, and to become soliloquy. The scenes between Manfred and the Chamois-hunter, between Manfred and the Witch of the Alps, between Manfred and the Abbot, are instances of this tendency. Manfred, after a few unimportant speeches, has all the talk to himself. The other interlocutors are nothing more than good listeners. They drop an occasional question or ejaculation which sets Manfred off again on the inexhaustible topic of his personal feelings. If we examine the fine passages in Lord Byron's dramas — the description of Rome, for example, in Manfred, the description of a Venetian revel in Marino Faliero, the concluding invective which the old doge pronounces against Venice — we shall find that there is nothing dramatic in these speeches, that they derive none of their effect from the character or situation of the speaker, and that they would have been as fine, or finer, if they had been published as fragments of blank verse by Lord B)Ton. There is scarcely a speech in Shakspeare 86 SELECTIONS FROM MyVCAULAY of which the same could be said. No skilful reader of the plays of Shakspeare can endure to see what are called the fine things taken out, under (he name of " Beauties " or of "" I'^legant Extracts," or to hear any single passage — "To be or not to be," for example — quoted as a sample of the great poet. "To be or not to be" has merit, undoubtedly, as a composition. It would have merit if put into the mouth of a chorus. But its merit as a composition vanishes when compared with its merit as belonging to Hamlet. Il is not too nuieh to say that the great plays of Shakspeare would lose less by being deprived of all the passages which are commonly called the fine passages, than those passages lose by being read separately from the play. This is perhaps the highest jiraise which can be given to a dramatist. On the other hand, it may be doubted whether there is, in all Lord Hyron's jilays, a single remarkable passage which owes any portion of its interest or effect to its connection with the characters or the action, lie has written only one scene, as far as we can recollect, which is dramatic even in manner — ^the scene between Lucifer and Cain. The conference is animated, and each of the interlocutors has a fair share of it. But this scene, when examined, will be found to be a confirmation of our remarks. It is a dialogue only in form. It is a soliloquy in essence. It is in reality a debate carried on within one single unquiet and sceptical mind. The questions and the answers, the objections and the solutions, all belong to the same charactev. A writer who showed so little dramatic skill in works profes- sedly dramatic was not likely to write narrative with dramatic effect. Nothing could, indeed, be more rude and careless than the structure of his narrative poems. He seems to have thought, with the hero of the Rchcafsaly that the plot was good for nothing but to bring in fine things. His two longest works, CJiildc Harold and Don Juan, have no plan whatever. Either of them might have been extended to any length, or cut short at any point. The state in which the Giaour appears illustrates the manner in which all Byron's poems were constructed. They are BYRON 87 all, like the Giaour, collections of fragments ; and, though there may be no empty spaces marked by asterisks, it is still easy to perceive, by the clumsiness of the joining, where the parts for the sake of which the whole was composed end and begin. It was in description and meditation that Byron excelled. ""Description," as he said in Don Juan, "was his forte," His manner is indeed peculiar, and is almost unequalled — rapid, sketchy, full of vigour ; the selection happy ; the strokes few and bold. In spite of the reverence which we feel for the genius of Mr. Wordsworth, we cannot but think that the minuteness of his descriptions often diminishes their effect. He has accustomed himself to gaze on nature with the eye of a lover, to dwell on every feature, and to mark every change of aspect. Those beauties which strike the most negligent ob- server, and those which only a close attention discovers, are equally familiar to him, and are equally prominent in his poetry. The proverb of old Hesiod, that half is often more than the whole, is eminently applicable to description. The policy of the Dutch, who cut down most of the precious trees in the Spice Islands in order to raise the value of what remained, was a policy which poets would do well to imitate. It was a policy which no poet understood better than Lord Byron. Whatever his faults might be, he was never, while his mind retained its vigour, accused of prolixity. 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 considered 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 Eng- land riding on its bosom, the towers of Cintra overhanging the shaggy forest of cork-trees and willows, the glaring marble of Tentelicus, the banks of the Rhine, the glaciers of Clarens, the 88 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 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 accessories, the background 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 monotony 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 cursed lead alike to misery — if they are not gratified, to the misery of disappointment; if they are gratified, to the misery of satiety. His 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 anguish only by an unconquerable pride resembling that of Prometheus on the rock or of Satan in the 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 described him- self as a man of the same kind with his favourite creations ; as a man whose heart had been withered, whose capacity for happi- ness was gone and could not be restored, but whose invincible spirit dared the worst that could befall him here or hereafter. How much of this morbid feeling sprang from an original disease of the mind, how much from real misfortune, how much from the nervousness of dissipation, how much was fanciful, how much was merely affected, it is impossible for us, and would probably have been impossible for the most intimate friends of Lord Byron, to decide. Whether there ever existed, or can ever exist, a person answering to the description which he gave of himself may be doubted ; but BYRON 89 that he was not such a person is beyond all doubt. It is ridiculous to imagine that a man whose mind was really imbued with scorn of his fellow-creatures would have published three or four books every year in order to tell them so ; or that a man who could say with truth that he neither sought sympathy nor needed it would have admitted all Europe to hear his farewell to his wife, and his blessings on his child. In the second canto of Childe Harold, he tells us that he is insensible to fame and obloquy : 111 may such contest now the spirit move, Which heeds nor keen reproof nor partial praise. Yet we know on the best evidence that, a day or two before he published these lines, he was greatly, indeed childishly, elated by the compliments paid to his maiden speech in the House of Lords. We are far, however, from thinking that his sadness was altogether feigned. He was naturally a man of great sensi- bility ; he had been ill educated ; his feelings had been early exposed to sharp trials ; he had been crossed in his boyish love ; he had been mortified by the failure of his first literary efforts ; he was straitened in pecuniary circumstances ; he was unfortunate in his domestic relations ; the public treated him with cruel injustice ; his health and spirits suffered from his dissipated habits of life ; he was, on the whole, an unhappy man. He early discovered that by parading his unhappiness before the multitude he produced an immense sensation. The world gave him every encouragement to talk about his mental sufferings. The interest which his first confessions excited induced him to affect much that he did not feel ; and the affectation probably reacted on his feelings. How far the character in which he exhibited himself was genuine, and how far theatrical, it would probably have puzzled himself to say. There can be no doubt that this remarkable man owed the vast influence which he exercised over his contemporaries at least as much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of go SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY his poetry. We never could very clearly understand how it is that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be so popu- lar in writing ; or how it is that men who affect in their com- positions qualities and feelings which they have not, impose so much more easily on their contemporaries than on posterity. The interest which the loves of Petrarch excited in his own time, and the pitying fondness with which half Europe looked upon Rousseau, are well known. To readers of our age, the love of Petrarch, seems to have been love of that kind which breaks no hearts; and the sufferings of Rousseau to have deserved laughter rather than pity, to have been partly coun- terfeited, and partly the consequences of his own perverseness and vanity. What our grandchilden may think of the character of Lord Byron, as exhibited in his poetry, we will not pretend to guess. It is certain that the interest which he excited during his life is without a parallel in literary history. The feeling with which young readers of poetry regarded him can be con- ceived only by those who have experienced it. To people who are unacquainted with real calamity, "nothing is so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy." This faint image of sorrow has in all ages been considered by young gentlemen as an agree- able excitement. Old gentlemen and middle-aged gentlemen have so many real causes of sadness that they are rarely in- clined "to be as sad as night only for wantonness." Indeed they want the power almost as much as the inclination. We know very few persons engaged in active life who, even if they were to procure stools to be melancholy upon, and were to sit down with all the premeditation of Master Stephen, would be able to enjoy much of what somebody calls the " ecstasy of woe." Among that large class of young persons whose reading is almost entirely confined to works of imagination, the popularity of Lord Byron was unbounded. They bought pictures of him ; they treasured up the smallest relics of him ; they learned his poems by heart, and did their best to write like him, and to BYRON 91 look like him. Many of them practised at the glass in the hope of catching the curl of the upper lip, and the scowl of the brow, which appear in some of his portraits. A few dis- carded their neck-cloths in imitation of their great leader. For some years the Minerva press sent forth no novel without a mysterious, unhappy, Lara-like peer. The number of hope- ful undergraduates and medical students who became things of dark imaginings, on whom the freshness of the heart ceased to fall like dew, whose passions had consumed themselves to dust, and to whom the relief of tears was denied, passes all calculation. This was not the worst. There was created in the minds of many of these enthusiasts a pernicious and absurd association between intellectual power and moral depravity. From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics, compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness, a system in which the two great commandments were, to hate your neighbour, and to love your neighbour's wife. This affectation has passed away ; and a few more years will destroy whatever yet remains of that magical potency which once belonged to the name of Byron. To us he is still a man, young, noble, and unhappy. To our children he will be merely a writer ; and their impartial judgment will appoint his place among writers, without regard to his rank or to his private history. That his poetry will undergo a severe sifting, that much of what has been admired by his contemporaries will be rejected as worthless, we have little doubt ; but we have as little doubt that, after the closest scrutiny, there will still remain much that can only perish with the English language. SAMUEL JOHNSON The Life of JoJinsoii is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shak- speare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthe- nes is not more, decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. He has distanced all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth while to place them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere. We are not sure that there is in the whole history of the human intellect so strange a phasnomenon as this book. Many of the greatest men that ever lived have written biography. Boswell was one of the 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 Dtinciad 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 em- inent man, and begging 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 filled Stratford-on-Avon, with a placard round his hat bearing the inscription of Corsica Boswell. In his Toiir, 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 family pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of 92 SAMUEL JOHNSON 93 a born gentleman, yet stooping to be a tale-bearer, an eaves- dropper, 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 where his book was printing 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 exultation 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 presentiments which came to nothing ; how at another place, on waking from a drunken doze, 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 scared at Johnson's ugly face ; how he was frightened out of his wits at sea, and how the sailors quieted him as they would have quieted a child ; how tipsy he was at Lady Cork's one evening, and how much his merriment annoyed the ladies; how impertinent he was to the Duchess of Argyll, and with what stately contempt she put down his im- pertinence ; 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-complacency, a perfect unconsciousness that he was mak- ing 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. 94 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY That such a man should have written one of the best books in the world is strange enough. But this is not all. Many persons who have conducted themselves foolishly in active life, and whose conversation has indicated no superior powers of mind, have left us valuable works. Goldsmith was very justly described by one of his contemporaries as an inspired idiot, and by another as a being Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll. La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. His blunders would not come in amiss among the stories of Hierocles. But these men attained literary eminence in spite of their weak- nesses. Boswell attained it by reason of his weaknesses. If he had not been a great fool, he would never have been a great writer. Without all the qualities which made him the jest and the torment of those among whom he lived, without the offi- ciousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility to all reproof, he never could have produced so excellent a book. He was a slave, proud of his servitude ; a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity and garrulity were virtues ; an unsafe companion who never scrupled to repay the most liberal hospitality by the basest violation of confidence ; a man without delicacy, without shame, without sense enough to know when he was hurting the feelings of others or when he was exposing himself to derision ; and because he was all this, he has, in an important department of literature, immeasurably surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon, Alfieri, and his own idol Johnson. Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to eminence as writers, Boswell had absolutely none. There is not in all his books a single remark of his own on literature, politics, reli- gion, or society, which is not either commonplace or absurd. His dissertations on hereditary gentility, on the slave-trade, and on the entailing of landed estates, may serve as examples. To say that these passages are sophistical would be to pay them an extravagant compliment. They have no pretence to SAMUEL JOHNSON 95 argument, or even to meaning. He has reported innumerable observations made by himself in the course of conversation. Of those observations we do not remember one which is above the intellectual capacity of a boy of fifteen. He has printed many of his own letters, and in these letters he is always ranting or twaddhng. Logic, ' eloquence, wit, taste, all those things which are generally considered as making a book valu- able, were utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous ; but because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made him immortal. Those parts of his book which, considered abstractedly, are most utterly worthless, are delightful when we read them as illustrations of the character of the writer. Bad in themselves, they are good dramatically, like the nonsense of Justice Shal- low, the clipped English of Dr. Caius, or the misplaced con- sonants of Fluellen. Of all confessors, Boswell is the most candid. Other men who have pretended to lay open their own hearts — Rousseau, for example, and Lord Byron — have evi- dently written with a constant view to effect, and are to be then most distrusted when they seem to be most sincere. There is scarcely any man who would not rather accuse himself of great crimes and of dark and tempestuous passions than proclaim all his little vanities and wild fancies. It would be easier to find a person who would avow actions like those of Caesar Borgia or Danton, than one who would publish a day-dream like those of Alnaschar and Malvolio. Those weaknesses which most men keep covered up in the most secret places of the mind, not to be disclosed to the eye of friendship or of love, were precisely the weaknesses which Boswell paraded before all the world. He was perfectly frank, because the weakness of his understanding and the tumult of his spirits prevented him from knowing when he made himself ridiculous. His book resembles nothing so much as the conversation of the inmates of the Palace of Truth. 96 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY His fame is great, and it will, we have no doubt, be lasting; but it is fame of a peculiar kind, and indeed marvellously resembles infamy. We remember no other case in which the world has made so great a distinction between a book and its author. In general, the book and the author are considered as one. To admire the book is to admire the author. The case of Boswell is an exception, we think the only exception, to this rule. His work is universally allowed to be interesting, instructive, eminently original ; yet it has brought him nothing but contempt. All the world reads it ; all the world delights in it ; yet we do not remember ever to have read or ever to have heard any expression of respect and admiration for the man to whom we owe so much instruction and amusement. While edition after edition of his book was coming forth, his son, as Mr. Croker tells us, was ashamed of it, and hated to hear it mentioned. This feeling was natural and reasonable. Sir Alexander saw that in proportion to the celebrity of the work was the degradation of the author. The very editors of this unfortunate gentleman's books have forgotten their alle- giance, and, like those Puritan casuists who took arms by the authority of the king against his person, have attacked the writer while doing homage to the writings. Mr, Croker, for example, has published two thousand five hundred notes on the life of Johnson, and yet scarcely ever mentions the biog- rapher whose performance he has taken such pains to illustrate, without some expression of contempt. An ill-natured man Boswell certainly was not. Yet the malignity of the most malignant satirist could scarcely cut deeper than his thoughtless loquacity. Having himself no sensibility to derision and contempt, he took it for granted that all others were equally callous. He was not ashamed to exhibit himself to the whole world as a common spy, a com- mon tattler, a humble companion without the excuse of pov- erty, and to tell a hundred stories of his own pertness and folly, and of the insults which his pertness and folly brought upon him. It was natural that he should show little discretion SAMUEL JOHNSON 97 in cases in which the feehngs or the honour of others might be concerned. No man, surely, ever pubhshed such stories respecting persons whom he professed to love and revere. He would infallibly have made his hero as contemptible as he has made himself, had not his hero really possessed some moral and intellectual qualities of a very high order. The best proof that Johnson was really an extraordinary man is that his character, instead of being degraded, has, on the whole, been decidedly raised by a work in which all his vices and weak- nesses are exposed more unsparingly than they ever were exposed by Churchill or by Kenrick. Johnson grown old, Johnson in the fulness of his fame and in the enjoyment of a competent fortune, is better known to us than any other man in history. Everything about him — his coat, his wig, his figure, his face, his scrofula, his St. Vitus 's dance, his rolling walk, his blinking eye, the outward signs which too clearly marked his approbation of his dinner, his insatiable appetite for fish-sauce and veal-pie with plums, his inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick of touching the posts as he walked, his mysterious practice of treasuring up scraps of orange-peel, his morning slumbers, his midnight disputa- tions, his contortions, his mutterings, his gruntings, his puff- ings, his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, his sarcastic wit, his vehemence, his insolence, his fits of tempestuous rage, his queer inmates, old Mr. Levett and blind Mrs. Williams, the cat Hodge and the negro Frank — all are as familiar to us as the objects by which we have been surrounded from child- hood. But we have no minute information respecting those years of Johnson's life during which his character and his manners became immutably fixed. We know him, not as he was known to the men of his own generation, but as he was known to men whose father he might have been. That cele- brated club of which he was the most distinguished member contained few persons who could remember a time when his fame was not fully established and his habits completely formed. He had made himself a name in literature while 98 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Reynolds and the Wartons were still boys. He was about twenty years older than Burke, Goldsmith, and Gerard Ham- ilton ; about thirty years older than Gibbon, Beauclerk, and Langton ; and about forty years older than Lord Stowell, Sir William Jones, and Windham. Boswell and Mrs. Thrale, the two writers from whom we derive most of our knowledge respecting him, never saw him till long after he was fifty years old, till most of his great works had become classical, and till the pension bestowed on him by the Crown had placed him above poverty. Of those eminent men who were his most intimate associates towards the close of his life, the only one, as far as we remember, who knew him during the first ten or twelve years of his residence in the capital, was David Garrick ; and it does not appear that, during those years, David Garrick saw much of his fellow-townsman. Johnson came up to London precisely at the time when the condition of a man of letters was most miserable and degraded. It was a dark night between two sunny days. The age of patronage had passed away. The age of general curiosity and intelligence had not arrived. The number of readers is at present so great that a popular author may subsist in comfort and opulence on the profits of his works. In the reigns of William the Third, of Anne, and of George the First, even such men as Congreve and Addison would scarcely have been able to live like gentlemen by the mere sale of their writings. But the deficiency of the natural demand for literature was, at the close of the seventeenth and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, more than made up by artificial encourage- ment, by a vast system of bounties and premiums. There was, perhaps, never a time at which the rewards of literary merit were so splendid, at which men who could write well found such easy admittance into the most distinguished society, and to the highest honours of the State. The chiefs of both the great parties into which the kingdom was divided, patronized literature with emulous munificence. Congreve, when he had scarcely attained his majority, was rewarded for his first comedy SAMUEL JOHNSON 99 with places which made him independent for Hfe. Smith, tliough his Hippolytns and PJiadi-a failed, would have been consoled with three hundred a year but for his own folly. Rowe was not only Poet Laureate, but also land-surveyor of the customs in the port of London, clerk of the council to the Prince of Wales, and secretary of the Presentations to the Lord Chancellor. Hughes was secretary to the Commissions of the Peace. Ambrose Philips was judge of the Prerogative Court in Ireland. Locke was Commissioner of Appeals and of the Board of Trade. Newton was Master of the Mint. Stepney and Prior were employed in embassies of high dignity and importance. Gay, who commenced life as apprentice to a silk mercer, became a secretary of legation at five-and-twenty. It was to a poem on the death of Charles the Second, and to the City and Country Mouse, that Montague owed his introduction into public life, his earldom, his garter, and his Auditorship of the Exchequer. Swift, but for the uncon- querable prejudice of the queen, would have been a bishop. Oxford, with his white staff in his hand, passed through the crowd of his suitors to welcome Parnell, when that ingenious writer deserted the Whigs. Steele was a commissioner of stamps and a member of Parliament. Arthur Mainwaring was a commissioner of the customs, and auditor of the im- prest. Tickell was secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland. Addison was Secretary of State. This liberal patronage was brought into fashion, as it seems, by the magnificent Dorset, almost the only noble versifier in the Court of Charles the Second who possessed talents for composition which were independent of the aid of a coronet. Montague owed his elevation to the favour of Dorset, and imi- tated through the whole course of his life the liberality to which he was himself so greatly indebted. The Tory leaders, Harley and Bolingbroke in particular, vied with the chiefs of the Whig party in zeal for the encouragement of letters. But soon after the accession of the House of Hanover a change took place. The supreme power passed to a man who cared lOO SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY little for poetry or eloquence. The importance of the House of Commons was constantly on the increase. The Govern- ment was under the necessity of bartering for Parliamentary support much of that patronage which had been employed in fostering literary merit ; and Walpole was by no means in- clined to divert any part of the fund of corruption to pur- poses which he considered as idle. He had eminent talents for government and for debate. But he had paid little attention to books, and felt little respect for authors. One of the coarse jokes of his friend, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, was far more pleasing to him than Thomson's Scasojis or Richard- son's Pamela. He had observed that some of the distin- guished writers whom the favour of Halifax had turned into statesmen had been mere incumbrances to their party, dawdlers in office and mutes in Parliament. During the whole course of his administration, therefore, he scarcely befriended a single man of genius. The best writers of the age gave all their sup- port to the Opposition, and contributed to excite that discon- tent which, after plunging the nation into a foolish and unjust war, overthrew the Minister to make room for men less able and equally immoral. The Opposition could reward its eulo- gists with little more than promises and caresses. St. James's would give nothing : Leicester House had nothing to give. Thus, at the time when Johnson commenced his literary career, a writer had little to hope from the patronage of pow- erful individuals. The patronage of the public did not yet furnish the means of comfortable subsistence. The prices paid by booksellers to authors were so low that a man of con- siderable talents and unremitting industry could do little more than provide for the day which was passing over him. The lean kine had eaten up the fat kine. The thin and withered ears had devoured the good ears. The season of rich harvest was over, and the period of famine had begun. All that is squalid and miserable might now be summed up in the word Poet. That word denoted a creature dressed like a scarecrow, familiar with compters and spunging-houses, and perfectly SAMUEL JOHNSON lOl qualified to decide on the comparative merits of the Common Side in the King's Bench prison and of Mount Scoundrel in the Fleet. Even the poorest pitied him ; and they well might pity him. For if their condition was equally abject, their aspirings were not equally high, nor their sense of insult equally acute. To lodge in a garret up four pair of stairs, to dine in a cellar among footmen out of place, to translate ten hours a day for the wages of a ditcher, to be hunted by bailiffs from one haunt of beggary and pestilence to another, from Grub Street to St. George's Fields, and from St. George's Fields to the alleys behind St. Martin's church, to sleep on a bulk in June and amidst the ashes of a glass-house in December, to die in an hospital, and to be buried in a parish vault, was the fate of more than one writer who, if he had lived thirty years earlier, would have been admitted to the sittings of the Kitcat or the Scriblerus Club, would have sat in Parliament, and would have been intrusted with embassies to the High Allies ; who, if he had lived in our time, would have found encouragement scarcely less munificent in Albemarle Street or in Paternoster I-^ow. As every climate has its peculiar diseases, so every walk of life has its peculiar temptations. The literary character, assur- edly, has always had its share of faults, vanity, jealousy, mor- bid sensibility. To these faults were now superadded the faults which are commonly found in men whose livelihood is precarious, and whose principles are exposed to the trial of severe distress. All the vices of the gambler and of the beg- gar were blended with those of the author. The prizes in the wretched lottery of book-making were scarcely less ruinous than the blanks. If good fortune came, it came in such a manner that it was almost certain to be abused. After months of starvation and despair, a full third night or a well-received dedication filled the pocket of the lean, ragged, unwashed poet with guineas. He hastened to enjoy those luxuries with the images of which his mind had been haunted while he was sleeping amidst the cinders and eating potatoes at the Irish ordinary in Shoe Lane. A week of taverns soon qualified him I02 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY for another year of night-cellars. Such was the life of Savage, of Boyse, and of a crowd of others. Sometimes blazing in gold-laced hats and waistcoats ; sometimes lying in bed be- cause their coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper cravats because their linen was in pawn ; sometimes drinking cham- pagne and Tokay with Betty Careless ; sometimes standing at the window of an eating-house in Porridge island, to snuff up the scent of what they could not afford to taste ; they knew luxury ; they knew beggary ; but they never knaw comfort. These men were irreclaimable. They looked on a regular and frugal life with the same aversion which an old gipsy or a Mohawk hunter feels for a stationary abode, and for the re- straints and securities of civilized communities. They were as untameable, as much wedded to their desolate freedom, as the wild ass. They could no more be broken in to the offices of social man than the unicorn could be trained to serve and abide by the crib. It was well if they did not, like beasts of a still fiercer race, tear the hands which ministered to their necessities. To assist them was impossible ; and the most benevolent of mankind at length became weary of giving re- lief which was dissipated with the wildest profusion as soon as it had been received. If a sum was bestowed on the wretched adventurer, such as, properly husbanded, might have supplied him for six months, it was instantly spent in strange freaks of sensuality, and, before forty-eight hours had elapsed, the poet was again pestering all his acquamtance for twopence to get a plate of shin of beef at a subterraneous cookshop. If his friends gave him an asylum in their houses, those houses were forthwith turned into bagnios and taverns. All order was destroyed ; all business was suspended. The most good-natured host began to repent of his eagerness to serve a man of genius in distress when he heard his guest roaring for fresh punch at five o'clock in the morning. A few eminent writers were more fortunate. Pope had been raised above poverty by the active patronage which, in his youth, both the great political parties had extended to his SAMUEL JOHNSON 103 Homer. Young had received the only pension ever bestowed, to the best of our recollection, by Sir Robert Walpole, as the reward of mere literary merit. One or two of the many poets who attached themselves to the Opposition, Thomson in par- ticular and Mallet, obtained, after much severe suffering, the means of subsistence from their political friends. Richardson, like a man of sense, kept his shop, and his shop kept him, which his novels, admirable as they are, would scarcely have done. But nothing could be more deplorable than the state even of the ablest men, who at that time depended for sub- sistence on their writings. Johnson, Collins, Fielding, and Thomson were certainly four of the most distinguished per- sons that England produced during the eighteenth century : it is well known that they were all four arrested for debt. Into calamities and difficulties such as these Johnson plunged in his twenty-eighth year. From that time till he was three or four and fifty, we have little information respecting him ; little, we mean, compared with the full and accurate information which we possess respecting his proceedings and habits towards the close of his life. He emerged at length from cock- lofts and sixpenny ordinaries into the society of the polished and the opulent. His fame was established. A pension suffi- cient for his wants had been conferred on him ; and he came forth to astonish a generation with which he had almost as little in common as with Frenchmen or Spaniards. 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 increas- ing. The price of literary labour had risen ; and those rising men of letters with whom Johnson was henceforth 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 lodging. Burke, Robertson, the Wartons, Gray, Mason, Gibbon, Adam Smith, Beattie, Sir William Jones, Goldsmith, and Churchill were the most distinguished writers of what may be I04 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 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 common among authors. Of the rest, scarcely any had felt the pressure of severe poverty. Almost 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 Osborne. Johnson came among them the solitary specimen of a past age, the last survivor of the 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 received an uncouth figure, a diseased constitution, and an irritable temper. The manner in which the earlier years of his man- hood had been passed had given to his demeanour, and even to his moral character, some peculiarities appalling to the civ- ilized beings who were the companions of his old age. The perverse irregularity of his hours, the slovenliness of his per- son, his fits of strenuous exertion, interrupted 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 orig- inal he was, undoubtedly, in some respects. But if we possessed full information concerning those who shared his early hard- ships, 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 Streatham Park as he had been used to eat behind the screen at St. John's Gate, when he was ashamed to show his ragged 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 privation with SAMUEL JOHNSON 105 fortitude, but not to taste pleasure with moderation. He could fast ; but, when he did not fast, he tore his dinner like a fam- ished wolf, with the veins swelling on his forehead, and the per- spiration 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 disease which raged with such deadly malignity in his friends Savage and Boyse. The roughness and violence which he showed in society were to be expected from a man whose temper, not naturally gentle, had been long tried by the bitterest calamities, 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 insincerity of patrons, by that bread which is the bitterest 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 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 demeanour in society should be harsh and despotic. For severe distress he had sympathy, and not only sympathy, but munificent relief ; but for the suffering which a harsh word inflicts upon a deli- cate 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 benevolence. 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 com- plaining of a headache, with Mrs. Thrale for grumbling about I06 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the dust on the road, or the smell of the kitchen. These were, in his phrase, "foppish lamentations," which people ought to be asTiamed to utter in a world so full of sin and sorrow. Goldsmith crying because TJic Good-natiircd Man had failed, inspired him with no pity. Though his own health was not good, he detested and despised valetudinarians. Pecuniary losses, unless they reduced the loser absolutely to beggary, moved him very little. People whose hearts had been softened by prosperity might weep, he said, for such events ; but all that could be expected of a plain man was not to laugh. He was not much moved even by the spectacle of Lady Tavistock dying of a broken heart for the loss of her lord. Such grief he considered as a luxury reserved for the idle and the wealthy. A washer-woman, left a widow with nine small children, would not have sobbed herself to death. A person who troubled himself so little about small or senti- mental grievances was not likely to be very attentive to the feelings of others in the ordinary intercourse of society. He could not understand how a sarcasm or a reprimand could make any man really unhappy. " My dear doctor," said he to Goldsmith, "what harm does it do to a man to call him Holofernes ? " " Pooh, ma'am," he exclaimed to Mrs. Carter, "who is the worse for being talked of uncharitably? " Polite- ness has been well defined as benevolence in small things. Johnson was impolite, not because he wanted benevolence, but because small things appeared smaller to him than to people who had never known what it was to live for fourpence halfpenny a day. 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 passion, which prevented him from boldly and fairly investigating a subject, he was a wary and acute SAMUEL JOHNSON 107 reasoner, a little too much inclined to scepticism, 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 expos- ing false testimony, some childish prejudices, such 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 narrowness and feebleness as the fisherman in the Arabian tale, when he saw the Genie, whose stature had overshadowed the whole sea- coast, 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. Johnson was in the habit of sifting with extreme severity the evidence for all stories which were merely odd. But when they were not only odd but miraculous, his severity relaxed. He began to be credulous precisely at the point where the most credulous people begin to be sceptical. It is curious to observe, both in his writings and in his conversation, the con- trast between the disdainful manner in which he rejects unau- thenticated anecdotes, even when they are consistent with the general laws of nature, and the respectful manner in which he mentions the wildest stories relating to the invisible world. A man who told him of a water-spout or a meteoric stone generally had the lie direct given him for his pains. A man who told him of a prediction or a dream wonderfully accom- plished was sure of a courteous hearing. "Johnson," observed Hogarth, " like King David, says in his haste that all men are liars." "His incredulity," says Mrs. Thrale, "amounted almost to disease." She tells us how he browbeat a gentle- man who gave him an account of a hurricane in the West Indies, and a poor Quaker who related some strange circum- stance about the red-hot balls fired at the siege of Gibraltar. " It is not so. It cannot be true. Don't tell that story again. io8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY You cannot think how poor a figure you make in telUng it." He once said, half jestingly, we suppose, that for six months he refused to credit the fact of the earthquake at Lisbon, and that he still believed the extent of the calamity to be greatly exaggerated. Yet he related with a grave face how old Mr, Cave of St. John's Gate saw a ghost, and how this ghost was something of a shadowy being. He went himself on a ghost-hunt to Cock Lane, and was angry with John Wesley for not following up another scent of the same kind with proper spirit and perseverance. He rejects the Celtic geneal- ogies and poems without the least hesitation ; yet he declares himself willing to believe the stories of the second-sight. If he had examined the claims of the Highland seers with half the severity with which he sifted the evidence for the genu- ineness of Fiiigal, he would, we suspect, have come away from Scotland with a mind fully made up. In his Lives of the Poets, we find that he is unwilling to give credit to the accounts of Lord Roscommon's early proficiency in his studies; but he tells with great solemnity an absurd romance about some intelligence preternaturally impressed on the mind of that nobleman. He avows himself to be in great doubt about the truth of the story, and ends by warning his readers not wholly to slight such impressions. Many of his sentiments on religious subjects are worthy of a liberal and enlarged mind. He could discern clearly enough the folly and meanness of all bigotry except his own. When he spoke of the scruples of the Puritans, he spoke like a person who had really obtained an insight into the divine philosophy of the New Testament, and who considered Chris- tianity as a noble scheme of government, tending to promote the happiness and to elevate the moral nature of man. The horror which the sectaries felt for cards, Christmas ale, plum- porridge, mince-pies, and dancing bears, excited his contempt. To the arguments urged by some very worthy people against showy dress he replied with admirable sense and spirit, " Let us not be found, when our Master calls us, stripping the lace SAMUEL JOHNSON 109 off our waistcoats, but the spirit of contention from our souls and tongues. Alas ! sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one," Yet he was himself under the tyranny of scruples as unreasonable as those of Hudibras or Ralpho, and carried his zeal for ceremonies and for ecclesiastical dignities to lengths altogether inconsistent with reason or with Christian charity. He has gravely noted down in his diary that he once com- mitted the sin of drinking coffee on Good Friday. In Scot- land, he thought it his duty to pass several months without joining in public worship, solely because the ministers of the Kirk had not been ordained by bishops. His mode of estimat- ing the piety of his neighbours was somewhat singular. "Campbell," said he, "is a good man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not been in the inside of a church for many years ; but he never passes a church without pulling off his hat : this shows he has good principles." Spain and Sicily must surely contain many pious robbers and well-principled assassins. Johnson could easily see that a Roundhead who named all his children after Solomon's singers, and talked in the House of Commons about seeking the Lord, might be an unprincipled villain whose religious mummeries only aggra- vated his guilt. But a man who took off his hat when he passed a church episcopally consecrated must be a good man, a pious man, a man of good principles. Johnson could easily see that those persons who looked on a dance or a laced waistcoat as sinful, deemed most ignobly of the attributes of God and of the ends of revelation. But with what a storm of invective he would have overwhelmed any man who had blamed him for celebrating the redemption of mankind with sugarless tea and butterless buns ! Nobody spoke more contemptuously of the cant of patri- otism. Nobody saw more clearly the error of those who regarded liberty, not as a means, but as an end, and who proposed to themselves, as the object of their pursuit, the prosperity of the State as distinct from the prosperity of no SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the individuals who compose the State. His calm and settled opinion seems to have been that forms of government have little or no influence on the happiness of society. This opinion, erroneous as it is, ought at least to have preserved him from all intemperance on political questions. It did not, however, preserve him from the lowest, fiercest, and most absurd ex- travagances of party spirit, from rants which, in everything but the diction, resembled those of Squire Western, He was, as a politician, half ice and half fire. On the side of his intellect he was a mere Pococurante, far too apathetic about public affairs, far too sceptical as to the good or evil tendency of any form of polity. His passions, on the contrary, were vjolent even to slaying against all who leaned to Whiggish principles. The well-known lines which he inserted in Goldsmith's Traveller express what seems to have been his deliberate judgment : How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which kings or laws can cause or cure ! He had previously put expressions very similar into the mouth of Rasselas. It is amusing to contrast these passages with the torrents of raving abuse which he poured forth against the Long Parliament and the American Congress. In one of the conversations reported by Boswell this inconsistency dis- plays itself in the most ludicrous manner. "Sir Adam Ferguson," says Boswell, "suggested that luxury corrupts a people, and destroys the spirit of liberty. Johnson : ' Sir, that is all visionary. I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than an- other. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual. Sir, the danger of the abuse of power is nothing to a private man. What Frenchman is prevented passing his life as he pleases ? ' Sir Adam : * But, sir, in the British constitution it is surely of importance to keep up a spirit in the people, so as to preserve a balance against the Crown.' Johnson : ' Sir, I per- ceive you are a vile Whig. Why all this childish jealousy of the power of the Crown .? The Crown has not power enough.' " SAMUEL JOHNSON iii One of the old philosophers, Lord Bacon tells us, used to say that life and death were just the same to him. " Why, then," said an objector, "do you not kill yourself?" The philosopher answered, " Because it is just the same." If the difference between two forms of government be not worth half a guinea, it is not easy to see how Whiggism can be viler than Toryism, or how the Crown can have too little power. If the happiness of individuals is not affected by political abuses, zeal for liberty is doubtless ridiculous. But zeal for monarchy must be equally so. No person could have been more quick-sighted than Johnson to such a contradiction as this in the logic of an antagonist. The judgments which Johnson passed on books were, in his own time, regarded with superstitious veneration, and, in our time, are generally treated with indiscriminate contempt. They are the judgments of a strong but enslaved understanding. The mind of the critic was hedged round by an uninterrupted fence of prejudices and superstitions. Within his narrow limits, he displayed a vigour and an activity which ought to have enabled him to clear the barrier that confined him. How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his premises so ably, should assume his premises so foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human nature. The same inconsistency may be observed in the schoolmen of the Middle Ages. Those writers show so much acuteness and force of mind in arguing on their wretched data, that a modern reader is perpetually at a loss to comprehend how such minds came by such data. Not a flaw in the superstructure of the theory which they are rearing escapes their vigilance. Yet they are blind to the obvious unsoundness of the foundation. It is the same with some eminent lawyers. Their legal arguments are intellectual prodigies, abounding with the happiest analogies and the most refined distinctions. The principles of their arbitrary science being once admitted, the statute-book and the reports being once assumed as the foundations of reasoning, these men must be allowed to be perfect masters of logic. But if a question 112 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY arises as to the postulates on which their whole system rests, if they are called upon to vindicate the fundamental maxims of that system which they have passed their lives in studying, these very men often talk the language of savages or of children. Those who have listened to a man of this class in his own court, and who have witnessed the skill with which he analyzes and digests a vast mass of evidence, or reconciles a crowd of precedents which at first sight seem contradictory, scarcely know him again when, a few hours later, they hear him speak- ing on the other side of Westminster Hall in his capacity of legislator. They can scarcely believe that the paltry quirks which are faintly heard through a storm of coughing, and which do not impose on the plainest country gentleman, can proceed from the same sharp and vigorous intellect which had excited their admiration under the same roof, and on the same day. Johnson decided literary questions like a lawyer, not like a legislator. He never examined foundations where a point was already ruled. His whole code of criticism rested on pure assumption, for which he sometimes quoted a precedent or an authority, but rarely troubled himself to give a reason drawn from the nature of things. He took it for granted that the kind of poetry which flourished in his own time, which he had been accustomed to hear praised from his childhood, and which he had himself written with success, was the best kind of poetry. In his biographical work he has repeatedly laid it down as an undeniable proposition that during the latter part of the seventeenth century, and the earlier part of the eighteenth, English poetry had been in a constant progress of improve- ment. Waller, Denham, Dryden, and Pope had been, according to him, the great reformers. He judged of all works of the imagination by the standard established among his own con- temporaries. Though he allowed Homer to have been a greater man than Virgil, he seems to have thought the Aincid a greater poem than the Iliad. Indeed, he well might have thought so, for he preferred Pope's Iliad to Homer's. He pronounced that, after Hoole's translation of Tasso, Fairfax's SAMUEL JOHNSON 113 would hardly be reprinted. He could see no merit in our fine old English ballads, and always spoke with the most provoking contempt of Percy's fondness for them. Of the great original works of imagination which appeared during his time, Richard- son's novels alone excited his admiration. He could see little or no merit in Tom Jones, in Gulliver s Travels, or in Tristram Shandy. To Thomson's Castle of Indolence he vouchsafed only a line of cold commendation — of commendation much colder than what he has bestowed on the Creation of that portentous bore, Sir Richard Blackmore. Gray was, in his dialect, a barren rascal. Churchill was a blockhead. The contempt which he felt for the trash of Macpherson was indeed just ; but it was, we suspect, just by chance. He despised the Fingal for the very reason which led many men of genius to admire it. He despised it, not because it was essentially commonplace, but because it had a superficial air of originality. He was undoubtedly an excellent judge of compositions fashioned on his own principles ; but when a deeper philosophy was required, when he undertook to pronounce judgment on the works of those great minds which "yield homage only to eternal laws," his failure was ignominious. He criticized Pope's Epitaphs excellently ; but his observations on Shak- speare's plays and Milton's poems seem to us for the most part as wretched as if they had been written by Rymer himself, whom we take to have been the worst critic that ever lived. Some of Johnson's whims on literary subjects can be com- pared only to that strange nervous feeling which made him uneasy if he had not touched every post between the Mitre tavern and his own lodgings. His preference of Latin epitaphs to English epitaphs is an instance. An English epitaph, he said, would disgrace Smollett. He declared that he would not pollute the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English epitaph on Goldsmith. What reason there can be for celebrating a British writer in Latin, which there was not for covering the Roman arches of triumph with Greek inscriptions, or for commemorating the deeds of the heroes of Thermopylae in Egyptian hieroglyphics, we are utterly unable to imagine. 114 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY On men and manners, at least on the men and manners of a particular place and a particular age, Johnson had certainly looked with a most observant and discriminating eye. His remarks on the education of children, on marriage, on the economy of families, on the rules of society, are always striking, and generally sound. In his writings, indeed, the knowledge of life which he possessed in an eminent degree is very imper- fectly exhibited. Like those unfortunate chiefs of the Middle Ages who were suffocated by their own chain-mail and cloth of gold, his maxims perish under that load of words which was de- signed for their defence and their ornament. But it is clear from the remains of his conversation that he had more of that homely wisdom which nothing but experience and observation can give than any writer since the time of Swift. If he had been content to write as he talked, he might have left books on the practical art of living superior to the Directions to Scnuints. Yet even his remarks on society, like his remarks on litera- ture, indicate a mind at least as remarkable for narrowness as for strength. He was no master of the great science of human nature. He had studied, not the genus man, but the species Londoner. Nobody was ever so thoroughly conversant with all the forms of life and all the shades of moral and intel- lectual character which were to be seen from Islington to the Thames, and from Hyde Park Corner to Mile-End Green. But his philosophy stopped at the first turnpike-gate. Of the rural life of England he knew nothing ; and he took it for granted that everybody who lived in the country was either stupid or miserable. " Country gentlemen," said he, ".must be unhappy ; for they have not enough to keep their lives in motion" ; as if all those peculiar habits and associations which made Fleet Street and Charing Cross the finest views in the world to himself had been essential parts of human nature. Of remote countries and past times he talked with wild and ignorant presumption. " The Athenians of the age of Demos- thenes," he said to Mrs. Thrale, "were a people of brutes, a barbarous people," In conversation with Sir Adam Ferguson SAMUEL JOHNSON 1 1 5 he used similar language. "The boasted Athenians," he said, " were barbarians. The mass of every people must be bar- barous where there is no printing." The fact was this : he saw that a Londoner who could not read was a very stupid and brutal fellow : he saw that great refinement of taste and activity of intellect were rarely found in a Londoner who had not read much ; and because it was by means of books that people acquired almost all their knowledge in the society with which he was acquainted, he concluded, in defiance of the strongest and clearest evidence, that the human mind can be cultivated by means of books alone. An Athenian citizen might possess very few volumes ; and the largest library to which he had access might be much less valuable than Johnson's bookcase in Bolt Court ; but the Athenian might pass every morning in conversation with Socrates, and might hear Pericles speak four or five times every month. He saw the plays of Sophocles and Aristophanes ; he walked amidst the friezes of Phidias and the paintings of Zeuxis ; he knew by heart the choruses of ^schylus ; he heard the rhapsodist at the corner of the streets reciting the Shield of Achilles or the Death of Argus ; he was a legislator, conversant with high questions of alliance, revenue, and war ; he was a soldier, trained under a liberal and generous discipline ; he was a judge compelled every day to weigh the effect of opposite arguments. These things were in themselves an education — an education eminently fitted, not, indeed, to form exact or profound thinkers, but to give quick- ness to the perceptions, delicacy to the taste, fluency to the expression, and politeness to the manners. All this was over- looked. An Athenian who did not improve his mind by reading was, in Johnson's opinion, much such a person as a Cockney who made his mark, much such a person as black Frank before he went to school, and far inferior to a parish clerk or a printer's devil. Johnson's friends have allowed that he carried to a ridiculous extreme his unjust contempt for foreigners. He pronounced the French to be a very silly people, much behind us, stupid, Ii6 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY ignorant creatures. And this judgment he formed after having been at Paris about a month, during which he would not talk French, for fear of giving the natives an advantage over him in conversation. He pronounced them, also, to be an indelicate people, because a French footman touched the sugar with his fingers. That ingenious and amusing traveller, M. Simond, has defended his countrymen very successfully against John- son's accusations, and has pointed out some English practices which, to an impartial spectator, would seem at least as incon- sistent with physical cleanliness and social decorum as those which Johnson so bitterly reprehended. To the sage, as Bos- well loves to call him, it never occurred to doubt that there must be something eternally and immutably good in the usages to which he had been accustomed. In fact, Johnson's remarks on society beyond the bills of mortality are generally of much the same kind with those of honest Tom Dawson, the English footman in Dr. Moore's Zchico. " Suppose the King of France has no sons, but only a daughter ; then, when the king dies, this here daughter, according to that there law, cannot be made queen, but the next near relative, provided he is a man, is made king, and not the last king's daughter, which, to be sure, is very unjust. The French footguards are dressed in blue, and all the marching regiments in white, w^hich has a very foolish appearance for soldiers ; and as for blue regimentals, it is only fit for the blue horse or the artillery." Johnson's visit to the Hebrides introduced him to a state of society completely new to him ; and a salutary suspicion of his own deficiencies seems on that occasion to have crossed his mind for the first time. He confessed, in the last para- graph of his Journey, that his thoughts on national manners were the thoughts of one who had seen but little, of one who had passed his time almost wholly in cities. This feeling, however, soon passed away. It is remarkable that to the last he entertained a fixed contempt for all those modes of life and those studies which tend to emancipate the mind from the prejudices of a particular age or a particular nation. Of SAMUEL JOHNSON 117 foreign travel and of history he spoke with the fierce and boisterous contempt of ignorance. " What does a man learn by travelling ? Is Beauclerk the better for travelling ? What did Lord Charlemont learn in his travels, except that there was a snake in one of the pyramids of Egypt ? " History was, in his opinion, to use the fine expression of Lord Plunkett, an old almanack : historians could, as he conceived, claim no higher dignity than that of almanack-makers ; and his favourite historians were those who, like Lord Hailes, aspired to no higher dignity. He always spoke with contempt of Robertson. Hume he would not even read. He affronted one of his friends for talking to him about Catiline's conspiracy, and declared that he never desired to hear of the Punic war again as long as he lived. Assuredly one fact which does not directly affect our own interests, considered in itself, is no better worth knowing than . another fact. The fact that there is a snake in a pyramid, or the fact that Hannibal crossed the Alps, are in themselves as unprofitable to us as the fact that there is a green blind in a particular house in Threadneedle Street, or the fact that a Mr. Smith comes into the city every morning on the top of one of the Blackwall stages. But it is certain that those who will not crack the shell of history will never get at the kernel. John- son, with hasty arrogance, pronounced the kernel worthless, because he saw no value in the shell. The real use of travelling to distant countries and of studying the annals of past times is to preserve men from the contraction of mind which those can hardly escape whose whole communion is with one gener- ation and one neighbourhood, who arrive at conclusions by means of an induction not sufficiently copious, and who there- fore constantly confound exceptions with rules, and accidents with essential properties. In short, the real use of travelling and of studying history is to keep men from being what Tom Dawson was in fiction, and Samuel Johnson in reality. Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, appears far greater in Boswell's books than in his own. His conversation ii8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY appears to have been quite equal to his writings in matter, and far superior to them in manner. When lie talked, he clothed his wit and his sense in forcible and natural expressions. As soon as he took his pen in his hand to write for the public, his style became systematically vicious. All his books are written in a learned language — in a language which nobody hears from his mother or his nurse ; in a language in which nobody ever quarrels, or drives bargains, or makes love ; in a language in which nobody ever thinks. It is clear that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in which he wrote. The expressions which came first to his tongue were simple, ener- getic, and picturesque. When he wrote for publication, he did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work of which the Journey to the Hebrides is the translation ; and it is amusing to coitipare the two versions. " When we were taken up-stairs," says he in one of his letters, "a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of us was to lie." This incident is recorded in the Joia-ney as follows : " Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose started up, at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge." Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. " The Rehearsal,'' he said, very unjustly, " has not wit enough to keep it sweet " ; then, after a pause, " it has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction." Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even agreeable, when the manner, though vicious, is natural. Few readers, for example, would be willing to part with the mannerism of Milton or of Burke, But a mannerism which does not sit easy on the mannerist, which has been adopted on principle, and which can be sustained only by constant effort, is always offensive. And such is the mannerism of Johnson. The characteristic faults of his style are so familiar to all our readers, and have been so often burlesqued, that it is almost superfluous to point them out. It is well known that he made less use than any other eminent writer of those SAMUEL JOHNSON 119 strong plain words, Anglo-Saxon or Norman-French, of which the roots lie in the inmost depths of our language ; and that he felt a vicious partiality for terms which, long after our own speech had been fixed, were borrowed from the Greek and Latin, and which, therefore, even when lawfully naturalized, must be considered as born aliens, not entitled to rank with the king's English. His constant practice of padding out a sentence with useless epithets till it became as stiff as the bust of an exquisite ; his antithetical forms of expression, constantly employed even where there is no opposition in the ideas expressed ; his big words wasted on little things ; his harsh inversions, so widely different from those graceful and easy inversions which give variety, spirit, and sweetness to the expression of our great old writers ; all these peculiarities have been imitated by his admirers and parodied by his assailants, till the public have become sick of the subject. Goldsmith said to him, very wittily and very justly, "If you were to write a fable about little fishes, doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like whales." No man surely ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shaf ton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely as Imlac the poet, or Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia. The gay Cornelia describes her reception at the country-house of her relations in such terms as these : "I was surprised, after the civilities of my first reception, to find, instead of the leisure and tranquillity which a rural life always promises, and, if well conducted, might always afford, a confused wildness of care, and a tumultuous hurry of diligence, by which every face was clouded and eveiy motion agitated." The gentle Tranquilla informs us that she "had not passed the earlier part of life without the flattery of courtship and the joys of triumph ; but had danced the round of gaiety amidst the murmurs of envy I20 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY and the gratulations of applause ; had been attended from pleasure to pleasure by the great, the sprightly, and the vain ; and had seen her regard solicited by the obsequiousness of gallantry, the gaiety of wit, and the timidity of love." Surely Sir John Falstaff himself did not wear his petticoats with a worse grace. The reader may well cry out with honest Sir Hugh Evans, " I like not when a 'oman has a great peard : I spy a great peard under her muffler." ^ We had something more to say ; but our article is already too long, and we must close it. We would fain part in good humour from the hero, from the biographer, and even from the editor, who, ill as he has performed his task, has at least this claim to our gratitude, that he has induced us to read Boswell's book again. As we close it, the club-room is before us, and the table on which stands the omelet for Nugent and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those heads which live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke and the tall thin form of Langton, the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and the beaming smile of Garrick, Gibbon tapping his snuffbox and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we have been brought up, the gigantic body, the huge massy face, seamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the grey wig with the scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches ; we see the heavy form rolling ; we hear it puffing ; and then comes the " Why, sir ! " and the " What then, sir ? " and the " No, sir ! " and the " You don't see your way through the question, sir ! " What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man ! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion. To receive from his contemporaries 1 It is proper to observe that this passage bears a very close resemblance to a passage in the Rambler (No. 20). The resemblance may possibly be the effect of unconscious plagiarism. SAMUEL JOHNSON 1 21 that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity ! To be more intimately known to pos- terity than other men are known to their contemporaries 1 That kind of fame which is commonly the most transient is, in his case, the most durable. The reputation of those writ- ings 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 remembered as long as the English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe. JOHN BUNYAN The characteristic pecuharity of the Pilgrim s Progress is that it is the only work of its kind which possesses a strong human interest. Other allegories only amuse the fancy. The allegory of Bunyan has been read by many thousands with tears. There are some good allegories in Johnson's works, and some of still higher merit by Addison. In these performances there is, perhaps, as much wit and ingenuity as in the Pilgrim s Progress. But the pleasure whi(?h is produced by the Vision of Mirza, the Vision of Theodore, the Genealogy of Wit, or the Contest between Rest and Labour, is exactly similar to the pleasure which we derive from one of Cowley's odes or from a canto of Hudibras. It is a pleasure which belongs wholly to the understanding, and in which the feelings have no part whatever. Nay, even Spenser himself, though assuredly one of the greatest poets that ever lived, could not succeed in the attempt to make allegory interesting. It was in vain that he lavished the riches of his mind on the House of Pride and the House of Temperance. One unpardonable fault, the fault of tediousness, pervades the whole of the Fairy Queen. We become sick of cardinal virtues and deadly sins, and long for the society of plain men and women. Of the persons who read the first canto, not one in ten reaches the end of the first book, and not one in a hundred perseveres to the end of the poem. Very few and very weary are those who are in at the death of the Blatant Beast. If the last six books, which are said to have been destroyed in Ireland, had been preserved, we doubt whether any heart less stout than that of a commentator would have held out to the end. It is not so with the Pilgrini s Pivgrcss. That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it. Dr. Johnson, JOHN BUNYAN 123 all whose studies were desultory, and who hated, as he said, to read books through, made an exception in favour of the Pilgrim's Progress. That work was one of the two or three works which he wished longer. It was by no common merit that the illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from the most pedantic of critics and the most bigoted of Tories. In the wildest parts of Scotland the Pilgrini s Progress is the delight of the peasantry. In every nursery the Pilgrini s Progress is a greater favourite than Jack the Giant-killer. Eveiy reader knows the straight and narrow path as well as he knows a road in which he has gone backward and forward a hundred times. This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. And this miracle the tinker has wrought. There is no ascent, no declivity, no resting-place, no turnstile, with which we are not perfectly acquainted. The wicket- gate, and the desolate swamp which separates it from the City of Destruction ; the long line of road, as straight as a rule can make it ; the Inter- preter's house and all its fair shows ; the prisoner in the iron cage ; the palace, at the doors of which armed men kept guard, and on the battlements of which walked persons clothed all in gold ; the cross and the sepulchre ; the steep hill and the pleasant harbour, the stately front of the House Beautiful by the wayside ; the chained lions crouching in the porch ; the low green valley of Humiliation, rich with grass and covered with flocks — all are as well known to us as the sights of our own street. Then we come to the narrow place where Apollyon strode right across the whole breadth of the way to stop the journey of Christian, and where, afterwards, the pillar was set up to testify how bravely the pilgrim had fought the good fight. As we advance, the valley becomes deeper and deeper. The shade of the precipices on both sides falls blacker and blacker. The clouds gather overhead. Doleful voices, the clanking of chains, and the rushing of many feet to and fro, are heard through the darkness. The way, hardly discernible in gloom, runs close by 124 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the mouth of the burning pit, which sends forth its flames, its noisome smoke, and its hideous shapes to terrify the adventurer. Thence he goes on, amidst the snares and pitfalls, with the mangled bodies of those who have perished lying in the ditch by his side. At the end of the long dark valley he passes the dens in which the old giants dwelt, amidst the bones of those whom they had slain. Then the road passes straight on through a waste moor, till at length the towers of a distant city appear before the traveller ; and soon he is in the midst of the innumerable multitudes of Vanity Fair. There are the jugglers and the apes, the shops and the puppet-shows. There are Italian Row, and French Row, and Spanish Row, and British Row, with their crowds of buyers, sellers, and loungers, jabbering all the languages of the earth. Thence we go on by the little hill of the silver mine, and through the meadow of lilies, along the bank of that pleasant river which is bordered on both sides by fruit-trees. On the left branches off the path leading to the horrible castle, the court- yard of which is paved with the skulls of pilgrims ; and right onward are the sheepfolds and orchards of the Delectable Mountains. From the Delectable Mountains, the way lies through the fogs and briars of the l^^nchanted Ground, with here and there a bed of soft cushions spread under a green arbour. And beyond is the. land of Beulah, where the flowers, the grapes, and the songs of birds never cease, and where the sun shines night and day. Thence are plainly seen the golden pavements and streets of pearl, on the other side of that black and cold river over which there is no bridge. All the stages of the journey, all the forms which cross or overtake the pilgrims, giants and hobgoblins, ill-favoured ones and shining ones, the tall, comely, swarthy Madam Bubble, with her great purse by her side, and her fingers playing with the money, the black man in the bright vesture, Mr. Worldly-Wise- man and my Lord Hategood, Mr. Talkative and Mrs. Timorous, JOHN BUNYAN 125 all are actually existing beings to us. We follow the travellers through their allegorical progress with interest not inferior to that with which we follow Elizabeth from Siberia to Moscow, or Jeanie Deans from Edinburgh to London. Bunyan is almost the only writer who ever gave to the abstract the interest of the concrete. In the works of many celebrated authors men are mere personifications. We have not a jealous man, but jealousy ; not a traitor, but perfidy; not a patriot, but patriotism. The mind of Bunyan, on the contrary, was so imaginative that personifications, when he dealt with them, became men. A di- alogue between two qualities, in his dream, has more dramatic effect than a dialogue between two human beings in most plays. In this respect the genius of Bunyan bore a great resemblance to that of a man who had very little else in common with him — Percy Bysshe Shelley. The strong imagination of Shelley made him an idolater in his own despite. Out of the most indefinite terms of a hard, cold, dark, metaphysical system, he made a gorgeous Pantheon, full of beautiful, majestic, and life-like forms. He turned atheism itself into a mythology, rich with visions as glorious as the gods that live in the marble of Phidias, or the virgin saints that smile on us from the canvas of Murillo. The Spirit of Beauty, the Principle of Good, the Principle of Evil, when he treated of them, ceased to be abstractions. They took shape and colour. They were no longer mere words, but "intelligible forms"; "fair humanities"; objects of love, of adoration, or of fear. As there can be no stronger sign of a mind destitute of the poetical faculty than that tendency which was so common among the writers of the French school to turn images into abstractions — Venus for example, into Love, Minerva into Wisdom, Mars into War, and Bacchus into P'estivity — so there can be no stronger sign of a mind truly poetical than a disposition to reverse this abstracting process, and to make individuals out of generalities. Some of the metaphysical and ethical theories of Shelley were certainly most absurd and pernicious. But we doubt whether any modern poet has possessed in an equal degree some of the highest 126 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY qualities of the great ancient masters. The words bard and inspiration, which seem so cold and affected when applied to other modern writers, have a perfect propriety when applied to him. He was not an author, but a bard. His poetry seems not to have been an art, but an inspiration. Had he lived to the full age of man, he might not improbably have given to the world some great work of the very highest rank in design and execution. But, alas ! 