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'JUL 2 8 1945 



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CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 




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i ' 



THE LIFE AND LETTERS 



OF 



LOED MAOAULAT. 






^' ■ f f\} I C"- <U^ 



THE LIFE AND LETTERS 



OF 



LOED MACAULAY 



BY HIS NEPHEW 

G. OTTO TREVELYAN 

MEMBER or PARLIAMENT FOR HAWICK DISTRICT OF BURGHS 



IN TWO VOLUMES 
Vol. II. 




NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 

FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1876 







Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 

Hakpek & Bkothers, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

1838-1839. 

Death of Zachary Maoaulay. — Mr. Wallace and MacMntosli. — Letters to 
Mr. Napier and Mr. Ellis. — Sir "Walter Scott. — Lord Brougham. — First 
Mention of the History. — Macaulay goes abroad. — His Way of regarding 
Scenery. — Chalons - sui - Marne. — Lyons. — Marseilles. — Genoa. — Pisa. — 
Florence. — Macaulay refuses the Judge - advocateship. — Florence to 
Rome. — Thrasymene. — St. Peter's. — The New Zealauder. — The Vatican. 
— The Temporal Power. — The Doctrine of the Immaculate Concep- 
tion. — Letter to Lord Lansdowne. — The Canadian Lisurrection. — Gib- 
hon. — Rome to Naples. — Bulwer's Novels. — Impressions of Naples. — 
Virgil's Tomb.— Macaulay sets out Homeward. — Mr. Goulburn. — Ver- 
sailles Page 9 

CHAPTEE Vm. 

1839-1841. 

Macaulay returns to London. — He meets Lord Brougham. — Letters to Mr. 
Napier and Mrs. Trevelyan. — Correspondence with Mr. Gladstone. — 
Heated State of Politics. — The Hostility of the Peers to Lord Melbourne's 
Government. — Maoaulay's View of the Situation. — Verses by Praed. — 
The Bed-chamber Question. — Macaulay is elected for Edinburgh. — De- 
bate on the Ballot. — ^Macaulay becomes a Cabinet Minister. — The Times. 
— Windsor Castle.— Vote of Want of Confidence. — ^The Chinese War. — 
Irish Registration : Scene in the House of Commons.— -Letters to Napier. 
— Religious Difficulties in Scotland. — Lord Cardigan. — The Corn Laws. 
— The Sugar Duties. — Defeat of the Ministry, and Dissolution of Parlia- 
ment. — Macaulay is re-elected for Edinburgh. — His Love for Street-bal- 
lads. — The Change of Government 48 



6 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTEE IX. 

1841-1844. 

Macaulay settles in The Albany. — Letters to Mr. Napier. — Warren Has- 
tings, and "The Vicar of Wakefield."— Leigh Hunt. — Macaulay's Doubts 
about the Wisdom of publishing his Essays. — Lord Palmerston as a 
Writer. — The "Lays of Eome." — Handsome Conduct of Professor Wil- 
son. — Republication of the Essays. — Miss Aikin's " Life of Addison." — 
Macaulay in Opposition.- — The Copyright Question. — Kecall of Lord El- 
lenhorongh. — Macaulay as a Public Speaker: Opinions of the Eeporters' 
Gallery. — Tour on the Loire. — Letters to Mr. Napier. — Payment of the 
Irish Eoman Catholic Clergy. — Barfere Page 90 

CHAPTER X. 

1844-1847. 

Letters to Mr. Napier. — Macaulay modifies his Design for an Article on 
Burke and his Times into a Sketch of Lord Chatham's Later Years. — 
Tour in Holland. — Scene off Dordrecht. — ^Macaulay on the Irish Church. 
— Maynooth. — The Ministerial Crisis of December, 1845: Letters to 
Lady Trevelyan. — Letter to Mr. Maofarlan. — Fall of Sir Robert Peel. — 
Macaulay becomes Paymaster-general. — His Re-election at Edinburgh. 
— His Position in the House of Commons. — General Election of 1847. — 
Macaulay's Defeat at Edinburgh 136 

CHAPTER XI. 

1847-1849. 

Macaulay retires into Private Life. — Extracts from Lord Carlisle's Journal. 
—Macaulay's Conversation. — His Memory. — His Distaste for General 
Society. — His Ways with Children. — Letters to his Niece Margaret. — 
"The Judicious Poet." — Valentines.— Sight-seeing. — Eastern Tours. — 
Macaulay's Method of Work.— His Diligence in collecting his Materials. 
— Glencoe.— Londonderry. — Macaulay's Accuracy: Opinions of Mr. Bage- 
hot and Mr. Buckle.— Macaulay's Industry at the Desk. — His Love for 
his Task.- Extracts from his Diary.— His Attention to the Details of the 
Press.- The " History" appears.— Congratulations.— Lord Halifax ; Lord 
Jeffrey ; Lord Auckland ; Miss Edgeworth.— The Popularity of the Work. 
— Extract from PaMcft.- Macaulay's Attitude in Relation to his Critics. 
— The Quarterly Meview.—tho Sacrifices which Macaulay made to Lit- 
erature j7() 



CONTENTS. 7 

CHAPTEE XII. 

1848-1852. 

Extracts from Macaulay's Diary. — Herodotus. — ^Mr. Roebuck. — Anticipa- 
tions of Failure and Success. — -Appearance of tlie " History." — Progress 
of the Sale. — Duke of Wellington. — Lord Palmerston. — Letters to Mr. 
Ellis. — Lord Brougham on Euripides. — Macaulay is elected Lord Rector 
of Glasgow Uniyersity. — His Inaugural Address. — Good Resolutions. — 
Croker.— Dr. Parr. — The Historical Professorship at Cambridge. — By- 
ron. — ^Tour in Ireland. — Althorp.— Lord Sidmouth. — ^Lord Thurlow.— 
Death of Jeffrey. — Mr. Richmond's Portrait of Macaulay. — Dinner at the 
Palace. — Robert Montgomery. — Death of Sir Robert Peel. — The Prelude. 
— Ventnor. — Letters to Mr. Ellis. — Plautus. — Fra Paolo. — Gibbon. — The 
Papal Bull. — Death of Henry Hallam. — Porson's Letters to Archdeacon 
Travis. — Charles Mathews. — Windsor Castle. — Macaulay sets up his Car- 
riage. — Opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851. — Cobbett. — Malvern. 
— Letters to Mr. Ellis. — "Wilhelm Meister." — The Battle of Worces- 
ter. — Palmerston leaves the Foreign Office. — Macaulay refuses an Offer 
of the Cabinet. — ^Windsor Castle. — King John. — Scene of the Assassina- 
tion Plot. — Royal Academy Dinner Page 213 



OHAPTEE XIII. 

1852-18S6. 

The Magnetoseope, and Table-turning. — Macaulay's Re-election for Edin- 
burgh, and the General Satisfaction which it occasioned. — He has a Se- 
rious Attack of Illness. — Clifton. — Extracts from Macaulay's Journal. — 
His Strong Feelings for Old Associations. — Barley Wood. — Letters to Mr. 
Ellis. — Great Change in Macaulay's Health and Habits. — His Speech at 
Edinburgh. — The House of Commons. — Mr. Disraeli's Budget. — Forma- 
tion of Lord Aberdeen's Ministry. — The Judges' Exclusion Bill. — The 
India Bill. — The Annuity Tax. — Macaulay ceases to take an Active 
Part in Politics. — Letters to Mr. Ellis. — Mrs. Beecher Stowe. — Tunbridge 
Wells. — Plato. — Mr. Vizetelly. — Macaulay's Patriotism. — The Crimean 
War. — Open Competition. — The "History." — Thames Ditton. — Publi- 
cation of Macaulay's Third and Fourth Volumes. — Statistics of the 
Sale of the "History." — Honors conferred on Macaulay. — The Brit- 
ish Museum 257 

CHAPTEE Xiy. 

1856-1858. 

Macaulay resigns his Seat for Edinburgh. — He settles Himself at Holly 



manach des Gourmands." — Country Visits. — Continental Tours. — Cha- 
teaubriand.— Maoaulay as a Man of Business. — His Generosity in Money 
Matters. — His Kindness to his Relations and toward Children. — Pict- 
ure-galleries. — Maoaulay as an Instructor. — He pays a Compliment to 
Lord Palmerston. — Macaulay is made a Peer. — His Attachment to his 
Old University. — He is elected Lord High Steward of the Borough of 
Cambridge. — Macaulay in the House of Lords. — French Politics.- — The 
Indian Mutiny.^The National Fast-day. — The Capture of Delhi and 
Eelief of Lucknow. — Professor Owen and the British Museum. — Liter- 
ary Ease. — The Fifth Volume of the "History." — Macaulay's Contri- 
butions to the " Encyclopsedia Britannica." — His Habit of learning by 
Heart. — Foreign Languages. — Macaulay's Modes of amusing Himself. — ■ 
The Consequences of Celebrity. — Extracts from Macaulay's Journal. — 
His Literary Conservatism. — His Love for Theology and Church Histo- 
ry. — His Devotion to Literature Page 331 

CHAPTEE XV. 

1859. 

Melancholy Anticipations. — Visit to the English Lakes and to Scotland. — 
Extracts from Macaulay's Journal. — His Death and Funeral 397 



LIFE AND LETTERS 



LORD MACAULAY. 



CHAPTEE VII. 
1838-1839. 



Death of Zachary Maoaulay. — Mr. Wallace and Mackintosh. — Letters to 
Mr. Napier and Mr. Ellis. — Sir "Walter Scott. — Lord Brougham. — First 
Mention of the History. — Macaulay goes abroad. — His Way of regarding 
Scenery. — Chalons - sur - Marne. — Lyons. — Marseilles. — Genoa. — Pisa. — 
Morenoe. — Macaulay refuses the Judge -advocateship. — Florence to 
Eome. — -Thrasymeue. — St. Peter's. — The New Zealauder. — The Vatican. 
— The Temporal Power. — The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. 
— Letter to Lord Lansdowne. — The Canadian Insurrection. — Gibbon. — 
Eome to Naples. — Bulwer's Novels. — Impressions of Naples. — Virgil's 
Tomb. — Macaulay sets out Homeward. — Mr. Goulhurn. — Versailles. 

The Lord Hungerford justified her reputation of a bad 
sailer, and the homeward voyage was protracted into the sixth 
month. This unusual delay, combined with the knowledge 
that the ship had met with very rough weather after leaving 
the Cape, gave rise to a report that she had been lost, with all 
on board, and brought a succession of "Whig politicians into 
the City to inquire at Lloyd's about the safety of her precious 
freight. But it was in the character of a son and brother, 
and not of a party orator, that Macaulay was most eagerly 
and anxiously expected. He had, indeed, been sorely missed. 



10 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vii. 

" Tou can have no conception," writes one of his sisters, " of 
the change which has come over this household. It is as if 
the sun had deserted the earth. The chasm Tom's departure 
has made can never be supplied. He was so unlike any other 
beiQg one ever sees, and his visits among us were a sort of re- 
freshment which served not a little to enliven and cheer our 
monotonous way of life ; but now day after day rises and sets 
without object or interest, so that sometimes I almost feel 
aweary of this world." 

Things did not mend as time went on. With Zaehary 
Maeaulay, as had been the case with so many like him, the 
years which intervened between the time when his work 
was done and the time when he went to receive his wages 
were years of trouble, of sorrow, and even of gloom. Failing 
health; failing eye-sight; the sense of being helpless and 
useless, after an active and beneficent career; the conscious- 
ness of dependence upon others at an age when the moral dis- 
advantages of poverty are felt even more keenly than youth 
feels its material discomforts — such were the clouds that dark- 
ened the close of a life which had never been without its tri- 
als. During the months that his children were on their 
homeward voyage his health was breaking fast; and before 
the middle of May he died, without having again seen their 
faces. Sir James Stephen, writing to Fanny Maeaulay, says : 
" I know not how to grieve for the loss of your father, though 
it removes from this world one of the oldest, and, assuredly, 
one of the most excellent friends I have ever had. What ra- 
tional man would not leap for joy at the offer of bearing all 
his burdens, severe as they were, if he could be assured of the 
same approving conscience, and of the same blessed reward ? 
He was almost the last survivor of a noble brotherhood now 
reunited in affection and in employment. Mr. Wilberforce 
Henry Thornton, Babington, my father, and other not less 
dear, though less conspicuous, companions of his many labors, 
have ere now greeted him as their associate in the world of 
spirits ; and, above all, he has been welcomed by his Eedeemer 
with ' Well done, good and faithful servant.' " 

Zaehary Macaulay's bust in Westminster Abbey bears on 



1838-'39.] LOED MACAULAY. n 

its pedestal a beautiful inscription (wliich is, and probably 
will remain, his only biography), in which much more is told 
than he himself would wish to have been told about a man 

WHO DURING FORTY SUCCBSSIVB TEAKS, 

PAETAICING IN THE COUNSELS AND THE LABORS 

WHICH, GUIDED BY FAVORING PROVIDENCE, 

RESCUED AFRICA FROM THE WOES, 

AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE FROM THE GUILT, 

OF SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE-TRADE, 

MEEKLY ENDURED THE TOIL, THE PRIVATION, AND THE REPROACH, 

RESIGNING TO OTHERS THE PRAISE AND THE REWARD. 

His tomb has for many years past been cut off from the body 
of the nave by an iron railing equally meaningless and un- 
sightly ; which withdraws from the eyes of his fellow-coun- 
trymen an epitaph at least as provocative to patriotism as 
those of the innumerable military and naval heroes of the sev- 
enteenth and eighteenth centuries, who fell in wars the very 
objects of which are for the most part forgotten, or remem- 
bered only to be regretted. 

The first piece of business which Macaulay found waiting 
to be settled on his return to England was sufficiently disa- 
greeable. As far back as July, 1835, he had reviewed Sir 
James Mackintosh's " History of the Eevolution of 1688." This 
valuable fragment was edited by a Mr. Wallace, who accom- 
panied it with a biographical sketch of his author, whom he 
treated throughout with an impertinence which had an air of 
inexcusable disloyalty ; but which, in truth, was due to noth- 
ing worse than self-sufficiency, thrown into unpleasant relief 
by the most glaring bad taste. Macaulay, who from a boy 
had felt for Mackintosh that reverence which is 

Dearer to true young hearts than their own praise, 

fell upon the editor with a contemptuous vigor, of which some 
pretty distinct traces remain in the essay as it at present ap- 
pears in the collected editions, where the following sentence 
may still be read : " It is plain that Thomas Burnet and his 
writings were never heard of by the gentleman who has been 
employed to edit this volume, and who, not content with de- 



12 LITE AND LETTEES OF [chap. vii. 

forming Sir James Mackintosli's text by such blunders, has 
prefixed to it a bad memoir, has appended to it a bad continu- 
ation, and has thus succeeded in expanding the volume into 
one of the thickest, and debasing it into one of the worst, that 
we ever saw." What the first vehemence of Macaulay's in- 
dignation was may be estimated by the fact that this passage, 
as it now stands, has been deprived of half its sting. 

One extract from the article, in its original form, merits to 
be reproduced here, because it explains, and in some degree 
justifies, Macaulay's wrath, and in itself is well worth read- 
ing: 

" He " (the editor) " affects, and, for aught we know, feels, something like 
contempt for the celebrated man whose life he has undertaken to write, 
and whom he was incompetent to serve in the capacity even of a correct- 
or of the press. Our readers may form a notion of the spirit in which the 
whole narrative is composed from expressions which occur at the begin- 
ning. This biographer tells us that Mackintosh, on occasion of taking his 
medical degree at Edinburgh, ' not only put off the writing of his Thesis 
to the last moment, but was an hour behind his time on the day of exam- 
ination, and kept the Academic Senate waiting for him in fall conclave.' 
This irregularity, which no sensible professor would have thought deserv- 
ing of more than a slight reprimand, is described by the biographer, after 
a lapse of nearly half a century, as an incredible instance * not so much of 
indolence, as of gross negligence and bad taste.' But this is. not all. Our 
biographer has contrived to procure a copy of the Thesis, and has sat 
down, with his 'As in prsesenti' and his 'Propria quas maribus' at his side, 
to pick out blunders in a composition written by a youth of twenty-one 
on the occasion alluded to. He finds one mistake, such a mistake as the 
greatest scholar might commit when in haste, and as the veriest school- 
boy would detect when at leisure. He glories over this precious discov- 
ery with all the exultation of a pedagogue. ' Deceived by the passive ter- 
mination of the verb defungor, Mackintosh misuses it in a passive sense.' 
He is not equaUy fortunate in his other discovery. 'Laude conspurcare,' 
whatever he may think, is not an improper phrase. Mackintosh meant to 
say that there are men whose praise is a disgrace. No person, we are sure 
who has read this memoir, will doubt that there are men whose abuse is 
an honor.'' 

Mr. Wallace did not choose to rest quietly under a castiga- 
tion which even Macaulay subsequently admitted to have been 
in excess of his deserts. 



1838-'39.] LOfeD MACAULAY. 13 

3 Clarges Street, London, June 14th, 1838. 

Deae Napiee, — I did not need your letter to satisfy me of 
your kindness, and of the pleasure which my arrival would 
give you. I have returned with a small independence, but 
still an independence. All my tastes and wishes lead me to 
prefer literature to polities. When I say this to my friends 
here, some of them seem to think that I am out of my wits, 
and others that I am coquetting to raise my price. I, on the 
other hand, believe that I am wise, and know that I am sin- 
cere. 

I shall be curious, when we meet, to see your correspond- 
ence with Wallace. Empson seemed to be a little uneasy lest 
the foolish man should give me trouble. I thought it impos- 
sible that he could be so absurd ; and, as I have now been in 
London ten days without heariag of him, I am confirmed in 
my opinion. In any event, you need not be anxious. If it 
be absolutely necessary to meet him, I will. But I foresee no 
such necessity ; and, as Junius says, I never will give a proof 
of my spirit at the expense of my understanding. 

Ever yours most truly, T. B. IMacaulat. 

London, August 14th, 1838. 
Deae Napiee, — Your old friend Wallace and I have been 
pretty near exchanging shots. However, all is accommodated, 
and, I think, quite unexceptionably. The man behaved much 
better to me than he did to you. Perhaps time has composed 
his feelings. He had, at all events, the advantage of being in 
good hands. He sent me by Tom Steele — a furious O'Con- 
nellite, but a gentleman, a man of honor, and, on this occasion 
at least, a man of temper — a challenge very properly worded. 
He accounted, handsomely enough, for the delay by saying 
that my long absence, and the recent loss in my family, pre- 
vented him from applying to me immediately on my return. 
I put the matter into Lord Strafford's hands. I had, to tell 
you the truth, no notion that a meeting could be avoided ; for 
the man behaved so obstinately well that there was no possi- 
bility of taking Empson's advice, and sending for the police ; 
and, though I was quite ready to disclaim aU intention of giv- 



14: LIFE AJSfD LETTERS OF [chap. vn. 

ing personal offense, and to declare that, when I wrote the 
review, I was ignorant of Mr. Wallace's existence, I could not 
make any apology, or express the least regret, for having used 
strong language ia defense of Mackintosh. Lord Strafford 
quite approved of my resolution. But he proposed a course 
which had never occurred to me ; which at once removed all 
scruples on my side ; and which, to my gi'eat surprise, Steele 
and Wallace adopted without a moment's hesitation. This 
was that Wallace should make a preliminary declaration 'that 
he meant, by his memoii-, nothing disrespectful or unkind to 
Mackintosh, but the direct contrary ; and that then I should 
declare that, ia consequence of Mr. Wallace's declaration, I 
was ready to express my regret if I had used any language 
that could be deemed personally offensive. This way of set- 
thng the business appeared to both Lord Strafford and Eice 
perfectly honorable; and I was of the same mind; for cer- 
tainly the language which I used could be justified only on 
the ground that Wallace had used Mackintosh ill ; and when 
Wallace made a preliminary declaration that he intended noth- 
ing but kindness and honor to Mackintosh, I could not prop- 
erly refuse to make some concession. I was much surprised 
that neither Steele nor Wallace objected to Lord Strafford's 
proposition ; but, as they did not object, it was impossible for 
me to do so. In this way the matter was settled — much bet- 
ter settled than by refusing to admit Wallace to the privileges 
of a gentleman. I hope that you will be satisfied with the re- 
sult. The kind anxiety which you have felt about me renders 
me very desirous to know that you approve of my conduct. 
Yours ever, T. B. Macaulat. 

3 Clarges Street, June 26th, 1838. 
Dear Napiee, — I assure you that I would wilHngly, and 
even eagerly, undertake the subject which you propose, if I 
thought that I should serve you by doing so. But, depend 
upon it, you do not know what you are asking for. I have 
done my best to ascertain what I can and what I can not do. 
There are extensive classes of subjects which I think myself 
able to treat as few people can treat them. After this, you 



1838-'39.] LOED MACAULAY. 15 

can not suspect me of any affectation of modesty j and you 
will therefore believe that I tell you what I sincerely think, 
when I say that I am not successful in analyzing the effect of 
works of genius. I have written several things on historical, 
political, and moral questions, of which, on the fullest recon- 
sideration, I am not ashamed, and by which I should be will- 
ing to be estimated ; but I have never written a page of crit- 
icism on poetry, or the fine arts, which I would not burn if I 
had the power. Hazlitt used to say of himself, " I am nothing 
if not critical." The case with me is directly the reverse. I 
have a strong and acute enjoyment of works of the imagina- 
tion, but I have never habituated myself to dissect them. Per- 
haps I enjoy them the more keenly for that very reason. Such 
books as Lessing's " Laocodn,"* such passages as the criticism 
on "Hamlet" in "Wilhelm Meister," fill me with wonder and, 
despair. ]N^ow, a review of Lockhart's book ought to be a re- 1 
view of Sir Walter's literary performances. I enjoy many of 
them — nobody, I believe, more keenly — but I am sure that 
there are himdreds who will criticise them far better. Trust 
to my knowledge of myself. I never in my life was more 
certain of any thing than of what I tell you, and I am sure 
that Lord Jeffrey will tell you exactly the same. 

There are other objections of less weight, but not quite un- 
important. Surely it would be desirable that some person 
who knew Sir Walter, who had at least seen him and spoken 
with him, should be charged with this article. Many people 
are living who had a most intimate acquaintance with him. 
I know no more of him than I know of Dryden or Addison, 
and not a tenth part so much as I know of Swift, Cowper, or 
Johnson. Then, again, I have not, from the little that I do 
know of him, formed so high an opinion of his character as 
most people seem to entertain, and as it would be expedient 
for the Edmhwrgli Reoiew to express. He seems to me to 
have been most carefully, and successfully, on his guard against 

* " I began Lessing's 'Laocoon,' and read forty or fifty pages : sometimes 
dissenting, but always admiring and learning." — Maoaulay's Journal for 
September 21s«, 1851. 



IQ LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. vii. 

the sins which most easily beset literary men. On that side 
he multiplied his precautions, and set double watch. Hardly 
any writer of note has been so free from the petty jealousies 
and morbid irritabilities of our caste. But I do not think 
that he kept himself equally pure from faults of a very differ- 
ent kind, from the faults of a man of the world. In politics, 
a bitter and unscrupulous partisan ; profuse and ostentatious 
in expense; agitated by the hopes and fears of a gambler; 
perpetually sacrificing the perfection of his compositions, and 
the durability of his fame, to his eagerness for money; writ- 
ing with the slovenly haste of Dryden, in order to satisfy 
wants which were not, like those of Dryden, caused by circum- 
stances beyond his control, but which were produced by his 
extravagant waste or rapacious speculation ; this is the way in 
which he appears to me. I am sorry for it, for I sincerely ad- 
mire the greater part of his works ; but I can not think him 
a high-minded man, or a man of very strict principle. Now 
these are opinions which, however softened, it would be high- 
ly unpopular to publish, particularly in a Scotch review. 

But why can not you prevail on Lord Jeffrey to furnish 
you with this article ? No man could do it half so weU. He 
knew and loved Scott ; and would perform the critical part of 
the work, which is much the most important, incomparably. 
I have said a good deal in the hope of convincing you that it 
is not without reason that I decline a task which I see that you 
wish me to undertake. 

I am quite unsettled. Breakfasts every morning, dinners 
every evening, and calls all day, prevent me from making any 
regular exertion. My books are at the baggage warehouse. 
My bopk-cases are in the hands of the cabinet-maker. "What- 
ever I write at present I must, as Bacon somewhere says, spin 
like a spider out of my own entrails, and I have hardly a min- 
ute in the week for such spinning. London is in a strange 
state of e:!(:citement. The western streets are in a constant 
ferment. The influx of foreigners and rustics has been pro- 
digious, and the regular inhabitants are almost as idle and cu- 
rious as the sojourners. Crowds assemble perpetually, no- 
body knows why, with a sort of vague expectation that there 



1838-'39.] LOED MACAULAY. 17 

will be sometliing to see ; and, after staring at each other, dis- 
perse without seeing any thing. This will last till the Coro- 
nation is over. The only quiet haunts are the streets of the 
City. For my part, I am sick to death of the turmoil, and al- 
most wish myself at Calcutta again, or becalmed on the equa- 
tor. Ever yours most truly, T. B. Macaulat. 

3 Clargea Street, London, July 20tli, 1838. 
Dear Napiee, — ^As to Brougham, I understand and feel 
for your embarrassments. I may perhaps refine too much; 
but I should say that this strange man, finding himself almost 
alone in the world, absolutely unconnected with either Whigs 
or Conservatives, and not having a single vote in either House 
of Parliament at his command except his own, is desirous to 
make the Review his organ. With this intention, unless I am 
greatly deceived, after having during several years contributed 
little or nothing of value, he has determined to exert himself 
as if he were a young writer struggling into note, and to make 
himself important to the work by his literary services. And 
he certainly has succeeded. His late articles, particularly the 
long one in the April number, have very high merit. They 
are, indeed, models of magazine writing as distinguished from 
other sorts of .writing. They are not, I think, made for du- 
ration. Every thing about them is exaggerated, incorrect, 
sketchy. All the characters are either too black or too fair. 
The passions of the wi'iter do not suffer him even to maintain 
the decent appearance of impartiality. And the style, though 
striking and animated, will not bear examination through a 
single paragraph. But the effect of the first perusal is great ; 
and few people read an article in a review twice. A bold, 
dashing, scene-painting manner is that which always succeeds 
best in periodical writing; and I have no dcnibt that these 
lively and vigorous papers of Lord Brougham will be of more 
use to you than more highly finished compositions. His wish, 
I imagine, is to establish in this way such an ascendency as 
may enable him to drag the Review along with him to any 
party to which his furious passions may lead him ; to the Rad- 
icals ; to the Tories ; to any set of men by whose help he may 
YoL. II.— 2 



18 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vn. 

be able to revenge himself on old friends, whose only crime 
is that they could not help finding him to be an habitual and 
incurable traitor. Hitherto your caution and firmness have 
done wonders. Yet already he has begun to use the word 
, " Whig " as an epithet of reproach, exactly as it is used in the 
lowest writings of the Tories, and of the extreme Eadicals ; 
exactly as it is used in Blackwood, in Fraser, in The Age, in 
Tait^s Magazine. There are several instances in the article 
on Lady Charlotte Bury. " The "Whig notions of female pro- 
priety." " The Whig secret tribunal." I have no doubt that 
the tone of his papers will become more and more hostile to 
the Government ; and that, in a short time, it will be neces- 
sary for you to take one of three courses, to every one of 
which there are strong objections — to break with him ; to ad- 
mit his papers into the Review, while the rest of the Review 
continues to be written in quite a different tone ; or to yield 
to his dictation, and to let him make the Review a mere tool 
of his ambition and revenge. 

As to Brougham's feelings toward myself, I know, and have 
known for a long time, that he hates me. If during the last 
ten years I have gained any reputation either in politics or in 
letters — ^if I have had any success in life — it has been without 
his help or countenance, and often in spite of his utmost ex- 
ertions to keep me down. It is strange that he should be siir- 
prised at my not calling on him since my return. I did not 
call on him when I went away. When he was chancellor, 
and I was in office, I never once attended his levee. It would 
be strange indeed if now, when he is squandering the remains 
of his public character in an attempt to niin the party of 
which he was a member then, and of which I am a member 
stm, I should begin to pay court to him. For the sake of the 
long intimacy which subsisted between him and my father, 
and of the mutual good offices which passed between them, I 
will not, unless I am compelled, make any public attack on 
him. But this is really the only tie which restrains me ; for 
I neither love him nor fear him. 

With regard to the Indian Penal Code, if you are satisfied 
that Empson really wishes to review it on its own account, 



1838-'39.] LOED MACAULAY. I9 

and not merely out of kindness to me, I should not at all ob- 
ject to his doing so. The subject is one of immense impor- 
tance. . The work is of a kind too abstruse for common read- 
ers, and can be made known to them only through the medi- 
um of some popular exposition. There is another considera- 
tion which weighs much with me. The Press iu India has 
fallen into the hands of the lower legal practitioners, who de- 
test all law-reform ; and their scurrility, though mere matter 
of derision to a person accustomed to the virulence of English 
factions, is more formidable than you can well conceive to the 
members of the civil service, who are quite unaccustomed to 
be dragged rudely before the public. It is, therefore, highly 
important that the members of the Indian Legislature, and of 
the Law Commission, should be supported against the clamor- 
ous abuse of the scribblers who surround them by seeing that 
their performances attract notice at home, and are judged 
with candor and discernment by writers of a far higher rank 
in literature than the Calcutta editors. For these reasons I 
should be glad to see an article on the Penal Code in the Ed- 
iriburgh Review. But I must stipulate that my name may 
not be mentioned, and that every thing may be attributed to 
the Law Commission as a body. I am quite confident that 
Empson's own good taste, and regard for me, will lead him, 
if he should review the Code, to abstain most carefully from 
every thing that resembles puffing. His regard to truth and 
the public interest wiQ, of course, lead him to combat our 
opinions freely wherever he thinks us wrong. 

There is little chance that I shall see Scotland this year. In 
the autumn I shall probably set out for Rome, and return to 
London in the spring. As soon as I return, I shall seriously 
commence my " History." The first part (which, I think, will 
take up five octavo volumes) will extend from the Revolution 
to the commencement of Sir Eobert "Walpole's long adminis- 
ti'ation ; a period of three or four and thirty very eventful 
years. From the commencement of "Walpole's administration 
to the commencement of the American war, events may be 
dispatched more concisely. From the commencement of the 
American war it will again become necessary to be copious. 



20 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap.vii. 

