It becomes plain, perhaps, why at the outset we spoke of style. One hears little about Shakspere's style, or Scott's, or Shelley's. Where there are matters of larger interest—character, dramatic situations, passion, lofty conceptions, abstract truth-there is little room for attention to so superficial a quality, or rather to a quality that has some such superficial aspects.

But in the work of less creative writers, a purely literary interest, if it be aroused at all, must centre chiefly in this. And herein lies Macaulay's significance to the literary world to-day.

Upon the professional writers of that world, as distinct from the readers, his influence has been

no less than profound, partly for

evil, but chiefly, we think (Mr. Morley notwithstanding), for good.

His name was mentioned at the beginning of our sketch in connection with journalism. It is just because the literary development of our age has moved so rapidly along this line, that Macaulay's influence has been so far-reaching. The journalist must have an active pen. He cannot indulge in meditation while the ink dries. He cannot stop to arrange and rearrange his ideas, to study the cadence of his sentences, to seek for the unique or the suggestive word. What Macaulay did was to furnish the model of just such a style as would meet this need—ready, easy, rapid, yet never loose or obscure. He seems to have found his way by

20. Influence on

Journalism.

instinct to all those expedients which make writing easy-short, direct sentences, commonplace words, constant repetition and balance of form, adapted quotations, and stock phrases from the Bible or Prayer-Book or from the language of the professions, politics, and trade. This style he impressed upon a generation of journalists that was ready to receive it and keenly alive to its value.

The word journalist is scarcely broad enough to cover the class of writers here meant. For the class includes, in addition to the great “press tribe” from editor to reporter and reviewer, every writer of popular literature, every one who appeals to a miscellaneous public, who undertakes to make himself a medium between special intelligence and general intelligence. And there are thousands of these writers to-day-in editorial chairs, on magazine staffs, on political, educational, and scientific commissions—who are consciously or unconsciously employing the convenient instrument which Macaulay did so much toward perfecting seventy-five years ago. The evidence is on every hand. One listens to a lecture by a scientist who, it is quite possible, never read a paragraph of Macaulay, and catches, before long, words like these: “There is no reversal of nature's processes. The world has come from a condition of things essentially different from the present. It is moving toward a condition of things essentially different from the present.” Or one turns to an editorial in a daily paper and reads : “It will be ever thus with all the movements in this country to which a revolutionary interpretation can be attached. The mass and body of the people of the United States are a level-headed, sober-minded people. They are an upright and a

. solvent people. They love their government. They are proud of their government. Its credit is dear to them. Enlisted in its cause, party lines sag loose upon the voters or disappear altogether from their contemplation." The ear-marks are very plain to see.

We would not make the mistake of attributing too many and too large effects to a single cause. Life and art are very complex matters and the agencies at work are quite beyond our calculation. There is always danger of exaggerating the importance of a single influence. The trend of things is not easily disturbed—the history of the world never yet turned upon the cast of a die or the length of a woman's nose. In spite of Jeffrey's testimony-and it cannot be lightly brushed aside--we are not ready to give Macaulay the whole credit for inventing this style. Nor do we believe that journalism would be materially different from what it is to-day, even though Macaulay had never written a line. But it does not seem too much to admit that the first vigorous impulse came from him and that the manner is deservedly associated with his name.

In itself, as has been pointed out, it is not a

beautiful thing. It is a thing of mannerisms, and these we have not hesitated to call vices. From the point of view of literature they are vices, blemishes on the face of true art.

But the style is useful none the less. The ready writer is not concerned about beauty, he does not profess to be an artist. He has intelligence to convey, and the simplest and clearest medium is for his purpose the best. He will continue to use this serviceable medium nor trouble himself about its "unlovely staccato” and its gaudy tinsel. Meanwhile the literary artist may pursue his way in search of a more elusive music and a more iridescent beauty, satisfied with the tithe of Macaulay's popularity if only he can attain to some measure of his own ideals.

But Macaulay himself should be remembered for his real greatness. The facile imitator of the 21. Real Great- tricks of his pen should beware

of the ingratitude of assuming that these were the measure of his mind. These vices are virtues in their place, but they are not high virtues, and they are not the virtues that made Macaulay great. His greatness lay in the qualities that we have tried to insist upon from the first, qualities that are quite beyond imitation, the power of bringing instantly into one mental focus the accumulations of a prodigious memory, and the range of vision, the grasp of detail, and the insight into men, measures, and events, that enabled him to reduce to beautiful order the chaos of human history.

CHRONOLOGY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

1800. Macaulay born, Oct. 25, at Rothley Temple,

Leicestershire. 1818. Entered Trinity College, Cambridge. (B. A.,

1822; M. A., 1825.) 1823. Began contributing to Knight's quarterly Maga

zine. 1824. Elected Fellow of Trinity. 1825. Began contributing to Edinburgh Review. 1826. Called to the Bar. 1830. Entered Parliament. 1831. Speeches on Reform Bill. 1834. Went to India as member of the Supreme Coun

cil. 1837. Indian Penal Code. 1838. Returned to England. Tour in Italy. 1839. Elected to Parliament for Edinburgh. Secretary

at War. 1842. Lays of Ancient Rome. 1843. Collected edition of Essays. 1848. History of England, vols. i. and ii. (Vols. iii.

and iv. 1855; vol. v. 1861.) 1852. Failure in health. 1857. Made Baron Macaulay of Rothley. 1859. Died Dec. 28. (Interred in Westminster Abbey.)

The standard edition of Macaulay's works is that edited by his sister, Lady Trevelyan, in eight volumes, and published at London, 1866; reprinted at New York, by Harper Bros. The authorized biography is that by his nephew, G. O. Trevelyan, a book which is exceedingly interesting and which takes high rank among English