'O Aa^vts €/3a poov • eKXvae 8iVa Tov IMwcats (jiiXov av8pa, rbv ov Ni;/x<^aicriv a-n-e)^9yj. But we must return to Bunyan. The Pilgrim s Progress undoubtedly is not a perfect allegory. The types are often inconsistent with each other ; and sometimes the allegorical disguise is altogether thrown off. The river, for example, is emblematic of death ; and we are told that every human being must pass through the river. But Faithful does not pass through it. He is martyred, not in shadow, but in reality, at Vanity Fair. Hopeful talks to Christian about Esau's birth- right and about his own convictions of sin as Bunyan might have talked with one of his own congregation. The damsels at the House Beautiful catechize Christiana's boys, as any good ladies might catechize any boys at a Sunday School. But we do not believe that any man, whatever might be his genius, and whatever his good luck, could long continue a figurative history without falling into many inconsistencies. We are sure that inconsistencies, scarcely less gross than the worst into which Bunyan has fallen, may be found in the shortest and most elaborate allegories of the Spectator and the Rambler. The Tale of a Tub and the History of JoJin Bull swarm with similar errors, if the name of error can be properly applied to that which is unavoidable. It is not easy to make a simile go on all-fours. But we believe that no human ingenuity could produce such a centipede as a long allegory in which the correspondence between the outward sign and the thing signified should be exactly preserved. JOHN BUNYAN 127 Certainly no writer, ancient or modern, has yet achieved the adventure. The best thing, on the whole, that an allegorist can do is to present to his readers a succession of analogies, each of which may separately be striking and happy, without looking very nicely to see whether they harmonize with each other. This Bunyan has done ; and though a minute scrutiny may detect inconsistencies in every page of his Tale, the gen- eral effect which the Tale produces on all persons, learned and unlearned, proves that he has done well. The passages which it is most difficult to defend are those in which he altogether drops the allegory, and puts into the mouth of his pilgrims religious ejaculations and disquisitions better suited to his own pulpit at Bedford or Reading than to the Enchanted Ground or to the Interpreter's Garden. Yet even these passages, though we will not undertake to defend them against the objections of critics, we feel that we could ill spare. We feel that the story owes much of its charm to these occasional glimpses of solemn and affecting subjects, which will not be hidden, which force themselves through the veil, and appear before us in their native aspect. The effect is not unlike that which is said to have been produced on the ancient stage, when the eyes of the actor were seen flaming through his mask, and giving life and expression to what would else have been an inanimate and uninteresting disguise. It is very amusing and very instructive to compare the Pilgrim s Progress with the Grace Aboiinding. The latter work is indeed one of the most remarkable pieces of autobi- ography in the world. It is a full and open confession of the fancies which passed through the mind of an illiterate man, whose affections were warm, whose nerves were irritable, whose imagination was ungovernable, and who was under the influence of the strongest religious excitement. In whatever age Bunyan had lived, the history of his feelings would, in all probability, have been very curious. But the time in which his lot was cast was the time of a great stirring of the human mind. A tremendous burst of public feeling, produced by the 128 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY tyranny of the hierarchy, menaced the old ecclesiastical insti- tutions with destruction. To the gloomy regularity of one intolerant Church had succeeded the license of innumerable sects, drunk with the sweet and heady must of their new liberty. Fanaticism, engendered by persecution, and destined to engender persecution in turn, spread rapidly through society. Even the strongest and most commanding minds were not proof against this strange taint. Any time might have pro- duced George Fox and James Naylor. But to one time alone belong the fanatic delusions of such a statesman as Vane, and the hysterical tears of such a soldier as Cromwell. The history of Bunyan is the history of a most excitable mind in an age of excitement. By most of his biographers he has been treated with gross injustice. They have understood in a popular sense all those strong terms of self-condemnation which he employed in a theological sense. They have, there- fore, represented him as an abandoned wretch, reclaimed by means almost miraculous, or, to use their favourite metaphor, " as a brand plucked from the burning." Mr. Ivimey calls him the depraved Bunyan, and the wicked tinker of Elstow. Surely Mr. Ivimey ought to have been too familiar with the bitter accusations which the most pious people are in the habit of bringing against themselves, to understand literally all the strong expressions which are to be found in the Grace Abounding. It is quite clear, as Mr. Southey most justly remarks, that Bunyan never was a vicious man. He married very early ; and he solemnly declares that he was strictly faith- ful to his wife. He does not appear to have been a drunkard. He owns, indeed, that when a boy he never spoke without an oath. But a single admonition cured him of this bad habit for life ; and the cure must have been wrought early ; for at eighteen he was in the army of the Parliament, and if he had carried the vice of profaneness into that service, he would doubtless have received something more than an admonition from Serjeant Bind-their-kings-in-chains, or Captain Hew- Agag-in-pieces-before-the-Lord, Bell-ringing and playing at JOHN BUNYAN 129 hockey on Sundays seem to have been the worst vices of this depraved tinker. They would have passed for virtues with Archbishop Laud. It is quite clear that, from a very early age, Bunyan was a man of a strict life and of a tender conscience. "He had been," says Mr. Southey, "a blackguard." Even this we think too hard a censure. Bunyan was not, we admit, so fine a gentleman as Lord Digby ; but he was a blackguard no otherwise than as every labouring man that ever lived has been a blackguard. Indeed Mr. Southey acknowledges this. " Such he might have been expected to be by his birth, breeding, and vocation. Scarcely, indeed, by possibility, could he have been otherwise." A man whose manners and senti- ments are decidedly below those of his class deserves to be called a blackguard ; but it is surely unfair to apply so strong a word of reproach to one who is only what the great mass of every community must inevitably be. Those horrible internal conflicts which Bunyan has described with so much power of language prove, not that he was a worse man than his neighbours, but that his mind was con- stantly occupied by religious considerations, that his fervour exceeded his knowledge, and that his imagination exercised despotic power over his body and mind. He heard voices from heaven. He saw strange visions of distant hills, pleasant and sunny as his own Delectable Mountains. From those abodes he was shut out, and placed in a dark and horrible wilderness, where he wandered through ice and snow, striving to make his way into the happy region of light. At one time he was seized with an inclination to work miracles. At an- other time he thought himself actually possessed by the devil. He could distinguish the blasphemous whispers. He felt his infernal enemy pulling at his clothes behind him. He spurned with his feet and struck with his hands at the de- stroyer. Sometimes he was tempted to sell his part in the salvation of mankind. Sometimes a violent impulse urged him to start up from his food, to fall on his knees, and to break forth into prayer. At length he fancied that he had I30 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY committed the unpardonable sin. His agony convulsed his robust frame. He was, he says, as if his breastbone would split ; and this he took for a sign that he was destined to burst asunder like Judas, The agitation of his nerves made all his movements tremulous ; and this trembling, he supposed, was a visible mark of his reprobation, like that which had been set on Cain. At one time, indeed, an encouraging voice seemed to rush in at the window, like the noise of wind, but very pleasant, and commanded, as he says, a great calm in his soul. At another time, a word of comfort " was spoke loud unto him ; it showed a great word ; it seemed to be writ in great letters."' But these intervals of ease were short. His state, during two years and a half, was generally the most horrible that the human mind can imagine. " I walked," says he, with his own peculiar eloquence, " to a neighbouring town, and sat down upon a settle in the street, and fell into a very deep pause about the most fearful state my sin had brought me to ; and, after long musing, I lifted up my head ; but methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to give me light, and as if the very stones in the street, and tiles upon the houses, did band themselves against me. Methought that they all combined together to banish me out of the world. I was abhorred of them, and unfit to dwell among them, because I had sinned against the Saviour. Oh, how happy now was every creature over I ! for they stood fast, and kept their station ; but I was gone and lost ! " Scarcely any madhouse could produce an instance of delusion so strong, or of misery so acute. It was through this Valley of the Shadow of Death, over- hung by darkness, peopled with devils, resounding with blasphemy and lamentation, and passing amidst quagmires, snares, and pitfalls, close by the very mouth of hell, that Bunyan journeyed to that bright and fruitful land of Beulah, in which he sojourned during the latter period of his pilgrimage. The only trace which his cruel sufferings and temptations seem to have left behind them was an affectionate compassion JOHN BUNYAN 1 31 for those who were still in the state in which he had once been. Religion has scarcely ever worn a form so calm and soothing as in his allegory. The feeling which predominates through the whole book is a feeling of tenderness for weak, timid, and harassed minds. The character of Mr. Fearing, of Mr. Feeble-Mind, of Mr. Despondency and his daughter Miss Much-afraid, the account of poor Little-faith who was robbed by the three thieves of his spending money, the description of Christian's terror in the dungeons of Giant Despair and in his passage through the river, all clearly show how strong a sympathy Bunyan felt, after his own mind had become clear and cheerful, for persons afflicted with religious melancholy. Mr. Southey, who has no love for the Calvinists, admits that if Calvinism had never worn a blacker appearance than in Bunyan's works, it would never have become a term of reproach. In fact, those works of Bunyan with which we are acquainted are by no means more Calvinistic than the articles and homilies of the Church of England, The moder- ation of his opinions on the subject of predestination gave offence to some zealous persons. We have seen an absurd allegory, the heroine of which is named Hephzibah, written by some raving supralapsarian preacher who was dissatisfied with the mild theology of the Pilgrim s Progress. In this foolish book, if we recollect rightly, the Interpreter is called the Enlightener, and the House Beautiful is Castle Strength. Mr. Southey tells us that the Catholics had also their Pilgrim s Progress, without a Giant Pope, in which the Interpreter is the Director, and the House Beautiful Grace's Hall. It is surely a remarkable proof of the power of Bunyan's genius that two religious parties, both of which regarded his opinions as heterodox, should have had recourse to him for assistance. There are, we think, some characters and scenes in the Pil- grim's Progress, which can be fully comprehended and enjoyed only by persons familiar with the history of the times through which Bunyan lived. The character of Mr. Great-heart, 132 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the guide, is an example. His fighting is, of course, alle- gorical ; but the allegory is not strictly preserved. He de- livers a sermon on imputed righteousness to his companions ; and, soon after, he gives battle to Giant Grim, who had taken upon him to back the lions. He expounds the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah to the household and guests of Gaius ; and then he sallies out to attack Slaygood, who was of the nature of flesh-eaters, in his den. These are inconsistencies ; but they are inconsistencies v^hich add, we think, to the interest of the narrative. We have not the least doubt that Bunyan had in view some stout old Greatheart of Naseby and Worcester, who prayed with- his men before he drilled them, who knew the spiritual state of every dragoon in his troop, and who, with the praises of God in his mouth and a two-edged sword in his hand, had turned to flight, on many fields of battle, the swearing, drunken bravoes of Rupert and Lunsford. Every age produces such men as By-ends. But the middle of the seventeenth century was eminently prolific of such men. Mr. Southey thinks that the satire was aimed at some partic- ular individual ; and this seems by no means improbable. At all events, Bunyan must have known many of those hypocrites who followed religion only when religion walked in silver slippers, when the sun shone, and when the people applauded. Indeed he might have easily found all the kindred of By-ends among the public men of his time. He might have found among the peers my Lord Turn-about, my Lord Time-server, and my Lord Fair-speech ; in the House of Commons, Mr. Smooth-man, Mr. Anything, and Mr. Facing-both-ways ; nor •would "the parson of the parish, Mr. Two-tongues," have been wanting. The town of Bedford probably contained more than one politician who, after contriving to raise an estate by seek- ing the Lord during the reign of the saints, contrived to keep what he had got by persecuting the saints during the reign of the strumpets ; and more than one priest who, during repeated changes in the discipline and doctrines of the Church, had remained constant to nothing: but his benefice. JOHN BUr^YAN 133 One of the most remarkable passages in the Pilgrim s Prog- ress is that in which the proceedings against Faithful are described. It is impossible to doubt that Bunyan intended to satirize the mode in which state trials were conducted under Charles the Second. The license given to the witnesses for the prosecution, the shameless partiality and ferocious insolence of the judge, the precipitancy and the blind rancour of the jury, remind us of those odious mummeries which, from the Restoration to the Revolution, were merely forms preliminary to hanging, drawing, and quartering. Lord Hate-good performs the office of counsel for the prisoners as well as Scroggs him- self could have performed it. Judge. Thou runagate, heretic, and traitor, hast thou heard what these honest gentlemen have witnessed againt thee ? Faithful. May I speak a few words in my own defence.'' Judge. Sirrah, sirrah ! thou deservest to live no longer, but to be slain immediately upon the place ; yet, that all men may see our gentleness towards thee, let us hear what thou, vile runagate, hast to say. No person who knows the state trials can be at a loss for parallel cases. Indeed, write what Bunyan would, the baseness and cruelty of the lawyers of those times " sinned up to it still," and even went beyond it. The imaginary trial of Faithful, before a jury composed of personified vices, was just and merciful when compared with the real trial of Alice Lisle before that tribunal where all the vices sat in the person of Jeffreys. The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and inval- uable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. We have observed several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, 1 34 SELECTIONS. FROM MACAULAY and the divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain work- ing men, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we would so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted English language — no book which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed, Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. To our refined forefathers, we suppose. Lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse, and the Duke of Buckinghamshire's Essay on Poetry, appeared to be compositions infinitely superior to the allegory of the preaching tinker. We live in better times ; and we are not afraid to say that, though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two minds which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. One of those minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pilgrim s Pros^ress. LORD CLIVE The Clives had been settled, ever since the twelfth century, on an estate of no great value, near Market-Drayton, in Shrop- shire, In the reign of George the First, this moderate but ancient inheritance was possessed by Mr. Richard Clive, who seems to have been a plain man of no great tact or capacity. He had been bred to the law, and divided his time between professional business and the avocations of a small proprietor. He married a lady from Manchester, of the name of Gaskill, and became the father of a very numerous family. His eldest son, Robert, the founder of the British empire in India, was born at the old seat of his ancestors on the twenty-ninth of September, 1725. 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 letters it appears that, even at that early age, his strong will and his fiery passions, sustained by a constitutional intrepidity which sometimes seemed hardly compatible with soundness 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 people of the neighbourhood still remember to have heard from their parents how Bob Clive 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 idle lads of the town into a kind of predatory army, and compelled the shopkeepers to submit to a tribute of apples and half-pence, in consider- ation of which he guaranteed the security of their windows. 135 136 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY He was sent from school to school, making very little prog- ress 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 such slender parts and such a headstrong temper. It is not strange, therefore, that they gladly accepted for him, when he was in his eighteenth year, a writership in the service of the East India Company, and shipped him off to make a fortune or to die of a fever at" Madras. . . . Madras, to which Clive had been appointed, was, at this time, perhaps, the first in importance of the Company's settle- ments. In the preceding century Fort St. George had arisen on a barren spot beaten by a raging surf ; and in the neigh- bourhood a town, inhabited by many thousands of natives, had sprung up, as towns spring up in the East, with the rapidity of the prophet's gourd. There were already in the suburbs many white villas, each surrounded by its garden, whither the wealthy agents of the Company retired, after the labours of the desk and the warehouse, to enjoy the cool breeze which springs up at sunset from the Bay of Bengal. The habits of these mercantile grandees appear to have been more profuse, luxurious, and ostentatious than those of the high judicial and political functionaries who have succeeded them. But comfort was far less understood. Many devices which now mitigate the heat of the climate, preserve health, and prolong life were unknown. There was far less intercourse with Europe than at present. The voyage by the Cape, which in our time has often been performed within three months, was then very seldom accomplished in six, and was sometimes protracted to more than a year. Consequently, the Anglo-Indian was then much more estranged from his country, much more addicted to Ori- ental usages, and much less fitted to mix in society after his return to Europe, than the Anglo-Indian of the present day. LORD CLIVE 137 Within the fort and its precinct, the English exercised, by permission of the native government, an extensive authority, such as every great Indian landowner exercised within his own domain. But they had never dreamed of claiming independent power. The surrounding country was ruled by the Nabob of the Carnatic, a deputy of the Viceroy of the . Deccan, com- monly called the Nizam, who was himself only a deputy of the mighty prince designated by our ancestors as the Great Mogul. Those names, once so august and formidable, still remain. There is still a Nabob of the Carnatic, who lives on a pension allowed to him by the English out of the revenues of the provinces which his ancestors ruled. There is still a Nizam, whose capital is overawed by a British cantonment, and to whom a British resident gives, under the name of advice, commands which are not to be disputed. There is still a Mogul, who is permitted to play at holding courts and receiving petitions, but who has less power to help or hurt than the youngest civil servant of the Company. Clive's voyage was unusually tedious even for that age. The ship remained some months at the Brazils, where the young adventurer picked up some knowledge of Portuguese, and spent all his pocket-money. He did not arrive in India till more than a year after he had left England. His situation at Madras was most painful. His funds were exhausted. His pay was small. He had contracted debts. He was wretchedly lodged, no small calamity in a climate which can be made tolerable to an European only by spacious and well-placed apartments. He had been furnished with letters of recommen- dation to a gentleman who might have assisted him ; but when he landed at Fort St. George he found that this gentleman had sailed for England. The lad's shy and haughty disposition withheld him from introducing himself to strangers. He was several months in India before he became acquainted with a single family. The climate affected his health and spirits. His duties were of a kind ill-suited to his ardent and daring character. He pined for his home, and in his letters to his 138 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY relations expressed his feelings in language softer and more pensive than we should have expected either from the way- wardness of his boyhood or from the inflexible sternness of his later years. " I have not enjoyed," says he, "' one happy day since I left my native country"; and again, "I must confess, at intervals, when I think of my dear native England, it affects me in a very peculiar manner. ... If I should be so far blest as to revisit again my own country, but more especially Manchester, the centre of all my wishes, all that I could hope or desire for would be presented before me in one view," One solace he found of the most respectable kind. The Governor possessed a good library, and permitted Clive to have access to it. The young man devoted much of his leisure to reading, and acquired at this time almost all the knowledge of books that he ever possessed. As a boy he had been too idle, as a man he soon became too busy, for literary pursuits. But neither climate nor poverty, neither study nor the sor- rows of a homesick exile, could tame the desperate audacity of his spirit. He behaved to his official superiors as he had behaved to his schoolmasters, and was several times in danger of losing his situation. Twice, while residing in the Writers' Buildings, he attempted to destroy himself ; and twice the pistol which he snapped at his own head failed to go off. This circumstance, it is said, affected him as a similar escape affected Wallenstein. After satisfying himself that the pistol was really well loaded, he burst forth into an exclamation that surely he was reserved for something great. . . . The circumstances in which he was now placed naturally led him to adopt a profession better suited to his restless and intrepid spirit than the business of examining packages and casting accounts. He solicited and obtained an ensign's com- mission in the service of the Company, and at twenty-one entered on his military career. His personal courage, of which he had, while still a writer, given signal proof by a desperate duel with a military bully who was the terror of Fort St. David, LORD CLIVE 139 speedily made him conspicuous even among hundreds of brave men. He soon began to show in his new calhng other quah- ties which had not before been discerned in him — judgment, sagacity, deference to legitimate authority. He distinguished himself highly in several operations against the French, and was particularly noticed by Major Lawrence, who was then considered as the ablest British officer in India. Clive had been only a few months in the army when intel- ligence arrived that peace had been concluded between Great Britain and France. Dupleix was in consequence compelled to restore Madras to the English Company ; and the young ensign was at liberty to resume his former business. He did indeed return for a short time to his desk. He again quitted it in order to assist Major Lawrence in some petty hostilities with the natives, and then again returned to it. While he was thus wavering betweeen a military and a commercial life, events took place which decided his choice. The politics of India assumed a new aspect. There was peace between the English and French Crowns ; but there arose between the English and French Companies trading to the East a war most eventful and important — a war in which the prize was nothing less than the magnificent inheritance of the House of Tamerlane. The empire which Baber and his Moguls reared in the six- teenth century was long one of the most extensive and splen- did in the world. In no European 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 which surrounded the throne of Delhi dazzled even eyes which were accustomed to the pomp of Versailles. Some of the great viceroys who held their posts by virtue of commissions from the Mogul ruled as many sub- jects as the King of France or the Emperor of Germany. Even the deputies of these deputies might well rank, as to extent of I40 . SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY territory and amount of revenue, with the Grand Duke of Tuscany or the Elector of Saxony. There can be Httle doubt that this great empire, powerful and prosperous as it appears on a superficial view, was yet, even in its best days, far worse governed than the worst-gov- erned 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 con- flicting pretensions of the princes of the royal house produced a long series of crimes and public disasters. Ambitious lieu- tenants of the sovereign sometimes aspired to independence. Fierce tribes of Hindoos, impatient of a foreign yoke, fre- quently withheld tribute, repelled the armies of the govern- ment from the mountain fastnesses, and poured down in arms on the cultivated plains. In spite, however, of much constant maladministration, in spite of occasional convulsions which shook the whole frame of society, this great monarchy, on the whole, retained, during some generations, an outward ap- pearance of unity, majesty, and energy. But throughout the long reign of Aurungzebe, the state, notwithstanding all that the vigour and policy of the prince could effect, was hastening to dissolution. After his death, which took place in the year 1707, the ruin was fearfully rapid. Violent shocks from with- out co-operated with an incurable decay which was fast pro- ceeding within ; and in a few years the empire had undergone utter decomposition. . . . Such, or nearly such, was the change which passed on the Mogul empire during the forty years which followed the death of Aurungzebe. A succession of nominal sovereigns, sunk in indolence and debauchery, sauntered away life in secluded pal- aces, chewing bang, fondling concubines, and listening to buf- foons. A succession of ferocious invaders descended through the- western passes to prey on the defenceless wealth of Hindo- stan. A Persian conqueror crossed the Indus, marched through the gates of Delhi, and bore away in triumph those treasures of which the masrnificence had astounded Roe and Bernier — LORD CLIVE 141 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 bracelet of Runjeet Sing, and is now destined to adorn the hideous idol of Orissa. The Afghan soon followed to complete the work of devastation which the Persian had begun. The warlike tribes of Raj poo- tana threw off the Mussulman yoke, A band of mercenary soldiers occupied Rohilcund. The Seiks ruled on the Indus. The Jauts spread dismay along the Jumna. The highlands which border on the western sea-coast of India poured forth a yet more formidable race — a race which was long the terror of every native power, and which, after many desperate and doubtful struggles, yielded only to the fortune and genius of England. It was under the reign of Aurungzebe that this wild clan of plunderers first descended from their mountains ; and soon after his death every corner of his wide empire learned to tremble at the mighty name of the Mahrattas. Many fertile viceroyalties were entirely subdued by them. Their dominions stretched across the peninsula from sea to sea. Mahratta captains reigned at Poonah, at Gualior, in Guz- erat, 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 kettle-drums 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 chil- dren to the mountains or the jungles, to the milder neighbour- hood of the hyasna and the tiger. Many provinces redeemed their harvests by the payment of an annual ransom. Even the wretched phantom who still bore the imperial title stooped to pay this ignominious blackmail. 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, de- scended year after year on the rice-fields of Bengal. Even 142 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the European factors trembled for their magazines. Less than a hundred years ago, it was thought necessary to fortify Cal- cutta 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 authority they became sovereigns. They might still acknowledge in words the superiority of the house of Tamerlane ; as a Count of Flanders or a Duke of Burgundy might have acknowledged the su- periority of the most helpless driveller among the later Carlo- vingians. They might occasionally send to their titular sovereign a complimentary present, or solicit from him a title of honour. In truth, however, they were no longer lieutenants removable at pleasure, but independent hereditary princes. In this way originated those great Mussulman houses which formerly 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 Hyderabad. In what was this confusion to end ? Was the strife to continue during centuries ? Was it to terminate in the rise of another great monarchy ? Was the Mussulman or the Mahratta to be the Lord of India .? Was another Baber to descend from the mountains, and to lead the hardy tribes of Cabul and Khorassan against a wealthier and less warlike race ? None of these events seemed improbable. But scarcely any man, how- ever sagacious, would have thought it possible that a trading company, separated from India by fifteen thousand miles of sea, and possessing in India only a few acres for purposes of commerce, would, in less than a hundred years, spread its empire from Cape Comorin to the eternal snow of the Himalayas ; would compel Mahratta and Mahommedan to forget their mutual feuds in common subjection ; would tame down even those wild races which had resisted the most powerful of the Moguls ; and, having united under its laws a hundred millions of subjects, would carry its victorious arms far to the east of the Burrampooter and far to the west of the Hydaspes, dictate terms of peace at the gates of Ava, and seat its vassal on the throne of Candahar. LORD CLIVE 143 The man who first saw that it was possible to found an European empire on the ruins of the Mogul monarchy was Dupleix. His restless, capacious, and inventive mind had formed this scheme at a time when the ablest servants of the English Company were busied only about invoices and bills of lading. Nor had he only proposed to himself the end. He had also a just and distinct view of the means by which it was to be attained. He clearly saw that the greatest force which the princes of India could bring into the field would be no match for a small body of men trained in the discipline and guided by the tactics of the West. He saw also that the natives of India might, under European commanders, be formed into armies such as Saxe or Frederic would be proud to command. He was perfectly aware that the most easy and convenient way in which an European adventurer could exercise sovereignty in India was to govern the motions, and to speak through the mouth, of some glittering puppet dignified by the title of Nabob or Nizam. The arts both of war and policy, which a few years later were employed with such signal success by the English, were first understood and practised by this ingenious and aspiring Frenchman. The situation of India was such that scarcely any aggression could be without a pretext, either in old laws or in recent practice. All rights were in a state of utter uncertainty ; and the Europeans who took part in the disputes of the natives confounded the confusion by applying to Asiatic politics the public law of the West and analogies drawn from the feudal system. If it was convenient to treat a Nabob as an inde- pendent prince, there was an excellent plea for doing so. He was independent in fact. If it was convenient to treat him as a mere deputy of the Court of Delhi, there was no difficulty ; for he was so in theory. If it was convenient to consider his office as an hereditary dignity, or as a dignity held during life only, or as a dignity held only during the good pleasure of the Mogul, arguments and precedents might be found for every one of those views. The party who had the heir of Baber in their hands represented him as the undoubted, the legitimate, 144 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the absolute sovereign, whom all subordinate authorities were bound to obey. The party against whom his name was used did not want plausible pretexts for maintaining that the empire was in fact dissolved, and that though it might be decent to treat the Mogul with respect, as a venerable relic of an order of things which had passed away, it was absurd to regard him as the real master of Hindostan. In the year 1748, died one of the most powerful of the new masters of India, the great Nizam al Mulk, Viceroy of the Deccan. His authority descended to his son, Nazir Jung. Of the provinces subject to this high functionary, the Carnatic was the wealthiest and the most extensive. It was governed by an ancient Nabob, whose name the English corrupted into Anaverdy Khan, But there were pretenders to the government both of the viceroyalty and of the subordinate province. Mirzapha Jung, a grandson of Nizam al Mulk, appeared as the competitor of Nazir Jung. Chunda Sahib, son-in-law of a former Nabob of the Carnatic, disputed the title of Anaverdy Khan, In the un- settled state of Indian law it was easy for both Mirzapha Jung and Chunda Sahib to make out something like a claim of right. In a society altogether disorganized, they had no difficulty in finding greedy adventurers to follow their standards. They united their interests, invaded the Carnatic, and applied for assistance to the French, whose fame had been raised by their success against the English in a recent war on the coast of Coromandel. Nothing could have happened more pleasing to the subtle and ambitious Dupleix. To make a Nabob of the Carnatic, to make a Viceroy of the Deccan, to rule under their names the whole of Southern India — this was, indeed, an attractive pros- pect. He allied himself with the pretenders, and sent four hun- dred French soldiers, and two thousand sepoys, disciplined after the European fashion, to the assistance of his confederates. A battle was fought. The French distinguished themselves greatly, Anaverdy Khan was defeated and slain. His son, LORD CLIVE 145 Mahommed Ali, who was afterwards well known in England as the Nabob of Arcot, and who owes to the eloquence of Burke a most unenviable immortality, fled with a scanty remnant of his army to Trichinopoly ; and the conquerors became at once masters of almost every part of the Carnatic. This was but the beginning of the greatness of Dupleix, After some months of fighting, negotiation, and intrigue, his ability and good fortune seemed to have prevailed everywhere. Nazir Jung perished by the hands of his own followers ; Mirzapha Jung was master of the Deccan ; and the triumph of French arms and French policy was complete. At Pondi- cherry all was exultation and festivity. Salutes were fired from the batteries, and Te Deziin sung in the churches. The new Nizam came thither to visit his allies ; and the ceremony of his installation was performed there with great pomp. Dupleix, dressed in the garb worn by Mahommedans of the highest rank, entered the town in the same palanquin with the Nizam, and, in the pageant which followed, took precedence of all the court. He was declared Governor of India from the river Krishna to Cape Comorin, a country about as large as France, with authority superior even to that of Chunda Sahib. He was intrusted with the command of seven thousand cavalry. It was announced that no mint would be suffered to exist in the Carnatic except that at Pondicherry. A large portion of the treasures which former Viceroys of the Deccan had accumu- lated had found its way into the coffers of the French gov- ernor. It was rumoured that he had received two hundred thousand pounds sterling in money, besides many valuable jewels. In fact, there could scarcely be any limit to his gains. He now ruled thirty millions of people with almost absolute power. No honour or emolument could be obtained from the government but by his intervention. No petition, unless signed by him, was perused by the Nizam. Mirzapha Jung survived his elevation only a few months. But another prince of the same house was raised to the throne by French influence, and ratified all the promises of his 146 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY predecessor. Dupleix was now the greatest potentate in India. His countrymen boasted that his name was mentioned with awe even in the chambers of the palace of Delhi. The native population looked with amazement on the progress which, in the short space of four years, an European adventurer had made towards dominion in Asia. Nor was the vainglorious Frenchman content with the reality of power. He loved to display his greatness with arrogant ostentation before the eyes of his subjects and of his rivals. Near the spot where his policy had obtained its chief triumph — by the fall of Nazir Jung and the elevation of Mirzapha — he determined to erect a column, on the four sides of which four pompous inscriptions, in four languages, should proclaim his glory to all the nations of the East. Medals stamped with emblems of his successes were buried beneath the foundations of this stately pillar, and round it arose a town bearing the haughty name of Dupleix Fatihabad, which is, being interpreted, the City of the Victory of Dupleix. The English had made some feeble and irresolute attempts to stop the rapid and brilliant career of the rival Company, and continued to recognize Mahommed Ali as Nabob of the Carnatic. But the dominions of Mahommed Ali consisted of Trichinopoly alone ; and Trichinopoly was now invested by Chunda Sahib and his French auxiliaries. To raise the siege seemed impossible. The small force which was then at Madras had no commander. Major Lawrence had returned to England ; and not a single officer of established character remained in the settlement. The natives had learned to look with contempt on the mighty nation which was soon to con- quer and to rule them. They had seen the French colours flying on Fort St. George ; they had seen the chiefs of the English factory led in triumph through the streets of Pondi- cherry ; they had seen the arms and counsels of Dupleix everywhere successful, while the opposition which the author- ities of Madras had made to his progress had served only to expose their own weakness and to heighten his glory. At LORD CLIVE 147 this moment, the valour and genius of an obscure EngHsh youth suddenly turned the tide of fortune. Clive was now twenty-five years old. After hesitating for some time between a military and a commercial life, he had at length been placed in a post which partook of both characters — that of commissary to the troops, with the rank of captain. The present emergency called forth all his powers. He repre- sented to his superiors that, unless some vigorous effort were made, 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 favourite residence of the Nabobs, it was not impossible that the siege of Trichi- nopoly would be raised. The heads of the English settlement, now thoroughly 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 instantly taken and destroyed, approved of Clive '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 fashion. Of the eight officers who commanded this little force under him, only two had ever been in action, and four of the eight were factors of the Company, whom Clive'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 should not be suffered to retain undisturbed possession of his conquest. He instantly began to collect provisions, to throw up works, and to make prep- arations for sustaining a siege. The garrison, which had fled at his approach, had now recovered from its dismay, and, having been swelled by large reinforcements from the neigh- bourhood to a force of three thousand men, encamped close 148 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY 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. The intelligence of these events was soon carried to Chunda Sahib, who, with his French allies, was besieging Trichinopoly. He immediately detached four thousand men from his camp and sent them to Arcot. They were speedily joined by the remains of the force which Clive had lately scattered. They were further strengthened by two thousand men from Vellore, and by a still more important reinforce- ment of a hundred and fifty French soldiers whom Dupleix despatched from Pondicherry. The whole of his army, amount- ing to about ten thousand men, was under the command of Rajah Sahib, son of Chunda Sahib. Rajah Sahib proceeded to invest the fort of Arcot, which seemed quite incapable of sustaining a siege. The walls were ruinous, the ditches dry, the ramparts too narrow to admit the guns, the battlements too low to protect the soldiers. The little garrison had been greatly reduced by casualties. It now con- sisted of a hundred and twenty Europeans and two hundred sepoys. Only four officers were left ; the stock of provisions was scanty ; and the commander, who had to conduct the defence under circumstances so discouraging, was a young man of five-and-twenty, who had been bred a bookkeeper. During fifty days the siege went on. During fifty days the young captain maintained the defence with a firmness, vigi- lance, and ability which would have done honour to the oldest marshal in Europe. The breach, however, increased day by day. The garrison began to feel the pressure of hunger. Under such circumstances, any troops so scantily provided with officers might have been expected to show signs of insub- ordination ; and the danger was peculiarly great in a force com- posed of men differing widely from each other in extraction, colour, language, manners, and religion. But the devotion of the little band to its chief surpassed anything that is related LORD CLIVE 149 of the Tenth Legion of Caesar, or of the Old Guard of Napoleon. The sepoys came to Clive, not to complain of their scanty fare, but to propose that all the grain should be given to the Europeans, who required more nourishment than the natives of Asia. The thin gruel, they said, which was strained away from the rice would suffice for themselves. History con- tains no more touching instance of military fidelity or of the influence of a commanding mind. An attempt made by the government of Madras to relieve the place had failed. But there was hope from another quarter. A body of six thousand Mahrattas, half soldiers, half robbers, under the command of a chief named Morari Row, had been hired to assist Mahommed Ali ; but thinking the French power irresistible, and the triumph of Chunda Sahib certain, they had hitherto remained inactive on the frontiers of the Carnatic. The fame of the defence of Arcot roused them from their torpor. Morari Row declared that he had never before believed that Englishmen could fight, but that he would willingly help them since he saw that they had spirit to help themselves. Rajah Sahib learned that the Mahrattas were in motion. It was necessary for him to be expeditious. He first tried negotiation. He offered large bribes to Clive, which were rejected with scorn. He vowed that, if his pro- posals were not accepted, he would instantly storm the fort, and put every man in it to the sword. Clive told him in reply, with characteristic haughtiness, that his father was an usurper, that his army was a rabble, and that he would do well to think twice before he sent such poltroons into a breach defended by English soldiers. Rajah Sahib determined to storm the fort. The day was well suited to a bold military enterprise. It was the great Mahommedan festival which is sacred to the memory of Hosein, the son of Ali, The history of Islam contains nothing more touching than the event which gave rise to that solem- nity. The mournful legend relates how the chief of the Fati- mites, when all his brave followers had perished round him, I50 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY drank his latest draught of water, and uttered his latest prayer ; how the assassins carried his head in triumph ; how the tyrant smote the lifeless lips with his staff ; and how a few old men recollected with tears that they had seen those lips pressed to the lips of the Prophet of God. After the lapse of near twelve centuries, the recurrence of this solemn season excites the fiercest and saddest emotions in the bosoms of the devout Moslems of India. They work themselves up to such agonies of rage and lamentation that some, it is said, have given up the ghost from the mere effect of mental excitement. They believe that whoever, during this festival, falls in arms against the infidels atones by his death for all the sins of his life, and passes at once to the garden of the Houris. It was at this time that Rajah Sahib determined to assault Arcot. Stimu- lating drugs were employed to aid the effect of religious zeal, and the besiegers, drunk with enthusiasm, drunk with bang, rushed furiously to the attack. Clive had received secret intelligence of the design, had made his arrangements, and, exhausted by fatigue, had thrown himself on his bed. He was awakened by the alarm, and was instantly at his post. The enemy advanced, driving before them elephants whose foreheads were armed with iron plates. It was expected that the gates would yield to the shock of these living battering-rams. But the huge beasts no sooner felt the English musket-balls than they turned round, and rushed furiously away, trampling on the multitude which had urged them forward. A raft was launched on the water which filled one part of the ditch. Clive, perceiving that his gunners at that post did not understand their business, took the man- agement of a piece of artillery himself, and cleared the raft in a few minutes. When the moat was dry, the assailants mounted with great boldness ; but they were received with a fire so heavy and so well-directed, that it soon quelled the courage even of fanaticism and of intoxication. The rear ranks of the English kept the front ranks supplied with a constant succession of loaded muskets, and every shot told on LORD CLIVE 151 the living mass below. After three desperate onsets, the besiegers retired behind the ditch. The struggle lasted about an hour. Four hundred of the assailants fell. The garrison lost only five or six men. The besieged passed an anxious night, looking for a renewal of the attack. But when the day broke, the enemy were no more to be seen. They had retired, leaving to the English several guns and a large quantity of ammunition. The news was received at Fort St. George with transports of joy and pride. Clive was justly regarded as a man equal to any command. Two hundred English soldiers and seven hundred sepoys were sent to him, and with this force he instantly commenced offensive operations. He took the fort of Timery, effected a junction with a division of Morari Row's army, and hastened by forced marches to attack Rajah Sahib, who was at the head of about five thousand men, of whom three hundred were French. The action was sharp ; but Clive gained a complete victory. The military chest of Rajah Sahib fell into the hands of the conquerors. Six hundred sepoys who had served in the enemy's army came over to Clive's quarters and were taken into the British service. Conjeveram surrendered without a blow. The governor of Arnee deserted Chunda Sahib, and recognized the title of Mahommed Ali. . . . The great commercial companies of Europe had long possessed factories in Bengal. The French were settled, as they still are, at Chandernagore on the Hoogly. Higher up the stream the Dutch held Chinsurah. Nearer to the sea, the English had built Fort William. A church and ample ware- houses rose in the vicinity. A row of spacious houses, belonging to the chief factors of the East India Company, lined the banks of the river ; and in the neighbourhood had sprung up a large and busy native town, where some Hindoo merchants of great opulence had fixed their abode. But the tract now covered by the palaces of Chowringhee contained only a few miserable huts thatched with straw. A jungle, abandoned to water-fowl 152 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY and alligators, covered the site of the present Citadel, and the Course, which is now daily crowded at sunset with the gayest equipages of Calcutta. For the ground on which the settlement stood, the English, like other great landholders, paid rent to the Government ; and they were, like other great landholders, permitted to exercise a certain jurisdiction within their domain. The great province of Bengal, together with Orissa and Bahar, had long been governed by a viceroy, whom the English called Aliverdy Khan, and who, like the other viceroys of the Mogul, had become virtually independent. He died in 1756, and the sovereignty descended to his grandson, a youth under twenty years of age, who bore the name of Surajah Dowlah. Oriental despots are perhaps the worst class of human beings ; and this unhappy boy was one of the worst specimens of his class. His understanding was naturally feeble, and his temper naturally unamiable. His education had been such as would have enervated even a vigorous intellect and perverted even a generous disposition. He was unreasonable, because nobody ever dared to reason with him ; and selfish, because he had never been made to feel himself dependent on the goodwill of others. Early debauchery had unnerved his body and his mind. He indulged immoderately in the use of ardent spirits, which inflamed his weak brain almost to madness. His chosen companions were flatterers sprung from the dregs of the people, and recommended by nothing but buffoonery and servility. It is said that he had arrived at the last stage of human depravity, when cruelty becomes pleasing for its own sake ; when the sight of pain as pain, where no advantage is to be gained, no offence punished, no danger averted, is an agree- able excitement. It had early been his amusement to torture beasts and birds ; and when he grew up, he enjoyed with still keener relish the misery of his fellow-creatures. From a child Surajah Dowlah had hated the English, It was his whim to do so ; and his whims were never opposed. He had also formed a very exaggerated notion of the wealth which might be obtained by plundering them ; and his feeble and LORD CLIVE 153 uncultivated mind was incapable of perceiving that the riches of Calcutta, had they been even greater than he imagined, would not compensate him for what he must lose if the European trade, of which Bengal was a chief seat, should be driven by his violence to some other quarter. Pretexts for a quarrel were readily found. The English, in expectation of a war with France, had begun to fortify their settlement without special permission from the Nabob. A rich native, whom he longed to plunder, had taken refuge at Calcutta, and had not been delivered up. On such grounds as these Surajah Dowlah marched with a great army against Fort William. The servants of the Company at Madras had been forced by Dupleix to become statesmen and soldiers. Those in Bengal were still mere traders, and were terrified and bewildered by the approaching danger. The Governor, who had heard much of Surajah Dowlah's cruelty, was frightened out of his wits, jumped into a boat, and took refuge in the nearest ship. The military commandant thought that he could not do better than follow so good an example. The fort was taken after a feeble resistance ; and great numbers of the English fell into the hands of the conquerors. The Nabob seated himself with regal pomp in the principal hall of the factory, and ordered Mr. Holwell, the first in rank among the prisoners, to be brought before him. His Highness talked about the insolence of the English, and grumbled at the smallness of the treasure which he had found ; but promised to spare their lives, and retired to rest. Then was committed that great crime, memorable for its singular atrocity, memorable for the tremendous retribution by which it was followed. The English captives were left to the mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to secure them for the night in the prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful name of the Black Hole. Even for a single European malefactor that dungeon would, in such a climate, have been too close and narrow. The space was only twenty feet square. The air-holes were small and obstructed. It was the summer solstice, the season when the fierce heat of 154 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Bengal can scarcely be rendered tolerable to natives of Eng- land by lofty halls and by the constant waving of fans. The number of the prisoners was one hundred and forty-six. When they were ordered to enter the cell, they imagined that the soldiers were joking ; and, being in high spirits on account of the promise of the Nabob to spare their lives, they laughed and jested at the absurdity of the notion. They soon dis- covered their mistake. They expostulated ; they entreated ; but in vain. The guards threatened to cut down all who hesi- tated. The captives were driven into the cell at the point of the sword, and the door was instantly shut and locked upon them. Nothing in history or fiction, not even the story which Ugolino told in the sea of everlasting ice, after he had wiped his bloody lips on the scalp of his murderer, approaches the horrors which were recounted by the few survivors of that night. They cried for mercy. They strove to burst the door. Holwell who, even in that extremity, retained some presence of mind, offered large bribes to the gaolers. But the answer was that nothing could be done without the Nabob's orders, that the Nabob was asleep, and that he would be angry if any- body woke him. Then the prisoners went mad with despair. They trampled each other down, fought for the places at the windows, fought for the pittance of water with which the cruel mercy of the murderers mocked their agonies, raved, prayed, blasphemed, implored the guards to fire among them. The gaolers in the meantime held lights to the bars, and shouted with laughter at the frantic struggles of their victims. At length the tumult died away in low gaspings and moanings. The day broke. The Nabob had slept off his debauch, and permitted the door to be opened. But it was some time before the soldiers could make a lane for the survivors, by piling up on each side the heaps of corpses on which the burning climate had already begun to do its loathsome work. When at length a passage was made, twenty-three ghastly figures, such as their own mothers would not have known, staggered one by one out of the charnel-house. A pit was instantly dug. The dead LORD CLIVE 155 bodies, a hundred and twenty-three in number, were flung into it promiscuously and covered up. But these things — which, after the lapse of more than eighty years, cannot be told or read without horror — awakened neither remorse nor pity in the bosom of the savage Nabob. He inflicted no punishment on the murderers. He showed no tenderness to the survivors. Some of them, indeed, from whom nothing was to be got, were suffered to depart ; but those from whom it was thought that anything could be extorted were treated with execrable cruelty. Holwell, unable to walk, was carried before the tyrant, who reproached him, threatened him, and sent him up the country in irons, together with some other gentlemen who were suspected of knowing more than they chose to tell about the treasures of the Company. These persons, still bowed down by the sufferings of that great agony, were lodged in miserable sheds and fed only with grain and water, till at length the intercessions of the female relations of the Nabob procured their release. One Englishwoman had survived that night. She was placed in the harem of the Prince at Moorshedabad. Surajah Dowlah, in the meantime, sent letters to his nom- inal sovereign at Delhi, describing the late conquest in the most pompous language. He placed a garrison in Fort William, forbade Englishmen to dwell in the neighbourhood, and directed that, in memory of his great actions, Calcutta should thenceforward be called Alinagore ; that is to say, the Port of God. In August the news of the fall of Calcutta reached Madras, and excited the fiercest and bitterest resentment. The cry of the whole settlement was for vengeance. Within forty-eight hours after the arrival of the intelligence it was determined that an expedition should be sent to the Hoogly, and that Clive should be at the head of the land forces. The naval armament was under the command of Admiral Watson. Nine hundred English infantry, fine troops and full of spirit, and fifteen hundred sepoys, composed the army which sailed to 156 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY punish a Prince who had more subjects than Lewis the Fifteenth or the Empress Maria Theresa. In October the expedition sailed ; but it had to make its way against adverse winds and did not reach Bengal till December. The Nabob was revelling in fancied security at Moorshed- abad. He was so profoundly ignorant of the state of foreign countries that he often used to say that there were not ten thousand men in all Europe ; and it had never occurred to him as possible that the English would dare to invade his dominions. But, though undisturbed by any fear of their military power, he began to miss them greatly. His revenues fell off ; and his ministers succeeded in making him understand that a ruler may sometimes find it more profitable to protect traders in the open enjoyment of their gains than to put them to the torture for the purpose of discovering hidden chests of gold and jewels. He was already disposed to permit the Com- pany to resume its mercantile operations in his country, when he received the news that an English armament was in the Hoogly. He instantly ordered all his troops to assemble at Moorshedabad, and marched towards Calcutta. Clive had commenced operations with his usual vigour. He took Budge-budge, routed the garrison of Fort William, recovered Calcutta, stormed and sacked Hoogly. The Nabob, already disposed to make some concessions to the English, was confirmed in his pacific disposition by these proofs of their power and spirit. He accordingly made overtures to the chiefs of the invading armament, and offered to restore the factory, and to give compensation to those whom he had despoiled. Clive's profession was war ; and he felt that there was something discreditable in an accommodation with Surajah Dowlah. But his power was limited. A committee, chiefly composed of servants of the Company who had fled from Calcutta, had the principal direction of affairs ; and these persons were eager to be restored to their posts and compen- sated for their losses. The government of Madras, apprized that war had commenced in Europe, and apprehensive of an LORD CLIVE 157 attack from the French, became impatient for the return of the armament. The promises of the Nabob were large, the chances of a contest doubtful ; and Clive consented to treat, though he expressed his regret that things should not be concluded in so glorious a manner as he could have wished. . . . All was now ready for action. Mr. Watts fled secretly from Moorshedabad. Clive put his troops in motion, and wrote to the Nabob in a tone very different from that of his previous letters. He set forth all the wrongs which the British had suffered, offered to submit the points in dispute to the arbi- tration of Meer Jalfier, and concluded by announcing that, as the rains were about to set in, he and his men would do themselves the honour of waiting on his Highness for an answer. Surajah Dowlah instantly assembled his whole force, and marched to encounter the English. It had been agreed that Meer Jaffier should separate himself from the Nabob, and carry over his division to Clive. But, as the decisive moment approached, the fears of the conspirator overpowered his ambi- tion. Clive had advanced to Cossimbuzar ; the Nabob lay with a mighty power a few miles off at Plassey ; and still Meer Jaffier delayed to fulfil his engagements, and returned evasive answers to the earnest remonstrances of the English general. Clive was in a painfully anxious situation. He could place no confidence in the sincerity or in the courage of his confed- erate ; and, whatever confidence he might place in his own military talents, and in the valour and discipline of his troops, it was no light thing to engage an army twenty times as numerous as his own. Before him lay a river over which it A'as easy to advance, but over which, if things went ill, not one of his little band would ever return. On this occasion, for the first and for the last time, his dauntless spirit, during a few hours, shrank from the fearful responsibility of making a decision. He called a council of war. The majority pro- nounced against fighting, and Clive declared his concurrence 158 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY with the majority. Long afterwards, he said that he had never called but one council of war, and that if he had taken the advice of that council the British would never have been masters of Bengal. But scarcely had the meeting broken up when he was himself again. He retired alone under the shade of some trees, and passed near an hour there in thought. He came back determined to put everything to the hazard, and gave orders that all should be in readiness for passing the river on the morrow. The river was passed ; and, at the close of a toilsome day's march, the army, long after sunset, took up its quarters in a grove of mango-trees near Plassey, within a mile of the enemy. Clive was unable to sleep ; he heard, through the whole night, the sound of drums and cymbals from the vast camp of the Nabob. It is not strange that even his stout heart should now and then have sunk when he reflected against what odds, and for what a prize, he was in a few hours to contend. Nor was the rest of Surajah Dowlah more peaceful. His mind, at once weak and stormy, was distracted by wild and horrible apprehensions. Appalled by the greatness and near- ness of the crisis, distrusting his captains, dreading every one who approached him, dreading to be left alone, he sat gloom- ily in his tent, haunted, a Greek poet would have said, by the furies of those who had cursed him with their last breath in the Black Hole. The day broke — the day which was to decide the fate of India. At sunrise the army of the Nabob, pouring through many openings of the camp, began to move towards the grove where the English lay. Forty thousand infantry, armed with firelocks, pikes, swords, bows and arrows, covered the plain. They were accompanied by fifty pieces of ordnance of the largest size, each tugged by a long team of white oxen, and each pushed on from behind by an elephant. Some smaller guns, under the direction of a few French auxiliaries, were perhaps more formidable. The cavalry were fifteen thousand, drawn, not from the effeminate population of Bengal, but from LORD CLIVE 159 the bolder race which inhabits the northern provinces ; and the practised eye of Chve could perceive that both the men and the horses were more powerful than those of the Carnatic. The force which he had to oppose to this great multitude consisted of only three thousand men. But of these nearly a thousand were English, and all were led by English officers, and trained in the English discipline. Conspicuous in the ranks of the little army were the men of the Thirty-Ninth Regiment, which still bears on its colours, amidst many honour- able additions won under Wellington in Spain and Gascony, the name of Plassey, and the proud motto, Priimts in Indis. The battle commenced with a cannonade in which the artillery of the Nabob did scarcely any execution, while the few field-pieces of the English produced great effect. Several of the most distinguished officers in Surajah Dowlah's service fell. Disorder began to spread through his ranks. His own terror increased every moment. One of the conspirators urged on him the expediency of retreating. The insidious advice, agreeing as it did with what his own terrors suggested, was readily received. He ordered his army to fall back, and this order decided his fate. Clive snatched the moment, and or- dered his troops to advance. The confused and dispirited multitude gave way before the onset of disciplined valour. No mob attacked by regular soldiers was ever more completely routed. The little band of Frenchmen, who alone ventured to confront the English, were swept down the stream of fugitives. In an hour the forces of Surajah Dowlah were dispersed, never to reassemble. Only five hundred of the vanquished were slain. But their camp, their guns, their baggage, innu- merable waggons, innumerable cattle, remained in the power of the conquerors. With the loss of twenty-two soldiers killed and fifty wounded, Clive had scattered an army of near sixty thousand men, and subdued an empire larger and more populous than Great Britain. Meer Jaffier had given no assistance to the English during the action. But as soon as he saw that the fate of the day i6o SELECTIONS FROM MAC AULA Y was decided, he drew off his division of the army, and, when the battle was over, sent his congratulations to his ally. The next morning he repaired to the English quarters, not a little uneasy as to the reception which awaited him there. He gave evident signs of alarm when a guard was drawn out to receive him with the honours due to his rank. But his apprehensions were speed- ily removed. Clive came forward to meet him, embraced him, saluted him as Nabob of the three great provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, listened graciously to his apologies, and advised him to march without delay to Moorshedabad. Surajah Dowlah had fled from the field of battle with all the speed with wliich a fleet camel could carry him, and arrived at Moorshedabad in little more than twenty-four hours. There he called his councillors round him. The wisest advised him to put himself into the hands of the English, from whom he had nothing worse to fear than deposition and confinement. But he attributed this suggestion to treachery. Others urged him to try the chance of war again. He approved the advice, and issued orders accordingly. But he wanted spirit to adhere even during one day to a manly resolution. He learned that Meer Jaffier had arrived, and his terrors became insupport- able. Disguised in a mean dress, with a casket of jewels in his hand, he let himself down at night from a window of his palace, and, accompanied by only two attendants, embarked on the river for Patna. In a few days Clive arrived at Moorshedabad, escorted by two hundred English soldiers and three hundred sepoys. For his residence had been assigned a palace which was sur- rounded by a garden so spacious that all the troops who accompanied him could conveniently encamp within it. The ceremony of the installation of Meer Jaffier was instantly per- formed. Clive led the new Nabob to the seat of honour, placed him on it, presented to him, after the immemorial fashion of the East, an offering of gold, and then, turning to the natives who filled the hall, congratulated them on the good fortune which had freed them from a tyrant. . . . LORD CLIVE i6i The shower of wealth now fell copiously on the Company and its servants. A sum of eight hundred thousand pounds sterling, in coined silver, was sent down the river from Moor- shedabad to Fort William. The fleet which conveyed this treasure consisted of more than a hundred boats, and per- formed its triumphal voyage with flags flying and music playing. Calcutta, which a few months before had been desolate, was now more prosperous than ever. Trade revived, and the signs of affluence appeared in every English house. As to Clive, there was lo limit to his acquisitions but his own moderation. The treasury of Bengal was thrown open to him. There were piled up, after the usage of Indian princes, immense masses of coin, among which might not seldom be detected the florins and byzants with which, before any European ship had turned the Cape of Good Hope, the Venetians purchased the stuffs and spices of the East. Clive walked between heaps of gold and silver, crowned with rubies and diamonds, and was at liberty to help himself. He accepted between two and three hundred thousand pounds. . . . Three months after this great victory, Clive sailed for Eng- land. At home, honours and rewards awaited him, not indeed equal to his claims or to his ambition, but still such as, when his age, his rank in the army, and his original place in society are considered, must be pronounced rare and splendid. He was raised to the Irish peerage and