These, at least, are my present notions. How far I shall bring 
the narrative down I have not determined. The death of 
George the Fourth would be the best halting -place. The 
" History " would then be an entire view of all the transac- 
tions which took place, between the Eevolution which brought 
the Crown into harmony with the Parliament, and the Eevo- 
lution which brought the Parliament into harmony with the 
nation. But there are great and obvious objections to contem- 
porary history. To be sure, if I live to be seventy, the events 
of George the Fourth's reign will be to me then what the 
American war and the Coalition are to me now. 

Whether I shall continue to reside in London seems to me 
very uncertain. I used to think that I liked London ; but, in 
truth, I liked things which were in London,' and which are 
gone. My family is scattered. I have no Parliamentary or 
official business to bind me to the capital. The business to 
which I propose to devote myself is almost incompatible vrith 
the distractions of a town life. I am sick of the monotonous 
succession of parties, and long for quiet and retirement. To 
quit politics for letters is, I believe, a wise choice. To cease 
to be a member of Parliament only to become a diner - out 
would be contemptible ; and it is not easy for me to avoid 
becoming a mere diner-out if I reside here. 

Ever yours, T. B. M. 

London, September 15th, 1838. 
Deab Ellis, — On Monday I shall set off for Liverpool by 
the railroad, which will then be opened for the whole way. 
I shall remain there about a week. The chief object of my 
visit is to see my little nephew, the son of my sister Mar- 
garet. It is no visit of pleasure, though I hear every thing 
most hopeful and pleasing about the boy's talents and tem- 
per.* Indeed, it is not without a great effort that I force my- 



* The boy died in 1847, having already shown as fair promise of remark- 
able ability and fine character as can be given at the age of thirteen. " I 
feel the calamity much," Macaulay wrote. " I had left the dear boy my 
library, little expecting that I should ever wear mourning for him." 



1838-'39.] LORD MACAULAY. 21 

seK to go. But I will say no more on ttis subject, for I can 
not command myself when I approach it. 

Empson came to London yesterday night, with his lady in 
high beauty and good humor. It is, you know, quite a pro- 
verbial truth that wives never tolerate an intimacy between 
their husbands and any old friends, except in two cases : the 
one, when the old friend was, before the marriage, a friend of 
both wife and husband ; the other, when the friendship is of 
later date than the marriage. I may hope to keep Empson's 
friendship under the former exception, as I have kept yours 
under the latter. 

Empson brings a sad account of poor Napier : aU sorts of 
disquiet and trouble, with dreadful, wearing complaints which 
give his friends the gravest cause for alarm. And, as if this 
were not enough. Brougham is persecuting him with the ut- 
most malignity. I did not think it possible for human nat- 
ure, in an educated, civilized man — a man, too, of great intel- 
lect — to have become so depraved. He writes to Napier in 
language of the most savage hatred, and of the most extravar 
gant vaunting. The ministers, he says, have felt only his lit- 
tle finger. He will now put forth his red right hand. They 
shall have no rest. As to me, he says that I shall rue my base- 
ness in not calling on him. But it is against Empson that he 
is most furious. He says that, in consequence of this new 
marriage,* he will make it the chief object of his life to pre- 
vent Jeffrey from ever being Lord President of the Court of 
Session. He thinks that there is some notion of making Emp- 
son editor of the Review. If that be done, he says, he will re- 
linquish every other object in order to ruin the Seview. He 
wiU lay out his last sixpence in that enterprise. He will make 
revenge on Empson the one business of the remaining years 
of his life. Empson says that nothing so demoniacal was ever 
written in the world. For my part, since he takes it into his 
head to be angry, I am pleased that he goes on in such a way ; 
for he is much less formidable in such a state than he would 
be if he kept his temper. I sent to Napier on Thursday a 

* Mr. Empson had married the daughter of Lord Jeffrey. 



22 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [cHAP.vn. 

long article on Temple. It is superficial ; but on that account, 
among others, I shall be surprised if it does not take. 

Hayter has painted me for his picture of the House of 
Commons. I can not judge of his performance. I can only- 
say, as Charles the Second did on a similar occasion, " Odds 
fish ! if I am like this, I am an ugly fellow." 

Tours ever, T. B. M. 

In the middle of October Macaulay started for a tour in 
Italy. Just past middle life, with his mind already full, and 
his imagination still fresh and his health unbroken, it may be 
doubted whether any traveler had carried thither a keener ex- 
pectation of enjoyment since Winckelmann for the first time 
crossed the Alps. A diary, from which extracts will be given 
in the course of this chapter, curiously illustrates the feelings 
with which he regarded the scenes around him. He viewed 
the works, both of man and of nature, with the eyes of an 
historian, and not of an artist. The leading features of a tract 
of country impressed themselves rapidly and indelibly on his 
observation; all its associations and traditions swept at once 
across his memory ; and every line of good poetry which its 
fame or its beauty had inspired rose almost involuntarily to his 
lips. But, compared with the wealth of phrases on which he 
could draw at will when engaged on the description of human 
passions, catastrophes, and intrigues, his stock of epithets ap- 
plicable to mountains, seas, and clouds was singularly scanty ; 
and he had no anibition to enlarge it. "When he had re- 
corded the fact that the leaves were green, the sky blue, the 
plain rich, and the hills clothed with wood, he had said all he 
had to say, and there was an end of it. He had neither the 
taste nor the power for rivaling those novelists who have 
more colors in their vocabulary than ever Turner had on his 
palette ; and who spend over the lingering phases of a single 
sunset as much ink as Richardson consumed in depicting the 
death of his villain or the ruin of his heroine. " I have al- 
ways thought," said Lady Trevelyan, " that your uncle was in- 
comparable in showing a town, or the place where any famous 
event occurred; but that he did not care for scenery, merely 



1838-'39.] LORD MACAULAY. 23 

as scenery. He enjoyed the country, in his way. He liked 
sitting out on a lawn, and seeing grass and fl.owers around 
him. Occasionally a view made a great impression on him, 
such as the view down upon Susa, going over Mont Cenis ; 
but I doubt whether any scene pleased his eye more than his 
own beloved Holly Lodge, or Mr. Thornton's garden at Bat- 
tersea Else. "When we were recalling the delights of an ex- 
cursion among the SuiTey hills, or in the by-ways at the En- 
glish lakes, he would be inclined to ask, ' What went ye out 
for to see V Yet he readily took in the points of a landscape ; 
and I remember being much struck by his description of the 
country before you reach Eome, which he gives in " Horatius." 
When I followed him over that ground many years after, I am 
sure that I marked the very turn in the road where the lines 
struck him : 

From where Cortona lifts to heaven 
Her diadem of towers ; 

and so on through ' reedy Thrasymene,' and all the other lo- 
calities of the poem." 

" Chalons-aur-Saone, Tuesday, October 23d, 1838. — The road from Autun is 
for some way more beautiful thau any thing I had yet seen in France ; or, 
indeed, in that style, anywhere else, except, perhaps, the ascent to the ta- 
ble-land of the Neilgherries. I traversed a winding pass, near two miles 
in length, running by the side of a murmuring brook, and between hills 
covered with forest. The landscape appeared in the richest coloring of 
October, under a sun like that of an English June. The earth was the 
earth of autumn, but the sky was the sky of summer. The foliage — dark- 
green, light-greeu, purple, red, and yellow — seen by the evening sun, pro- 
duced the effect of the plumage of the finest Eastern birds. I walked up 
the pass exceedingly pleased. To enjoy scenery you should ramble amidst 
it ; let the feelings to which it gives rise mingle with other thoughts ; look 
around upon it in intervals of reading ; and not go to it as one goes to see 
the lions fed at a fair. The beautiful is not to be stared at, but to be lived 
with. I have no pleasure from books which equals that of reading over 
for the hundredth time great productions which I almost know by heart ; 
and it is just the same with scenery." 

"Lyons, Thursday, October 25th. — My birthday. Thirty-eight years old. 
Thought of Job, Swift, and Antony, Dressed, and went down to the 
steamer. I was delighted by my first sight of the blue, rushing, health- 
ful-looking Ehoue, I thought, as I wandered along the quay, of the sin- 



24 LIFE AJID LETTERS OF [chap.vii. 

gulai love and veneration which rivers excite in those who live on their 
banks; of the feeling of the Hindoos about the Ganges; of the Hebrews 
about the Jordan ; of the Egyptians about the Nile ; of the Romans, 
Cuique fuit rerum prdmissa potentia Tibrin; 

of the Germans about the Rhine. Is it that rivers have, in a greater de- 
gree than almost any other inanimate object, the appearance of animation, 
and something resembling chai-acter ? They are sometimes slow and darlc- 
looking; sometimes fierce and impetuous; sometimes bright, dancing, and 
almost flippant. The attachment of the French for the Rhone may be ex- 
plained into a very natural sympathy. It is a vehement, rapid stream. 
It seems cheerful, and fuU of animal spirits, even to petulance. But this 
is all fanciful." 

" Octoler 26th.— On board the steamer for Avignon. Saw the famous 
junction of the two rivers, and thought of Lord Chatham's simile.* But 
his expression 'languid, though of no depth,' is hardly just to the Sa6ne, 
however just it may be to the Duke of Newcastle. We went down at a 
noble rate. The day, which had been dank and foggy, became exceedingly 
beautiful. After we had left Valence the scenery grew wilder : the hills 
bare and rocky like the sides of Lethe water in Cumberland ; the mount- 
ains of Danphin6 in the distance reminded me of the outline of Ceylon as 
I saw it from the sea ; and, here and there, I could catch a glimpse of white 
peaks which I fancied to be the summits of the Alps. I chatted with the 
French gentlemen on board, and found them intelligent and polite. We 
talked of their roads and public works, and they complimented me on my 
knowledge of French history and geography. 'Ah, monsieur, vous avez 
beaucoup approfondi ces choses-lsl.' The evening was falling when we 
came to the Pont St. Esprit, a famous work of the monks, which pretends 
to no ornament, and needs none." 

" October 28th. — The day began to break as we descended into Marseilles. 
It was Sunday ; but the town seemed only so much the gayer. I looked 
hard for churches, but for a long time I saw none. At last I heard bells, 
and the noise guided me to a chapel, mean inside and mean outside, but 
crowded as Simeon's church used to be crowded at Cambridge. The mass 
was nearly over. I staid to the end, wondering that so many reasonable 
beings could come together to see a man bow, drink, bow again, wipe a 

* " One fragment of this celebrated oration remains in a state of tolera- 
ble preservation. It is the comparison between the coalition of Fox and 
Newcastle, and the junction of the Rhone and the Sa6ne. 'At Lyons,' said 
Pitt, ' I was taken to see the place where the two rivers meet ; the one 
gentle, feeble, languid, and, though languid, yet of no depth ; the other a 
boisterous and impetuous torrent. But, different as they are, they meet at 
last.' " — Macaulay's Essay on Chatham. 



1838-'39.] LOED MACAULAY. 25 

cup, wrap up a napkin, spread his arms, and gesticulate with his hands ; 
and to hear a low muttering which they could not understand, interrupted 
by the occasional jingling of a bell. A fine steamer sails to-morrow for 
Leghorn. I am going to looii this hulking volume up, and I shall next 
open it in Tuscany." 

" Wednesday, October Slat. — This was one of the most remarkable days of 
my life. After being detained, by the idle precautions which are habitual 
with these small absolute governments, for an hour on deck, that the pas- 
sengers might be counted ; for another hour in a dirty room, that the agent 
of the police might write down all our names ; and for a third hour in an- 
other smoky den, while a custom-house of&cer opened razor-cases to see 
that they concealed no muslin, and turned over dictionaries to be sure that 
they contained no treason or blasphemy, I hurried on shore, and by seven 
in the morning I was in the streets of Genoa. Never had I been more 
struck and enchanted. There was nothing mean or small to break the 
charm, as one huge, massy, towering palace succeeded to another. True 
it is that none of these magnificent piles is a strikingly good architectural 
composition ; but the general effect is majestic beyond description. When 
the King of Sardinia became sovereign of Genoa, he bought the house of 
the Durazzo family, and found himself at once lodged as nobly as a great 
prince need wish to be. What a city, where a king has only to go into 
the market to buy a Luxembourg, or a St. James's ! Next to the palaces, 
or rather quite as much, I admired the churches. Outside they are poor 
and bad, but within they dazzled and pleased me more than I can express. 
It was the awakening of a new sense, the discovery of an unsuspected 
pleasure. I had drawn all my notions of classical interiors from the cold, 
white, and naked walls of such buildings as St. Paul's, or St. Genevifeve's ; 
but the first church-door that I opened at Genoa let me into another world. 
One harmonious glow pervaded the whole of the long Corinthian arcade 
from the entrance to the altar. In this way I passed the day, greatly ex- 
cited and delighted." / 

With this, perhaps the only jingling sentence which he ever 
left Tinblotted, Macaulay closes the account of his first, but far 
from his last, visit to the queen of the Tyrrhenian sea. To 
the end of his days, when comparing, as he loved to compare, 
the claims of European cities to the prize of beauty, he would 
place at the head of the list the august names of Oxford, Ed- 
inburgh, and Genoa. 

"November Zd. — I shall always have an interesting recollection of Pisa. 
There is something pleasing in the way in which all tbe monuments of 
Pisan greatness lie together, in a place not unlike the close of an English 



26 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vii. 

cathedral, surrounded witli green turf; still kept in the most perfect pres- 
ervation, and evidently matters of admiration and of pride to the whole 
population. Pisa has always had a great hold on my mind : partly from 
its misfortunes ; and partly, I believe, hecause my first notions about the 
Italian republics were derived from Sismondi, whom I read while at 
school : and Sismondi, who is, or fancies that he is, of Pisan descent, does 
all in his power to malie the country of his ancestors an object of inter- 
est. I like Pisa, too, for having been Ghibelline. After the time of Fred- 
erick Barbarossa, my preference, as far as one can have preferences in so 
wretched a question, are all Ghibelline. 

"As I approached Florence the day became brighter; and the country 
looked, not indeed strikingly beautiful, but very pleasing. The sight of 
the olive-trees interested me much. I had, indeed, seen what I was told 
were olive-trees, as I was . whirled down the Rhone from Lyons to Avi- 
gnon ; but they might, for any thing I saw, have been willows or ash-trees. 
Now they stood, covered with berries, along the road for miles. I looked 
at them with the same sort of feeling with which Washington Irving says 
that he heard the nightingale for the first time when he came to En- 
gland, after having read descriptions of her in poets from his childhood. 
I thought of the Hebrews, and their numerous images drawn from the 
olive ; of the veneration in which the tree was held by the Athenians ; of 
Lysias's speech ; of the fine ode in the ' CEdipus at Colonus ;' of Virgil and 
Lorenzo de' Medici. Surely it is better to travel in mature years, witli all 
these things in one's head, than to rush over the Continent while still a 
boy!" 

"Florence, November 3d. — Up before eight, and read Boiardo at break- 
fast. My rooms look into a court adorned with orange-trees and marble 
statues. I never look at the statues without thinking of poor Mignon. 

Und Marmorbilder stehn und sehn mich an : 
Was hat man dir, du armes Kind, getjan ? 

I know no two lines in the world which I would sooner have written than 
those. I went to a Gabinetto Litterario hard by, subscribed, and read the 
last English newspapers. I crossed the river, and walked through some 
of the rooms in the Palazzo Pitti ; greatly admiring a little painting, by 
Raphael, from Ezekiel, which was so fine that it almost reconciled me to 
seeing God the Father on canvas. 

" Then to the Church of Santa Croce : an ugly, mean outside ; and not 
much to admire in the architecture within, but consecrated by the dust 
of some of the greatest men that ever lived. It was to me what a first 
visit to Westminster Abbey would be to an American. The first tomb 
which caught my eye, as I entered, was that of Michael Angelo. I was 
ranch moved, and still more so when, going forward, I saw the stately 
monument lately erected to Dante. The figure of the poet seemed to me 



1838-'39.] LORD MACAULAY. 27 

fine aod fiuely placed, and the inscription very happy — his own words, the 
proclamation which resounds through the shades when Virgil returns, 

Onorate I'altisslmo poeta. 

The two allegorical figures were not much to my taste. It is particularly 
absurd to represent Poetry weeping for Dante. These weeping figures 
are all very well when a tomb is erected to a person lately dead; but 
when a group of sculpture is set up over a man who has been dead more 
than five hundred years, such lamentation is nonsensical. Who can help 
laughing at the thought of tears of regret shed because a man, who was 
born in the time of our Henry the Third is not stiU alive ? Yet I was very 
near shedding tears of a diifereut kind as I looked at this magnificent 
monument, and thought of the sufferings of the great poet, and of his in- 
comparable genius, and of all the pleasure which I have derived from him, 
and of his death in exile, and of the late justice of posterity. I believe 
that very few people have ever had their minds more thoroughly pene- 
trated with the spirit of any great work than mine is with that of the 
' Divine Comedy.' His execution I take to be far beyond that of any oth- 
er artist who has operated on the imagination by means of words. 

O degli altri poeti onore e lume, 
Vagliami il lungo studio e '1 grande amore 
Che m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume. ' 

I was proud to think that I had a right to apostrophize him thus. I went 
on, and next I came to the tomb of Alfieri, set np by his mistress, the 
Countess of Albany. I passed forward, and in another minute my foot 
was on the grave of Machiavel." 

"Noverribef 7th. — While walking about the town, I picked up a little 
mass-book, and read for the first time in my life — strange, and almost dis- 
graceful that it should be so — the service of the mass from beginning to 
end. It seemed to me inferior to our Communion Service in one most im- 
portant point. The phraseology of Christianity has in Latin a barbarous 
air, being altogether later than the age of pure Latinity. But the English 
language has grown up in Christian times, and the whole vocabulary of 
Christianity is incorporated with it. The fine passage in the Communion 
Service, ' Therefore with angels, and archangels, and aU the company of 
heaven,' is English of the best and most genuine description. But the an- 
swering passage in the mass, ' Laudant angeli, adorant dominationes, tre- 
mnnt potestates, coeli coelorumque virtutes ao beata seraphim,' would not 

' Glory and light of all the tuneful train. 
May it avail me that I long with zeal 
Have sought thy volume, and with love immense 
Have conn'd it o'er ! 



2S LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vii. 

merely have appeared barbarous, but would have been utterly unintelligi- 
ble — a mere gibberish — to every one of the great masters of the Latin 
tongue, Plautus, Cicero, Cassar, and Catullus. I doubt whether even Clau- 
dian would have understood it. I intend to frequent the Eomish worship 
tUl I come thoroughly to understand this ceremonial." 

Florence, November 4th, 1838. 

Deae I^apiee,— I arrived here the day before yesterday in 
very good health, after a journey of three weeks from Lon- 
don. I find that it vfill be absolutely impossible for me to 
execute the plan of reviewing Panizzi's edition of Boiardo in 
time for your next number. I have not been able to read 
one -half of Boiardo's poem, and, in order to do what I pro- 
pose, I must read Berni's rifacimento too, as well as Pulci's 
" Morgante ;" and this, I fear, will be quite out of the question. 
The day is not long enough for what I want to do in it : and 
if I find this to be the case at Florence, I may be sure that at 
Eome I shall have stiU less leisure. However, it is my full 
intention to be in England in February, and on the day on 
which I reach London I will begin to work for you on Lord 
Clive. 

I know little English news. I steal a quarter of an hour in 
the day from marbles and altar-pieces to read the Times and 
the Mornmg Chronicle. Lord Brougham, I have a notion, 
will of ten wish that he had left Lord Durham alone. Lord 
Durham will be in the House of Lords, with his pugnacious 
spirit, and with his high reputation among the Eadicals. In 
oratorical abilities there is, of course, no comparison between 
the men; but Lord Durham has quite talents enough to ex- 
pose Lord Brougham, and has quite as much acrimony and a 
great deal more nerve than Lord Brougham himself. I should 
very much like to know what the general opinion about this 
matter is. My own suspicion is that the Tories in the House 
of Lords will lose reputation, though I do not imagine that 
the Government will gain any. As to Brougham, he has 
reached that happy point at which it is equally impossible for 
him to gain character and lose it. 

Ever, dear Napier, yours most truly, 

T. B. Macaulat. 



1838-'39.] LORD MACAULAY. 29 

There was, indeed, very little reputation to be gained out of 
the business. Ifo episode in our political history is more re- 
plete with warning to honest and public-spirited men, who, in 
seeking to serve their country, forget what is due to their own 
interests and their own security, than the story of Lord Dur- 
ham. He accepted the governorship of Canada during a su- 
preme crisis in the affairs of that colony. He carried with 
him thither the confidence of the great body of his fellow- 
countrymen — a confidence which he had conciliated by his 
earnest and courageous demeanor in the warfare of Parlia- 
ment ; by the knowledge that, when he undertook his present 
mission, he had stipulated for the largest responsibility and 
refused the smallest emolument ; and, above all, by the appeal 
which, before leaving England, he made in the House of Lords 
to friends and foes alike. " I feel," he said, " that I can ac- 
complish my task only by the cordial and energetic support— 
a support which I am sure I shall obtain — of my noble friends, 
the members of Her Majesty's Cabinet; by the co-operation 
of the Imperial Parliament ; and, permit me to say, by the 
generous forbearance of the noble lords opposite, to whom I 
have always been politically opposed." From his political op- 
ponents, in the place of generous forbearance, he met with un- 
remitting persecution ; and, as for the character of the support 
which he obtained from those ministers who had themselves 
placed him in the forefront of the battle, it is more becom- 
ing to leave it for Tory historians to recount the tale. To 
Lord Brougham's treatment of his foimer colleague justice is 
done in the last sentence of Macaulay's letter. But Macaulay 
was mistaken in expecting that Lord Durham would call his 
enemies to account, and still less his friends. His heart was 
broken, but not estranged. His tongue, which had too seldom, 
perhaps, refrained from speaking out what was brave and true, 
could keep silence when silence was demanded by the claims 
of past alliances and the memory of old friendships. During 
the remnant of his life, Lord Durham continued to support 
the Whig Cabinet with all the loyalty and modesty of a young 
peer hopeful of an under-secretaryship, or grateful for having 
been selected to second the Address. But none the less had 



30 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. vn. 

the blow gone home ; and the Administration, which had so 
long been trembling and dying, was destined to survive by 
many months the most single-minded and high-natured among 
that company of statesmen who had wrought for our people 
the great deliverance of 1832. 

"Friday, November 9i?!.— Went to Dante's 'bel San Giovanni/ and heard 
mass there. Then to another church, and heard another mass. I begin to 
follow the service as well as the body of the hearers, which is not saying 
much. I paid a third visit to Santa Croce, and noticed in the cloister a 
monument to a little baby, ' II piti bel bambino che mai fosse ;' not a very 
wise inscription for parents to put up, but it brought tears iuto my eyes. 
I thought of the little thing* who lies in the cemetery at Calcutta. I 
meditated some verses for my ballad of ' Eomulu8,'t but made only one stan- 
za to my satisfaction. I finished Casti's ' Giuli Tre,' and have liked it less 
than I expected. The humor of the work consists in endless repetition. 
It is a very hazardous experiment to attempt to make fun out of that which 
is the great cause of yawning, perpetual harping on the same topic. Sir 
Walter Scott was very fond of this device for exciting laughter : as witness 
Lady Margaret, and his Sacred Majesty's disjune ; Claude Halcro, and Glo- 
rious John ; Sir Dngald Dalgetty, and the Marischal College of Aberdeen ; 
the Baillie, and his father, the deacon ; old Trapbois, and ' for a considera- 
tion.' It answered, perhaps once, for ten times that it failed." 

" Saturday, November Wth, 1838. — A letter from Mr. Aubln, our charg6 d'af- 
faires here, to say that he has a confidential message for me, and asking 
when he might call. I was in bed. I sent word that I would call on him 
as soon as I had breakfasted. I had little doubt that the ministers wanted 
my help in Parliament. I went to him, and he delivered to me two let- 
ters — one from Lord Melbourne, and the other from Eice. They press me 
to become judge-advocate, and assure me that a seat in Parliament may 
be procured for nie with little expense. Eice dwells mnch on the salary, 
which he says is £3500 a year. I thought it had been cut down ; but he 
must know. He also talks of the other advantages connected with the 
place. The offer did not strike me as even tempting. The money I do 
not want. I have little, but I have enough. The Eight Honorable before 
my name is a bauble which it would be far, very far indeed, beneath me to 
care about. The power is nothing. As an independent member of Par- 
liament I should have infinitely greater power. Nay, as I am, I have far 
greater power. I can now write what I choose ; and what I write may 
produce considerable effect on the public mind. In office I must necessari- 



* A little niece, who died in 1837, three months old. 

t The poem which was published as " The Prophecy of Cai>y8." 



1838-'39.] LORD MACAULAY. 31 

ly be under restraint. If, indeed, I had a cabinet oiBce, I should be able to 
do something in support of my own views of government ; but a man in 
office, and out of the Cabinet, is a mere slave. I have felt the bitterness of 
that slavery once. Though I hardly knew where to turn for a morsel of 
bread, my spirit rose against the intolerable thralldom. I was mutinous, 
and once actually resigned. I then went to India to get independence, and 
I have got it, and I will keep it. So I wrote to Lord Melbourne and Eioe. 
I told them that I would cheerfully do any thing to serve them in Parlia- 
ment ; but that office, except, indeed, office of the highest rank, to which I 
have no pretensions, had not the smallest allurements for me ; that the sit- 
uation of a subordinate was unsuited to my temper ; that I had tried it, 
that I had found it insupportable, and that I would never make the exper- 
iment again. I begged them not to imagine that I thought a place which 
Mackintosh had been anxious to obtain beneath me. Very far from it. I 
admitted it to be above the market price of my services ; but it was below 
the fancy price which a peculiar turn of mind led me to put on my liberty 
and my studies. The only thing that would ever tempt me to give up my 
liberty and my studies was the power to effect great things ; and of that 
power, as they well knew, no man had so little as a man in office out of the 
Cabinet. 

"I never in my life took an important step with greater confidence in 
my own judgment, or with a firmer conviction that I was doing the best 
for my own happiness, honor, and usefulness. I have no relentings. If 
they take me at my word, and contrive to bring me into Parliament with- 
out office, I shall be, I think, in the most eligible of situations ; but this I 
do not much expect." 

On the 12th of November, Macaulay set out from Florence, 
by way of Cortona and Perugia. 

" Tuesday, November 13th. — My journey lay over the field of Thrasyme- 
nus, and as soon as the sun rose, I read Livy's description of the scene, and 
wished that I had brought Polybius too. However, it mattered little, for 
I could see absolutely nothing. I was exactly in the situation of the con- 
sul, Flaminius — completely hid in the morning fog. I did not discern the 
lake till the road came quite close to it, and then my view extended only 
over a few yards of reedy mud and shallow water, so that I can truly say 
that I have seen precisely what the Eoman army saw on that day. After 
some time we began to ascend, and came at last, with the help of oxen, 
to an eminence on which the sun shone bright. All the hill-tops round 
were perfectly clear, and the fog lay in the valley below like a lake wind- 
ing among mountains. I then understood the immense advantage which 
Hannibal derived from keeping his divisions on the heights, where he 
conld see them all, and where they could all see each other, while the 
Romans were stumbling and groping, without the possibility of concert. 



32 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vii. 

through the thick haze below. Toward evening I began to notice the 
white oxen of Clitummis." 

"November 14*7i.— Up and off by half-past four. The sun triumphed 
over the mist just as I reached Narni. The scenery was really glorious ; 
far finer than that of Matlock or the Wye, in something of the same style. 
The pale line of the river which brawled below, though in itself not agree- 
able, was interesting from classical recollections. I thought how happily 
Virgil had touched the most striking and characteristic features of Italian 
landscape. As the day wore on, I saw the Tiber for the first time. I saw 
Mount Soracte, and, unlike Lord Byron, I loved the sight for Horace's sake. 
And so I came to Civita Castellana, where I determined to stop, though it 
was not much after two. I did not wish to enter Eome by night. I want- 
ed to see the dome of St. Peter's from a distance, and to observe the city 
disclosing itself by degrees.'' 

"Noveniber 15t7t. — On arriving this morning, I walked straight from the 
hotel door to St. Peter's. I was so much excited by the expectation of 
what I was to see, that I could notice nothing else. I was quite nervous. 
The colonnade in front is noble — very, very noble — yet it disappointed me, 
and would have done so had it been the portico of Paradise. In I went, 
and I was for a minute fairly stunned by the magnificence and harmony 
of the interior. I never in my life saw, and never, I suppose, shall again 
see, any thing so astonishingly beautiful. I really could have cried with 
pleasure. I rambled about for half an hour or more, paying little or no 
attention to details, but enjoying the effect of the sublime whole. 

"In rambling back to the Piazza di Spagna I found myself before the 
portico of the Pantheon. I was as much struck and affected as if I had 
not known that there was such a building in Eome. There it was, the 
work of the age of Augustus ; the work of men who lived with Cicero, and 
Csesar, and Horace, and Virgil. What would they have said if they had 
seen it stuck all over with 'Invito Sacro,' and 'Indulgenza Perpetua?'" 

"November 16th. — As soon as it cleared up, I hastened to St. Peter's again. 
There was one spot near which an Euglishman could not help lingering 
for a few minutes. In one of the side aisles, a monument by Canova 
marks the burial-place of the latest princes of the House of Stuart ; James 
the Third ; Charles Edward ; and Cardinal York, whom the last of the 
Jacobites affected to call Henry the Ninth. I then went toward the riv- 
er, to the spot where the old Pons Sublicius stood, and looked about to 
see how my Horatius agreed with the topography. Pretty well : but his 
house must be on Mount Palatine ; for he would never see Mount Coelius 
from the spot where he fought.* Thence to the Capitol, and wandered 



' But he saw on Palatinus 

The white porch of his home ; 
And he spake to the noble river 
That rolls by the walls of Rome. 



1838-'39.] LORD MACAULAY. 33 

through the gallery of paintings placed there by Benedict the Fourteenth, 
my favorite Pope." 

