these stirring tales in verse, though admirable and widely popular, are not so important as his other achievements. The last of Macaulay's writings was a group of biographical sketches, written during the later years of his life for the "Encyclopædia Britannica," after he had ceased to write for the Review, and while he was busy with his "History." These were the articles on Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Doctor Johnson, and William Pitt, which are still to be found under those titles in the present (ninth) edition of the "Britannica." The "Life of William Pitt " was the last of Macaulay's writings published during his life-time. These "Lives," especially, perhaps, the Life of Doctor Johnson," which is the subject of this volume, are among the best of his works. 66 During his last years honors fell thick and fast on Macaulay's head. He was elected to many positions of distinction and honor, and in 1857 he was made a peer of the House of Lords-the first literary man to receive that distinction. But he never spoke in the House of Lords. For a number of years before his death his health was frail; he died at his residence, Holly Lodge, Kensington, December 28, 1859, of heart disease. Two months before, he wrote in his diary: "October 25, 1859. My birthday. I am fifty-nine years old. Well, I have had a happy life. I do not know that any one whom I have seen close has had a happier." Macaulay is buried in the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. 66 Macaulay was an upright, amiable man, and his life was one of placid content and quiet happiness. No act inconsistent with the strictest honor and integrity has ever been imputed to him."1 'We cannot imagine him doing anything wrong, or even indecorous." He enjoyed the good things of life with heartiness, yet he was strik 66 1 Mark Pattison. 2 J. C. Morrison. 66 ingly unselfish, and one of the most prominent qualities revealed in his "Letters" is a sweet, affectionate tenderness for his friends. His domestic life was singularly beautiful. Even his keenest literary critics speak with admiration of his bearing towards his parents, his sisters, and his nephews and nieces. To the latter he was an ideal uncle-the "good uncle" of story books. When he died, his sister wrote: We have lost the light of our home, the most tender, loving, generous, unselfish, devoted of friends. What he was to me for fifty years who can tell? What a world of love he poured out upon me and mine. His only domestic fault, according to his nephew, seems to have been that he did not like dogs! His very last act was to write a letter to a poor curate, enclosing a check for twenty-five pounds. His personal appearance is thus described by his nephew, Mr. Trevelyan: 66 Macaulay's outward man was never better described than in two sentences of Praed's Introduction to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. There came up a short, manly figure, marvellously upright, with a bad neckcloth, 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." This picture, in which every touch is correct, tells all that there is to be told. He had a massive head, and features of a powerful and rugged cast; but so constantly lighted up by every joyful and ennobling emotion that it mattered little if, when absolutely quiescent, his face was rather homely than handsome. While conversing at table, no one thought him otherwise than good looking; but when he rose, he was seen to be short and stout in figure. He at all times sat and stood straight, full, and square; and in this respect Woolner, in the fine statue at Cambridge, has missed what was undoubtedly the most marked fact in his personal appearance. He dressed badly, but not cheaply. clothes, though ill put on, were good." His Of his manner in conversation Mr. Trevelyan says: "Whatever fault might be found with Macaulay's gestures as an orator, his appearance and bearing in conversation were singularly effective. Sitting bolt upright, his hands resting on the arms of his chair or folded over the handle of his walking-stick; knitting his great eyebrows if the subject was one that had to be thought out as he went along, or brightening from the forehead downwards when a burst of humor was coming; his massive features and honest glance suited well with the manly, sagacious sentiments which he set forth in his pleasant, sonorous voice, and in his racy and admirably intelligible language.' Macaulay's method of work is thus described by his nephew: "The main secret of Macaulay's success lay in this, that to extraordinary fluency and facility he united patient, minute, and persistent diligence. He well knew, as Chaucer knew before him, that 66 There is na workeman That can bothe worken wel and hastilie. If his method of composition ever comes into fashion, books probably will be better, and undoubtedly will be shorter. As soon as he had got into his head all the information relating to any particular episode in his ' History' (such, for instance, as Argyll's expedition to Scotland, or the attainder of Sir John Fenwick, or the calling in of the clipped coinage), he would sit down and write off the whole story at a headlong pace; sketching in the outlines under the genial and audacious impulse of a first conception; and securing in black and white each idea, and epithet, and turn of phrase, as it flowed straight from his busy brain to his rapid fingers. His manuscript, at this stage, to the eyes of any one but himself, appeared to consist of column after column of dashes and flourishes, in which a straight line with a half formed letter at each end, and another in the middle, did duty for a word. "As soon as Macaulay had finished his rough draft, he began to fill it in at the rate of six sides of foolscap every morning; written in so large a hand, and with such a multitude of erasures, that the whole six pages were, on an average, compressed in two pages of print. This portion he called his task,' and he was never quite easy unless he completed it daily. More he seldom sought to accomplish; for he had learned by long experience that this was as much as he could do at his best; and except when at his best, he never would work at all. 66 6 Macaulay never allowed a sentence to pass muster until it was as good as he could make it. He thought little of recasting a chapter in order to obtain a more lucid arrangement, and nothing whatever of reconstructing a paragraph for the sense of one happy stroke or apt illustration. Whatever the worth of his labor, at any rate it was a labor of love." Macaulay's essays may be thus conveniently classified: 1. English History Group.-Milton; 1 Hallam (one of the best); John Hampden; Burleigh and his Times (one of the weakest); Horace Walpole (unjust); William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1834; incomplete); The Earl of Chatham (completes the story of Chatham's life); Sir James Mackintosh; Sir William Temple (one of the best); Lord Clive; Warren Hastings. (The last two are among the most famous of the essays.) 2. Foreign History Group.-Machiavelli; Mirabeau; War of the Succession in Spain; Von Ranke (the real subject is the "History of the Popes"; the third paragraph is widely celebrated); Frederick the Great; Barère. 3. Controversial Group.-Mill's Theory of Government (three essays); Saddler's Law of Population (two essays); Southey's Colloquies on Society; Gladstone on Church and State. (These controversial essays possess but little permanent interest.) 4. Critical Group.-John Dryden; History; Montgom See Mr. Croswell's edition in this series. ery; John Bunyan (1830); Lord Byron (discusses the nature of poetry); Boswell's "Life of Johnson" (1831); Lord Bacon (the poorest of them all); Leigh Hunt (the real subject is "The Comic Dramatists of the Restoration "); Madame D'Arblay; Addison (which Thackeray calls "a magnificent statue of the great writer and moralist "). 5. Biographical Group.-(All written for the "Encyclopædia Britannica.") Francis Atterbury; John Bunyan (1854); Oliver Goldsmith; Samuel Johnson (1856); William Pitt (son of the Earl of Chatham). II. MACAULAY'S STYLE AND GENIUS. 1. WITH Macaulay's characteristics as orator, poet, and historian we are not now concerned; for the subject of our present study brings him before us as an essayist only, in which character, perhaps, he is most widely known. His essays, of which a classified list is given above, cover a very wide range of subjects. In them Macaulay had something to say, directly or indirectly, about nearly all the important persons and events in history. For a busy man of only moderate education, who has curiosity to know a little about the great lives and great thoughts of the past, the "Essays" are as good as a library.1 They are somewhat unequal in merit, those written after the author's return from India being in some respects better than those written before his departure from England; but taken as a whole they are the most famous essays ever written in English. They have been read by millions, and thousands of copies are still sold every year. If we except Shakespeare's plays and Scott's novels, they have probably done more to stimulate interest in the past than any other books. All that many persons know of history they have learned from Macaulay's "Essays." Other 'Mr. John Morley. |