encouraged to expect an English title. George the Third, who had just ascended the throne, received him with great distinction. The ministers paid him marked attention ; and Pitt, whose influence in the House of Commons and in the country was unbounded, was eager to mark his regard for one whose exploits had contributed so much to the lustre of that memorable period. The great orator had already in Parliament described Clive as a heaven- born general, as a man who, bred to the labour of the desk, had displayed a military genius which might excite the admira- tion of the King of Prussia. There were then no reporters in the gallery ; but these words, emphatically spoken by the first 1 62 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY statesman of the age, had passed from mouth to mouth, had been transmitted to Chve in Bengal, and had greatly delighted and flattered him. Indeed, since the death of Wolfe, Clive was the only English general of whom his countrymen had much reason to be proud. The Duke of Cumberland had been generally unfortunate ; and his single victory, having been gained over his countrymen and used with merciless severity, had been more fatal to his popularity than his many defeats. Conway, versed in the learning of his profession, and personally courageous, wanted vigour and capacity. Granby, honest, gen- erous, and as brave as a lion, had neither science nor genius. Sackville, inferior in knowledge and abilities to none of his contemporaries, had incurred, unjustly as we believe, the imputation most fatal to the character of a soldier. It was under the command of a foreign general that the British had triumphed at Minden and Warburg. The people therefore, as was natural, greeted with pride and delight a captain of their own, whose native courage and self-taught skill had placed him on a level with the great tacticians of Germany. The wealth of Clive was such as enabled him to vie with the first grandees of England. There remains proof that he had remitted more than a hundred and eighty thousand pounds through the Dutch East India Company, and more than forty thousand pounds through the English Company. The amount which he had sent home through private houses was also con- siderable. He had invested great sums in jewels, then a very common mode of remittance from India. His purchases of diamonds at Madras alone . amounted to twenty-five thousand pounds. Besides a great mass of ready money, he had his Indian estate, valued by himself at twenty-seven thousand a year. His whole annual income, in the opinion of Sir John Malcolm, who is desirous to state it as low as possible, exceeded forty thousand pounds ; and incomes of forty thousand pounds at the time of the accession of George the Third were at least as rare as incomes of a hundred thousand pounds now. We may safely affirm that no Englishman who started with nothing LORD CLIVE 163 has ever, in any line of life, created such a fortune at the early age of thirty-four. . , . At length the state of things in Bengal began to excite uneasiness at home. A succession of revolutions ; a disorgan- ized administration ; the natives pillaged, yet the Company not enriched ; every fleet bringing back fortunate adventurers who were able to purchase manors and to build stately dwell- ings, yet bringing back also alarming accounts of the financial prospects of the government ; war on the frontiers ; disaffec- tion in the army ; the national character disgraced by excesses resembling those of Verres and Pizarro — such was the spectacle which dismayed those who were conversant with Indian affairs. The general cry was that Clive, and Clive alone, could save the empire which he had founded. This feeling manifested itself in the strongest manner at a very full General Court of Proprietors. Men of all parties, forgetting their feuds and trembling for their dividends, exclaimed that Clive was the man whom the crisis required, that the oppressive proceedings which had been adopted respecting his estate ought to be dropped, and that he ought to be entreated to return to India. Clive rose. As to his estate, he said, he would make such propositions to the Directors, as would, he trusted, lead to an amicable settlement. But there was a still greater difficulty. It was proper to tell them that he never would undertake the government of Bengal while his enemy Sulivan was chairman of the Company. The tumult was violent. Sulivan could scarcely obtain a hearing. An overwhelming majority of the assembly was on Clive's side. Sulivan wished to try the result of a ballot. But, according to the bye-laws of the Company, there can be no ballot except on a requisition signed by nine proprietors ; and, though hundreds were present, nine persons could not be found to set their hands to such a requisition. Clive was in consequence nominated Governor and Com- mander-in-chief of the British possessions in Bengal. But he 1 64 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY adhered to his declaration, and refused to enter on his office till the event of the next election of Directors should be known. The contest was obstinate ; but Clive triumphed. Sulivan, lately absolute master of the India House, was within a vote of losing his own seat ; and both the chairman and the deputy- chairman were friends of the new governor. Such were the circumstances under which Lord Clive sailed for the third and last time to India. In May, 1765, he reached Calcutta ; and he found the whole machine of government even more fearfully disorganized than he had anticipated. Meer Jaffier, who had some time before lost his eldest son Meeran, had died while Clive was on his voyage out. The English functionaries at Calcutta had already received from home strict orders not to accept presents from the native princes. But, eager for gain, and unaccustomed to respect the commands of their distant, ignorant, and negligent masters, they again set up the throne of Bengal to sale. About one hundred and forty thousand pounds sterling was distributed among nine of the most powerful servants of the Company ; and, in consideration of this bribe, an infant son of the deceased Nabob was placed on the seat of his father. The news of the ignominious bargain met Clive on his arrival. In a private letter written immediately after his landing to an intimate friend, he poured out his feel- ings in language, which, proceeding from a man so daring, so resolute, and so little given to theatrical display of sentiment, seems to us singularly touching. "Alas!" he says, "how is the English name sunk ! I could not avoid paying the tribute of a few tears to the departed and lost fame of the British nation — irrecoverably so, I fear. However, I do declare, by that great Being who is the searcher of all hearts, and to whom we must be accountable if there be a hereafter, that I am come out with a mind superior to all corruption, and that I am determined to destroy these great and growing evils, or perish in the attempt." The Council met, and Clive stated to them his full deter- mination to make a thorough reform, and to use for that LORD CLIVE 165 purpose the whole of the ample authority, civil and military, which had been confided to him. Johnstone, one of the boldest and worst men in the assembly, made some show of opposition. Clive interrupted him, and haughtily demanded whether he meant to question the power of the new government. Johnstone was cowed, and disclaimed any such intention. All the faces round the board grew long and pale, and not another syllable of dissent was uttered. Clive redeemed his pledge. He remained in India about a year and a half, and in that short time effected one of the most extensive, difficult, and salutary reforms that ever was accomplished by any statesman. This was the part of his life on which he afterwards looked back with most pride. He had it in his power to triple his already splendid fortune ; to connive at abuses while pretending to remove them ; to conciliate the goodwill of all the English in Bengal by giving up to their rapacity a helpless and timid race, who knew not where lay the island which sent forth their oppressors, and whose complaints had little chance of being heard across fifteen thousand miles of ocean. He knew that if he applied himself in earnest to the work of reformation, he should raise every bad passion in arms against him. He knew how unscrupulous, how implacable, would be the hatred of those ravenous adventurers who, having counted on accumulating in a few months fortunes sufficient to support peerages, should find all their hopes frustrated. But he had chosen the good part, and he called up all the force of his mind for a battle far harder than that of Plassey. At first success seemed hopeless ; but soon all obstacles began to bend before that iron courage and that vehement will. The receiving of presents from the natives was rigidly prohibited. The private trade of the servants of the Company was put down. The whole settlement seemed to be set, as one man, against these measures. But the inexorable governor declared that, if he could not find support at Fort William, he would procure it elsewhere, and sent for some civil servants from Madras to assist him in carrying on the administration. The most factious 1 66 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY of his opponents he turned out of their offices. The rest sub- mitted to what was inevitable, and in a very short time all resistance was quelled. But Clive was far too wise a man not to see that the recent abuses were partly to be ascribed to a cause which could not fail to produce similar abuses, as soon as the pressure of his strong hand was withdrawn. The Company had followed a mistaken policy with respect to the remuneration of its servants. The salaries were too low to afford even those indulgences which are necessary to the health and comfort of Europeans in a tropical climate. To lay by a rupee from such scanty pay was impossible. It could not be supposed that men of even average abilities would consent to pass the best years of life in exile, under a burning sun, for no other consideration than these stinted wages. It had accordingly been understood, from a very early period, that the Company's agents were at liberty to enrich themselves by their private trade. This practice had been seriously injurious to the commercial interests of the cor- poration. That very intelligent observer. Sir Thomas Roe, in the reign of James the First, strongly urged the Directors to apply a remedy to the abuse. "Absolutely prohibit the private trade," said he; "for your business will be better done. I know this is harsh. Men profess they come not for bare wages. But you will take away this plea if you give great wages to their content ; and then you know what you part from." In spite of this excellent advice, the Company adhered to the old system, paid low salaries, and connived at the indirect gains of the agents. The pay of a member of Council was only three hundred pounds a year. Yet it was notorious that such a functionary could not live in India for less than ten times that sum ; and it could not be expected that he would be content to live even handsomely in India without laying up something against the time of his return to England. This system, before the conquest of Bengal, might affect the amount of the dividends payable to the proprietors, but could do little LORD CLIVE 167 harm in any other way. But the Company was now a ruhng body. Its servants might still be called factors, junior mer- chants, senior merchants. But they were in truth proconsuls, propraetors, procurators, of extensive regions. They had immense power. Their regular pay was universally admitted to be insufficient. They were, by the ancient usage of the service, and by the implied permission of their employers, warranted in enriching themselves by indirect means ; and this had been the origin of the frightful oppression and corruption which had desolated Bengal. Clive saw clearly that it was absurd to give men power, and to require them to live in penury. He justly concluded that no reform could be effectual which should not be coupled with a plan for liberally remu- nerating the civil servants of the Company. The Directors, he knew, were not disposed to sanction any increase of the salaries out of their own treasury. The only course which remained open to the governor was one which exposed him to much misrepresentation, but which we think him fully justified in adopting. He appropriated to the support of the service the monopoly of salt, which has formed, down to our own time, a principal head of Indian revenue ; and he divided the proceeds according to a scale which seems to have been not unreason- ably fixed. He was in consequence accused by his enemies, and has been accused by historians, of disobeying his instructions, of violating his promises, of authorizing that very abuse which it was his special mission to destroy — namely, the trade of the Company's servants. But every discerning and impartial judge will admit that there was really nothing in common between the system which he set up and that which he was sent to destroy. The monopoly of salt had been a source of revenue to the Governments of India before Clive was born. It con- tinued to be so long after his death. The civil servants were clearly entitled to a maintenance out of the revenue, and all that Clive did was to charge a particular portion of the reve- nue with their maintenance. He thus, while he put an end to the practices by which gigantic fortunes had been rapidly 1 68 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY accumulated, gave to every British functionary employed in the East the means of slowly, but surely, acquiring a competence. Yet such is the injustice of mankind that none of those acts which are the real stains of his life has drawn on him so much obloquy as this measure, which was in truth a reform necessary to the success of all his other reforms. He had quelled the opposition of the civil servants : that of the army was more formidable. Some of the retrenchments which had been ordered by the Directors affected the interests of the military service and a storm arose such as even Caesar would not willingly have faced. It was no light thing to en- counter the resistance of those who held the power of the sword in a country governed only by the sword. Two hundred English officers engaged in a conspiracy against the govern- ment, and determined to resign their commissions on the same day, not doubting that Clive would grant any terms rather than see the army (on which alone the British empire in the East rested) left without commanders. They little knew the uncon- querable spirit with which they had to deal. Clive had still a few officers round his person on whom he could rely. He sent to Fort St. George for a fresh supply. He gave commissions even to mercantile agents who were disposed to support him at this crisis, and he sent orders that every officer who resigned should be instantly brought up to Calcutta. The con- spirators found that they had miscalculated. The governor was inexorable. The troops were steady. The sepoys, over whom Clive had always possessed extraordinary influence, stood by him with unshaken fidelity. The leaders in the plot were arrested, tried, and cashiered. The rest, humbled and dis- pirited, begged to be permitted to withdraw their resignations. Many of them declared their repentance even with tears. The younger offenders Clive treated with lenity. To the ringleaders he was inflexibly severe, but his severity was pure from all taint of private malevolence. While he sternly upheld the just authority of his office, he passed by personal insults and injuries with magnanimous disdain. One of the conspirators LORD CLIVE 169 was accused of having planned the assassination of the Gover- nor ; but CHve would not listen to the charge. " The officers," he said, " are Englishmen, not assassins." While he reformed the civil service and established his authority over the army, he was equally successful in his for- eign policy. His landing on Indian ground was the signal for immediate peace. The Nabob of Oude, with a large army, lay at that time on the frontier of Bahar. He had been joined by many Afghans and Mahrattas, and there was no small reason to expect a general coalition of all the native powers against the English. But the name of Clive quelled in an instant all opposition. The enemy implored peace in the hum- blest language, and submitted to such terms as the new governor chose to dictate. At the same time, the Government of Bengal was placed on a new footing. The power of the English in that province had hitherto been altogether undefined. It was unknown to the ancient constitution of the empire, and it had been ascer- tained by no compact. It resembled the power which, in the last decrepitude of the Western Empire, was exercised over Italy by the great chiefs of foreign mercenaries — the Ricimers and the Odoacers — who put up and pulled down at their pleasure a succession of insignificant princes, dignified with the names of Caesar and Augustus. But as in Italy, so in India, the warlike strangers at length found it expedient to give to a domination which had been established by arms the sanction of law and ancient prescription. Theodoric thought it politic to obtain from the distant Court of Byzantium a commission appointing him ruler of Italy ; and Clive, in the same manner, applied to the Court of Delhi for a formal grant of the powers of which he already possessed the reality. The Mogul was ab- solutely helpless ; and, though he murmured, had reason to be well pleased that the English were disposed to give solid rupees (which he never could have extorted from them) in exchange for a few Persian characters which cost him nothing. A bargain was speedily struck, and the titular sovereign of Hindostan I/O SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY issued a warrant empowering the Company to collect and administer the revenues of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar. There was still a Nabob, who stood to the British authorities in the same relation in which the last drivelling Chilperics and Childerics of the Merovingian line stood to their able and vigorous Mayors of the Palace, to Charles Martel and to Pepin. At one time Clive had almost made up his mind to discard this phantom altogether ; but he afterwards thought that it might be convenient still to use the name of the Nabob, particularly in dealings with other European nations. The French, the Dutch, and the Danes would, he conceived, sub- mit far more readily to the authority of the native Prince, whom they had always been accustomed to respect, than to that of a rival trading corporation. This policy may at that time have been judicious. But the pretence was soon found to be too flimsy to impose on anybody, and it was altogether laid aside. The heir of Meer Jafifier still resides at Moor- shedabad, the ancient capital of his house ; still bears the title of Nabob ; is still accosted by the English as "Your Highness " ; and is still suffered to retain a portion of the regal state which surrounded his ancestors. A pension of a hundred and sixty thousand pounds a year is annually paid to him by the govern- ment. His carriage is surrounded by guards and preceded by attendants with silver maces. His person and his dwelling are exempted from the ordinary authority of the ministers of jus- tice. But he has not the smallest share of political power, and is, in fact, only a noble and wealthy subject of the Company. It would have been easy for Clive, during his second admin- istration in Bengal, to accumulate riches such as no subject in Europe possessed. He might, indeed, without subjecting the rich inhabitants of the province to any pressure beyond that to which their mildest rulers had accustomed them, have received presents to the amount of three hundred thousand pounds a year. The neighbouring princes would gladly have paid any price for his favour. But he appears to have strictly adhered to the rules which he had laid down for the guidance LORD CLIVE 171 of others. The Rajah of Benares offered him diamonds of great value. The Nabob of Oude pressed him to accept a large sum of money and a casket of costly jewels. Clive cour- teously but peremptorily refused ; and it should be observed that he made no merit of his refusal, and that the facts did not come to light till after his death. He kept an exact account of his salary, of his share of the profits accruing from the trade in salt, and of those presents which, according to the fashion of the East, it would be churlish to refuse. Out of the sum arising from these resources he defrayed the expenses of his situation. The surplus he divided among a few attached friends who had accompanied him to India. He always boasted, and as far as we can judge, he boasted with truth, that his last administration diminished instead of increasing his fortune. One large sum indeed he accepted. Meer Jaffier had left him by will above sixty thousand pounds sterling in specie and jewels ; and the rules which had been recently laid down extended only to presents from the living, and did not affect legacies from the dead. Clive took the money, but not for himself. He made the whole over to the Company in trust for officers and soldiers invalided in their service. The fund which still bears his name owes its origin to this princely donation. After a stay of eighteen months, the state of his health made it necessary for him to return to Europe. At the close of January, 1767, he quitted for the last time the country on whose destinies he had exercised so mighty an influence. His second return from Bengal was not, like his first, greeted by the acclamations of his countrymen. Numerous causes were already at work which embittered the remaining years of his life and hurried him to an untimely grave. His old enemies at the India House were still powerful and active, and they had been reinforced by a large band of allies whose violence far exceeded their own. The whole crew of pilferers and oppressors from whom he had rescued Bengal persecuted him with the implacable rancour which belongs to such abject natures. Many of them even invested their property in India 172 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY stock, merely that they might be better able to annoy the man whose firmness had set bounds to their rapacity. Lying news- papers were set up for no purpose but to abuse him ; and the temper of the public mind was then such that these arts, which under ordinary circumstances would have been ineffectual against truth and merit, produced an extraordinary impression. The great events which had taken place in India had called into existence a new class of Englishmen, to whom their countrymen gave the name of Nabobs. These persons had generally sprung from families neither ancient nor opulent ; they had generally been sent at an early age to the East ; and they had there acquired large fortunes, which they had brought back to their native land. It was natural that, not having had much opportunity of mixing with the best society, they should exhibit some of the awkwardness and some of the pomposity of upstarts. It was natural that, during their sojourn in Asia, they should have acquired some tastes and habits surprising, if not disgusting, to persons who never had quitted Europe. It was natural that, having enjoyed great consideration in the East, they should not be disposed to sink into obscurity at home ; and as they had money, and had not birth or high connection, it was natural that they should display a little obtru- sively the single advantage which they possessed. Wherever they settled there was a kind of feud between them and the old nobility and gentry similar to that which raged in France between the farmer-general and the marquess. This enmity to the aristocracy long continued to distinguish the servants of the Company. More than twenty years after the time of which we are now speaking, Burke pronounced that among the Jacobins might be reckoned " the East Indians almost to a man, who cannot bear to find that their present importance does not bear a proportion to their wealth." The Nabobs soon became a most unpopular class of men. Some of them had in the East displayed eminent talents and rendered great services to the state ; but at home their talents were not shown to advantage, and their services were little LORD CLIVE 173 known. That they had sprung from obscurity ; that they had acquired great wealth ; that they exhibited it insolently ; that they spent it extravagantly ; that they raised the price of everything in their neighbourhood, from fresh eggs to rotten boroughs ; that their liveries outshone those of dukes ; that their coaches were finer than that of the Lord Mayor ; that the examples of their large and ill-governed households corrupted half the servants in the country ; that some of them, with all their magnificence, could not catch the tone of good society, but, in spite of the stud and the crowd of menials, of the plate and the Dresden china, of the venison and the Burgundy, were still low men — these were things which excited, both in the class from which they had sprung and in the class into which they attempted to force themselves, the bitter aversion which is the effect of mingled envy and contempt. But when it was also rumoured that the fortune which had enabled its possessor to eclipse the Lord Lieutenant on the race-ground, or to carry the county against the head of a house as old as Domesday Book, had been accumulated by violating public faith, by depos- ing legitimate princes, by reducing whole provinces to beggary, all the higher and better, as well as all the low and evil, parts of human nature were stirred against the wretch who had obtained by guilt and dishonour the riches which he now lav- ished with arrogant and inelegant profusion. The unfortunate Nabob seemed to be made up of those foibles against which comedy has pointed the most merciless ridicule, and of those crimes which have thrown the deepest gloom over tragedy — of Turcaret and Nero, of Monsieur Jourdain and Richard the Third. A tempest of execration and derision such as can be compared only to that outbreak of public feeling against the Puritans which took place at the time of the Restoration burst on the servants of the Company. The humane man was horror- struck at the way in which they had got their money, the thrifty man at the way in which they spent it. The Dilettante sneered at their want of taste. The Maccaroni blackballed them as vulgar fellows. Writers the most unlike in sentiment 174 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY and style, Methodists and libertines, philosophers and buffoons, were for once on the same side. It is hardly too much to say that, during a space of about thirty years, the whole lighter literature of England was coloured by the feelings which we have described. Foote brought on the stage an Anglo-Indian chief — dissolute, ungenerous, and tyrannical ; ashamed of the humble friends of his youth ; hating the aristocracy, yet child- ishly eager to be numbered among them ; squandering his wealth on pandars and flatterers ; tricking out his chairmen with the most costly hot-house flowers ; and astounding the ignorant with jargon about rupees, lacs, and jaghires, Mackenzie, with more delicate humour, depicted a plain country family raised by the Indian acquisitions of one of its members to sudden opulence, and exciting derision by an awkward mimiciy of the manners of the great. Cowper, in that lofty expostulation which glows with the very spirit of the Hebrew poets, placed the oppression of India foremost in the list of those national crimes for which God had punished England with years of disastrous war, with discomfiture in her own seas, and with the loss of her transatlantic empire. If any of our readers will take the trouble to search in the dusty recesses of circulating libraries for some novel published sixty years ago, the chance is that the villain or sub-villain of the story will prove to be a savage old Nabob with an immense fortune, a tawny com- plexion, a bad liver, and a worse heart. Such, as far as we can now judge, was the feeling of the country respecting Nabobs in general. And Clive was emi- nently the Nabob, the ablest, the most celebrated, the highest in rank, the highest in fortune, of all the fraternity. His wealth was exhibited in a manner which could not fail to excite odium. He lived with great magnificence in Berkeley Square. He reared one palace in Shropshire and another at Claremont. His parliamentary influence might vie with that of the greatest families. But in all this splendour and power envy found something to sneer at. On some of his relations wealth and dignity seem to have sat as awkwardly as on LORD CLIVE 175 Mackenzie's Margery Mushroom. Nor was he himself, with all his great qualities, free from those weaknesses which the satirists of that age represented as characteristic of his whole class. In the field, indeed, his habits were remarkably simple. He was constantly on horseback, was never seen but in his uniform, never wore silk, never entered a palanquin, and was content with the plainest fare. But when he was no longer at the head of an army, he laid aside this Spartan temperance for the ostentatious luxury of a Sybarite. Though his person was ungraceful, and though his harsh features were redeemed from vulgar ugliness only by their stern, dauntless, and com- manding expression, he was fond of rich and gay clothing, and replenished his wardrobe with absurd profusion. Sir John Malcolm gives us a letter worthy of Sir Matthew Mite, in which Clive orders "two hundred shirts, the best and finest that can be got for love or money." A few follies of this description, grossly exaggerated by report, produced an unfa- vourable impression on the public mind. But this was not the worst. Black stories, of which the greater part were pure inven- tions, were circulated touching his conduct in the East. He had to bear the whole odium, not only of those bad acts to which he had once or twice stooped, but of all the bad acts of all the English in India ; of bad acts committed when he was absent ; nay, of bad acts which he had manfully opposed and severely punished. The very abuses against which he had waged an honest, resolute, and successful war were laid to his account. He was, in fact, regarded as the personification of all the vices and weaknesses which the public, with or without reason, ascribed to the English adventurers in Asia. We have ourselves heard old men who knew nothing of his history, but who still retained the prejudices conceived in their youth, talk of him as an incarnate fiend. Johnson always held this language. Brown, whom Clive employed to lay out his pleasure- grounds, was amazed to see in the house of his noble employer a chest which had once been filled with gold from the treasury of Moorshedabad, and could not understand how the conscience 176 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY of the criminal could suffer him to sleep with such an object so near to his bedchamber. The peasantry of Surrey looked with mysterious horror on the stately house which was rising at Claremont, and whispered that the great wicked lord had ordered the walls to be made so thick in order to keep out the devil, who would one day carry him away bodily. Among the gaping clowns who drank in this frightful story was a worthless ugly lad of the name of Hunt, since widely known as William Huntington, S.S. ; and the superstition which was strangely mingled with the knavery of that remarkable impostor seems to have derived no small nutriment from the tales which he heard of the life and character of Clive. In the meantime, the impulse which Clive had given to the administration of Bengal was constantly becoming fainter and fainter. His policy was to a great extent abandoned ; the abuses which he had suppressed began to revive ; and at length the evils which a bad government had engendered were aggravated by one of those fearful visitations which the best government cannot avert. In the summer of 1770, the rains failed ; the earth was parched up ; the tanks were empty ; the rivers shrank within their beds ; and a famine, such as is known only in countries where every household depends for support on its own little patch of cultivation, filled the whole valley of the Ganges with misery and death. Tender and del- icate women, whose veils had never been lifted before the pub- lic gaze, came forth from the inner chambers in which Eastern jealousy had kept watch over their beauty, threw themselves on the earth before the passers-by, and with loud wailings implored a handful of rice for their children. The Hoogly every day rolled down thousands of corpses close to the por- ticoes and gardens of the English conquerors. The very streets of Calcutta were blocked up by the dying and the dead. The lean and feeble survivors had not energy enough to bear the bodies of their kindred to the funeral pile or to the holy river, or even to scare away the jackals and vultures which fed on human remains in the face of day. The extent LORD CLIVE 177 of the mortality was never ascertained ; but it was popularly reckoned by millions. This melancholy intelligence added to the excitement which already prevailed in England on Indian subjects. The proprietors of East India stock were uneasy about their dividends. All men of common humanity were touched by the calamities of our unhappy subjects ; and indignation soon began to mingle itself with pity. It was rumoured that the Company's servants had created the famine by engrossing all the rice of the country ; that they had sold grain for eight, ten, twelve times the price at which they had bought it ; that one English functionary who, the year before, was not worth a hundred guineas, had, during that season of misery, remitted sixty thousand pounds to London. These charges we believe to have been unfounded. That servants of the Company had ventured, since Clive's departure, to deal in rice is probable. That, if they dealt in rice, they must have gained by the scarcity, is certain. But there is no reason for thinking that they either produced or aggravated an evil which physical causes sufficiently explain. The outcry which was raised against them on this occasion was, we suspect, as absurd as the imputations which, in times of dearth at home, were once thrown by statesmen and judges, and are still thrown by two or three old women, on the corn factors. It was, however, so loud and so general that it appears to have imposed even on an intellect raised so high above vulgar prejudices as that of Adam Smith, What was still more extraordinary, these un- happy events greatly increased the unpopularity of Lord Clive. He had been some years in England when the famine took place. None of his acts had the smallest tendency to produce such a calamity. If the servants of the Company had traded in rice, they had done so in direct contravention of the rule which he had laid down, and, while in power, had resolutely enforced. But, in the eyes of his countrymen, he was, as we have said, the Nabob, the AngloTndian personified ; and, while he was building and planting in Surrey, he was held responsible for all the effects of a dry season in Bengal. 1/8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Parliament had hitherto bestowed very Httle attention on our Eastern possessions. Since the death of George the Second, a rapid succession of weak administrations, each of which was in turn flattered and betrayed by the Court, had held the sem- blance of power. Intrigues in the palace, riots in the capital, and insurrectionary movements in the American colonies had left the advisers of the Crown little leisure to study Indian politics. When they did interfere, their interference was feeble and irresolute. Lord Chatham, indeed, during the short period of his ascendency in the councils of George the Third, had meditated a bold attack on the Company. But his plans were rendered abortive by the strange malady which about that time began to overcloud his splendid genius. At length, in 1772, it was generally felt that Parliament could no longer neglect the affairs of India. The Government was stronger than any which had held power since the breach between Mr. Pitt and the great Whig connection in 1761. No pressing question of domestic or European policy required the attention of public men. There was a short and delusive lull between two tempests. The excitement produced by the Mid- dlesex election was over ; the discontents of America did not yet threaten civil war ; the financial difficulties of the Company brought on a crisis ; the Ministers were forced to take up the subject ; and the whole storm, which had long been gathering, now broke at once on the head of Clive. His situation was, indeed, singularly unfortunate. He was hated throughout the country ; hated at the India House ; hated, above all, by those wealthy and powerful servants of the Com- pany, whose rapacity and tyranny he had withstood. He had to bear the double odium of his bad and of his good actions, of every Indian abuse and of every Indian reform. The state of the political world was such that he could count on the sup- port of no powerful connection. The party to which he had belonged — that of George Grenville — had been hostile to the Government, and yet had never cordially united with the other sections of the Opposition, with the little band which still LORD CLIVE 179 followed the fortunes of Lord Chatham, or with the large and respectable body of which Lord Rockingham was the acknowl- edged leader, George Grenville was now dead ; his followers were scattered ; and Clive, unconnected with any of the power- ful factions which divided the Parliament, could reckon only on the votes of those members who w^ere returned by himself. His enemies, particularly those who were the enemies of his virtues, were unscrupulous, ferocious, implacable. Their malev- olence aimed at nothing less than the utter ruin of his fame and fortune. They wished to see him expelled from Parlia- ment, to see his spurs chopped off, to see his estate confis- cated ; and it may be doubted whether even such a result as this would have quenched their thirst for revenge. Clive's parliamentary tactics resembled his military tactics. Deserted, surrounded, outnumbered, and with everything at stake, he did not even deign to stand on the defensive, but pushed boldly forward to the attack. At an early stage of the discussions on Indian affairs he rose, and in a long and elab- orate speech vindicated himself from a large part of the accusations which had been brought against him. He is said to have produced a great impression on his audience. Lord Chatham, who, now the ghost of his former self, loved to haunt the scene of his glory, was that night under the gallery of the House of Commons, and declared that he had never heard a finer speech. It was subsequently printed under Clive's direc- tion, and, when the fullest allowance has been made for the assistance which he may have obtained from literary friends, proves him to have possessed, not merely strong sense and a manly spirit, but talents both for disquisition and declamation which assiduous culture might have improved into the highest excellence. He confined his defence on this occasion to the measures of his last administration, and succeeded so far that his enemies thenceforth thought it expedient to direct their attacks chiefly against the earlier part of his life. The earlier part of his life unfortunately presented some assailable points to their hostility. A committee was chosen i8o SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY by ballot to inquire into the affairs of India ; and by this com- mittee the whole history of that great revolution which threw down Surajah Dowlah and raised Meer Jaffier was sifted with malignant care. Clive was subjected to the most unsparing examination and cross-examination, and afterwards bitterly complained that he, the Baron of Plassey, had been treated like a sheep-stealer. The boldness and ingenuousness of his replies would alone suffice to show how alien from his nature were the frauds to which, in the course of his Eastern nego- tiations, he had sometimes descended. He avowed the arts which he had employed to deceive Omichund, and resolutely said that he was not ashamed of them, and that, in the same circumstances, he would again act in the same manner. He admitted that he had received immense sums from Meer Jaffier ; but he denied that, in doing so, he had violated any obligation of morality or honour. He laid claim, on the con- trary, and not without some reason, to the praise of eminent disinterestedness. He described in vivid language the situation in which his victory had placed him : great princes dependent on his pleasure ; an opulent city afraid of being given up to plunder ; wealthy bankers bidding against each other for his smiles ; vaults piled with gold and jewels thrown open to him alone. "By God, Mr. Chairman," he exclaimed, "at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation ! "• The inquiry was so extensive that the Houses rose before it had been completed. It was continued in the following session. When at length the committee had concluded its labours, enlightened and impartial men had little difficulty in making up their minds as to the result. It was clear that Clive had been guilty of some acts which it is impossible to vindicate without attacking the authority of all the most sacred laws which regulate the intercourse of individuals and of states. But it was equally clear that he had displayed great talents, and even great virtues ; that he had rendered eminent services both to his country and to the people of India ; and that it was in truth not for his dealings with Meer Jaffier nor for the LORD CLIVE i8i fraud which he had practised on Omichund, but for his deter- mined resistance to avarice and tyranny, that he was now called in question. Ordinary criminal justice knows nothing of set-off. The greatest desert cannot be pleaded in answer to a charge of the slightest transgression. If a man has sold beer on a Sunday morning, it is no defence that he has saved the life of a fellow- creature at the risk of his own. If he has harnessed a New- foundland dog to his little child's carriage, it is no defence that he was wounded at Waterloo. But it is not in this way that we ought to deal with men who, raised far above ordinary restraints, and tried by far more than ordinary temptations, are entitled to a more than ordinary measure of indulgence. Such men should be judged by their contemporaries as they will be judged by posterity. Their bad actions ought not, indeed, to be called good ; but their good and bad actions ought to be fairly weighed ; and if on the whole the good preponderate, the sentence ought to be one, not merely of acquittal, but of approbation. Not a single great ruler in history can be absolved by a judge who fixes his eye inexorably on one or two unjusti- fiable acts. Bruce the deliverer of Scotland, Maurice the deliverer of Germany, William the deliverer of Holland, his great descendant the deliverer of England, Murray the good regent, Cosmo the father of his country, Henry the Fourth of France, Peter the Great of Russia, how would the best of them pass such a scrutiny.? History takes wider views; and the best tribunal for great political cases is the tribunal which anticipates the verdict of history. Reasonable and moderate men of all parties felt this in Clive's case. They could not pronounce him blameless ; but they were not disposed to abandon him to that low-minded and rancorous pack who had run him down and were eager to worry him to death. Lord North, though not very friendly to him, was not disposed to go to extremities against him. While the inquiry was still in progress, Clive, who had some years before been created a Knight of the Bath, was installed 1 82 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY with great pomp in Henry the Seventh's Chapel. He was soon after appointed Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire. When he kissed hands, George the Third, who had ahvays been partial to him, admitted him to a private audience, talked to him half an hour on Indian politics, and was visibly affected when the persecuted general spoke of his services and of the way in which they had been requited. At length the charges came in a definite form before the House of Commons. Burgoyne, chairman of the committee, a man of wit, fashion, and honour, an agreeable dramatic writer, an officer whose courage was never questioned and whose skill was at that time highly esteemed, appeared as the accuser. The members of the administration took different sides ; for in that age all questions were open questions, except such as were brought forward by the Government, or such as implied some censure on the Government. Thurlow, the Attorney- General, was among the assailants. Wedderburn, the Solicitor- General, strongly attached to Clive, defended his friend with extraordinary force of argument and language. It is a curious circumstance that, some years later, Thurlow was the most conspicuous champion of Warren Hastings, while Wedderburn was among the most unrelenting persecutors of that great though not faultless statesman. Clive spoke in his own defence at less length and with less art than in the preceding year, but with much energy and pathos. He recounted his great actions and his wrongs ; and, after bidding his hearers remember that they were about to decide not only on his honour but on their own, he retired from the House. The Commons resolved that acquisitions made by the arms of the State belong to the State alone, and that it is illegal in the servants of the State to appropriate such acquisitions to themselves. They resolved that this wholesome rule appeared to have been systematically violated by the English functionaries in Bengal. On a subsequent day they went a step further, and resolved that Clive had, by means of the power which he possessed as commander of the British forces in India, obtained LORD CLIVE 183 large sums from Meer Jaffier. Here the Commons stopped. They had voted the major and minor of Burgoyne's syllogism, but they shrank from drawing the logical conclusion. When it was moved that Lord Clive had abused his powers, and set an evil example to the servants of the public, the previous question was put and carried. At length, long after the sun had risen on an animated debate, Wedderburn moved that Lord Clive had at the same time rendered great and meritorious services to his country ; and this motion passed without a division. The result of this memorable inquiry appears to us, on the whole, honourable to the justice, moderation, and discernment of the Commons. They had, indeed, no great temptation to do wrong. They would have been very bad judges of an accusation brought against Jenkinson or against Wilkes. But the question respecting Clive was not a party question ; and the House accordingly acted with the good sense and good feeling which may always be expected from an assembly of English gentlemen not blinded by faction. The equitable and temperate proceedings of the British Parliament were set off to the greatest advantage by a foil. The wretched government of Louis the Fifteenth had mur- dered, directly or indirectly, almost every Frenchman who had served his country with distinction in the East. Labourdonnais was flung into the Bastile, and, after years of suffering, left it only to die. Dupleix, stripped of his immense fortune, and broken-hearted by humiliating attendance in ante-chambers, sank into an obscure grave. Lally was dragged to the common place of execution with a gag between his lips. The Commons of England, on the other hand, treated their living captain with that discriminating justice which is seldom shown except to the dead. They laid down sound general principles ; they delicately pointed out where he had deviated from those prin- ciples ; and they tempered the gentle censure with liberal eulogy. The contrast struck Voltaire, always partial to Eng- land, and always eager to expose the abuses of the Parliaments of France. Indeed, he seems at this time to have meditated 1 84 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY a history of the conquest of Bengal. He mentioned his design to Dr. Moore when that amusing writer visited him at Ferney. Wedderburn took great interest in the matter, and pressed Chve to furnish materials. Had the plan been carried into execution, we have no doubt that Voltaire would have produced a book containing much lively and picturesque narrative, many just and humane sentiments poignantly expressed, many grotesque blunders, many sneers at the Mosaic chronology, much scandal about the Catholic missionaries, and much sub- lime theophilanthropy, stolen from the New Testament and put into the mouths of virtuous and philosophical Brahmins. Clive was now secure in the enjoyment of his fortune and his honours. He" was surrounded by attached friends and relations, and he had not yet passed the season of vigorous bodily and mental exertion. But clouds had long been gather- ing over his mind, and now settled on it in thick darkness. From early youth he had been subject to fits of that strange melancholy "' which rejoiceth exceedingly and is glad when it can find the grave." While still a writer at Madras, he had twice attempted to destroy himself. Business and prosperity had produced a salutary effect on his spirits. In India, while he was occupied by great affairs, in England, while wealth and rank had still the charm of novelty, he had borne up against his constitutional misery. But he had now nothing to do and nothing to wish for. His active spirit in an inactive situation drooped and withered like a plant in an uncongenial air. The malignity with which his enemies had pursued him, the in- dignity with which he had been treated by the committee, the censure (lenient as it was) which the House of Commons had pronounced, the knowledge that he was regarded by a large portion of his countrymen as a cruel and perfidious tyrant, all concurred to irritate and depress him. In the meantime, his temper was tried by acute physical suffering. During his long residence in tropical climates, he had contracted several pain- ful distempers. In order to obtain ease he called in the help of opium ; and he was gradually enslaved by this treacherous LORD CLIVE 185 ally. To the last, however, his genius occasionally flashed through the gloom. It was said that he would sometimes, after sitting silent and torpid for hours, rouse himself to the discussion of some great question, would display in full vigour all the talents of the soldier and the statesman, and would then sink back into his melancholy repose. The disputes with America had now become so serious that an appeal to the sword seemed inevitable, and the Ministers were desirous to avail themselves of the services of Clive. Had he still been what he was when he raised the siege of Patna and annihilated the Dutch army and navy at the mouth of the Ganges, it is not improbable that the resistance of the colonists would have been put down, and that the inevitable separation would have been deferred for a few years. But it was too late. His strong mind was fast sinking under many kinds of suffering. On the twenty-second of November, 1774, he died by his own hand. He had just completed his forty- ninth year. In the awful close of so much prosperity and glory, the vulgar saw only a confirmation of all their prejudices ; and some men of real piety and genius so far forgot the maxims both of religion and of philosophy as confidently to ascribe the mournful event to the just vengeance of God and to the horrors of an evil conscience. It is with very different feelings that we contemplate the spectacle of a great mind ruined by the weariness of satiety, by the pangs of wounded honour, by fatal diseases, and more fatal remedies. Clive committed great faults and we have not attempted to disguise them. But his faults, when weighed against his merits, and viewed in connection with his temptations, do not appear to us to deprive him of his right to an honourable place in the estimation of posterity. From his first visit to India dates the renown of the English arms in the East. Till he appeared, his countrymen were despised as mere pedlars, while the French were revered as a people formed for victory and command. His courage 1 86 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY and capacity dissolved the charm. With the defence of Arcot commences that long series of Oriental triumphs which closes with the fall of Ghizni. Nor must we forget that he was only twenty-five years old when he approved himself ripe for military command. This is a rare if not a singular distinction. It is true that Alexander, Cond6, and Charles the Twelfth won great battles at a still earlier age ; but those princes were surrounded by veteran generals of distinguished skill, to whose suggestions must be attributed the victories of the Granicus, of Rocroi, and of Narva. Clive, an inexperienced youth, had yet more experience than any of those who served under him. He had to form himself, to form his officers, and to form his army. The only man, as far as we recollect, who at an equally early age ever gave equal proof of talents for war was Napoleon Bonaparte. From Clive's second visit to India dates the political ascendency of the English in that country. His dexterity and resolution realized, in the course of a few months, more than all the gorgeous visions which had floated before the imagina- tion of Dupleix. Such an extent of cultivated territory, such an amount of revenue, such a multitude of subjects, was never added to the dominion of Rome by the most successful pro- consul. Nor were such wealthy spoils ever borne under arches of triumph, down the Sacred Way, and through the crowded Forum, to the threshold of Tarpeian Jove. The fame of those who subdued Antiochus and Tigranes grows dim when compared with the splendour of the exploits which the young English adventurer achieved at the head of an army not equal in numbers to one half of a Roman legion. From Clive's third visit to India dates the purity of the administration of our Eastern empire. When he landed in Calcutta in 1765, Bengal was regarded as a place to which Englishmen were sent only to get rich, by any means, in the shortest possible time. He first made dauntless and unsparing war on that gigantic system of oppression, extortion, and corruption. In that war he manfully put to hazard his ease, LORD CLIVE 187 his fame, and his splendid fortune. The same sense of justice which forbids us to conceal or extenuate the faults of his earlier days compels us to admit that those faults were nobly repaired. If the reproach of the Company and of its servants has been taken away ; if in India the yoke of foreign masters, elsewhere the heaviest of all yokes, has been found lighter than that of any native dynasty ; if to that gang of public robbers, which formerly spread terror through the whole plain of Bengal, has succeeded a body of functionaries not more highly distinguished by ability and diligence than by integrity, disinterestedness, and public spirit ; if we now see such men as Munro, Elphinstone, and Metcalfe, after leading victorious armies, after making and deposing kings, return, proud of their honourable poverty, from a land which once held out to every greedy factor the hope of boundless wealth, the praise is in no small measure due to Clive. His name stands high on the roll of conquerors. But it is found in a better list — in the list of those who have done and suffered much for the happi- ness of mankind. To the warrior history will assign a place in the same rank with Lucullus and Trajan. Nor will she deny to the reformer a share of that veneration with which France cherishes the memory of Turgot, and with which the latest generations of Hindoos will contemplate the statue of Lord William Bentinck. WARREN HASTINGS On a general review of the long administration of Hastings, it is impossible to deny that, against the great crimes by which it is blemished, we have to set off great public services. England had passed through a perilous crisis. She still, in- deed, maintained her place in the foremost rank of European powers ; and the manner in which she had defended herself against fearful odds had inspired surrounding nations with a high opinion both -of her spirit and of her strength. Never- theless, in every part of the world except one she had been a loser. Not only had she been compelled to acknowledge the independence of thirteen colonies peopled by her children, and to conciliate the Irish by giving up the right of legislating for them ; but, in the Mediterranean, in the Gulf of Mexico, on the coast of Africa, on the continent of America, she had been compelled to cede the fruits of her victories in former wars. Spain regained Minorca and Florida ; France regained Senegal, Goree, and several West Indian Islands. The only quarter of the world in which Britain had lost nothing was the quarter in which her interests had been committed to the care of Hastings. In spite of the utmost exertions both of European and Asiatic enemies, the power of our country in the East had been greatly augmented. Benares was sub- jected ; the Nabob Vizier reduced to vassalage. That our influence had been thus extended — nay, that Fort William and Fort St. George had not been occupied by hostile armies — was owing, if we may trust the general voice of the English in India, to the skill and resolution of Hastings. His internal administration, with all its blemishes, gives him a title to be considered as one of the most remarkable men in our history. He dissolved the double government. He transferred the direction of affairs to English hands. Out of WARREN HASTINGS 189 a frightful anarchy he educed at least a rude and imperfect order. The whole organization by which justice was dispensed, revenue collected, peace maintained throughout a territory not inferior in population to the dominions of Louis the Sixteenth or of the Emperor Joseph, was formed and superintended by him. He boasted that every public office, without exception, which existed when he left Bengal was his creation. It is quite true that this system, after all the improvements suggested by the experience of sixty years, still needs improvement, and that it was at first far more defective than it now is. But whoever seriously considers what it is to construct from the beginning the whole of a machine so vast and complex as a government will allow that what Hastings effected deserves high admiration. To compare the most celebrated European ministers to him seems to us as unjust as it would be to compare the best baker in London with Robinson Crusoe, who, before he could bake a single loaf, had to make his plough and his harrow, his fences and his scarecrows, his sickle and his flail, his mill and his oven. The just fame of Hastings rises still higher, when we re- flect that he was not bred a statesman ; that he was sent from school to a counting-house ; and that he was employed during the prime of his manhood as a commercial agent, far from all intellectual society. Nor must we forget that all, or almost all, to whom, when placed at the head of affairs, he could apply for assistance were persons who owed as little as himself, or less than him- self, to education. A minister in Europe finds himself, on the first day on which he commences his functions, surrounded by experienced public servants, the depositaries of official tra- ditions. Hastings had no such help. His own reflection, his own energy, were to supply the place of all Downing Street and Somerset House. Having had no facilities for learning, he was forced to teach. He had first to form himself, and then to form his instruments ; and this not in a single depart- ment, but in all the departments of the administration. I90 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY It must be added that, while engaged in this most arduous task, he was constantly trammelled by orders from home, and frequently borne down by a majority in Council. The preser- vation of an Empire from a formidable combination of foreign enemies, the construction of a government in all its parts, were accomplished by him while every ship brought out bales of censure from his employers, and while the records of every consultation were filled with acrimonious minutes by his col- leagues. We believe that there never was a public man whose temper was so severely tried ; not Marlborough, when thwarted by the Dutch Deputies ; not Wellington, when he had to deal at once with the Portuguese Regency, the Spanish Juntas, and Mr. Percival. But the temper of Hastings was equal to almost any trial. It was not sweet, but it was calm. Quick and vigorous as his intellect was, the patience with which he endured the most cruel vexations till a remedy could be found resembled the patience of stupidity. He seems to have been capable of resentment, bitter and long-enduring ; yet his resent- ment so seldom hurried him into any blunder that it may be doubted whether what appeared to be revenge was anything but policy. The effect of this singular equanimity was that he always had the full command of all the resources of one of the most fertile minds that ever existed. Accordingly, no complication of perils and embarrassments could perplex him. For every difficulty he had a contrivance ready ; and, whatever may be thought of the justice and humanity of some of his contriv- ances, it is certain that they seldom failed to serve the purpose for which they were designed. Together with this extraordinary talent for devising ex- pedients, Hastings possessed, in a very high degree, another talent scarcely less necessary to a man in his situation ; we mean the talent for conducting political controversy. It is as necessary to an English statesman in the East that he should be able to write, as it is to a minister in this country that he should be able to speak. It is chiefly by the oratory of a WARREN HASTINGS 191 public man here that the nation judges of his powers. It is from the letters and reports of a public man in India that the dispensers of patronage form their estimate of him. In each case, the talent which receives peculiar encouragement is developed, perhaps at the expense of the other powers. In this country, we sometimes hear men speak above their abilities. It is not very unusual to find gentlemen in the Indian service who write above their abilities. The English politician is a little too much of a debater ; the Indian politician a little too much of an essayist. Of the numerous servants of the Company who have dis- tinguished themselves as framers of minutes and despatches, Hastings stands at the head. He was, indeed, the person who gave to the official writing of the Indian governments the character which it still retains. He was matched against no common antagonist. But even Francis was forced to acknowl- edge, with sullen and resentful candour, that there was no contending against the pen of Hastings. And, in truth, the Governor-General's power of making out a case, of perplexing what it was inconvenient that people should understand, and of setting in the clearest point of view whatever would bear the light, was incomparable. His style must be praised with some reservation. It was, in general, forcible, pure, and polished ; but it was sometimes, though not often, turgid, and on one or two occasions even bombastic. Perhaps the fondness of Hastings for Persian literature may have tended to corrupt his taste. And, since we have referred to his literary tastes, it would be most unjust not to praise the judicious encouragement which, as a ruler, he gave to liberal studies and curious re- searches. His patronage was extended, with prudent generosity, to voyages, travels, experiments, publications. He did little, it is true, towards introducing into India the learning of the West, To make the young natives of Bengal familiar with Milton and Adam Smith, to substitute the geography, astronomy, and surgery of Europe for the dotages of the Brahminical 192 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY superstition, or for the imperfect science of ancient Greece trans- fused through Arabian expositions — this was a scheme reserved to crown the beneficent administration of a far more virtuous ruler. Still, it is impossible to refuse high commendation to a man who, taken from a ledger to govern an empire, overwhelmed by public business, surrounded by people as busy as himself, and separated by thousands of leagues from almost all literary society, gave, both by his example and by his munificence, a great impulse to learning. In Persian and Arabic literature he was deeply skilled. With the Sanscrit he was not himself acquainted ; but those who first brought that language to the knowledge of European students owed much to his encourage- ment. It was under his protection that the Asiatic Society commenced its honourable career. That distinguished body selected him to be its first president ; but, with excellent taste and feeling, he declined the honour in favour of Sir William Jones. But the chief advantage which the students of Oriental letters derived from his patronage remains to be mentioned. The Pundits of Bengal had always looked with great jealousy on the attempts of foreigners to pry into those mysteries which were locked up in the sacred dialect. The Brahminical religion had been persecuted by the Mahommedans. What the Hindoos knew of the spirit of the Portuguese Government might warrant them in apprehending persecution from Christians, That ap- prehension the wisdom and moderation of Hastings removed. He was the first foreign ruler w^ho succeeded in gaining the confidence of the hereditary priests of India, and who induced them to lay open to English scholars the secrets of the old Brahminical theology and jurisprudence. It is, indeed, impossible to deny that, in the great art of inspiring large masses of human beings with confidence and attachment no ruler ever surpassed Hastings. If he had made himself popular with the English by giving up the Bengalese to extortion and oppression, or if, on the other hand, he had conciliated the Bengalese and alienated the English, there would have been no cause for wonder. What is peculiar to WARREN HASTINGS 193 him is that, being the chief of a small band of strangers who exercised boundless power over a great indigenous population, he made himself beloved both by the subject many and by the dominant few. The affection felt for him by the civil service was singularly ardent and constant. Through all his disasters and perils, his brethren stood by him with steadfast loyalty. The army, at the same time, loved him as armies have seldom loved any but the greatest chiefs who have led them to victory. Even in his disputes with distinguished military men, he could always count on the support of the military profession. While such was his empire over the hearts of his countrymen, he enjoyed among the natives a popularity, such as other governors have perhaps better merited, but such as no other governor has been able to attain. He spoke their vernacular dialects with facility and precision. He was intimately acquainted with their feelings and usages. On one or two occasions, for great ends, he deliberately acted in defiance of their opinion ; but on such occasions he gained more in their respect than he lost in their love. In general, he carefully avoided all that could shock their national or religious prejudices. His administration was, indeed, in many respects faulty ; but the Bengalee standard of good government was not high. Under the Nabobs, the hurricane of Mahratta cavalry had passed annually over the rich alluvial plain. But even the Mahratta shrank from a conflict with the mighty children of the sea ; and the immense rice harvests of the Lower Ganges were safely gathered in under the protection of the English sword. The first English conquerors had been more rapacious and merciless even than the Mahrattas ; but that generation had passed away. Defective as was the police, heavy as were the public burdens, it is probable that the oldest man in Bengal could not recollect a season of equal security and prosperity. For the first time within living memory, the province was placed under a govern- ment strong enough to prevent others from robbing, and not inclined to play the robber itself. These things inspired good- will. At the same time, the constant success of Hastings and 194 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the manner in which he extricated himself from every difficulty made him an object of superstitious admiration ; and the more than regal splendour which he sometimes displayed dazzled a people who have much in common with children. Even now, after the lapse of more than fifty years, the natives of India still talk of him as the greatest of the English ; and nurses sing children to sleep with a jingling ballad about the fleet horses and richly caparisoned elephants of Sahib Warren Hostein. The gravest offences of which Hastings was guilty did not affect his popularity with the people of Bengal ; for those offences were committed against neighbouring states. Those offences, as our readers must have perceived, we are not dis- posed to vindicate ; yet, in order that the censure may be justly apportioned to the transgression, it is fit that .the motive of the criminal should be taken into consideration. The motive which prompted the worst acts of Hastings was misdirected and ill-regulated public spirit. The rules of justice, the senti- ments of humanity, the plighted faith of treaties, were in his view as nothing when opposed to the immediate interest of the State. This is no justification, according to the principles either of morality, or of what we believe to be identical with morality — namely, far-sighted policy. Nevertheless the common sense of mankind, which in questions of this sort seldom goes far wrong, will always recognize a distinction between crimes which originate in an inordinate zeal for the commonwealth, and crimes which originate in selfish cupidity. To the benefit of this distinction Hastings is fairly entitled. There is, we conceive, no reason to suspect that the Rohilla war, the revo- lution of Benares, or the spoliation of the Princesses of Oude added a rupee to his fortune. We will not affirm that in all pecuniary dealings he showed that punctilious integrity, that dread of the faintest appearance of evil, which is now the glory of the Indian civil service. But when the school in which he had been trained and the temptations to which he was exposed are considered, we are more inclined to praise him for his WARREN HASTINGS 195 general uprightness with respect to money than rigidly to blame him for a few transactions which would now be called indeli- cate and irregular, but which even now would hardly be desig- nated as corrupt. A rapacious man he certainly was not. Had he been so, he would infallibly have returned to his country the richest subject in Europe. We speak within compass when we say that, without applying any extraordinary pressure, he might easily have obtained from the zemindars of the Com- pany's provinces and from neighbouring princes, in the course of thirteen years, more than three millions sterling, and might have outshone the splendour of Carlton House and of the Palais Royal. He brought home a fortune such as a Gov- ernor-General, fond of state and careless of thrift, might easily, during so long a tenure of office, save out of his legal salary. Mrs. Hastings, we are afraid, was less scrupulous. It was gen- erally believed that she accepted presents with great alacrity, and that she thus formed, without the connivance of her hus- band, a private hoard amounting to several lacs of rupees. We are the more inclined to give credit to this story because Mr. Glcig, who cannot but have heard it, does not, as far as we have observed, notice or contradict it. The influence of Mrs. Hastings over her husband was, indeed, such that she might easily have obtained much larger sums than she was ever accused of receiving. At length her health began to give way ; and the Governor-General, much against his will, was compelled to send her to England, He seems to have loved her with that love which is peculiar to men of strong minds, to men whose affection is not easily won or widely diffused. The talk of Calcutta ran for some time on the luxurious manner in which he fitted up the round-house of an Indiaman for her accommodation, on the profusion of sandal-wood and carved ivory which adorned her cabin, and on the thousands of rupees which had been expended in order to procure for her the society of an agreeable female companion during the voyage. We may remark here that the letters of Hastings to his wife are exceedingly characteristic. They are 196 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY tender, and full of indications of esteem and confidence ; but, at the same time, a little more ceremonious than is usual in so intimate a relation. The solemn courtesy with which he com- pliments "his elegant Marian" reminds us now and then of the dignified air with which Sir Charles Grandison bowed over Miss Byron's hand in the cedar parlour. After some months, Hastings prepared to follow his wife to England. When it was announced that he was about to quit his office, the feeling of the society which he had so long governed manifested itself by many signs. Addresses poured in from Europeans and Asiatics, from civil functionaries, sol- diers, and traders. On the day on which he delivered up the keys of office, a crowd of friends and admirers formed a lane to the quay where he embarked. Several barges escorted him far down the river ; and some attached friends refused to quit him till the low coast of Bengal was fading from the view, and till the pilot was leaving the ship. Of his voyage little is known, except that he amused him- self with books and with his pen, and that among the com- positions by which he beguiled the tediousness of that long leisure was a pleasing imitation of Horace's Otiwn Divos rogat. This little poem was inscribed to Mr. Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, a man of whose integrity, humanity, and honour it is impossible to speak too highly, but who, like some other excellent members of the civil service, extended to the conduct of his friend Hastings an indulgence of which his own conduct never stood in need. The voyage was, for those times, very speedy. Hastings was little more than four months on the sea. In June, 1785, he landed at Plymouth, posted to London, appeared at Court, paid his respects in Leadenhall Street, and then retired with his wife to Cheltenham. He was greatly pleased with his reception. The King treated him with marked distinction. The Queen, who had already incurred much censure on account of the favour which, in spite of the ordinary severity of her virtue, she had shown WARREN HASTINGS 197 to the "elegant Marian," was not less gracious to Hastings. The Directors received him in a solemn sitting ; and their chairman read to him a vote of thanks which they had passed without one dissentient voice. " I find myself," said Hastings, in a letter written about a quarter of a year after his arrival in England — "I find myself everywhere, and universally, treated with evidences, apparent even to my own observation, that I possess the good opinion of my country." The confident and exulting tone of his correspondence about this time is the more remarkable because he had al- ready received ample notice of the attack which was in prep- paration. Within a week after he landed at Plymouth, Burke gave notice in the House of Commons of a motion seriously affecting a gentleman lately returned from India. The Session, however, was then so far advanced that it was impossible to enter on so extensive and important a subject. Hastings, it is clear, was not sensible of the danger of his position. Indeed, that sagacity, that judgment, that readiness in devising expedients, which had distinguished him in the East seemed now to have forsaken him ; not that his abilities were at all impaired ; not that he was not still the same man who had triumphed over Francis and Nuncomar, who had made the Chief Justice and the Nabob Vizier his tools, who had deposed Cheyte Sing and repelled Hyder Ali. But an oak, as Mr. Grattan finely said, should not be transplanted at fifty. A man who, having left England when a boy, returns to it after thirty or forty years passed in India, will find, be his talents what- they may, that he has much both to learn and to unlearn before he can take a place among English statesmen. The working of a representative system, the war of parties, the arts of debate, the influence of the press, are startling novelties to him. Surrounded on every side by new machines and new tactics, he is as much bewildered as Hannibal would have been at Waterloo, or Themistocles at Trafalgar. His very acuteness deludes him. His very vigour causes him to stumble. The more correct his maxims, when 198 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY applied to the state of society to which he is accustomed, the more certain they are to lead him astray. This was strikingly the case with Hastings. In India he had a bad hand ; but he was master of the game, and he won every stake. In England he held excellent cards, if he had known how to play them ; and it was chiefly by his own errors that he was brought to the verge of ruin. Of all his errors the most serious was, perhaps, the choice of a champion. Clive, in similar circumstances, had made a singularly happy selection. He put himself into the hands of Wedderburn, afterwards Lord Loughborough, one of the few great advocates who have also been great in the House of Commons. To the defence of Clive, therefore, nothing was wanting — neither learning nor knowledge of the world, neither forensic acuteness nor that eloquence which charms political assemblies. Hastings intrusted his interests to a very different person, a Major in the Bengal army, named Scott. This gentleman had been sent over from India some time before as the agent of the Governor-General. It was rumoured that his services were rewarded with Oriental munificence ; and we believe that he received much more than Hastings could con- veniently spare. The Major obtained a seat in Parliament, and was there regarded as the organ of his employer. It was evidently impossible that a gentleman so situated could .speak with the authority which belongs to an independent position. Nor had the agent of Hastings the talents necessary for obtaining the ear of an assembly which, accustomed to listen to great orators, had naturally become fastidious. He was always on his legs ; he was very tedious ; and he had only one topic, the merits and wrongs of Hastings. Everybody who knows the House of Commons will easily guess what followed. The Major was soon considered as the greatest bore of his time. His exertions were not confined to Parlia- ment. There was hardly a day on which the newspapers did not contain some puff upon Hastings, signed Asiaticus or Bengalcusis, but known to be written by the indefatigable WARREN HASTINGS 199 Scott ; and hardly a month in which some bulky pamphlet on the same subject, and from the same pen, did not pass to the trunk-makers and the pastry-cooks. As to this gentleman's capacity for conducting a delicate question through Parliament, our readers will want no evidence beyond that which they will find in letters preserved in these volumes. We will give a single specimen of his temper and judgment. He designated the greatest man then living as "that reptile Mr. Burke." In spite, however, of this unfortunate choice, the general aspect of affairs was favourable to Hastings. The King was on his side. The Company and its servants were zealous in his cause. Among public men he had many ardent friends. Such were Lord Mansfield, who had outlived the vigour of his body, but not that of his mind ; and Lord Lansdowne, who, though unconnected with any party, retained the impor- tance which belongs to great talents and knowledge. The ministers were generally believed to be favourable to the late Governor-General. They owed their power to the clamour which had been raised against Mr. Fox's East India Bill. The authors of that bill, when accused of invading vested rights, and of setting up powers unknown to the constitution, had defended themselves by pointing to the crimes of Hast- ings, and by arguing that abuses so extraordinary justified extraordinary measures. Those who, by opposing that bill, had raised themselves to the head of affairs would naturally be inclined to extenuate the evils which had been made the plea for administering so violent a remedy ; and such, in fact, was their general disposition. The Lord Chancellor Thurlow, in particular, whose great place and force of intellect gave him a weight in the Government inferior only to that of Mr. Pitt, espoused the cause of Hastings with indecorous violence. Mr. Pitt, though he had censured many parts of the Indian system, had studiously abstained from saying a word against the late chief of the Indian Government. To Major Scott, indeed, the young minister had in private extolled Hastings as a great, a wonderful man, who had the highest claims on 200 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the Government. There was only one objection to granting all that so eminent a servant of the public could ask. The resolution of censure still remained on the journals of the House of Commons. That resolution was, indeed, unjust ; but, till it was rescinded, could the minister advise the King to bestow any mark of approbation on the person censured ? If Major Scott is to be trusted, Mr. Pitt declared that this was the only reason which prevented the advisers of the Crown from conferring a peerage on the late Governor-General. Mr. Dundas was the only important member of the adminis- tration who was deeply committed to a different view of the subject. He had moved the resolution which created the difficulty ; but even from him little was to be apprehended. Since he had presided over the committee on Eastern affairs, great changes had taken place. He was surrounded by new allies ; he had fixed his hopes on new objects ; and whatever may have been his good qualities — and he had many — flattery itself never reckoned rigid consistency in the number. From the Ministry, therefore, Hastings had every reason to expect support ; and the Ministry was very powerful. The Opposition was loud and vehement against him. But the Opposition, though formidable from the wealth and influence of some of its members, and from the admirable talents and eloquence of others, was outnumbered in Parliament,- and odious throughout the country. Nor, as far as we can judge, was the Opposition generally desirous to engage in so serious an undertaking as the impeachment of an Indian Governor. Such an impeachment must last for years. It must impose on the chiefs of the party an immense load of labour. Yet it could scarcely, in any manner, affect the event of the great political game. The followers of the coalition were therefore more inclined to revile Hastings than to prosecute him. They lost no opportunity of coupling his name with the names of the most hateful tyrants of whom history makes mention. The wits of Brooks's aimed their keenest sarcasms both at his public and at his domestic life. Some fine diamonds WARREN HASTINGS 2oi which he had presented, as it was rumoured, to the royal family, and a certain richly carved ivory bed which the Queen had done him the honour to accept from him, were favourite subjects of ridicule. One lively poet proposed that the great acts of the fair Marian's present husband should be immortal- ized by the pencil of his predecessor ; and that Imhoff should be employed to embellish the House of Commons with paint- ings of the bleeding Rohillas, of Nuncomar swinging, of Cheyte Sing letting himself down to the Ganges. Another, in an exquisitely humorous parody of Virgil's third eclogue, propounded the question what that mineral could be of which the rays had power to make the most austere of prin- cesses the friend of a wanton. A third described, with gay malevolence, the gorgeous appearance of Mrs, Hastings at St. James's — the galaxy of jewels, torn from Indian Begums, which adorned her head-dress, her necklace gleaming with future votes, and the depending questions that shone upon her ears. Satirical attacks of this description, and perhaps a motion for a vote of censure, would have satisfied the great body of the Opposition. But there were two men whose indignation was not to be so appeased — Philip Francis and Edmund Burke. Francis had recently entered the House of Commons, and had already established a character there for industry and abil- ity. He laboured, indeed, under one most unfortunate defect, want of fluency. But he occasionally expressed himself with a dignity and energy worthy of the greatest orators. Before he had been many days in Parliament, he incurred the bitter dislike of Pitt, who constantly treated him with as much as- perity as the laws of debate would allow. Neither lapse of years nor change of scene had mitigated the enmities which Francis had brought back from the East. After his usual fashion, he mistook his malevolence for virtue, nursed it, as preachers tell us that we ought to nurse our good dispositions, and paraded it, on all occasions, with Pharisaical ostentation. The zeal of Burke was still fiercer ; but it was far purer. Men unable to understand the elevation of his mind have tried 202 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY to find out some discreditable motive for the vehemence and pertinacity which he showed on this occasion. But they have altogether failed. The idle story that he had some private slight to revenge has long been given up, even by the advo- cates of Hastings. Mr. Gleig supposes that Burke was actu- ated by party spirit, that he retained a bitter remembrance of the fall of the coalition, that he attributed that fall to the ex- ertions of the East India interest, and that he considered Hastings as the head and the representative of that interest. This explanation seems to be sufficiently refuted by a reference to dates. The hostility of Burke to Hastings commenced long before the coalition, and lasted long after Burke had become a strenuous supporter of those by whom the coalition had been defeated. It began when Burke and Fox, closely allied together, were attacking the influence of the Crown, and call- ing for peace with the American republic. It continued till Burke, alienated from Fox, and loaded with the favours of the Crown, died, preaching a cmsade against the French republic. We surely cannot attribute to the events of 1784 an enmity which began in 1781, and which retained undi- minished force long after persons far more deeply implicated than Hastings in the events of 1784 had been cordially for- given. And why should we look for any other explanation of Burke's conduct than that which we find on the surface } The plain truth is that Hastings had committed some great crimes, and that the thought of those crimes made the blood of Burke boil in his veins. For Burke was a man in whom compassion for suffering, and hatred of injustice and tyrann}^, were as strong as in Las Casas or Clarkson. And although in him, as in Las Casas and in Clarkson, these noble feelings were alloyed with the infirmity which belongs to human nature, he is, like them, entitled to this great praise, that he devoted years of intense labour to the service of a people with whom he had neither blood nor language, neither religion nor man- ners, in common, and from whom no requital, no thanks, no applause could be expected. WARREN HASTINGS 203 His knowledge of India was such as few, even of those Europeans who have passed many years in that country, have attained, and such as certainly was never attained by any pub- lic man who had not quitted Europe. He had studied the history, the laws, and the usages of the East with an industry such as is seldom found united to so much genius and so much sensibility. Others have perhaps been equally laborious, and have collected an equal mass of materials. But the manner in which Burke brought his higher powers of intellect to work on statements of facts an(^ on tables of figures was peculiar to himself. In every part of those huge bales of Indian in- formation which repelled almost all other readers, his mind, at once philosophical and poetical, found something to instruct or to delight. His reason analyzed and digested those vast and shapeless masses ; his imagination animated and coloured them. Out of darkness and dulness and confusion he formed a multitude of ingenious theories and vivid pictures. He had, in the highest degree, that noble faculty whereby man is able to live in the past and in the future, in the distant and in the unreal. India and its inhabitants were not to him, as to most Englishmen, mere names and abstractions, but a real country and a real people. The burning sun, the strange vegetation of the palm and the cocoa-tree, the rice-field, the tank, the huge trees, older than the Mogul empire, under which the village crowds assemble, the thatched roof of the peasant's hut, the rich tracery of the mosque where the imaum prays with his face to Mecca, the drums, and banners, and gaudy idols, the devotee swinging in the air, the graceful maiden, with the pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the riverside, the black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect, the turbans and the flowing robes, the spears and the silver maces, the elephants with their canopies of state, the gor- geous palanquin of the prince, and the close litter of the noble lady — all these things were to him as the objects amidst which his own life had been passed, as the objects which lay on the road between Beaconsfield and St. James's Street. All 204 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY India was present to the eye of his mind — from the hall where suitors laid gold and perfumes at the feet of sovereigns to the wild moor where the gipsy camp was pitched ; from the bazar, humming like a beehive with the crowd of buyers and sellers, to the jungle where the lonely courier shakes his bunch of iron rings to scare away the hyaenas. He had just as lively an idea of the insurrection at Benares as of Lord George Gordon's riots, and of the execution of Nun- comar as of the execution of Dr. Dodd. Oppression in Bengal was to him the same thing as oppression in the streets of London, He saw that Hastings had been guilty of some most unjusti- fiable acts. All that followed was natural and necessary in a mind like Burke's. His imagination and his passions, once excited, hurried him beyond the bounds of justice and good sense. His reason, powerful as it was, became the slave of feelings which it should have controlled. His indignation, virtuous in its origin, acquired too much of the character of personal aversion. He could see no mitigating circumstance, no redeeming merit. His temper, which, though generous and affectionate, had always been irritable, had now been made almost savage by bodily infirmities and mental vexations. Con- scious of great powers and great virtues, he found himself, in age and poverty, a mark for the hatred of a perfidious Court and a deluded people. In Parliament his eloquence was out of date, A young generation, which knew him not, had filled the House, Whenever he rose to speak, his voice was drowned by the unseemly interruption of lads who were in their cradles when his orations on the Stamp Act called forth the applause of the great Earl of Chatham. These things had produced on his proud and sensitive spirit an effect at which we cannot wonder. He could no longer discuss any question with calm- ness, or make allowance for honest differences of opinion. Those who think that he was more violent and acrimonious in debates about India than on other occasions, are ill-informed respecting the last years of his life. In the discussions on WARREN HASTINGS 205 the Commercial Treaty with the Court of Versailles, on the Regency, on the French Revolution, he showed even more virulence than in conducting the impeachment. Indeed, it may be remarked that the very persons who called him a mischie- vous maniac for condemning in burning words the Rohilla war and the spoliation of the Begums exalted him into a prophet as soon as he began to declaim, with greater vehe- mence, and not with greater reason, against the taking of the Bastile and the insults offered to Marie Antoinette. To us he appears to have been neither a maniac in the former case nor a prophet in the latter, but in both cases a great and good man, led into extravagance by a sensibility which domineered over all his faculties. It may be doubted whether the personal antipathy of Francis or the nobler indignation of Burke would have led their party to adopt extreme measures against Hastings if his own con- duct had been judicious. He should have felt that, great as his public services had been, he was not faultless, and should have been content to make his escape without aspiring to the honours of a triumph. He and his agent took a different view. They were impatient for the rewards which, as they conceived, were deferred only till Burke's attack should be over. They accordingly resolved to force on a decisive action with an enemy for whom, if they had been wise, they would have made a bridge of gold. On the first day of the session of 1786 Major Scott reminded Burke of the notice given in the preceding year, and asked whether it was seriously intended to bring any charge against the late Governor-General. This challenge left no course open to the Opposition except to come forward as accusers or to acknowledge themselves calum- niators. The administration of Hastings had not been so blameless, nor was the great party of Fox and North so feeble, that it could be prudent to venture on so bold a defiance. The leaders of the Opposition instantly returned the only answer which they could with honour return, and the whole party was irrevocably pledged to a prosecution. 2o6 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Burke began his operations by applying for Papers. Some of the documents for which he asked were refused by the ministers, who, in the debate, held language such as strongly confirmed the prevailing opinion that they intended to support Hastings. In April the charges were laid on the table. They had been drawn by Burke with great ability, though in a form too much resembling that of a pamphlet. Hastings was fur- nished with a copy of the accusation ; and it was intimated to him that he might, if he thought fit, be heard in his own defence at the bar of the Commons, Here again Hastings was pursued by the same fatality which had attended him ever since the day when he set foot on English ground, it seemed to be decreed that this man, so politic and so successful in the East, should commit nothing but blunders in Europe. Any judicious adviser would have told him that the best thing which he could do would be to make an eloquent, forcible, and affecting oration at the bar of the House ; but that, if he could not trust himself to speak, and found it necessary to read, he ought to be as concise as pos- sible. Audiences accustomed to extemporaneous debating of the highest excellence are always impatient of long written compositions. Hastings, however, sat down as he would have done at the Government- House in Bengal and prepared a pa- per of immense length. That paper, if recorded on the consul- tations of an Indian administration, would have been justly praised as a very able minute. But it was now out of place. It fell flat, as the best written defence must have fallen flat, on an assembly accustomed to the animated and strenuous con- flicts of Pitt and Fox. The members, as soon as their curiosity about the face and demeanour of so eminent a stranger was satisfied, walked away to dinner, and left Hastings to tell his story till midnight to the clerks and the Serjeant-at-Arms. All preliminary steps having been duly taken, Burke, in the beginning of June, brought forward the charge relating to the Rohilla war. He acted discreetly in placing this accusation in the van ; for Dundas had formerly moved, and the House had WARREN HASTINGS 207 adopted, a resolution condemning in the most severe terms the pohcy followed by Hastings with regard to Rohilcund. Dundas had little, or rather nothing, to say in defence of his own consistency ; but he put a bold face on the matter and opposed the motion. Among other things, he declared that, though he still thought the Rohilla war unjustifiable, he con- sidered the services which Hastings had subsequently rendered to the State as sufficient to atone even for so great an offence. Pitt did not speak, but voted with Dundas, and Hastings was absolved by a hundred and nineteen votes against sixty-seven. Hastings was now confident of victory. It seemed, indeed, that he had reason to be so. The Rohilla war was, of all his measures, that which his accusers might with greatest advan- tage assail. It had been condemned by the Court of Directors. It had been condemned by the House of Commons. It had been condemned by Mr. Dundas, who had since become the chief minister of the Crown for Indian affairs. Yet Burke, having chosen this strong ground, had been completely defeated on it. That, having failed here, he should succeed on any point was generally thought impossible. It was rumoured at the clubs and coffee-houses that one or perhaps two more charges would be brought forward ; that if, on those charges, the sense of the House of Commons should be against im- peachment, the Opposition would let the matter drop ; that Hastings would be immediately raised to the peerage, decorated with the star of the Bath, sworn of the Privy Council, and invited to lend the assistance of his talents and experience to the India Board. Lord Thurlow, indeed, some months before, had spoken with contempt of the scruples which prevented Pitt from calling Hastings to the House of Lords ; and had even said that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer was afraid of the Commons, there was nothing to prevent the Keeper of the Great Seal from taking the royal pleasure about a patent of peerage. The very title was chosen. Hastings was to be Lord Daylesford. For through all changes of scene and changes of fortune remained unchanged his attachment to the spot which 2o8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY had witnessed the greatness and the fall of his family, and which had borne so great a part in the first dreams of his young ambition. But in a very few days these fair prospects were overcast. On the thirteenth of June, Mr. Fox brought forward, with great ability and eloquence, the charge respecting the treat- ment of Cheyte Sing. Francis followed on the same side. The friends of Hastings were in high spirits when Pitt rose. With his usual abundance and felicity of language, the Minister gave his opinion on the case. He maintained that the Governor-General was justified in calling on the Rajah of Benares for pecuniary assistance, and in imposing a fine when that assistance was contumaciously withheld. He also thought that the conduct of the Governor-General during the insurrec- tion had been distinguished by ability and presence of mind. He censured, with great bitterness, the conduct of Francis, both in India and in Parliament, as most dishonest and malignant. The necessary inference from Pitt's arguments seemed to be that Hastings ought to be honourably acquitted, and both the friends and the opponents of the Minister expected from him a declaration to that effect. To the astonishment of all parties, he concluded by saying that though he thought it right in Hastings to fine Cheyte Sing for contumacy, yet the amount of the fine was too great for the occasion. On this ground, and on this ground alone, did Mr. Pitt, applauding every other part of the conduct of Hastings with regard to Benares, declare that he should vote in favour of Mr. Fox's motion. The House was thunderstruck ; and it well might be so. For the wrong done to Cheyte Sing, even had it been as flagitious as Fox and Francis contended, was a trifle when compared with the horrors which had been inflicted on Rohil- cund. But if Mr, Pitt's view of the case of Cheyte Sing were correct, there was no ground for an impeachment, or even for a vote of censure. If the offence of Hastings was really no more than this, that, having a right to impose a mulct, the WARREN HASTINGS 209 amount of which mulct was not defined, but was left to be settled by his discretion, he had, not for his own advantage, but for that of the State, demanded too much, was this an offence which required a criminal proceeding of the highest solemnity, a criminal proceeding, to which, during sixty years, no public functionary had been subjected ? We can see, we think, in what way a man of sense and integrity might have been induced to take any course respecting Hastings except the course which Mr. Pitt took. Such a man might have thought a great example necessary for the preventing of in- justice and for the vindicating of the national honour, and might, on that ground, have voted for impeachment both on the Rohilla charge and on the Benares charge. Such a man might have thought that the offences of Hastings had been atoned for by great services, and might, on that ground, have voted against the impeachment, on both charges. With great diffidence, we give it as our opinion that the most correct course would, on the whole, have been to impeach on the Rohilla charge and to acquit on the Benares charge. Had the Benares charge appeared to us in the same light in which it appeared to Mr. Pitt, we should, without hesitation, have voted for acquittal on that charge. The one course which it is inconceivable that any man of a tenth part of Mr. Pitt's abili- ties can have honestly taken was the course which he took. He acquitted Hastings on the Rohilla charge. He softened down the Benares charge till it became no charge at all ; and then he pronounced that it contained matter for impeachment. Nor must it be forgotten that the principal reason assigned by the ministry for not impeaching Hastings on account of the Rohilla war was this, that the delinquencies of the early part of his administration had been atoned for by the excellence of the later part. Was it not most extraordinary that men who had held this language could after\vards vote that the later part of his administration furnished matter for no less than twenty articles of impeachment .-' They first represented the conduct of Hastings in 1780 and 1781 as so highly meritorious that, 2IO SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY like works of supererogation in the Catholic theology, it ought to be efficacious for the cancelling of former offences ; and they then prosecuted him for his conduct in 1780 and 1781. The general astonishment was the greater, because, only twenty-four hours before, the members on whom the minister could depend had received the usual notes from the Treasury begging them to be in their places and to vote against Mr. Fox's motion. It was asserted by Mr. Hastings that, early on the morning of the very day on which the debate took place, Dundas called on Pitt, woke him, and was closeted with him many hours. The result of this conference was a determination to give up the late Governor-General to the vengeance of the Opposition. It was impossible even for the most powerful minister to carry all his followers with him in so strange a course. Several persons high in office, the Attorney-General, Mr. Grenville, and Lord Mulgrave, divided against Mr. Pitt. But the devoted adherents who stood by the head of the Government without asking questions were sufficiently numer- ous to turn the scale. A hundred and nineteen members voted for Mr. Fox's motion, seventy-nine against it. Dundas silently followed Pitt. That good and great man, the late William Wilberforce, often related the events of this remarkable night. He described the amazement of the House and the bitter reflections which were muttered against the Prime Minister by some of the habitual supporters of Government. Pitt himself appeared to feel that his conduct required some explanation. He left the treasury bench, sat for some time next to Mr. Wilberforce, and very earnestly declared that he had found it impossible, as a man of conscience, to stand any longer by Hastings. The business, he said, was too bad. Mr. Wilberforce, we are bound to add, fully believed that his friend was sincere, and that the suspicions to which this mysterious affair gave rise were altogether unfounded. Those suspicions, indeed, were such as it is painful to mention. The friends of Hastings, most of whom, it is to be WARREN HASTINGS 2ii observed, generally supported the administration, affirmed that the motive of Pitt and Dundas was jealousy. Hastings was personally a favourite with the King. He was the idol of the East India Company and of its servants. If he were absolved by the Commons, seated among the Lords, admitted to the Board of Control, closely allied with the strong-minded and imperious Thurlow, was it not almost certain that he would soon draw to himself the entire management of Eastern affairs .? Was it not possible that he might become a formidable rival in the Cabinet ? It had probably got abroad that very singular communications had taken place between Thurlow and Major Scott ; and that if the First Lord of the Treasury was afraid to recommend Hastings for a peerage, the Chancellor was ready to take the responsibility of that step on himself. Of all ministers, Pitt was the least likely to submit with patience to such an encroachment on his functions. If the Commons impeached Hastings, all danger was at an end. The proceed- ing, however it might terminate, would probably last some years. In the meantime, the accused person would be excluded from honours and public employments, and could scarcely venture even to pay his duty at Court. Such were the motives attributed by a great part of the public to the young minister, whose ruling passion was generally believed to be avarice of power. The prorogation soon interrupted the discussions respecting Hastings. In the following year, those discussions were resumed. The charge touching the spoliation of the Begums was brought forward by Sheridan in a speech which was so imperfectly reported that it may be said to be wholly lost, but which was, without doubt, the most elaborately brilliant of all the productions of his ingenious mind. The impression which it produced was such as has never been equalled. He sat down, not merely amidst cheering, but amidst the loud clapping of hands, in which the Lords below the bar and the strangers in the gallery joined. The excitement of the House was such that no other speaker could obtain a hearing, and the debate was 212 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY adjourned. The ferment spread fast through the town. Within four and twenty hours, Sheridan was offered a thousand pounds for the copyright of the speech, if he would himself correct it for the press. The impression made by this remarkable display of eloquence on severe and experienced critics, whose discern- ment may be supposed to have been quickened by emulation, was deep and permanent. Mr. Windham, twenty years later, said that the speech deserved all its fame, and was, in spite of some faults of taste, such as were seldom wanting either in the literary or in the parliamentary performances of Sheridan, the finest that had been delivered within the memory of man. Mr. Fox, about the same time, being asked by the late Lord Holland what was the best speech ever made in the House of Commons, assigned the first place, without hesitation, to the great oration of Sheridan on the Oude charge. When the debate was resumedj the tide ran so strongly against the accused that his friends were coughed and scraped down. Pitt declared himself for Sheridan's motion ; and the question was carried by a hundred and seventy-five votes against sixty-eight. The Opposition, flushed with victory and strongly supported by the public sympathy, proceeded to bring forward a succes- sion of charges relating chiefly to pecuniary transactions. The friends of Hastings were discouraged, and, having now no hope of being able to avert an impeachment, were not very strenuous in their exertions. At length the House, having agreed to twenty articles of charge, directed Burke to go before the Lords, and to impeach the late Governor-General of High Crimes and Misdemeanours. Hastings was at the same time arrested by the Serjeant-at-Arms, and carried to the bar of the Peers. The session was now within ten days of its close. It was, therefore, impossible that any progress could be made in the trial till the next year. Hastings was admitted to bail ; and further proceedings were postponed till the Houses should reassemble. WARREN HASTINGS 213 When Parliament met in the following winter, the Com- mons proceeded to elect a Committee for managing the impeachment. Burke stood at the head ; and with him were associated most of the leading members of the Opposition. But when the name of Francis was read a fierce contention arose. It was said that Francis and Hastings were notoriously on bad terms ; that they had been at feud during many years ; that on one occasion their mutual aversion had impelled them to seek each other's lives ; and that it would be improper and indelicate to select a private enemy to be a public accuser. It was urged on the other side with great force, particularly by Mr. Windham, that impartiality, though the first duty of a judge, had never been reckoned among the qualities of an advocate ; that in the ordinary administration of criminal jus- tice among the English, the aggrieved party, the very last person who ought to be admitted into the jury-box, is the pros- ecutor ; that what was wanted in a manager was, not that he should be free from bias, but that he should be able, well- informed, energetic, and active. The ability and information of Francis were admitted ; and the very animosity with which he was reproached, whether a virtue or a vice, was at least a pledge for his energy and activity. It seems difficult to refute these arguments. But the inveterate hatred borne by Francis to Hastings had excited general disgust. The House decided that Francis should not be a manager. Pitt voted with the majority, Dundas with the minority. In the meantime, the preparations for the trial had pro- ceeded rapidly; and on the thirteenth of February, 1788, the sittings of the Court commenced. There have been spectacles more dazzling 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 calculated to strike a highly cul- tivated, a reflecting, and 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 214 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY in one hour. All the talents and all the accomplishments which are developed by liberty and civilization were now dis- played, with every advantage that could be derived both from co-operation and from contrast. Every step in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through many troubled cen- turies, to the days when the foundations of our 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, according to forms handed down from the days of the Plantagenets, on an English- man accused of exercising tyranny over the lord of the holy city of Benares, and over the ladies of the princely house of Oude. The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclama- tions 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 inflamed 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 military nor civil pomp was want- ing. 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 — George Eliott, Lord Heathfield, recently ennobled for his memorable defence of Gibraltar 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 WARREN HASTINGS 215 bearing. The grey old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely ex- cited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered together, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art. There were seated round 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 majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing 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 still retained 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 thought- ful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen and the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to sus- pend his labours in that dark and profound mine from which he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition ^ — a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splendid. There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of the throne had in secret plighted his faith. There too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from the common decay. There were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticized, and exchanged repartees under the rich peacock-hangings of Mrs. Montague. And there the ladies whose lips, more per- suasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster election against palace and treasury shone round Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. 2i6 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY The Serjeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar, and bent his knee. The culprit was indeed not un- worthy 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 deriv- ing 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 inflexible decision ; a face pale and worn, but serene, on which -was written, as legibly as under the picture in the council-chamber at Calcutta, Mens cequa in ardnis — such was the aspect with which the great proconsul presented himself to his judges. His counsel accompanied him, men all of whom were after- wards raised by their talents and learning to the highest posts in their profession — the bold and strong-minded Law, after- wards Chief Justice of the King's Bench ; the more humane and eloquent Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas ; and Plomer, who, near twenty years later, successfully conducted in the same high court the defence of Lord Mel- ville, and subsequently became Vice-chancellor and Master of the Rolls. But neither the culprit nor his advocates attracted so 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, ap- peared 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 compliment of wearing a bag and sword. Pitt had refused to be one of the conductors of the impeachment ; and his commanding, copious, and sono- rous eloquence was wanting to that great muster of various WARREN HASTINGS 217 talents. Age and blindness had unfitted Lord North for the duties of a public prosecutor ; and his friends were left with- out the help of his excellent 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 con- tained an array of speakers such as perhaps had not appeared together since the great age of Athenian eloquence. There were Fox and Sheridan, the English Demosthenes and the English Hyperides. There was Burke, ignorant, indeed, or negligent, of the art of adapting his reasonings and his style to the capacity and taste of his hearers, but in amplitude 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 exercise, his face beaming with intelli- gence and spirit, the ingenious, the chivalrous, the high-souled Windham. Nor, though surrounded by such men, did the youngest manager pass unnoticed. At an age when most of those who distinguish themselves in life are still contend- ing for prizes and fellowships at college, he had won for himself a conspicuous place in Parliament. No advantage of fortune or connection was wanting that could set off to the height his splendid talents and his unblemished honour. At twenty-three he had been thought worthy to be ranked with 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, advocates, accusers. To the generation which is now in the vigour of life, he is the sole representative of a great age which has passed away. But those who, within the last ten years, have listened with delight, till the morning sun shone on the tapestries of the House of Lords, to the lofty and animated eloquence 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. The ceremony occupied two whole days, and was rendered less 2i8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY tedious than it would otherwise 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 were occupied by his opening speech, which was intended to be a general introduction to all the charges. With an exuberance of thought and a splendour of diction which more than satisfied the highly raised expectation of the audience, he described the character and institutions of the natives of India, recounted the circumstances in which the Asiatic empire of Britain had originated, and set forth the constitution of the Company and of the English Presidencies. Having thus at- tempted to communicate to his hearers an idea of Eastern society as vivid as that which existed in his own mind, he proceeded to arraign the administration of Hastings as syste- matically conducted in defiance of morality and public law. The energy and pathos of the great orator extorted expres- sions of unwonted admiration 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, unaccustomed to such displays of eloquence, excited by the solemnity of the occasion, and perhaps not unwilling to dis- play 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, "Therefore," said he, "hath it with all confidence been ordered by the Commons of Great Britain, that I im- peach Warren Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanours. I impeach him in the name of the Commons' House of Par- liament, whose trust he has betrayed. I impeach him in the name of the English nation, whose ancient honour he has sul- lied. I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose rights he has trodden under foot, and whose country he has turned into a desert. Lastly, in the name of human nature itself, in the name of both sexes, in the name of every WARREN HASTINGS 219 age, in the name of every rank, I impeach the common enemy and oppressor of all." When the deep murmur of various emotions had subsided, Mr. Fox rose to address the Lords respecting the course of pro- ceeding to be followed. The wish of the accusers was that the Court would bring to a close the investigation of the first charge before the second was opened. The wish of Hastings and of his counsel was that the managers should open all the charges, and produce all the evidence for the prosecution, before the defence began. The Lords retired to their own House to consider the question. The Chancellor took the side of Hastings. Lord Loughborough, who was now in opposition, supported the de- mand of the managers. The division showed which way the in- clination of the tribunal leaned. A majority of near three to one decided in favour of the course for which Hastings contended. When the Court sat again, Mr. Fox, assisted by Mr. Grey, opened the charge respecting Cheyte Sing, and several days were spent in reading papers and hearing witnesses. The next article was that relating to the Princesses of Oude. The conduct of this part of the case was intrusted to Sheridan. The curiosity of the public to hear him was unbounded. His sparkling and highly finished declamation lasted two days ; but the Hall was crowded to suffocation during the whole time. It was said that fifty guineas had been paid for a single ticket. Sheridan, when he concluded, contrived, with a knowl- edge of stage effect which his father might have envied, to sink back, as if exhausted, into the arms of Burke, who hugged him with the energy of generous admiration. June was now far advanced. The session could not last much longer ; and the progress which had been made in the impeachment was not very satisfactory. There were twenty charges. On two only of these had even the case for the prosecution been heard ; and it was now a year since Hastings had been admitted to bail. The interest taken by the public in the trial was great when the Court began to sit, and rose to the height when Sheridan 220 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY spoke on the charge relating to the Begums, From that time the excitement went down fast. The spectacle had lost the attraction of novelty. The great displays of rhetoric were over. What was behind was not of a nature to entice men of letters from their books in the morning, or to tempt ladies who had left the masquerade at two to be out of bed before eight. There remained examinations and cross-examinations. There remained statements of accounts. There remained the reading of papers filled with words unintelligible to English ears, with lacs and crores, zemindars and aumils, sunnuds and perwannahs, jaghires and nuzzurs. There remained bickerings, not always carried on with the best taste or the best temper, between the managers of the impeachment and the counsel for the defence, particularly between Mr. Burke and Mr. Law. There remained the endless marches and countermarches of the Peers between their House and the Hall ; for as often as a point of law was to be discussed, their Lordships retired to discuss it apart ; and the consequence was, as a Peer wittily said, that the judges walked and the trial stood still. It is to be added that, in the spring of 1788, when the trial commenced, no important question, either of domestic or foreign policy, occupied the public mind. The proceeding in Westminster Hall, therefore, naturally attracted most of the attention of Parliament and of the country. It was the one great event of that season. But in the following year the King's illness, the debates on the Regency, the expectation of a change of ministry, completely diverted public attention from Indian affairs ; and within a fortnight after George the Third had returned thanks in St. Paul's for his recovery, the States-General of France met at Versailles. In the midst of the agitation produced by these events, the impeachment was for a time almost forgotten. The trial in the Hall went on languidly. In the session of 1788, when the proceedings had the interest of novelty, and when the Peers had little other business before them, only thirty-five days were given to the impeachment. In 1789, the WARREN HASTINGS 221 Regency Bill occupied the Upper House till the session was far advanced. When the King recovered the circuits were beginning. The judges left town ; the Lords waited for the return of the oracles of jurisprudence ; and the consequence was that during the whole year only seventeen days were given to the case of Hastings. It was clear that the matter would be protracted to a length unprecedented in the annals of criminal law. In truth, it is impossible to deny that impeachment, though it is a fine ceremony, and though it may have been useful in the seventeenth century, is not a proceeding from which much good can now be expected. Whatever confidence may be placed in the decision of the Peers on an appeal arising out of ordinary litigation, it is certain that no man has the least con- fidence in their impartiality when a great public functionary, charged with a great state crime, is brought to their bar. They are all politicians. There is hardly one among them whose vote on an impeachment may not be confidently pre- dicted before a witness has been examined ; and even if it were possible to rely on their justice, they would still be quite unfit to try such a cause as that of Hastings. They sit only during half the year. They have to transact much legislative and much judicial business. The law-lords, whose advice is required to guide the unlearned majority, are employed daily in administering justice elsewhere. It is impossible, therefore, that during a busy session the Upper House should give more than a few days to an impeachment. To expect that their Lordships would give up partridge-shooting in order to bring the greatest delinquent to speedy justice, or to relieve accused innocence by speedy acquittal, would be unreasonable indeed. A well-constituted tribunal, sitting regularly six days in the week, and nine hours in the day, would have brought the trial of Hastings to a close in less than three months. The Lords had not finished their work in seven years. The result ceased to be matter of doubt from the time when the Lords resolved that they would be guided by the 222 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY rules of evidence which are received in the inferior courts of the realm. Those rules, it is well known, exclude much in- formation which would be quite sufficient to determine the conduct of any reasonable man in the most important transac- tions of private life. These rules at every assize save scores of culprits whom judges, jury, and spectators firmly believe to be guilty. But when those rules were rigidly applied to offences committed many years before, at the distance of many thousands of miles, conviction was, of course, out of the question. We do not blame the accused and his counsel for availing themselves of every legal advantage in order to obtain an acquittal. But it is clear that an acquittal so obtained cannot be pleaded, in bar of the judgment of history. Several attempts were made by the friends of Hastings to put a stop to the trial. In 1789 they proposed a vote of censure upon Burke, for some violent language which he had used respecting the death of Nuncomar and the connection between Hastings and Impey. Burke was then unpopular in the last degree both with the House and with the country. The asperity and indecency of some expressions which he had used during the debates on the Regency had annoyed even his warmest friends. The vote of censure was carried ; and those who had moved it hoped that the managers would resign in disgust. Burke was deeply hurt. But his zeal for what he considered as the cause of justice and mercy triumphed over his personal feelings. He received the censure of the House with dignity and meekness, and declared that no personal mortification or humiliation should induce him to flinch from the sacred duty which he had undertaken. In the following year the Parliament was dissolved, and the friends of Hastings entertained a hope that the new House of Commons might not be disposed to go on with the impeachment. They began by maintaining that the whole pro- ceeding was terminated by the dissolution. Defeated on this point, they made a direct motion that the impeachment should be dropped ; but they were defeated by the combined forces WARREN HASTINGS 223 of the Government and the Opposition. It was, however, resolved that, for the sake of expedition, many of the articles should be withdrawn. In truth, had not some such measure been adopted, the trial would have lasted till the defendant was in his grave. At length, in the spring of 1795, the decision was pro- nounced, near eight years after Hastings had been brought by the Serjeant-at-Arms of the Commons to the bar of the Lords. On the last day of this great procedure the public curiosity, long suspended, seemed to be revived. Anxiety about the judgment there could be none ; for it had been fully ascertained that there was a great majority for the de- fendant. Nevertheless many wished to see the pageant, and the Hall was as much crowded as on the first day. But those who, having been present on the first day, now bore a part in the proceedings of the last, were few ; and most of those few were altered men. As Hastings himself said, the arraignment had taken place before one generation, and the judgment was pronounced by another. The spectator could not look at the woolsack, or at the red benches of the Peers, or at the green benches of the Commons, without seeing something that reminded him of the instability of all human things — of the instability of power and fame and life, of the more lamentable instability of friend- ship. The great seal was borne before Lord Loughborough, who, when the trial commenced, was a fierce opponent of Mr. Pitt's government, and who was now a member of that government, while Thurlow, who presided in the court when it first sat, estranged from all his old allies, sat scowling among the junior barons. Of about a hundred and sixty nobles who walked in the procession on the first day, sixty had been laid in their family vaults. Still more affecting must have been the sight of the managers' box. What had become of that fair fellowship, so closely bound together by public and private ties, so resplendent with every talent and accomplishment ? It had been scattered by calamities more 224 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY bitter than the bitterness of death. The great chiefs were still living, and still in the full vigour of their genius. But their friendship was at an end. It had been violently and pub- licly dissolved, with tears and stormy reproaches. If those men, once so dear to each other, were now compelled to meet for the purpose of managing the impeachment, they met as strangers whom public business had brought together, and behaved to each other with cold and distant civility. Burke had in his vortex whirled away Windham. Fox had been followed by Sheridan and Grey. Only twenty-nine Peers voted. Of these only six found Hastings guilty on the charges relating to Cheyte Sing and to the Begums. On other charges, the majority in his favour was still greater. On some, he was unanimously absolved. He was then called to the bar, was informed from the woolsack that the Lords had acquitted him, and was solemnly discharged. He bowed respectfully and retired. We have said that the decision had been fully expected. It was also generally approved. At the commencement of the trial there had been a strong and indeed unreasonable feeling against Hastings. At the close of the trial there was a feeling equally strong and equally unreasonable in his fa- vour. One cause of the change was, no doubt, what is com- monly called the fickleness of the multitude, but what seems to us to be merely the general law of human nature. Both in individuals and in masses violent excitement is always fol- lowed by remission, and often by reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence where we have shown undue rigour. It was thus in the case of Hastings. The length of his trial, moreover, made him an object of compassion. It was thought, and not without reason, that, even if he was guilty, he was still an ill-used man, and that an impeachment of eight years was more than a sufficient punishment. It was also felt that, though in the ordinary course of criminal law a defendant is not allowed to set off his good actions WARREN HASTINGS 225 against his crimes, a great political cause should be tried on different principles, and that a man who had governed an em- pire during thirteen years might have done some very repre- hensible things, and yet might be, on the whole, deserving of rewards and honours rather than of fine and imprisonment. The press, an instrument neglected by the prosecutors, was used by Hastings and his friends with great effect. Every ship, too, that arrived from Madras or Bengal, brought a cuddy full of his admirers. Every gentleman from India spoke of the late Governor-General as having deserved bet- ter, and having been treated worse, than any man living. The effect of this testimony, unanimously given by all per- sons who knew the East, was naturally very great. Retired members of the Indian services, civil and military, were set- tled in all corners of the kingdom. Each of them was, of course, in his own little circle, regarded as an oracle on an Indian question ; and they were, with scarcely one exception, the zealous advocates of Hastings. It is to be added that the numerous addresses to the late Governor-General which his friends in Bengal obtained from the natives and transmitted to England, made a considerable impression. To these ad- dresses we attach little or no importance. That Hastings was beloved by the people whom he governed is true ; but the eulogies of pundits, zemindars, Mahommedan doctors, do not prove it to be true. For an English collector or judge would have found it easy to induce any native who could write to sign a panegyric on the most odious ruler that ever was in India. It was said that at Benares, the very place at which the acts set forth in the first article of impeachment had been committed, the natives had erected a temple to Hastings ; and this story excited a strong sensation in England. Burke's observations on the apotheosis were ad- mirable. He saw no reason for astonishment, he said, in the incident which had been represented as so striking. He knew something of the mythology of the Brahmins. He knew that as they worshipped some gods from love, so they worshipped 226 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY others from fear. He knew that they erected shrines, not only to the benignant deities of Hght and plenty, but also to the fiends who preside over smallpox and murder ; nor did he at all dispute the claim of Mr. Hastings to be admitted into such a Pantheon. This reply has always struck us as one of the finest that ever was made in Parliament. It is a grave and forcible argument, decorated by the most brilliant wit and fancy. Hastings was, however, safe. But in everything except character he would have been far better off if, when first impeached, he had at once pleaded guilty and paid a fine of fifty thousand pounds. He was a ruined man. The legal expenses of his defence had been enormous. The expenses which did not appear in his attorney's bill were perhaps larger still. Great sums had been paid to Major Scott. Great sums had been laid out in bribing newspapers, rewarding pamphlet- eers, and circulating tracts. Burke, so early as 1790, declared in the House of Commons that twenty thousand pounds had been employed in corrupting the press. It is certain that no controversial weapon, from the gravest reasoning to the coars- est ribaldry, was left unemployed. Logan defended the accused Governor with great ability in prose. For the lovers of verse, the speeches of the managers were burlesqued in Simpkin's letters. It is, we are afraid, indisputable that Hastings stooped so low as to court the aid of that malignant and filthy baboon John Williams, who called himself Anthony Pasquin. It was necessary to subsidize such allies largely. The private hoards of Mrs. Hastings had disappeared. It is said that the banker to whom they had been intrusted had failed. Still, if Hastings had practised strict economy, he would, after all his losses, have had a moderate competence ; but in the management of his private affairs he was imprudent. The dearest wish of his heart had always been to regain Daylesford. At length, in the very year in which his trial commenced, the wish was accomplished ; and the domain, alienated more than seventy years before, returned to the descendant of its old lords. But WARREN HASTINGS 227 the manor-house was a ruin ; and the grounds round it had, during many years, been utterly neglected. Hastings proceeded to build, to plant, to form a sheet of water, to excavate a grotto ; and, before he was dismissed from the bar of the House of Lords, he expended more than forty thousand pounds in adorning his seat. The general feeling both of the Directors and of the pro- prietors of the East India Company was that he had great claims on them, that his services to them had been eminent, and that his misfortunes had been the effect of his zeal for their interest. His friends in Leadenhall Street proposed to reimburse him the costs of his trial, and to settle on him an annuity of five thousand pounds a year. But the consent of the Board of Control was necessary ; and at the head of the Board of Control was Mr. Dundas, who had himself been a party to the impeachment, who had, on that account, been reviled with great bitterness by the adherents of Hastings, and who, therefore, was not in a very complying mood. He refused to consent to what the Directors suggested. The Directors remonstrated. A long controversy followed. Hastings, in the meantime, was reduced to such distress that he could hardly pay his weekly bills. At length a compromise was made. An annuity for life of four thousand pounds was settled on Hast- ings ; and in order to enable him to meet pressing demands, he was to receive ten years' annuity in advance. The Company was also permitted to lend him fifty thousand pounds, to be repaid by instalments without interest. This relief, though given in the most absurd manner, was sufficient to enable the retired Governor to live in comfort, and even in luxury, if he had been a skilful manager. But he was careless and profuse, and was more than once under the necessity of applying to the Company for assistance, which was liberally given. He had security and affluence, but not the power and dignity which, when he landed from India, he had reason to expect. He had then looked forward to a coronet, a red riband, a seat at the Council Board, an office at Whitehall. He was then 228 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY only fifty-two, and might hope for many years of bodily and mental vigour. The case was widely different when he left the bar of the Lords. He was now too old a man to turn his mind to a new class of studies and duties. He had no chance of receiving any mark of royal favour while Mr, Pitt remained in power ; and when Mr. Pitt retired, Hastings was approaching his seventieth year. Once, and only once, after his acquittal, he interfered in politics ; and that interference was not much to his honour. In 1804 he exerted himself strenuously to prevent Mr. Addington, against whom Fox and Pitt had combined, from resigning the Treasury. It is difficult to believe that a man so able and energetic as Hastings can have thought that, when Bonaparte was at "Boulogne with a great army, the defence of our island could safely be intrusted to a ministry which did not contain a single person whom flattery could describe as a great statesman. It is also certain that, on the important question which had raised Mr. Addington to power, and on which he differed from both Fox and Pitt, Hastings, as might have been expected, agreed with Fox and Pitt, and was decidedly opposed to Addington. Religious intolerance has never been the vice of the Indian service, and certainly was not the vice of Hastings, But Mr, Addington had treated him with marked favour. Fox had been a principal manager of the impeachment. To Pitt it was owing that there had been an impeachment ; and Hastings, we fear, was on this occasion guided by personal considerations, rather than by a regard to the public interest. The last twenty-four years of his life were chiefly passed at Daylesford. He amused himself with embellishing his grounds, riding fine Arab horses, fattening prize-cattle, and trying to rear Indian animals and vegetables in England. He sent for seeds of a very fine custard-apple, from the garden of what had once been his own villa, among the green hedgerows of Allipore. He tried also to naturalize in Worcestershire the delicious leechee, almost the only fruit of Bengal which WARREN HASTINGS 229 deserves to be regretted even amidst the plenty of Covent Garden. The Mogul emperors, in the time of their greatness, had in vain attempted to introduce into Hindostan the goat of the table-land of Thibet, whose down supplies the looms of Cashmere with the materials of the finest shawls. Hastings tried, with no better fortune, to rear a breed at Daylesford ; nor does he seem to have succeeded better with the cattle of Bootan, whose tails are in high esteem as the best fans for brushing away the mosquitoes. Literature divided his attention with his conservatories and his menagerie. He had always loved books, and they were now necessary to him. Though not a poet in any high sense of the word, he wrote neat and polished lines with great facility, and was fond of exercising this talent. Indeed, if we must speak out, he seems to have been more of a Trissotin than was to be expected from the powers of his mind and from the great part which he had played in life. We are assured in these Memoirs that the first thing which he did in the morning was to write a copy of verses. When the family and guests assembled, the poem made its appearance as regu- larly as the eggs and rolls ; and Mr. Gleig requires us to believe that, if from any accident Hastings came to the breakfast-table without one of his charming performances in his hand, the omission was felt by all as a grievous disappointment. Tastes differ widely. For ourselves, we must say that, however good the breakfasts at Daylesford may have been — and we are assured that the tea was of the most aromatic flavour, and that neither tongue nor venison-pasty was wanting — we should have thought the reckoning high if we had been forced to earn our repast by listening every day to a new madrigal or sonnet composed by our host. We are glad, however, that Mr. Gleig has preserved this little feature of character, though we think it by no means a beauty. It is good to be often reminded of the inconsistency of human nature, and to learn to look with- out wonder or disgust on the weaknesses which are found in the strongest minds. Dionysius in old times, Frederic in the 230 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY last century, with capacity and vigour equal to the conduct of the greatest affairs, united all the little vanities and affectations of provincial blue-stockings. These great examples may con- sole the admirers of Hastings for the affliction of seeing him reduced to the level of the Hayleys and Sewards, ' When Hastings had passed many years in retirement, and had long outlived the common age of men, he again became for a short time an object of general attention. In 1813 the charter of the East India Company was renewed ; and much discussion about Indian affairs took place in Parliament. It was determined to examine witnesses at the bar of the Com- mons ; and Hastings was ordered to attend. He had appeared at that bar once before. It was when he read his answer to the charges which Burke had laid on the table. Since that time twenty-seven years had elapsed ; public feeling had under- gone a complete change ; the nation had now forgotten his faults, and remembered only his services. The reappearance, too, of a man who had been among the most distinguished of a generation that had passed away, who now belonged to history, and who seemed to have risen from the dead, could not but produce a solemn and pathetic effect. The Commons received him with acclamations, ordered a chair to be set for him, and, when he retired, rose and uncovered. There were, indeed, a few who did not sympathize with the general feeling. One or two of the managers of the impeachment were present. They sat in the same seats which they had occupied when they had been thanked for the services which they had rendered in Westminster Hall : for, by the courtesy of the House, a member who has been thanked in his place is con- sidered as having a right always to occupy that place. These gentlemen were not disposed to admit that they had employed several of the best years of their lives in persecuting an innocent man. They accordingly kept their seats, and pulled their hats over their brows ; but the exceptions only made the prevailing enthusiasm more remarkable. The Lords received the old man with similar tokens of respect. The University WARREN HASTINGS 231 of Oxford conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws ; and in the Sheldonian Theatre the undergraduates welcomed him with tumultuous cheering. These marks of public esteem were soon followed by marks of royal favour. Hastings was sworn of the Privy Council, and was admitted to a long private audience of the Prince Regent, who treated him very graciously. When the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia visited England, Hastings appeared in their train both at Oxford and in the Guildhall of London, and, though surrounded by a crowd of princes and great warriors, was everywhere received with marks of respect and admiration. He was presented by the Prince Regent both to Alexander and to Frederic William ; and his Royal Highness went so far as to declare in public that honours far higher than a seat in the Privy Council were due, and would soon be paid, to the man who had saved the British dominions in Asia. Hastings now confidently expected a peerage ; but, from some unexplained cause, he was again disappointed. He lived about four years longer, in the enjoyment of good spirits, of faculties not impaired to any painful or degrading extent, and of health such as is rarely enjoyed by those who attain such an age. At length, on the twenty-second of August, 18 1 8, in the eighty-sixth year of his age, he met death with the same tranquil and decorous fortitude which he had opposed to all the trials of his various and eventful life. With all his faults — and they were neither few nor small ■ — only one cemetery was worthy to contain his remains. In that temple of silence and reconciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried, in the Great Abbey which has during many ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by the contentions of the Great Hall, the dust of the illustrious accused should have 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 Daylesford, in earth which already held the bones of many chiefs of the house of 232 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Hastings, was laid the coffin of the greatest man who has ever borne that ancient and widely extended name. On that very- spot probably, four-score years before, the 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 romantic, it is not likely that they had been so strange as the truth. Not only had the poor orphan retrieved 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 empire. He had founded a polity. He had administered government and war with more than the capacity of Richelieu. He had patronized learning with the judicious liberality of Cosmo. He had been attacked by the most forniidable combination of enemies that ever sought the destruction of a single victim ; and over that com- bination, 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 honour after so much obloquy. Those who look on his character without favour or malev- olence 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 though 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 com- mand, for administration, and for controversy ; his dauntless courage ; his honourable poverty ; his fervent zeal for the inter- ests of the State ; his noble equanimity, tried by both extremes of fortune, and never disturbed by either. FREDERIC THE GREAT Frederic, surnamed the Great, son of Frederic William, was born in January, 17 12, 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 interest- ing. 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 Frederic William was hard and bad, and the habit of exercising arbitrary power had made him frightfully savage. His rage constantly vented itself to right and left in curses and blows. When his Majesty took a walk, every human being fled before him, as if a tiger had broken loose from a menagerie. 