"Novemler 22(J. — I Trent to see a famous relic of antiquity, lately discov- 
ered — the baker's tomb. This baker, aud his wife, and the date of his 
baking performances, and the meaning of that mysterious word 'apparet,' 
are now the great subjects of discussion among the best circles of Rome. 
Strange city; once sovereign of the world, whose news now consists in the 
discovery of the buried tomb of a tradesman who has been dead at least fif- 
teen hundred years! The question whether 'apparet' is the short for 'ap- 
paritoris' is to them what the Licinian Rogations and the Agrarian Laws 
were to their fathers ; what the Catholic Bill and the Reform Bill have 
been to us. Yet, to indulge in a sort of reflection which I often fall into 
here, the day may come when London, then dwindled to the dimensions 
of the parish of St. Martin's, and supported in its decay by the expendi- 
ture of wealthy Patagonians aud New Zealauders,* may have no more im- 
1 portant questions to decide than the arrangement of 'Afflictions sore long 
I time I bore' on the grave-stone of the wife of some baker in Hounds- 
ditch." 

"Noveniber 26tli. — At ten, Colyart came, and we set out. The day would 
furnish matter for a volume. We went to the English College, and walk- 
ed about the cloisters — interesting cloisters to an Englishman. There lie 
several of our native dignitaries who died at Rome before the Reforma- 
tion. There lie, too, the bones of many Jacobites, honest martyrs to a 
worthless cause. We looked into the refectory, much like the halls of the 
small colleges at Cambridge in my time — that of Peterhouse, for example 
— and smelling strongly of yesterday's supper, which strengthened the re- 
semblance. We found the principal, Dr. Wiseman, a young ecclesiastic 
full of health and vigor — ranch such a ruddy, strapping divine as I re- 
member Whewell eighteen years ago — in purple vestments standing in 
the cloister. With him was Lord Clifford, in the uniform of a deputy- 
lieutenant of Devonshire, great from paying his court to Pope Gregory. 
He was extremely civil, and talked with gratitude of General Macaulay's 
kindness to him in Italy. Wiseman chimed in. Indeed, I hear my uncle's 
praises wherever I go. Lord Clifford is not at all like my notion of a 

* It may be worth mention that the celebrated New Zealander appears 
at the end of the third paragraph of the essay on Von Ranke's " History 
of the Popes.'' 

t Mr. Colyar was an English Catholic gentleman, residing in Rome, who 
was particularly well-informed with regard to every thing concerning the 
city, ancient and modern. He was in high favor with priests and prelates, 
and was, therefore, an invaluable acquaintance for English travelers, at 
whose disposal he was very ready to place both his knowledge and his 
influence. 

YoL. 11.-3 



34 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vii. 

great Catholic peer of old family. I always imagine such a, one proud 
and stately, with the air of a man of rank, but not of fashion ; such a per- 
sonage as Mrs. Inchhald's Catholic lord in the ' Simple Story,' or as Sir 
Walter's Lord GlenaUau without the remorse. But .Lord Clifford is all 
quicksilver. He talked about the pope's reception of him and Lord 
Shrewsbury. His holiness is in high health and spirits, and is a little 
more merry than strict formalists approve. Lord Shrewsbury says that 
he seems one moment to be a boy eager for play, and the next to be an- 
other Leo arresting the march of Attila. The poor King of Prussia, it 
seems, is Attila. We went into Dr. Wiseman's ap.artments, which are 
snugly furnished in the English style, and altogether are very like the 
rooms of a senior Fellow of Trinity. After visiting the library, where I 
liad a sight of the identical copy of Fox's ' Book of Martyrs ' in which Par- 
sons made notes for his answer, I took leave of my countrymen with great 
good-will. 

" We then crossed the river, and turned into the Vatican. I had walk- 
ed a hundred feet through the library without the faintest notion that I 
was in it. No books, no shelves, were visible. All was light and brill- 
iant; nothing but white and red and gold; blazing arabesques, and 
paintings on ceiling and wall. And this was the Vatican Library; a 
l>]a<!e which I used to think of with awe as a far sterner and darker Bod- 
leian ! The books and manuscripts are all in low wooden cases ranged 
round the walls ; and as these cases are painted in light colors, they har- 
monize with the gay aspect of every thing around them, and might be 
supposed to contain musical instruments, masquerade dresses, or china 
for the dances and snppers for which the apartments seem to be meant. 
They bore inscriptions, however, more suited to my notions of the place. 

" Thence I went through the Museum, quite distracted by the multitude 
and magnificence of the objects which it contained. The splendor of the 
ancient marbles, the alabaster, the huge masses of porphyry, the granites 
of various colors, made the whole seem like a fairy region. I wonder that 
nobody in this moneyed and luxurious age attempts to open quarries like 
those which supplied the ancients. The wealth of modern Europe is far 
greater than that of the Roman Empire ; and these tilings are highly val- 
ued, and bought at enormous prices. And yet we content ourselves with 
digging for them in the ruins of this old city and its suburbs, and never 
think of seeking them in the rocks from which the Romans extracted 
them. Africa and Greece were the parts of the world which afforded the 
most costly marbles ; and perhaps, now that the French have settled in 
Africa, and that a Bavarian prince reigns in Greece, some researches may 
be made. 

" I looked into the apartments where the works in mosaic are carried 
on. - A noble figure of Isaiah, by Raphael, had just been completed. We 
ought to have a similar workshop connected with the National Gallery. 



1838-'39.] LOED MACAULAY. 35 

What a glorious vestibule to a palace might be made, with the cartoons in 
mosaic covering the walls ! The best portraits of the great men of En- 
gland, reproduced in the same material, beginning with Holbein's Wolsey 
and More, and coming down to Lawrence's Wellington and Canning, 
would be worthy decorations to the new Houses of Parliament. I should 
like to see *he walls of St. Paul's incrusted with porphyry and verd-an- 
tique, and the ceiling and dome glittering with mosaics and gold. 

" The Demosthenes is very noble. There can be no doubt about the 
face of Demosthenes. There are two busts of him in the Vatican, besides 
this statue. They are all exactly alike, being distiuguished by the strong 
projection of the upper lip. The face is lean, wrinkled, and haggard ; the 
expression singularly stern and intense. You see that he was no trifler, 
no jester, no voluptuary, but a man whose soul was devoured by ambi- 
tion, and constantly on the stretch. The soft, sleek, plump, almost sleepy, 
though handsome, iiice of ^schiues presents a remarkable contrast. I 
was much interested by the bust of Julius, with the head veiled. It is a 
most striking countenance, indeed. He looks like a man meant to be 
master of the world. The endless succession of these noble works bewil- 
dered me, and I went home almost exhausted with pleasurable excite- 
ment." 

In a letter written during the latter half of December, 
Macaulay gives his impressions of the Papal Government at 
greater length than in his diary. 

" Rome was full enough of English when I arrived, but now the crowd 
is insupportable. I avoid society as much as I can without being churl- 
ish ; for it is boyish to come to Italy for the purpose of mixing with the 
set, and hearing the tattle, to which one is accustomed in Mayfair. The 
Government treats us very well. The pope winks at a Protestant chapel, 
and indulges us in a reading-room, where the Times and Morning Chronicle 
make their appearance twelve days after they are published in London. 
It is a pleasant city for an English traveler. He is not harassed or re- 
strained. He lives as he likes, and reads what he likes, and suffers little 
from the vices of the Administration ; but I can conceive nothing more 
insupportable than the situation of a layman who should be a subject of 
the pope. In this government there is no avenue to distinction for any 
hut priests. Every office of importance, dij)lomatic, financial, and judi- 
cial, is held by the clergy. A prelate, armed with most formidable pow- 
ers, superintends the police of the streets. The military department is 
directed by a commission, over which a cardinal presides. Some petty 
magistracy is the highest promotion to which a lawyer can look forward ; 
and the greatest nobles of this singular State can expect nothing better 
than some place in the pope's household, which may entitle them to walk 



36 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vii. 



in procession on the great festivals. Imagine what England would be if 
all the members of Parliament, the ministers, the judges, the embassadors, 
the governors of colonies, the very commanders-in-chief and lords of the 
admiralty, were, without one exception, bishops or priests ; and if the 
highest post open to the noblest, wealthiest, ablest, and most ambitious 
layman were a lordship of the bed-chamber! And yet this would not 
come up to the truth, for our clergy can marry ; but here every man who 
takes a wife cuts himself off forever from all dignity and power, and puts 
himself into the same position as a Catholic in England before the Eman- 
cipation Bill. The Church is, therefore, filled with men who are led into 
it merely by ambition, and who, though they might have been useful and 
respectable as laymen, are hypocritical and immoral as churchmen ; while, 
on the other hand, the State suffers greatly, for you may guess what sort 
of secretaries at war and chancellors of the exchequer are likely to be 
found among bishops and canons. Corruption infects all the public of- 
fices. Old women above, liars and cheats below — that is the Papal Ad- 
ministration. The States of the pope are, I suppose, the worst governed 
in the civilized world ; and the imbecility of the police, the venality of 
the public servants, the desolation of the country, and the wretchedness 
of the people, force themselves on the observation of the most heedless 
traveler. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the population seems 
to consist chiefly of foreigners, priests, and paupers. Indeed, whenever 
you meet a man who is neither in canonicals nor rags, you may bet two 
to one that he is an Englishman." 

" Tuesday, Deeeniber ith. — I climbed the Janiculan Hill to the Convent of 
St. Onofrio, and went into the church. It contains only one object of in- 
terest — a stone in the pavement, with the words 'Hie jacet Torquatus 
Tassus.' He died in this convent, just before the day fixed for his corona- 
tion at the Capitol. I was not quite in such raptures as I have heard oth- 
er people profess. Tasso is not one of my favorites, either as a man or a 
poet. There is too little of the fine frenzy in his verses, and too much in 
his life. 

" I called on the American consul. He was very civil, and, d, la mode 
WAm&ique, talked to me about my writings.* I turned the conversation 

* An injury of this nature was still fresh in Macanlay's mind. Writing 
from Florence, he says : " I do not scamper about with a note-book in my 
hand, and a cicerone gabbling in my ear ; hut I go often, and stay long, at 
the places which interest me. I sit quietly an hour or two every morning 
in the finest churches, watching the ceremonial, and the demeanor of the 
congregation. I seldom pass less than an hour daily in the Tribune, where 
the Venus de' Medici stands, surrounded by other masterpieces in sculpture 
and painting. Yesterday, as I was looking at some superb portraits by 
Raphael and Titian, a Yankee clergyman introduced himself to me ; told 



1838-'39.] LORD MACAULAY. 37 

instantly. No topic, I am glad to say, is less to my taste. I dined by my- 
self, and read an execrably stupid novel called ' Tylney Hall.' Why do I 
read such stuff ?" 

" Saturday, December 8th,. — TSo letters at the post-office, the reading-room 
shut, and the churches full. It is the feast of the Immaculate Conception 
of the Virgin Mary ; a day held in prodigious honor by the Franciscans, 
who first, I believe, introduced this absurd notion, which even within the 
Catholic Church the Dominicans have always combated, and which the 
Council of Treut, if I remember Fra Paolo right, refused to pronounce or- 
thodox. I spent much of the day over Smollett's ' History.' It is exceed- 
ingly bad : detestably so.* I can not think what had happened to him. 
His carelessness, partiality, passion, idle invective, gross ignorance of facts, 
and crude general theories, do not surprise me much. But the style, wher- 
ever he tries to be elevated, and wherever he attempts to draw a charac- 
ter, is perfectly nauseous ; which I can not understand. He says of old 
Horace Walpole that he was an embassador without dignity, and a pleni- 
potentiary without address. I declare I would rather have a hand cut off 
than publish such a precious antithesis." 

" Tuesday, December 18th. — I staid at home till late, reading and medita- 
ting. I have altered some parts of ' Horatius ' to my mind ; and I have 
thought a good deal during the last few days about my ' History.' The 
great difficulty of a work of this kind is the beginning. How is it to be 
joined on to the preceding events ? Where am I to commence it ? I can 
not plunge, slap-dash, into the middle of events and characters. I can not, 
on the other hand, write a history of the whole reign of James the Second 

me that he had heard who I was ; that he begged to thank me for my 
writings in the name of his countrymen ; that he had himself reprinted my 
paper on Bacon ; that it had a great run in the States ; and that my name 
was greatly respected there. I bowed, thanked him, and stole away; 
leaving the Grand Duke's pictures a great deal sooner than I had in- 
tended." 

The same scene, with the same actors, was repeated on the next day be- 
neath the frown of the awful duke who sits aloft in the chapel of the Me- 
dici, adjoining the Chnrch of San Lorenzo; whither Macaulay had repair- 
ed " to snatch a mass, as one of Sir Walter's heroes says." 

* Even Charles Lamb, who was far too chivalrous to leave a favorite au- 
thor in the lurch, can find nothing to say in defense of Smollett's "Histo- 
ry " except a delightful, but perfectly gratuitous, piece of impertinence to 
Hume. "Smollett they" (the Scotch) "have neither forgotten nor for- 
given for his delineation of Eory and bis companion upon their first intro- 
duction to our metropolis. Speak of Smollett as a great genius, and they 
will retort upon you Hume's ' History ' compared with his Continuation of 
it. What if the historian had continued ' Humphry Clinker f " 



38 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vii. 

as a preface to the history of William the Third ; and if I did, a history of 
Charles the Second would still be equally necessary, as a preface to that of 
the reign of James the Second. I sympathize with the poor man who be- 
gan the war of Troy 'gemiuo ab ovo.' But, after much consideration, I 
think that I can manage, by the help of an introductory chapter or two, 
to glide imperceptibly into the full current of my narrative. I am more 
and more in love with the subject. I really think that posterity will not 
willingly let my book die. 

" To St. Peter's again. This is becoming a daily visit." 

Rome, December 19th, 1838. 
Dear Loed Lafsdowne, — I Lave received your kind letter, 
and thank you for it. I have now had ample time to reflect 
on the determination which I expressed to Lord Melbourne 
and Rice ; and I am every day more and more satisfied that 
the course which I have taken is the best for myself, and the 
best also for the Government. If I thought it right to follow 
altogether my own inclinations, I should entirely avoid public 
life. But I feel that these are not times for flinching from 
the Whig banner. I feel that at this juncture no friend of 
toleration and of temperate liberty is justifled in withholding 
his support from the ministers ; and I think that, in the pres- 
ent unprecedented and inexplicable scarcity of Parliamentary 
talent among the young men of England, a little of that tal- 
ent may be of as much service as far greater powers in times 
more fertile of eloquence. I would, therefore, make some sac- 
rifice of ease, leisure, and money, in order to serve the Govern- 
ment in the House of Commons. But I do not think that 
public duty at all requires me to overcome the dislike which I 
feel for official life. On the contrary, my duty and inclina- 
tion are here on one side. For I am certain that, as an inde- 
pendent member of Parliament, I should have far more weight 
than as judge-advocate. It is impossible for me to be igno- 
rant of my position in the world, and of the misconstructions 
to which it exposes nie. Entering Parliament as judge-advo- 
cate, I should be considered as a mere political adventurer. 
My speeches might be complimented as creditable rhetorical 
performances, but they, would never produce the sort of effect 
which I have seen produced by very rude sentences stammered 
by such men as Lord Spencer and Lord Ebrington. If I en- 



1838-'39.] LORD MACAULAY. 39 

ter Parliament as a placeman, nobody will believe/what nev- 
ertheless is the truth, that I am quite as independent, quite as 
indifferent to salary, as the Dake of Northumberland can be. 
As I have none of that authority which belongs to large fort- 
une and high rank, it is absolutely necessary to my comfort, 
and will be greatly conducive to my usefulness, that I should 
have the authority which belongs to proved disinterestedness. 
I should also, as a member of Parliament not in office, have 
leisure for other pursuits, which I can not bear to think of 
quitting, and which you kindly say you do not wish me to 
quit. A life of literary repose would be most to my own 
taste. Of my literary repose I am, however, willing to sacri- 
fice exactly as much as public duty requires me to sacrifice; 
but I will sacrifice no more ; and by going into Parliament 
without office I both make a smaller personal sacrifice, and do 
more service to the public, than by taking office. I hope that 
you will think these reasons satisfactory ; for you well know 
that, next to my own approbation, it would be my first wish 
to have yours. 

I hare been more delighted than I can express by Italy, and 
above all by Pome. I had no notion that an excitement so 
powerful and so agreeable, still untried by me, was to be found 
in the world. I quite agree with you in thinking that the first 
impression is the weakest ; and that time, familiarity,, and re- 
flection, which destroy the charm of so many objects, height- 
en the attractions of this wonderful place. I hardly know 
whether I am more interested by the old Pome or by the 
new Rome — ^by the monuments of the extraordinary empire 
which has perished, or by the institutions of the still more ex- 
traordinary empire which, after all the shocks which it has sus- 
tained, is still full of life and of perverted energy. If there 
were not a single ruin, fine building, picture, or statue in 
Rome, I should think myseK repaid for my journey by hav- 
ing seen the head-quarters of Catholicism, and learned some- 
thing of the nature and effect of the strange Brahmanical gov- 
ernment established in the Ecclesiastical State. Have you 
read Von Panke's "History of the Papacy since the Refor- 
mation ?" I have owed much of my pleasure helre to what I 
learned from him. 



40 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vii. 

Eome is full of English. "We could furnish exceedingly 
respectable Houses of Lords and Commons. There are at 
present twice as many coroneted carriages in the Piazza di 
Spagna as in St. James's parish. Ever, my dear lord, yours 
most faithfully, T. B. Macaulay. 

" Saturday, Becemher 22d. — The Canadian iDSurrection seems to be entire- 
ly crushed. I fear that the victorious caste will not be satisfied without 
punishments so rigorous as would dishonor the English Government in 
the eyes of all Europe, and in our own eyes ten years hence. I wish that 
ministers would remember that the very people who bawl for wholesale 
executions now will be the first to abuse them for cruelty when this ex- 
citement is gone by. The Duke of Cumberland in Scotland did only what 
all England was clamoring for ; but all England changed its mind, and 
the duke became unpopular for yieldiug to the cry which was set up in a 
moment of fear and resentment. As to hanging men by the hundred, it 
really is not to be tliought of with patience. Ten or twelve examples well 
selected would be quite sufficient, together with the slaughter and burn- 
ing which have already taken place. If the American prisoners are trans- 
ported, or kept on the roads at hard labor, their punishment will do more 
good than a great wholesale execution. The savage language of some of 
the newspapers, both in Canada and London, makes me doubt whether 
we are so far beyond the detestable Carlists and Christluos of Spain as 
I had hoped. 

" I read a good deal of Gibbon. He is grossly partial to the pagan per- 
secutors ; quite offensively so. His opinion of the Christian fathers is very 
little removed from mine ; but his excuses for the tyranny of their oppress- 
ors give to his book the character which Person describes.* He writes 
'like a man who had received some personal injury from Christianity, and 
wished to be revenged on it and all its professors. I dined at home, and 
read some more of ' Pelham ' in the evening. I know few things of the 
kind so good as the character of Lord Vincent." 

* The passage alluded to occurs in the Preface to the " Letters to Arch- 
deacon Travis," which Macaulay regarded as a work of scholarship second 
only to Bentley's " Phalaris." " His " (Gibbon's) " reflections are often just 
and profound. He pleads eloquently for the rights of mankind and the 
duty of toleration ; nor does his humanity ever slumber unless when wom- 
en are ravished or the Christians persecuted He often makes, when 

he can not readily find, an occasion to insult our religion ; which he hates 
so cordially that he might seem to revenge some personal insult. Such is 
his eagerness in the cause, that he stoops to the most despicable pun, or to 
the most awkward perversion of language, for the pleasure of turning the 
Scriptures into ribaldry, or of calling Jesus an impostor." 



1838-'39.] LOED MACAULAY. 41 

Macaulay, who had not yet lost his taste for a show, took 
full advantage of his presence at Eome during the Christmas 
festivals. He pronounced the procession in St. Peter's to be 
the finest thing of the kind that he had ever seen ; but it would 
be unfair on him to expose to general criticism his off-hand 
description of a pageant, which no written sentences, however 
carefully arranged and polished, could depict one-tenth as viv- 
idly as the colors in which Roberts loved to paint the swarm- 
ing aisles of a stately cathedral. And yet, perhaps, not even 
Titian himself (although in a picture at the Louvre, according 
to Mr. Euskin, he has put a whole library of dogmatic theol- 
ogy into the backs of a row of bishops) could find means to 
represent on canvas the sentiments which suggest themselves 
to the spectators of this, the most impressive of earthly cere- 
monies. " I was deeply moved," says Maca^^lay, " by reflect- 
ing on the immense antiquity of the papal dignity, which can 
certainly boast of a far longer clear, known, and uninterrupted 
succession than any dignity in the world ; linking together, as 
it does, the two great ages of human civilization. Our mod- 
ern feudal kings are mere upstarts compared with the succes- 
sors in regular order, not, to be sure, of Peter, but of Sylvester 
and Leo the Great." 

There was one person among the by-standers through whose 
brain thoughts of this nature were doubtless coursing even 
more rapidly than through Macaulay's own. " On Christmas- 
eve I found Gladstone in the throng ; and I accosted him ; as 
we had met, though we had never been introduced to each 
other. He received my advances with very great emjyresse- 
ment indeed, and we had a good deal of pleasant talk." 

"December 29tt. — I went to Torlonia's to get money for my journey. \ 
What a cnrioiis eifect it has to see a bank in a palace, among orange-trees, 
colonnades, marble statues, and all the signs of the most refined luxury ! 
It carries me back to the days of the merchant-princes of Florence ; when 
philosophers, poets, and painters crowded to the house of Cosmo de' Med- 
ici. I drew one hundred pounds' worth of scudi, and had to lug it through 
the streets in a huge canvas bag, muttering with strong feeling Pope's 
' Blest paper credit.' I strolled through the whole of the vast collection 
of the Vatican with still increasing pleasure. The ' Communion of St. Je- 



42 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. vii. 

rome ' seems to me finer and finer every time that I look at it ; and the 
'Transfiguration' has at last made a complete conquest of nie. In spite 
of all the faults of the plan, I feel it to be the first picture in the world. 
Then to St. Peter's for the last time, and rambled about it quite sadly. I 
could not have believed that it would have pained me so much to part 
from stone and mortar.'' 

"January 1st, 1839. — I shall not soon forget the three days which I 
passed between Eome and Naples. As I descended the hiU of Velletri, the 
huge Pontine Marsh was spread out below like a sea. I soon got into it ; 
and, thank God, soon got out of it. If the Government has not succeeded 
in making this swamp salubrious, at any rate measures have been taken 
for enabling people to stay in it as short a time as possible. The road is 
raised, dry, and well paved ; as hard as a rock, and as straight as an arrow. 
It reminded me of the road in the ' Pilgrim's Progress,' running through the 
Slough of Despond, the quagmire in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, 
and the Enchanted Land. At the frontier the custom-house oiHcer begged 
me to give him a place in my carriage to Mola. I refused, civilly, but firm- 
ly. I gave him three crowns not to plague me by searching my baggage, 
which indeed was protected by a lascia passare. He pocketed the three 
crowns, but looked very dark and sullen at my refusal to accept his com- 
pany. Precious fellow, to think that a public functionary to whom a little 
silver is a bribe is fit society for an English gentleman ! 

" I had a beautiful view of the Bay of Gaeta, with Vesuvius at an im- 
mense distance. The whole country is most interesting historically. 
They pretend to point out on the road the exact spot where Cicero was 
murdered. I place little more faith in these localities than in the head of 
St. Andrew, or the spear of Longinus ; but it is certain that hereabouts 
the event took place. The inn at Mola, in which I slept, is called the 
Villa di Cicerone. The chances are infinite that none of the ruins now 
extant belonged to Cicero ; but it pleased me to think how many great 
Eomans, when Eome was what England is now, loved to pass their occa- 
sional holidays on this beautiful coast. I traveled across the low coun- 
try through which Horace's Liris flows ; by the marshes of Minturnje, where 
Marius hid himself from the vengeance of Sulla; over the field where 
Gonsalvo de Cordova gained the great victory of Garigliano. The plain 
of Capua seemed to retain all its old richness. Since I have been in Italy, 
I have often thought it very strange that the English have never intro- 
duced the olive into any of those vast regions which they have colonized. 
I do not believe that there is an olive-tree in all the United States,\or in 
South Africa, or in Australasia. ' • 

" On my journey through the Pontine Marshes I finished Bulwer's ' Alice.' 
It affected me much, and in a way in which I have not been affected by 
novels these many years. Indeed, I generally avoid all novels which are 
said to have much pathos. The suffering which they produce is to me a 



1838-'39.] LOED MACAULAY. 43 

very real suffering, and of that I have quite enough without them. I 
think of Bulwer, still, as I have always thought. He has considerable tal- 
ent and eloquence ; hut he is fond of writing ahout what he only half un- 
derstands, or understands not at all. His taste is had ; and bad from a 
cause which lies deep and is not to be removed — from want of soundness, 
manliness, and simplicity of mind. This work, though better than any 
thing of his that I have read, is far too long." 

"Thursday, January Zdi ^1 must say that the accounts which I had 
heard of Naples are very iucorrect. There is far less beggary than at 
Kome, and far more industry. Rome is a city of priests. It reminded me 
of the towns in Palestine which were set apart to be inhabited by the Le- 
vites. Trade and agriculture seem only to he tolerated as subsidiary to 
devotion. Men are allowed to work ; because, unless somebody works, 
nobody can live ; and, if nobody lives, nobody can pray. But as soon as 
you enter Naples you notice a striking contrast. It is the difference be- 
tween Sunday and Monday. Here the business of civil life is evidently 
the great thing, and religion is the accessory. A poet might introduce 
Naples as Martha, and Rome as Mary. A Catholic may thiuk Mary's the 
better employment ; but, even a Catholic, much more a Protestant, would 
prefer the table of Martha. I must ask many questions about these mat- 
ters. At present, my impressions are very favorable to Naples. It is the 
only place in Italy that has seemed to me to have the same sort of vitali- 
ty which you find in all the great English ports and cities. Rome and 
Pisa are dead and gone ; Florence is not dead, but sleepeth ; while Naples 
overflows with life. 

" I have a letter from Empson, who tells me that every body speaks 
handsomely about my refusal of the judge-advocateship. Holt Mackenzie 
praised the ' Code' highly at Rogers's the other day. I am glad of it. It 
is, however, a sort of work which must wait long for justice, as I well 
knew when I labored at it." 

"Naples, Sunday, January Qth. — I climbed to the top of the hill to see 
Virgil's tomb. The tomb has no interest but what it derives from its 
name. I do not know the history of this ruin; but, if the tradition be an 
immemorial tradition — if nobody can fix any time wheu it originated — I 
should be inclined to think it autljeutio. Virgil was just the man whose 
bnrial-place was likely to be known to every generation which has lived 
since his death. There has been no period, from the Augustan age down- 
ward, when there were not readers of the '^neid ' in Italy. The suspi- 
cious time with the religion of the Catholic Church is the early time. I 
suppose nobody doubts that the sepulchre now shown as that of Christ is 
the same with the sepulchre of Helena, or that the place now pointed out 
as the tomb of St. Paul is the same which was so considered in the days of 
Chrysostom. The local traditions of Christianity are clear enough during 
the last thirteen hundred or fourteen hundred years. It is during the 



44 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [Chap, vil 

first two or three centuries that the chain falls. Now, as to Virgil, there 
can be no doubt that his burial-place would, have been as well known till 
the dissolution of the Western Empire as that of Shakspeare is now ; andy 
even in the dark ages, there would always have been a certain number of 
people interested about his remains. I returned to my hotel, exceedingly 
tired with walking and climbing. I dined ; had a pint of bottled porter, 
worth all the Falernian of these days ; and finished the evening by my 
fireside over Theodore Hook's ' Jack Brag.' He is a clever, coarse, vulgar 
writer." 

"Friday, January lift. — When I woke it was snowing ; so that I deter- 
mined to give up Psestum, for which I was rather sorry when, at about 
eleven, it became flue and clear. Bnt I was not quite well, and it is bit- 
terly cold to a returued Indian. I staid by my fire and read Bulwer's 
' Pompeii.' It has eloquence and talent, like all his books. It has also 
more learning than I expected ; but it labors under the usual faults of all 
works iu which it is attempted to give moderns a glimpse of ancient maur 
uers. After all, between us and them there is a great gulf, which no 
learning will enable a man to clear. Strength of imagination may em- 
power him to create a world uulijje oar own ; but the chances are a thou- 
sand to oue that it is not the world which has passed away. Perhaps 
those act most wisely who, in treating poetically of ancient events, stick 
to general human nature, avoid gross blunders of costume, and trouble 
themselves about little more. All attempts to exhibit Romans talking 
slang, and jesting with each other, however clever, must be failures. 
There are a good many pretty obvious blots iu Bulwer's book. Why, in 
the name of common sense, did Glaucus neglect to make himself a Roman 
citizen ? He, a man of fortune and talents residing in Italy, intimate 
with Romans of distinction ! Arbaces, too, is not a citizen. Rich, pow- 
erful, educated subjects of Rome, dwelling in a considerable Italian town, 
and highly acceptable in all societies there, yet not citizens ! The thing 
was never heard of, I imagine. The Christianity of Bulwer's book is not 
to my taste. The Trinity ; the Widow's son ; the recollections of the 
preaching of St. Panl, spoil the classical effect of the story. I do not be- 
lieve that Christianity had, at that time, made the very smallest impres- 
sion on the educated classes iu Italy; some Jews, of course, excepted. 
Bulwer brings down the Greek valor and free spirit to too late an age. 
He carries back the modern feelings of philanthropy to too early an age. 
His Greeks are made up of scraps of the Athenian republican, and scraps 
of the Parisian jjAiZosop/ie; neither of which suit with the smart, voluble, 
lying, cringing jack-of-all-trades that a Greek under the Flavian family 
would have been. It is very clever, nevertheless." 

"January 12tft.— This was the king's birthday. The court was attendr 
ed by many foreigners. The king paid no attention to the English— not 
even to so great a man as the Duke of Buccleuch — but reserved his civil-: 



1838-'39.] LOED MACAULAY. 45 

ities for the Eussians. Fool, to think that either the lion or the bear 
cares which side the hare takes in these disputes ! lu the evening, as I 
was sipping Marsala, and reading a novel called ' Crichton,' by the author 
of ' Eookwood,' and worse than ' Eookwood,' in came Verney to beg me to 
take a seat in his opera-box at the Teatro di Sau Carlo, which was to be 
illuminated in honor of the day. I care little for operas ; but as this the- 
atre is said to be the finest in Italy — indeed, in Europe — and as the occa- 
sion was a great one, I agreed. The royal family were below ns, so that 
we did not see them; and I am sure that I would not give a carliuo to 
see every Bourbon, living and dead, of the Spanish branch. The per- 
formance tired me to death, or rather to sleep ; and I actually dozed for 
half an hour. Home, and read ' Gil Bias.' Charming. I am never tired 
of it." 

