stops to brood over an incident or a character, with an inner eye intent on penetrating to the lowest depth of motive and cause, to the furthest complexity of impulse, calculation, and subtle incentive. The spirit of analysis is not in him. His whole mind runs in action and movement; it busies itself with eager interest in all objective particulars. He is seized by the external and the superficial, and revels in every detail that appeals to the five senses. 66 It may be noticed that the remarkable interest he often awakens in a story, which he tells so admirably, is nearly always the interest of adventure, never the interest of psychological analysis. Events and outward actions are told with incomparable clearness and vigor-but a thick curtain hangs before the inward theatre of the mind, which is never revealed on his stage.

Another quality which hurts Macaulay in the opinion of men who are accustomed to careful and accurate thinking, though it is another reason for his popularity with the masses, is the extreme positiveness which pervades his writings. He represents everything as absolutely certain, and " goes forward with a grand confidence" in himself, his facts, and his opinions, which is delightful to many, but displeasing to those who know how extremely uncertain just these very things are. Macaulay is a "dealer in unqualified propositions."3 However much obscurity may envelop a fact of history or a subject in literature, he marches through the intricacies of things in a blaze of certainty." This confident tone is partly the expression of Macaulay's character, for he was a man of very positive. convictions; but it is also, perhaps, a rhetorical quality cultivated in the interest of absolute clearness to the ordinary mind. Eschewing high thought on the one hand, and deep feeling on the other, he marched down a middle road of resonant commonplace, quite certain that where

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1

1 Mr. John Morley.

2 J. C. Morrison.

"Mr. Morley.

'Bang, whang, whang, goes the drum,

And tootle-tee-tootle the fife,'

the densest crowd, marching in time, will follow the music." 1 A dense crowd has, indeed, followed Macaulay's drum and trumpet style with great satisfaction; but persons of highly cultivated taste are disposed to stop their ears in the presence of his resounding, banging phrases. Pattison well expressed the feeling of this class of readers when he said: "He has a constant tendency to glaring colors, to strong effects, and will always be striking violent blows. He is not merely exuberant, but excessive. There is an overwhelming confidence about his tone; he expresses himself in trenchant phrases, which are like challenges to an opponent to stand up and deny them. His propositions have no qualifications. Uninstructed readers like this assurance, as they like a physician who has no doubt about their case. But a sense of distrust grows upon the more circumspect reader as he follows page after page of Macaulay's categorical affirmations about matters which our own experience of life teaches us to be of a contingent nature. We inevitably think of a saying attributed to Lord Melbourne, 'I wish I were as cock-sure of any one thing as Macaulay is of everything.

92

This is what critics mean when they speak of Macaulay's inaccuracy. It is not that his memory is at fault or that his learning is inadequate, but that the rush and the vigor of his thought lead him occasionally into sweeping assertions which are really exaggerations. His writings abound in superlative expressions; his style is marked by a wonderful vigor that sometimes overshoots the mark. When a difficult question crosses his path, he disposes of it in a dashing way with some simple, easy answer, which everyone can understand, but which more profound thinkers perceive to be inadequate and unsatisfactory. It is cer

'J. C. Morrison.

2 Encyclopædia Britannica.

tain, however, that Macaulay was never intentionally inaccurate, and that he never knowingly called black white, or white black. He is a thoroughly honest, manly writer; and his exaggerations are only manifestations of that heartiness which was a part of his strong character.

To sum up, Macaulay, as Mr. Frederick Harrison has remarked, has led millions who read no one else, or who never read before, to know something of the past, and to enjoy reading. Let us be thankful for his energy, learning, brilliance. He is no priest, philosopher, or master; but let us delight in him as a companion. In one thing all agree-critics and the public, friends and opponentsMacaulay's was a life of purity, honor, courage, generosity, affection, and manly perseverance, almost without a stain or a defect. His was a fine, generous, honorable, and sterling nature. His books deserve their vast popularity; but Macaulay must not be judged among philosophers nor even among the greatest masters of the English language. He stands between philosophic historians and the public very much as journals and periodicals stand between the masses and great libraries. Macaulay is a glorified journalist and reviewer, who brings the matured results of scholars to the man in the street in a form that he can remember and enjoy, when he could not make use of a learned book. He performs the office of the ballad-maker or story-teller in an age before books were common. And it is largely due to the influence of his style that the best journals and periodicals of our day are written in a style so clear, so direct, so resonant.1

The technical elements of Macaulay's style can be profitably studied only in connection with the text of his writings; all discussion of such matters is therefore reserved for the Notes (see p. 104).