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 himself 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 unreasonable and ferocious. His palace was hell, and he the most execrable of fiends, a cross between 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 metaphysi- cians, 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 drilled. The recreations suited to a prince were to sit in a cloud of tobacco smoke, to sip Swedish beer =33 234 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY between the puffs of tlie pipe, to play backgammon for three halfpence a rubber, to kill wild hogs, and to shoot partridges by the thousand. The Prince Royal showed little inclination either for the serious employments or for the amusements of his father. He shirked the duties of the parade ; he detested the fume of tobacco ; he had no taste either for backgammon or for field sports. He had an exquisite ear, and performed skilfully on the flute. His earliest instructors had been French refugees, and they had awakened in him a strong passion for French literature and French society. Frederic William re- garded these tastes as effeminate and contemptible, and, by abuse and persecution, made them still stronger. Things became worse when the Prince Royal attained that time of life at which the great revolution in the human mind and body takes place. He was guilty of some youthful indiscretions, which no good and wise parent would regard with severity. At a later period he was accused, truly or falsely, of vices from which History averts her eyes, and which even Satire blushes to name — vices such that, to borrow the energetic language of Lord Keeper Coventry, " the depraved nature of man, which of itself carrieth man to all other sin, abhorreth them." But the offences of his youth were not characterized by any peculiar turpitude. They excited, however, transports of rage in the King, who hated all faults except those to which he was himself inclined, and who conceived that he made ample atonement to Heaven for his brutality, by holding the softer passions in detestation. The Prince Royal, too, was not one of those who are content to take their religion on trust. He asked puzzling questions, and brought forward arguments which seemed to savour of some- thing different from pure Lutheranism. The King suspected that his son was inclined to be a heretic of some sort or other, whether Calvinist or Atheist his Majesty did not very well know. The ordinary malignity of Frederic William was bad enough. He now thought malignity a part of his duty as a Christian man, and all the conscience that he had stimulated his hatred. The flute was broken ; the French books were FREDERIC THE GREAT 235 sent out of the palace ; the Prince was kicked and cudgelled, and pulled by the hair. At dinner the plates were hurled at his head ; sometimes he was restricted to bread and water ; sometimes he was forced to swallow food so nauseous that he could not keep it on his stomach. Once his father knocked him down, dragged him along the floor to a window, and was with difficulty prevented from strangling him with the cord of the curtain. The Queen, for the crime of not wishing to see her son murdered, was subjected to the grossest indignities. The Princess Wilhelmina, who took her brother's part, was treated almost as ill as Mrs. Brownrigg's apprentices. Driven to despair, the unhappy youth tried to run away. Then the fury of the old tyrant rose to madness. The Prince was an officer in the army : his flight was therefore desertion ; and in the moral code of Frederic William, desertion was the highest of all crimes. "Desertion," says this royal theologian, in one of his half-crazy letters, " is from hell. It is a work of the children of the Devil. No child of God could possibly be guilty of it." An accomplice of the Prince, in spite of the recommendation of a court-martial, was mercilessly put to death. It seemed probable that the Prince himself would suffer the same fate. It was with difficulty that the intercession of the States of Holland, of the Kings of Sweden and Poland, and of the Emperor of Germany saved the House of Brandenburg from the stain of an unnatural murder. After months of cruel suspense, P'rederic learned that his life would be spared. He remained, however, long a prisoner ; but he was not on that account to be pitied. He found in his gaolers a tenderness which he had never found in his father. His table was not sumptuous, but he had wholesome food in sufficient quantity to appease hunger ; he could read the Hcnriadc without being kicked, and could play on his flute without having it broken over his head. When his confinement terminated he was a man. He had nearly completed his twenty first year, and could scarcely be kept much longer under the restraints which had made his 236 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY boyhood miserable. Suffering had matured his understanding, while it had hardened his heart and soured his temper. He had learnt self-command and dissimulation ; he affected to conform to some of his father's views, and submissively accepted a wife, who was a wife only in name, from his father's hand. He also served with credit, though without any oppor- tunity of acquiring brilliant distinction, under the command of Prince Eugene, during a campaign marked by no extraordinary events. He was now permitted to keep a separate establish- ment, and was therefore able to indulge with caution his own tastes. Partly in order to conciliate the King, and partly, no doubt, from inclination, he gave up a portion of his time to military and political business, and thus gradually acquired such an aptitude for affairs as his most intimate associates were not aware that he possessed. His favourite abode was at Rheinsberg, near the frontier which separates the Prussian dominions from the Duchy of Mecklenburg. Rheinsberg is a fertile and smiling spot, in the midst of the sandy waste of the Marquisate. The mansion, surrounded by woods of oak and beech, looks out upon a spacious lake. There Frederic -amused himself by laying out gardens in regular alleys and intricate mazes, by building obelisks, temples, and conservatories, and by collecting rare fruits and flowers. His retirement was enlivened by a few companions, among whom he seems to have preferred those who, by birth or extraction, were French. With these intimates he dined and supped well, drank freely, and amused himself sometimes with concerts, and sometimes with holding chapters of a fraternity which he called the Order of Bayard ; but literature was his chief resource. His education had been entirely French. The long ascend- ency which Louis the Fourteenth had enjoyed, and the eminent merit of the tragic and comic dramatists, of the satirists, and of the preachers who had flourished under that magnificent prince, had made the French language predominant in Europe. Even in countries which had a national literature, FREDERIC THE GREAT 237 and which could boast of names greater than those of Racine, of Moliere, and of Massillon — in the country of Dante, in the country of Cervantes, in the country of Shakspeare and Milton - — the intellectual fashions of Paris had been to a great extent adopted. Germany had not yet produced a single masterpiece of poetry or eloquence. In Germany, therefore, the French taste reigned without rival and without limit. Every youth of rank was taught to speak and write French. That he should speak and write his own tongue with politeness, or even with accuracy and facility, was regarded as comparatively an un- important object. Even Frederic William, with all his rugged Saxon prejudices, thought it necessary that his children should know French, and quite unnecessary that they should be well versed in German. The Latin was positively interdicted. "" My son," his Majesty wrote, "shall not learn Latin ; and, more than that, I will not suffer anybody even to mention such a thing to me." One of the preceptors ventured to read the Goldeji Bull in the original with the Prince Royal. Frederic William entered the room, and broke out in his usual kingly style : " Rascal, what are you at there ? " " Please your Majesty," answered the preceptor, " I was explaining the Golden Bull to his Royal Highness." " I '11 Golden Bull you, you rascal !" roared the Majesty of Prussia. Up went the King's cane ; away ran the terrified instructor ; and Frederic's classical studies ended for ever. He now and then affected to quote Latin sentences, and produced such exquisitely Ciceronian phrases as these : "Stante pede morire " ; "De gustibus non est disputandus " ; "Tot verbas tot spondera." Of Italian he had not enough to read a page of Metastasio with ease ; and of the Spanish and English, he did not, as far as we are aware, understand a single word. . . . Early in the year 1740, Frederic William met death with a firmness and dignity worthy of a better and wiser man ; and Frederic, who had just completed his twenty-eighth year, became King of Prussia. His character was little understood. 238 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY That he had good abihties, indeed, no person who had talked with him or corresponded with him could doubt. But the easy Epicurean life which he had led, his love of good cookery and good wine, of music, of conversation, of light literature, led many to regard him as a sensual and intellectual voluptuary. His habit of canting about moderation, peace, liberty, and the happiness which a good mind derives from the happiness of others had imposed on some who should have known better. Those who thought best of him, expected a Telemachus after Fenelon's pattern. Others predicted the approach of a Medicean age — an age propitious to learning and art, and not unpropi- tious to pleasure. Nobody had the least suspicion that a tyrant of extraordinary military and political talents, of industry more extraordinary still, without fear, without faith, and without mercy, had ascended the throne. The disappointment of Falstaff at his old boon-companion's coronation was not more bitter than that which awaited some of the inmates of Rheinsberg. They had long looked forward to the accession of their patron as to the event from which their own prosperity and greatness were to date. They had at last reached the promised land — the land which they had figured to themselves as flowing with milk and honey — and they found it a desert. "No more of these fooleries," was the short, sharp admonition given by Frederic to one of them. It soon became plain that, in the most important points, the new sovereign bore a strong family likeness to his predecessor. There was, indeed, a wide difference between the father and the son as respected extent and vigour of intellect, speculative opinions, amuse- ments, studies, outward demeanour. But the groundwork of the character was the same in both. To both were common the love of order, the love of business, the military taste, the parsimony, the imperious spirit, the temper irritable even to ferocity, the pleasure in the pain and humiliation of others. But these propensities had in P>ederic William partaken of the general unsoundness of his mind, and wore a very different aspect when found in company with the strong and cultivated FREDERIC THE GREAT 239 understanding of his successor. Thus, for example, Frederic was as anxious as any prince could be about the efficiency of his army. But this anxiety never degenerated into a monomania like that which led his father to pay fancy prices for giants. Frederic was as thrifty about money as any prince or any private man ought to be. But he did not conceive, like his father, that it was worth while to eat unwholesome cabbages for the purpose of saving four or five rix-dollars in the year. Frederic was, we fear, as malevolent as his father ; but Frederic's wit enabled him often to show his malevolence in ways more decent than those to which his father resorted, and* to inflict misery and degradation by a taunt instead of a blow. Frederic, it is true, by no means relinquished his hereditary privilege of kicking and cudgelling. His practice, however, as to that matter dif- fered in some important respects from his father's. To Frederic William, the mere circumstance that any persons whatever, men, women, or children, Prussians or foreigners, were within reach of his toes and of his cane appeared to be a sufficient reason for proceeding to belabour them. Frederic required provocation as well as vicinity ; nor was he ever known to in- flict this paternal species of correction on any but his born subjects ; though on one occasion M. Thiebault had reason, during a few seconds, to anticipate the high honour of being an exception to this general rule. . . , He had, from the commencement of his reign, applied him- self to public business after a fashion unknown among kings, Louis the Fourteenth, indeed, had been his own prime minis- ter, 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. Under him there was no room, not merely for a Richelieu or a Mazarin, but for a Colbert, a Louvois, or a Torcy, A love of labour for its own sake, a restless and insatiable longing to dictate, to intermed- dle, to make his power felt, a profound scorn and distrust of his fellow-creatures, made him unwilling to ask counsel, to 240 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY confide important secrets, to delegate ample powers. The high- est functionaries under his government were mere clerks, and were not so much trusted by him as valuable clerks are often trusted by the heads of departments. He was his own treas- urer, 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 mon- archy, 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 received next day from a royal messenger Frederic's answer signed by Frederic's own hand. This was an extrava- gant, 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 con- tented himself with a general control. In this manner the advantages which belong to unity of design, and the advan- tages which belong to the division of labour, 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 under- standing enough to translate and transcribe, to make out his scrawls, and to put his concise 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. At Potsdam, his ordi- nary residence, he rose at three in summer and four in win- ter. A page soon appeared with a large basket full 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 FREDERIC THE GREAT 241 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 suspicion 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 generally fin- ished this part of his task. The adjutant-general was then in attendance, and received instructions for the day as to all the military arrangements 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 meantime 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 stirred they should finish the whole of their work. The King, always on his guard against treachery, took from the heap a handful of letters at random and looked into 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 imprison- ment 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 carrying 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 great, efficient, and well-trained army. He had a kingdom which in extent and population was hardly in the second rank of European powers ; and yet he aspired 242 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY to a place not inferior to that of the sovereigns of England, France, and Austria. For that end it was necessary that Prus- sia should be all sting. Louis the Fifteenth, with five times as many subjects as Frederic, and more than five times as large a revenue, had not a more formidable army. The propor- tion which the soldiers in Prussia bore to the people seems hardly credible. Of the males in the vigour of life, a seventh part were probably under arms ; and this great force had, by drilling, by reviewing, and by the unsparing use of cane and scourge, been taught to perform all evolutions with a rapidity and a precision which would have astonished Villars or Eugene. The elevated feelings which are necessary to the best kind of army were then wanting to the I^russian service. In those ranks were not found the religious and political enthusiasm which inspired the pikemen of Cromwell ; the patriotic ardour, 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 P'rench 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 rix-dollar of extraordinary charge was scrutinized by P'rederic 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 axle- trees gave way. Even to his highest diplomatic agents, who resided at London and Paris, he allowed less than a thousand pounds sterling a year. The royal household was managed with a frugality unusual in the establishments of opulent FREDERIC THE GREAT 243 subjects, unexampled in any other palace. The King loved good eating and drinking, and during great part of his life took pleasure in seeing his table surrounded by guests ; 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 rix-dollars were asked of him for a hun- dred 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, with- out excessive tyranny, to keep up at once a formidable army and a splendid court. Considered as an administrator, Frederic had undoubtedly many titles to praise. Order was strictly maintained through- out his dominions. Property was secure. A great liberty of speaking and of writing was allowed. Confident in the irre- sistible strength derived from a great army, the King looked down on malcontents and libellers with a wise disdain, and gave little encouragement to spies and informers. When he was told of the disaffection of one of his subjects, he merely asked, "How many thousand men can he bring into the field ? " He once saw a crowd staring at something on a wall. 244 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY He rode up and found that the object of curiosity was a scurrilous placard against himself. The placard had been posted up so high that it was not easy to read it. Frederic ordered his attendants to take it down and put it, lower. " My people and I," he said, " have come to an agreement which satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please." No person would have dared to publish in London satires on George the Second approaching to the atrocity of those satires on Frederic which the booksellers at Berlin sold with impunity. One bookseller sent to the palace a copy of the most stinging lampoon that perhaps was ever written in the world — -the Memoirs of Voltaire, published by Beaumarchais — and asked for his Majesty's orders. " Do not advertise it in an offensive manner," said the King, " but sell it by all means. I hope it will pay you well." Even among statesmen accustomed to the license of a free press, such steadfastness of mind as this is not very common. It is due also to the memory of Frederic to say that he earnestly laboured to secure to his people the great blessing of cheap and speedy justice. He was one of the first rulers who abolished the cruel and absurd practice of torture. No sentence of death pronounced by the ordinary tribunals was executed without his sanction ; and his sanction, except in cases of murder, was rarely given. Towards his troops he acted in a very different manner. Military offences were punished with such barbarous scourging that to be shot was considered by the Prussian soldier as a secondary punishment. Indeed, the principle which pervaded F"rederic's whole policy was this, that the more severely the army is governed, the safer it is to treat the rest of the community with lenity. Religious persecution was unknown under his government, unless some foolish and unjust restrictions which lay upon the Jews may be regarded as forming an exception. His policy with respect to the Catholics of Silesia presented an honour- able contrast to the policy which, under very similar circum- stances, England long followed with respect to the Catholics FREDERIC THE GREAT 245 of Ireland. Every form of religion and irreligion found an asylum in the States, The scoffer whom the parliaments of France had sentenced to a cruel death was consoled by a commission in the Prussian service. The Jesuit who could show his face nowhere else, who in Britain was still subject to penal laws, who was proscribed by France, Spain, Portugal, and Naples, who had been given up even by the Vatican, found safety and the means of subsistence in the Prussian dominions. Most of the vices of Frederic's administration resolve them- selves into one vice — the spirit of meddling. The indefatigable activity of his intellect, his dictatorial temper, his military habits — all inclined him to this great fault. He drilled his people as he drilled his grenadiers. Capital and industry were diverted from their natural direction by a crowd of preposterous regulations. There was a monopoly of coffee, a monopoly of tobacco, a monopoly of refined sugar. The public money, of which the King was generally so sparing, was lavishly spent in ploughing bogs, in planting mulberry trees amidst the sand, in bringing sheep from Spain to improve the Saxon wool, in bestowing prizes for fine yarn, in building manufactories of porcelain, manufactories of carpets, manufactories of hardware, manufactories of lace. Neither the experience of other rulers nor his own could ever teach him that something more than an edict and a grant of public money was required to create a Lyons, a Brussels, or a Birmingham. For his commercial policy, however, there was some excuse. He had on his side illustrious examples and popular prejudice. Grievously as he- erred, he erred in company with his age. In other departments his meddling was altogether without apology. He interfered with the course of justice as well as with the course of trade, and set up his own crude notions of equity against the law as expounded by the unanimous voice of the gravest magistrates. It never occurred to him that men whose lives were passed in adjudicating on questions of civil right were more likely to form correct opinions on such 246 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY questions than a prince whose attention was divided among a thousand objects, and who had never read a law-book through. The resistance opposed to him by the tribunals inflamed him to fury. He reviled his Chancellor. He kicked the shins of his judges. He did not, it is true, intend to act unjustly. He firmly believed that he was doing right and defending the cause of the poor against the wealthy. Yet this well-meant meddling probably did far more harm than all the explosions of his evil passions during the whole of his long reign. We could make shift to live under a debauchee or a tyrant, but to be ruled by a busybody is more than human nature can bear. The same passion for directing and regulating appeared in every part of the King's policy. Every lad of a certain station in life was forced to go to certain schools within the Prussian dominions. If a young Prussian repaired, though but for a few weeks, to Leyden or Gottingen for the purpose of study, the offence was punished with civil disabilities, and sometimes with the confiscation of property. Nobody was to travel with- out the royal permission. If the permission were granted, the pocket-money of the tourist was fixed by royal ordinance. A merchant might take with him two hundred and fifty rix- dollars in gold, a noble was allowed to take four hundred ; for it may be observed, in passing, that Frederic studiously kept up the old distinction between the nobles and the com- munity. In speculation he was a French philosopher, but in action a German prince. He talked and wrote about the privileges of blood in the style of Sieyes ; but in practice no chapter in the empire looked with a keener eye to genealogies and quarter ings. Such was Frederic the Ruler. But there was another Frederic — the Frederic of Rheinsberg, the fiddler and flute- player, the poetaster and metaphysician. Amidst the cares of State the King had retained his passion for music, for reading, for writing, for literary society. To these amusements he devoted all the time that he could snatch from the business of war and government ; and perhaps more light is thrown on FREDERIC THE GREAT 247 his character by what passed during his hours of relaxation than by his battles or his laws. It was the just boast of Schiller that, in his country, no Augustus, no Lorenzo, had watched over the infancy of poetry. The rich and energetic language of Luther, driven by the Latin from the schools of pedants, and by the French from the palaces of kings, had taken refuge among the people. Of the powers of that language Frederic had no notion. He gen- erally spoke of it, and of those who used it, with the contempt of ignorance. His library consisted of French books ; at his table nothing was heard but French conversation. The asso- ciates of his hours of relaxation were, for the most part, foreigners. Britain furnished to the royal circle two distin- guished men, born in the highest rank, and driven by civil dissensions from the land to which, under happier circum- stances, their talents and virtues might have been a source of strength and glory. George Keith, Earl Mareschal of Scotland, had taken arms for the House of Stuart in 171 5, and his younger brother James, then only seventeen years old, had fought gallantly by his side. When all was lost, they retired together to the Continent, roved from country to country, served under various standards, and so bore themselves as to win the respect and goodwill of many who had no love for the Jacobite cause. Their long wanderings terminated at Potsdam ; nor had Frederic any associates who deserved or obtained so large a share of his esteem. They were not only accomplished men, but nobles and warriors, capable of serving him in war and diplomacy, as well as of amusing him at supper. Alone of all his companions they appear never to have had reason to complain of his demeanour towards them. Some of those who knew the palace best pronounced that the Lord Mareschal was the only human being whom Frederic ever really loved. Italy sent to the parties at Potsdam the ingenious and amiable Algarotti, and Bastiani, the most crafty, cautious, and servile of Abbes. But the greater part of the society which Frederic had assembled round him was drawn from France. 248 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Maupertuis had acquired some celebrity by the journey which he had made to Lapland for the purpose of ascertaining, by actual measurement, the shape of our planet. He was placed in the chair of the Academy of Berlin, a humble imitation of the renowned academy of Paris. Baculard D'Arnaud, a young poet who was thought to have given promise of great things, had been induced to quit his country and to reside at the Prussian Court. The Marquess D'Argens was among the King's favourite companions, on account, as it should seem, of the strong opposition between their characters. The parts of D'Argens were good, and his manners those of a finished French gentleman ; but his whole soul was dissolved in sloth, timidity, and self-indulgence. He was one of that abject class of minds which are superstitious without being religious. Hat- ing Christianity with a rancour which made him incapable of rational inquiry, unable to see in the harmony and beauty of the universe the traces of divine power and wisdom, he was the slave of dreams and omens, would not sit down to table with thirteen in company, turned pale if the salt fell towards him, begged his guests not to cross their knives and forks on their plates, and would not for the world commence a journey on Friday. His health was a subject of constant anxiety to him. Whenever his head ached or his pulse beat quick, his dastardly fears and effeminate precautions were the jest of all Berlin, All this suited the King's purpose admirably. He wanted somebody by whom he might be amused, and whom he might despise. When he wished to pass half an hour in easy polished conversation, D'Argens was an excellent com- panion ; when he wanted to vent his spleen and contempt, D'Argens was an excellent butt. With these associates, and others of the same class, Frederic loved to spend the time which he could steal from public cares. He wished his supper-parties to be gay and easy. He invited his guests to lay aside all restraint, and to forget that he was at the head of a hundred and sixty thousand soldiers, and was absolute master of the life and liberty of all who sat at meat FREDERIC THE GREAT 249 with him. There was, therefore, at these parties the outward show of ease. The wit and learning of the company were os- tentatiously displayed. The discussions on history and litera- ture were often highly interesting. But the absurdity of all the religions known among men was the chief topic of con- versation ; and the audacity with which doctrines and names venerated throughout Christendom were treated on these oc- casions startled even persons accustomed to the society of French and English freethinkers. Real liberty, however, or real affection, was in this brilliant society not to be found. Absolute kings seldom have friends ; and Frederic's faults were such as, even where perfect equality exists, make friend- ship exceedingly precarious. He had, indeed, many qualities which, on a first acquaintance, were captivating. His conver- sation was lively ; his manners, to those whom he desired to please, were even caressing. No man could flatter with more delicacy. No man succeeded more completely in inspiring those who approached him with vague hopes of some great advantage from his kindness. But under this fair exterior he was a tyrant, suspicious, disdainful, and malevolent. He had one taste which may be pardoned in a boy, but which, when habitually and deliberately indulged by a man of mature age and strong understanding, is almost invariably the sign of a bad heart — a taste for severe practical jokes. If a courtier was fond of dress, oil was flung over his richest suit. If he was fond of money, some prank was invented to make him disburse more than he could spare. If he was hypochondri- acal, he was made to believe that he had the dropsy. If he had particularly set his heart on visiting a place, a letter was forged to frighten him from going thither. These things, it may be said, are trifles. They are so ; but they are indications, not to be mistaken, of a nature to which the sight of human suffering and human degradation is an agreeable excitement. Frederic had a keen eye for the foibles of others, and loved to communicate his discoveries. He had some talent for sar- casm, and considerable skill in detecting the sore places where 250 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY sarcasm would be most acutely felt. His vanity, as well as his malignity, found gratification in the vexation and confusion of those who smarted under his caustic jests. Yet in truth his success on these occasions belonged quite as much to the king as to the wit. We read that Commodus descended, sword in hand, into the arena against a wretched gladiator, armed only with a foil of lead, and, after shedding the blood of the help- less victim, struck medals to commemorate the inglorious vic- tory. The triumphs of Frederic in the war of repartee were of much the same kind. How to deal with him was the most puzzling of questions. To appear constrained in his presence was to disobey his commands and to spoil his amusement. Yet if his associates were enticed by his graciousness to in- dulge in the familiarity of a cordial intimacy, he was certain to make them repent of their presumption by some cruel hu- miliation. To resent his affronts was perilous ; yet not to re- sent them was to deserve and to invite them. In his view, those who mutinied were insolent and ungrateful ; those who submitted were curs made to receive bones and kickings with the same fawning patience. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how anything short of the rage of hunger should have induced men to bear the misery of being the associates of the Great King. It was no lucrative post. His Majesty was as severe and economical in his friendships as in the other charges of his establishment, and as unlikely to give a rix-dollar too much for his guests as for his dinners. The sum which he allowed to a poet or a philosopher was the very smallest sum for which such poet or philosopher could be induced to sell himself into slavery ; and the bondsman might think himself fortunate if what had been so grudgingly given was not, after years of suffering, rudely and arbitrarily withdrawn. 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 FREDERIC THE GREAT 251 flattery, encouraged to expect prosperity and greatness. It was in vain that a long succession of favourites who had entered that abode with dehght 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 eajly, and spirit enough to fly without looking back ; others lingered on to a cheerless and unhonoured 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. . . . Maria Theresa had never for a moment forgotten the great wrong which she had received at the hand of Frederic, Young and delicate, just left an orphan, just about to be a mother, she had been compelled to fly from the ancient capital of her race ; she had seen her fair inheritance dismembered by robbers, and of those robbers he had been the foremost. Without a pretext, without a provocation, in defiance of the most sacred engagements, he had attacked the helpless ally whom he was bound to defend. The Empress Queen had the faults as well as the virtues which are connected with quick sensibility and a high spirit. There was no peril which she was not ready to brave, no calamity which she was not ready to bring on her subjects, or on the whole human race, if only she might once taste the sweetness of a complete revenge. Revenge, too, presented itself, to her narrow and superstitious mind, in the guise of duty. Silesia had been wrested not only from the House of Austria, but from the Church of Rome. The conqueror had indeed permitted his new subjects to worship God after their own fashion ; but this was not enough. To bigotry it seemed an intolerable hardship that the Catholic Church, having long enjoyed ascendency, should be compelled to content itself with equality. Nor was this the only circum- stance which led Maria Theresa to regard her enemy as the 252 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY enemy of God. The profaneness of Frederic's writings and conversation, and the frightful rumours which were circulated respecting the immorality of his private life, naturally shocked a woman who believed with the firmest faith all that her con- fessor told her, and who, though surrounded by temptations, though young and beautiful, though ardent in all her passions, though possessed of absolute power, had preserved her fame unsullied even by the breath of slander. To recover Silesia, to humble the dynasty of Hohenzollern to the dust, was the great object of her life. She toiled during many years for this end, with zeal as indefatigable as that which the poet ascribed to the stately goddess who tired out her immortal horses in the work of raising the nations against Troy, and who offered to give up to destruction her darling Sparta and Mycenae, if only she might once see the smoke going up from the palace of Priam. With even such a spirit did the proud Austrian Juno strive to array against her foe a coalition such as Europe had never seen. Nothing would content her but that the whole civilized world, from the White Sea to the Adriatic, from the Bay of Biscay to the pastures of the wild horses of the Tanais, should be combined in arms against one petty State. She early succeeded by various arts in obtaining the adhe- sion of Russia. An ample share of spoil was promised to the King of Poland ; and that prince, governed by his favourite, Count Bruhl, readily promised the assistance of the . Saxon forces. The great difficulty was with France. That the Houses of Bourbon and of Hapsburg should ever cordially co-operate in any great scheme of European policy had long been thought, to use the strong expression of Frederic, just as impossible as that fire and water should amalgamate. The whole history of the Continent during two centuries and a half had been the history of the mutual jealousies and en- mities of France and Austria. Since the administration of Richelieu, above all, it had been considered as the plain policy of the Most Christian King to thwart on all occasions the FREDERIC THE GREAT 253 Court of Vienna, and to protect every member of the Ger- manic body who stood up against the dictation of the Caesars. Common sentiments of rehgion had been unable to mitigate this strong antipathy. The rulers of France, even while clothed in the Roman purple, even while persecuting the heretics of Rochelle and Auvergne, had still looked with favour on the Lutheran and Calvinistic princes who were struggling against the chief of the empire. If the French ministers had paid any respect to the traditional rules handed down to them through many generations, they would have acted towards Frederic as the greatest of their predecessors acted towards Gustavus Adolphus. That there was deadly enmity between Prussia and Austria was of itself a sufficient reason for close friendship between Prussia and France. With France Frederic could never have any serious controversy. His territories were so situated that his ambition, greedy and unscrupulous as it was, could never impel him to attack her of his own accord. He was more than half a Frenchman ; he wrote, spoke, read nothing but PYench ; he delighted in French society ; the admiration of the French he proposed to himself as the best reward of all his exploits. It seemed incredible that any French Government, however notorious for levity or stupidity, could spurn away such an ally. The Court of Vienna, however, did not despair. The Aus- trian diplomatists propounded a new scheme of politics, which, it must be owned, was not altogether without plausibility. The great powers, according to this theory, had long been under a delusion. They had looked on each other as natural enemies, while, in truth, they were natural allies. A succession of cruel wars had devastated Europe, had thinned the population, had exhausted the public resources, had loaded governments with an immense burden of debt ; and when, after two hundred years of murderous hostility or of hollow truce, the illustrious Houses whose enmity had distracted the world sat down to count their gains, to what did the real advantage on either side amount ? Simply to this, that they had kept each other from 254 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY thriving. It was not the King of France, it was not the Emperor, who had reaped the fruits of the Thirty Years' War, or of the War of the Pragmatic Sanction. Those fruits had been pilfered by states of the second and tliird rank, which, secured against jealousy by their insignificance, had dexterously aggran- dized themselves while pretending to serve the animosity of the great chiefs of Christendom. While the lion and tiger were tearing each other, the jackal had run off into the jungle with the prey. The real gainer by the Thirty Years' War had been neither France nor Austria, but Sweden. The real gainer by the War of the Pragmatic Sanction had been neither France nor Austria, but the upstart of Brandenburg. France had made great efforts, had added largely to her military glory, and largely to her public burdens. And for what end ? Merely that Frederic might rule Silesia. For this, and this alone, one French army, wasted by sword and famine, had perished in Bohemia ; and another had purchased with floods of the noblest blood, the barren glory of Fontenoy. And this prince, for whom France had suffered so much, was he a grateful, was he even an honest ally ? Had he not been as false to the Court of Versailles as to the Court of Vienna ? Had he not played, on a large scale, the same part which, in private life, is played by the vile agent of chicane who sets his neighbours quarrelling, involves them in costly and interminable litigation, and betrays them to each other all round, certain that, whoever may be ruined, he shall be enriched ? Surely the true wisdom of the great powers was to attack, not each other, but this common barrator, who, by inflaming the passions of both, by pretending to serve both, and by deserting both, had raised himself above the station to which he was born. The great object of Austria was to regain Silesia ; the great object of PVance was to obtain an accession of territory on the side of Flanders. If they took opposite sides, the result would probably be that, after a war of many years, after the slaughter of many thousands of brave men, after the waste of many millions of crowns, they would lay down their arms without having achieved either object ; FREDERIC THE GREAT 255 but if they came to an understanding, there would be no risk and no difficulty. Austria would willingly make in Belgium such cessions as France could not expect to obtain by ten pitched battles. Silesia would easily be annexed to the mon- archy of which it had long been a part. The union of two such powerful governments would at once overawe the King of Prussia. If he resisted, one short campaign would settle his fate. France and Austria, long accustomed to rise from the game of war both losers, would, for the first time, both be gainers. There could be no room for jealousy between them. The power of both would be increased at once ; the equilib- rium between them would be preserved ; and the only suf- ferer would be a' mischievous and unprincipled buccaneer who deserved no tenderness from either. These doctrines, attractive from their novelty and ingenuity, soon became fashionable at the supper-parties and in the coffee- houses of Paris, and were espoused by every gay marquis and every facetious abbe who was admitted to see Madame de Pompadour's hair curled and powdered. It was not, how- ever, to any political theory that the strange coalition between France and Austria owed its origin. The real motive which induced the great Continental powers to forget their old ani- mosities and their old State maxims was personal aversion to the King of Prussia. This feeling was strongest in Maria Theresa ; but it was by no means confined to her. Frederic, in some respects a good master, was emphatically a bad neigh- bour. That he was hard in all dealings, and quick to take all advantages, was not his most odious fault. His bitter and scoff- ing speech had inflicted keener wounds than his ambition. In his character of wit he was under less restraint than even in his character of ruler. Satirical verses against all the princes and ministers of Europe were ascribed to his pen. In his letters and conversation he alluded to the greatest potentates of the age in terms which would have better suited Colle, in a war of repartee with young Crebillon at Pelletier's table, than a great sovereign speaking of great sovereigns. About 256 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY women he was in the habit of expressing himself in a manner which it was impossible for the meekest of women to forgive ; and, unfortunately for him, almost the whole Continent was then governed by women who were by no means conspicuous for meekness. Maria Theresa herself had not escaped his scurrilous jests. The Empress Elizabeth of Russia knew that her gallantries afforded him a favourite theme for ribaldry and invective. Madame de Pompadour, who was really the head of the French Government, had been even more keenly galled. She had attempted, by the most delicate flattery, to propitiate the King of Prussia ; but her messages had drawn from him only dry and sarcastic replies. The Empress Queen took a very different course. Though the haughtiest of princesses, though the most austere of matrons, she forgot in her thirst for revenge both -the dignity of her race and the purity of her character, and condescended to flatter the low-born and low- minded concubine, who, having acquired influence by prosti- tuting herself, retained it by prostituting others. Maria Theresa actually wrote with her own hand a'note, full of expressions of esteem and friendship, to her dear cousin, the daughter of the butcher Poisson, the wife of the publican D'Etioles, the kid- napper of young girls for the harem of an old rake — a strange cousin for the descendant of so many Emperors of the West ! The mistress was completely gained over, and easily carried her point with Louis, who had, indeed, wrongs of his own to resent. His feelings were not quick ; but contempt, says the Eastern prov- erb, pierces even through the shell of the tortoise ; and neither prudence nor decorum had ever restrained Frederic from ex- pressing his measureless contempt for the sloth, the imbecility, and the baseness of Louis. France was thus induced to join the coalition ; and the example of France determined the con- duct of Sweden, then completely subject to French influence. The enemies of Frederic were surely strong enough to attack him openly ; but they were desirous to add to all their other advantages the advantage of a surprise. He was not, however, a man to be taken off his guard. He had tools in every Court ; FREDERIC THE GREAT 257 and he now received from Vienna, from Dresden, and from Paris, accounts so circumstantial and so consistent that he could not doubt of his danger. He learnt that he was to be assailed at once by France, Austria, Russia, Saxony, Sweden, and the Germanic body ; that the greater part of his dominions was to be portioned out among his enemies ; that France, which from her geographical position could not directly share in his spoils, was to receive an equivalent in the Netherlands ; that Austria was to have Silesia, and the Czarina East Prus- sia ; that Augustus of Saxony expected Magdeburg ; and that Sweden would be rewarded with part of Pomerania. If these designs succeeded, the House of Brandenburg would at once sink in the European system to a place lower than that of the Duke of Wiirtemberg or the Margrave of Baden. And what hope was there that these designs would fail ? No such union of the continental powers had been seen for ages. A less formidable confederacy had in a week conquered all the provinces of Venice, when Venice was at the height of power, wealth, and glory. A less formidable confederacy had compelled Louis the Fourteenth to bow down his haughty head to the very earth. A less formidable confederacy has, within our own memory, subjugated a still mightier empire and abased a still prouder name. Such odds had never been heard of in war. The people whom Frederic ruled were not five millions. The population of the countries which were leagued against him amounted to a hundred millions. The dis- proportion in wealth was at least equally great. Small commu- nities, actuated by strong sentiments of patriotism or loyalty, have sometimes made head against great monarchies weakened by factions and discontents. But small as was Frederic's king- dom, it probably contained a greater number of disaffected subjects than were to be found in all the states of his enemies. Silesia formed a fourth part of his dominions ; and from the Silesians, born under Austrian princes, the utmost that he could expect was apathy. From the Silesian Catholics he could hardly expect anything but resistance. 258 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Some states have been enabled by their geographical posi- tion to defend themselves with advantage against immense force. The sea has repeatedly protected England against the fury of the whole Continent. The Venetian Government, driven from its possessions on the land, could still bid defiance to the confederates of Cambray from the Arsenal amidst the lagoons. More than one great and well-appointed army, which regarded the shepherds of Switzerland as an easy prey, has perished in the passes of the Alps. Frederic had no such advantage. The form of his states, their situation, the nature of the ground, all were against him. His long, scattered, straggling territory seemed to have been shaped with an express view to the con- venience of invaders, and was protected by no sea, by no chain of hills. Scarcely any corner of it was a week's march from the territory of the enemy. The capital itself, in the event of war, would be constantly exposed to insult. In truth, there was hardly a politician or a soldier in Europe who doubted that the conflict would be terminated in a very few days by the prostration of the House of Brandenburg. Nor was Frederic's own opinion very different. He antici- pated nothing short of his own ruin, and of the ruin of his family. Yet there was still a chance, a slender chance, of escape. His states had at least the advantage of a central position ; his enemies were widely separated from each other, and could not conveniently unite their overwhelming forces on one point. They inhabited different climates, and it was probable that the season of the year which would be best suited to the military operations of one portion of the League would be unfavourable to those of another portion. The Prus- sian monarchy, too, was free from some infirmities which were found in empires far more extensive and magnificent. Its effective strength for a desperate struggle was not to be meas- ured merely by the number of square miles or the number of people. In that spare but well-knit and well-exercised body there was nothing but sinew and muscle and bone. No pub- lic creditors looked for dividends. No distant colonies required FREDERIC THE GREAT 259 defence. No Court filled with flatterers and mistresses de- voured the pay of fifty battalions. The Prussian army, though far inferior in number to the troops which were about to be opposed to it, was yet strong out of all proportion to the ex- tent of the Prussian dominions. It was also admirably trained and admirably officered, accustomed to obey and accustomed to conquer. The revenue was not only unincumbered by debt, but exceeded the ordinary outlay in time of peace. Alone of all the European princes, Frederic had a treasure laid up for a day of difficulty. Above all, he was one, and his enemies were many. In their camps would certainly be found the jealousy, the dissension, the slackness inseparable from coali- tions ; on his side was the energy, the unity, the secrecy of a strong dictatorship. To a certain extent the deficiency of military means might be supplied by the resources of military art. Small as the King's army was, when compared with the six hundred thousand men whom the confederates could bring into the field, celerity of movement might in some degree compensate for deficiency of bulk. It was thus just possible that genius, judgment, resolution, and good luck united might protract the struggle during a campaign or two ; and to gain even a month was of importance. It could not be long before the vices which are found in all extensive confederacies would begin to show themselves. Every member of the League would think his own share of the war too large, and his own share of the spoils too small. Complaints and recriminations would abound. The Turk might stir on the Danube ; the statesmen of France might discover the error which they had committed in abandoning the fundamental principles of their national policy. Above all, death might rid Prussia of its most formidable enemies. The war was the effect of the personal aversion with which three or four sovereigns regarded Frederic ; and the decease of any one of those sovereigns might produce a complete revolution in the state of Europe. In the midst of a horizon generally dark and stormy Frederic could discern one bright spot. The peace which 26o SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY had been concluded between England and France in 1748 had been in Europe no more than an armistice, and had not even been an armistice in the other quarters of the globe. In India the sovereignty of the Carnatic was disputed between two great Mussulman houses ; Fort Saint George had taken one side, Pondicherry the other ; and in a series of battles and sieges the troops of Lawrence and Clive had been opposed to those of Dupleix. A struggle less important in its conse- quences, but not less likely to produce irritation, was carried on between those French and English adventurers who kid- napped negroes and collected gold dust on the coast of Guinea. But it was in North America that the emulation and mutual aversion of the two nations were most conspicuous. The French attempted to hem in the English colonists by a chain of mili- tary posts, extending from the Great Lakes to the mouth of the Mississippi. The English took arms. The wdld aboriginal tribes appeared on each side mingled with the pale-faces. Battles were fought ; forts were stormed ; and hideous stories about stakes, scalpings, and death-songs reached Europe, and inflamed that national animosity which the rivalry of ages had produced. The disputes between France and England came to a crisis at the very time when the tempest which had been gathering was about to burst on Prussia. The tastes and inter- ests of Frederic would have led him, if he had been allowed an option, to side with the House of Bourbon, But the folly of the Court of Versailles left him no choice. France became the tool of Austria ; and Frederic was forced to become the ally of England. He could not, indeed, expect that a power which covered the sea with its fleets, and which had to make war at once on the Ohio and the Ganges, would be able to spare a large number of troops for operations in Germany. But England, though poor compared with the England of our time, was far richer than any country on the Continent. The amount of her revenue and the resources which she found in her credit, though they may be thought small by a generation which has seen her raise a hundred and thirty FREDERIC THE GREAT 261 millions in a single year, appeared miraculous to the politi- cians of that age. A very moderate portion of her wealth, ex- pended by an able and economical prince, in a country where prices were low, would be sufficient to equip and maintain a formidable army. Such was the situation in which Frederic found himself. He saw the whole extent of his peril. He saw that there was still a faint possibility of escape ; and, with prudent temerity, he determined to strike the first blow. It was in the month of August, 1756, that the great war of the Seven Years com- menced. The King demanded of the Empress Queen a distinct explanation of her intentions, and plainly told her that he should consider a refusal as a declaration of war. " I want," he said, " no answer in the style of an oracle." He received an answer at once haughty and evasive. In an instant the rich electorate of Saxony was overflowed by sixty thousand Prussian troops. Augustus with his army occupied a strong position at Pirna. The Queen of Poland was at Dresden. In a few days Pirna was blockaded and Dresden was taken. The first object of Frederic was to obtain posses- sion of the Saxon State papers ; for those papers, he well knew, contained ample proofs that, though apparently an aggressor, he was really acting in self-defence. The Queen of Poland, as well acquainted as Frederic with the importance of those documents, had packed them up, had concealed them in her bedchamber, and was about to send them off to Warsaw, when a Prussian officer made his appearance. In the hope that no soldier would venture to outrage a lady, a queen, a daughter of an emperor, the mother-in-law of a dauphin, she placed herself before the trunk, and at length sat down on it. But all resistance was vain. The papers were carried to Frederic, who found in them, as he expected, abundant evidence of the designs of the coalition. The most important documents were instantly published, and the effect of the publication was great. It was clear that, of whatever sins the King of Prussia might formerly have been guilty, he was 262 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY now the injured party, and had merely anticipated a blow intended to destroy him. The Saxon camp at Pirna was in the meantime closely invested ; but the besieged were not without hopes of succour. A great Austrian army under Marshal Brown was about to pour through the passes which separate Bohemia from Saxony. Frederic left at Pirna a force sufficient to deal with the Saxons, hastened into Bohemia, encountered Brown at L.owositz, and defeated him. This battle decided the fate of Saxony, Augustus and his favourite Bruhl fled to Poland. The whole army of the Electorate capitulated. From that time till the end of the war, Frederic treated Saxony as a part of his dominions, or, rather, he acted towards the Saxons in a manner which may serve to illustrate the whole meaning of that tremendous sentence, " subjectos tanquam suos, viles tanquam alienos." Saxony was as much in his power as Brandenburg ; and he had no such interest in the welfare of Saxony as he had in the welfare of Brandenburg. He accord- ingly levied troops and exacted contributions throughout the enslaved province with far more rigour than in any part of his own dominions. Seventeen thousand men who had been in the camp at Pirna were half compelled, half persuaded, to enlist under their conqueror. Thus, within a few weeks from the commencement of hostilities, one of the confederates had been disarmed, and his weapons were now pointed against the rest. The winter put a stop to military operations. All had hitherto gone well. But the real tug of war was still to come. It was easy to foresee that the year 1757 would be a memo- rable era in the history of Europe. The King's scheme for the campaign was simple, bold, and judicious. The Duke of Cumberland with an English and Hanoverian army was in Western Germany, and might be able to prevent the French troops from attacking Prussia. The Russians, confined by their snows, would probably not stir till the spring was far advanced. Saxony was prostrated. Sweden could do nothing very important. During a few FREDERIC THE GREAT 263 months Frederic would have to deal with Austria alone. Even thus the odds were against him. But ability and courage have often triumphed against odds still more formidable. , Early in 1757 the Prussian army in Saxony began to move. Through four defiles in the mountains they came pouring into Bohemia. Prague was the King's first mark ; but the ulterior object was probably Vienna. At Prague lay Marshal Brown with one great army. Daun, the most cautious and fortunate of the Austrian captains, was advancing with another. Frederic determined to overwhelm Brown before Daun should arrive. On the sixth of May was fought, under those walls which, a hundred and thirty years before, had witnessed the victory of the Catholic league and the flight of the unhappy Palatine, a battle more bloody than any which Europe saw during the long interval between Malplaquet and Eylau. The King and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick were distinguished on that day by their valour and exertions. But the chief glory was with Schwerin. When the Prussian infantry wavered, the stout old Marshal snatched the colours from an ensign, and, waving them in the air, led back his regiment to the charge. Thus at seventy-two years of age he fell in the thickest battle, still grasping the standard which bears the black eagle on the field argent. The victory remained with the King ; but it had been dearly purchased. Whole columns of his bravest warriors had fallen. He admitted that he had lost eighteen thousand men. Of the enemy, twenty-four thousand had been killed, wounded, or taken. Part of the defeated army was shut up in Prague. Part fled to join the troops which, under the command of Daun, were now close at hand. Frederic determined to play over the same game which had succeeded at Lowositz. He left a large force to besiege Prague, and at the head of thirty thousand men he marched against Daun. The cautious Marshal, though he had a great superiority in numbers, would risk nothing. He occupied at Kolin a position almost impregnable, and awaited the attack of the King. 264 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY It was the eighteenth of June, a day which, if the Greek superstition still retained its influence, would be held sacred to Nemesis — a day on which the two greatest princes of modern times were taught by a terrible experience that neither skill nor valour can fix the inconstancy of fortune. The battle began before noon, and part of the Prussian army maintained the contest till after the midsummer sun had gone down. But at length the King found that his troops, having been repeatedly driven back with frightful carnage, could no longer be led to the charge. He was with dilficulty persuaded to quit the field. The officers of his personal staff were under the necessity of expostulating with him, and one of them took the liberty to say, " Does your Majesty mean to storm the batteries alone ? " Thirteen thousand of his bravest followers had perished. NxDthing remained for him but to retreat in good order, to raise the siege of Prague, and to hurry his army by different routes out of Bohemia. This stroke seemed to be final. Frederic's situation had at best been such that only an uninterrupted run of good luck could save him, as it seemed, from ruin. And now, almost in the outset of the contest, he had met with a check which, even in a war between equal powers, would have been felt as serious. He had owed much to the opinion which all Europe entertained of his army. Since his accession, his soldiers had in many successive battles been victorious over the Austrians. But the glory had departed from his arms. All whom his malevolent sarcasms had wounded made haste to avenge them- selves by scoffing at the scoffer. His soldiers had ceased to confide in his star. In every part of his camp his disposi- tions were severely criticized. Even in his own family he had detractors. His next brother, William, heir presumptive, or rather, in truth, heir apparent to the throne, and great-grand- father of the present King, could not refrain from lamenting his own fate and that of the House of Hohenzollern, once so great and so prosperous, but now, by the rash ambition of its chief, made a by-word to all nations. These complaints, and FREDERIC THE GREAT 265 some blunders which Wilham committed during the retreat from Bohemia, called forth the bitter displeasure of the inex- orable King. The prince's heart was broken by the cutting reproaches of his brother ; he quitted the army, retired to a country seat, and in a short time died of shame and vexation. It seemed that the King's distress' could hardly be increased. Yet at this moment another blow not less terrible than that of Kolin fell upon him. The French under Marshal D'Estrees had invaded Germany. The Duke of Cumberland had given them battle at Hastembeck and had been defeated. In order to save the Electorate of Hanover from entire subjugation, he had made at Closter Seven an arrangement with the French Generals which left them at liberty to turn their arms against the Prussian dominions. That nothing might be wanting to Frederic's distress he lost his mother just at this time ; and he appears to have felt the loss more than was to be expected from the hardness and severity of his character. In truth, his misfortunes had now cut to the quick. The mocker, the tyrant, the most rigorous, the most imperious, the most cynical of men, was very un- happy. His face was so haggard and his form so thin that when, on'his return from Bohemia, he passed through Leipsic the people hardly knew him again. His sleep was broken ; the tears, in spite of himself, often started into his eyes ; and the grave began to present itself to his agitated mind as the best refuge from misery and dishonour. His resolution was fixed never to be taken alive, and never to make peace on condition of descending from his place among the powers of Europe. He saw nothing left for him except to die ; and he deliberately chose his mode of death. He always carried about with him a sure and speedy poison in a small glass case ; and to the few in whom he placed confidence he made no mystery of his resolution. But we should very imperfectly describe the state of Frederic's mind if we left out of view the laughable peculiarities which contrasted so singularly with the gravity, energy, and harshness 266 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY of his character. It is difficult to say whether the tragic or the comic predominated in the strange scene which was then acting. In the midst of all the great King's calamities, his pas- sion for writing indifferent poetry grew stronger and stronger. Enemies all round him, despair in his heart, pills of corrosive sublimate hidden in his* clothes, he poured forth hundreds upon hundreds of lines, hateful to gods and men, the insipid dregs of Voltaire's Hippocrene, the faint echo of the lyre of Chaulieu. It is amusing to compare what he did during the last months of 1757 with what he wrote during the same time. It may be doubted whether any equal portion of the life of Hannibal, of Caesar, or of Napoleon, will bear a comparison with that short period, the most brilliant in the history of Prussia and of Frederic. Yet at this very time the scanty leisure of the illustrious warrior was employed in producing odes and epistles a little better than Gibber's and a little worse than Hayley's. Here and there a manly sentiment which deserves to be in prose makes its appearance in company with Prometheus and Orpheus, Elysium and Acheron, the plaintive Philomel, the poppies of Morpheus, and all the other frippery which, like a robe tossed by a proud beauty to her waiting- woman, has long been contemptuously abandoned by genius to mediocrity. We hardly know any instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so striking and so grotesque as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue- stocking, half Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verses in the other. Frederic had some time before made advances towards a reconciliation with Voltaire ; and some civil letters had passed bet\veen them. After the battle of Kolin their epistolary intercourse became, at least in seeming, friendly and confiden- tial. We do not know any collection of Letters which throws so much light on the darkest and most intricate parts of human nature, as the correspondence of these strange beings after they had exchanged forgiveness. Both felt that the quarrel FREDERIC THE GREAT 267 had lowered them in the pubhc estimation. They admired each other. They stood in need of each other. The great King wished to be handed down to posterity by the great Writer. The great Writer felt himself exalted by the homage of the great King. Yet the wounds which they had inflicted on each other were too deep to be effaced, or even perfectly healed. Not only did the scars remain ; the sore places often festered and bled afresh. The letters consisted for the most part of compliments, thanks, offers of service, assurances of attachment. But if anything brought back to Frederic's recol- lection the cunning and mischievous pranks by which Voltaire had provoked him, some expression of contempt and dis- pleasure broke forth in the midst of eulogy. It was much worse when anything recalled to the mind of Voltaire the out- rages which he and his kinswoman had suffered at Frankfort. All at once his flowing panegyric was turned into invective. " Remember how you behaved to me. For your sake I have lost the favour of my native King. For your sake I am an exile from my country. I loved you. I trusted myself to you. I had no wish but to end my life in your service. And what was my reward ? Stripped of all that you had bestowed on me, the key, the order, the pension, I was forced to fly from your territories. I was hunted as if I had been a deserter from your grenadiers. I was arrested, insulted, plundered. My niece was dragged through the mud of Frankfort by your soldiers, as if she had been some wretched follower of your camp. You have great talents. You have good qualities. But you have one odious vice. You delight in the abasement of your fellow-creatures. You have brought disgrace on the name of philosopher. You have given some colour to the slanders of the bigots, who say that no confidence can be placed in the justice or humanity of those who reject the Christian faith." Then the King answers, with less heat but equal severity, " You know that you behaved shamefully in Prussia. It was well for you that you had to deal with a man so indulgent to the infirmities of genius as I am. You richly deserved to see 268 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the inside of a dungeon. Your talents are not more widely known than your faithlessness and your malevolence. The grave itself is no asylum from your spite. Maupertuis is dead ; but you still go on calumniating and deriding him, as if you had not made him miserable enough while he was living. Let us have no more of this. And above all, let me hear no more of your niece, I am sick to death of her name, I can bear with your faults for the sake of your merits ; but she has not written Mahomet or Merope!' An explosion of this kind, it might be supposed, would necessarily put an end to all amicable communication. But it was not so. After every outbreak of ill humour this extraor- dinary pair became more loving than before, and exchanged compliments and assurances of mutual regard with a wonderful air of sincerity. - It may well be supposed that men who wrote thus to each other were not very guarded in what they said of each other. The English ambassador, Mitchell, who knew that the King of Prussia was constantly writing to Voltaire with the greatest freedom on the most important subjects, was amazed to hear his Majesty designate this highly favoured correspondent as a bad-hearted fellow, the greatest rascal on the face of the earth. And the language which the poet held about the King was not much more respectful. It would probably have puzzled Voltaire himself to say what was his real feeling towards Frederic. It was compounded of all sentiments from enmity to friendship and from scorn to admiration ; and the proportions in which these elements were mixed, changed every moment. The old patriarch resembled the spoiled child who screams, stamps, cuffs, laughs, kisses, and cuddles within one quarter of an hour. His resentment was not extinguished ; yet he was not without sympathy for his old friend. As a Frenchman, he wished success to the arms of his country. As a philosopher, he was anxious for the stability of a throne on which a philosopher sat. He longed both to save and to humble Frederic. There was one FREDERIC THE GREAT 269 way, and only one, in which all his conflicting feelings could at once be gratified. If Frederic were preserved by the inter- ference of France, if it were known that for that interference he was indebted to the mediation of Voltaire, this would indeed be delicious revenge ; this would indeed be to heap coals of fire on that haughty head. Nor did the vain and restless poet think it impossible that he might, from his hermitage near the Alps, dictate peace to Europe. D'Estrees had quitted Hanover and the command of the French army had been intrusted to the Duke of Richelieu, a man whose chief distinction was derived from his success in gallantry. Richelieu was in truth the most eminent of that race of seducers by profession who furnished Crebillon the younger and Laclos with models for their heroes. In his earlier days the royal house itself had not been secure from his presump- tuous love. He was believed to have carried his conquests into the family of Orleans ; and some suspected that he was not unconcerned in the mysterious remorse which embittered the last hours of the charming mother of Louis the Fifteenth. But the Duke was now sixty years old. With a heart deeply corrupted by vice, a head long accustomed to think only on trifles, an impaired constitution, an impaired fortune, and, worst of all, a very red nose, he was entering on a dull, frivolous, and unrespected old age. Without one qualification for military command, except that personal courage which was common between him and the whole nobility of France, he had been placed at the head of the army of Hanover ; and in that situation he did his best to repair, by extortion and corruption, the injury which he had done to his property by a life of dissolute profusion. The Duke of Richelieu to the end of his life hated the philosophers as a sect, not for those parts of their system which a good and wise man would have condemned, but for their virtues, for their spirit of free inquiry, and for their hatred of those social abuses of which he was himself the personification. But he, like many of those who thought with 270 SELECTIONS FROM MAC AULA Y him, excepted Voltaire from the hst of proscribed writers. He frequently sent flattering letters to Ferney. He did the patriarch the honour to borrow money of him, and even carried this condescending friendship so far as to forget to pay the interest. Voltaire thought that it might be in his power to bring the Duke and the King of Prussia into com- munication with each other. He wrote earnestly to both ; and he so far succeeded that a correspondence between them was commenced. But it was to very different means that Frederic was to owe his deliverance. At the beginning of November, the net seemed to have closed completely round him. The Russians were in the field, and were spreading devastation through his eastern provinces, Silesia was overrun by the Austrians. A great French army was advancing from the west under the command of Marshal Soubise, a prince of the great Armorican house of Rohan. Berlin itself had been taken and plundered by the Croatians. Such was the situation from which Frederic extricated himself with dazzling glory in the short space of thirty days. He marched first against Soubise. On the fifth of Novem- ber the armies met at Rossbach. The French were two to one ; but they were ill-disciplined, and their general was a dunce. The tactics of Frederic and the well-regulated valour of the Prussian troops obtained a complete victory. Seven thousand of the invaders were made prisoners. Their guns, their colours, their baggage, fell into the hands of the conquerors. Those who escaped fled as confusedly as a mob scattered by cavalry. Victorious in the West, the King turned his arms towards Silesia. In that quarter everything seemed to be lost. Breslau had fallen ; and Charles of Lorraine, with a mighty power, held the whole province. On the fifth of December, exactly one month after the battle of Rossbach, Frederic, with forty thousand men, and Prince Charles, at the head of not less than sixty thousand, met at Leuthen, hard by Breslau. The King, who was, in general, perhaps too much inclined to FREDERIC THE GREAT 271 consider the common soldier as a mere machine, resorted, on this great day, to means resembling those which Bonaparte afterwards employed with such signal success for the purpose of stimulating military enthusiasm. The principal officers were convoked. Frederic addressed them with great force and pathos ; and directed them to speak to their men as he had spoken to them. When the armies were set in battle array, the Prussian troops were in a state of fierce excitement ; but their excitement showed itself after the fashion of a grave people. The columns advanced to the attack chanting, to the sound of drums and fifes, the rude hymns of the old Saxon Sternholds. They had never fought so well ; nor had the genius of their chief ever been so conspicuous. " That battle," said Napoleon, "was a masterpiece. Of itself it is sufficient to entitle Frederic to a place in the first rank among generals." The victory was complete. Twenty-seven thousand Austrians were killed, wounded, or taken ; fifty stand of colours, a hun- dred guns, four thousand waggons, fell into the hands of the Prussians. Breslau opened its gates ; Silesia was reconquered ; Charles of Lorraine retired to hide his shame and sorrow at Brussels ; and Frederic allowed his troops to take some repose in winter-quarters, after a campaign to the vicissitudes of which it will be difficult to find any parallel in ancient or modern history. The King's fame filled all the world. He had during the last year maintained a contest, on terms of advantage, against three powers, the weakest of which had more than three times his resources. He had fought four great pitched battles against superior forces. Three of these battles he had gained ; and the defeat of Kolin, repaired as it had been, rather raised than lowered his military renown. The victory of Leuthen is, to this day, the proudest on the roll of Prussian fame. Leipsic, indeed, and Waterloo produced consequences more important to mankind. But the glory of Leipsic must be shared by the Prussians with the Austrians and Russians ; and at Waterloo the British infantry bore the burden and heat of the day. 2/2 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY The victory of Rossbach was, in a military point of view, less honourable than that of Leuthen ; for it was gained over an incapable general and a disorganized army ; but the moral effect which it produced was immense. All the preceding triumphs of Frederic had been triumphs over Germans, and could excite no emotions of national pride among the German people. It was impossible that a Hessian or a Hanoverian could feel any patriotic exultation at hearing that Pomeranians had slaughtered Moravians, or that Saxon banners had been hung in the churches of Berlin. Indeed, though the military character of the Germans justly stood high throughout the world, they could boast of no great day which belonged to them as a people ; of no Agincourt, of no Bannockburn. Most of their victories had been gained over each other ; and their most splendid exploits against foreigners had been achieved under the command of Eugene, who was himself a foreigner. The news of the battle of Rossbach stirred the blood of the whole of the mighty population from the Alps to the Baltic, and from the borders of Courland to those of Lorraine, Westphalia and Lower Saxony had been deluged by a great host of strangers, whose speech was unintelligible, and whose petulant and licentious manners had excited the strongest feelings of disgust and hatred. That great host had been put to flight by a small band of German warriors, led by a prince of German blood on the side of father and mother, and marked by the fair hair and the clear blue eye of Germany. Never since the dissolution of the empire of Charlemagne had the Teutonic race won such a field against the French. The tidings called forth a general burst of delight and pride from the whole of the great family which spoke the various dialects of the ancient language of Arminius. The fame of Frederic began to supply, in some degree, the place of a com- mon government and of a common capital. It became a rallying point for all true Germans, a subject of mutual congratulation to the Bavarian and the Westphalian, to the citizen of Frank- fort and the citizen of Nuremberg. Then first it was manifest FREDERIC THE GREAT 273 that the Germans were truly a nation. Then first was discernible that patriotic spirit which in 18 13 achieved the great deliver- ance of central Europe, and which still guards, and long will guard, against foreign ambition the old freedom of the Rhine. Nor were the effects produced by that celebrated day merely political. The greatest masters of German poetry and eloquence have admitted that, though the great King neither valued nor understood his native language, though he looked on France as the only seat of taste and philosophy, yet, in his own despite, he did much to emancipate the genius of his countrymen from the foreign yoke ; and that in the act of vanquishing Soubise he was unintentionally rousing the spirit which soon began to question the literary precedence of Boileau and Voltaire. So strangely do events confound all the plans of man. A prince who read only French, who wrote only French, who aspired to rank as a French classic, became, quite unconsciously, the means of liberating half the Continent from the dominion of that French criticism of which he was himself, to the end of his life, a slave. Yet even the enthu- siasm of Germany in favour of Frederic hardly equalled the enthusiasm of England. The birthday of our ally was cele- brated with as much enthusiasm as that of our own sovereign ; and at night the streets of London were in a blaze with illuminations. Portraits of the Hero of Rossbach, with his cocked hat and long pigtail, were in every house. An atten- tive observer will at this day find in the parlours of old- fashioned inns and in the portfolios of print-sellers twenty portraits of Frederic for one of George the Second. The sign-painters were everywhere employed in touching up Admiral Vernon into the King of Prussia. This enthusiasm was strong among religious people, and especially among the Methodists, who knew that the French and Austrians were Papists, and supposed Frederic to be the Joshua or Gideon of the Reformed Faith. One of Whitefield's hearers, on the day on which thanks for the battle of Leuthen were returned at the Tabernacle, made the following exquisitely ludicrous 274 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY entry in a diary, part of which has come down to us : " The Lord stirred up the King of Prussia and his soldiers to pray. They kept three fast days, and spent about an hour praying and singing psalms before they engaged the enemy. O ! how good it is to pray and fight ! " Some young Englishmen of rank proposed to visit Germany as volunteers, for the purpose of learning the art of war under the greatest of commanders. This last proof of British attachment and admiration Frederic politely but firmly declined. His camp was no place for amateur students of military science. The Prussian discipline was rigorous even to cruelty. The officers, while in the field, were expected to practise an abstemiousness and self-denial such as was hardly surpassed by the most rigid monastic orders. However noble their birth, however high their rank in the service, they were not permitted to eat from anything better than pewter. It was a high crime even in a count and field-marshal to have a single silver spoon among his baggage. Gay young Englishmen of twenty thousand a year, accustomed to liberty and to luxury, would not easily submit to these Spar- tan restraints. The King could not venture to keep them in order as he kept his own subjects in order. Situated as he was with respect to England, he could not well imprison or shoot refractory Howards and Cavendishes. On the other hand, the example of a few fine gentlemen, attended by chariots and livery servants, eating in plates, and drinking champagne and Tokay, was enough to cormpt his whole army. He thought it best to make a stand at first, and civilly refused to admit such dangerous companions among his troops. The help of England was bestowed in a manner far more useful and more acceptable. An annual subsidy of near seven hundred thousand pounds enabled the King to add probably more than fifty thousand men to his army. Pitt, now at the height of power and popularity, undertook the task of defend- ing Western Germany against France, and asked Frederic only for the loan of a general. The general selected was Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, who had attained high distinction FREDERIC THE GREAT 275 in the Prussian service. He was put at the head of an army partly EngUsh, partly Hanoverian, partly composed of merce- naries hired from the petty princes of the empire. He soon vindicated the choice of the two allied Courts, and proved himself the second general of the age. Frederic passed the winter at Breslau in reading, writing, and preparing for the next campaign. The havoc which the war had made among his troops was rapidly repaired ; and in the spring of 1758 he was again ready for the conflict. Prince Ferdinand kept the French in check. The King in the meantime, after attempting against the Austrians some operations which led to no very important result, marched to encounter the Russians, who, slaying, burning, and wasting wherever they turned, had penetrated into the heart of his realm. He gave them battle at Zorndorf, near Frankfort-on- the-Oder. The fight was long and bloody. Quarter was neither given nor taken ; for the Germans and Scythians regarded each other with bitter aversion, and the sight of the ravages committed by the half savage invaders had incensed the King and his army. The Russians were overthrown with great slaughter ; and for a few months no further danger was to be apprehended from the east. A day of thanksgiving was proclaimed by the King, and was celebrated with pride and delight by his people. The rejoicings in England were not less enthusiastic or less sin- cere. This may be selected as the point of time at which the military glory of Frederic reached the zenith. In the short space of three quarters of a year he had won three great bat- tles over the armies of three mighty and warlike monarchies — France, Austria, and Russia. But it was decreed that the temper of that strong mind should be tried by both extremes of fortune in rapid succes- sion. Close upon this series of triumphs came a series of disasters such as would have blighted the fame and broken the heart of almost any other commander. Yet Frederic, in the midst of his calamities, was still an object of admiration 276 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY to his subjects, his alHes, and his enemies. Overwhelmed by adversity, sick of hfe, he still maintained the contest, greater in defeat, in flight, and in what seemed hopeless ruin than on the fields of his proudest victories. Having vanquished the Russians, he hastened into Saxony to oppose the troops of the Empress Queen, commanded by Daun, the most cautious, and Laudohn, the most inventive and enterprising, of her generals. These two celebrated com- manders agreed on a scheme in which the prudence of the one and the vigour of the other seem to have been happily combined. At dead of night they surprised the King in his camp at Hochkirchen. His presence of mind saved his troops from destruction ; but nothing could save them from defeat and severe loss. Marshal Keith was among the slain. The first roar of the guns roused the noble exile from his rest, and he was instantly in the front of the battle. He received a dangerous wound, but refused to quit the field, and was in the act of rallying his broken troops, when an Austrian bullet terminated his chequered and eventful life. The misfortune was serious. But of all generals Frederic understood best how to repair defeat, and Daun understood least how to improve victory. In a few days the Prussian army was as formidable as before the battle. The prospect was, however, gloomy. An Austrian army under General Harsch had invaded Silesia and invested the fortress of Neisse. Daun, after his success at Hochkirchen, had written to Harsch in very confident terms : " Go on with your operations against Neisse. Be quite at ease as to the King. I will give a good account of him." In truth, the position of the Prussians was full of difficulties. Between them and Silesia lay the victorious army of Daun. It was not easy for them to reach Silesia at all. If they did reach it, they left Saxony exposed to the Austrians. But the vigour and activity of Frederic surmounted every obstacle. He made a circuitous march of extraordinary rapidity, passed Daun, hastened into Silesia, raised the siege of Neisse, and drove Harsch into FREDERIC THE GREAT 277 Bohemia. Daun availed himself of the King's absence to attack Dresden. The Prussians defended it desperately. The inhabitants of that wealthy and polished capital begged in vain for mercy from the garrison within and from the besiegers without. The beautiful suburbs were burned to the ground. It was clear that the town, if won at all, would be won street by street by the bayonet. At this conjuncture came news that Frederic, having cleared Silesia of his enemies, was returning by forced marches into Saxony. Daun retired from before Dresden, and fell back into the Austrian territories. The King, over heaps of ruins, made his triumphant entry into the unhappy metropolis, which had so cruelly expiated the weak and perfidious policy of its sovereign. It was now the twentieth of November. The cold weather suspended military operations ; and the King again took up his winter- quarters at Breslau. The third of the seven terrible years was over; and Frederic still stood his ground. He had been recently tried by domestic as well as by military disasters. On the fourteenth of October, the day on which he was defeated at Hochkirchen — the day on the anniversary of which, forty-eight years later, a defeat far more tremendous laid the Prussian monarchy in the dust — died Wilhelmina, Margravine of Bareuth. From the accounts which we have of her, by her own hand and by the hands of the most discerning of her contemporaries, we should pronounce her to have been coarse, indelicate, and a good hater, but not destitute of kind and generous feelings. Her mind, naturally strong and observant, had been highly cultivated ; and she was, and deserved to be, Frederic's favourite sister. He felt the loss as much as it was in his iron nature to feel the loss of anything but a province or a battle. At Breslau, during the winter, he was indefatigable in his poetical labours. The most spirited lines, perhaps, that he ever wrote, are to be found in a bitter lampoon on Louis and Madame de Pompadour which he composed at this time and sent to Voltaire. The verses were, indeed, so good, that 2/8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Voltaire was afraid that he might himself be suspected of having written them, or at least of having corrected them ; and partly from fright, partly, we fear, from love of mischief, sent them to the Duke of Choiseul, then prime minister of France. Choiseul very wisely determined to encounter Frederic at Frederic's own weapons, and applied for assistance to Palissot, who had some skill as a versifier and some little talent for satire. Palissot produced some very stinging lines on the moral and literary character of Frederic, and these lines the Duke sent to Voltaire. This war of couplets, follow- ing close on the carnage of Zorndorf and the conflagration of Dresden, illustrates well the strangely compounded character of the King of Prussia. At this moment he was assailed by a new enemy. Benedict the Fourteenth,' the best and wisest of the two hundred and fifty successors of St. Peter, was no more. During the short interval between his reign and that of his disciple Ganganelli, the chief seat in the Church of Rome was filled by Rezzonico, who took the name of Clement the Thirteenth. This absurd priest determined to try what the weight of his authority could effect in favour of the orthodox Maria Theresa against a heretic king. At the high mass on Christmas-day, a sword with a rich belt and scabbard, a hat of crimson velvet lined with ermine, and a dove of pearls, the mystic symbol of the Divine Comforter, were solemnly blessed by the supreme pontiff, and were sent with great ceremony to Marshal Daun, the conqueror of Kolin and Hochkirchen. This mark of favour had more than once been bestowed by the Popes on the great champions of the faith. Similar honours had been paid, more than six centuries earlier, by Urban the Second to Godfrey of Bouillon. Similar honours had been conferred on Alba for destroying the liberties of the Low Countries, and on John Sobiesky after the deliverance of Vienna. But the pres- ents which were received with profound reverence by the Baron of the Holy Sepulchre in the eleventh century, and which had not wholly lost their value even in the seventeenth century, FREDERIC THE GREAT 279 appeared inexpressibly ridiculous to a generation which read Montesquieu and Voltaire. Frederic wrote sarcastic verses on the gifts, the giver, and the receiver. But the public wanted no prompter ; and an universal roar of laughter from Peters- burg to Lisbon reminded the Vatican that the age of crusades was over. The fourth campaign, the most disastrous of all the cam- paigns of this fearful war, had now opened. The Austrians filled Saxony and menaced Berlin. The Russians defeated the King's generals on the Oder, threatened Silesia, effected a junction with Laudohn, and intrenched themselves strongly at Kunersdorf. Frederic hastened to attack them. A great battle was fought. During the earlier part of the day every- thing yielded to the impetuosity of the Prussians and to the skill of their chief. The lines were forced. Half the Russian guns were taken. The King sent off a courier to Berlin with two lines announcing a complete victory. But in the mean- time the stubborn Russians, defeated yet unbroken, had taken up their stand in an almost impregnable position on an eminence where the Jews of Frankfort were wont to bury their dead. Here the battle recommenced. The Prussian infantry, exhausted by six hours of hard fighting under a sun which equalled the tropical heat, were yet brought up repeat- edly to the attack, but in vain. The King led three charges in person. Two horses were killed under him. The officers of his staff fell all round him. His coat was pierced by several bullets. All was in vain. His infantry was driven back with frightful slaughter. Terror began to spread fast from man to man. At that moment, the fiery cavalry of Laudohn, still fresh, rushed on the wavering ranks. Then followed an uni- versal rout. Frederic himself was on the point of falling into the hands of the conquerors, and was with difficulty saved by a gallant officer, who, at the head of a handful of Hussars, made a good diversion of a few minutes. Shattered in body, shattered in mind, the King reached that night a village which the Cossacks had plundered ; and there, in a ruined 28o SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY and deserted farm-house, flung himself on a heap of straw. He had sent to Berhn a second despatch very different from the first : " Let the royal family leave Berlin. Send the archives to Potsdam. The town may make terms with the enemy." The defeat was, in truth, overwhelming. Of fifty thousand men who had that morning marched under the black eagles, not three thousand remained together. The King bethought him again of his corrosive sublimate, and wrote to bid adieu to his friends, and to give directions as to the measures to be taken in the event of his death. " I have no resource left" — such is the language of one of his letters — "all is lost. I will not survive the ruin of my country. Farewell for ever." But the mutual jealousies of the confederates prevented them from following up their victory. They lost a few days in loitering and squabbling ; and a few days improved by Frederic were worth more than the years of other men. On the morning after the battle he had got together eighteen thousand of his troops. Very soon his force amounted to thirty thousand. Guns were procured from the neighbouring fortresses ; and there was again an army, Berlin was for the present safe ; but calamities came pouring on the King in uninterrupted succession. One of his generals, with a large body of troops, was taken at Maxen ; another was defeated at Meissen ; and when at length the campaign of 17 59 closed, in the midst of a rigorous winter, the situation of Prussia appeared desperate. The only consoling circumstance was that, in the West, Ferdinand of Brunswick had been more fortunate than his master ; and by a series of exploits, of which the battle of Minden was the most glorious, had removed all apprehension of danger on the side of France. The fifth year was now about to commence. It seemed impossible that the Prussian territories, repeatedly devastated by hundreds of thousands of Invaders, could longer support the contest. But the King carried on war as no European FREDERIC THE GREAT 281 power has ever carried on war, except the Committee of Public Safety during the great agony of the French Revolu- tion. He governed his kingdom as he would have governed a besieged town, not caring to what extent property was destroyed or the pursuits of civil life suspended, so that he did but make head against the enemy. As long as there was a man left in Prussia, that man might carry a musket ; as long as there was a horse left, that horse might draw artillery. The coin was debased, the civil functionaries were left unpaid ; in some provinces civil government altogether ceased to exist. But there were still rye-bread and potatoes ; there were still lead and gunpowder ; and while the means of sustaining and destroying life remained Frederic was determined to fight it out to the very last. The earlier part of the campaign of 1760 was unfavourable to him. Berlin was again occupied by the enemy. Great contributions were levied on the inhabitants, and the royal palace was plundered. But at length, after two years of calamity, victory came back to his arms. At Lignitz he gained a great battle over Laudohn ; at Torgau, after a day of horrible carnage, he triumphed over Daun. The fifth year closed, and still the event was in suspense. In the countries where the war had raged the misery and exhaustion were more appalling than ever ; but still there were left men and beasts, arms and food, and still Frederic fought on. In truth he had now been baited into savageness. His heart was ulcerated with hatred. The implacable resentment with which his enemies persecuted him, though originally provoked by his own unprincipled ambition, excited in him a thirst for vengeance which he did not even attempt to conceal. "It is hard," he says in one of his letters, "for a man to bear what I bear. I begin to feel tliat, as the Italians say, revenge is a pleasure for the gods. My philosophy is worn out by suffer- ing. I am no saint, like those of whom we read in the legends ; and I will own that I should die content if only I could first inflict a portion of the misery which I endure." 282 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Borne up by such feelings, he struggled with various success, but constant glory, through the campaign of 1761. On the whole the result of this campaign was disastrous to Prussia. No great battle was gained by the enemy ; but, in spite of the desperate bounds of the hunted tiger, the circle of pursuers was fast closing round him. Laudohn had sur- prised the important fortress of Schweidnitz. With that fortress, half of Silesia, and the command of the most im- portant defiles through the mountains, had been transferred to the Austrians. The Russians had overpowered the King's generals in Pomerania. The country was so completely deso- lated that he began, by his own confession, to look round him with blank despair, unable to imagine where recruits, horses, or provisions were to be found. Just at this time two great events brought on a complete change in the relations of almost all the powers of Europe. One of those events was the retirement of Mr. Pitt from office ; the other was the death of the Empress Elizabeth of Russia. The retirement of Pitt seemed to be an omen of utter ruin to the House of Brandenburg. His proud and vehement nature was incapable of anything that looked like either fear or treachery. He had often declared that while he was in power England should never make a peace of Utrecht ; should never, for any selfish object, abandon an ally even in the last extremity of distress. The Continental war was his own war. He had been bold enough — he who in former times had attacked with irresistible powers of oratory the Hanoverian policy of Carteret and the German subsidies of Newcastle — to declare that Hanover ought to be as dear to us as Hampshire, and that he would conquer America in Germany. He had fallen ; and the power which he had exercised, not always with discretion, but always with vigour and genius, had devolved on a favourite who was the representative of the Tory party — of the party which had thwarted William, which had persecuted Marlborough, which had given up the Catalans to the venge- ance of Philip of Anjou. To make peace with France, to FREDERIC THE GREAT 283 shake off, with all, or more than all, the speed compatible with decency, every Continental connection — these were among the chief objects of the new Minister. The policy then fol- lowed inspired Frederic with an unjust but deep and bitter aversion to the English name, and produced effects which are still felt throughout the civilized world. To that policy it was owing that, some years later, England could not find on the whole Continent a single ally to stand by her, in her extreme need, against the House of Bourbon. To that policy it was owing that Frederic, alienated from England, was compelled to connect himself closely, during his later years, with Russia, and was induced to assist in that great crime, the fruitful parent of other great crimes, the first partition of Poland. Scarcely had the retreat of Mr. Pitt deprived Prussia of her only friend, when the death of Elizabeth produced an entire revolution in the politics of the North. The Grand Duke Peter, her nephew, who now ascended the Russian throne, was not merely free from the prejudices which his aunt had enter- tained against Frederic, but was a worshipper, a servile imitator of the great King. The days of the new Czar's government were few and evil, but sufficient to produce a change in the whole state of Christendom. He set the Prussian prisoners at liberty, fitted them out decently, and sent them back to their master ; he withdrew his troops from the provinces which Elizabeth had decided on incorporating with her dominions ; and he absolved all those Prussian subjects who had been compelled to swear fealty to Russia from their engagements. Not content with concluding peace on terms favourable to Prussia, he solicited rank in the Prussian service, dressed him- self in a Prussian uniform, wore the Black Eagle of Prussia on his breast, made preparations for visiting Prussia, in order to have an interview with the object of his idolatry, and actu- ally sent fifteen thousand excellent troops to reinforce the shattered army of Frederic. Thus strengthened, the King speedily repaired the losses of the preceding year, reconquered Silesia, defeated Daun at Buckersdorf, invested and retook 284 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Schweidnitz, and at the close of the year presented to the forces of Maria Theresa a front as formidable as before the great reverses of 1759. Before the end of the campaign, his friend the Emperor Peter, having, by a series of absurd in- sults to the institutions, manners, and feelings of his people, united them in hostility to his person and government, was deposed and murdered. The Empress, who, under the title of Catherine the Second, now assumed the supreme power, was at the commencement of her administration by no means par- tial to Frederic, and refused to permit her troops to remain under his command. But she observed the peace made by her husband ; and Prussia was no longer threatened by danger from the East. England and France at the same time paired off together. They concluded, a treaty by which they bound themselves to observe neutrality with respect to the German war. Thus the coalitions on both sides were dissolved ; and the original ene- mies, Austria and Prussia, remained alone confronting each other. Austria had undoubtedly far greater means than Prussia, and was less exhausted by hostilities ; yet it seemed hardly possible that Austria could effect alone what she had in vain attempted to effect when supported by France on the one side, and by Russia on the other. Danger also began to menace the Imperial house from another quarter. The Ottoman Porte held threatening language, and a hundred thousand Turks were mustered on the frontiers of Hungary. The proud and revengeful spirit of the Empress Queen at length gave way ; and in February, 1763, the peace of Hubertsburg put an end to the conflict which had during seven years devastated Ger- many. The King ceded nothing. The whole Continent in arms had proved unable to tear Silesia from that iron grasp. The war was over. Frederic was safe. His glory was beyond the reach of envy. If he had not made conquests as vast as those of Alexander, of Caesar, and of Napoleon ; if he had not on fields of battle enjoyed the constant success of Marlborough FREDERIC THE GREAT 285 and Wellington ; he had yet given an example unrivalled in history of what capacity and resolution can effect against the greatest superiority of power and the utmost spite of fortune. He entered Berlin in triumph, after an absence of more than six years. The streets were brilliantly lighted up ; and, as he passed along in an open carriage with Ferdinand of Brunswick at his side, the multitude saluted him with loud praises and blessings. He was moved by those marks of attachment, and repeatedly exclaimed, " Long live my dear people ! Long live my children!" Yet, even in the midst of that gay spectacle, he could not but perceive everywhere the traces of destruction and decay. The city had been more than once plundered. The population had considerably diminished. Berlin, however, had suffered little when compared with most parts of the kingdom. The ruin of private fortunes, the distress of all ranks, was such as might appal the firmest mind. Almost every province had been the seat of war, and of war conducted with merciless ferocity. Clouds of Croatians had descended on Silesia, Tens of thousands of Cossacks had been let loose on Pomerania and Brandenburg. The mere contributions levied by the invaders amounted, it was said, to more than a hundred millions of dollars ; and the value of what they extorted was probably much less than the value of what they destroyed. The fields lay uncultivated. The very seed-corn had been devoured in the madness of hunger. Famine, and contagious maladies pro- duced by famine, had swept away the herds and flocks ; and there was reason to fear that a great pestilence among the human race was likely to follow in the train of that tremen- dous war. Near fifteen thousand houses had been burned to the ground. The population of the kingdom had in seven years decreased to the frightful extent of ten per cent. A sixth of the males capable of bearing arms had actually perished on the field of battle. In some districts no labourers, except women, were seen in the fields at harvest-time. In others the traveller passed shuddering through a succession of silent villages in which not a single inhabitant remained. The 286 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY currency had been debased ; the authority of laws and magistrates had been suspended ; the whole social system was deranged. For, during that convulsive struggle, everything that was not military violence was anarchy. Even the army was disorgan- ized. Some great generals and a crowd of excellent officers had fallen, and it had been impossible to supply their place. The difficulty of finding recruits had, towards the close of the war, been so great, that selection and rejection were impossi- ble. Whole battalions were composed of deserters or of pris- oners. It was hardly to be hoped that thirty years of repose and industry would repair the ruin produced by seven years of havoc. One consolatory circumstance, indeed, there was. No debt had been incurred. The burdens of the war had been terrible, almost insupportable ; but no arrear was left to embar- rass the finances in time of peace. ADDISON To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much hive affection as any sentiment can be which is inspired by one who has been sleeping a hundred and twenty years in West- minster Abbey. We trust, however, that this feeling will not betray us into that abject idolatry which we have often had occasion to reprehend in others, and which seldom fails to make both the idolater and the idol ridiculous. A man of genius and virtue is but a man. All his powers cannot be equally developed ; nor can we expect from him perfect self- knowledge. We need not, therefore, hesitate to admit that Addison has left us some compositions which do not rise above mediocrity — some heroic poems hardly equal to Parnell's, some criticism as superficial as Dr. Blair's, and a tragedy not very much better than Dr. Johnson's. It is praise enough to say of a writer that in a high department of literature in which many eminent writers have distinguished themselves he has had no equal ; and this may, with strict justice, be said of Addison. As a man, he may not have deserved the adoration which he received from those who, bewitched by his fascinating society, and indebted for all the comforts of life to his generous and delicate friendship, worshipped him nightly in his favourite temple at Button's. But, after full inquiry and impartial reflection, we have long been convinced that he deserved as much love and esteem as can be justly claimed by any of our infirm and erring race. Some blemishes may undoubtedly be detected in his character ; but the more care- fully it is examined, the more will it appear — to use the phrase of the old anatomists — sound in the noble parts, free from all taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of cruelty, of ingratitude, of 287 288 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY envy. Men may easily be named, in whom some particular good disposition has been more conspicuous than in Addison. But the just harmony of qualities, the exact temper between the stern and the humane virtues, the habitual observance of every law, not only of moral rectitude, but of moral grace and dignity, distinguish him from all men who have been tried by equally strong temptations, and about whose conduct we possess equally full information. His father was the Reverend Lancelot Addison, who, though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, made some figure in the world, and occupies with credit two folio pages in the Biographia Britannica. Lancelot was sent up, as a poor scholar, from Westmoreland to Queen's College, Oxford, in the time of the Commonwealth, made some progress in learning, became, like most of his fellow-students, a violent Royalist, lampooned the heads of the University, and was forced to ask pardon on his bended knees. When he had left college, he earned a humble subsistence by reading the liturgy of the fallen Church to the families of those sturdy squires whose manor-houses were scattered over the Wild of Sussex. After the Restoration, his loyalty was rewarded with the post of chaplain to the garrison of Dunkirk. When Dunkirk was sold to France, he lost his employment. But Tangier had been ceded by Portugal to England as part of the marriage portion of the Infanta Catherine ; and to Tangier Lancelot Addison was sent. A more miserable situation can hardly be conceived. It was difficult to say whether the unfortunate settlers were more tormented by the heats or by the rains, by the soldiers within the wall or by the Moors without it. One advantage the chaplain had. He enjoyed an excellent opportunity of studying the history and manners of Jews and Mahometans ; and of this opportunity he appears to have made excellent use. On his return to England, after some years of banishment, he published an interesting volume on the Polity and Religion of Barbary, and another on the Hcbrczv Cnstoins and the State of Rabbinical Learning. He ADDISON 289 rose to eminence in his profession, and became one of the royal chaplains, a Doctor of Divinity, Archdeacon of Salisbury, and Dean of Lichfield. It is said that he would have been made a bishop after the Revolution if he had not given offence to the Government by strenuously opposing, in the Convocation of 1689, the liberal policy of William and Tillotson. In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return from Tangier, his son Joseph was born. Of Joseph's childhood we know little. He learned his rudiments at school in his father's neighbourhood, and was then sent to the Charter House. The anecdotes which are popularly related about his boyish tricks do not harmonize very well with what we know of his riper years. There remains a tradition that he was the ring- leader in a barring out, and another tradition that he ran away from school and hid himself in a wood, where he fed on berries and slept in a hollow tree till after a long search he was discovered and brought home. If these stories be true, it would be curious to know by what moral discipline so mutinous and enterprising a lad was transformed into the gentlest and most modest of men. We have abundant proof that, whatever Joseph's pranks may have been, he pursued his studies vigorously and success- fully. At fifteen he was not only fit for the university, but carried thither a classical taste and a stock of learning which would have done honour to a Master of Arts. He was entered at Queen's College, Oxford ; but he had not been many months there, when some of his Latin verses fell by accident into the hands of Dr. Lancaster, Dean of Magdalen College. The young scholar's diction and versification were already such as veteran professors might envy. Dr. Lancaster was desirous to serve a boy of such promise ; nor was an opportunity long wanting. The Revolution had just taken place ; and nowhere had it been hailed with more delight than at Magdalen College. That great and opulent corporation had been treated by James and by his Chancellor with an insolence and injus- tice which, even in such a Prince and in such a Minister, 290 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY may justly excite amazement, and which had done more than even the prosecution of the Bishops to ahenate the Church of England from the throne. A president, duly elected, had been violently expelled from his dwelling ; a Papist had been set over the society by a royal mandate ; the Fellows who, in conformity with their oaths, had refused to submit to this usurper had been driven forth from their quiet cloisters and gardens to die of want or to live on charity. But the day of redress and retribution speedily came. The intruders were ejected ; the venerable House was again inhabited by its old inmates ; learning flourished under the rule of the wise and virtuous Hough ; and with learning was united a mild and hberal spirit too often wanting in the princely colleges of Oxford. In consequence of the troubles through which . the society had passed, there had been no valid election of new members during the year 1688. In 1689, therefore, there was twice the ordinary number of vacancies ; and thus Dr. Lancaster found it easy to procure for his young friend admittance to the advantages of a foundation then generally esteemed the wealthiest in Europe. At Magdalen Addison resided during ten years. He was, at first, one of those scholars who were called Demies, but was subsequently elected a Fellow. His college is still proud of his name ; his portrait still hangs in the hall ; and strangers are still told that his favourite walk was under the elms which fringe the meadow on the banks of the Cherwell. It is said, and is highly probable, that he was distinguished arriong his fellow-students by the delicacy of his feelings, by the shyness of his manners, and by the assiduity with which he often pro- longed his studies far into the night. It is certain that his repu- tation for ability and learning stood high. Many years later, the ancient doctors of Magdalen continued to talk in their common room of his boyish compositions, and expressed their sorrow that no copy of exercises so remarkable had been preserved. . . . The time had now arrived when it was necessary for Addi- son to choose a calling. Everything seemed to point his course ADDISON 291 towards the clerical profession. His habits were regular, his opinions orthodox. His college had large ecclesiastical prefer- ment in its gift, and boasts that it has given at least one bishop to almost every see in England. Dr. Lancelot Addison held an honourable place in the Church, and had set his heart on seeing his son a clergyman. It is clear, from some expres- sions in the young man's rhymes, that his intention was to take orders. But Charles Montague interfered. Montague had first brought himself into notice by verses well-timed and not contemptibly written, but never, we think, rising above medi- ocrity. Fortunately for himself and for his country, he early quitted poetry, in which he could never have attained a rank as high as that of Dorset or Rochester, and turned his mind to official and parliamentary business. It is written that the ingenious person who undertook to instruct Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia, in the art of flying, ascended an eminence, waved his wings, sprang into the air, and instantly dropped into the lake. But it is added that the wings, which were unable to support him through the sky, bore him up effectually as soon as he was in the water. This is no bad type of the fate of Charles Montague and of men like him. When he attempted to soar into the regions of poetical invention, he altogether failed ; but as soon as he had descended from that ethereal elevation into a lower and grosser element, his talents instantly raised him above the mass. He became a distinguished finan- cier, debater, courtier, and party leader. He still retained his fondness for the pursuits of his early days ; but he showed that fondness, not by wearying the public with his own feeble performances, but by discovering and encouraging literary ex- cellence in others. A crowd of wits and poets who would easily have vanquished him as a competitor revered him as a judge and a patron. In his plans for the encouragement of learning, he was cordially supported by the ablest and most virtuous of his colleagues, the Lord Chancellor Somers. Though both these great statesmen had a sincere love of letters, it was not solely from a love of letters that they were 292 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY desirous to enlist youths of high intellectual qualifications in the public service. The Revolution had altered the whole system of government. Before that event the press had been controlled by censors, and the Parliament had sat only two months in eight years. Now the press was free, and had begun to exer- cise unprecedented influence on the public mind. Parliament met annually and sat long. The chief power in the State had passed to the House of Commons. At such a conjuncture, it w^s natural that literary and oratorical talents should rise in \alue. There was danger that a government which neglected such talents might be subverted by them. It was, therefore, a profound and enlightened policy which led Montague and Somers to attach such talents to the Whig party by the strong- est ties both of interest and of gratitude. It is remarkable that in a neighbouring country we have recently seen similar effects follow from similar causes. The revolution of July, 1830, established representative government in France. The men of letters instantly rose to the highest importance in the State. At the present moment most of the persons whom we see at the head both of the Administration atid of the Opposition have been Professors, Historians, Jour- nalists, Poets. The influence of the literary class in England, during the generation which followed the Revolution, was great, but by no means so great as it has lately been in France. For in England the aristocracy of intellect had to contend with a powerful and deeply rooted aristocracy of a very different kind. France had no Somersets and Shrewsburys to keep down her Addisons and Priors, It was in the year 1699, when Addison had just completed his twenty-seventh year, that the course of his life was finally determined. Both the great chiefs of the Ministry were kindly disposed towards him. In political opinions he already was what he continued to be through life, a firm though a moderate Whig. He had addressed the most polished and vigorous of his early English lines to Somers, and had dedicated to Montague a Latin poem, truly Virgilian both in style and rh3^hm, on the ADDISON 293 peace of Ryswick, The wish of the young poet's great friends was, it should seem, to employ him in the service of the Crown abroad. But an intimate knowledge of the French language was a qualification indispensable to a diplomatist, and this qualifi- cation Addison had not acquired. It was, therefore, thought desirable that he should pass some time on the Continent in preparing himself for official employment. His own means were not such as would enable him to travel, but a pension of three hundred pounds a year was procured for him by the interest of the Lord Chancellor. It seems to have been appre- hended that some difficulty might be started by the rulers of Magdalen College. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote in the strongest terms to Hough. The State — such was the purport of Montague's letter — could not at that time spare to the Church such a man as Addison. Too many high civil posts were already occupied by adventurers, who, destitute of every liberal art and sentiment, at once pillaged and disgraced the country which they pretended to serve. It had become necessary to recruit for the public service from a very different class — from that class of which Addison was the representa- tive. The close of the Minister's letter was remarkable. '" I am called," he said, "an enemy of the Church ; but I will never do it any other injury than keeping Mr, Addison out of it." This interference was successful, and in the summer of 1699, Addison, made a rich man by his pension, and still retaining his fellowship, quitted his beloved Oxford and set out on his travels. . . . He returned about the close of the year 1703 to England. He was there cordially received by his friends, and introduced by them into the Kit Cat Club, a society in which were collected all the various talents and accomplishments which then gave lustre to the Whig party. Addison was, during some months after his return from the Continent, hard pressed by pecuniary difficulties. But it was soon in the power of his noble patrons to serve him effectually. A political change, silent and gradual, but of the highest importance, was in daily progress. The accession of 294 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Anne had been hailed by the Tories with transports of joy and hope, and for a time it seemed that the Whigs had fallen never to rise again. The throne was surrounded by men supposed to be attached to the prerogative and to the Church, and among these none stood so high in the favour of the Sovereign as the Lord Treasurer Godolphin and the Captain-General Marlborough. The country gentlemen and country clergymen had fully expected that the policy of these Ministers would be directly opposed to that which had been almost constantly followed by William ; that the landed interest would be favoured at the expense of trade ; that no addition would be made to the funded debt ; that the privileges conceded to Dissenters by the late King would be curtailed, if not withdrawn ; that the war with France, if there must be such a war, would on our part be almost entirely naval ; and that the Government would avoid close connections with foreign powers, and, above all, with Holland. But the country gentlemen and country clergymen were fated to be deceived, not for the last time. The prejudices and passions which raged without control in vicarages, in cathedral closes, and in the manor-houses of fox-hunting squires, were not shared by the chiefs of the Ministry. Those statesmen saw that it was both for the public interest and for their own interest to adopt a Whig policy, at least as respected the alliances of the country and the conduct of the war. But if the foreign policy of the Whigs were adopted, it was impossible to abstain from adopting also their financial policy. The natural consequences followed. The rigid Tories were alienated from the Government. The votes of the Whigs became necessary to it. The votes of the Whigs could be secured only by further concessions, and further concessions the Queen was induced to make. At the beginning of the year .1704, the state of parties bore a close analogy to the st?te of parties in 1826. In 1826, as in 1704, there was a Tory Ministry divided into two hos- tile sections. The position of Mr. Canning and his friends in ADDISON 295 1826 corresponded to that which Marlborough and Godolphin occupied in 1704. Nottingham and Jersey were, in 1704, what Lord Eldon and Lord Westmoreland were in 1826. The Whigs of 1704 were in a situation resembling that in which the Whigs of 1826 stood. In 1704, Somers, Halifax, Sunderland, Cowper were not in office. There was no avowed coalition between them and the moderate Tories. It is prob- able that no direct communication tending to such a coalition had yet taken place ; yet all men saw that such a coalition was inevitable — nay, that it was already half formed. Such, or nearly such, was the state of things when tidings arrived of the great battle fought at Blenheim on the 13th of August, 1704. By the Whigs the news was hailed with transports of joy and pride. No fault, no cause of quarrel, could be remembered by them against the Commander whose genius had in one day changed the face of Europe, saved the Imperial throne, humbled the House of Bourbon, and secured the Act of Settlement against foreign hostility. The feeling of the Tories was very different. They could not, indeed, without impru- dence, openly express regret at an event so glorious to their country ; but their congratulations were so cold and sullen as to give deep disgust to the victorious general and his friends. Godolphin was not a reading man. Whatever time he could spare from business he was in the habit of spending at Newmarket or at the card-table. But he was not absolutely indifferent to poetry, and he was too intelligent an observer not to perceive that literature was a formidable engine of polit- ical warfare, and that the great Whig leaders had strengthened their party and raised their character by extending a liberal and judicious patronage to good writers. He was mortified, and not without reason, by the exceeding badness of the poems which appeared in honour of the battle of Blenheim. One of those poems has been rescued from oblivion by the exquisite absurdity of three lines : Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, And each man mounted on his capering beast ; Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals. 296 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Where to procure better verses the Treasurer did not know. He understood how to negotiate a loan, or remit a subsidy ; he was also well versed in the history of running horses and fighting cocks ; but his acquaintance among the poets was very small. He consulted Halifax ; but Halifax affected to decline the office of adviser. He had, he said, done his best, when he had power, to encourage men whose abilities and acquirements might do honour to their country. Those times were over. Other maxims had prevailed. Merit was suffered to pine in obscurity, and the public money was squandered on the un- deserving. " I do know," he added, " a gentleman who would celebrate the battle in a manner worthy of the subject ; but I will not name him." Godolphin, who was expert at the soft answer which turns away wrath, and who was under the necessity of paying court to the Whigs, gently replied that there was too much ground for Halifax's complaints, but that what was amiss should in time be rectified, and that in the meantime the services of a man such as Halifax had described should be liberally rewarded. Halifax then mentioned Addi- son, but, mindful of the dignity as well as of the pecuniary interest of his friend, insisted that the Minister should apply in the most courteous manner to Addison himself ; and this Godolphin promised to do. Addison then occupied a garret up three pair of stairs over a small shop in the Haymarket. In this humble lodging he was surprised, on the morning which followed the con- versation between Godolphin and Halifax, by a visit from no less a person than the Right Honourable Henry Boyle, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and afterwards Lord Carleton. This high-born Minister had been sent by the Lord Treasurer as ambassador to the needy poet, Addison readily undertook the proposed task — a task which to so good a Whig was probably a pleasure. When the poem was little more than half finished, he showed it to Godolphin, who was delighted with it, and particularly with the famous similitude of the Angel. Addison was instantly appointed to a Commissionership worth ADDISON 297 about two hundred pounds a year, and was assured that this appointment was only an earnest of greater favours. The Campaign came forth, and was as much admired by the pubhc as by the Minister. It pleases us less on the whole than the Epistle to Halifax. Yet it undoubtedly ranks high among the poems which appeared during the interval between the death of Dryden and the dawn of Pope's genius. The chief merit of the Campaign, we think, is that which was noticed by Johnson — the manly and rational rejection of fiction. The first great poet whose works have come down to us sang of war long before war became a science or a trade. If in his time there was enmity between two little Greek towns, each poured forth its crowd of citizens, ignorant of discipline, and armed with implements of labour rudely turned into weapons. On each side appeared conspicuous a few chiefs whose wealth had enabled them to procure good armour, horses, and chariots, and whose leisure had enabled them to practise military exercises. One such chief, if he were a man of great strength, agility, and courage, would probably be more formidable than twenty common men ; and the force and dexterity with which he flung his spear might have no inconsiderable share in deciding the event of the day. Such were probably the battles with which Homer was familiar. But Homer related the actions of men of a former generation — of men who sprang from the Gods, and com- muned with the Gods face to face ; of men one of whom could with ease hurl rocks which two sturdy hinds of a later period would be unable even to lift. He therefore naturally represented their martial exploits as resembling in kind, but far surpassing in magnitude, those of the stoutest and most expert combatants of his own age. Achilles, clad in celestial armour, drawn by celestial coursers, grasping the spear which none but himself could raise, driving all Troy and Lycia before him, and choking Scamander with dead, was only a magnificent exaggeration of the real hero who, strong, fear- less, accustomed to the use of weapons, guarded by a shield 298 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY and helmet of the best Sidonian fabric, and whirled along by horses of Thessalian breed, struck down with his own right arm foe after foe. In all rude societies similar notions are found. There are at this day countries where the Lifeguards- man Shaw would be considered as a much greater warrior than the Duke of Wellington, Bonaparte loved to describe the astonishment with which the Mamelukes looked at his diminutive figure. Mourad Bey, distinguished above all his fellows by his bodily strength and by the skill with which he managed his horse and his sabre, could not believe that a man who was scarcely five feet high, and rode like a butcher, could be the greatest soldier in Europe. Homer's descriptions of war had therefore as much truth as poetry requires. But truth was altogether wanting to the per- formances of those who, writing about battles which had scarcely anything in common with the battles of his times, servilely imitated his manner. The folly of Silius Italicus, in particular, is positively nauseous. He undertook to record in verse the vicissitudes of a great struggle between generals of the first order ; and his narrative is made up of the hideous wounds which these generals inflicted with their own hands. Hasdrubal flings a spear which grazes the shoulder of the consul Nero ; but Nero sends his spear into Hasdrubal's side. Fabius slays Thuris and Butes and Maris and Arses, and the long- haired Adherbes and the gigantic Thylis, and Sapharus and Monaesus, and the trumpeter Morinus. Hannibal runs Peru- sinus through the groin with a stake, and breaks the backbone of Telesinus with a huge stone. This detestable fashion was copied in modern times, and continued to prevail down to the age of Addison. Several versifiers had described William turn- ing thousands to flight by his single prowess, and dyeing the Boyne with Irish blood. Nay, so estimable a writer as John Philips, the author of the Splendid Shilling, represented Marl- borough as having won the battle of Blenheim merely by strength of muscle and skill in fence. The following lines may serve as an example : ADDISON 299 Churchill, viewing where The violence of Tallard most prevailed, Came to oppose his slaughtering arm. With speed Precipitate he rode, urging his way O'er hills of gasping heroes, and fallen steeds Rolling in death. Destruction, grim with blood. Attends his furious course. Around his head The glowing balls play innocent, while he With dire impetuous sway deals fatal blows Among the flying Gauls. In Gallic blood He dyes his reeking sword, and strews the ground With headless ranks. What can they do ? Or how Withstand his wide-destroying sword ? Addison, with excellent sense and taste, departed from this ridiculous fashion. He reserved his praise for the qualities which made Marlborough truly great — energy, sagacity, military science ; but, above all, the poet extolled the firmness of that mind which, in the midst of confusion, uproar, and slaughter, examined and disposed everything with the serene wisdom of a higher intelligence. Here it was that he introduced the famous comparison of Marlborough to an angel guiding the whirlwind. We will not dispute the general justice of Johnson's remarks on this passage. But we must point out one circumstance which appears to have escaped all the critics. The extraordinary effect which this simile produced when it first appeared, and which to the follow- ing generation seemed inexplicable, is doubtless to be chiefly attributed to a line which most readers now regard as a feeble parenthesis — Such as, of late, o'er pale Britannia pass'd. Addison spoke, not of a storm, but of the storm. The great tempest of November, 1703 — the only tempest which in our latitude has equalled the rage of a tropical hurricane — had left a dreadful recollection in the minds of all men. No other tempest was ever in this country the occasion of a parliamen- tary address or of a public fast. Whole fleets had been cast away. Large mansions had been blown down. One Prelate 300 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY had been buried beneath the ruins of his palace. London and Bristol had presented the appearance of cities just sacked. Hundreds of families were still in mourning. The prostrate trunks of large trees and the ruins of houses still attested, in all the southern counties, the fury of the blast. The popularity which the simile of the angel enjoyed among Addison's con- temporaries has always seemed to us to be a remarkable in- stance of the advantage which, in rhetoric and poetry, the particular has over the general. Soon after the Campaign, was published Addison's Narra- tive of his Travels in Italy. The first effect produced by this Narrative was disappointment. The crowd of readers who ex- pected politics and scandal, speculations on the projects of Victor Amadeus, and anecdotes about the jollities of convents and the amours of cardinals and nuns, were confounded by finding that the writer's mind was much more occupied by the war between the Trojans and Rutulians than by the war be- tween France and Austria ; and that he seemed to have heard no scandal of later date than the gallantries of the Empress Faustina. In time, however, the judgment of the many was overruled by that of the few ; and before the book was re- printed it was so eagerly sought that it sold for five times the original price. It is still read with pleasure ; the style is pure and flowing ; the classical quotations and allusions are numer- ous and happy ; and we are now and then charmed by that singularly humane and delicate humour in which Addison excelled all men. Yet this agreeable work, even when con- sidered merely as the history of a literary tour, may justly be censured on account of its faults of omission. We have already said that, though rich in extracts from the Latin poets, it contains scarcely any references to the Latin orators and historians. We must add that it contains little or rather no information respecting the history and literature of modern Italy. To the best of our remembrance, Addison does not mention Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boiardo, Berni, Lorenzo de' Medici, or Machiavelli. He coldly tells us that at Ferrara he saw the tomb of Ariosto, and that at Venice he heard the ADDISON 301 gondoliers sing verses of Tasso. But for Tasso and Ariosto he cared far less than for Valerius Flaccus and Sidonius Apollinaris. The gentle flow of the Ticin brings a line of Silius to his mind. The sulphurous stream of Albula suggests to him several passages of Martial. But he has not a word to say of the illustrious dead of Santa Croce ; he crosses the wood of Ravenna without recollecting the Spectre Huntsman, and wanders up and down Rimini without one thought of Francesca. At Paris he had eagerly sought an introduction to Boileau ; but he seems not to have been at all aware that at Florence he was in the vicinity of a poet with whom Boileau could not sustain a comparison, of the greatest lyric poet of modern times, Vincenzo Filicaja. This is the more remark- able because Filicaja was the favourite poet of the accomplished Somers, under whose protection Addison travelled, and to whom the account of the Travels is dedicated. The truth is, that Addison knew little, and cared less, about the literature of modern Italy. His favourite models were Latin. His favourite critics were French. Half the Tuscan poetry that he had read seemed to him monstrous, and the other half tawdry. His Travels were followed by the lively opera of Rosamond. This piece was ill set to music, and therefore failed on the stage ; but it completely succeeded in print, and is indeed ex^ cellent in its kind. The smoothness with which the verses glide, and the elasticity with which they bound, are, to our ears at least, very pleasing. We are inclined to think that if Addi- son had left heroic couplets to Pope, and blank verse to Rowe, and had employed himself in writing airy and spirited songs, his reputation as a poet would have stood far higher than it now does. Some years after his death, Rosamond was set to new music by Doctor Arne, and was performed with complete success. Several passages long retained their popularity, and were daily sung during the latter part of George the Second's reign at all the harpsichords in England. While Addison thus amused himself, his prospects, and the prospects of his party, were constantly becoming brighter and brighter. In the spring of 1705, the Ministers were freed from 302 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the restraint imposed by a House of Commons in which Tories of the most perverse class had the ascendency. The elections were favourable to the Whigs. The coalition which had been tacitly and gradually formed was now openly avowed. The Great Seal was given to Cowper. Somers and Halifax were sworn of the Council. Halifax was sent in the following year to carry the decorations of the Order of the Garter to the Electoral Prince of Hanover, and was accompanied on this honourable mission by Addison, who had just been made Under-Secretary of State. The Secretary of State under whom Addison first served was Sir Charles Hedges, a Tory. But Hedges was soon dismissed to make room for the most vehement of Whigs, Charles, Earl of Sunderland, In every department of the State, indeed, the High Churchmen were compelled to give place to their opponents. At the close of 1707, the Tories who still remained in office strove to rally, with Harley at their head. But the attempt, though favoured by the Queen, who had al- ways been a Tory at heart, and who had now quarrelled with the Duchess of Marlborough, was unsuccessful. The tirne was not yet. The Captain-General was at the height of popularity and glory.- The Low Church party had a majority in Parlia- ment. The country squires and rectors, though occasionally uttering a savage growl, were for the most part in a state of torpor, which lasted till they were roused into activity, and in- deed into madness, by the prosecution of Sacheverell. Harley and his adherents were compelled to retire. The victory of the Whigs was complete. At the general election of 1708, their strength in the House of Commons became irresistible ; and before the end of that year Somers was made Lord President of the Council, and Wharton Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Addison sat for Malmesbury in the House of Commons which was elected in 1708. But the House of Commons was not the field for him. The bashfulness of his nature made his wit and eloquence useless in debate. He once rose, but could not over- come his diffidence, and ever after remained silent. Nobody can think it strange that a great, writer should fail as a speaker. ADDISON 303 But many, probably, will think it strange that Addison's failure as a speaker should have had no unfavourable effect on his success as a politician. In our time, a man of high rank and great fortune might, though speaking very little and very ill, hold a considerable post. But it would now be inconceivable that a mere adventurer — a man who, when out of office, must live by his pen — should in a few years become successively Under-Secretary of State, Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Sec- retary of State without some oratorical talent. Addison, with- out high birth, and with little property, rose to a post which Dukes — the heads of the great Houses of Talbot, Russell, and Bentinck — have thought it an honour to fill. Without opening his lips in debate, he rose to a post the highest that Chatham or Fox ever reached. And this he did before he had been nine years in Parliament. We must look for the explanation of this seeming miracle to the peculiar circumstances in which that generation was placed. During the interval which elapsed between the time when the Censorship of the Press ceased and the time when parliamentary proceedings began to be freely reported, literary talents were, to a public man, of much more importance, and oratorical talents of much less impor- tance, than in our time. At present the best way of giving rapid and wide publicity to a fact or an argument is to intro- duce that fact or argument into a speech made in Parliament. If a political tract were to appear superior to the Conduct of the Allies or to the best numbers of the Freeholder, the cir- culation of such a tract would be languid indeed when com- pared with the circulation of every remarkable word uttered in the deliberations of the Legislature. A speech made in the House of Commons at four in the morning is on thirty thou- sand tables before ten. A speech made on the Monday is read on the Wednesday by multitudes in Antrim and Aberdeen- shire. The orator, by the help of the shorthand writer, has to a great extent superseded the pamphleteer. It was not so in the reign of Anne. The best speech could then produce no effect except on those who heard it. It was only by means of 304 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the press that the opinion of the public without-doors could be influenced ; and the opinion of the public without-doors could not but be of the highest importance in a country governed by parliaments, and indeed at that time governed by triennial parliaments. The pen was therefore a more formidable politi- cal engine than the tongue. Mr. Pitt and Mr, Fox contended only in Parliament. But Walpole and Pulteney — the Pitt and Fox of an earlier period — had not done half of what was neces- sary when they sat down amidst the acclamations of the House of Commons. They had still to plead their cause before the country, and this they could do only by means of the press. Their works are now forgotten. But it is certain that there were in Grub Street few more assiduous scribblers of Thoughts, Letters, Answers, Remarks, than these two great chiefs of par- ties. Pulteney, when leader of the Opposition and possessed of thirty thousand a year, edited the Ci-aftsinan. Walpole, though not a man of literary habits, was the author of at least ten pamphlets, and retouched and corrected many more. These facts sufficiently show of how great importance literary assist- ance then was to the contending parties. St. John was cer- tainly, in Anne's reign, the best Tory speaker ; Cowper was probably the best Whig speaker. But it may well be doubted whether St. John did so much for the Tories as Swift, and whether Cowper did so much for the Whigs as Addison. When these things are duly considered, it will not be thought strange that Addison should have climbed higher in the State than any other Englishman has ever, by means merely of lit- erary talents, been able to climb. Swift would, in all proba- bility, have climbed as high if he had not been encumbered by his cassock and his pudding sleeves. As far as the hom- age of the great went. Swift had as much of it as if he had been Lord Treasurer. 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, ADDISON 305 violence, audacity, laxity of principle, are the vices ordinarily attributed to that class of men. But faction 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 deportment indicated a fine sense of the becoming ; that in the utmost heat of controversy his zeal was tempered by a regard for truth, humanity, and social decorum ; that no outrage could ever provoke him to retaliation unworthy of a Christian and a gentleman ; and that his only faults were a too sensitive delicacy, and a modesty which amounted to bashfulness. 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 favourite with the public as he who is at once an object of admiration, of respect, and of pity ; and such were the feelings which Addison in- spired. Those who enjoyed the privilege of hearing his familiar conversation declared with one voice that it was superior even to his writings. The brilliant Mary Montague said that she had known all the wits, and that Addison was the best com- pany 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 Addison. Steele, an excellent judge of lively conversation, said that the con- versation 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 something which was neither Terence nor Catullus, but Addison alone. Young, an excellent judge of serious conversation, said that when Addison was at his ease he went on in a noble strain of 3o6 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY thought and language, so as to chain the attention of every hearer. Nor were Addison's great colloquial powers more admirable than the courtesy and softness of heart which ap- peared 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 presuming dunce right were ill received, he changed his tone, "assented with civil leer," and lured the flattered cox- comb deeper and deeper into absurdity. That such was his practice, we should, we think, have guessed from his works. The Tatlcr s criticisms on Mr. Softly's sonnet and the Spec- tator s dialogue with the politician who is so zealous for the honour of Lady O — 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 company, as soon as he saw an unknown face, his lips 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 necessary to be alone with him, and to hear him, in his 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 ungraceful nor un- amiable — 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 ADDISON 307 peccadilloes, and was so far from being a mark of ill-breeding that it was almost essential to the character of a fine gentle- man. But the smallest speck is seen on a white ground ; and almost all the biographers of Addison have said something about this failing. Of any other statesman or writer of Queen Anne's reign, we should no more think of saying that he some- times took too much wine than that he wore a long wig and a sword. To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature we must ascribe another fault which generally arises from a very dif- ferent 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 feeling with which he looked on most of his humble com- panions was one of benevolence, slightly tinctured with con- tempt. 