Macaulay returned from I^aples to Marseilles by a coasting 
steamer, which touched at Civita Yecchia, where — 

" GoulbuTU came on board.* He was very civil and friendly. We chat- 
ted a good deal at dinner, and even got upon politics, and talked without 
the least acrimony on either side. Once I had him, and he felt it. He 
was abusing the election committees. ' You really think, then, Mr. Goul- 
burn, that the decisions of the election committees are partial and unfair?' 
'I do,' he said, ' most decidedly.' ' Well, then,' said I, ' I can not but think 
that it was rather hard to pass a vote of censure on O'Connell for saying 
so.' I never saw a man more completely at a nonplus. He quite colored 
— face, forehead, and all — and looked 

'As I have seen him in the Capitol, 
Being crossed in conference with some senators.' 

He had really nothing to say, except that he had given his opinion about 
election committees to me in private. I told him that I, of course, under- 
stood it so ; and I was too generous and polite to press my victory. But, 
really, a vote of censure is a serious thing; and I do not conceive that any 
man is justified in voting for it, unless he thinks it deserved. There is 
little difference between a dishonest vote in an election committee and a 
dishonest vote in a question of censure. Both are judicial proceedings. 
The oath taken by members of a committee is merely a bugbear for old 
women, and men like old women. A wise and honest man has other 
guides than superstition to direct his conduct. I like Goulburn's con- 
versation and manners. I had a prejudice against him which, like most 
prejudices conceived merely on the ground of political diiference, yields 

* Mr. Goulburn was subsequently chancellor of the exchequer in Sir 
Eobert Peel's Government. 



46 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [CHAP.vn. 

readily to a little personal intercourse. And this is a man whom I have 
disliked for years without knowing him, and who has probably disliked 
me with just as little reason ! A lesson. 

"I read Botta's 'History of the American War.' The book interested 
me, though he is not a writer to my taste. He is fair enough ; and when 
he misrepresents, it is rather from ignorance than from partiality. But 
he is shallow, and his style is the most affected that can be imagined. I 
can better excuse his speeches, put into the mouths of his heroes, and his 
attempts to give a classical air to our English debates ; his substitution 
of 'Signer Giorgio Grenville' for 'the right honorable gentleman,' and 
'cari concittadini,' or 'venerabili senatori,' for 'Mr. Speaker.' But his 
efforts at naivet6 move my disgust. The affectation of magnificence I 
can pardon, but the affectation of simplicity is loathsome ; for magnifi- 
cence may co-exist with affectation, but simplicity and affectation are in 
their natures opposite. Botta uses so many odd old words that even Ital- 
ians require a glossary to read him ; and he is particularly fond of imita- 
ting the infantine style which is so delightful in Boccaccio. He perpet- 
ually introduces into his narratives vulgar Florentine proverbs of the 
fourteenth century. He tells us that God, 'who does not stay till Sat- 
urday to pay wages,' took sigual vengeance on the ravagers of Wyoming; 
and that they were repaid for their outrages ' with collier's measure.'" 

" Pm-is, February 2rf, 1839. — The sky was clear; though it was very cold, 
and the snow covered every thing. I resolved to go to Versailles. The 
palace is a huge heap of littleness. On the side toward Paris the contrast 
between the patches of red brick in the old part, and the attempt at clas- 
sical magnificence in the later part, is simply revolting. Enormous as is 
the size of the Place des Armes, it looks paltry beyond description. The 
statues which used to stand at Paris on the bridge in front of the Cham- 
ber of Deputies are ranged round this court. Wretched, strutting things 
they were ; heroes storming like captains of banditti blustering through a 
bad melodrama in a second-rate theatre. I had hoped never to have seen 
them again when I missed them on the bridge ; and I fancied, more fool I, 
that the Government might have had the good taste to throw them into 
the Seine. In the middle of the court is an equestrian statue of Louis 
XIV. He showed his sense, at least, in putting himself where he could 
not see his own architectural performances. I was glad to walk through 
the Orangerie, and thence I went some little way into the gardens. The 
snow was several inches deep ; but I saw enough to satisfy me that these 
famous grounds, in meanness and extravagance, surpassed my expecta- 
tions ; and my expectations were not moderate. The garden fapade of 
the palace is certainly fine by contrast with the other front ; but when 
the enormous means employed are compared with the effect, the dispro- 
portion is wonderful. This fafade is about two thousand feet in length, 
and is elevated on a lofty terrace. It ought to be one of the most strik- 



1838-'39.] LORD MACAULAY. 4Y 

ing works of human power and art. I doubt whether there he anywhere 
any single architectural composition of equal extent. I do not believe 
that all the works of Pericles — nay, that even St. Peter's, colonnade and 
all — cost so much as was lavished on Versailles ; and yet there are a doz- 
en country houses of private individuals in England alone which have a 
greater air of majesty and splendor than this huge quarry. Castle How- 
ard is immeasurably finer. I went Inside, and was struck by the good 
sense — I would even say magnanimity — which the present king has 
shown in admitting all that does honor to the nation, without regard to 
personal or family considerations. The victories of Bonaparte furnish 
half the rooms. Even Charles the Tenth is fairly dealt with. Whatever 
titles he had to public respect — the African victories ; Navarino ; the Dau- 
phin's exploits, such as they were, in Spain — all have a place here. The 
most interesting thing, however, in the whole palace is Louis the Four- 
teenth's bedroom, with its original furniture. I thought of all St. Si- 
mon's anecdotes about that room and bed." 



48 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. viii. 



CHAPTER YIII. 

1839-1841. 

Macanlay returns to London. — He meets Lord Brougham — Letters to Mr. 
Napier and Mrs. Trevelyau.- — Correspondence with Mr. Gladstone. — 
Heated State of Politics. — The Hostility of the Peers to Lord Melbourne's 
Government. — Maoaulay's View of the Situation. — Verses by Praed. — 
The Bed-chamber Question. — Macaulay is elected for Edinburgh. — De- 
bate on the Ballot. — Macaulay becomes a Cabinet Minister. — The Times. 
— Windsor Castle. — Vote of Want of Confidence. — The Chinese War. — 
Irish Eegistration : Scene in the House of Commons. — Letters to Napier. 
— Eeligious Difficulties in Scotland. — Lord Cardigan. — The Corn Laws. 
• — The Sugar Duties. — Defeat of the Ministry, and Dissolution of Parlia- 
ment. — Macaulay is re-elected for Edinburgh. — His Love for Street-bal- 
lads. — The Change of Government. 

At the end of the first week in February, 1839, Macaulay 
was again in London. 

"Fnday, February 8th.— I have been reading Lord Durham's Canadian 
report, and think it exceedingly good and able. I learn, with great con- 
cern, that the business has involved Lord Glenelg's resignation. Poor fel- 
low! I love him and feel for him.* I bought Gladstone's book: a capital 
Shrove-tide cock to throw at. Almost too good a mark." 

"February Vith.—l read, while walking, a good deal of Gladstone's book. 
The Lord hath delivered him into our hand. I think I see my way to a 
popular, and at the same time gentleman-like, critique. I called on the 
Miss Berrys, who are very desirous to collect my articles. I gave them a 
list, and procured some numbers for them at a book-seller's near Leicester 
Square. Thence to ElUs, and repeated him ' Eomulus,' the alterations in 
'Horatius,' and the beginning of ' Virginia.' He was much pleased. We 
walked away together to Lincoln's Inn Fields, and met Brougham : an awk- 
ward momeut. But he greeted mo just as if we had parted yesterday, 
shook hands, got between us, and walked with us some way. He was in 
extraordinary force, bodily and mental. He declared vehemently against 



See page 263 of vol. i. 



1839-'41.] LORD MACAULAY. 49 

the usage which Lord Gleuelg has experienced, and said that it was a case 
for pistoling, an infamous league of eleven men to ruin one. It will be long 
enough before he takes to the remedy which he recommends to others. 
He talked well and bitterly of Lord Durham's report. It was, he said, a 
second-rate article for the Edinburgh Beview. ' The matter came from a 
swindler; the style from a coxcomb; and the dictator furnished only six 
letters, D-TJ-e-h-a-m.' As we were walking, Allen the Quaker came by. 
Brougham hallooed to him, and began to urge him to get up the strongest 
opposition to Lord John Russell's education plan. I was glad when we 
parted. Home, and thought abont Gladstone. In two or three days I 
shall have the whole in my head, and then my pen will go like fire." 

3 Clarges Street, February 26th, 1839. 

Deae Napiee, — I can now promise you an article in a week, 
or ten days at furthest. Of its length I can not speak with 
certainty. I should think it would fill ahout forty pages ; but 
I find the subject grow on me. I think that I shall dispose 
completely of Gladstone's theory. I wish that I could see 
my way clearly to a good counter -theory; but I catch only 
glimpses here and there of what I take to be truth. 

I am leading an easy life ; not unwilling to engage in the 
Parliamentary battle if a fair opportunity should offer, but not 
in the smallest degree tormented by a desire for the House of 
Commons, and fully determined against office. I enjoyed Italy 
intensely; far more than I had expected. By-the-bye, I met 
Gladstone at Home. We talked and walked together in St. 
Peter's during the best part of an afternoon. He is both a 
clever and an amiable man. 

As to politics, the cloud has blown over ; the sea has gone 
down; the barometer is rising. The session is proceeding 
through what was expected to be its most troubled stage in 
the same quiet way in which it generally advances through 
the dog-days toward its close. Every thing and every body 
is languid, and even Brougham seems to be somewhat miti- 
gated. I met him in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the other day, when 
I was walking with Ellis. He greeted me as if we had break- 
fasted together that morning, and went on to declaim against 
every body with even more than his usual parts, and with all 
his usual rashness and flightiness. Ever yours, 

T. B. Macaulay. 

YoL. II.— 4 



50 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vm. 

London, March 20th, 1839. 

Deaeest Hannah, — I have passed some very melancholy 
days since I wrote last. On Sunday afternoon I left Ellis tol- 
erably cheerful. His wife's disorder was abating. The next 
day, when I went to him, I found the house shut up. I meant 
only to have asked after him; but he would see me. He 
gave way to very violent emotion ; but he soon collected him- 
self, and talked to me about her for hours. " I was so proud 
of her," he said. " I loved so much to show her to any body 
that I valued. And now, what good will it do me to be a 
judge or to make ten thousand a year ? I shall not have her 
to go home to with the good news." I could not speak, for I 
know what that feeling is as well as he. He talked much of 
the sources of happiness that were left to him — his children, 
his relations and hers, and my friendship. He ought, he said, 
to be very grateful that I had not died in India, but was at 
home to comfort him. Comfort him I could not, except by 
hearing him talk of her with tears in my eyes. I staid till 
late. Yesterday I went again, and passed most of the day 
with him, and I shall go to him again to-day ; for he says, and 
I see, that my company does him good. I would with pleas- 
ure give one of my fingers to get him back his wife, which is 
more than most widowers would give to get back their own. 

I have had my proofs from Napier. He magnifies the arti- 
cle prodigiously. In a letter to Empson he calls it exquisite 
■ and admirable, and to me he writes that it is the finest piece 
of logic that ever was printed. I do not think it so ; but I 
do think that I have disposed of all Gladstone's theories un- 
answerably ; and there is not a line of the paper with which 
even so strict a judge as Sir Robert Inglis or my uncle Bab- 
ington could quarrel at as at all indecorous. How is my dear 
little girl ? Is she old enough to take care of a canary bird or 
two. From her tenderness for the little fish, I think I may 
venture to trust her with live animals. 

I have this instant a note from Lord Lansdowne, who was 
in the chair of the Club* yesterday night, to say that I am 



The Clnb, as it was invariably called (for its inemhers wonld not stoop 



1839-'41.] LOKD MAC AULA Y. 51 

unanimously elected. Poor Ellis's loss had quite put it out of 
my head. Ever yours, T. B. M. 

On the 10th of April Macaulay received a letter from Mr. 
Gladstone, who in generous terms acknowledged the courtesy, 
and, with some reservations, the fairness of his article. " I 
have been favored," Mr. Gladstone wrote, " with a copy of the 
forthcoming number of the Edinbiorgh Mevieiv; and I per- 
haps too much presume upon the bare acquaintance with you, 
of which alone I can boast, in thus unceremoniously assuming 
you to be the author of the article entitled ' Church and State,' 
and in offering you my very warm and cordial thanks for the 
manner in which you have treated both the work, and the 
author on whom you deigned to bestow your attention. In 
whatever you write, you can hardly hope for the privilege of 
most anonymous productions, a real concealment ; but, if it 
had been possible not to recognize you, I should have ques- 
tioned your authorship in this particular case, because the can- 
dor and single-mindedness which it exhibits are, in one who 
has long been connected in the most distinguished manner 

with political party, so rare as to be almost incredible 

In these lacerating times one clings to every thing of personal 
kindness in the past, to husband it for the future ; and, if you 
will allow me, I shall earnestly desire to carry with me such 
a recollection of your mode of dealing with a subject upon 
which the attainment of truth, we shall agree, so materially 
depends upon the temper in which the search for it is insti- 
tuted and conducted." 

How much this letter pleased Macaulay is indicated by the 

to identify it by any distinctive title) was the club of Johnson, Gibbon, 
Burke, Goldsmith, Garriok, and Eeynolds. Under the date April 9th, 1839, 
the following entry occurs in Macaulay's diary : " I went to the Thatched 
House, and was well pleased to meet the Club for the first time. We had 
Lord Holland in the chair, the Bishop of London, Lord Mahon, Phillips the 
painter, Milman, Elphinstone, Sir Charles Grey, and Hudson Guruey. I 
was amused, in turning over the records of the Club, to come upon poor 
Bozzy's signature, evidently afSxed when he was too drunk to guide his 
pen." 



52 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [ciiap. viii. 

fact of his having kept it tmburned ; a compliment which, ex- 
cept in this single instance, he never paid to any of his corre- 
spondents. " I have very seldom," he writes in reply to Mr. 
Gladstone, " been more gratified than by the very kind note 
which I have just received from you. Your book itself, and 
every thing that I heard about you, though almost all my in- 
formation came — to the honor, I must say, of our troubled 
times — from people very strongly opposed to you in politics, 
led me to regard you with respect and good-will, and I am 
truly glad that I have succeeded in marking those feelings. I 
was half afraid, when I read myself over again in print, that 
the button, as is too common in controversial fencing even be- 
tween friends, had once or twice come off the foil." 

The emphatic allusions which both these letters contain to 
the prevailing bitterness and injustice of party feeling may 
well sound strangely to us, who have already for two sessions 
been living in that atmosphere of good temper and good man- 
ners which pervades the House of Commons whenever the 
Conservatives are contented and the Liberals despondent. It 
was a different matter in 1839. The closing years of the Whig 
Administration were one long political crisis, with all the dis- 
agreeable and discreditable accompaniments from which no 
political crisis is free. Public animosity and personal viru- 
lence had risen to a higher, or, at any rate, to a more sustain- 
ed temperature than had ever been reached since the period 
when, amidst threats of impeachment and accusations of trea- 
son, perfidy, and corruption. Sir Eobert Walpole was tottering 
to his fall. 

, Lord Melbourne's Cabinet had rendered immense services 
to the country, and the greatest of those services was the fact 
of its own existence. In JSTovember, 1834, the king, of his 
own will and pleasure, had imposed a Tory government on a 
Llouse of Commons which contained a large "Whig majority. 
The fierce onslaught upon that government, so gallantly and 
skillfully led by Lord John Eussell, while it presented (as it 
could not fail to present) a superficial appearance of factious 
self-seeking, was in truth a struggle fought to establish, once 
and forever, the most vital of all constitutional principles. 



1839-'41.] LORD MACAULAY. o3 

Not a vote nor a speech w^s thrown away, of all that were di- 
rected against Sir Eobert's Peel's first ministry. It was worth 
any expenditure of time and breath "and energy to vindicate 
the right of the country to choose its rulers for itself, instead 
of accepting those who might be imposed upon it from above. 
The story of the session of 1835 reads strangely to us who 
have been born, and hope to grow old, within the reign of the 
monarch who, by a long course of loyal acquiescence in the de- 
clared wishes of her people, has brought about what is noth- 
ing less than another Great Kevolution, all the more benefi- 
cent because it has been gradual and silent. We can not, 
without an effort of the imagination, understand the indigna- 
tion and disquietude of the Whig leaders, when they saw Wil- 
liam the Fourth recurring to those maxims of personal gov- 
ernment which his father had effectually practiced, and after 
which his brother had feebly and fitfully hankered. To get 
Peel out was in their eyes the whole duty of public men; a 
duty. which they strenuously and successfully accomplished. 
But, in pursuing their end with an audacity and determination 
which those who had not divined the real bearings of the sit- 
uation mistook for want of scruple, they made hosts of new 
enemies, and imbittered all their old ones. They aroused 
against themselves the furies of resentment, alarm, and dis- 
trust, which attended them relentlessly until they in their turn 
succumbed. The passions heated during the debates of 1835 
were cooled only in the deluge which overwhelmed the Whigs 
at the general election of 1841. 

The Peers gave them no chance from the first. Those who 
have joined in the idle jubilation over the impotence and 
helplessness of the House of Lords, with which, in our own 
day, triumphant partisans celebrated the downfall of the Irish 
Church and the abolition of purchase in the army, would do 
well to study the history of the decline and fall of Lord Mel- 
bourne's Administration. There they would learn how sub- 
stantial, and how formidable, is the power of Conservative 
statesmen who, surveying the field of action from the secure 
stronghold of an assembly devoted to their interests, can dis- 
cern through all the dust and clamor of a popular movement 



54 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap, viil 

the exact strength and attitude of the hostile forces. An Up- 
per Chamber which will accept from ministers whom it de- 
tests no measure that has not behind it an irresistible mass of 
excited public opinion, has, sooner or later, the fate of those 
ministers in its hands. For, on the one hand, the friction 
generated by the process of forcing a bill through a reluctant 
House of Lords annoys and scandalizes a nation which soon 
grows tired of having a revolution once a twelvemonth ; and, 
on the other hand, the inability of a cabinet to conduct 
through both Houses that continuous flow of legislation which 
the ever-changing necessities of a country like ours demand, 
alienates those among its more ardent supporters who take lit- 
tle account of its difficulties, and see only that it is unable to 
turn its bills into acts. 

Never was the game of obstruction played more ably, and 
to better purpose, than during the three sessions which pre- 
ceded, and the three which followed, the accession of Queen 
Yictoria. " Lord Cadogan," Maeaulay writes, " talked to me 
well of the exceedingly difficult situation of the ministers in 
the Lords. They have against them Brougham, the first 
speaker of the age ; the duke, with the highest character of 
any public man of the age ; Lyndhurst, Aberdeen, EUenbor- 
ough, and others, every one of whom is an overmatch for our 
best orator. And this superiority in debate is backed by a 
still greater superiority in number." These advantages, in 
point of votes and talents, were utilized to the utmost by con- 
summate parliamentary strategy. The struggle was fought 
out over the destination of a sum of money expected to ac- 
crue from the improved management of Church property in 
Ireland. The Whigs proposed to appropriate this money to 
the education of the people at large, without distinction of re- 
ligious persuasion ; while the Opposition insisted on leaving 
it at the disposal of the Church, to be used exclusively for 
Church purposes. It was an admirable battle-ground for the 
Conservatives. The most exalted motives of piety and patri- 
otism, the blindest prejudices of race and creed, were alike ar- 
rayed behind the impregnable defenses which guarded the po- 
sition so adroitly selected by the Tory leaders. In the fourth 



1839-'41.] LOED MACAULAY. 55 

year of the contest the ministers yielded, with a disastrous 
effect upon their own influence and reputation, from which 
they never recovered. But the victory had been dearly 
bought. In exchange for the reversion of a paltry hundred 
thousand pounds, the Irish Establishment had bartered away 
what remained to it of the public confidence and esteem. 
The next sacrifice which it was called upon to make was of a 
very different magnitude ; and it was fated to read by the 
Hght of a bitter experience the story of the Sibylline books 
— that fable the invention of which is in itself sufficient to 
stamp the Komans as a constitutional people. 

Macaulay's letters from Calcutta prove with what profound 
uneasiness he watched the course of public affairs at home. A 
looker-on, who shares the passions of the combatants, is sel- 
dom inclined to underrate the gravity of the situation, or the 
drastic nature of the remedies that are required. " I am quite 
certain," so he writes to Mr. Ellis, " that in a few years the 
House of Lords must go after Old Sarum and Gatton. What 
is now passing is mere skirmishing and manoeuvring between 
two general actions. It seems to be of little consequence to 
the final result how these small operations turn out. When 
the grand battle comes to be fought, I have no doubt about 
the event." At length his seuse of coming evil grew so keen, 
that he took the step of addressing to Lord Lansdowne a care- 
fully reasoned letter, a state paper in all but the form ; urg- 
ing the imminent perils that threatened a constitution in 
which a reformed House of Commons found itself face to face 
with an unref ormed House of Lords ; and setting forth in de- 
tail a scheme for reconstructing the Upper Chamber on an 
elective basis. Macaulay's notions were not at all to his old 
friend's taste ; and, after a single interchange of opinions, the 
subject never re-appeared in their correspondence. 

On the tactics pursued by Peel and Lyndhurst, Macaulay 
expressed the sentiments of a Whig politician in the lan- 
guage of a student of history. " Your English politics," he 
writes from India during the first week of 1838, "are in a 
singular state. The elections appear to have left the two 
parties still almost exactly equal in Parliamentary strength. 



56 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vm. 

There seems to be a tendency in the public mind to modera- 
tion : but there seems also to be a most pernicious disposition 
to mix up religion with politics. For my own part, I can con- 
ceive nothing more dangerous to the interests of religion than 
the new Conservative device of representing a reforming spir- 
it as synonymous with an infidel spirit. For a short time the 
Tories may gain something by giving to civil abuses the sanc- 
tity of religion ; but rehgion will. very soon begin to contract 
the unpopularity which belongs to civil abuses. There will 
be, I am satisfied, a violent reaction ; and ten years hence 
Christianity will be as unpopular a topic on the hustings as 
the duty of seeking the Lord would have been at the time 
of the Eestoration. The world is governed by associations. 
That which is always appealed to as a defense for every griev- 
ance will soon be considered as a grievance itself. No cry 
which deprives the people of valuable servants, and raises job- 
bers and oppressors to power, will long continue to be a popu- 
lar cry." 

There is something almost pathetic in this unbounded and 
unshaken faith in the virtues of a political party. The praise 
which in a confidential letter a man bestows upon his contem- 
poraries is pretty sure to be sincere; and when Macaulay 
described Lord Melbourne's Administration as a breakwater 
which stemmed the advancing tide of Tory jobbery, no one 
who knew him, or who knows his writings, can doubt that he 
believed what he said. And yet it required not a little cour- 
age to represent the Whigs of 1838 as deaf to the claims of 
private interests and family connections. So widespread and 
so deeply rooted was the conviction that the ministers gave 
more thought to placing their dependents than to governing 
•the country, that their best actions were beginning to be mis- 
construed by their oldest friends. The invaluable series of 
investigations, by royal commissions, into all that concerned 
the moral, social, and religious welfare of the people, which 
was conducted under Lord Melbourne's auspices, presented it- 
self to all his opponents, and some of his allies, in the light of 
a gigantic machinery devised by the people in power with the 
express purpose of providing for briefless sons and nephews. 



1839-'41.] LOED MACAULAY. 57 

Sydney Smith, whose appetite for reform was very soon sati- 
ated when the era of reform had once fairly set in, declared in 
a burst of humorous consternation that the whole earth was 
in commission, and that mankind had been saved from the 
Flood only to be delivered over to barristers of six years' 
standing. The onus probcmdi, he declared, rested with any 
one who said that he was not a commissioner; and the only 
doubt which a man felt on seeing a Whig whom he had never 
met before was, not whether he was a commissioner or no, but 
what the department of human life might be into which he 
had been appointed to inquire. 

That which was fussiness and nepotism in the eyes of an 
original founder of the Edinburgh JReview, to a contributor 
to the Morning Post seemed little better than recklessness 
and rapacity. It was about this period that Praed assailed 
the ministry in some of the most incisive couplets which a 
political satirist has ever penned.* 

Sure none sbonld better know how sweet 
The tenure of official seat 
Than one who every session bnys 
At snch high rate the gaudy prize ; 
One who for this so long has borne 
The scowl of universal scorn ; 
Has seen distrust in every look ; 
Has heard in every voice rebuke ; 
Exulting yet, as home he goes 
From sneering friends and pitying foes, 
That, shun him, loathe him, if they will, 
He keeps the seals and salary still. 

And, truth to say, it must be pleasant 
To be a minister at present : 
To make believe to guide the realm 
Without a hand Upon the helm, 
And wonder what with such a crew 
A pilot e'er should find to do ; 

* The little poem from which, these lines are taken has hitherto re- 
mained unpublished, with the exception of the concluding appeal to the 
young queen — a passage which is marked by an elevation of tone unusual 
in Praed's political effusions. 



58 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vm. 

To hold wliat people are content 

To fancy is the government, 

And touch extremely little of it 

Except the credit and the profit ; 

When FoUett presses, Sugden poses. 

To bid gay Stanley" count the noses, 

And leave the Cabinet's defense 

To Bulwer's wit and Blewitt's sense ; 

To hear demands of explanation 

On India, Belgium, trade, taxation. 

And answer that perhaps they'll try 

To give au answer by-and-by ; 

To save the Church and serve the Crown 

By letting others pull them down ; 

To promise, pause, prepare, postpone. 

And end by letting things alone ; 

In short, to earn the people's pay 

By doing nothing every day ; 

These tasks, these joys, the Fates assign 

To well-placed Whigs in Thirty-nine. 

A greater man than Praed or Sydney Smith has traced an 
indelible record of the impression produced upon himself, and 
others like him, by the events of that melancholy epoch. Car- 
lyle had shared to the full in the ardor and enthusiasm which 
hailed the passing of the Great Eef orm Bill ; and he now had 
rather more than his share of the disappointment and the 
gloom, which, after seven years' experience of a Reformed 
House of Commons, led by the Whigs, and thwarted by the 
Peers, had begun to settle down upon the minds of all who 
loved their country better than their party. In more than 
one of his volumes he has told us the story of a " young ar- 
dent soul, looking with hope and joy into a world infinitely 
beautiful to him, though overhung with falsities and foul cob- 
webs, which were to be swept away amidst heroic joy, and en- 
thiisiasm of victory and battle;" and of the discouragement 
that eclipsed these gallant anticipations, when one session after 

* The late Lord Stanley, of Alderley, was Treasury whip to the Mel- 
bourne Administration. The traditions of the lobby still point to his ten- 
ure of office as the culminating epoch in the art of Parliamentary manage- 
ment. 



1839-'41.] LORD MACAULAY. 59 

another was spent on getting, " with endless jargoning, debat- 
ing, motioning, and counter -motioning, a settlement effected 
between the Honorable Mr. This and the Honorable Mr. That 
as to their respective pretensions to ride the high horse." 
The time had arrived when to the passion and energy of 1832 
had succeeded the unedifying spectacle of "hungry Greek 
throttling down hungry Greek on the floor of St. Stephen's, 
until the loser cried, ' Hold ! The place is thine.' " 

The responsibility for the continuance of this sterile and 
ignoble political ferment, which for some years had lain at 
the door of the House of Lords, began to be shared by the 
Whig Government soon after Macaulay's return from India. 
From that time forward Lord Melbourne and his brother-min- 
isters could not have failed to perceive, by those signs which 
are so familiar to veteran politicians, that their popularity was 
waning ; and that, with their popularity, their power for good 
was disappearing fast. When their measures were mangled 
and curtailed in the Commons, and quashed in the Peers — 
when one election after another told the same tale of gen- 
eral dissatisfaction and distrust — it became incumbent on 
them to show themselves at least as ready to surrender office 
as, in 1835, they had been resolute in seizing it. The hour 
had arrived when statesmen should have caught eagerly at the 
first opportunity of proving that our unwritten constitution 
provides a key to that problem on the right solution of which 
the prosperity, and even the existence, of a free community 
depends — the problem how rulers, who have for a time lost 
the favor and confidence of the governed, may for a time be 
removed from power, without impairing the force and the au- 
thority of the Executive Government. Unfortunately there 
were considerations, honorable in themselves, which deterred 
the Cabinet from that wise and dignified course ; and the 
month of May, 1839, saw the leaders of the great party, which 
had marched into office across the steps of a throne, standing 
feebly at bay behind the petticoats of their wives and sisters. 
Whether the part which they played was forced upon them 
by circumstances, or whether it was not, their example was 
disastrous in its effect upon English public life. Our stand' 



60 LIFE AKD LETTERS OF [chap, viii: 

ard of ministerial duty was lower from that 'day forth ; until,: 
in June, 1866, it was raised to a higher point than ever by the 
refusal of Earl Eussell and his colleagues to remain in power, 
after they had found themselves unable to carry in its integ- 
rity the measure of Eeform which they had promised to the 
nation. 

As soon as the Whigs had made up their minds to solve the 
Bed-chamber difficulty by resuming office, they were, natural- 
ly enough, anxious to bring within the walls of the House of 
Commons all the ability and eloquence of their party. Times 
were coming when they were likely to find occasion for as 
much oratory as they could muster. Toward the end of May 
the elevation to the peerage of Mr. Abercromby, the Speaker, 
left a seat at Edinburgh vacant. The ministers did all that 
could be done in London to get Macaulay accepted as the Lib- 
eral candidate, and the constituency gave a willing response. 
He introduced himself to the electors in a speech that in point 
of style came up to their expectations, and with the substance 
of which they were very well contented. He conciliated the 
Radicals by pledging himself to the ballot ; the reminiscences 
of Lord Melville's despotism were still too fresh in Scotch 
memories to make it worth while for the Tories even to talk 
of contesting the representation of the Scotch capital ; and the 
Whigs would have been monsters of ingratitude if they had 
not declared to a man in favor of one who was a Whig with 
the same intensity of conviction that Montrose had been a 
Eoyalist, or Carnot a Jacobin. " I look with pride," said Mac- 
aulay, " on all that the Whigs have done for the cause of hu- 
man freedom and of human happiness. I see them now hard 
pressed, struggling with difficulties, but still fighting the good 
fight. At their head I see men who have inherited the spirit 
and the virtues, as well as the blood, of old champions and 
martyrs of freedom. To those men I propose to attach my- 
self. While one shred of the old banner is flying, by that 
banner will I, at least, be found. Whether in or out of Par- 
liament — whether speaking with that authority which must 
always belong to the representative of this great and enlight- 
ened community, or expressing the humble sentiments of a 



1839-'41.] LORD MACAULAY. 61 

private citizen — I will to the last maintain inviolate my fidel- 
ity to principles which, though they may be borne down for a 
time by senseless clamor, are yet strong with the strength, and 
immortal with the immortality, of truth ; and which, however 
they may be misunderstood or misrepresented by contempo- 
raries, will assuredly find justice from a better age." Such 
fervor will provoke a smile from those who survey the field 
of politics with the serene complacency of the literary critic, 
more readily than from statesmen who have learned the value 
of party loyalty by frequent and painful experience of its op- 
posite. 