'This paragraph is based, with some changes, upon a portion of Mr. Harrison's article in The Forum for September, 1894.

III. MACAULAY ON JOHNSON.

MACAULAY wrote two articles on Samuel Johnson, twenty-five years apart, and very different in character. The first appeared in the Edinburgh Review in September, 1831, as a review of J. W. Croker's edition of "Boswell's Life of Johnson." Croker1 was one of Macaulay's political opponents in the House of Commons, twenty years his senior, and a bitter personal enemy. He had ability, was

Secretary to the Admiralty, and an enthusiatic student of history and literature; but he was an unamiable man, and in one of his speeches had spoken of Macaulay's orations as "vague generalities handled with that brilliant imagination which tickles the ear and amuses the fancy without satisfying the reason." The purpose and temper of Macaulay's review of Croker's edition of "Boswell," may be best learned from several passages in Macaulay's letters. Three months before Croker's book appeared, Macaulay wrote to the editor of the Edinburgh Review, "I will certainly review Croker's' Boswell' when it comes out." One week after the book was published he wrote to his sister: "I am to review Croker's edition of Bozzy. It is wretchedly ill done. The notes are poorly written and shamefully inaccurate." A few weeks later, after making an extemporaneous speech in the House of Commons, he wrote: "I ought to tell you that Peel was very civil, and cheered me loudly; and that impudent, leering Croker congratulated the House on the proof which I had given of my readiness. See whether I do not dust that varlet's jacket for him in the next number of the Blue and Yellow.2 I detest him more than cold boiled veal.'

'See Mr. Miller's edition of Southey's Life of Nelson, in this series, p. xxi., and Southey's dedication, p. 3.

"The cover of the Edinburgh Review was dark blue, with a yellow back.

On October 17, 1831, after his article appeared, he wrote: "Croker looks across the House of Commons at me with a leer of hatred which I repay with a gracious smile of pity."

It is evident that a review inspired by this personal quarrel can have little permanent interest, and the first forty paragraphs of the essay on "Boswell's Life of Johnson are omitted in the present volume. They treat only

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of Croker's edition of Boswell's celebrated book, and smack strongly of personal animosity. In them the reviewer dwells at length and with relish on certain errors in Croker's dates and genealogies, ascribing to them an exaggerated importance, and exposing them in a way to humiliate Croker and make him out a dunce. He says Croker's book is "as bad as bad could be; "' maintains that the "notes absolutely swarm with misstatements; " comments in detail on the monstrous blunders" and scandalous inaccuracy; " and declares Croker to be "entitled to no confidence whatever." Macaulay's criticism is founded on fact, but it is unjust in tone and emphasis. A more just, though still an unfavorable, review of Croker's Boswell" will be found in Carlyle's "Essay' "" on the same subject. The rest of Macaulay's "Essay on Boswell's Johnson," reprinted in this volume, consists of two parts. The first treats at length of the character of Boswell, the second discusses Doctor Johnson himself. These parts of the "Essay" are marked by all the vigor and vivacity of Macaulay's early style. The eccentricities of both Boswell and Johnson are set forth with unexampled clearness and power; but combined with these brilliant qualities of style is a tendency to exaggeration, a lack of insight into character, and a superficial treatment of difficult problems, which make the "Essay" unjust to both Johnson and his satellite.

The second of Macaulay's articles on Johnson, and by far the best, is the "Life of Samuel Johnson," written in