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 Boswell, or Warbur- ton 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 candour be admitted 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. One member of this little society was Eustace Budgell, a young Templar of some literature, and a distant relation of Addison. There was at this time no stain on the character of Budgell, and it is not improbable that his career would have been pros- perous and honourable if the life of his cousin had been pro- longed. But when the master was laid in the grave, the disciple broke loose from all restraint, descended rapidly from 3o8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY one degree of vice and misery to another, ruined his fortune by folhes, attempted to repair it by crimes, and at length closed a wicked and unhappy life by self-murder. Yet to the last, the wretched man — gambler, lampooner, cheat, forger, as he was — retained his affection and veneration for Addison, and recorded those feelings in the last lines which he traced before he hid himself from infamy under London Bridge. Another of Addison's favourite companions was Ambrose Philips, a good Whig and a middling poet, who had the honour of bringing into fashion a species of composition which has been called, after his name, Namby Pamby. But the most remarkable members of the little senate, as Pope long after- wards called it, were Richard Steele and Thomas Tickell. Steele had known Addison from childhood. They had been together at the Charter House and at Oxford ; but circumstances had then, for a time, separated 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 comedies. 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 honour; 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. Addison regarded Steele with kindness not unmingled with scorn, tried, with little success, to keep him out of scrapes, introduced him to the great, procured a good place for him, corrected his plays, and, though by no means rich, lent him large suras of money. One of these loans appears, from a letter dated in August, 1708, to have amounted to a thousand pounds. These pecuniary ■ ADDISON 309 transactions probably led to frequent bickerings. It is said that 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 rejecting this story. Johnson heard it from Savage, who had heard it from Steele. Few private trans- actions 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 inconvenience to himself, for the purpose of relieving a friend in distress, is squandered with insane profusion. We will illustrate our mean- ing by an example, 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 behaving to Dr. Harrison. The real history, we have little doubt, 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 candle or a bushel of coals, or credit with the butcher for a shoulder of mutton. Addison is moved. He determines to deny himself some medals which are want- ing 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 assembled. The fiddles are playing. The table is groaning under cham- pagne, Burgundy, and pyramids of sweetmeats. Is it strange 3IO SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY that a man whose kindness is thus abused should send sheriff's officers to reclaim what is due to him? Tickell was a young man, fresh from Oxford, who had introduced himself to public notice by writing a most ingenious and graceful little poem in praise of the opera of Rosamond. He deserved, and at length attained, the first place in Addison's friendship. For a time Steele and Tickell were on good terms. But they loved Addison too much to love each other, and at length became as bitter enemies as the rival bulls in Virgil. At the close" of 1 708 Wharton became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and appointed Addison Chief Secretary. Addison was consequently under the necessity of quitting London for Dublin. Besides the chief secretaryship, which was then worth about two thousand pounds a year, he obtained a patent appoint- ing him Keeper of the Irish Records for life, with a salary of three or four hundred a year. Budgell accompanied his cousin in the capacity of private secretary. Wharton and Addison had nothing in common but Whiggism. The Lord-Lieutenant was not only licentious and corrupt, but was distinguished from other libertines and jobbers by a callous impudence which presented the strongest contrast to the Secre- tary's gentleness and delicacy. Many parts of the Irish adminis- tration at this time appear to have deserved serious blame. But against Addison there was not a murmur. He long afterwards asserted, what all the evidence which we have ever seen tends to prove, that his diligence and integrity gained the friendship of all the most considerable persons in Ireland. The parliamentary career of Addison in Ireland has, we think, wholly escaped the notice of all his biographers. He was elected member for the borough of Cavan in the summer of 1 709 ; and in the journals of two sessions his name frequently occurs. Some of the entries appear to indicate that he so far overcame his timidity as to make speeches. Nor is this by any means im- probable ; for the Irish House of Commons was a far less formidable audience than the English House ; and many tongues which were tied by fear in the greater assembly ADDISON 311 became fluent in the smaller. Gerard Hamilton, for example, who, from fear of losing the fame gained by his single speech, sat mute at Westminster during forty years, spoke with great effect at Dublin when he was Secretary to Lord Halifax. While Addison was in Ireland, an event occurred to which he owes his high and permanent rank among British writers. As yet his fame rested on performances which, though highly respectable, were not built for duration, and which would, if he had produced nothing else, have now been almost forgotten — on some excellent Latin verses, on some English verses which occasionally rose above mediocrity, and on a book of travels, agreeably written, but not indicating any extraordinary powers of mind. These works showed him to be a man of taste, sense, and learning. The time had come when he was to prove himself a man of genius, and to enrich our literature with compositions which will live as long as the English language. In the spring of 1709 Steele formed a literary project, of which he was far indeed from foreseeing the consequences. Periodical papers had. during many years been published in London. Most of these were political ; but in some of them questions of morality, taste, and love casuistry had been dis- cussed. The literary merit of these works was small indeed ; and even their names are now known only to the curious. Steele had been appointed Gazetteer by Sunderland, at the request, it is said, of Addison, and thus had access to foreign intelligence earlier and more authentic than was in those times within the reach of an ordinary news-writer. This circumstance seems to have suggested to him the scheme of publishing a periodical paper on a new plan. It was to appear on the days on which the post left London for the country, which were, in that generation, the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It was to contain the foreign news, accounts of theatrical repre- sentations, and the literary gossip of Will's and of the Grecian. It was also to contain remarks on the fashionable topics of the day, compliments to beauties, pasquinades on noted sharpers, and criticisms on popular preachers. The aim of Steele does 312 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY not appear to have been at first higher than this. He was not ill qualified to conduct the work which he had planned. His public intelligence he drew from the best sources. He knew the town, and had paid dear for his knowledge. He had read much more than the dissipated men of that time were in the habit of reading. He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes. His style was easy and not incorrect; and, though his wit and humour were of no high order, his gay animal spirits imparted to his compositions an air of vivacity which ordinary readers could hardly distinguish from comic genius. His writings have been well compared to those light wines which, though deficient in body and flavour, are yet a pleasant small drink, if not kept too long or carried too far. Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was an imaginary per- son, almost as well known in that age as Mr. Paul Pry or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in ours. Swift had assumed the name of Bickerstaff in a satirical pamphlet against Partridge, the maker of almanacks. Partridge had been fool enough to pub- lish a furious reply, Bickerstaff had rejoined in a second pamphlet still more diverting than the first. All the wits had combined to keep up the joke, and the town was long in con- vulsions of laughter. Steele determined to employ the name which this controversy had made popular ; and, in April, 1 709, it was announced that Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was about to publish a paper called the Tatler. Addison had not been consulted about this scheme : but as soon as he heard of it, he determined to give his assistance. The effect of that assistance cannot be better described than in Steele's own words. " I fared," he said, "like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him." " The paper," he says elsewhere, " was advanced indeed. It was raised to a greater thing than I intended it." It is probable that Addison, when he sent across St. George's Channel his first contributions to the Tatler, had no notion of ADDISON 313 the extent and variety of his own powers. He was the pos- sessor of a vast mine rich with a hundred ores. But he had been acquainted only with the least precious part of his treas- ures, and had hitherto contented himself with producing some- times copper and sometimes lead, intermingled with a little silver. All at once, and by mere accident, he had lighted on an inexhaustible vein of the finest gold. The mere choice and arrangement of his words would have sufficed to make his essays classical. For never, not even by Dryden, not even by Temple, had the English language been written with such sweetness, grace, and facility. But this was the smallest part of Addison's praise. Had he clothed his thoughts in the half-French style of Horace Walpole, or in the half- Latin style of Dr. Johnson, or in the half-German jargon of the present day, his genius would have triumphed over all faults of manner. As a moral satirist he stands un- rivalled. If ever the best Tatlcrs and Spectators were equalled in their own kind, we should be inclined to guess that it must have been by the lost comedies of Menander. In wit, properly so called, Addison was not inferior to Cowley or Butler. No single ode of Cowley contains so many happy analogies as are crowded into the lines to Sir Godfrey Kneller; and we would undertake to collect from the Spectators as great a number of ingenious illustrations as can be found in Hiidibras. The still higher faculty of invention Addison possessed in still larger measure. The numerous fictions, generally original, often wild and grotesque, but always singularly graceful and happy, which are found in his essays fully entitle him to the rank of a great poet — a rank to which his metrical compositions give him no claim. As an observer of life, of manners, of all the shades of human character, he stands in the first class. And what he observed he had the art of communicating in two widely different ways. He could describe virtues, vices, habits, whims, as well as Clarendon. But he could do something better. He could call human beings into existence, and make them exhibit themselves. If we wish to find anything more 314 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY vivid than Addison's best portraits, we must go either to Shakspeare or to Cervantes. But what shall we say of Addison's humour — of his sense of the ludicrous, of his power of awakening that sense in others, and of drawing mirth from incidents which occur every day, and from little peculiarities 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 pleasantry of some other great satirists. 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 questioned. But each of them, within his own domain, was supreme. Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merriment is without disguise or restraint. He 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 works such as he appeared in society. All the company are convulsed with merriment, 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 of Swift as from that of Voltaire. He neither laughs out like the French wit, nor, like the Irish wit, throws a double portion of severity into his countenance while laughing inwardly ; but preserves a look peculiarly his own — a look of demure serenity, disturbed only by an arch sparkle of the eye, an almost imperceptible elevation of the brow, an almost imperceptible curl of the lip. His tone is never that either of a Jack Pudding or of a Cynic. It is that of a gentleman in whom the quickest sense of the ridiculous is constantly tempered by good nature and good breeding. ADDISON 315 We own that the humour of Addison is, in our opinion, of a more deHcious flavour than the humour of either Swift or Voltaire. Thus much, at least, is certain, that both Swift and Voltaire have been successfully mimicked, and that no man has yet been able to mimic Addison. The letter of the Abbe Coyer to Pansophe is Voltaire all over, and imposed during a long time on the Academicians of Paris. There are passages in Arbuthnot's satirical works which we, at least, cannot dis- tinguish from Swift's best writing. But of the many eminent men who have made Addison their model, though several have copied his mere diction with happy effect, none has been able to catch the tone of his pleasantry. In the World, in the Connoisseur, in the Mirror, in the Lonnger, there are numer- ous papers written in obvious imitation of his Tatlers and Spectators. Most of those papers have some merit ; many are very lively and amusing ; but there is not a single one which could be passed off as Addison's on a critic of the smallest perspicacity. But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison from Swift, from Voltaire, from almost all the other great masters of ridi- cule, is the grace, the nobleness, the moral purity, which we find even in his merriment. Severity, gradually hardening and darkening into misanthropy, characterizes the works of Swift. The nature of Voltaire was, indeed, not inhuman ; but he ven- erated nothing. Neither in the masterpieces of art nor in the purest examples of virtue, neither in the Great First Cause nor in the awful enigma of the grave, could he see anything but subjects for drollery. The more solemn and august the theme, the more monkey-like was his grimacing and chattering. The mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephistopheles ; the mirth of Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. If, as Soame Jenyns oddly imagined, a portion of the happiness of Seraphim and just men made perfect be derived from an exquisite perception of the ludicrous, their mirth must surely be none other than the mirth of Addison — a mirth consistent with tender compassion for all that is frail, and with profound reverence for all that 3i6 SELECTIONS FROM MAC AULA Y is sublime. Nothing great, nothing amiable, no moral duty, no doctrine of natural or revealed religion, has ever been asso- ciated by Addison with any degrading idea. His humanity is without parallel in literary history. The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it. No kind of power is more formidable than the power of making men ridiculous ; and that power Addison possessed in bound- less measure. How grossly that power was abused by Swift and by Voltaire is well known. But of Addison it may be confidently affirrned that he has blackened no man's' character ; nay, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find in all the volumes which he has left us a single taunt which can be called ungenerous or unkind. Yet he had detractors whose malignity might have seemed to justify as terrible a revenge as that which men not superior to him in genius wreaked on Bettesworth and on Franc de Pompignan. He was a politi- cian ; he was the best writer of his party ; he lived in times of fierce excitement, in times when persons of high character and station stooped to scurrility such as is now practised only by the basest of mankind. Yet no provocation and no exam- ple could induce him to return railing for railing. Of the service which his Essays rendered to morality it is difficult to speak too highly. It is true that, when the Tatler appeared, that age of outrageous profaneness and licentious- ness which followed the Restoration had passed away. Jeremy Collier had shamed the theatres into something which, com- pared with the excesses of Etherege and Wycherley, might be called decency. Yet there still lingered in the public mind a pernicious notion that there was some connection between genius and profligacy, between the domestic virtues and the sullen formality of the Puritans. That error it is the glory of Addison to have dispelled. He taught the nation that the faith and the morality of Hale and Tillotson might be found in company with wit more sparkling than the wit of Congreve, and with humour richer than the humour of Vanbrugh. So effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had ADDISON 317 recently been directed against virtue that, since his time, the open violation of decency has always been considered among us as the mark of a fool. And this revolution, the greatest and most salutary ever effected by any satirist, he accomplished, be it remembered, without writing one personal lampoon. In the earlier contributions of Addison to the Tatler his peculiar powers were not fully exhibited. Yet from the first his superiority to all his coadjutors was evident. Some of his later Tatlers are fully equal to anything that he ever wrote. Among the portraits we most admire "Tom Folio," "Ned Softly," and the " Political Upholsterer," " The Proceedings of the Court of Honour," the "Thermometer of Zeal," the story of the " Frozen Words," the " Memoirs of the Shilling," are excellent specimens of that ingenious and lively species of fiction in which Addison excelled all men. There is one still better paper of the same class. But though that paper, a hundred and thirty-three years ago, was probably thought as edifying as one of Smalridge's sermons, we dare not indicate it to the squeamish readers of the nineteenth century. During the session of Parliament which commenced in November, 1709, and which the impeachment of Sacheverell has made memorable, Addison appears to have resided in London. The Tatler was now more popular than any period- ical paper had ever been, and his connection with it was generally known. It was not known, however, that almost everything good in the Tatler was his. The truth is that the fifty or sixty numbers which we owe to him were not merely the best, but so decidedly the best that any five of them are more valuable than all the two hundred numbers in which he had no share. He required, at this time, all the solace which he could derive from literary success. The Queen had always disliked the Whigs. She had during some years disliked the Marl- borough family. But, reigning by a disputed title, she could not venture directly to oppose herself to a majority of both Houses of Parliament ; and, engaged as she was in a war on 3i8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY the event of which her own Crown was staked, she could not venture to disgrace a great and successful general. But at length, in the year i/io, the causes which had restrained her from showing her aversion to the Low Church party ceased to operate. The trial of Sacheverell produced an outbreak of public feeling scarcely less violent than the outbreaks which we can ourselves remember in 1820 and 183 1. The country gentlemen, the country clergymen, the rabble of the towns, were all, for once, on the same side. It was clear that, if a general election took place before the excitement abated, the Tories would have a majority. The services of Marlborough had been so splendid that they were no longer necessary. The Queen's throne was secure from all attack on the part of Louis. Indeed, it seemed much more likely that the English and German armies would divide the spoils of Versailles and Marli than that a Marshal of France would bring back the Pretender to St. James's. The Queen, acting by the advice of Harley, determined to dismiss her servants. In June the change commenced. Sunderland was the first who fell. The Tories exulted over his fall. The Whigs tried, during a few weeks, to persuade themselves that her Majesty had acted only from personal dislike to the Secretary, and that she meditated no further alteration. But, early in August, Godol- phin was surprised by a letter from Anne which directed him to break his white staff. Even after this event, the irresolu- tion or dissimulation of Harley kept up the hopes of the Whigs during another month ; and then the ruin became rapid and violent. The Parliament was dissolved. The Min- isters were turned out. The Tories were called to office. The tide of popularity ran violently in favour of the High Church party. That party, feeble in the late House of Commons, was now irresistible. The power which the Tories had thus suddenly acquired, they used with blind and stupid ferocity. The howl which the whole pack set up for prey and for blood appalled even him who had roused and unchained them. When, at this distance of time, we calmly review the conduct ADDISON 319 of the discarded Ministers, we cannot but feel a movement of indignation at the injustice with which they were treated. No body of men had ever administered the Government with more energy, ability, and moderation ; and their success had been proportioned to their wisdom. They had saved Holland and Germany. They had humbled France. They had, as it seemed, all but torn Spain from the House of Bourbon. They had made England the first power in Europe. At home they had united England and Scotland. They had respected the rights of conscience and the liberty of the subject. They retired, leaving their country at the height of prosperity and glory. And yet they were pursued to their retreat by such a roar of obloquy as was never raised against the Government which threw away thirteen colonies, or against the Govern- ment which sent a gallant army to perish in the ditches of Walcheren. None of the Whigs suffered more in the general wreck than Addison. He had just sustained some heavy pecuniary losses, of the nature of which we are imperfectly informed, when the Secretaryship was taken from him. He had reason to believe that he should also be deprived of the small Irish office which he held by patent. He had just resigned his Fellowship. It seems probable that he had already ventured to raise his eyes to a great lady, and that, while his political friends were in power and while his own fortunes were rising, he had been, in the phrase of the romances which were then fashionable, permitted to hope. But Mr. Addison the ingen- ious writer and Mr. Addison the Chief Secretary were, in her ladyship's opinion, two very different persons. All these calamities united, however, could not disturb the serene cheer- fulness of a mind conscious of innocence and rich in its own wealth. He told his friends, with smiling resignation, that they ought to admire his philosophy ; that he had lost at once his fortune, his place, his Fellowship, and his mistress ; that he must think of turning tutor again, and yet that his spirits were as good as ever. 320 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity which his friends had incurred, he had no share. Such was the esteem with which he was regarded that, while the most violent measures were taken for the purpose of forcing Tory members on Whig corporations, he was returned to Parliament without even a contest. Swift, who was now in London, and who had already determined on quitting the Whigs, wrote to Stella in these remarkable words : " The Tories carry it among the new members six to one. Mr. Addison's election has passed easy and undisputed 4 and I believe if he had a mind to be king, he would hardly be refused." The goodwill with which the Tories regarded Addison is the more honourable to him because it had not been pur- chased by any concession on his part. During the general election he published a political Journal entitled the Whig Examiner. Of that Journal it may be sufficient to say that Johnson, in spite of his strong political prejudices, pronounced it to be superior in wit to any of Swift's writings on the other side. When it ceased to appear. Swift, in a letter to Stella, expressed his exultation at the death of so formidable an antagonist. "He might well rejoice," says Johnson, "at the death of that which he could not have killed." "On no occa- sion," he adds, " was the genius of Addison more vigorously exerted, and on none did the superiority of his powers more evidently appear." The only use which Addison appears to have made of the favour with which he was regarded by the Tories was to save some of his friends from the general ruin of the Whig party. He felt himself to be in a situation which made it his duty to take a decided part in politics. But the case of Steele and of Ambrose Philips was different. For Philips, Addison even condescended to solicit, with what success we have not ascer- tained. Steele held two places. He was Gazetteer, and he was also a Commissioner of Stamps. The Gazette was taken from him. But he was suffered to retain his place in the Stamp Office on an implied understanding that he should not ADDISON 321 be active against the new Government ; and he was, during more than two years, induced by Addison to observe this armi- stice with tolerable fidelity. Isaac Bickerstaff accordingly became silent upon politics, and the article of news, which had once formed about one-third of his paper, altogether disappeared. The Tatler had completely changed its character. It was now nothing but a series of essays on books, morals, and manners. Steele therefore re- solved to bring it to a close, and to commence a new work on an improved plan. It was announced that this new work would be published daily. The undertaking was generally re- garded as bold, or rather rash; but the event amply justified the confidence with which Steele relied on the fertility of Addison's genius. On the second of January, 171 1, appeared the last Tatler. At the beginning of March following appeared the first of an incomparable series of papers containing obser- vations on life and literature by an imaginary Spectator. The Spectator himself was conceived and drawn by Addison ; and it is not easy to doubt that the portrait was meant to be in some features a likeness of the painter. The Spectator is a gentleman who, after passing a studious youth at the univer- sity, has travelled on classic ground, and has bestowed much attention on curious points of antiquity. He has, on his return, fixed his residence in London, and has observed all the forms of life which are to be found in that great city — has daily listened to the wits of Will's, has smoked with the philoso- phers of the Grecian, and has mingled with the parsons at Child's, and with the politicians at the St. James's. In the morning he often listens to the hum of the Exchange ; in the evening his face is constantly to be seen in the pit of Drury Lane Theatre. But an insurmountable bashfulness pre- vents him from opening his mouth, except in a small circle of intimate friends. These friends were first sketched by Steele. Four of the club — the templar, the clergyman, the soldier, and the merchant — were uninteresting figures, fit only for a background. But the 322 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY other two — an old country baronet and an old town rake — though not delineated with a very delicate pencil, had some good strokes. Addison took the rude outlines into his own hands, retouched them, coloured them, and is in truth the creator of the Sir Roger de Coverley and the Will Honey- comb with whom we are all familiar. The plan of the Spectator must be allowed to be both orig- inal and eminently happy. Every valuable essay in the series may be read with pleasure separately ; yet the five or six hun- dred essays form- a whole, and a whole which has the interest of a novel. It must be remembered, too, that at that time no novel giving a lively and powerful picture of the common life and manners of England had appeared. Richardson was working as a compositor. Fielding was robbing birds' nests. Smollett was not yet born. The narrative, therefore, which connects together the Spectator's Essays gave to our ancestors their first taste of an exquisite and untried pleasure. That narrative was indeed constructed with no art or labour. The events were such events as occur every day. Sir Roger comes up to town to see Eugenio (as the worthy baronet always called Prince Eugene), goes with the Spectator on the water to Spring Gardens, walks among the tombs in the Abbey, and is frightened by the Mohawks, but conquers his apprehension so far as to go to the theatre when the Distressed Mother is acted. The Spectator pays a visit in the summer to Coverley Hall, is charmed with the old house, the old butler, and the old chaplain, eats a jack caught by Will Wimble, rides to the assizes, and hears a point of law discussed by Tom Touchy. At last a letter from the honest butler brings to the club the news that Sir Roger is dead. Will Honeycomb marries and reforms at sixty. The club breaks up, and the Spectator resigns his functions. Such events can hardly be said to form a plot ; yet they are related with such truth, such grace, such wit, such humour, such pathos, such knowledge of the human heart, such knowledge of the ways of the world, that they charm us on the hundredth perusal. We have not the least ADDISON 323 doubt that if Addison had written a novel on an extensive plan, it would have been superior to any that we possess. As it is, he is entitled to be considered not only as the greatest of the English essayists, but as the forerunner of the greatest English novelists. We say this of Addison alone, for Addison is the Spectator. About three-sevenths of the work are his ; and it is no ex- aggeration to say that his worst essay is as good as the best essay of his coadjutors. His best essays approach near to abso- lute perfection ; nor is their excellence more wonderful than their variety. His invention never seems to flag ; nor is he ever under the necessity of repeating himself, or of wearing out a subject. There are no dregs in his wine. He regales us after the fashion of that prodigal nabob who held that there was only one good glass in a bottle. As soon as we have tasted the first sparkling foam of a jest, it is withdrawn, and a fresh draught of nectar is at our lips. On the Monday we have an allegory as lively and mgenious as Lucian's Auction of Lives ; on the Tuesday, an Eastern apologue as richly coloured as the Tales of Scherczade ; on the Wednesday, a character described with the skill of La Bruyere ; on the Thursday, a scene from common life, equal to the best chapters in the Vicar of Wakefield \ on the Friday, some sly Horatian pleasantry on fashionable follies, on hoops, patches, or puppet shows ; and, on the Saturday, a religious meditation which will bear a comparison with the finest passages in Massillon. It is dangerous to select where there is so much that de- serves the highest praise. We will venture, however, to say that any person who wishes to form a just notion of the extent and variety of Addison's powers will do well to read at one sitting the following papers : the two " Visits to the Abbey," the "Visit to the Exchange," the "Journal of the Retired Citizen," the "Vision of Mirza," the "Transmigrations of Pug the Monkey," and the " Death of Sir Roger de Coverley." ^ * Nos. 26, 329, 69, 317, 159, 343, 517. These papers are all in the first seven volumes. The eighth must be considered as a separate work. 324 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY The least valuable of Addison's contributions to the Spectator are, in the judgment of our age, his critical papers. Yet his critical papers are always luminous, and often ingenious. The very worst of them must be regarded as creditable to him, when the character of the school in which he had been trained is fairly considered. The best of them were much too good for his readers. In truth, he was not so far behind our gen- eration as he was before his own. No essays in the Spectator were more censured and derided than those in which he raised his voice against the contempt with which our fine old ballads were regarded, and showed the scoffers that the same gold which, burnished and polished, gives lustre to the ALneid and the Odes of Horace is mingled with the rude dross of Chevy Chase. It is not strange that the success of the Spectator should have been such as no similar work has ever obtained. The number of copies daily distributed was at first three thousand. It subsequently increased, and had risen to near four thousand when the stamp tax was imposed. That tax was fatal to. a crowd of journals. The Spectator, however, stood its ground, doubled its price, and, though its circulation fell off, still yielded a large revenue both to the State and to the authors. For particular papers the demand was immense ; of some, it is said, twenty thousand copies were required. But this was not all. To have the Spectator served up every morning with the bohea and rolls was a luxury for the few. The majority were content to wait till essays enough had appeared to form a volume. Ten thousand copies of each volume were imme- diately taken off, and new editions were called for. It must be remembered that the population of England was then hardly a third of what it now is. The number of Englishmen who were in the habit of reading was probably not a sixth of what it now is. A shopkeeper or a farmer who found any pleasure in literature was a rarity. Nay, there was doubtless more than one knight of the shire whose country seat did not contain ten books, receipt books and books on farriery included. ADDISON 325 In these circumstances, the sale of the Spectator must be con- sidered as indicating a popularity quite as great as that of the most successful works of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Dickens in our own time. At the close of 1712 the Spectator ceased to appear. It was probably felt that the short-faced gentleman and his club had been long enough before the town, and that it was time to withdraw them, and to replace them by a new set of charac- ters. In a few weeks the first number of the Guardian was published. But the Guardian was unfortunate both in its birth and in its death. It began in dulness, and disappeared in a tempest of faction. The original plan was bad. Addison con- tributed nothing till sixty-six numbers had appeared ; and it was then impossible to make the Guardian what the Spectator had been. Nestor Ironside and the Miss Lizards were people to whom even he could impart no interest. He could only furnish some excellent little essays, both serious and comic, and this he did. Why Addison gave no assistance to the Guardian during the first two months of its existence is a question which has puzzled the editors and biographers, but which seems to us to admit of a very easy solution. He was then engaged in bring- ing his Cato on the stage. The first four acts of this drama had been lying in his desk since his return from Italy. His modest and sensitive nature shrank from the risk of a public and shameful failure ; and, though all who saw the manuscript were loud in praise, some thought it possible that an audience might become impatient even of very good rhetoric, and advised Addison to print the play without hazarding a representation. At length, after many fits of apprehension, the poet yielded to the urgency of his political friends, who hoped that the public would discover some analogy between the followers of Caesar and the Tories, between Sempronius and the apostate Whigs, between Cato, struggling to the last for the liberties of Rome, and the band of patriots who still stood firm around Halifax and Wharton. 326 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Addison gave the play to the managers of Drury Lane Theatre without stipulating for any advantage to himself. They therefore thought themselves bound to spare no cost in scenery and dresses. The decorations, it is true, would not have pleased the skilful eye of Mr. Macready. Juba's waistcoat blazed with gold lace ; Marcia's hoop was worthy of a Duchess on the birthday ; and Cato wore a wig worth fifty guineas. The prologue was written by Pope, and is undoubtedly a dig- nified and spirited composition. The part of the hero was ex- cellently played by Booth. Steele undertook to pack a house. The boxes were in a blaze with the stars of the Peers in Op- position. The pit was crowded with attentive and friendly listeners from the Inns of Court and the literary coffee-houses. Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Governor of the Bank of England, was at the head of a powerful body of auxiliaries from the city, warm men and true Whigs, but better known at Jonathan's and Garraway's than in the haunts of wits and critics. These precautions were quite superfluous. The Tories, as a body, regarded Addison with no unkind feelings. Nor was it for their interest, professing, as they did, profound reverence for law and prescription, and abhorrence both of popular insur- rections and of standing armies, to appropriate to themselves reflections thrown on the great military chief and demagogue, who, with the support of the legions and of the common people, subverted all the ancient institutions of his country. Accordingly, every shout that was raised by the members of the Kit Cat was echoed by the High Churchmen of the Octo- ber; and the curtain at length fell amidst thunders of unanimous applause. The delight and admiration of the town were described by the Gitardian in terms which we might attribute to partiality, were it not that the Examiner, the organ of the Ministry, held similar language. The Tories, indeed, found much to sneer at in the conduct of their opponents. Steele had on this, as on other occasions, shown more zeal than taste or judgment. The honest citizens who marched under the orders of Sir ADDISON 327 Gibby-, as he was facetiously called, probably knew better when to buy and when to sell stock than when to clap and when to hiss at a play, and incurred some ridicule by making the hypo- critical Sempronius their favourite, and by giving to his insincere rants louder plaudits than they bestowed on the tem- perate eloquence of Cato. Wharton, too, who had the incredible effrontery to applaud the lines about flying from prosperous vice and from the power of impious men to a private station, did not escape the sarcasms of those who justly thought that he could fly from nothing more vicious or impious than him- self. The epilogue, which was written by Garth, a zealous Whig, was severely and not unreasonably censured as ignoble and out of place. But Addison was described, even by the bitterest Tory writers, as a gentleman of wit and virtue, in whose friendship many persons of both parties were happy, and whose name ought not to be mixed up with factious squabbles. Of the jests by which the triumph of the Whig party was disturbed, the most severe and happy was Bolingbroke's. Between two acts, he sent for Booth to his box, and presented him, before the whole theatre, with a purse" of fifty guineas for defending the cause of liberty so well against the perpetual Dictator. This was a pungent allusion to the attempt which Marlborough had made, not long before his fall, to obtain a patent, creating him Captain-General for life. It was April ; and in April, a hundred and thirty years ago, the London season was thought to be far advanced. During a whole month, however, Cato was performed to overflowing houses, and brought into the treasury of the theatre twice the gains of an ordinary spring. In the summer, the Drury Lane Company went down to the Act at Oxford, and there, before an audience which retained an affectionate remembrance of Addison's accomplishments and virtues, his tragedy was acted during several days. The gownsmen began to besiege the theatre in the forenoon, and by one in the afternoon all the seats were filled. 328 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY About the merits of the piece which had so extraordinary an effect, the pubUc, we suppose, has made up its mind. To compare it with the masterpieces of the Attic stage, with the great Enghsh dramas of the time of Ehzabeth, or even with the productions of Schiller's manhood, would be absurd indeed. Yet it contains excellent dialogue and declamation, and among plays fashioned on the French model must be allowed to rank high; not indeed with AtJialie, or Saul; but, we think, not below Cinna, and certainly above any other English tragedy of the same school, above many of the plays of Corneille, above many of the plays of Voltaire and Alfieri, and above some plays of Racine. Be this as it may, we have little doubt that Cato did as much as the Tatlcrs, Spectators, and FrceJwldcrs united to raise Addison's fame among his contemporaries. The modesty and good nature of the successful dramatist had tamed even the malignity of faction. But literary envy, it should seem, is a fiercer passion than party spirit. It was by a zealous Whig that the fiercest attack on the Whig tragedy was made. John Dennis published Remarks on Cato, which were written with some acuteness and with much coarseness and asperity. Addison neither defended himself nor retaliated. On many points he had an excellent defence, and nothing would have been easier than to retaliate ; for Dennis had written bad odes, bad tragedies, bad comedies ; he had, more- over, a larger share than most men of those infirmities and eccentricities which excite laughter ; and Addison's power of turning either an absurd book or an absurd man into ridicule was unrivalled. Addison, however, serenely conscious of his superiority, looked with pity on his assailant, whose temper, naturally irritable and gloomy, had been soured by want, by controversy, and by literary failures. But among the young candidates for Addison's favour there was one distinguished by talents from the rest, and distin- guished, we fear, not less by malignity and insincerity. Pope was only twenty-five. But his powers had expanded to their full maturity ; and his best poem, the Rape of the Lock, had ADDISON 329 recently been published. Of his genius Addison had always expressed high admiration. But Addison had early discerned (what might indeed have been discerned by an eye less pene- trating than his) that the diminutive, crooked, sickly boy was eager to revenge himself on society for the unkindness of nature. In the Spectator, the Essay on Criticism had been praised with cordial warmth ; but a gentle hint had been added that the writer of so excellent a poem would have done well to avoid ill-natured personalities. Pope, though evidently more galled by the censure than gratified by the praise, returned thanks for the admonition, and promised to profit by it. The two writers continued to exchange civilities, counsel, and small good offices. Addison publicly extolled Pope's miscellaneous pieces ; and Pope furnished Addison with a prologue. This did not last long. Pope hated Dennis, whom he had injured without provocation. The appearance of the Remarks on Cato gave the irritable poet an opportunity of venting his malice under the show of friendship ; and such an opportunity could not but be welcome to a nature which was implacable in enmity, and which always preferred the tortuous to the straight path. He published, accordingly, the Narrative of tJie Frenzy of John Denjiis. But Pope had mistaken his powers. He was a great master of invective and sarcasm. He could dissect a character in terse and sonorous couplets, brilliant with antithesis ; but of dramatic talent he was altogether destitute. If he had written a lampoon on Dennis such as that on Atticus or that on Sporus, the old gRimbler would have been crushed. But Pope writing dialogue resembled — to borrow Horace's imagery and his own — a wolf which, instead of biting, should take to kicking, or a monkey which should try to sting. The Narrative is utterly contemptible. Of argument there is not even the show ; and the jests are such as, if they were introduced into a farce, would call forth the hisses of the shilling gallery. Dennis raves about the drama, and the nurse thinks that he is calling for a dram. "There is," he cries, "no peripetia in the tragedy, no change of fortune, no change at all." " Pray. 330 SELECTIONS FROM MAC AULA Y good sir, be not angry," says the old woman; "I'll fetch change." This is not exactly the pleasantry of Addison. There can be no doubt that Addison saw through this officious zeal, and felt himself deeply aggrieved by it. So foolish and spiteful a pamphlet could do him no good, and, if he were thought to have any hand in it, must do him harm. Gifted with incomparable powers of ridicule, he had never, even in self-defence, used those powers inhumanly or uncourteously ; and he was not disposed to let others make his fame and his interests a pretext under which they might commit outrages from which he had himself constantly abstained. He accord- ingly declared that he had no concern in the Narrative, that he disapproved of it, and that if he answered the Remarks, he would answer them like a gentleman ; and he took care to communicate this to Dennis. Pope was bitterly mortified ; and to this transaction we are inclined to ascribe the hatred with which he ever after regarded Addison. In September, 171 3, the Guardian ceased to appear. Steele had gone mad about politics. A general election had just taken place : he had been chosen member for Stockbridge ; and he fully expected to play a first part in Parliament. The immense success of the Tatler and Spectator had turned his head. He had been the editor of both those papers and was not aware how entirely they owed their influence and popularity to the genius of his friend. His spirits, always violent, were now excited by vanity, ambition, and faction, to such a pitch that he every day committed some offence against good sense and good taste. All the discreet and moderate members of his own party regretted and condemned his folly. "" I am in a thousand troubles," Addison wrote, "about poor Dick, and wish that his zeal for the public may not be ruinous to himself. But he has sent me word that he is determined to go on, and that any advice I may give him in this particular will have no weight with him." Steele set up a political paper called the Englishman, which, as it was not supported by contributions from Addison, ADDISON 331 completely failed. By this work, by some other writings of the same kind, and by the airs which he gave himself at the first meeting of the new Parliament, he made the Tories so angry that they determined to expel him. The Whigs stood by him gallantly, but were unable to save him. The vote of expulsion was regarded by all dispassionate men as a tyrannical exercise of the power of the majority. But Steele's violence and folly, though they by no means justified the steps which his enemies took, had completely disgusted his friends ; nor did he ever regain the place which he had held in the public estimation. Addison about this time conceived the design of adding an eighth volume to the Spectator. In June, 17 14, the first number of the new series appeared, and during about six months three papers were published weekly. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the Englishman and the eighth volume of the Spectator, between Steele without Addison and Addison without Steele, The Englishman is forgotten ; the eighth volume of the Spectator contains, perhaps, the finest essays, both serious and playful, in the English language. Before this volume was completed, the death of Anne produced an entire change in the administration of public affairs. The blow fell suddenly. It found the Tory party distracted by internal feuds, and unprepared for any great effort, Harley had just been disgraced, Bolingbroke, it was supposed, would be the chief Minister. But the Queen was on her death-bed before the white staff had been given, and her last public act was to deliver it with a feeble hand to the Duke of Shrewsbury. The emergency produced a coalition between all sections of public men who were attached to the Protestant succession, George the First was proclaimed with- out opposition, A Council, in which the leading Whigs had seats, took the direction of affairs till the new King should arrive. The first act of the Lords Justices was to appoint Addison their secretary. There is an idle tradition that he was directed to prepare a letter to the King, that he could not satisfy himself as to the 332 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY style of this composition, and that the Lords Justices called in a clerk who at once did what was wanted. It is not strange that a story so flattering to mediocrity should be popular ; and we are sorry to deprive dunces of their consolation. But the truth must be told. It was well observed by Sir James Mack- intosh, whose knowledge of these times was unequalled, that Addison never, in any official document, affected wit or elo- quence, and that his despatches are, without exception, remark- able for unpretending simplicity. Everybody who knows with what ease Addison's finest essays were produced must be con- vinced that, if well-turned phrases had been wanted, he would have had no difficulty in finding them. We are, however, inclined to believe, that the story is not absolutely without a foundation. It may well be that Addison did not know, till he had consulted experienced clerks who remembered the times when William the Third was absent on the Continent, in what form a letter from the Council of Regency to the King ought to be drawn. We think it very likely that the ablest states- men of our time — Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, for example — would, in similar circumstances, be found quite as ignorant. Every office has some little mysteries which the dullest man may learn with a little attention, and which the greatest man cannot possibly know by intuition. One paper must be signed by the chief of the department ; another by his deputy ; to a third the royal sign manual is necessary. One communication is to be registered, and another is not. One sentence must be in black ink and another in red ink. If the ablest Secretary for Ireland were moved to the India Board, if the ablest President of the India Board were moved to the War Office, he would require instruction on points like these ; and we do not doubt that Addison re- quired such instruction when he became, for the first time, Secretary to the Lords Justices. George the First took possession of his kingdom without opposition. A new Ministry was formed, and a new Parliament favourable to the Whigs chosen. Sunderland was appointed ADDISON 333 Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland ; and Addison again went to Dublin as Chief Secretary. At Dublin Swift resided ; and there was much speculation about the way in which the Dean and the Secretary would behave towards each other. The relations which existed between these remarkable men form an interesting and pleas- ing portion of literary history. They had early attached them- selves to the same political party and to the same patrons. While Anne's Whig Ministry was in power, the visits of Swift to London and the official residence of Addison in Ireland had given them opportunities of knowing each other. They were the two shrewdest observers of their age. But their observa- tions on each other had led them to favourable conclusions. Swift did full justice to the rare powers of conversation which were latent under the bashful deportment of Addison. Addi- son, on the other hand, discerned much good-nature under the severe look and manner of Swift ; and, indeed, the Swift of 1708 and the Swift of 1738 were two very different men. But the paths of the two friends diverged widely. The Whig statesmen loaded Addison with solid benefits. They praised Swift, asked him to dinner, and did nothing more for him. His profession laid them under a difficulty. In the State they could not promote him ; and they had reason to fear that, by bestowing preferment in the Church on the author of the Tale of a Tub, they might give scandal to the public, which had no high opinion of their orthodoxy. He did not make fair allow- ance for the difficulties which prevented Halifax and Somers from serving him, thought himself an ill-used man, sacrificed honour and consistency to revenge, joined the Tories, and became their most formidable champion. He soon found, however, that his old friends were less to blame than he had supposed. The dislike with which the Queen and the heads of the Church regarded him was insurmountable ; and it was with the greatest difficulty that he obtained an ecclesiastical dignity of no great value, on condition of fixing his residence in a country which he detested. 334 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Difference of political opinion had produced, not indeed a quarrel, but a coolness between Swift and Addison. They at length ceased altogether to see each other. Yet there was between them a tacit compact like that between the hereditary guests in the Iliad: HoWol fjikv yap ifxol Tpwes kXcltol t eiriKovpoi KTCtVetv, ov Ke ^eds ye Troprj kol ttoctcti ki^elw, IIoAAoi o av (Tol 'A^atot ivaipificv, ov Ke Svprjai. It is not strange that Addison, who calumniated and insulted nobody, should not have calumniated or insulted Swift. But it is remarkable that Swift, to whom neither genius nor virtue was sacred, and who generally seemed to find, like most other renegades, a peculiar pleasure in attacking old friends, should have shown so much respect and tenderness to Addison. Fortune had now changed. The accession of the House of Hanover had secured in England the liberties of the people, and in Ireland the dominion of the Protestant caste. To that caste Swift was more odious than any other man. He was hooted and even pelted in the streets of Dublin ; and could not venture to ride along the strand for his health without the attendance of armed servants. Many whom he had formerly served now libelled and insulted him. At this time Addison arrived. He had been advised not to show the smallest civility to the Dean of St. Patrick's. He had answered, with admirable spirit, that it might be necessary for men whose fidelity to their party was suspected to hold no intercourse with political oppo- nents ; but that one who had been a steady Whig in the worst times might venture when the good cause was triumphant to shake hands with an old friend who was one of the vanquished Tories. His kindness was soothing to the proud and cruelly wounded spirit of Swift ; and the two great satirists resumed their habits of friendly intercourse. Those associates of Addison whose political opinions agreed with his shared his good fortune. He took Tickell with him to ADDISON 335 Ireland. He procured for Budgell a lucrative place in the same kingdom, Ambrose Philips was provided for in England. Steele had injured himself so much by his eccentricity and perverseness that he obtained but a very small part of what he thought his due. He was, however, knighted ; he had a place in the household ; and he subsequently received other marks of favour from the Court. Addison did not remain long in Ireland. In 1715 he quitted his secretaryship for a seat at the Board of Trade. In the same year his comedy of the Drimmicr was brought on the stage. The name of the author was not announced ; the piece was coldly received ; and some critics had expressed a doubt whether it were really Addison's. To us the evidence, both external and internal, seems decisive. It is not in Addison's best manner ; but it contains numerous passages which no other writer known to us could have produced. It was again performed after Addison's death, and, being known to be his, was loudly applauded. Towards the close of the year 171 5, while the Rebellion was still raging in Scotland, Addison published the first num- ber of a paper called the Freeholder. Among his political works the Freeholder is entitled to the first place. Even in the Spectator there are few serious papers nobler than the charac- ter of his friend Lord Somers, and certainly no satirical papers superior to those in which the Tory fox-hunter is introduced. This character is the original of Squire Western, and is drawn with all Fielding's force, and with a delicacy of which Fielding was altogether destitute. As none of Addison's works exhibits stronger marks of his genius than the Freeholder, so none does more honour to his moral character. It is difficult to extol too highly the candour and humanity of a political writer whom even the excitement of civil war cannot hurry into unseemly violence. Oxford, it is well known, was then the stronghold of Toryism, The High Street had been repeatedly lined with bayonets in order to keep down the disaffected gownsmen ; and traitors pursued by the messengers of the Government 336 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY had been concealed in the garrets of several colleges. Yet the admonition which, even under such circumstances, Addison addressed to the University, is singularly gentle, respectful, and even affectionate. Indeed, he could not find it in his heart to deal harshly even with imaginary persons. His fox-hunter, though ignorant, stupid, and violent, is at heart a good fellow, and is at last reclaimed by the clemency of the King. Steele was dissatisfied with his friend's moderation, and, though he acknowledged that the FrccJwldcr was excellently written, com- plained that the Ministry played on a lute when it was necessary to blow the truhipet. He accordingly determined to execute a flourish after his own fashion, and tried to rouse the public spirit of the nation by means of a paper called the Toivn Talk, which is now as utterly forgotten as his Englishman, as his Crisis, as his Letter to the Bailiff of Stockbridgc, as his Reader — in short, as everything that he wrote without the help of Addison. In the same year in which the Drummer was acted, and in which the first numbers of the Freeholder appeared, the es- trangement of Pope and Addison became complete. Addison had from the first seen that Pope was false and malevolent. Pope had discovered that Addison was jealous. The discovery was made in a strange manner. Pope had written the Rape of the Lock in two cantos without supernatural machinery. These two cantos had been loudly applauded, and by none more loudly than by Addison. Then Pope thought of the Sylphs and Gnomes — Ariel, Momentilla, Crispissa, and Umbriel — and resolved to interweave the Rosicrucian mythology with the orig- inal fabric. He asked Addison's advice. Addison said that the poem as it stood was a delicious little thing, and entreated Pope not to run the risk of marring what was so excellent in trying to mend it. Pope afterwards declared that this insidious counsel first opened his eyes to the baseness of him who gave it. Now there can be no doubt that Pope's plan was most ingen- ious, and that he afterwards executed it with great skill and success. But does it necessarily follow that Addison's advice was bad .? And if Addison's advice was bad, does it necessarily ADDISON 337 follow that it was given from bad motives ? If a friend were to ask us whether we would advise him to risk his all in a lottery of which the chances were ten to one against him, we should do our best to dissuade him from running such a risk. Even if he were so lucky as to get the thirty thousand pound prize, we should not admit that we had counselled him ill ; and we should certainly think it the height of injustice in him to accuse us of having been actuated by malice. We think Addison's advice good advice. It rested on a sound principle, the result of long and wide experience. The general rule un- doubtedly is that when a successful work of imagination has been produced, it should not be recast. We cannot at this moment call to mind a single instance in which this rule has been transgressed with happy effect, except the instance of the Rape of tJic Lock. Tasso recast \\\s Jerusalem. Akenside recast his Pleasures of the Imagination and his Epistle to Curio. Pope himself — emboldened no doubt by the success with which he had expanded and remodelled the Rape of the Lock — made the same experiment on the Dunciad. All these attempts failed. Who was to foresee that Pope would, once in his life, be able to do what he could not himself do twice, and what nobody else has ever done ? Addison's advice was good. But had it been bad, why should we pronounce it dishonest ? Scott tells us that one of his best friends predicted the failure of Wave7iey. Herder adjured Goethe not to take so unpromising a subject as Fa7ist. Hume tried to dissuade Robertson from writing the History of Charles the Fifth. Nay, Pope himself was one of those who prophe- sied that Cato would never succeed on the stage, and advised Addison to print it without risking a representation. But Scott, Goethe, Robertson, Addison, had the good sense and gener- osity to give their advisers credit for the best intentions. Pope's heart was not of the same kind with theirs. In 171 5, while he was engaged in translating the Iliad, he met Addison at a coffee-house. Philips and Budgell were there ; but their sovereign got rid of them, and asked Pope to 338 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY dine with him alone. After dinner Addison said that he lay under a difficulty which he wished to explain. " Tickell," he said, " translated some time ago the first book of the Iliad. I have promised to look it over and correct it. I cannot there- fore ask to see yours ; for that would be double-dealing." Pope made a civil reply, and begged that his second book might have the advantage of Addison's revision. Addison readily agreed, looked over the second book, and sent it back with warm commendations. Tickell's version of the first book appeared soon after this conversation. In the preface all rivalry was earnestly disclaimed. Tickell declared that he should not go on with the Iliad. That enterprise he should leave to powers which he admitted to be superior to his own. His only view, he said, in publishing this specimen was to bespeak the favour of the public to a trans- lation of the Odyssey in which he had made some progress. Addison, and Addison's devoted followers, pronounced both the versions good, but maintained that Tickell's had more of the original. The town gave a decided preference to Pope's. We do not think it worth while to settle such a question of precedence. Neither of the rivals can be said to have trans- lated the Iliad, unless, indeed, the word translation be used in the sense which it bears in the Midsimimer NigJif s Dream. When Bottom makes his appearance with an ass's head in- stead of his own, Peter Quince exclaims, "' Bless thee ! Bottom, bless thee ! thou art translated." In this sense, undoubtedly, the readers of either Pope or Tickell may very properly exclaim, " Bless thee ! Homer, thou art translated indeed." Our readers will, we hope, agree with us in thinking that no man in Addison's situation could have acted more fairly and kindly, both towards Pope and towards Tickell, than he appears to have done. But an odious suspicion had sprung up in the mind of Pope. He fancied, and he soon firmly believed, that there was a deep conspiracy against his fame and his fortunes. The work on which he had staked his reputation was to be depreciated. The subscription on which ADDISON 339 rested his hopes of a competence was to be defeated. With this view Addison had made a rival translation ; Tickell had consented to father it ; and the wits of Button's had united to puff it. Is there any external evidence to support this grave accusa- tion ? The answer is short. There is absolutely none. Was there any internal evidence which proved Addison to be the author of this version .? Was it a work which Tickell was incapable of producing .? Surely not. Tickell was a Fellow of a College at Oxford, and must be supposed to have been able to construe the Iliad; and he was a better versifier than his friend. We are not aware that Pope pre- tended to have discovered any turns of expression peculiar to Addison. Had such turns of expression been discovered, they would be sufficiently accounted for by supposing Addison to have corrected his friend's lines, as he owned that he had done. Is there anything in the character of the accused persons which makes the accusation probable .? We answer confidently — nothing. Tickell was long after this time described by Pope himself as a very fair and worthy man. Addison had been during many years before the public. Literary rivals, political opponents, had kept their eyes on him. But neither envy nor faction, in its utmost rage, had ever imputed to him a single deviation from the laws of honour and of social morality. Had he been indeed a man meanly jealous of fame, and capable of stooping to base and wicked arts for the purpose of injuring his competitors, would his vices have remained latent so long .? He was a writer of tragedy : had he ever injured Rowe ? He was a writer of comedy : had he not done ample justice to Congreve, and given valuable help to Steele 1 He was a pamphleteer : have not his good nature and generosity been acknowledged by Swift, his rival in fame and his adversary in politics } That Tickell should have been guilty of a villany seems to us highly improbable. That Addison should have been guilty 340 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY of a villany seems to us highly improbable. But that these two men should have conspired together to commit a villany seems to us improbable in a tenfold degree. All that is known to us of their intercourse tends to prove that it was not the intercourse of two accomplices in crime. These are some of the lines in which Tickell poured forth his sorrow over the cofifin of Addison : Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind, A task well suited to thy gentle mind ? Oh, if sometimes thy spotless form descend, To me thine aid, thou guardian genius, lend. When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms, When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms. In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart, And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart ; Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before, Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more. In what words, we should like to know, did this guardian genius invite his pupil to join in a plan such as the Editor of the Satifist would hardly dare to propose to the Editor of the Age } We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation which he knew to be false. We have not the smallest doubt that he believed it to be true ; and the evidence on which he believed it he found in his own bad heart. His own life was one long series of tricks, as mean and as malicious as that of which he suspected Addison and Tickell. He was all stiletto and mask. To injure, to insult, and to save himself from the conse- quences of injury and insult by lying and equivocating, was the habit of his life. He published a lampoon on the Duke of Chandos ; he was taxed with it, and he lied and equivocated. He published a lampoon on Aaron Hill ; he was taxed with it, and he lied and equivocated. He published a still fouler lampoon on Lady Mary Wortley Montague ; he was taxed with it, and he lied with more than usual effrontery and vehemence. He puffed himself and abused his enemies under feigned names. He robbed himself of his own letters, and ADDISON 341 then raised the hue and cry after them. Besides his frauds of mahgnity, of fear, of interest, and of vanity, there were frauds which he seems to have committed from love of fraud alone. He had a habit of stratagem, a pleasure in outwitting all who came near him. Whatever his object might be, the indirect road to it was that which he preferred. For Boling- broke Pope undoubtedly felt as much love and veneration as it was in his nature to feel for any human being. Yet Pope was scarcely dead when it was discovered that, from no motive except the mere love of artifice, he had been guilty of an act of gross perfidy to Bolingbroke. Nothing was more natural than that such a man as this should attribute to others that which he felt within himself. A plain, probable, coherent explanation is frankly given to him. He is certain that it is all a romance. A line of conduct scrupulously fair, and even friendly, is pursued towards him. He is convinced that it is merely a cover for a vile intrigue by which he is to be disgraced and ruined. It is vain to ask him for proofs. He has none, and wants none, except those which he carries in his own bosom. Whether Pope's malignity at length provoked Addison to retaliate for the first and last time cannot now be known with certainty. We have only Pope's story, which runs thus : A pamphlet appeared containing some reflections which stung Pope to the quick. What those reflections were, and whether they were reflections of which he had a right to complain, we have now no means of deciding. The Earl of Warwick, a foolish and vicious lad, who regarded Addison with the feel- ings with which such lads generally regard their best friends, told Pope, truly or falsely, that this pamphlet had been written by Addison's direction. When we consider what a tendency stories have to grow in passing even from one honest man to another honest man, and when we consider that to the name of honest man neither Pope nor the Earl of Warwick had a claim, we are not disposed to attach much importance to this anecdote. 