The first speech which Macaulay made after his re-appear- 
ance in Parliament was on Mr. Grote's motion for leave to in- 
troduce the Ballot Bill. That annual question (to which the 
philosophical reasoning and the classical erudition of its cham- 
pion had long ere this ceased to impart any charm more at- 
tractive than respectability), in 1839 had recovered a certain 
flavor of novelty from the fact that Lord Melbourne's Cabinet, 
at its wits' end for something that might make it popular, had 
agreed that the more advanced among the ministers might be 
at liberty to vote as they pleased. The propriety of this course 
was, naturally enough, challenged by their opponents. Mac- 
aulay had an admirable opportunity of giving the House, 
which was eager to hear him, a characteiistic touch of his 
quality, as he poured forth a torrent of historical instances to 
prove that governments which had regard for their own sta- 
bility, or for the consciences of their individual members, al- 
ways had recognized, and always must recognize, the neces- 
sity of dealing liberally with open questions. " I rejoice," he 
said, " to see that we are returning to the wise, the honest, 
the moderate maxims which prevailed in this House in the 
time of our fathers. If two men are brought up together 
from their childhood ; if they follow the same studies, mix in 
the same society, and exercise a mutual influence in forming 
each other's minds, a perfect agreement between them on po- 
litical subjects can not even then be expected. But govern- 
ments are constracted in such a manner that forty or flf ty gen- 
tlemen, some of whom have never seen each other's faces till 



62 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. viii. 

tliey are united officially, or have been in hot opposition to 
each other all the rest of their lives, are brought all at once 
into intimate connection. Among such men unanimity would 
be an absolute miracle. ' Talk of divided houses !' said Lord 
Chatham. ' Why there never was an instance of a united 
Cabinet ! When were the minds of twelve men ever cast in 
one and the same mold ? Within the memory of many per- 
sons now living the rule was this, that all questions whatever 
were open questions in a Cabinet, except those which came 
imder two classes — measures brought forward by the Govern- 
ment as a government, which all the members of the Gov- 
ernment were, of course, expected to support; and motions 
brought forward with the purpose of casting a censure, ex- 
press or implied, on the Government, or any department of 
it, which all the members of the Government were, of course, 
expected to oppose. Let honorable gentlemen," said Macau- 
lay, warming to his theme, " run their minds over the history 
of Mr. Pitt's administration :" and honorable gentlemen were 
reminded, or, not impossibly, informed, how, on Parliamenta- 
ry Reform, Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas had voted against Lord 
Mulgrave and Lord Grenville ; and how, on the question of 
the slave-trade, Mr. Dundas and Lord Thurlow had voted 
against Lord Grenville and Mr. Pitt ; and so on through the 
law of libel, and the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and 
the dropping of the impeachment of Warren Hastings, until 
the names of Mr. Pitt's Cabinet had been presented to the 
view of honorable gentlemen in eveiy possible variation, and 
every conceivable combination. "And was this the eflEect of 
any extraordinary weakness on the part of the statesman who 
was then prime minister? 'No. Mr. Pitt was a man whom 
even his enemies acknowledged to possess a brave and com- 
manding spirit. And was the effect of his policy to enfeeble 
his administration, to daunt his adherents, to render them un- 
able to withstand the attacks of the Opposition ? On the con- 
traiy, never did a ministry present a firmer or more serried 
front ; nor is there the slightest doubt but that their strength 
was increased in consequence of their giving each member 
more individual liberty." 



1839-'41.] LORD MACAULAY. 63 

Sir Eobert Peel, after expressing in handsome and even 
chivalrous terms his satisfaction at finding himself once more 
confronted by so redoubtable an antagonist, proceeded to re- 
ply with a feeble and partial argument, set off by a fine quo- 
tation from Burke. To this day there remains unanswered 
Macaulay's protest against the cruelty of needlessly placing 
men in a position where they must be false either to their 
personal convictions or to a factitious theory of ministerial 
obligation — a protest which has still greater force when di- 
rected against the extravagant impolicy of bringing the im- 
mense weight and authority of the Treasury bench to influ- 
ence the vote upon an abstract motion, which can have no 
possible value, except in so far as it affords a genuine and un- 
biased indication of Parliamentary opinion. 

London, July 4tl), 1839. 

Dear Napiee, — I am sorry that you had set your heart on 
a paper from me. I was really not aware that you expected 
one, or I would have written earlier to tell you that it would 
be quite impossible for me to do any thing of the kind at 
present. I mean to give you a life of Clive for October. 
The subject is a grand one, and admits of decorations and il- 
lustrations innumerable. 

I meant to have spoken on the Education question; but 
the ministers pushed up Vernon Smith just as I was going to 
rise, and I had no other opportunity till Goulburn sat down, 
having thoroughly wearied the House. Five hundred peo- 
ple were coughing and calling for the question ; and, though 
some of our friends wanted me to try my fortime, I was too 
prudent. A second speech is a critical matter; and it is al- 
ways hazardous to address an impatient audience after mid- 
night. 

I do not like to write for you on Education, or on other 
pending political questions. I have two fears — one that I 
may commit myself, the other that I may unseat myself. I 
shall keep to history, general literature, and the merely specu- 
lative part of politics, in what I write for the Review. 

Ever yours, T. B. M. 



64: LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap.yui. 

Edinburgli, September 2d, 1839. 

Deae ]S"apiee, — I shall work on Clive as hard as I can, and 
make the paper as short as I can ; but I am afraid that I can 
not positively pledge myself either as to time or as to length. 
I rather think, however, that the article will take. 

I shall do my best to be in London again on the 18th. 
God knows what these ministerial changes may produce. Of- 
fice was never, within my memory, so little attractive, and 
therefore, I fear, I can not, as a man of spirit, flinch, if it is 
offered to me. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. 

London, September 20th, 1839. 

Deae Napiee, — I reached town early this morning; hav- 
ing, principally on your account, shortened my stay at Paris, 
and crossed to Eamsgate in such weather that the mails could 
not get into the harbor at Dover. I hoped to have five or six 
days of uninterrupted work, in which I might finish my paper 
for the Review. But I found waiting for me — this is strictly 
confidential — a letter from Lord Melbourne with an offer of 
the Secretaryship at War, and a seat in the Cabinet. I shall 
be a good deal occupied, as you may suppose, by conferences 
and correspondence during some time ; but I assure you that 
every spare minute shall be employed in your service. I 
shall hope to be able, at all events, to send you the article by 
the 30th. I will write the native names as clearly as I can, 
and trust to your care without a proof. 

My historical plans must for the present be suspended;* 
but I see no reason to doubt that I shall be able to do as 
much as ever for the Review. Again, remember, silence is 
the word. Yours ever, T. B. M. 

Macaulay accepted the Secretaryship at "War without any 
sliow of reluctance ; but he did not attain to this great eleva- 
tion without incurring the penalties of success. A man who. 



* " Friday, March 9JA.— I began my ' History' with a sketch of the early 
revolutions of England. Pretty well ; but a little too stately and rhetor- 
ical." — Macavlay's Journal for 1839. 



1839-'41.] LORD MACAULAY. 65 

having begun life without rank, fortune, or private interest, 
finds himself inside the Cabinet and the Privy Council before 
his fortieth birthday, must expect that the world will not be 
left in ignorance of any thing that can be said against him. 
The Times, which had been faithful to Sir Eobert Peel 
through every turn of fortune, grafted on to its public quar- 
rel with the "Whig Government a personal grudge against the 
new minister. That grudge was vented in language that cu- 
riously marks the change which, between that day and this, 
has come over the tone of English journalism. For weeks to- 
gether, even in its leading articles, the great newspaper could 
find no other appellation for the great man than that of " Mr. , 
Babble-tongue Macaulay." "When, in company with Shell, 
he was sworn of the Privy Council, the disgust of the Times 
could only be expressed by ejaculations which even then were 
unusual in political controversy. " These men Privy Coun- 
cilors! These men petted at "Windsor Castle! Faugh! "Why, | 
they are hardly fit to fill up the vacancies that have occurred 
by the lamented death of her majesty's two favorite mon- 
keys." 

It so happened that, at this very moment, Macaulay got 
into a scrape- which enabled his detractors to transfer their 
abuse from the general to the particular. "When it became 
his duty to announce to his constituents that he had taken of- 
fice, he was careless enough to date his address from Windsor 
Castle. The Times rose, or rather sunk, to the occasion ; but 
it would be an ungracious act to dignify the ephemeral scur- 
rility of some envious scribbler by reproducing it under the 
name of that famous journal, which, for a generation back, has 
seldom allowed a week to pass without an admiring refer- 
ence to Macaulay's writings, or a respectful appeal to his au- 
thority. 

Many months elapsed before the new Secretary at "War 
heard the last of "Windsor Castle. That unlucky slip of the 
pen afforded matter for comment and banter, in Parliament, 
on the hustings, and through every corner pf the daily and 
weekly press. It has obtained a chance of longer life than it 
deserves by reason of a passing allusion in the published 

YoL. II.— 5 



66 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.viii. 

works ©f Thackeray* In later years the great novelist ap- 
pears to have felt undue contrition for what was, after all, a 
very innocent, and not ill-natured, touch of satire. In his gen- 
erous and affecting notice of Macaulay's death he writes : " It 
always seemed to me that ample means, and recognized rank, 
were Macaulay's as of right. Years ago there was a wretched 
outcry raised because Mr. Macaulay dated a letter from Wind- 
sor Castle, where he was staying. Immortal gods ! "Was this 
man not a fit guest for any palace in the world, or a fit com- 
panion for any man or woman in it ? I dare say, after Aus- 
terlitz, the old court officials and footmen sneered at Napoleon 
for dating from Schonbrunn. But that miserable Windsor 
Castle outcry is an echo out of fast-retreating old-world re- 
membrances. The place of such a natural chief was among 
the first of the land ; and that country is best, according to 
our British notion at least, where the man of eminence has 
the best chance of investing his genius and intellect." 

Macaulay took his promotion quietly, ,and paid little or no 
heed to the hard words which it brought him. He kept his 
happiness in his own hands, and never would permit it to de- 
pend upon the good-will or the forbearance of others. His 
biographer has no occasion to indite those woful passages in 
which the sufferings of misunderstood genius are commended 
to the indignant commiseration of posterity. In December, 
1839, he writes to Mr. Napier : " You think a great deal too 
much about the Times. What does it signify whether they 

* " Time was when the author's trade was considered a very mean one, 
■which a gentleman of family could not take up hut as an amateur. This 
absurdity is pretty well worn out now, and I do humbly hope and pray for 
the day when the other shall likewise disappear. If there be any noble- 
man with a talent tliat way, why, why don't we see him among E.A.'s? 

501 The School-master (sketch taken (Brum, Henry, Lord, R.A., F.K.S., S.A. 

abroad) i of the National Institute of Fiance. 

502 View of the Artist's residence at I Maconkey, Right Honorable T. B. 

Wmdsor ) 

-nn ,, J, ^ i^t T, ,- • i,. m ( Bustle, Lord J. Pill, Right Honorable 

503 Murder of the Babes in the Tower. \ „., ^ . . ' ^ 

.504r A Little Agitation O'Carroll, Daniel, M.R.I.A. 

Fancy, I say, such names as these figuring in the Catalogue of the Acad- 
emy !" 



1639-'41.] LOED MACAULAY. 67 

abuse me or not? There is nothing at all discouraging in 
their violence. It is so far from being a means or a proof of 
strength, that it is both a cause and a symptom of weakness." 
This is the only instance throughout his entire journals and 
correspondence in which Macaulay even refers to a series of 
invectives extending over many months, and of a nature most 
unusual in the columns of a leading newspaper, when the sub- 
ject of attack is a man of acknowledged eminence and blame- 
less character. 

He was just now less disposed than ever to trouble himself 
about the justice or injustice of the treatment which he met 
with from the outside world. An event had occurred, most 
unexpectedly, which opened to him a long and secure pros- 
pect of domestic happiness. At the end of the year 1839, his 
brother-in-law, Mr. Trevelyan, was appointed to the Assistant- 
secretaryship of the Treasury — one of the few posts in the 
English civil service which could fully compensate a man of 
energy and public spirit for renouncing the intensely interest- 
ing work, and the rare opportunities of distinction, presented 
by an Indian career. " This event," writes Lady Trevelyan, 
" of course made England our home during your uncle's life. 
He could never afterward speak of it without emotion. 
Throughout the autumn of 1839, his misery at the prospect 
of our return to India was the most painful and hourly trial ; 
and when the joy and relief came upon us it restored the 
spring and flow of his spirits. He took a house in Great 
George Street, and insisted on our all living together; and a 
most happy year 1840 was." 

Like other happy years, it was a busy year too. Macaulay, 
who had completely laid aside his " History " for the present, 
devoted his powers to his oiBcial work. He conducted the 
business of his department in Parliament with the unobtru- 
sive assiduity and the unvaried courtesy by which a prudent 
minister may do so much to shorten discussion and to depre- 
cate opposition. And, indeed, the spirit of the age was such 
that he had every chance of an easy life. The House of 
Commons of 1840 spent upon the army very little of its 
own time, or of the nation's money. The paucity and insig- 



68 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. viii. 

nifieanee of the questions which it fell to Macaulay's lot to 
master might well rouse the envy of a secretary of state for 
war in these troubled days of alternate military reorganiza- 
tion and reaction. He passed his estimates, which were of 
an amount to make a modern reformer's mouth water, after a 
short grumble from Hume, and a single division, in which 
that implacable economist took with him into the lobby hard- 
ly as many adherents as the Government asked for millions. 
Mr. Charles Macaulay, who at this time was his brother's pri- 
vate secretary, is the authority for an anecdote which is worth 
recording. He remembers being under the gallery with Sul- 
ivan, the Assistant-secretary of War, and with the estimate 
clerk of the War Office, when Macaulay was submitting to 
the House his first army estimate. In the course of his 
speech he made a statement to which the estimate clerk de- 
murred. " That is a mistake," said the clerk. " No, it isn't," 
said Sulivan, "for a hundred pounds! I never knew him 
make a blunder in any thing which he had once got up;" and 
it turned out that Sulivan was right. 

On the 14th of March, 1840, Macaulay writes to Mr. Ellis : 
" I have got through my estimates with flying colors ; made a 
long speech of figures and details without hesitation or mis- 
take of any sort ; stood catechising on all sorts of questions ; 
and got six millions of public money in the course of an hour 
or two. I rather like the sort of work, and I have some apt- 
itude for it. I find business pretty nearly enough to occupy 
all my time ; and if I have a few minutes to myself, I spend 
them with my sister and niece ; so that, except while I am 
dressing and undressing, I get no reading at all. I do not ' 
know but that it is as well for me to live thus for a time. I 
became too mere a bookworm in India, and on my voyage 
home. Exercise, they say, assists digestion ; and it may be 
that some months of hard official and iParliamentary work 
may make my studies more nourishing." 

But Macaulay's course in Parliament was not all plain-sail- 
ing when he ventured from the smooth watei-s of the War 
Office into the broken seas of general politics. The session 
of 1840 had hardly commenced, when Sir John Yarde Buller 



1839-'41.] LORD MACAULAY. 69 

moved a resolution professing want of confidence in the min- 
istry — a motion which, the Tories supported with all their 
strength hoth of vote and lung. For the first, and, as he him- 
self willingly confessed, for the last, time in his life Macaulay 
did not get a fair hearing. On the second night of the de- 
bate, Sir James Graham, speaking with the acrimony which 
men of a certain character affect when they are attacking old 
allies, by a powerful invective, spiced with allusions to the 
Windsor Castle address, had goaded the Opposition ranks 
into a fit of somewhat insolent animosity. When Macaulay 
rose to reply, the indications of that animosity were so mani- 
fest that he had almost to commence his remarks with an ap- 
peal for tolerance. " I trust," he said, " that the first cabinet 
minister who, when the question is, whether the Government 
be or be not worthy of confidence, offers himself in debate, 
will find some portion of that generosity and good feeling 
which once distinguished English gentlemen." The words 
"first cabinet minister" were no sooner out of his mouth 
than the honorable gentlemen opposite, choosing willfully to 
misconstrue those words as if he were putting forward an ab- 
surd claim to the leading place in the Cabinet, burst forth 
into a storm of ironical cheering which would have gone far 
to disconcert O'Connell. Macaulay (who, to speak his best, 
required the sympathy, or, at any rate, the indulgence, of his 
audience) said all that he had to say, but said it without spirit 
or spontaneity; and did not succeed in maintaining the en- 
thusiasm either of himself or his hearers at the rather high- 
pitched level of the only one of his Parliamentary efforts 
which could in any sense be described as a failure.* 

Some days afterward he met Sir James Graham in the 
park, who expressed a hope that nothing which appeared 

* In 1853, Macanlay was correcting his speeches for publication. On the 
28th of July of that year he writes in his journal : " I worked hard, but 
without much heart ; for it was that unfortunate speech on BuUer's mo- 
tion in 1840 ; one of the few unlucky things in a lucky life. I can not 
conceive why it failed. It is far superior to many of my speeches which 
have succeeded. But, as old Demosthenes said, the power of oratory is as 
much in the ear as in the tongue." 



70 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. viii. 

rude or offensive had escaped his lips. "ISTot at all," said 
Maeaulay. " Only I think that your speech would have been 
still more worthy of you if you had not adopted the worn-- 
out newspaper jests about my Windsor letter." On the Yth 
of April, Sir James himself brought forward a vote of cen- 
sure on the Government for having led the country into war 
with China ; and Maeaulay, who again followed him in the 
debate, achieved a brilliant and undoubted success in an ora- 
tion crowned by a noble tribute to the majesty of the British 
flag — quite incomparable as an example of that sort of rhet- 
oric which goes straight to the heart of a British House of 
Commons.* When they met again. Sir James said to him : 
" In our last encounter none but polished weapons were used 
on both sides ; and I am afraid that public opinion rather in- 
clines to the belief that you had the best of it." "As to the 
polished weapons," said Maeaulay, "my temptations are not 
so misleading as yours. You never wrote a Windsor letter." 
His adversaries paid him a high compliment when they were 
reduced to make so much of a charge, which was the gravest 



* " I was much touched, and so, I dare say, were many other gentlemen, 
by a passage in one of Captain Elliot's dispatches. I mean that passage 
in which he describes his arrival at the factory in the moment of extreme 
danger. As soon as he landed he was surrounded by his countrymen, all 
in an agony of distress aud despair. The first thing which he did was to 
order the British flag to be brought from his boat and planted in the bal- 
cony. The sight immediately revived the hearts of those who had a min- 
ute before given themselves up for lost. It was natural that they should 
look up with hope aud confidence to that victorious flag. For it reminded 
them that they belonged to a country unaccustomed to defeat, to submis- 
sion, or to shame ; to a country which had exacted such reparation for the 
wrongs of her children as had made the ears of all who heard it to tingle ; 
to a country which made the Dey of Algiers humble himself to the dust be- 
fore her insulted consul ; to a country which had avenged the victims of 
the Black Hole on the field of Plassey ; to a country which had not degen- 
erated since the great Protector vowed that he would make the name of 
Englishman as ranch respected as ever had been the name of Eoman citi- 
zen. They knew that, surrounded as they were by enemies, aud sepa- 
rated by great oceans aud continents from all help, not a hair of their 
heads would be harmed with impunity," 



1839-'41.] LORD MACAULAY. Yl 

that malice itself ever brought against him in his character of 
a public man. 

Throughout the sessions of 1840 and 1841, a series of con- 
fused and angry discussions took place over a multitude of 
bills dealing with the registration of voters in Ireland; 
which were brought forward from every quarter of the House, 
and with every possible diversity of view. In these debates 
Macaulay gave marked proof of having profited by the severe 
legal training which was not the least valuable and enduring 
reward of his Indian labors. Holding his own against Sug- 
den in technical argument, he enforced his points with his 
customary wealth of language and illustration, much of which 
unfortunately perished between his lips and the reporters' gal- 
lery. "Almost every clause of this bill which is designed for 
keeping out the wrongful, acts just as effectually against the 
rightful, claimant. Let me suppose the case of a man of great 
wealth, and of imperious, obstinate, and arbitrary temper; 
one of those men who think much of the rights of property, 
and little of its duties. Let me suppose that man willing to 
spend six or seven thousand a year in securing the command 
of a county — an ambition, as every one knows, not impossible 
even in England. I will not mention any recent transaction ; 
nor do I wish to .mix up personalities with this serious debate ; 
but no one is ignorant how a certaiu man now dead, provoked 
by the opposition he received in a certain town, vowed that he 
would make the grass grow in its streets, and how that vow 
Tvas kept. Another great person ejected four hundred voters 
in one shire, and entered two hundred and twenty-five civil 
actions. Such a man could easily command an Irish county. 
It would only be a picture the less in his gallery, or an antique 
gem the less in his collection." 

The conflict was not always carried on with such scrupulous 
abstinence from personalities. 

" Thursday, June 11th. — I went from the OiBce to the House, which was 
engaged upon Stanley's Irish Registration Bill. The night was very 
stormy. I have never seen such unseemly demeanor, or heard such scur- 
rilous language, in Parliament. Lord Norreys was whistling, and making 
all sorts of noises. Lord Maidstone was so ill-mannered that I hope ho 



72 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vm. 

■was drunk. At last, after mucli grossly indeceut conduct, at which Lord 
Eliot expressed his disgust to me, a furious outbreak took place. O'Con- 
nell was so rudely interrupted that he used the expression 'beastly bel- 
lowings.' Then rose such an uproar as no O. P. mob at Covent Garden 
Theatre, no crowd of Chartists in front of a hustings, ever equaled. Men 
on both sides stood up, shook their fists, and bawled at the top of their 
voices. Freshfield, who was in the chair, was strangely out of his element. 
Indeed, he knew his business so little that, when first he had to put a ques- 
tion, he fancied himself at Exeter Hall, or The Crown and Anchor, and said: 
'As many as are of that opinion please to signify the same by holding up 
their bauds.' He was quite unable to keep the smallest order when the 
storm came. O'Conuell raged like a mad bull ; and our people — I for one 
— while regretting and condemning his violence, thought it much extenu- 
ated by the provocation. Charles BuUer spoke with talent, as he always 
does ; and with earnestness, dignity, and propriety, which he scarcely ever 
does. A short and most amusing scene passed between O'Connell and 
Lord Maidstone, which in the tumult escaped the observation of many, 
but which I watched carefully. 'If,' said Lord Maidstone, 'the word 
beastly is retracted, I shall be satisfied. If not, I shall not be satisfied.' 
'I do not care whether the'noble lord is satisfied or not.' 'I wish you 
would give me satisfaction.' 'I advise the noble lord to carry his liquor 
meekly.' At last the tumult ended from absolute physical weariness. It 
was past one, and the steady bellowers of the Opposition had been howl- 
ing from six o'clock with little interruption. I went home with a head- 
ache, and not in high spirits. But how different my frame of mind from 
what it was two years ago ! How profoundly domestic happiness has al- 
tered my whole way of looking at life ! I have my share of the anxieties 
and vexations of ambition, but it is only a secondary passion now." 

November, 1839. 

Deae ISTapiee, — I send back the paper on Clive. Eemem- 
ber to let me have a revise. I have altered the last sentence, 
so as to make it clearer and more harmonious ; but I can not 
consent to leave out the well-earned compliment* to my dear 
old friend, Lord "William Bentinck, of whom Victor Jacque- 
mont said, as truly as wittily, that he was "William Penn on 
the throne of the Mogul, and at the head of two hundred thou- 
sand soldiers. Ever yours, T. B. Macatjlat. 

* " To the warrior, history will assign a. place in the same rank with 
LuouUus 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." 



1839-'41.] LORD MACAULAY. Y3 

Lord William Bentinck, since his return from India, had 
taken an active, and sometimes even a turbid, part in polities 
as member for Glasgow. Those who will turn to the last 
words of the " Essay on Lord Clive " will understand Mr. Na- 
pier's uneasiness at the notion of placing on so conspicuous a 
literary pedestal the effigy of one who, for the time, had come 
to be regarded as the radical representative of a large Scotch 
constituency is apt to be regarded during a period of Conserv- 
ative reaction. 

London, October 14th, 1840. 

Deae Napiee, — I am glad that you are satisfied.* I dare' 
say that there will be plenty of abuse ; but about that I have 
long ceased to care one straw. 

I have two plans, indeed three, in my head. Two might, I 
think, be executed for the next number. Gladstone advertises 
another book about the Church. That subject belongs to me; 
particularly as he will very probably say something concern- 
ing my former article. 

Leigh Hunt has brought out an edition of Congreve, "Wych- 
erley, and Farquhar. I see it in the windows of the book-sell- 
ers' shops-, but I have not looked at it. I know their plays, 
and the literary history of their time, well enough to make an 
amusing paper. Collier's controversy with Congreve on the 
subject of the drama deserves to be better known than it is ; 
and there is plenty of amusing and curious anecdote about 
Wycherley. If you will teU Longman to send me the book, 
I will see whether I can give you a short, lively article on 
it. 

My third plan can not yet be executed. It is to review 
Capefigue's history of the Consulate and Empire of Napoleon. 
A character both of the man and of the government such as 
the subject deserves has not yet, in my opinion, appeared. 
But there are still two volumes of Capefigue's book to come, 
if not more ; and, though he writes with wonderful rapidity, 
he can hardly bring them out till the beginning of next year. 
Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. 

* This refers to the article on Von Eanke's " History of the Popes.'' 



74 XIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. viii. 

London, October 29tb, 1840. 

Deau Napiee, — I have received Hunt's book, and shall 
take it down with me to Southampton, whither I hope to be 
able to make a short trip. I shall give it well to Hunt about 
Jeremy Collier, to whom he is scandalously unjust. I think 
Jeremy one of the greatest public benefactors in our history. 

Poor Lord Holland ! It is vain, to lament. A whole gen- 
eration is gone to the grave with him. While he lived, all 
the great orators and statesmen of the last generation were 
living too. What a store of historical information he has 
carried away ! But his kindness, generosity, and openness of 
heart were more valuable than even his fine accomplishments. 
I loved him dearly. Ever yours truly, T. B. Macaulay. 

London, November 13tb, 1840. 

Dear Napiee, — Yesterday evening I received Gladstone^ 
book, and read it. I do not think that it would be wise to re- 
view it. I observed in it very little that had any reference to 
politics, and very little indeed that might not be consistently 
said by a supporter of the Voluntary system. It is, in truth, 
a theological treatise ; and I have no mind to engage in a con- 
troversy about the nature of the sacraments, the operation of 
holy orders, the visibility of the Church, and such points of 
learning ; except when they are connected, as in his former 
work they were connected, with questions of government. I 
have no disposition to split hairs about the spiritual reception 
of the body and blood of Christ in the eucharist, or about 
baptismal regeneration. I shall try to give you a paper on 
a very different subject — Wycherley, and the other good-for- 
nothing fellows -whose indecorous wit Leigh Hunt has edited. 

I see that a life of Warren Hastings is just coming out. I 
mark it for mine. I will try to make as interesting an article, 
though I fear not so flashy, as that on Clive. 

The state of things at Edinburgh has greatly vexed me. 
Craig advises me not to go down, at least for some time. 
But, if I do not go soon, I shall not be able to go at all this 
year. What do you think about the matter 1 

Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. 



1839-'41.] LOED MACAULAY. Y5 

There was, indeed, little to tempt him northward. All 
Scotland was in a ferment between two great controversies ; 
and the waves of religious passion, still surging with the ex- 
citement of the Church Extension agitation, already felt the 
first gusts of the rising storm which was soon to rage over the 
more momentous question of patronage. Lord Melbourne 
and his colleagues were ignorant of the strength and meaning 
either of the one movement or the other. Incapable of lead- 
ing the opinion of the country, they meddled from time to 
time only to make discords more pronounced, and difficulties 
more insoluble, than ever. The nation was split up into ill- 
defined, but not, on that account, less hostile, camps. On the 
platform and at the polling-booth — in the pulpit, the press, 
the presbyteries, and the law courts — churchmen were array- 
ed against dissenters, and against each other. The strife was 
one whose issues could never be finally determined, except in 
accordance with principles which Paisley weavers and Perth- 
shire shepherds were beginning to understand much more 
clearly than ever did her majesty's ministers. It was the 
general opinion of Macaulay's friends at Edinburgh that he 
would do well to avoid exposing himself to the blows which 
were sure to fall about the head of a Parliamentary represent- 
ative at a time when his constituents were engaged in such 
fierce cross-fighting. He certainly consulted his comfort, and 
possibly his political interests, when he decided on refraining 
from an interference which would have offended most parties 
and satisfied none. 

London, December 8th, 1840. 

Deae Napiee, — I shall work at my article on Hunt when- 
ever I have a leisure hour, and shall try to make it amusing to 
lovers of literary gossip. 

I will not plague you with arguments about the Eastern 
question. My own opinion has long been made up. Unless 
England meant to permit a virtual partition of the Ottoman 
Empire between France and Eussia, she had no choice but to 
act as she has acted. Had the treaty of July not been signed, 
Nicholas would have been really master of Constantinople, 
and Thiers of Alexandria. The treaty once made, I never 



76 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vm. 

would have consented to flinch from it, whatever had been 
the d9,nger. I am satisfied that the war party in France is 
insatiable and unappeasable ; that concessions would only have 
strengthened and emboldened it ; and that, after stooping to 
the lowest humiliations, we should soon have had to fight 
without allies, and at every disadvantage. The policy which 
has been followed I believe to be not only a just and honora- 
ble, but eminently a pacific policy. Whether the peace of the 
world will long be preserved I do not pretend to say ; but I 
firmly hold, that the best chance of preserving it was to make 
the treaty of July, and, having made it, to execute it resolute- 
ly. For my own part, I will tell you plainly that if the course 
of events had driven Palmerston to resign, I would have re- 
signed with him, though I had stood alone. Look at what the 
late ministers of Louis Philippe have avowed with respect to 
the Balearic Islands. Were such designs ever proclaimed be- 
fore, except in a crew of pirates or a den of robbers ? Look 
at Barrot's speeches about England. Is it for the sake of such 
friendships as this that our country is to abdicate her rank, 
and sink into a dependency ? I like war quite as little as Sir 
William Molesworth or Mr. Fonblanque. It is foolish and 
wicked to bellow for war merely for war's sake, like the rump 
of the Mountain at Paris. I would never make offensive war. 
I would never offer to any other power a provocation which 
might be a fair ground for war. But I never would abstain 
from doing what I had clear right to do because a neighbor 
chooses to threaten me with an unjust war; first, because I be- 
lieve that such a policy would, in the end, inevitably produce 
war ; and, secondly, because I think war, though a very great 
evil, by no means so great an evil as subjugation and national 
humiliation. 

In the present case, I think the course taken by the Govern- 
ment unexceptionable. If Guizot prevails — that is to say, if rea- 
son, justice, and public law prevail — we shall have no war. If the 
writers of the National and the singers of the "Marseillaise" 
prevail, we can have no peace. At whatever cost, at whatever 
risk, these banditti must be put down ; or they will put down all 
commerce, civilization, order, and the independence of nations. 



1839-'41.] LOKD MAC AULA Y. 77 

Gf course, what I write to you is confidential : not that I 
should hesitate to proclaim the substance of what I have said 
on the hustings, or in the House of Commons ; but because I 
do not measure my words in pouring myself out to a friend. 
But I have run on too long, and should have done better to 
have given the last half -hour to Wycherley. 

Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. 

London, January 11th, 1841. 

Dear Napiee, — As to my paper on the dramatists, if yon 
are content, so am I. I set less value on it than on any thing 
I have written since I was a boy. 

I have hardly opened Gleig's book on "Warren Hastings, 
and I can not yet judge whether I can review it before it is 
complete. I am not quite sure that so vast a subject may not 
bear two articles. The scene of the first would lie principally 
in India. The Kohilla War, the disputes of Hastings and his 
Council, the character of Francis, the death of Nuncomar, the 
rise of the empire of Hyder, the seizure of Benares, and many 
other interesting matters, would furnish out such a paper. 
In the second, the scene would be changed to Westminster. 
There we should have the Coalition ; the India Bill ; the im- 
peachment ; the characters of all the noted men of that time, 
from Burke, who managed the prosecution of Hastings, down 
to the wretched Tony Pasquin, who first defended and then 
libeled him. I hardly know a story so interesting, and of 
such various interest. And the central figure is in the high- 
est degree striking and majestic. I think Hastings, thougli 
far from faultless, one of the greatest men that England ever 
produced. He had pre-eminent talents for government, and 
great literary talents too ; fine taste, a princely spirit, and he- 
roic equanimity in the midst of adversity and danger. He 
was a man for whom nature had done much of what the Stoic 
philosophy pretended, and only pretended, to do for its disci- 
ples. "Mens aequa in arduis" is the inscription under his 
picture in the Government House at Calcutta, and never was 
there a more appropriate motto. This story has never been 
told as weU as it deserves. Mill's account of Hasting's admin- 



78 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vm. 

istration is indeed very atle— the ablest part, in. my judgment, 
of liis work— but it is dry. As to Gleig, unless he has great- 
ly improved since he wrote Sir Thomas Munro's life, he will 
make very little of his subject. I am not so vain as to think 
that I can do it full justice; but the success of my paper on 
Olive has emboldened me, ^nd I have the advantage of being 
in hourly intercourse with Trevelyan, who is thoroughly well 
acquainted with the languages, manners, and diplomacy of the 
Indian courts. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulat. 

London, April 26tli, 1841. 

Dbae ITapiee, — I have aiTanged with Leigh Hunt for a pa- 
per on the Colmans, which will be ready for the July number. 
He has written some very pretty lines on the queen, who has 
been very kind to him, both by sending him money and by 
countenancing his play. It has occurred to me that if poor 
Southey dies (and his best friends must now pray for his 
death), Leigh Hunt might very fitly have the laurel, if that 
absurd fashion is to be kept up ; or, at all events, the pension 
and the sack. 

'I wish that you could move Eogers to write a short charac- 
ter of Lord Holland for us. Nobody knew his house so well ; 
and Eogers is no mean artist in prose.* 

As to Lord Cardigan, he has deserved some abuse ; he has 
had ten times as much as he deserved ; and, as I do not choose 
to say a word more than I think just against him, I come in 
for a share. You may easily suppose that it troubles me very 
little. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulat. 

During the session of 1841,]Vracaulay, as Secretary at "War, 
had very little to do in the House of Commons except to de- 
fend Lord Cardigan ; but that in itself was quite sufficient oc- 
cupation for one minister. Mr. Kinglake, who enjoyed large, 
and even overabundant, opportunities for studying his lord- 

* In a letter of May 4th, 1841, Macaulay writes : " Lady Holland is so 
earnest with me to review her husband's ' Protests in the House of Lords' 
that I hardly know what to do. I can not refuse her," 



1839-'41.] LOKD MA.CAULAY. 79 

ship, has described his character in a passage almost too well 
known for quotation : " Having no personal ascendency, and 
no habitual consideration for the feelings of others, he was 
not, of course, at all qualified to exert easy rule over English 
gentlemen. There surely was cruelty in the idea of placing 
human beings under the military control of an officer at once 
so arbitrary and so narrow ; but the notion of such a man hav- 
ing been able to purchase for himself a right to hold English- 
men in military subjection is, to my mind, revolting." Lord 
Cardigan bought himseK up from comet to lieutenant-colonel 
in the course of seven years ; and by an expenditure, it is said, 
of four times as many thousand pounds. So open-handed a 
dealer had, of course, the pick of the market. He selected a 
fine cavalry regiment, which he proceeded to drag through a 
slough of scandal, favoritism, petty tyranny, and intrigue, into 
that glare of notoriety which to men of honor is even more 
painful than the misery which a commanding officer of Lord 
Cardigan's type has such unbounded power of inflicting upon 
his subordinates. Within the space of a single twelvemonth, 
one of his captains was cashiered for writing him a challenge ; 
he sent a coarse and insulting verbal message to another, and 
then punished him with prolonged arrest, because he respect- 
fully refused to shake hands with the officer who had been 
employed to convey the affroni ; he fought a duel with a lieu- 
tenant who had left the corps, and shot him through the body ; 
and he flogged a soldier on Sunday, between the services, on 
the very spot where, half an hour before, the man's comrades 
had been mustered for public worship. The Secretary at War 
had to put the best face he could on these ugly stories. When 
it was proposed to remove Lord. Cardigan from the command 
of his regiment, Macaulay took refuge in a position which he 
justly regarded as impregnable : " Honorable gentlemen should 
beware how they take advantage of the unpopularity of an 
individual to introduce a precedent which, if once established, 
would lead to the most fatal effects to the whole of our mili- 
tary system, and work a great injustice to all officers in her 
majesty's service. What is the case with officers in the army ? 
They buy their commissions at a high price, the interest of 



80 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chaj 

which, would be very nearly equal to the pay they rec 
they devote the best years of their lives to the service 
are liable to be sent to the most unhealthy parts of the g 
where their health, and sometimes their lives, fall a saci 
Is it to be expected that men of spirit and honor will coi 
to enter this service, if they have not, at least, some degr 
security for the permanence of their situations?" — in ■ 
words, if they are not allowed to do as they will with 
own. 

Meanwhile the political crisis was approaching its a| 
The Whig Government was now in such a plight that it ( 
neither stand with decency nor fall with grace. Their i 
measure of the year, the Irish Eegistration Bill, narrow! 
caped the perils of a second reading, and was inglori( 
wrecked in committee. Their last year's deficit, of £ 
thing under one million, had this year grown to somel 
over two ; and they could no longer rely upon the wa'N 
popular favor to tide them over their troubles. All th 
thusiasm for progress which still survived had been absc 
into the ranks of those fiery refonners who were urging 
crusade against the Corn Laws under the guidance of le; 
who sat elsewhere than on the Treasury bench, or did ni 
in Parliament at all. As far back as 1839, Macaulay was 
ing in his diary : " The cry for free trade in corn seems 
very formidable. The Tifnes has joined in it. I was 
sure that it would be so. If the ministers play their i 
well, they may now either triumph completely, or retire 
honor. They have excellent cards, if they know how t( 
them." Dire necessity had gradually brought even the 
timid members of the Cabinet to acquiesce in these h 
sentiments, and the "Whigs at length made up their min 
come before the country in the character of Free-traders, 
a letter to Mr. ISTapier, on the 30th day of April, 1841, M; 
lay says : " All the chances of our party depend on to-n 
We shall play double or quits. I do not know what ti 
pect ; and as far as I am concerned, I rather hope for a d( 
I pine for liberty and ease, freedom of speech, and freedo 
pen. I have all that I want ; a small competence, don 



1839-'41.] LOED MACAULAY. 81 

happiness, good health and spirits. If at forty I can get from 
under this yoke, I shall not easily be induced to bear it again." 
So wrote the Secretary at War in the naorning ; and at four 
o'clock in the afternoon of the same day Lord John Eussell 
gave notice that on the 31st of May he should move that the 
House resolve itself into a committee to consider the acts re- 
lating to the trade in com. 

But it was too late to make a change of front in the face of 
the greatest Parliamentary captain of the age, and of a whole 
phalanx of statesmen who were undoubtedly superior to the 
ministers in debate, and who were generally believed to be far 
abler as administrators. A great deal was to happen between 
the 30th of April and the 31st of May. One main feature in 
the budget was a proposal to reduce the duty on foreign sug- 
ar ; a serious blow to the privilege which the free labor of 
our own colonies enjoyed, as against the slave labor of the 
Spanish plantations. Lord Sandon moved an amendment, 
skillfully framed to catch the votes of Abolitionist members 
of the Liberal party, and the question was discussed through 
eight live-long nights, with infinite repetition of argument and 
dreariness of detail. Mr. Gladstone, who had early learned 
that habit of high-toned courtesy which is the surest presage 
of future greatness, introduced into the last sentences of a fine 
speech an allusion that pleased no one so much as him against 
whom it was directed. " There is a another name," said he, 
" strangely associated with the plan of the ministry. I can 
only speak from tradition of the struggle for the abolition of 
slavery ; but, if I have not been misinformed, there was en- 
gaged in it a man who was the unseen ally of Mr. Wilber- 
f orce, and the pillar of his strength ; a man of profound be- 
nevolence, of acute understanding, of indefatigable industry, 
and of that self-denying temper which is content to work in 
secret, to forego the recompense of present fame, and to seek 
for its reward beyond the grave. The name of that man was 
Zachary Macaulay, and his son is a member of the existing 
Cabinet." 

Li the early morning of the 19th of May, Lord Sandon's 
amendment was carried by thirty-six votes ; and on the mor- 

VoL. II.— 6 



82 LIFE AKD LETTEKS OF [chap. vm. 

row the House was crammed inside and out, ia the confident 
expectation of such an announcement as generally follows 
upon a crushing ministerial defeat. Neither the friends of 
the Government nor its enemies could believe their ears, 
when the chancellor of the exchequer, with the self-possess- 
ed air of a minister who has a working majority and a finan- 
cier who has an available sui-plus, gave notice that he should 
bring forward the usual sugar duties in Committee of Ways 
and Means ; and, before the audience could recover its breath. 
Lord John Eussell followed him with a motion that this 
House, on its rising, do adjourn to Monday. The Earl of 
Darlington, in a single sentence of contemptuous astonish- 
ment, asKed on what day the noble lord proposed to take the 
question of the Com Laws. "When that day had been ascer- 
tained to be the 4th of June, the subject dropped at once ; 
and an unhappy member began upon the grievances of the 
Eoyal Marines, amidst the buzz of conversation, expressive of 
gratified or disappointed curiosity, with which, after a thrill- 
ing episode, the House relieves its own nerves, and tortures 
those of the wretch whose ambition or ill -luck has exposed 
him to the most formidable ordeal which can be inflicted on 
a public speaker. 

But the matter was not to end thus. The 4th of June, 
instead of being the first day of the debate on the Com Laws, 
was the fifth and last of an obstinate and dubious conflict 
waged over a direct vote of want of confidence ; which was 
proposed by the Conservative leader in a quiet and careful- 
ly reasoned speech, admirably worthy of the occasion, and of 
himself. Macaulay, who had shown signs of immense inter- 
est while Sir Eobert was unfolding his budget of historical 
parallels and raling cases, replied on the same night with an 
ample roll of the instances in which Lord Sunderland, and 
Mr. Pitt, and Lord Liverpool had accepted defeat vrithout re- 
sorting either to resignation or dissolution. But all the prec- 
edents in the journals of Parliament, though collected by 
HaUam and set forth by Canning, would have failed to prove 
that the country had any interest whatsoever in the continued 
existence of a ministry which had long been powerless, and 



1839-'41.] LORD MACAULAY. 



83 



was rapidly becoming discredited. Wten Sir James Graham 
rose, there was a break in that tone of mutual forbearance 
which the principal speakers on either side had hitherto main- 
tained. The honorable baronet could not resist the tempta- 
tion of indulging himself in an invective which, as he pro- 
ceeded toward his peroration, degenerated into a strain of 
downright ribaldry;* but the Government was already too 
far gone to profit by the mistakes or the excesses of its adver- 
saries ; and the Opposition triumphed by one vote, in a House 
fuller by twenty than that which, ten years before, had carried 
the second reading of the Eeform BiU by exactly the same 
majority. 

Within three weeks Parliament was dissolved, and the min- 
isters went to the country on the question of a fixed duty on 
foreign wheat. There could be but one issue to a general 
election which followed upon such a session, and but one fate 
in store for a party whose leaders were fain to have recourse 
to so feeble and perfunctory a cry. Lord Melbourne and his 
colleagues had touched the Corn Laws too late, and too timid- 
ly, for their reputation, and too soon for the public opinion of 
the constituencies. They sent their supporters on what was 
indeed a forlorn-hope, when, as a sort of political after-thought, 
they bid them attack the most powerful interest in the na- 
tion. North of Trent the "Whigs held their ground; but 
throughout the southern districts of England they were smit- 
ten hip and thigh, from Lincoln to St. Ives. The adherents 
of the Government had to surrender something of their pre- 

* " I can not address the people of this country in the language of the 
quotation used by the noble lord, 

'O passi graviora;' 

for never was a country cursed with a worse, a more reckless, or a more 
dangerous government. The noble lord, the Secretary for Ireland, talks 
of ' lubricity ;' but, thank God, we have at last pinned you to something 
out of which you can not wriggle ; and, as we have the melancholy satis- 
faction to know that there is an end to all things, so I can now say with 

the noble lord : 

' Dabit Deus his quoque finem ; 

thank God we have at last got rid of such a government as this.' " 



84: LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. ym. 

dominance in the "boroughs, while those who sat for the coun- 
ties were turned out by shoals. There were whole shires 
which sent back their writs inscribed with an unbroken tale 
of Protectionists. AU the ten Essex members were Conserva- 
tives, in town and country alike ; and so were all the twelve 
members for Shropshire. Before the Irish returns had come 
to hand, it was abeady evident that the ministerial loss would 
be equivalent to a hundred votes on a stand and fall division. 
The Whigs had experienced no equally grave reverse since, in 
1784, Pitt scattered to the winds the Coalition majority ; and 
no such other was destined again to befall them. 

Until a day more dark and drear, 
And a more memorable year, 

should, after the lapse of a generation, deliver over to misfort- 
tme and defeat 

A mightier host and haughtier name. 

Scotland, as usual, was not affected by the contagion of re- 
action. Indeed, the troubles of candidates to the north of the 
Border proceeded rather from the progressive than the retro- 
gressive tendencies of the electors. Macaulay was returned 
unopposed, in company with Mr. "William Gibson Craig; 
though he had been threatened with a contest by the more 
ardent members of that famous party in the Scotch Church 
which, within two years from that time, was to give such a 
proof as history wiU not forget of its willingness to sacrifice, 
for conscience' sake,* things far more precious even than the 
honor of sending to St. Stephen's an eloquent and distinguish- 
ed representative. 

To Miss F. Macaulay. 

Edinburgh, June 28th, 1841. 
Deaeest Fanny, — We have had a meeting — a little stormy 
when church matters were touched on, but perfectly cordial on 

* The disruption of the Scotch Church took place on the 18th of May, 
1843. 



1839-'41.] LOED MACAULAY. 85 

other points. I took the bull by the horns, and have reason 
to believe that I was right, both in principle and in poKcy. 
A Non-intrusion opposition has been talked of. My language 
at the meeting displeased the violent churchmen, and they 
were at one time minded even to coalesce with the Tories 
against me. The leading JSTon-intrusionists, however, have 
had a conference with me; and though we do not exactly 
agree, they own that they shall get more from me than from 
a Tory. I do not think that there is now any serious risk of 
a contest, and there is none at all of a defeat ; but in the 
mean time I am surrounded by the din of a sort of contro- 
versy which is most distasteful to me. " Yes, Mr. Macaulay ; 
that is all very well for a statesman. But what becomes of 
the headship of our Loi'd Jesus Christ ?" And I can not an- 
swer a constituent quite as bluntly as I should answer any one 
else who might reason after such a fashion. 

Ever yours, T. B. M. 

London, July 12th, 1841. 

Deae Ellis, — I can not send you "Yirginius," for I have 
not a copy by me at present, and have not time to make one. 
When you return I hope to have finished another ballad, on 
the Lake Eegillus. I have no doubt that the author of the 
original ballad had Homer in his eye. The battle of the Lake 
Eegillus is a purely Homeric battle. I am confident that the 
ballad-maker has heard of the fight over the body of Patroclus. 
"We will talk more about this. I may, perhaps, publish a 
small volume next spring. I am encouraged by the approba- 
tion of all who have seen the little pieces. I find the un- 
learned quite as well satisfied as the learned. 

I have taken a very comfortable suite of chambers in The 
Albany ; and I hope to lead during some years a sort of life 
peculiarly suited to my taste — college life at the West End of 
London. I have an entrance -hall, two sitting-rooms, a bed- 
room, a kitchen, cellars, and two rooms for servants — all for 
ninety guineas a year ; and this in a situation which no young- 
er son of a duke need be ashamed to put on his card. We 
shall have, I hope, some very pleasant breakfasts there, to say 



86 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. via. 

nothing of dinners. My own housekeeper will do very well 
for a few plain dishes, and The Clarendon is within a hundred 
yards. 

I own that I am quite delighted with our prospects. A 
strong opposition is the very thing that I wanted. I shall be 
heartily glad if it lasts till I can finish a " History of England, 
from the Eevolution to the Accession of the House of Hano- 
ver." Then I shall be willing to go in again for a few years. 
It seems clear that we shall be just about three hundred. 
This is what I have always supposed. I got through very tri- 
umphantly at Ediaburgh, and very cheap. I believe I can 
say what no other man in the kingdom can say. I have been 
four times returned to Parliament by cities of more than a 
hundred and forty thousand inhabitants; and all those four 
elections together have not cost me five hundred pounds. 

Yom' ballads are delightful. I like that of Ips,* Gips, and 

* Ips, Gips, and Johnson were three Northumbrian butchers, who, when 
riding from market, heard a cry for help, and came upon a woman who had 
been reduced to the distressful plight in which ladies were so often dis- 
covered by knights errant. 

Then Johnson, being a valiant man, a man of courage bold. 
He took his coat from oflf his back to keep her from the cold. 

As they rode over Northumberland, as hard as they could ride, 
She put her fingers in her ears, and dismally she cried. 

Then up there start ten swaggering blades, with weapons in their hands, 
And riding up to Johnson they bid him for to stand. 

"It's I'll not stand," says Ipson: "then no, indeed, not I." 
"Nor I'll not stand," says Gipson : " I'll sooner live than die." 
"Then I will stand," says Johnson; "I'll stand the while I can. 
I never yet was daunted, nor afraid of any man." 

Johnson thereupon drew his sword, and had disposed of eight out of his 
ten assailants, when he was stabbed from behind by the woman, and died, 
upbraiding her with having killed 

The finest butcher that ever the sun shone on. 

It is not so easy to identify " Napoleon " among a sheaf of ballads entitled 
"The Island of St. Helena," "Maria Louisa's Lamentation," and "Young 
Napoleon, or the Bunch of Roses ;" though from internal evidence there is 
reason to believe that the song in question was "Napoleon's Farewell to 
Paris," which commences with an apostrophe so gorgeous as to suggest the 



1839-'41.] LORD MACAULAY. 87 

Jolmsoii best. " Napoleon " is excellent, but hardly equal to 
the " Donkey wot wouldn't go." Ever yours, 

T. B. Maoatjlay. 

Macaulay's predilection for the Muse of the street has al- 
ready furnished more than one anecdote to the newspapers. 
It is, indeed, one of the few personal facts about him which 
up to this time have taken hold of the public imagination. 
He bought every half -penny song on which he could lay his 
hands ; if only it was decent, and a genuine, undoubted poem 
of the people. He has left a scrap-book containing about 
eighty ballads; for the most part vigorous and picturesque 
enough, however defective they may be in rhyme and gram- 
mar; printed on flimsy, discolored paper, and headed with 
coarsely executed vignettes, seldom bearing even the most re- 
mote reference to the subject which they are supposed to il- 
lustrate. Among the gems of his collection he counted " Pla- 
to, a favorite song," commencing with a series of questions in 
which it certainly is not easy to detect traces of the literary 
style employed by the great dialectician : 

Says Plato, " Why should man be vain, 

Since bounteous Heaven has made him great ? 

Why look with insolent disdain 

On those not decked with pomp or state ?" 

It is not too much to say that Macaulay knew the locality, 
and, at this period of his life, the stock in trade, of every 
book-stall in London. "After office hours," says his brother 
Charles, "his principal relaxation was rambling about with 
me in the back lanes of the City. It was then that he began 
to talk of his idea of restoring to poetry the legends of which 
poetry had been robbed by history ; and it was in these walks 

idea that the great Emperor's curious popularity with our troubadours of 
the curbstone is of Irish origin. 

Farewell, ye splendid citadel, Metropolis, called Paris, 
Where Phoebus every morning shoots refulgent beams ; 

Where Flora's bright Aurora advancing from the Orient 
With radiant light Ulumines the pure shining streams. 



88 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vm. 

that I heard for the first time from his lips the "Lays of 
Rome," which were not pubHshed until some time afterward. 
In fact, I heard them in the making. I never saw the hidden 
mechanism of his mind so clearly as in the course of these 
walks. He was very fond of discussing psychological and 
ethical questions ; and sometimes, but more rarely, would lift 
the veil behind which he habitually kept his religious opin- 
ions." 

On the 19th of August Parliament met to give effect to 
the verdict of the polling-booths. An amendment on the ad- 
dress, half as long as the address itself, the gist of which lay 
in a respectful representation to her majesty that her present 
advisers did not possess the confidence of the country, was 
moved simultaneously in both Houses. It was carried on the 
first night of the debate by a majority of seventy-two in the 
Lords, and on the fourth night by a majority of ninety-one in 
the Commons. Macaulay, of course, voted with his colleagues ; 
but he did not raise his voice to deprecate a consummation 
which on public grounds he could not desire to see postponed, 
and which, as far as his private inclinations were concerned, 
he had for some time past anticipated with imf eigned and all 
but unmixed delight. 

London, July 27tli, 1841. 

Deab Napiee, — I am truly glad that you are satisfied. I 
do not know what Brougham means by objecting to what I 
have said of the first Lord Holland. I will engage to find 
chapter and verse for it all. Lady Holland told me that she 
could hardly conceive where I got so correct a notion of him. 

I am not at all disappointed by the elections. They have, 
indeed, gone very nearly as I expected. Perhaps I counted 
on seven or eight votes more ; and even these we may get on 
petition. I can truly say that I have not, for many years, 
been so happy as I am at present. Before I went to India, I 
had no prospect in the event of a change of government, ex- 
cept that of living by my pen, and seeing my sisters govern- 
esses. In India I was an exile. When I came back, I was 
for a time at liberty ; but I had before me the prospect of 
parting in a few months, probably forever, with my dearest 



1839-'41.] LOED MACAULAY. 89 

sister and her children. That misery was removed ; but I 
found myself in office, a member of a government wretched- 
ly weak, and struggling for existence. I^ow I am free. I 
am independent. I airi in Parliament, as honorably seated as 
man can be. My family is comfortably off. I have leisure 
for literature, yet I am not reduced to the necessity of writing 
for money. If I had to choose a lot from all that there are 
in human life, I am not sure that I should prefer any to that 
which has fallen to me. I am sincerely and thoroughly con- 
tented. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. 



90 LITE AMD LETTERS OF [chap. ix. 



CHAPTEK IX. 

1841-1844. 

Macaulay settles in The Albany. — Letters to Mr. Napier. — Warren Has- 
tings, and "The Vicar of Wakefield." — Leigh Hunt. — Macanlay's Doubts 
about the Wisdom of publishing his Essays. — Lord Palmerston as a 
Writer. — The " Lays of Eome." — Handsome Conduct of Professor Wil- 
son. — Republication of the Essays. — Miss Aikin's " Life of Addison." — 
Macaulay in Opposition. — The Copyright Question. — Recall of Lord El- 
lenborough. — Macaulay as a Public Speaker : Opinions of the Reporters' 
Gallery. — Tour on the Loire. — Letters to Mr. Napier. — Payment of the 
Irish Roman Catholic Clergy. — Bar&re. 

The change of government was any thing but a misfort- 
une to Macaulay. He lost nothing but an income which he 
could well do without, and the value of which he was ere long 
to replace many times over by his pen; and he gained his 
time, his liberty, the power of speaking what he thought, writ- 
ing when he would, and living as he chose. The plan of life 
which he selected was one eminently suited to the bent of his 
tastes and the nature of his avocations. Toward the end of 
the year 1840, Mr. and Mrs. Trevelyan removed to Clapham ; 
and on their departure, Macaulay broke up his establishment 
in Great George Street, and quartered himself in a commodi- 
ous set of rooms on a second floor in The Albany ; that luxuri- 
ous cloister, whose inviolable tranquillity affords so agreeable 
a relief from the roar and flood of the Piccadilly traffic. His 
chambers, every comer of which was library, were comfort- 
ably, though not very brightly, furnished. The ornaments 
were few, but choice: half a dozen fine Italian engravings 
from his favorite great masters; a handsome French clock, 
provided with a singularly melodious set of chimes, the gift 
of his friend and publisher, Mr. Thomas Longman ; and the 



1841-'44.] LORD MACAULAY. 91 

well-known bronze statuettes of Voltaire and Eousseau (nei- 
ther of them heroes of his own),* which had been presented 
to him by Lady Holland as a remembrance of her husband. 

The first use which Macaulay made of his freedom was in 
the capacity of a reviewer. Mr. G-leig, who had served with 
distinction during the last years of the great French war as a 
regimental officer, after having been five times wounded in ac- 
tion, had carried his merit into the Church, and his campaign- 
ing experiences into military literature. The author of one 
book which is good, and of several which are not amiss, he 
flew at too high game when he undertook to compile the 
" Memoirs of Warren Hastings." In January, 1841, Macau- 

* Macaulay says in a letter to Lord Stanhope : " I have not made np my 
mind about John, Duke of Bedford. Hot-headed he certainly was. That 
is a quality which lies on the surface of a character, and about which 
there can be no mistake. Whether a man is cold-hearted, or not, is a, 
much more diiScult question. Strong emotions may be hid by a stoical 
deportment. Kind and caressing manners may conceal an unfeeling dis- 
position. Eomilly, whose sensibility was morbidly strong, and who died 
a martyr to it, was by many thought to be incapable of affection. Eous- 
seau, who was always soaking people's waistcoats with his tears, betrayed 
and slandered aU his benefactors in turn, and sent his children to the En- 
fans Trouv^s." 

Macaulay's sentiments with regard to Voltaire are pretty fully express- 
ed in his essay on Frederic the Great. In 1853 he visited Ferney. " The 
cabinet where Voltaire used to write looked, not toward Mont Blanc, of 
which he might have had a noble view, but toward a terrace and a grove 
of trees. Perhaps he wished to spare his eyes. He used to complain that 
the snow hurt them. I was glad to have seen a place about which I had 
read and dreamed so much ; a place which, eighty years ago, was regarded 
with the deepest interest all over Europe, and visited by pilgrims of the 
highest rank and greatest genius. I suppose that no private house ever 
received such a number of illustrious guests during the same time as were 
entertained in Ferney between 1768 and 1778. I thought of Marmontel, 
and his 'ombre chevalier;' of La Harpe, and his quarrel with the Patri- 
arch ; of Madame de Genlis, and of all the tattle which iills ' Grimm's Cor- 
respondence.' Lord Lansdowne was much pleased. Ellis less so. He is 
no Voltairian ; nor am I, exactly ; but I take a great interest in the literary 
history of the last century." In his diary of the 28th of December, 1850, 
he writes, " Read the ' Physiology of Monkeys,' and Collins's account of 
Voltaire — as mischievous a monkey as any of them." 



92 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. ix. 

lay, who was then still at the "War Office, wrote to the editor 
of the Edinburgh Review in these terms : " I think the new 
' Life of Hastings ' the worst book that I ever saw. I should 
be inclined to treat it mercilessly, were it not that the writer, 
though I never saw him, is, as an army chaplain, in some sense 
placed officially under me ; and I think that there would be 
something like tyranny and insolence in pouring contempt on 
a person who has a situation from which I could, for aught 
I know, have him dismissed, and in which I certainly could 
make him very uneasy. It would be far too Crokerish a 
proceeding for me to strike a man who would find some diffi- 
culty in retaliating. I shall therefore speak of him much less 
sharply than he deserves ; unless, indeed, we should be out, 
which is not improbable. In that case I should, of course, be 
quite at liberty." 

Unfortunately for Mr. Gleig, the "Whigs were relegated to 
private life in time to set Macaulay at liberty to make certain 
strictures ; which, indeed, he was under an absolute obligation 
to make if there was any meaning in the motto of the Edvrv- 
hurgh Meview* The first two paragraphs of the " Essay on 
"Warren Hastings " originally ran as follows : 

" This book seems to have heen manufactured in pursuance of a con- 
tract, by which the representatives of Warren Hastings, on the one part, 
hound themselves to furnish papers, and Mr. Gleig, on the other part, 
hound himself to furnish praise. It is but just to say that the covenants 
on both sides have been most faithfully kept ; and the result is before us 
in the form of three big bad volumes, full of undigested correspondence 
and undiscerning panegyric. 