342 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY It is certain, however, that Pope was furious. He had already sketched the character of Atticus in prose. In his anger he turned this prose into the brilhant and energetic hnes which everybody knows by heart, or ought to l^now by heart, and sent them to Addison. One charge which Pope has enforced with great skill is probably not without foundation. Addison was, we are inclined to believe, too fond of presiding over a circle of humble friends. Of the other imputations which these famous lines are intended to convey, scarcely one has ever been proved to be just, and some are certainly false. That Addison was not in the habit of " damning with faint praise " appears from innumerable passages in his writings, and from none more than from those in which he mentions Pope. And it is not merely unjust, but ridiculous, to describe a man who made the fortune of almost every one of his intimate friends as "so obliging that he ne'er obliged." That Addison felt the sting of Pope's satire keenly we cannot doubt. That he was conscious of one of the weak- nesses with which he was reproached is highly probable. But his heart, we firmly believe, acquitted him of the gravest part of the accusation. He acted like himself. As a satirist he was, at his own weapons, more than Pope's match ; and he would have been at no loss for topics. A distorted and diseased body, tenanted by a yet more distorted and diseased mind ; spite and envy thinly disguised by sentiments as benevolent and noble as those which Sir Peter Teazle admired in Mr. Joseph Surface ; a feeble sickly licentiousness ; an odious love of filthy and noisome images — these were things which a genius less powerful than that to which we owe the Spectator could easily have held up to the mirth and hatred of mankind. Addison had, moreover, at his command, other means of vengeance which a bad man would not have scrupled to use. He was powerful in the State. Pope was a Catholic ; and in those times a Minister would have found it easy to harass the most innocent Catholic by innumerable petty vexations. Pope, near twenty years later, said that " through the lenity of the ADDISON 343 Government alone he could live with comfort." " Consider," he exclaimed, "the injury that a man of high rank and credit may do to a private person, under penal laws and many other disadvantages." It is pleasing to reflect that the only revenge which Addison took was to insert in the FrceJiolder a warm encomium on the translation of the Iliad, and to exhort all lovers of learning to put down their names as subscribers. There could be no doubt, he said, from the specimens already published, that the masterly hand of Pope would do as much for Homer as Dryden had done for Virgil. From that time to the end of his life he always treated Pope, by Pope's own acknowledgment, with justice. Friendship was, of course, at an end. One reason which induced the Earl of Warwick to play the ignominious part of talebearer on this occasion may have been his dislike of the marriage which was about to take place be- tween his mother and Addison. The Countess Dowager, a daughter of the old and honourable family of the Middletons of Chirk — a family which in any country but ours would be called noble — resided at Holland House. Addison had, during some years, occupied at Chelsea a small dwelling, once the abode of Nell Gwynn. Chelsea is now a district of London, and Holland House may be called a town residence. But in the days of Anne and George the First, milkmaids and sports- men wandered between green hedges and over fields bright with daisies from Kensington almost to the shore of the Thames. Addison and Lady Warwick were country neigh- bours, and became intimate friends. The great wit and scholar tried to allure the young Lord from the fashionable amuse- ments of beating watchmen, breaking windows, and rolling women in hogsheads down Holborn Hill, to the study of letters and the practice of virtue. These well-meant exertions did little good, however, either to the disciple or to the master. Lord Warwick grew up a rake ; and Addison fell in love. The mature beauty of the Countess has been celebrated by poets in language which, after a very large allowance has been made 344 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY for flattery, would lead us to believe that she was a fine woman ; and her rank doubtless heightened her attractions. The courtship was long. The hopes of the lover appear to have risen and fallen with the fortunes of his party. His attachment was at length a matter of such notoriety that, when he visited Ireland for the last time, Rowe addressed some con- solatory verses to the Chloe of Holland House. It strikes us as a little strange that in these verses Addison should be called Lycidas, a name of singularly evil omen for a swain just about to cross St. George's Channel. At length Cbloe capitulated. Addison was indeed able to treat with her on equal terms. He had reason to expect pre- ferment even higher than that which he had attained. He had inherited the fortune of a brother who died Governor of Madras. He had purchased an estate in Warwickshire, and had been welcomed to his domain in very tolerable verse by one of the neighbouring squires — the poetical fox-hunter, William Somerville. In August, 1716, the newspapers an- nounced that Joseph Addison, Esquire, famous for many excellent works both in verse and prose, had espoused the Countess Dowager of Warwick. He now fixed his abode at Holland House — a house which can boast of a greater number of inmates distinguished in political and literary history than any other private dwelling in England. His portrait still hangs there. The features are pleasing ; the complexion is remarkably fair ; but in the expression, we trace rather the gentleness of his disposition than the force and keenness of his intellect. Not long after his marriage he reached the height of civil greatness. The Whig Government had, during some time, been torn by internal dissensions. Lord Townshend led one section of the Cabinet, Lord Sunderland the other. At length, in the spring of i/r/, Sunderland triumphed. Townshend retired from office, and was accompanied by Walpole and Cowper. Sunderland proceeded to reconstruct the Ministry; and Addison was appointed Secretary of State. It is certain ADDISON 345 that the Seals were pressed upon him, and were at first de- chned by him. Men equally versed in official business might easily have been found ; and his colleagues knew that they could not expect assistance from him in debate. He owed his elevation to his popularity, to his stainless probity, and to his literary fame. But scarcely had Addison entered the Cabinet when his health began to fail. From one serious attack he recovered in the autumn ; and his recovery was celebrated in Latin verses, worthy of his own pen, by Vincent Bourne, who was then at Trinity College, Cambridge. A relapse soon took place ; and in the following spring Addison was prevented by a severe asthma from discharging the duties of his post. He resigned it, and was succeeded by his friend Craggs, a young man whose natural parts, though little improved by cultivation, were quick and showy, whose graceful person and winning manners had made him generally acceptable in society, and who, if he had lived, would probably have been the most formidable of all the rivals of Walpole. As yet there was no Joseph Hume. The Ministers, there- fore, were able to bestow on Addison a retiring pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year. In what form this pension was given we are not told by the biographers, and have not time to inquire. But it is certain that Addison did not vacate his seat in the House of Commons. Rest of mind and body seem to have re-established his health ; and he thanked God with cheerful piety for having set him free both from his office and from his asthma. Many years seemed to be before him, and he meditated many works — a tragedy on the death of Socrates, a translation of the Psalms, a treatise on the evidences of Christianity. Of this last perform- ance a part, which we could well spare, has come down to us. But the fatal complaint soon returned, and gradually pre- vailed against all the resources of medicine. It is melancholy to think that the last months of such a life should have been overclouded both by domestic and by political vexations. A 346 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY tradition which began early, which has been generally received, and to which we have nothing to oppose, has represented his wife as an arrogant and imperious woman. It is said that, till his health failed him, he was glad to escape from the Countess Dowager and her magnificent dining-room, blazing with the gilded devices of the House of Rich, to some tavern where he could enjoy a laugh, a talk about Virgil and Boileau, and a bottle of claret with the friends of his happier days. All those friends, however, were not left to him. Sir Richard Steele had been gradually estranged by various causes. He considered himself as one who, in evil times, had braved martyrdom for his political principles, and demanded, when the Whig party was triumphant, a large compensation for what he had suffered when it was militant. The, Whig leaders took a very different view of his claims. They thought that he had, by his own petulance and folly, brought them as well as himself into trouble, and, though they did not absolutely neglect him, doled out favours to him with a sparing hand. It was natural that he should be angry with them, and especially angry with Addison. But what above all seems to have disturbed Sir Richard, was the elevation of Tickell, who, at thirty, was made by Addison Under-Secretary of State ; while the editor of the Tatlcr and Spectator, the author of the Crisis, and member for Stock- bridge who had been persecuted for firm adherence to the House of Hanover, was, at near fifty, forced, after many so- licitations and complaints, to content himself with a share in the patent of Drury Lane Theatre. Steele himself says, in his celebrated letter to Congreve, that Addison, by his preference of Tickell, " incurred the warmest resentment of other gentle- men"; and everything seems to indicate that, of those resent- ful gentlemen, Steele was himself one. While poor Sir Richard was brooding over what he consid- ered as Addison's unkindness, a new cause of quarrel arose. The Whig party, already divided against itself, was rent by a new schism. The celebrated Bill for limiting the number of Peers had been brought in. The proud Duke of Somerset, ADDISON 347 first in rank of all the nobles whose religion permitted them to sit in Parliament, was the ostensible author of the measure. But it was supported, and in truth devised, by the Prime Minister, We are satisfied that the bill was most pernicious ; and we fear that the motives which induced Sunderland to frame it were not honourable to him. But we cannot deny that it was supported by many of the best and wisest men of that age. Nor was this strange. The royal prerogative had, within the memory of the generation then in the vigour of life, been so grossly abused that it was still regarded with a jealousy which, when the peculiar situation of the House of Brunswick is con- sidered, may perhaps be called immoderate. The particular prerogative of creating peers had, in the opinion of the Whigs, been grossly abused by Queen Anne's last Ministry ; and even the Tories admitted that her Majesty, in swamping, as it has since been called, the Upper House, had done what only an extreme case could justify. The theory of the English consti- tution, according to many high authorities, was that three independent powers — the sovereign, the nobility, and the commons — ought constantly to act as checks on each other. If this theory were sound, it seemed to follow that to put one of these powers under the absolute control of the other two was absurd. But if the number of peers were unlimited, it could not well be denied that the Upper House was under the absolute control of the Crown and the Commons, and was indebted only to their moderation for any power which it might be suffered to retain. Steele took part with the Opposition, Addison with the Ministers. Steele, in a paper called the Plebeian, vehemently attacked the bill. Sunderland called for help on Addison, and Addison obeyed the call. In a paper called the Old Whig, he answered, and indeed refuted, Steele's arguments. It seems to us that the premises of both the controversialists were unsound ; that on those premises Addison reasoned well and Steele ill ; and that consequently Addison brought out a false conclusion 348 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY while Steele blundered upon the truth. In style, in wit, and in politeness, Addison maintained his superiority, though the Old Whig is by no means one of his happiest performances. At first, both the anonymous opponents observed the laws of propriety. But at length Steele so far forgot himself as to throw an odious imputation on the morals of the chiefs of the administration. Addison replied with severity, but, in our opinion, with less severity than was due to so grave an offence against morality and decorum ; nor did he, in his just anger, forget for a moment the laws of good taste and good breeding. One calumny which has been often repeated, and never yet •contradicted, it is our duty to expose. It is asserted in the Biographia Britannica that Addison designated Steele as " little Dicky." This assertion was repeated by Johnson, who had never seen the Old Whig, and was therefore excusable. It has also been repeated by Miss Aikin, who has seen the Old Whig, and for whom therefore there is less excuse. Now, it is true that the words " little Dicky " occur in the Old Whig, and that Steele's name was Richard. It is equally true that the words "little Isaac" occur in the Ditenna, and that New- ton's name was Isaac. But we confidently affirm that Addison's " little Dicky " had no more to do with Steele than Sheridan's "little Isaac" with Newton. If we apply the words "little Dicky " to Steele, we deprive a very lively and ingenious pas- sage, not only of all its wit, but of all its meaning. Little Dicky was the nickname of Henry Norris, an actor of remark- ably small stature, but of great humour, who played the usurer Gomez, then a most popular part, in Dryden's SpanisJi Fnar} 1 We will transcribe the whole paragraph. How it can ever have been misunderstood is unintelligible to us. But our author's chief concern is for the poor House of Commons, whom he repre- sents as naked and defenceless, when the Crown, by losing this prerogative, would be less able to protect them against the power of a House of Lords. Who forbears laughing when the Spanish Friar represents little Dicky, under the person of Gomez, insulting the Colonel that was able to fright him out of his wits with a single frown ? This Gomez, says he, flew upon him like a dragon, got him down, the Devil being strong in him, and gave him bastinado on bastinado, and buffet on buffet, which the poor Colonel, being prostrate, suffered with a most Christian patience. The improbability of the fact never ADDISON 349 The merited reproof which Steele had received, though softened by some kind and courteous expressions, galled him bitterly. He replied with little force and great acrimony ; but no rejoinder appeared. Addison was fast hastening to his grave ; and had, we may well suppose, little disposition to prosecute a quarrel with an old friend. His complaint had terminated in dropsy. He bore up long and manfully. But at length he abandoned all hope, dismissed his physicians, and calmly prepared himself to die. His works he intrusted to the care of Tickell, and dedicated them a very few days before his death to Craggs, in a letter written with the sweet and graceful eloquence of a Saturday's Spectator. In this his last composition, he alluded to his approaching end in words so manly, so cheerful, and so tender that it is difficult to read them without tears. At the same time he earnestly recommended the interests of Tickell to the care of Craggs. Within a few hours of the time at which this dedication was written, Addison sent to beg Gay, who was then living by his wits about town, to come to Holland House. Gay went, and was received with great kindness. To his amazement his for- giveness was implored by the dying man. Poor Gay, the most good-natured and simple of mankind, could not imagine what he had to forgive. There was, however, some wrong, the remembrance of which weighed on Addison's mind, and which he declared himself anxious to repair. He was in a state of extreme exhaustion ; and the parting was doubtless a friendly one on both sides. Gay supposed that some plan to serve him had been in agitation at Court, and had been frustrated by Addison's influence. Nor is this improbable. Gay had paid assiduous court to the royal family. But in the Queen's days he had been the eulogist of Bolingbroke, and was still connected with many Tories. It is not strange that Addison, while heated fails to raise mirth in the audience; and one may venture to answer for a British House of Commons, if we may guess from its conduct hitherto, that it will scarce be either SO tame or so weak as our author supposes. 350 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY by conflict, should have thought himself justified in obstructing the preferment of one whom he might regard as a political enemy. Neither is it strange that, when reviewing his whole life and earnestly scrutinizing all his motives, he should think that he had acted an unkind and ungenerous part in using his power against a distressed man of letters' who was as harmless and as helpless as a child. One inference may be drawn from this anecdote. It appears that Addison, on his death-bed, called himself to a strict account, and was not at ease till he had asked pardon for an injury which it was not evea suspected that he had committed, for an injury which would have caused disquiet only to a very tender con- science. Is it not then reasonable to infer that, if he had really been guilty of forming a base conspiracy against the fame and fortunes of a rival, he would have expressed some remorse for so serious a crime ? But it is unnecessary to multiply arguments and evidence for the defence when there is neither argument nor evidence for the accusation. The last moments of Addison were perfectly serene. His interview with his step-son is universally known. " See," he said, '' how a Christian can die ! " The piety of Addison was, in truth, of a singularly cheerful character. The feeling which predominates in all his devotional writings, is gratitude. God was to him the all-wise and all-powerful Friend who had watched over his cradle with more than maternal tenderness ; who had listened to his cries before they could form themselves in prayer ; who had preserved his youth from the snares of vice ; who had made his cup run over with worldly blessings ; who had doubled the value of those blessings by bestowing a thankful heart to enjoy them and dear friends to partake them ; who had rebuked the waves of the Ligurian gulf, had purified the autumnal air of the Campagna, and had restrained the avalanches of Mont Cenis. Of the Psalms, his favourite was that which represents the Ruler of all things under the endearing image of a shepherd, whose crook guides the flock safe, through gloomy and desolate glens to meadows well ADDISON 351 watered and rich with herbage. On that Goodness to which he ascribed all the happiness of his life, he relied in the hour of death with the love which casteth out fear. He died on the seventeenth of June, 17 19. He had just entered on his forty-eighth year. His body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and was borne thence to the Abbey at dead of night. The choir sang a funeral hymn. Bishop Atterbury, one of those Tories who had loved and honoured the most accomplished of the Whigs, met the corpse, and led the procession by torchlight, round the shrine of Saint Edward and the graves of the Plantagenets, to the Chapel of Henry the Seventh. On the north side of that Chapel, in the vault of the House of Albemarle, the coffin of Addison lies next to the coffin of Montague. Yet a few months, and the same mourners passed again along the same aisle. The same sad anthem was again chanted. The same vault was again opened ; and the coffin of Craggs was placed close to the coffin of Addison. Many tributes were paid to the memory of Addison ; but one alone is now remembered. Tickell bewailed his friend in an elegy which would do honour to the greatest name in our literature, and which unites the energy and magnificence of Dryden to the tenderness and purity of Cowper. This fine poem was prefixed to a superb edition of Addison's works which was published, in 1721, by subscription. The names of the subscribers proved how widely his fame had been spread. That his countrymen should be eager to possess his writings, even in a costly form, is not wonderful. But it is wonderful that, though English literature was then little studied on the Continent, Spanish Grandees, Italian Prelates, Marshals of France, should be found in the list. Among the most remark- able names are those of the Queen of Sweden, of Prince Eugene, of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, of the Dukes of Parma, Modena, and Guastalla, of the Doge of Genoa, of the Regent Orleans, and of Cardinal Dubois. We ought to add that this edition, though eminently beautiful, is in some 352 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY important points defective ; nor, indeed, do we yet possess a complete collection of Addison's writings. It is strange that neither his opulent and noble widow, nor any of his powerful and attached friends, should have thought of placing even a simple tablet, inscribed with his name, on the walls of the Abbey. It was not till three generations had laughed and wept over his pages that the omission was supplied by the public veneration. At length, in our own time, his image, skilfully graven, appeared in Poet's Corner. It represents him, as we can conceive him, clad in his dressing-gown, and freed from his wig, stepping from his parlour at Chelsea into his trim little garden, with the account of the "Everlasting Club," or the "Loves of Hilpa and Shalum," just finished for the next day's Spectator, in his hand. Such a mark of national respect was due to the unsullied statesman, to the accomplished scholar, to the master of pure English eloquence, to the con- summate painter of life and manners. It was due, above all, to the great satirist, who alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it ; who, without inflicting a wound, effected a great social reform ; and who reconciled wit and virtue, after a long and disastrous separation, during which wit had been led astray by profligacy, and virtue by fanaticism. HISTORY OF ENGLAND (a) William and Mary The place which WilUam Henry, Prince of Orange Nassau, occupies in the history of England and of mankind is so great that it may be desirable to portray with some minuteness the strong lineaments of his character.^ He was now in his thirty-seventh year. But both in body and in mind he was older than other men of the same age. Indeed it might be said that he had never been young. His external appearance is almost as well known to us as to his own captains and counsellors. Sculptors, painters, and medal- lists exerted their utmost skill in the work of transmitting his features to posterity ; and his features were such as no artist could fail to seize, and such as, once seen, could never be forgotten. His name at once calls up before us a slender and feeble frame, a lofty and ample forehead, a nose curved like the beak of an eagle, an eye rivalling that of an eagle in bright- ness and keenness, a thoughtful and somewhat sullen brow, a firm and somewhat peevish mouth, a cheek pale, thin, and deeply furrowed by sickness and by care. That pensive, severe, and solemn aspect could scarcely have belonged to a happy or a good-humoured man. But it indicates, in a manner not to be mistaken, capacity equal to the most arduous enterprises, and fortitude not to be shaken by reverses or dangers. ^ The chief materials from which I have taken my description of the Prince of Orange will be found in Burnet's History, in Temple's and Gourville's Memoirs, in the Negotiations of the Counts of Estrades and Avaux, in Sir George Downing's Letters to Lord Chancellor Clarendon, in Wagenaar's voluminous History, in Van Kamper's Karakterkunde der Vader- landsche Geschiedenis, and, above all, in William's own confidential corre- spondence, of which the Duke of Portland permitted Sir James Mackintosh to take a copy. 353 354 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Nature had largely endowed William with the qualities of a great ruler ; and education had developed those qualities in no common degree. With strong natural sense, and rare force of will, he found himself, when first his mind began to open, a fatherless and motherless child, the chief of a great but depressed and disheartened party, and the heir to vast and indefinite pretensions, which excited the dread and aversion of the oligarchy then supreme in the United Provinces. The common people, fondly attached during a century to his house, indicated, whenever they saw him, in a manner not to be mis- taken, that they- regarded him as their rightful head. The able and experienced ministers of the republic, mortal enemies of his name, came every day to pay their feigned civilities to him, and to observe the progress of his mind. The first move- ments of his ambition were carefully watched : every unguarded word uttered by him was noted down ; nor had he near him any adviser on whose judgment reliance could be placed. He was scarcely fifteen years old when all the domestics who were attached to his interest, or who enjoyed any share of his confidence, were removed from under his roof by the jealous government. He remonstrated with energy beyond his years, but in vain. Vigilant observers saw the tears more than once rise in the eyes of the young state prisoner. His health, naturally delicate, sank fey a time under the emotions which his desolate situation had produced. Such situations bewilder and unnerve the weak, but call forth all the strength of the strong. Surrounded by snares in which an ordinary youth would have perished, William learned to tread at once warily and firmly. Long before he reached manhood he knew how to keep secrets, how to baffle curiosity by dry and guarded answers, how to conceal all passions under the same show of grave tranquillity. Meanwhile he made little proficiency in fashionable or literary accomplishments. The manners of the Dutch nobility of that age wanted the grace which was found in the highest perfection among the gentlemen of France, and which, in an inferior degree, embellished the Court of HISTORY OF ENGLAND 355 England ; and his manners were altogether Dutch. Even his countrymen thought him blunt. To foreigners he often seemed churlish. In his intercourse with the world in general he appeared ignorant or negligent of those arts which double the value of a favour and take away the sting of a refusal. He was little interested in letters or science. The discoveries of Newton and Leibnitz, the poems of Dryden and Boileau, were unknown to him. Dramatic performances tired him ; and he was glad to turn away from the stage and to talk about public affairs, while Orestes was raving, or while Tartuffe was press- ing Elmira's hand. He had indeed some talent for sarcasm, and not seldom employed, quite unconsciously, a natural rhet- oric, quaint, indeed, but vigorous and original. He did not, however, in the least affect the character of a wit or of an orator. His attention had been confined to those studies which form strenuous and sagacious men of business. From a child he listened with interest when high questions of alliance, finance, and war were discussed. Of geometry he learned as much as was necessary for the construction of a ravelin or a hornwork. Of languages, by the help of a memory singularly powerful, he learned as much as was necessary to enable him to comprehend and answer without assistance everything that was said to him, and every letter which he received. The Dutch was his own tongue. He understood Latin, Italian, and Spanish. He spoke and wrote French, English, and German, inelegantly, it is true, and inexactly, but fluently and intel- ligibly. No qualification could be more important to a man whose life was to be passed in organizing great alliances, and in commanding armies assembled from different countries. One class of philosophical questions had been forced on his attention by circumstances, and see;ms to have interested him more than might have been expected from his general char- acter. Among the Protestants of the United Provinces, as among the Protestants of our island, there were two great religious parties which almost exactly coincided with two great political parties. The chiefs of the municipal oligarchy were 356 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY Arminians, and were commonly regarded by the multitude as little better than Papists. The princes of Orange had generally been the patrons of the Calvinistic divinity, and owed no small part of their popularity to their zeal for the doctrines of elec- tion and final perseverance, a zeal not always enlightened by knowledge or tempered by humanity, William had been care- fully instructed from a child in the theological system to which his family was attached ; and he regarded that system with even more than the partiality which men generally feel for a hered- itary faith. He had ruminated on the great enigmas which had been discussed in the Synod of Dort, and had found in the austere and inflexible logic of the Genevese school some- thing which suited his intellect and his temper. That example of intolerance, indeed, which some of his predecessors had set he never imitated. For all persecutjon he felt a fixed aversion, which he avowed, not only where the avowal was obviously politic, but on occasions where it seemed that his interest would have been promoted by dissimulation or by silence. His theological opinions, however, were even more decided than those of his ancestors. The tenet of predestination was the keystone of his religion. He often declared that, if he were to abandon that tenet, he must abandon with it all belief in a superintending Providence, and must become a mere Epicu- rean. Except in this single instance, all the sap of his vigor- ous mind was early drawn away from the speculative to the practical. The faculties which are necessary for the conduct of important business ripened in him at a time of life when they have scarcely begun to blossom in ordinary men. Since Octavius the world had seen no such instance of precocious statesmanship. Skilful diplomatists were surprised to hear the weighty observations which at seventeen the Prince made on public affairs, and still more surprised to see a lad, in situa- tions in which he might have been expected to betray strong passion, preserve a composure as imperturbable as their own. At eighteen he sat among the fathers of the commonwealth, grave, discreet, and judicious as the oldest among them. At HISTORY OF ENGLAND 357 twenty-one, in a day of gloom and terror, he was placed at the head of the administration. At twenty-three he was renowned throughout Europe as a soldier and a politician. He had put domestic factions under his feet : he was the soul of a mighty coalition ; and he had contended with honour in the field against some of the greatest generals of the age. His personal tastes were those rather of a warrior than of a statesman : but he, like his great-grandfather, the silent prince who founded the Batavian commonwealth, occupies a far higher place among statesmen than among warriors. The event of battles, indeed, is not an unfailing test of the abilities of a commander ; and it would be peculiarly unjust to apply this test to William ; for it was his fortune to be almost always opposed to captains who were consummate masters of their art, and to troops far superior in discipline to his own. Yet there is reason to believe that he was by no means equal, as a general in the field, to some who ranked far below him in intellectual powers. To those whom he trusted he spoke on this subject with the magnanimous frankness of a man who had done great things, and who could well afford to acknowl- edge some deficiencies. He had never, he said, served an apprenticeship to the military profession. He had been placed, while still a boy, at the head of an army. Among his officers there had been none competent to instruct him. His own blunders and their consequences had been his only lessons. "I would give," he once exclaimed, "a good part of my estates to have served a few campaigns under the Prince of Conde before I had to command against him," It is not improbable that the circumstance which prevented William from attaining any eminent dexterity in strategy may have been favourable to the general vigour of his intellect. If his battles were not those of a great tactician, they entitled him to be called a great man. No disaster could for one moment deprive him of his firmness or of the entire possession of all his faculties. His defeats were repaired with such marvellous celerity that before his enemies had sung the Te Deum he 358 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY was again ready for conflict ; nor did his adverse fortune ever deprive him of the respect and confidence of his soldiers. That respect and confidence he owed in no small measure, to his personal courage. Courage, in the degree which is neces- sary to carry a soldier without disgrace through a campaign, is possessed, or might, under proper training, be acquired, by the great majority of men. But courage like that of William is rare indeed. He was proved by every test ; by war, by wounds, by painful and depressing maladies, by raging seas, by the imminent and constant risk of assassination, a risk which has shaken very strong nerves, a risk which severely tried even the adamantine fortitude of Cromwell. Yet none could ever discover what that thing was which the Prince of Orange feared. His advisers could with difficulty induce him to take any precaution against the pistols and daggers of conspirators,! Old sailors were amazed at the composure which he preserved amidst roaring breakers on a perilous coast. In battle his bravery made him conspicuous even among tens of thousands of brave warriors, drew forth the generous applause of hostile armies, and was scarcely ever questioned even by the injustice of hostile factions. During his first campaigns he exposed himself like a man who sought for death, was always foremost in the charge and last in the retreat, fought, sword in hand, in the thickest press, and, with a musket ball in his arm and the blood streaming over his cuirass, still stood his ground and waved his hat under the hottest fire. His friends adjured him to take more care of a life invaluable to his country ; and his most illustrious antago- nist, the great Conde, remarked, after the bloody day of ^ William was earnestly intreated by his friends, after the peace of Ryswick, to speak seriously to the French ambassador about the schemes of assassination which the Jacobites of St. Germains were constantly con- triving. The cold magnanimity with which these intimations of danger were received is singularly characteristic. To Bentinck, who had sent from Paris very alarming intelligence, William merely replied, at the end of a long letter of business, — "Pour les assasins je ne luy en ay pas voulu parler, croiant que c'etoit au desous de moy." May y%. 1698. I keep the original orthography, if it is to be so called. HISTORY OF ENGLAND 359 Seneff, that the Prince of Orange had in all things borne himself like an old general, except in exposing himself like a young soldier. William denied that he was guilty of temerity. It was, he said, from a sense of duty, and on a cool calculation of what the public interest required, that he was always at the post of danger. The troops which he commanded had been little used to war, and shrank from a close encounter with the veteran soldiery of France. It was necessary that their leader should show them how battles were to be won. And in truth more than one day which had seemed hopelessly lost was retrieved by the hardihood with which he rallied his broken battalions and cut down with his own hand the cowards who set the example of flight. Sometimes, however, it seemed that he had a strange pleasure in venturing his person. It was remarked that hig spirits were never so high and his manners never so gracious and easy as amidst the tumult and carnage of a battle. Even in his pastimes he liked the excitement of danger. Cards, chess, and billiards gave him no pleasure. The chase was his favourite recreation ; and he loved it most when it was most hazardous. His leaps were sometimes such that his boldest companions did not like to follow him. He seems even to have thought the most hardy field sports of England effeminate, and to have pined in the Great Park of Windsor for the game which he had been used to drive to bay in the forests of Guelders — wolves, and wild boars, and huge stags with sixteen antlers, ^ The audacity of his spirit was the more remarkable because his physical organization was unusually delicate. From a child he had been weak and sickly. In the prime of manhood his complaints had been aggravated by a severe attack of smallpox. 1 From Windsor he wrote to Bentinck, then ambassador at Paris. "J'ay pris avant hier un cerf dans la forest avec les chains du Pr. de Denm. et ay fait un assez joHe chasse, autant que ce vilain paiis le permest." ^^'^^^ '°- 1698. The spelling is bad, but not worse than Napoleon's. William wrote in better humour from Loo. " Nous avons pris deux gros cerfs, le premier dans Dorewaert, qui est un des plus gros que je sache avoir jamais pris. II porte seize." ^pi^ 1697. 36o SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY He was asthmatic and consumptive. His slender frame was shaken by a constant hoarse cough. He could not sleep unless his head was propped by several pillows, and could scarcely draw his breath in any but the purest air. Cruel headaches frequently tortured him. Exertion soon fatigued him. The physicians constantly kept up the hopes of his enemies by fixing some date beyond which, if there were anything certain in medical science, it was impossible that his broken constitution could hold out. Yet, through a life which was one long disease, the force of his mind never failed, on any great occasion, to bear up his suffering and languid body. He was born with violent passions and quick sensibilities : but the strength of his emotions was not suspected by the world. From the multitude his joy and his grief, his affection and his resentment, were hidden by a phlegmatic serenity which made him pass for the most cold-blooded of mankind. Those who brought him good news could seldom detect any sign of pleasure. Those who saw him after a defeat looked in vain for any trace of vexation. He praised and reprimanded, rewarded and punished, with the stern tranquillity of a Mo- hawk chief : but those who knew him well and saw him near were aware that under all this ice a fierce fire was constantly burning. It was seldom that anger deprived him of power over himself. But when he was really enraged the first out- break of his passion was terrible. It was indeed scarcely safe to approach him. On these rare occasions, however, as soon as he regained his self-command, he made such ample repara- tion to those whom he had wronged as tempted them to wish that he would go into a fury again. His affection was as impetuous as his wrath. Where he loved, he loved with the whole energy of his strong mind. When death separated him from what he loved, the few who witnessed his agonies trembled for his reason and his life. To a very small circle of intimate friends, on whose fidelity and secrecy he could abso- lutely depend, he was a different man from the reserved and stoical William whom the multitude supposed to be destitute HISTORY OF ENGLAND 361 of human feelings. He was kind, cordial, open, even con- vivial and jocose, would sit at table many hours, and would bear his full share in festive conversation. Highest in his favour stood a gentleman of his household named Bentinck, sprung from a noble Batavian race, and destined to be the founder of one of the great patrician houses of England. The fidelity of Bentinck had been tried by no common test. It was while the United Provinces were struggling for exist- ence against the French power that the young Prince on whom all their hopes were fixed was seized by the smallpox. That disease had been fatal to many members of his family, and at first wore, in his case, a peculiarly malignant aspect. The public consternation was great. The streets of the Hague were crowded from daybreak to sunset by persons anxiously asking how his Highness was. At length his complaint took a favourable turn. His escape was attributed partly to his own singular equanimity, and partly to the intrepid and indefati- gable friendship of Bentinck. From the hands of Bentinck alone William took food and medicine. By Bentinck alone William was lifted from his bed and laid down in it. "Whether Bentinck slept or not while I was ill," said William to Temple, with great tenderness, "' I know not. But this I know, that, through sixteen days and nights, I never once called for anything but that Bentinck was instantly at my side." Before the faithful servant had entirely per- formed his task, he had himself caught the contagion. Still, however, he bore up against drowsiness and fever till his master was pronounced convalescent. Then, at length, Bentinck asked leave to go home. It was time : for his limbs would no longer support him. He was in great danger, but recovered, and, as soon as he left his bed, hastened to the army, where, during many sharp campaigns, he was ever found, as he had been in peril of a different kind, close to William's side. Such was the origin of a friendship as warm and pure as any that ancient or modern history records. The descendants of Bentinck still preserve many letters written by William to 362 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY their ancestor : and it is not too much to say that no person who has not studied those letters can form a correct notion of the Prince's character. He whom even his admirers generally accounted the most distant and frigid of men here forgets all distinctions of rank, and pours out all his thoughts with the ingenuousness of a schoolboy. He imparts without reserve secrets of the highest moment. He explains with perfect sim-" plicity vast designs affecting all the governments of Europe. Mingled with his communications on such subjects are other communications of a very different, but perhaps not of a less interesting, kind. All his adventures, all his personal feel- ings, his long runs after enormous stags, his carousals on St. Hubert's day, the growth of his plantations, the failure of his melons, the state of his stud, his wish to procure an easy pad nag for his wife, his vexation at learning that one of his household, after ruining a girl of good family, refused to marry her, his fits of seasickness, his coughs, his headaches, his de- votional moods, his gratitude for the divine protection after a great escape, his struggles to submit himself to the divine will after a disaster, are described with an amiable garrulity hardly to have been expected from the most discreet and sedate states- man of the age. Still more remarkable is the careless effusion of his tenderness, and the brotherly interest which he takes in his friend's domestic felicity. When an heir is bom to Bentinck, " he will live, I hope," says William, " to be as good a fellow as you are ; and, if I should have a son, our chil- dren will love each other, I hope, as we have done." ^ Through life he continues to regard the little Bentincks with paternal kindness. He calls them by endearing diminutives : he takes charge of them in their father's absence, and, though vexed at being forced to refuse them any pleasure, will not suffer them to go on a hunting party, where there would be risk of a push from a stag's horn, or to sit up late at a riotous supper.^ ^ March 3. 1679. 2 " Voila en peu de mot le detail de nostre St. Hubert. Et j'ay eu soin que M. Woodstoc " (Bentinck's eldest son) " n'a point este h. la chasse, bien moin HISTORY OF ENGLAND 363 When their mother is taken ill during her husband's absence, William, in the midst of business of the highest moment, finds time to send off several expresses in one day with short notes containing intelligence of her state.^ On one occasion, when she is pronounced out of danger after a severe attack, the Prince breaks forth into fervent expressions of gratitude to God. "I write," he says, "with tears of joy in my eyes."^ There is a singular charm in such letters, penned by a man whose irresistible energy and inflexible firmness extorted the respect of his enemies, whose cold and ungracious demeanour repelled the attachment of almost all his partisans, and whose mind was occupied by gigantic schemes which have changed the face of the world. His kindness was not misplaced. Bentinck was early pro- nounced by Temple to be the best and truest servant that ever prince had the good fortune to possess, and continued through life to merit that honourable character. The friends were in- deed made for each other. William wanted neither a guide nor a flatterer. Having a firm and just reliance on his own judgment, he was not partial to counsellors who dealt much in suggestions and objections. At the same time he had too much discernment, and too much elevation of mind, to be gratified by sycophancy. The confidant of such a prince ought to be a man, not of inventive genius or commanding spirit, but brave and faithful, capable of executing orders punctually, of keeping secrets inviolably, of observing facts vigilantly, and of reporting them truly ; and such a man was Bentinck. William was not less fortunate in marriage than in friend- ship. Yet his marriage had not at first promised much domes- tic happiness. His choice had been determined chiefly by political considerations : nor did it seem likely that any strong affection would grow up between a handsome girl of sixteen, au soupe, quoyqu'il fut icy. Vous pouvez pourtant croire que de n'avoir pas chasse I'a un peu mortifie, mais je ne I'ay pas ause prendre sur moy, puisque vous m'aviez dit que vous ne le souhaitiez pas." From Loo, Nov. 4. 1679. 1 On the 15th of June, 1688. 2 Sept. 6. 1679. 364 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY well disposed indeed, and naturally intelligent, but ignorant and simple, and a bridegroom who, though he had not com- pleted his twenty-eighth year, was in constitution older than her father, whose manner was chilling, and whose head was constantly occupied by public business or by field sports. For a time William was a negligent husband. He was indeed drawn away from his wife by other women, particularly by one of her ladies, Elizabeth Villiers, who, though destitute of personal at- tractions, and disfigured by a hideous squint, possessed talents which well fitted her to partake his cares.^ He was indeed ashamed of his- errors, and spared no pains to conceal them: but, in spite of all his precautions, Mary well knew that he was not strictly faithful to her. Spies and tale-bearers, encour- aged by her father, did their best to inflame her resentment. A man of a very different character, the excellent Ken, who was her chaplain at the Hague during some months, was so much incensed by her wrongs that he, wjth more zeal than dis- cretion, threatened to reprimand her husband severely.^ She, however, bore her injuries with a meekness and patience which deserved, and gradually obtained, William's esteem and grati- tude. Yet there still remained one cause of estrangement. A time would probably come when the Princess, who had been educated only to work embroidery, to play on the spinet, and to read the Bible and the Whole Duty of Man, would be the chief of a great monarchy, and would hold the balance of Europe, while her lord, ambitious, versed in affairs, and bent on great enterprises, would find in the British government no place marked out for him, and would hold power only from her bounty and during her pleasure. It is not strange that a man so fond of authority as William, and so conscious of a genius for command, should have strongly felt that jealousy which, during a few hours of royalty, put dissension between Guild- ford Dudley and the Lady Jane, and which produced a rupture 1 See Swift's account of her in the Journal to Stella. 2 Henry Sidney's Journal of March 31. 1680, in Mr. Blencowe's interesting collection. HISTORY OF ENGLAND 365 still more tragical between Darnley and the Queen of Scots. The Princess of Orange had not the faintest suspicion of her husband's feelings. Her preceptor, Bishop Compton, had in- structed her carefully in religion, and had especially guarded her mind against the arts of Roman Catholic divines, but had left her profoundly ignorant of the English constitution and of her own position. She knew that her marriage vow bound her to obey her husband ; and it had never occurred to her that the relation in which they stood to each other might one day be inverted. She had been nine years married before she dis- covered the cause of William's discontent ; nor would she ever have learned it from himself. In general his temper inclined him rather to brood over his griefs than to give utterance to them ; and in this particular case his lips were sealed by a very natural delicacy. At length a complete explanation and reconciliation were brought about by the agency of Gilbert Burnet. . . . All the peculiarities of his character fitted him to be the peacemaker between William and Mary. When persons who ought to esteem and love each other are kept asunder, as often happens, by some cause which three words of frank explana- tion would remove, they are fortunate if they possess an indis- creet friend who blurts out the whole truth. Burnet plainly told the Princess what the feeling was which preyed upon her husband's mind. She learned for the first time, with no small astonishment, that, when she became Queen of England, William would not share her throne. She warmly declared that there was no proof of conjugal submission and affection which she was not ready to give. Burnet, with many apologies and with solemn protestations that no human being had put words into his mouth, informed her that the remedy was in her own hands. She might easily, when the crown devolved on her, induce her Parliament not only to give the regal title to her husband, but even to transfer to him by a legislative act the administration of the government. " But," he added, " your Royal Highness ought 10 consider well before you 366 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY announce any such resolution. For it is a resolution which, having once been announced, cannot safely or easily be retracted," " I want no time for consideration," answered Mary. ''It is enough that I have an opportunity of showing my regard for the Prince. Tell him what I say ; and bring him to me that he may hear it from my own lips." Burnet went in quest of William ; but William was many miles off after a stag. It was not till the next day that the decisive interview took place. " I did not know till yesterday," said Mary, "that there was such a difference between the laws of England and the laws of God. But I now promise you that you shall always bear rule ; and, in return, I ask only this, that, as I shall observe the precept which enjoins wives to obey their husbands, you will observe that which enjoins husbands to love their wives." Her generous affection completely gained the heart of William. From that time till the sad day when he was carried away in fits from her dying bed, there was entire friendship and confidence between them. Many of her letters to him are extant ; and they contain abundant evidence that this man, unamiable as he was in the eyes of the multi- tude, had succeeded in inspiring a beautiful and virtuous woman, born his superior, with a passion fond even to idolatry. (b) Invitation to William The Whigs saw that their time was come. Whether they should draw the sword against the government had, during six or seven years, been, in their view, merely a question of prudence ; and prudence itself now urged them to take a bold course. In May, before the birth of the Prince of Wales, and while it was still uncertain whether the Declaration would or would not be read in the churches, Edward Russell had repaired to the Hague. He had strongly represented to the Prince of Orange the state of the public mind, and had advised his Highness to appear in England at the head of a strong body of troops, and to call the people to arms. HISTORY OF ENGLAND 367 William had seen, at a glance, the whole importance of the crisis. " Now or never," he exclaimed in Latin to Van Dykvelt.^ To Russell he held more guarded language, admitted that the distempers of the state were such as required an extraordinary remedy, but spoke with earnestness of the chance of failure, and of the calamities which failure might bring on Britain and on Europe. He knew well that many who talked in high lan- guage about sacrificing their lives and fortunes for their country would hesitate when the prospect of another Bloody Circuit was brought close to them. He wanted therefore to have, not vague professions of good will, but distinct invitations and promises of support subscribed by powerful and eminent men. Russell remarked that it would be dangerous to entrust the design to a great number of persons. William assented, and said that a few signatures would be sufficient, if they were the signatures of statesmen who represented great interests.^ With this answer Russell returned to London, where he found the excitement greatly increased and daily increasing. The imprisonment of the Bishops and the delivery of the Queen made his task easier than he could have anticipated. He lost no time in collecting the voices of the chiefs of the opposition. His principal coadjutor in this work was Henry Sidney, brother of Algernon. It is remarkable that both Edward Russell and Henry Sidney had been in the household of James, that both had, partly on public and partly on private grounds, become his enemies, and that both had to avenge the blood of near kinsmen who had, in the same year, fallen victims to his implacable severity. Here the resemblance ends. Russell, with considerable abilities, was proud, acrimonious, restless, and violent. Sidney, with a sweet temper and win- ning manners, seemed to be deficient in capacity and knowl- edge, and to be sunk in voluptuousness and indolence. His face and form were eminently handsome. In his youth he had been the terror of husbands ; and even now, at near fifty, ^ "Aut nunc, aut nunquam." — Witsen MS. quoted by Wagenaar, book ix. " Burnet, i. 763. 368 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY he was the favourite of women and the envy of younger men. He had formerly resided at the Hague in a pubUc character, and had then succeeded in obtaining a large share of William's confidence. Many wondered at this : for it seemed that be- tween the most austere of statesmen and the most dissolute of idlers there could be nothing in common. Swift, many years later, could not be convinced that one whom he had known only as an illiterate and frivolous old rake could really have played a great part in a great revolution. Yet a less acute ob- server than Swift might have been aware that there is a certain tact, resembling an instinct, which is often wanting to great orators and philosophers, and which is often found in persons who, if judged by their conversation or by their writings, would be pronounced simpletons. Indeed, when a man possesses this tact, it is in some sense an advantage to him that he is des- titute of those more showy talents which would make him an object of admiration, of envy, and of fear. Sidney was a remarkable instance of this truth. Incapable, ignorant, and dis- sipated as he seemed to be, he understood, or rather felt, with whom it was necessary to be reserved, and with whom he might safely venture to be communicative. The consequence was that he did what Mordaunt, with all his vivacity and invention, or Burnet, with all his multifarious knowledge and fluent elocu- tion, never could have done.^ With the old Whigs there could be no difficulty. In their opinion there had been scarcely a moment, during many years, at which the public wrongs would not have justified resistance. Devonshire, who might be regarded as their chief, had private as well as public wrongs to revenge. He went into the scheme with his whole heart, and answered for his party .^ Russell opened the design to Shrewsbury. Sidney sounded Halifax. Shrewsbury took his part with a courage and decision 1 Sidney's Diary and Correspondence, edited by Mr. Blencowe ; Mackay's Memoirs with Swift's note ; Burnet, i. 763. ^Burnet, i. 764; Letter in cipher to WilHam, dated June iS. 168S, in Dalrymple. HISTORY OF ENGLAND 369 which, at a later period, seemed to be wanting to his character. He at once agreed to set his estate, his honours, and his Hfe on the stake. But Hahfax received the first hint of the project in a way which showed that it would be useless, and perhaps hazardous, to be explicit. He was indeed not the man for such an enterprise. His intellect was inexhaustibly fertile of distinc- tions and objections ; his temper calm and unad venturous. He was ready to oppose the court to the utmost in the House of Lords and by means of anonymous writings : but he was little disposed to exchange his lordly repose for the insecure and agitated life of a conspirator, to be in the power of accom- plices, to live in constant dread of warrants and King's mes- sengers, nay, perhaps to end his days on a scaffold, or to live on alms in some back street of the Hague. He therefore let fall some words which plainly indicated that he did not wish to be privy to the intentions of his more daring and impetuous friends. Sidney understood him and said no more.^ The next application was made to Danby, and had far better success. Indeed, for his bold and active spirit the danger and the excitement, which were insupportable to the more delicately organized mind of Halifax, had a strong fascination. The different characters of the two statesmen were legible in their faces. The brow, the eye, and the mouth of Halifax indicated a powerful intellect and an exquisite sense of the ludicrous ; but the expression was that of a sceptic, of a voluptuary, of a man not likely to venture his all on a single hazard, or to be a martyr in any cause. To those who are acquainted with his countenance it will not seem wonderful that the writer in whom he most delighted was Montaigne.^ Danby was a skeleton ; and his meagre and wrinkled, though handsome and noble, face strongly expressed both the keenness of his parts and the restlessness of his ambition. Already he had once risen from 1 Burnet, i. 764; Letter in cipher to William, dated June 18, 16SS. ^ As to Montaigne, see Halifax's Letter to Cotton. I am not sure that the head of Halifax in Westminster Abbey does not give a more lively notion of him than any painting or engraving that I have seen. 3;o SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY obscurity to the height of power. He had then fallen head- long from his elevation. His life had been in danger. He had passed years in a prison. He was now free : but this did not content him ; he wished to be again great. Attached as he was to the Anglican Church, hostile as he was to the PVencli ascendency, he could not hope to be great in a court swarming with Jesuits and obsequious to the House of Bourbon. But, if he bore a chief part in a revolution which should con- found all the schemes of the Papists, which should put an end to the long vassalage of England, and which should transfer the regal power to an illustrious pair whom he had united, he might emerge from his eclipse with new splendour. The Whigs, whose animosity had nine years before driven him from office, would, on his auspicious reappearance, join their acclamations to the acclamations of his old friends the Cavaliers. Already there had been a complete reconciliation between him and one of the most distinguished of those who had formerly been managers of his impeachment, the Earl of Devonshire. The two noblemen had met at a village in the Peak, and had exchanged assurances of good will. Devonshire had frankly owned that the Whigs had been guilty of a great injustice, and had declared that they were now convinced of their error. Danby, on his side, had also recantations to make. He had once held, or pretended to hold, the doctrine of pas- sive obedience in the largest sense. Under his administration and with his sanction, a law had been proposed which, if it had been passed, would have excluded from Parliament and office all who refused to declare on oath that they thought resistance in every case unlawful. But his vigorous under- standing, now thoroughly awakened by anxiety for the public interests and for his own, was no longer to be duped, if indeed it ever had been duped, by such childish fallacies. He at once gave in his own adhesion to the conspiracy. He then exerted himself to obtain the concurrence of Compton, the suspended Bishop of London, and succeeded without difficulty. No prelate had been so insolently and unjustly treated by the government HISTORY OF ENGLAND 371 as Compton ; nor had any prelate so much to expect from a revolution : for he had directed the education of the Princess of Orange, and was supposed to possess a large share of her confidence. He had, like his brethren, strongly maintained, as long as he was not oppressed, that it was a crime to resist oppression ; but, since he had stood before the High Com- mission, a new light had broken in upon his mind.^ Both Danby and Compton were desirous to secure the assist- ance of Nottingham. The whole plan was opened to him ; and he approved of it. But in a few days he began to be unquiet. His mind was not sufficiently powerful to emancipate itself from the prejudices of education. He went about from divine to divine proposing in general terms hypothetical cases of tyranny and inquiring whether in such cases resistance would be lawful. The answers which he obtained increased his distress. He at length told his accomplices that he could go no further with them. If they thought him capable of betray- ing them, they might stab him ; and he should hardly blame them ; for, by drawing back after going so far, he had given them a kind of right over his life. They had, however, he assured them, nothing to fear from him : he would keep their secret ; he could not help wishing them success ; but his con- science would not suffer him to take an active part in a rebel- lion. They heard his confession with suspicion and disdain. Sidney, whose notions of a conscientious scruple were ex- tremely vague, informed the Prince that Nottingham had taken fright. It is due to Nottingham, however, to say that the general tenor of his life justifies us in believing his conduct on this occasion to have been perfectly honest, though most unwise and irresolute .^ The agents of the Prince had more complete success with Lord Lumley, who knew himself to be, in spite of the eminent ^ See Danby's Introduction to the papers which he published in 1710; Burnet, i. 764. 2 Burnet, i. 764; Sidney to the Prince of Orange, June 30. 1688, in Dalrymple. 372 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY service which he had performed at the time of the Western insurrection, abhorred at Whitehall, not only as a heretic but as a renegade, and who was therefore more eager than most of those who had been born Protestants to take arms in defence of Protestantism. ^ During June the meetings of those who were in the secret were frequent. At length, on the last day of the month, the day on which the Bishops were pronounced not guilty, the decisive step was taken. A formal invitation, transcribed by Sidney, but drawn up by some person more skilled than Sidney in the art of composition, was despatched to the Hague. In this paper William was assured that nineteen-twentieths of the English people were desirous of a change, and would willingly join to effect it, if only they could obtain the help of such a force from abroad as might secure those who should rise in arms from the danger of being dispersed and slaughtered before they could form themselves into anything like military order. If his Highness would appear in the island at the head of some troops, tens of thousands would hasten to his standard. He would soon find himself at the head of a force greatly superior to the whole regular army of England. Nor could that army be implicitly depended on by the government. The officers were discontented ; and the common soldiers shared that aversion to Popery which was general in the class from which they were taken. In the navy Protestant feeling was still stronger. It was important to take some decisive step while things were in this state. The enterprise would be far more arduous if it were deferred till the King, by remodelling boroughs and regiments, had procured a Parliament and an army on which he could rely. The conspirators, therefore, implored the Prince to come among them with as little delay as possible. They pledged their honour that they would join him ; and they undertook to secure the co-operation of as large a number of persons as could safely be trusted with so mo- mentous and perilous a secret. On one point they thought it 1 Burnet, i. 763; Lumley to William, May 31. 1688, in Dalrymple. HISTORY OF ENGLAND 373 their duty to remonstrate with his Highness. He had not taken advantage of the opinion which the great body of the English people had formed respecting the late birth. He had, on the contrary, sent congratulations to Whitehall, and had thus seemed to acknowledge that the child who was called Prince of Wales was rightful heir of the throne. This was a grave error, and had damped the zeal of many. Not one person in a thousand doubted that the boy was supposititious ; and the Prince would be wanting to his own interests if the suspicious circumstances which had attended the Queen's confinement were not put prominently forward among his reasons for taking arms.^ This paper was signed in cipher by the seven chiefs of the conspiracy — Shrewsbury, Devonshire, Danby, Lumley, Compton, Russell, and Sidney. Herbert undertook to be their messenger. His errand was one of no ordinary peril. He assumed the garb of a common sailor, and in this disguise reached the Dutch coast in safety, on the Friday after the trial of the Bishops. He instantly hastened to the Prince. Bentinck and Van Dykvelt were summoned, and several days were passed in deliberation. The first result of this deliberation was that the prayer for the Prince of Wales ceased to be read in the Princess's chapel.^ From his wife William had no opposition to apprehend. Her understanding had been completely subjugated by his ; and, what is more extraordinary, he had won her entire affection. He was to her in the place of the parents whom she had lost by death and by estrangement, of the children who had been denied to her prayers, and of the country from which she was banished. His empire over her heart was divided only with her God, To her father she had probably never been attached : she had quitted him young : many years had elapsed since she had seen him ; and no part of his conduct to her, since her marriage, had indicated tenderness on his part, or had been calculated to call forth tenderness on hers. He had done all in his power to disturb her domestic happiness, and had ^ See the invitation at length in Dalrymple. 2 Sidney's Letter to WiUiam, June 30. 1688 ; Avaux Neg., July |g. ||. 374 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY established a system of spying, eavesdropping, and tale-bearing under her roof. He had a far greater revenue than any of his predecessors had ever possessed, and allowed to her younger sister thirty or forty thousand pounds a year : ^ but the heiress presumptive of his throne had never received from him the smallest pecuniary assistance, and was scarcely able to make that appearance which became her high rank among European princesses. She had ventured to intercede with him on behalf of her old friend and preceptor Compton, who, for refusing to commit an act of flagitious injustice, had been suspended from his episcopal functions ; but she had been ungraciously re- pulsed.2 From the day on which it had become clear that she and her husband were determined not to be parties to the subversion of the English constitution, one chief object of the politics of James had been to injure them both. He had recalled the British regiments from Holland. He had con- spired with Tyrconnel and with France against Mary's rights, and had made arrangements for depriving her of one at least of the three crowns to which, at his death, she would have been entitled. It was now believed by the great body of his people, and by many persons high in rank and distinguished by abilities, that he had introduced a supposititious Prince of Wales into the royal family in order to deprive her of a magnificent inheritance ; and there is no reason to doubt that she partook of the prevailing suspicion. That she should love such a father was impossible. Her religious principles, indeed, were so strict that she would probably have tried to perform what she considered as her duty, even to a father whom she did not love. On the present occasion, however, she judged that the claim of James to her obedience ought to yield to a claim more sacred. And indeed all divines and publicists agree in this, that, when the daughter of a prince of one country is married to a prince of another country, she is bound to forget her own people and her father's house, and, in the event of a rupture between her husband and her parents, to side 1 Bonrepaux, July ^|. 1687. ^ Birch's Extracts, in the British Museum. HISTORY OF ENGLAND 375 with her husband. This is the undoubted rule even when the husband is in the wrong ; and to Mary the enterprise which Wilham meditated appeared not only just, but holy. But, though she carefully abstained from doing or saying anything that could add to his difficulties, those difficulties were serious indeed. They were in truth but imperfectly understood even by some of those who invited him over, and have been but imperfectly described by some of those who have written the history of his expedition. The obstacles which he might expect to encounter on Eng- lish ground, though the least formidable of the obstacles which stood in the way of his design, were yet serious. He felt that it would be madness in him to imitate the example of Mon- mouth, to cross the sea with a few British adventurers, and to trust to a general rising of the population. It was necessary, and it was pronounced necessary by all those who invited him over, that he should carry an army with him. Yet who could answer for the effect which the appearance of such an army might produce .? The government was indeed justly odious. But would the English people, altogether unaccustomed to the interference of continental powers in English disputes, be in- clined to look with favour on a deliverer who was surrounded by foreign soldiers ? If any part of the royal forces resolutely withstood the invaders, would not that part soon have on its side the patriotic sympathy of millions ? A defeat would be fatal to the whole undertaking. A bloody victory gained in the heart of the island by the mercenaries of the States General over the Coldstream Guards and the Buffs would be almost as great a calamity as a defeat. Such a victory would be the most cruel wound ever inflicted on the national pride of one of the proudest of nations. The crown so won would never be worn in peace or security. The hatred with which the High Commission and the Jesuits were regarded would give place to the more intense hatred which would be inspired by the alien conquerors ; and many, who had hitherto contemplated t;he power of France with dread and loathing, would say that, 376 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY if a foreign yoke must be borne, there was less ignominy in submitting to France than in submitting to Holland. These considerations might well have made William uneasy, even if all the military means of the United Provinces had been at his absolute disposal. But in truth it seemed very doubtful whether he would he able to obtain the assistance of a single battalion. Of all the difficulties with which he had to struggle, the greatest, though little noticed by English histo- rians, arose from the constitution of the Batavian republic. No great society has ever existed during a long course of years under a polity so inconvenient. The States General could not make war or peace, could not conclude any alliance or levy any tax, without the consent of the States of every province. The States of a province could not give such consent without the consent of every municipality which had a share in the representation. Every municipality was, in some sense, a sover- eign state, and, as such, claimed the right of communicating directly with foreign ambassadors, and of concerting with them the means of defeating schemes on which other municipalities were intent. In some town councils the party which had, during several generations, regarded the influence of the Stadt- holders with jealousy had great power. At the head of this party were the magistrates of the noble city of Amsterdam, which was then at the height of prosperity. They had, ever since the peace of Nimeguen, kept up a friendly correspond- ence with Louis through the instrumentality of his able and active envoy the Count of Avaux. Propositions brought for- ward by the Stadtholder as indispensable to the security of the commonwealth, sanctioned by all the provinces except Holland, and sanctioned by seventeen of the eighteen town councils of Holland, had repeatedly been negatived by the single voice of Amsterdam. The only constitutional remedy in such cases was that deputies from the cities which were agreed should pay a visit to the city which dissented, for the purpose of expostulation. The number of deputies was unlimited : they might continue to expostulate as long as they HISTORY OF ENGLAND 377 thought fit ; and meanwhile all their expenses were defrayed by the obstinate community which refused to yield to their argu- ments. This absurd mode of coercion had once been tried with success on the little town of Gorkum, but was not likely to produce much effect on the mighty and opulent Amsterdam, renowned throughout the world for its haven bristling with in- numerable masts, its canals bordered by stately mansions, its gorgeous hall of state, walled, roofed, and floored with polished marble, its warehouses filled with the most costly productions of Ceylon and Surinam, and its Exchange resounding with the endless hubbub of all the languages spoken by civilized men.^ The disputes between the majority which supported the Stadtholder and the minority headed by the magistrates of Amsterdam had repeatedly run so high that bloodshed had seemed to be inevitable. On one occasion the Prince had attempted to bring the refractory deputies to punishment as traitors. On another occasion the gates of Amsterdam had been barred against him, and troops had been raised to defend the privileges of the municipal council. That the rulers of this great city would ever consent to an expedition offensive in the highest degree to Louis whom they courted, and likely to aggrandize the House of Orange which they abhorred, was not likely. Yet, without their consent, such an expedition could not legally be undertaken. To quell their opposition by main force was a course from which, in different circumstances, the resolute and daring Stadtholder would not have shrunk. But at that moment it was most important that he should carefully avoid every act which could be represented as tyrannical. He could not venture to violate the fundamental laws of Holland at the very moment at which he was drawing the sword against his father-in-law for violating the fundamental laws of England. The violent subversion of one free constitution would have been a strange prelude to the violent restoration of another.^ 1 Avaux Neg., ^^ 16S3. 2 As to the relation in which the Stadtholder and the city of Amsterdam stood towards each other, see Avaux, J>assim. 3/8 SELECTIONS FROM MACAULAY There was yet another difficulty which has been too httle noticed by EngHsh writers, but which was never for a moment absent from Wilham's mind. In the expedition which he meditated he could succeed only by appealing to the Protestant feeling of England, and by stimulating that feeling till it became, for a time, the dominant and almost the exclusive sentiment of the nation. This would indeed have been a very simple course, had the end of all his politics been to effect a revolution in our island and to reign there. But he had in view an ulterior end which could be obtained only by the help of princes sincerely attached to the Church of Rome. He was desirous to unite the Empire, the Catholic King, and the Holy See, with England and Holland, in a league against the French ascendency. It was therefore necessary that, while striking the greatest blow ever struck in defence of Protestant- ism, he should yet contrive not to lose the good will of govern- ments which regarded Protestantism as a deadly heresy. Such were the complicated difficulties of this great under- taking. Continental statesmen saw a part of those difficulties; British statesmen another part. One capacious and powerful mind alone took them all in at one view, and determined to surmount them all. It was no easy thing to subvert the English government by means of a foreign army without galling the national pride of Englishmen. It was no easy thing to obtain from that Batavian faction which regarded France with par- tiality, and the House of Orange with aversion, a decision in favour of an expedition which would confound all the schemes of France, and raise the House of Orange to the height of greatness. It was no easy thing to lead enthusiastic Protestants on a crusade against Popery with the good wishes of almost all Popish governments and of the Pope himself. Yet all these things William effected. All his objects, even those which appeared most incompatible with each other, he attained com- pletely and at once. The whole history of ancient and of modern times records no other such triumph of statesmanship. HISTORY OF ENGLAND 379 (