" If it were worth while to examine this performance in detail, we could 
easily make a long article by merely pointing out inaccurate statements, 
inelegant expressions, and immoral doctrines. But it would be idle to 
waste criticism on a book-maker; and, whatever credit Mr. Gleig may 
have justly earned by former works, it is as a book-maker, and nothing 
more, that he now comes before us. More eminent men than Mr. Gleig 
have written nearly as ill as he, when they have stooped to similar drudg- 
ery. It would be unjust to estimate Goldsmith by ' The Vicar of Wake- 
field,' or Scott by the ' Life of Napoleon.' Mr. Gleig is neither a Goldsmith 
nor a Scott; but it would be unjust to deny that he is capable of some- 

* "Judex damnjitur cumnocens absolvitur." 



1841-'44.] LOED MACATJLAY. 93 

thing better than these 'Memoirs.' It -would also, we hope and believe, be 
unjust to charge any Christian minister with the guilt of deliberately 
maintaining some of the propositions which we find in this book. It is 
not too much to say that Mr. Gleig has written several passages which bear 
the same relation to ' The Prince ' of Machiavelli that ' The Prince ' of Ma- 
chiavelli bears to ' The Whole Duty of Man,' and which would excite admi- 
ration in a den of robbers, or on board of a schooner of pirates. But we 
are willing to attribute these offenses to haste, to thoughtlessness, and to 
that disease of the understanding which may be called the furor Mograpk- 
ieus, and which is to writers of lives what the goitre is to an Alpine shep- 
herd, or dirt-eating to a negro slave." 

If this passage was unduly harsh, the punishment which 
overtook its author was instant and terrible. It is difficult 
to conceive any calamity which Macaulay would regard with 
greater consternation than that, in the opening sentences of 
an article which was sure to be read by every body who read 
any thing, he should pose before the world for three mortal 
months in the character of a critic who thought " The Yicar 
of Wakefield " a bad book. 

Albany, London, October 26th, 1841. 

Dear I^apiee, — I write chiefly to point out, what I dare 
say you have already observed, the absurd blunder in the first 
page of my article. I have not, I am sorry to say, the conso- 
lation of being able to blame either you or the printers : for 
it must have been a slip of my own pen. I have put " The 
Vicar of Wakefield" instead, of the "History of Greece." 
Pray be so kind as to correct this in the errata of the next 
number. I am, indeed, so much vexed by it that I could wish 
that the correction were made a little more prominent than 
usual, and introduced with two or three words of preface. 
But this I leave absolutely to your taste and judgment. 

Ever yours truly, T. B. Macaulat. 

Albany, London, October 30th, 1841. 
Dear Napiee, — I have received your letter, and am truly 
glad to find that you are satisfied with the effect of my article. 
As to the pecuniary part of the matter, I am satisfied, and 
more than satisfied. Indeed, as you well know, money has 
never been my chief object in writing. It was not so even 



94 LITE AND LETTERS OP [chap. ix. 

when I was very poor ; and at present I consider myself as 
one of the richest men of my acquaintance ; for I can well af- 
ford to spend a thousand a year, and I can enjoy every com- 
fort on eight hundred. I own, however, that your supply 
comes agreeably enough to assist me in furnishing my rooms, 
which I have made, unless I am mistaken, into a very pleasant 
student's cell. 

And now a few words about Leigh Hunt. He wi'ote to me 
yesterday in great distress, and inclosed a letter which he had 
received from you, and which had much agitated him. In 
truth, he misunderstood you ; and you had used an expression 
which was open to some little misconstruction. You told 
him that you should be glad to have a " gentleman-like " arti- 
cle from him, and Hunt took this for a reflection on his birth. 
He implored me to tell him candidly whether he had given 
you any offense, and to advise him as to his course. I replied 
that he had utterly misunderstood you ; that I was sure you 
meant merely a literary criticism ; that your taste in composi- 
tion was more severe than his, more indeed than mine ; that 
you were less tolerant than myself of little mannerisms spring- 
ing from peculiarities of temper and training ; that his style 
seemed to you too colloquial ; that I myself thought that he 
was in danger of excess in that direction ; and that, when you 
received a letter from him promising a very " chatty " article, 
I was not surprised that you should caution him against his 
besetting sin. I said that I was sure that you wished him 
well, and would be glad of his assistance ; but that he could 
not expect a person in your situation to pick his words very 
nicely ; that you had during many years superintended great 
literary undertakings ; that you had been under the necessity 
of collecting contributions from great numbers of writers, and 
that you were responsible to the public for the whole. Youf 
credit was so deeply concerned that you must be allowed to 
speak plainly. I knew that you had spoken to men of the 
first consideration quite as plainly as to him. I knew that 
yott-had refused to insert passages written by so great a man 
as Lord Brougham. I knew that you had not scrupled to 
hack and hew articles on foreign politics which had been con- 



1841-'44.] LOED MACAULAY. 95 

cocted in the hotels of embassadors, and had received the ifn- 
prvmatur of secretaries of state. I said that, therefore, he 
must, as a man of sense, suffer you to tell him what you 
might think, whether rightly or wrongly, to be the faults of 
his style. As to the sense which he had put on one or two of 
your expressions, I took it on myself, as your friend, to affirm 
that he had mistaken their meaning, and that you would nev- 
er have used those words if you had foreseen that they would 
have been so understood. Between ourselves, the word " gen- 
tleman-like " was used in rather a harsh way.* Now I have 
told you what has passed between him and me ; and I leave 
you to act as you think fit. I am sure that you will act prop- 
erly and humanely. But I must add that I think you are too 
hard on his article. 

As to " The Vicar of Wakefield," the correction must be de- 
ferred, I think, tUl the appearance of the next number. I am 
utterly unable to conceive how I can have committed such a 
blunder, and failed to notice it in the proofs. 

Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. 

Albany, London, November 5th, 1841. 

Dear ISTapiee, — Leigh Hunt has sent me a most generous 
and amiable letter which he has received from you. He 
seems much touched by it, and more than satisfied, as he 
ought to be. 

I have at last begun my- historical labors ; I can hardly say 
with how much interest and delight. I really do not think 
that there is in our literature so great a void as that which 
I am trying to supply. Enghsh history, from 1688 to the 
French Revolution, is, even to educated people, almost a terra 
mcognita. I will venture to say that it is quite an even 
chance whether even such a man as Empsori, or Senior, can 
repeat accurately the names of the prime ministers of that 
time in order. The materials for an amusing narrative are 

* It is worth notice that "gentleman-like" is the precise epithet which 
Macaulay applied to his own article on Gladstoue'a " Church and State." 
See page 48. 



96 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. ix. 

immense. I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something 
which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel 
on the tables of young ladies. 

I should be very much obliged to you to tell me what are 
the best sources of information about the Scotch Eevolution 
in 1688, the campaign of Dundee, the massacre of Glencoe, 
and the Darien scheme. I mean to visit the scenes of all the 
principal events both in Great Britain and Ireland, and also 
on the Continent. "Would it be worth my while to pass a 
fortnight in one of the Edinburgh libraries next summer? 
Or do you imagine that the necessary information is to be got 
at the British Museum ? 

By-the-bye, a lively picture of the state of the Kirk is in- 
dispensable. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. 

Albany, London, December 1st, 1841. 

Deae l^APiEE, — You do not seem to like what I suggested 
about Henry the Fifth.* ISTor do I, on fuU consideration. 
What do you say to an article on Frederic the Great? Tom 
Campbell is bringing out a book about his majesty. 

Now that I am seriously engaged in an extensive work, 
which will probably be the chief employment of the years of 
health and vigor which remain to me, it is necessary that I 
should choose my subjects for reviews with some reference to 
that work. I should iiot choose to write an article on some 
point which I should have to treat again as a historian ; for, 
if I did, I should be in danger of repeating myself. I assure 
you that I a little grudge you Westminster Hall, in the paper 
on Hastings. On the other hand, there are many characters 
and events which will occupy little or no space in my " Histo- 
ry," yet with which, in the course of my historical researches, 
I shall necessarily become familiar. There can not be a bet- 
ter instance than Frederic the Great. His personal character. 



* Macaulay had written on the 10th of November : " If Longman will 
send me Mr. Tyler's book on Henry the Fifth, I wiU. see whether I can not, 
with the help of Froiasart and Moustrelet, furnish a spirited sketch of that 
short and most brilliant life." 



1841-'44.] LORD MACAULAY. 97 

manners, studies, literary associates ; his quarrel with Yoltaire, 
his friendship for Maupertuis, and his own unhappy mef/roma- 
nie will be very slightly, if at all, alluded to in a " History of 
England."* Yet in order to write the " History of England," 
it will he necessary to turn over all the memoirs, and all the 
writings, of Frederic, connected with us, as he was, in a most 
important war. In this way my reviews would benefit by my 
historical researches, and yet would not forestall my " History," 
or materially impede its progress. I should not like to en- 
gage in any researches altogether alien from what is now my 
maiii object. Still less should I like to tell the same story 
over and over again, which I must do if I were to write on 
such a subject as the "Vernon Correspondence," or Trevor's 
" History of William the Third." Ever yours, 

T. B. Macatjlay. 

In January, 1842, Macaulay writes to Mr. Napier : "As to 
Frederic, I do not see that I can deal with him well under 
seventy pages. I shall try to give a life of him after the 
manner of Plutarch. That, I think, is my forte. The paper 
on Clive took greatly. That on Hastings, though in my own 
opinion by no means equal to that on Clive, has been even 
more successful. I ought to produce something much better 
than either of those articles with so excellent a subject as 
Frederic. Keep the last place for me if you can. I greatly 
regret my never having seen Berlin and Potsdam." 

Albany, London, April 18th, 1842. 
Mt Dear Napiee, — I am much obliged to you for your 
criticisms on my article on Frederic. My copy of the Review 
I have lent, and can not therefore refer to it. I have, how- 
ever, thought over what you say, and should be disposed to 
admit part of it to be just. But I have several distinctions 
and limitations to suggest. 

* At this period of his career Macaulay still purposed, and hoped, to 
write the history of England " down to a time which is within the memo- 
ry of men stiU living." 

Vol. II.— 7 



98 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. ix. 

The charge to which I am most sensible is that of interlard- 
ing my sentences with French terms. I will not positively 
affirm that no such expression may have dropped from my 
pen, in writing hurriedly on a subject so very French. It is, 
however, a practice to which I am extremely averse, and into 
which I could fall only by inadvertence. I do not really know 
to what you allude ; for as to the words "Abb^ " and " Parc- 
aux-Cerfs," which I recollect, those surely are not open to ob- 
jection. I remember that I carried my love of English in one 
or two places almost to the length of affectation. For example, 
I called the " Place des Yictoires " the " Place of Victories ;" 
and the " Fermier G^n6ral " D'Etioles a " publican." I will 
look over the article again, when I get it into my hands, and 
try to discover to what you allude. 

The other charge, I confess, does not appear to me to be 
equally serious. I certainly should not, in regular history, 
use some of the phrases which you censure. But I do not 
consider a review of this sort as regular history, and I really 
think that, from the highest and most imquestionable author- 
ity, I could vindicate my practice. Take Addison, the model of 
pure and graceful writing. In his Spectators I find " wench," 
" baggage," " queer old put," " prig," " fearing that they should 
smoke the Knight." All these expressions I met this morn- 
ing, in turning over two or three of his papers at breakfast. 
I would no more use the word " bore " or " awkward squad " 
in a composition meant to be uniformly serious and earnest, 
than Addison would in a state paper have called Louis an " old 
put," or have described Shrewsbury and Argyle as " smoking" 
the design to bring in the Pretender. But I did not mean 
my article to be uniformly serious and earnest. If you judge 
of it as you would judge of a regular history, your censure 
ought to go very much deeper than it does, and to be directed 
against the substance as well as against the diction. The tone 
of many passages, nay, of whole pages, would justly be called 
flippant in a regular history. But I conceive that this sort of 
composition has its own character and its own laws. I do not 
claim the honor of having invented it ; that praise belongs to 
Southey ; but I may say that I have in some points improved 



1841-'44.] LOED MACAtlLAY. 99 

upon his design. The manner of these little historical essays 
bears, I think, the same analogy to the manner of Tacitus or 
Gibbon which the manner of Ariosto bears to the manner of 
Tasso, or the manner of Shakspeare's historical plays to the 
manner of Sophocles. Ariosto, when he is grave and pathetic, 
is as grave and pathetic as Tasso ; but he often takes a light, 
fleeting tone which suits him admirably, but which in Tasso 
would be quite out of place. The despair of Constance in 
Shakspeare is as lofty as that of (Edipus in Sophocles ; T)xit 
the levities of the bastard Faulconbridge would be utterly out 
of place in Sophocles. Yet we feel that they are not out of 
place in Shakspeare. 

So with these historical articles. Where the subject re- 
quires it, they may rise, if the author can manage it, to the 
highest altitudes of Thucydides. Then, again, they may with- 
out impropriety sink to the levity and colloquial ease of Hor- 
ace "Walpole's Letters. This is my theory. Whether I have 
succeeded in the execution is quite another question. You 
will, however, perceive that I am in no danger of taking simi- 
lar liberties in my " History." I do, indeed, greatly disapprove 
of those notions which some writers have of the dignity of his- 
tory. For fear of alluding to the vulgar concerns of private 
life, they take no notice of the circumstances which deeply affect 
the happiness of nations. But I never thought of denying 
that the language of history ought to preserve a certain dignity. 
I would, however, no more attempt to preserve that dignity in 
a paper like this on Frederic than I would exclude from such a 
poem as " Don Juan " slang tenns, because such terms would 
be out of place in " Paradise Lost," or Hudibrastic rhymes, be- 
cause such rhymes would be shocking in Pope's " Iliad." 

As to the particular criticisms which you have made, I will- 
ingly submit my judgment to yours, thoiigh I think that I 
could say something on the other side. The first rule of all 
writing — that rule to which every other is subordinate — is that 
the words used by the writer shall be such as most fully and 
precisely convey his meaning to the great body of his readers. 
All considerations about the purity and dignity of style ought 
to bend- to this consideration. To write what is not under- 



100 LIFE AND LETTERS OF Ichap. ix. 

stood in its whole force for fear of using some word which 
was unknown to Swift or Dryden would be, I think, as absurd 
as to build an observatory like that at Oxford, from which it 
is impossible to observe, only for the purpose of exactly pre- 
serving the proportions of the Temple of the "Winds at Athens. 
That a word which is appropriate to a particular idea, which 
every body, high and low, uses to express that idea, and which 
expresses that idea with a completeness which is not equaled 
by any other single word, and scarcely by any circumlocution, 
should be banished from writing, seems to be a mere throw- 
ing-away of power. Such a word as "talented" it is proper 
to avoid : first, because it is not wanted ; secondly, because 
you never hear it from those who speak very good English. 
But the word "shirk" as applied to military duty is a word 
which every body uses ; which is the word, and the only word, 
for the thing ; which in every regiment and in every ship be- 
longing to our country is employed ten times a day; which 
the Duke of Wellington, or Admiral Stopford, would use in 
reprimanding an officer. To interdict it, therefore, in what 
is meant to be familiar, and almost jocose, narrative seems to 
me rather rigid. 

But I will not go o.n. I will only repeat that I am truly 
grateful for your advice, and that if you will, on future occa- 
sions, mark with an asterisk any words in my proof-sheets 
which you think open to objection, I will try to meet your 
wishes, though it may sometimes be at the expense of my 
own. Ever yours most truly, T. B. Macaulay. 

Albany, London, April 25th, 1842. 

Deae Napiee, — Thank you for your letter. We shall have 
no disputes about diction. The English language is not so 
poor but that I may very well find in it the means of content- 
ing both you and myself. 

I have no objection to try Madame D'Arblay for the Oc- 
tober number. I have only one scruple — that some months 
ago Leigh Hunt told me that he thought of proposing that 
subject to you, and I approved of his doing so. Now, I 
should have no scruple in taking a subject out of Brougham's 



1841-'44.] LORD MACADLAY. 101 

hands, because lie can take care of himself, if he thinks him- 
self ill-used. But I would not do any thing that could hurt 
the feelings of a man whose spirit seems to be quite broken 
by adversity, and who lies under some obligations to me. 

By-the-way, a word on a subject which I should be much 
obliged to you to consider, and advise me upon. I jS.nd that 
the American publishers have thought it worth while to put 
forth two, if not three, editions of my reviews ; and I receive 
letters from them saying that the sale is considerable. I have 
heard that several people here have ordered them from Amer- 
ica. Others have cut them out of old numbers of the Edinr 
hurgh Meview, and have bound them up in volumes. Now, I 
know that these pieces are full of faults, and that their popu- 
larity has been veiy far beyond their merit ; but, if they are 
to be republished, it would be better that they should be re- 
published under the eye of the author, and with his correc- 
tions, than that they should retain all the blemishes insepara- 
ble from hasty writing and hasty printing. Longman pro- 
posed something of the kind to me three years ago ; but at 
that time the American publication had not taken place, 
which makes a great difference. Give me your counsel on 
the subject. Ever yours truly, T. B. Macaulay. 

Albany, London, June 24tli, 1842. 
Deak Napiee, — I have thought a good deal about repub- 
lishing my articles, and have made up my mind not to do so. 
It is rather provoking, to be sure, to learn that a third edition 
is coming out in America, and to meet constantly with smug- 
gled copies. It is stiU more provoking to see trash, of which 
I am perfectly guiltless, inserted among my writiags. But, 
on the whole, I think it best that things should remain as 
they are. The public judges, and ought to judge, indulgently 
of periodical works. They are not expected to be highly fin- 
ished. Their natural life is only six weeks. Sometimes their 
writer is at a distance from the books to which he wants to 
refer. Sometimes he is forced to hurry through his task in 
order to catch the post. He may blunder ; he may contradict 
himself ; he may break off in the middle of a story ; he may 



102 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. ix. 

give an immoderate extension to one part of Ms subject, and 
dismiss an equally important part in a few words. All this is 
readily forgiven if there be a certain spirit' and vivacity in his 
style. But, as soon as he republishes, he challenges a compar- 
ison with aU the most symmetrical and polished of human 
compositions. A painter who has a picture in the exhibition 
of the Eoyal Academy would act very unwisely if he took it 
down and carried it over to the l^fational Gallery. Where it 
now hangs, surrounded by a crowd of daubs which are only 
once seen and then forgotten, it may pass for a fine piece. 
He is a fool if he places it side by side with the masterpieces 
of Titian and Claude. My reviews are generally thought to 
be better written, and they certainly live longer, than the re- 
views of most other people; and this ought to content me. 
The moment I come forward to demand a higher rank, I must 
expect to be judged by a higher standard. Fonblanque may 
serve for a beacon. His leading articles in the Excmvmer 
were extolled to the skies, while they were considered merely 
as leading articles ; for they were in style and manner incom- 
parably superior to any thing in the Courier, or Globe, or 
Stcmdwrd; nay, to any thing in the Times. People said that 
it was a pity that such admirable compositions should perish ; 
so Fonblanque determined to republish them in a book. He 
never considered that in that form they would be compared 
not with the rant and twaddle of the daily and weekly press, 
but with Burke's pamphlets, with Pascal's letters, with Addi- 
son's Spectators and Freeholders. They would not stand this 
new test a moment. I shall profit by the warning. "What the 
Yankees may do I can not help ; but I will not found my 
pretensions to the rank of a classic on my reviews. I will re- 
main, according to the excellent precept in the Gospel, at the 
lower end of the table, where I am constantly accosted with 
" Friend, go up higher," and not push my way to the top at 
the risk of being compelled with shame to take the lowest 
room. If I live twelve or fifteen years, I may perhaps pro- 
duce something which I may not be afraid to exhibit side by 
side with the performance of the old masters. 

Ever yours truly, T. B. Maoaulat. 



1841-'44.] LORD MACAULAY. 103 

Albany, London, July 14tli, 1842. 
Dear Napiee, — As to the next number, I must beg you to 
excuse me. I am exceedingly desirous to get on with my 
" History," which is really ia a fair train. I must go down into 
Somersetshire and Devonshire to see the scene of Monmouth's 
campaign, and to foUow the line of William's march from 
Torquay. I hare also another plan of no great importance, 
but one which will occupy me during some days. Tou are 
acquatated, no doubt, with Perizonius's theory about the early 
Koman history — a theory which Mebuhr revived, and which 
Arnold has adopted as fully established. I have myself not 
the smallest doubt of its truth. It is, that the stories of the 
birth of Komulus and Eemus, the fight of the Horatii and 
Curatii, and all the other romantic tales which fill the first 
three or four books of Livy, came from the lost ballads of the 
early Eomans. I amused myself iu India with trying to re- 
store some of these long-perished poems. Arnold saw two of 
them,* and wrote to me in such terms of eulogy that I have 
been induced to correct and complete them. There are four 
of them, and I think that, though they are but trifles, they 
may pass for scholar -like and not inelegant trifles. I must 
prefix short prefaces to them, and I think of publishing them 
next November in a smaU volume. I fear, therefore, that just 
at present I can be of no use to you. Nor, indeed, should I 
find it easy to select a subject. " EomiUy's Life " is a little 
stale. Lord Cornwallis is not an attractive subject. Clive 
and Hastings were great men, and their history is full of great 
events. Cornwallis was a respectable specimen of mediocri- 
ty. His wars were not brilliantly successful; fiscal reforms 
were his principal measures ; and to interest English readers 
in questions of Indian finance is quite impossible. 

* Dr. Arnold never saw tlie " Lays " in print. Just a month previous 
to the date of this letter Macaulay wrote to his sister Fanny: "But poor 
Arnold ! I am deeply grieved for him and for the public. It is really a 
great calamity, and will be felt as such by hundreds of families. There 
was no such school : and from the character of the trustees, who almost 
aU are strong, and even bitter, Tories, I fear that the place is likely to be 
filled by somebody of very different spirit." 



104 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. ix. 

I am a little startled by the very careless way in which the 
review on duelling has been executed. In the historical part 
there are really as many errors as assertions. Look at page 
439. Ossory never called out Clarendon. The peer whom 
he called out, on the Irish Cattle Bill, was Buckingham. The 
provocation was Buckingham's remark that whoever opposed 
the bUl had an Irish interest, or an Irish understanding. It is 
Clarendon who tells the whole story. Then, as to the scuffle 
between Buckingham aud a free-trading Lord Dorchester in 
the lobby, the scuffle was not in the lobby, but at a confer- 
ence in the Painted Chamber; nor had it any thing to do 
with free trade ; for at a conference all the Lords are on one 
side. It was the effect of an old quarrel, and of an accident- 
al jostling for seats. Then, a few lines lower, it is said that 
Lady Shrewsbury dissipated all her son's estate, which is cer- 
tainly not true ; for soon after he came of age he raised forty 
thousand pounds by mortgage, which at the then rate of in- 
terest he never could have done unless he had a good estate. 
Then, in the next page, it is said that Mohun murdered rather 
than killed the Duke of Hamilton — a gross blunder. Those 
who thought that the duke was murdered always attributed 
the murder not to Mohun, but to Mohun's second. Macartney. 
The fight between the two principals was universally allowed 
to be perfectly fair. Nor did Steele rebuke Thomhill for kill- 
ing Dering, but, on the contrary, did his best to put Thornhill's 
conduct in the most amiable light, and to throw the whole 
blame on the bad usages of society. I do not know that there 
ever was a greater number of mistakes as to matters of fact 
in so short a space. I have read only those two pages of the 
article. If it is aU of a piece, it is a prodigy indeed. 

Let me beg that you will not mention the little literary 
scheme which I have confided to you. I should be very sorry 
that it were known tiU the time of publication arrives. 

Ever yours truly, T. B. Macaulat. 

Albany, London, July SOth, 1842. 
Deak Napieb, — I do not like to disappoint you; and I 
really would try to send you something, if I could think of a 



1841-'44.] LORD MACAULAY. 105 

subject that would suit me. My objections to taking Eomil- 
ly's " Life " are numerous. One of them is that I was not 
acquainted with him, and never heard him speak, except for 
a few minutes when I was a child. A stranger who writes a 
description of a person whom hundreds stiU living knew in- 
timately, is almost certain to make mistakes ; and, even if he 
makes no absolute mistake, his portrait is not likely to be 
thought a striking resemblance by those who knew the origi- 
nal. It is like making a bust from a description. The best 
sculptor must disappoint those who knew the real face. I felt 
this even about Lord Holland ; and nothing but Lady Hol- 
land's request would have overcome my unwillingness to say 
any thing about his Parliamentary speaking, which I had nev- 
er heard. I had, however, known him familiarly in private ; 
but Eomilly I never saw except in the House of Commons. 

You do not quite apprehend the nature of my plan about 
the old Eoman ballads; but the explanation will come fast 
enough. I wish from my soul that I had written a volimie of 
my " History." I have not written half a volume ; nor do I 
consider what I have done as more than rough-hewn. 

I hear with some concern that Dickens is going to publish 
a most curious book against the Yankees. I am told that all 
the Fearons, Trollopes, Marryats, and Martineaus together 
have not given them half so much offense as he will give. 
This may be a more serious affair than the destruction of the 
Carolme, or the mutiny in the Creole.* 

Ever yours, T. B. Macaulat. 

In a subsequent letter Macaulay says: "I wish Dickens's 
book to be kept for me. I have never written a word on that 
subject, and I have a great deal in my head. Of course, I 
shall be courteous to Dickens, whom I know, and whom I 

* The Caroline was an American steamboat, wMch had been employed to 
convey arms and stores to the Canadian insurgents. A party of loyalists 
seized the vessel, and sent her down the Falls of Niagara. The Creole dif- 
ficulty arose from the mutiny of a ship-load of Virginian slaves, who, in an 
evil hour for their owner, bethought themselves that they were something 
better than a cargo of cattle. 



106 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. ix. 

think both a man of genius and a good-hearted man, in spite 
of some faults of taste." 

Mr. Napier was very anxious to turn the enforced leisure 
of the Whig leaders to some account by getting an article for 
his October number from the Foreign Secretary of the late 
Administration. In August, 1842, Macaulay writes : " I had a 
short talk about the Edmburgh Beview with Palmerston, just 
before he left London. I told him, what is quite true, that 
there were some public men of high distinction whom I would 
never counsel to write, both with a view to the interests of 
the Beview, and to their own ; but that he was in no danger 
of losing by his writings any part of the credit which he had 
acquired by speech and action. I was quite sincere in this, 
for he writes excellently." Lord Palmerston, after thinking 
the matter over, sent Macaulay a letter promising to think it 
over a little more; and stating, in his free, pleasant style, the 
difficulties which made him hesitate about acceding to the pro- 
posal. " If one has any good hits to make about the present 
state of foreign affairs, one feels disposed to reserve them for 
the House of Commons ; while, in order to do justice to the 
British Government, it might now and then be necessary to 
say things about some foreign governments which would not 
come altogether well from any body who had been, and might 
be thought likely again at some future time to be, concerned in 
the management of affairs. Perhaps you will say that the last 
consideration need not restrain the pen of any of us, according 
to present appearances." 

Albany, London, August 22(i, 1842. 

Deae Ellis, — For the ballads many thanks. Some of them 
are capital. 

I have been wishing for your advice. My little volume is 
nearly finished, and I must talk the prefaces over with you 
fully. I have made some alterations which I think improve- 
ments, and, in particular, have shortened the " Battle of EegU- 
lus " by near thirty lines without, I think, omitting any im- 
portant circumstance. 

It is odd that we never, in talking over this subject, remem- 
bered that in all probability the old Koman lays were in the 



1841-'44.] LOED MACAULAY. 107 

Saturnian metre; and it is still more odd that my ballads 

should, by mere accident, be very like the Saturnian metre ; 

quite as like, indeed, as suits the genius of our language. The 

Saturnian metre is acatalectic dimeter iambic, followed by 

three trochees. A pure Saturnian line is preserved by some 

grammarian : 

Dabunt malum Metelli Nsevio poetse. 

ISTow, oddly enough, every tetrastich, and almost every distich, 
of my ballads opens with an acatalectic dimeter iambic line. 

Lars Foisena of Clusium 

is precisely the same with 

Dabunt malum Metelli. 

I have not kept the trochees, which really would be very un- 
pleasiag to an English ear. Yet there are some verses which 
the omission of a single syllable would convert into pure Sa- 
turnian metre ; as. 

In Alba's lake no fisher 

(His) nets to-day is flinging. 

Is not this an odd coiacidence ? 

The only pure Saturnian line that I have been able to call 
to mind in all English poetry is in the nursery song — 

The queen was in her parlor 
Eating bread and honey. 

Let me know when you come to town. I shall be here. 
Fix a day for dining with me next week — the sooner after 
your arrival, the better. I must give you one good boring 
about these verses before I deliver them over to the printer's 
devils. 

Have you read Lord Londonderry's " Travels ?" I hear that 
they contain the following pious expressions of resignation to 
the divine will : " Here I learned that Almighty God, for rea- 
sons best known to himself, had been pleased to bum down my 
house in the county of Durham." Is not the mixture of vexa- 
tion with respect admirable ? Ever yours, T. B. M. 



108 LIFE AOT) LETTERS OF [chap.ix. 

In a later letter to Mr. Ellis, Macaulay says : " Tour objec- 
tion to the lines 

' By heaven,' he said, ' yon rebels 
Stand manfully at bay,' 

is quite sound. I also think the word 'rebels' objectionable, 
as raising certain modern notions about allegiance, divine 
right, Tower Hill, and the Irish Croppies, which are not at 
all to. the purpose. What do you say to this couplet ? 

Quoth he, ' The she-wolf's litter 
Stand savagely at bay.' 

'Litter' is used by our best writers as governing the plural 
niimber." 

Albany, September 29th, 1842. 

Deae Ellis, — ^Many thanks for the sheets. I am much 
obliged to Adolphus for the trouble which he has taken. 
Some of his criticisms are quite sound. I admit that the line 
about bringing Lucrece to shame is very bad, and the worse 
for coming over so often.* I will try to mend it. I admit, 
also, that the inventory of spoils in the last poem is, as he 
says, too long. I will see what can be done with it. He is 
not, I think, in the right about " the true client smile." " The 
true client smile " is not exactly in the style of our old ballads ; 
but it would be dangerous to make these old ballads models, 
in all points, for satirical poems which are supposed to have 
been produced in a great strife between two parties, crowded 
together within the walls of a republican city. And yet even 
in an old English ballad I should not be surprised to find a 
usurer described as having the " righte Jew grinne." 

I am more obliged to Adolphus than I can express for his 
interest in these trifles. As to you, I need say nothing. But 
pray be easy. I am so, and shall be so. Every book settles 

* It is evident from this letter that the line 

"That brought Lucrece to shame" 

originally stood wherever the line 

" That -wrought the deed of shame " 
stands now. 



1841-'44.] LORD MACAULAY. 109 

its own place. I never did, and never will, directly or indi- 
rectly, take any step for the purpose of obtaining praise or 
deprecating censure. Longman came to ask what I wished 
him to do before the volume appeared. I told him that I 
stipulated for nothing but that there should be no puffing of 
any sort. I have told Napier that I ask it, as a personal favor, 
that my name and writings may never be mentioned in the 
Edinburgh Review. I shall certainly leave this volume as the 
ostrich leaves her eggs in the sand. T. B. Macaulat. 

Albany, October 19th, 1843. 

Dear Napiee, — This morning I received Dickens's book. 
I have now read it. It is impossible for me to review it ; nor 
do I think that you would wish me to do so. I can not praise 
it, and I will not cut it up. I can not praise it, though it con- 
tains a few lively dialogues and descriptions ; for it seems to 
me to be, on the whole, a failure. It is written like the worst 
parts of "Humphrey's Clock." What is meant to be easy 
and sprightly is vulgar and ilippant, as in the first two pages. 
What is meant to be fine is a great deal too fine for me, as 
the description of the Fall of Niagara. A reader who wants 
an amusing account of the United States had better go to 
Mrs. TroUope, coarse and malignant as she is. A reader who 
wants information about American politics, manners, and lit- 
erature had better go even to so poor a creature as Bucking- 
ham. In short, I pronounce the book, in spite of some gleams 
of genius, at once frivolous and dull. 

Therefore I will not praise it. Neither will I attack it; 
first, because I have eaten salt with Dickens ; secondly, be- 
cause he is a good man, and a man of real talent ; thirdly, be- 
cause he hates slavery as heartily as I do ; and, fourthly, be- 
cause I wish to see him enrolled in our blue-and-yellow corps, 
where he may do excellent service as a skirmisher and sharp- 
shooter. Ever yours truly, T. B. Macaulat. 

My little volume will be out, I think, in the course of the 
week. But all that I leave to Longman, except that I have 
positively stipulated that there shaU be no puffing. 



110 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. ix. 

The sails of tlie little craft could dispense witli an artificial 
breeze. Launched without any noise of trumpets, it went 
bravely down the wind of popular favor. Among the first to 
discern its merits was Macaulay's ancient adversary, Professor 
Wilson, of Edinburgh, who greeted it in BlcKhwoocPs Magon 
zme with a paean of hearty, unqualified panegyric ; which was 
uttered with all the more zest because the veteran gladiator of 
the press recognized an opportunity for depreciating, by com- 
parison with Macaulay, the reigning verse- writers of the day. 

"What! poetry from Macanlay? Ay, and why not ? The HouBe hush- 
es itself to hear him, even though Stanley is the cry ! If he he not the first 
of critics (spare our hlushes), who is ? Name the Young Poet who could 
have written ' The Armada.' The Young Poets all want fire ; Macaulay is 
fuU of fire. The Young Poets are somewhat weakly ; he is strong. The 
Young Poets are rather ignorant ; his knowledge is great. The Young 
Poets mumble books ; he devours them. The Young Poets dally with 
their subject; he strikes its heart. The Young Poets are still their own 
heroes ; he sees but the chiefs he celebrates. The Young Poets weave 
dreams with shadows transitory as clouds without substance ; he builds 
realities lasting as rocks. The Young Poets steal from all and sundry, 
and deny their thefts ; he robs in the face of day. Whom ? Homer." 

Again and again, in the course of his article, Christopher 
North indulges himself in outbursts of joyous admiration, 
which he had doubtless repressed, more or less consciously, 
ever since the time when, " twenty years ago, like a burnish- 
ed fly in pride of May, Macaulay bounced through the open 
windows of KnigTiVs Quarterly Magazine^ He instructs his 
readers that a war -song is not to be skimmed through once, 
and then laid aside like a pamphlet on the Corn Laws. 

" Why, Sir Walter kept reciting his favorite ballads almost every day 
for forty years, and with the same fire about his eyes, till even they grew 
dim at last. Sir Walter would have rejoiced in Horatius as if he had been 
a doughty Douglas. 

Now, by our sire Quirinus, 

It was a goodly sight 
To see the thirty standards 
Swept down the tide of flight. 

That is the way of doing business ! A out-and-thrust style, without any 
flourish. Scott's style when his blood was up, and the first words came 
like a vanguard impatient for battle." 



1841-'44.] LORD MACAULAY. m 

The description of Yirginia's death is pronounced by the 
reviewer to be " the only passage in which Mr. Macanlay has 
sought to stir up pathetic emotion. Has he succeeded ? "We 
hesitate not to say that he has, to our heart's desire. This 
effect has been wrought simply by letting the course of the 
great natural affections flow on, obedient to the promptings 
of a sound, manly heart." Slight as it is, this bit of criticism 
shows genuine perspicacity. Frequent allusions in Macaulay's 
journals leave no doubt that in these lines he intended to em- 
body his feelings toward his little niece Margaret, now Lady 
HoUand, to whom then, as always, he was deeply and tender- 
ly attached. 

By making such cordial amends to an author whom in old 
days he had unjustly disparaged, Professor Wilson did credit 
to his own sincerity ; but the public approbation needed no 
prompter, either then or thereafter. Eighteen thousand of 
the " Lays of Ancient Eome " were sold in ten years ; forty 
thousand in twenty years ; and, by June, 1875, upward of a 
hundred thousand copies had passed into the hands of readers. 
But it is a work of superfluity to measure by statistics the suc- 
cess of poems every line of which is, and long has been, too 
hackneyed for quotation. 

Albany, London, November 16tli, 1842. 

Deak Napibe, — On my return from a short tour, I found 
your letter on my table. I am glad that you like my " Lays," 
and the more glad because I know that, from good-wiU to me, 
you must have been anxious about their fate. I do not won- 
der at your misgivings. I should have felt similar misgiv- 
ings if I had learned that any person, however distinguished 
by talents and knowledge, whom I knew as a writer only by 
prose works, was about to publish a volume of poetry. Had 
I seen advertised a poem by Mackintosh, by Dugald Stewart, 
or even by Burke, I should have augured nothing but failure ; 
and I am far from putting myself on a level even with the 
least of the three. So much the better for me. "Where peo- 
ple look for no merit, a little merit goes a long way ; and, 
without the smallest affectation of modesty, I confess that the 
success of my little book has far exceeded its just claims. I 



112 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. ix. 

Bhall be in no hurry to repeat the experiment ; for I am well 
aware that a second attempt would be made under much less 
favorable circumstances. A far more severe test would now 
be applied to my verses. I shall, therefore, like a wise game- 
ster, leave off while I am a winner, and not cry Double or 
Quits. 

As to poor Leigh Hunt, I wish that I could say, with you, 
that I heard nothing from him. I have a letter from him on 
my table asking me to lend him money, and lamenting that 
my verses want the true poetical aroma which breathes from 
Spenser's " Faery Queen." I am much pleased with him for 
having the spirit to tell me, in a begging letter, how little he 
likes my poetry. If he had praised me, knowing his poetical 
creed as I do, I should have felt certain that his praises were 
insincere. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulat. 

Albany, London, December 3d, 1843. 

Deab Napiee, — Longman has earnestly pressed me to con- 
sent to the republication of some of my reviews. The plan 
is one of which, as you know, I had thought ; and which, on 
full consideration, I had rejected. But there are new circum- 
stances in the case. The American edition is coming over by 
wholesale.* To keep out the American copies by legal meas- 
ures, and yet to refuse to publish an edition here, would be an 
odious course, and in the very spirit of the dog in the manger. 
I am, therefore, strongly inclined to accede to Longman's prop- 
osition. And if the thing is to be done, the sooner the better. 

I am about to put forth a second edition of my Eoman 
" Lays." They have had great success. By-the-bye, "Wilson, 
whom I never saw but at your table, has behaved very hand- 
somely about them. I am not in the habit of returning thanks 
for favorable criticism ; for, as Johnson says in his " Life of 
Lyttelton," such thanks must be paid either for flattery or for 

* In a subsequent letter Macaulay writes : " The question is now merely 
this — whether Longman and I, or Carey & Hart, of Philadelphia, shall have 
the supplying of the English market with these papers. The American 
copies are coming over by scores, and measures are being taken for bring- 
ing them over by hundreds.'' 



1841-'44.] LOED MACAULAY. II3 

justice. But when a strong political opponent bestows fervent 
praise on a work which he might easily depreciate by means 
of sly sneer and cold commendations, and which he might, if 
he chose, pass by in utter silence, he ought, I think, to be told 
that his courtesy and good feeling are justly appreciated. I 
should be really obliged to you if, when you have an oppor- 
tunity, you will let Professor Wilson know that his conduct 
has affected me as generous conduct affects men not ungener- 
ous. Ever yours, T. B. Maoaulat. 

Macaulay spent the first weeks of 1843 in preparing for the 
republication of his " Essays." " I find from many quarters," 
he writes to Mr. Longman on the 25th of January, " that it is 
thought that the article on Southey's edition of Bunyan ought 
to be in the collection. It is a favorite with the Dissenters." 
And again : " Pray omit all mention of my Prefatory ITotice. 
It will be very short and simple, and ought by no means to 
be announced beforehand as if it were any thing elaborate and 
important." The world was not slow to welcome, and, hav- 
ing welcomed, was not in a hurry to shelve, a book so unwill- 
ingly and unostentatiously presented to its notice. Upward 
of a hundred and twenty thousand copies have been sold in 
the United Kingdom alone by a single publisher. Consider- 
ably over a hundred and thirty thousand copies of separate 
essays have been printed in the series known by the name of 
The Traveler's Library. And it is no passing, or even wan- 
ing, popularity which these figures represent. Between the 
years 1843 and 1853 the yearly sales by Messrs. Longman of 
the collected editions averaged 1230 copies ; between 1853 and 
1864 they rose to an average of 4700 ; and since 1864 more 
than six thousand copies have, one year with another, been 
disposed of annually. The publishers of the United States 
are still pouring forth reprints by many thousands at a time ; 
and in British India, and on the Continent of Europe, these 
productions, which their author classed as ephemeral, are so 
greedily read and so constantly reproduced, that, taking the 
world as a whole, there is probably never a moment when 
they are out of the hands of the compositor. The market for 
Vol. II.— 8 



114 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. ix. 

them in their native country is so steady, and apparently so 
inexhaustible, that it perceptibly falls and rises with the gen- 
eral prosperity of the nation ; and it is hardly too miich to as- 
sert that the demand for Macaulay varies with the demand for 
coal. The astonishing success of this celebrated book must be 
regarded as something of far higher consequence than a mere 
literary or commercial triumph. It is no insignificant feat to 
have awakened in hundreds of thousands of minds the taste for 
letters and the yearning for knowledge ; and to have shown by 
example that, in the interests of its own fame, genius can never 
be so well employed as on the careful and earnest treatment of 
serious themes. 

Albany, Loudon, January IStli, 1843. 
Deab ISTapiee, — Another paper from me is at present out 
of the question. One in half a year is the very utmost of 
which I can hold out any hopes. I ought to give my whole 
leisure to my " History ;" and I fear that if I suffer myself 
to be diverted from that design as I have done, I shall, like 
poor Mackintosh, leave behind me the character of a man who 
would have done something, if he had concentrated his pow- 
ers, instead of frittering them away. I do assure you that if 
it were not on your account, I should have already given up 
writing for. the Review at all. There are people who can 
carry on twenty works at a time. Southey would write the 
"History of Brazil" before breakfast, an ode after break- 
fast, then the " History of the Peninsular War " till dinner, 
and an article for the Qua/rterly Review in the evening. But 
I am of a different temper. I never write to please myself 
iintil my subject has for the time driven every other out of 
my head. When I turn from one work to another, a great 
deal of time is lost in the mere transition. I must not so on 
dawdling and reproaching myself all my life. 

Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. 

Albany, London, April 19tli, 1843. 
Dear Napiee, — You may count on an article from me 
on Miss Aikin's " Life of Addison." Longman sent me the 
sheets as they were printed. I own that I am greatly disap- 



1841-'44.] LORD MACAULAY. 115 

pointed. There are, to be sure, some clianning letters by Ad; 
dison which have never yet been published ; but Miss Aikin's 
narrative is dull, shallow, and inaccurate. Either she has fall- 
en off greatly since she wrote her former works, or I have be- 
come much more acute since I read them. By-the-bye, I have 
an odd story to teU you. I was vexed at observing, in a very 
hasty perusal of the sheets, a great number of blunders, any 
of which singly was discreditable, and all of which united 
were certain to be fatal to the book. To give a few speci- 
mens, the lady called Evelyn " Sir John Evelyn ;" transferred 
Christ Church from Oxford to Cambridge ; confounded Rob- 
ert Earl of Sunderland, James the Second's minister, with his 
son, Charles Earl of Sunderland, George the First's minister ; 
confounded Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, with George 
Savile, Marquis of Halifax ; called the Marquis of Hertford 
"Earl of Hertford," and so forth. I pointed the grossest 
blunders out to Longman, and advised him to point them out 
to her without mentioning me. He did so. The poor wom- 
an could not deny that my remarks were just ; but she railed 
most bitterly both at the publishers, and at the Mr. Nobody, 
who had had the insolence to find any blemish in her writ- 
ings. At first she suspected Sedgwick. She now knows that 
she was wrong in that conjecture, but I do not think that she 
has detected me. This, you will say, is but a bad return to me 
for going out of my way to save her book from utter ruin. I 
am glad to learn that, with all her anger, she has had the sense 
to cancel some sheets in consequence of Mr. l^obody's criticisms. 
My collected reviews have succeeded well. Longman tells 
me that he nmst set about a second edition. In spite, how- 
ever, of the applause and of the profit, neither of which I de- 
spise, I am sorry that it had become necessary to republish 
these papers. There are few of them which I read with sat- 
isfaction. Those few, however, are generally the latest, and 
this is a consolatory circumstance. The most hostile critic 
must admit, I think, that I have improved greatly as a writer. 
The third volume seems to me worth two of the second, and 
the second worth ten of the first. 

Jeffrey is at work on his collection. It will be delightful, 



116 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. ix. 

no doubt; but to me it will not have the charm of novelty; 
for I have read and re-read his old articles till I know them 
by heart. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. 

Albany, June 15th, 1843. 

Dear Napiee, — I mistrust my own judgment of what I 
write so much, that I shall not be at all surprised if both you 
and the public think my paper on Addison a failure ; but I 
own that I am partial to it. It is now more than half fin- 
ished. I have some researches to make before I proceed ; but 
I have all the rest in my head, and shall write very rapidly. 
I fear that I can not contract my matter into less than seven- 
ty pages. You will not, I think, be inclined to stint me. 

I am truly vexed to find Miss Aikin's book so very bad that 
it is impossible for us, with due regard to our own character, 
to praise it. All that I can do is to speak civilly of her writ- 
ings generally, and to express regret that she should have been 
nodding. I have found, I will venture to say, not less than 
forty gross blunders as to matters of fact in the first volume. 
Of these I may, perhaps, point out eight or ten as courteously 
as the case will bear. Yet it goes much against my feelings 
to censure any woman, even with the greatest lenity. My 
taste and Croker's are by no means the same. I shall not 
again undertake to review any lady's book till I know how it 
is executed. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. 

Albany, London, July 22d, 1843. 

Dear Napiee, — I hear generally favorable opinions about 

my article. I am much pleased with one thing. You may 

remember how confidently I asserted that " little Dicky " in 

the "Old Whig" was the nickname of some comic actor.* 

* " One calumny, whicli has beau often repeated, and never yet contra- 
dicted, it is our duty to expose. It is asserted, in the ' Biographia Britan- 
nica,' that Addison designated Steele as 'little Dicky.' This assertion ^vas 
repeated by Johnson, who had never seen the ' Old Whig,' and was there- 
fore excusable. It has also been repeated by Miss Aikiu, 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 



1841-'44.] LOED MACAULAY. 117 

Several people thought that I risked too much in assuming this 
so strongly on mere internal evidence. I have now, by an 
odd accident, found out who the actor was. An old prompter 
of Drury Lane Theatre, named Chetwood, published in 1749 
a small volume, containing an account of all the famous per- 
formers whom he remembered, arranged in alphabetical order. 
This little volume I picked up yesterday, for sixpence, at a 
book-stall in Holborn ; and the first name on which I opened 
was that of Henry Norris, a favorite comedian, who was nick- 
named Dicky, because he first obtained celebrity by acting 
the part of Dicky in the " Trip to the Jubilee." It is added 
that his figure was very diminutive. He was, it seems, in 
the height of his popularity at the very time when the " Old 
Whig" was written. You will, I think, agree with me that 

■was Richard. It is equally true that the words 'little Isaac' occur in the 
' Duenna,' and that Newton's name was Isaac. But we confidently affirm 
that Addison's little Dicky had no more to do with Steele than Sheridan's 
Jittle Isaac with Newton. If we apply the words ' little Dicky ' to Steele, 
we deprive a very lively and ingenious passage not only of all its wit, 
hut of all its meaning. Little Dicky was evidently the nickname of some 
comic actor who played the usurer Gomez, then a most popular part, in 
Dryden's ' Spanish Friar.' " 

This passage occurs in Macaulay's article on Miss Aikin's "Life and 
Writings of Addison," as it originally appeared in July, 1843. There is a 
marked difference of form between this and all his previous contributions 
to the Edinburgh, Beview. The text of the article on Addison is, with few 
and slight variations, the text of the collected edition ; while all that re- 
lates to Miss Aikin is relegated to the foot-notes. Thus in the note on 
page 239 we read: "Miss Aikin says that the Guardian was launched in 
November, 1713. It was launched in March, 1713, and was given over in 
the following September." And in the note on page 247 : " Miss Aikin has 
been most unfortunate in her account of this Rebellion. We will notice 
only two errors, which occur in one page. She says that the Rebellion 
was undertaken in favor of James the Second, who had been fourteen 
years dead, and that it was headed by Charles Edward, who was not born." 

Macaulay was now no longer able to conceal from himself the fact that, 
whether he liked it or not, his "Essays" would live; and he accordingly 
took pains to separate the part of his work which was of permanent lit- 
erary value from those passing strictures upon his author which as a re- 
viewer he was bound to make, in order to save himself the trouble of sub- 
sequent revision and expurgation. 



118 LIFE AJ^D LETTERS OF [chap.ix. 

this is decisive. I am a little vain of my sagacity, which I 
really think would have dubbed me a " vir clarissimus " if it 
had been shown on a point of Gi'eek or Latin learning ; but I 
am still more pleased that the vindication of Addison from an 
unjust charge, which has been universally believed since the 
publication of the " Lives of the Poets," should thus be com- 
plete. Should you have any objection to inserting a short note 
at the end of the next number ? Ten lines would suffice ; and 
the matter is really interesting to all lovers of literary history. 
As to politics, the ministers are in a most unenviable situa- 
tion ; and, as far as I can see, all the chances are against them. 
The immense name of the duke, though now only a " magni 
nominis umbra," is of great service to them. His assertion, 
unsupported by reasons, saved Lord EUenborough. His dec- 
laration that sufficient precautions had been taken against an 
outbreak in Ireland has done wonders to calm the public 
mind. Nobody can safely venture to speak in Parliament 
with bitterness or contempt of any measure which he chooses 
to cover with his authority. But he is seventy-four, and, in 
constitution, more than seventy -four. His death will be a 
terrible blow to these people. I see no reason to believe that 
the Irish agitation will subside of itself, or that the death of 
O'Connell would quiet it. On the contrary, I much fear that 
his death would be the signal for an explosion. The aspect 
of foreign polities is gloomy. The finances are in disorder. 
Trade is in distress. Legislation stands still. The Tories are 
broken up into three or more factions, which hate each other 
more than they hate the "Whigs — the faction which stands by 
Peel, the faction which is represented by Vivian and the 
Morning Post, and the faction of Smythe and Cochrane. I 
should not be surprised if, before the end of the next session, 
the ministry were to fall from mere rottenness. 

Ever yours, T. B. Macatoay. 

Maeaulay was right in thinking that the Goverimient was 
rotten, and Lord Palmerston* in believing that it was safe. 

* See page 106. 



1841-'44.] LOKD MACAULAY. 119 

Sir Robert Peel was not the first minister, and perhaps he is 
not destined to be the last, who has been chained down to 
office by the passive weight of an immense but discontent- 
ed majority. Unable to retire in favor of his opponents, and 
compelled to disgust his supporters at every turn, he had still 
before him three more years of public usefulness and personal 
mortification. One, at any rate, among his former antagonists 
did much to further his measures, and little or nothing to ag- 
gravate his difficulties. The course which Macaulay pursued 
between the years 1841 and 1846 deserves to be studied as a 
model of the conduct which becomes a statesman iu opposition. 
In following that course he had a rare advantage. The con- 
tinuous and absorbing labors of his " History " filled his mind 
and occupied his leisure, and relieved him from the craving 
for occupation and excitement that lies at the root of half 
the errors to which politicians out of office are prone — errors 
which the popular judgment most unfairly attributes to lack 
of patriotism, or excess of gall. In the set party fights that 
from time to time took place, he spoke seldom, and did not 
speak his best ; but when subjects came to the front on which 
his knowledge was great, and his opinion strongly marked, he 
interfered with decisive and notable effect. 

It has been said of Macaulay, with reference to this period 
of his political career, that no member ever produced so much 
effect upon the proceedings of Parliament who spent so many 
hours in the Library and so few in the House. Never has 
any public man, unendowed with the authority of a minister, 
so easily molded so important a piece of legislation into a 
shape which so accurately accorded with his own views, as did 
Macaulay the Copyright Act of 1842. In 1814, the term dur- 
ing which the right of printing a book was to continue private 
property had been fixed at twenty-eight years from the date 
of publication. The shortness of this term had always been 
regarded as a grievance by authors and by publishers, and was 
beginning to be so regarded by the world at large. " The 
family of Sir Walter Scott," says Miss Martineau in her " His- 
tory of England," " stripped by his great losses, might be sup- 
posed to have an honorable provision in his splendid array of 



120 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [cHAP.rx. 

works, wliidi the world was still buying as eagerly as ever : 
but the copyright of "Waverley" was about to expire; and 
there was no one who could not see the injustice of trans- 
ferring to the public a property so evidently sacred as 
theirs." 

An arrangement which bore hardly upon the children of 
the great Scotchman, whose writings had been popular and 
profitable from the first, was nothing less than cruel in the 
case of authors who, after fighting a life-long battle against 
the insensibility of their countrymen, had ended by creating 
a taste for their own works. Wordsworth's poetry was at 
length being freely bought by a generation which he himself 
had educated to enjoy it ; but, as things then stood, his death 
would at once rob his heirs of all share in the produce of the 
"Sonnets" and the "Ode to Immortality," and would leave 
them to console themselves as they best might with the copy- 
right of the "Prelude." Southey (firmly possessed, as he 
was, with the notion that posterity would set the highest value 
upon those among his productions which living men were 
the least disposed to purchase) had given it to be understood 
that, in the existing state of the law, he should undertake no 
more works of research like the " History of Brazil," and no 
more epic poems on the scale of " Madoc " and " Eoderick." 
But there was nothing which so effectually stirred the sympa- 
thies of men in power, and persuaded their reason, as a peti- 
tion presented to the House of Commons by " Thomas Car- 
lyle, a writer of books ;" which began by humbly showing 
" That your petitioner has written certain books, being incited 
thereto by certain innocent and laudable considerations;" which 
proceeded to urge " that this his labor has found hitherto, in 
money or money's worth, small recompense or none : that he 
is by no means sure of its ever finding recompense : but thinks 
that, if so, it will be at a distant time, when he, the laborer, will 
probably no longer be in need of money, and those dear to 
him will still be in need of it ;" and which ended by a prayer 
to the House to forbid "extraneous persons, entirely uncon- 
cerned in this adventure of his, to steal from him his small 
winnings, for a space of sixty years at the shortest. After 



1841-'44.] LOED MACAULAY. 121 

sixty years, unless yoiir honorable House provide otherwise, 
they may begin to steal." 

In the session of 1841 Sergeant Talfourd brought in a meas- 
ure, devised with the object of extending the term of copy- 
right in a book to sixty years, reckoned from the death of the 
author. Macaulay, speaking with wonderful force of argu-- 
ment and brilliancy of illustration, induced a thin House to 
reject the bill by a few votes. Talfourd, in the bitterness of 
his soul, exclaimed that Literature's own familiar friend, in 
whom she trusted, and who had eaten of her bread, had lift- 
ed up his heel against her. A writer of eminence has since 
echoed the complaint ; but none can refuse a tribute of re- 
spect to a man who, on high grounds of public expediency, 
thought himself bound to employ all that he possessed of en- 
ergy and ability on the task of preventing himself from being 
placed in a position to found a fortune, which, by the year 
1919, might well have ranked among the largest funded es- 
tates in the country. 

Admonished, but not deterred, by Sergeant Talfourd's re- 
verse, Lord Mahon next year took up the cause of his brother 
authors, and introduced a bill in which he proposed to carry 
out the objectionable principle, but to carry it less far than 
his predecessor. Lord Mahon was for giving protection for 
five-and-twenty years, reckoned from the date of death; and 
his scheme was regarded with favor, until Macaulay came for- 
ward with a counter-scheme, giving protection for forty-two 
years, reckoned from the date of publication. He unfolded 
his plan in a speech, terse, elegant, and vigorous ; as amusing 
as an essay of Elia, and as convincing as a proof of Euclid.* 

* "But this is not all. My noble friend's plan is not merely to insti- 
tute a lottery in which some writers Will draw prizes aud some will draw 
blanks. His lottery is so contrived that, in the vast majority of cases, the 
blanks will fall to the best books, and the prizes to books of inferior merit. 

" Take Shakspeare. My noble friend gives a longer protection than I 
should give to ' Love's Labor's Lost,' and ' Pericles, Prince of Tyre ;' but he 
gives a shorter protection than I shonld give to 'Othello' and 'Macbeth.' 

" Take Milton. Milton died in 1674. The copyrights of Milton's great 
works would, according to my noble friend's plan, expire in 1699. ' Comus' 



122 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. li. 

When he resumed his seat, Sir Kobert Peel walked across the 
floor, and assured him that the last twenty minutes had rad- 

appeared iu 1634, tho ' Paradise Lost ' in 1668. To ' Comus,' then, my no- 
ble friend would give sixty-five years of copyright, and to 'Paradise Lost' 
only thirty-one years. Is that reasonable? 'Comus' is a noble poem; 
but who would rank it with the 'Paradise Lost?' My plan would give 
forty-two years both to the 'Paradise Lost' and to 'Comus.' 

"Let us pass on from Milton to Dryden. My noble friend would give 
more than sixty years of copyright to Dryden's worst works ; to the en- 
comiastic verses on Oliver Cromwell, to the 'Wild Gallant,' to the 'Rival 
Ladies,' to other wretched pieces as bad as any thing written by Fleck- 
noe or Settle : but for ' Theodore and Houoria,' for ' Tancred and Sigis- 
Tnuuda,' for 'Cimon and Iphigenia,' for 'Palamon and Arcite,'for 'Alexan- 
der's Feast,' my noble frieud thinks a copyright of twenty-eight years suf- 
ficient. Of all Pope's works, that to which my noble friend would give 
the largest measure of protection is the volume of ' Pastorals,' remarkable 
only as the production of a boy. Johnson's first work was a translation 
of a book of travels in Abyssinia, published iu 1735. It was so poorly exe- 
cuted that in his later years he did not like to hear it mentioned. Bos- 
well once picked up a copy of it, and told his friend that he had done so. 
' Do not talk about it,' said Johnsou : ' it is a thing to be forgotten.' To 
this performance my noble friend would give protection, during the enor- 
mous term of seventy-five years. To the ' Lives of the Poets ' he would 
give protection during about thirty years 

" I have, I think, shown from literary history that the effect of my noble 
friend's plan would be to give crude and imperfect works a great advan- 
tage over the highest productions of genius. What I recommend is that 
the certain term, reckoned from the date of publication, shall be forty-two 
years instead of twenty-eight years. In this arrangement there is no un- 
certainty, no inequality. The advantage which I propose to give will be 
the same to every book. No work will have so long a copyright as my 
noble friend gives to some books, or so short a copyright as he gives to 
others. No copyright will last ninety years. No copyright will end in 
twenty-eight years. To every book published in the last seventeen years 
of a writer's life I give a longer term of. copyright than my noble friend 
gives ; and I am confident that no- person versed in literary history will 
deny this : that in general the most valuable works of an author are pub- 
lished iu the last seventeen years of his life. To ' Lear,' to ' Macbeth,' to 
' Othello,' to the ' Faery Queen,' to the ' Paradise Lost,' to Bacon's ' Novum 
Organum' and 'De Augmentis,' to Locke's 'Essay on the Human Under- 
standing,' to Clarendon's 'History,' to Hume's 'History,' to Gibbon's 'His- 
tory,' to Smith's 'Wealth of Nations,' to Addison's Spectators, to almost all 
the great works of Burke, to ' Clarissa ' and ' Sir Charles Grandison,' to ' Jo- 



1841-'44.] LORD MACAULAY. 123 

ically altered his own views on the law of copyright. One 
member after another confessed to an entire change of mind ; 
and, on a question which had nothing to do with party, each 
change of mind brought a vote with it. The bill was remod- 
eled on the principle of calculating the duration of copyright 
from the date of publication, and the term of forty-two years 
was adopted by a large majority. Some slight modifications 
were made in Macaulay's proposal ; but he enjoyed the satis- 
faction of having framed according to his mind a statute which 
may fairly be described as the charter of his craft, and of hav- 
ing added to Hansard what are by common consent allowed to 
be among its most readable pages. 

There was another matter, of more striking dimensions in 
the eyes of his contemporaries, on which, by taking an in- 
dependent course and persevering in it manfully, Macaulay 
brought round to his own opinion first his party, and ulti- 
mately the country. The Afghan war had come to a close 
in the autumn of 1842. The Tories claimed for Lord Ellen- 
borough the glory of having saved India ; while the Opposi- 
tion held that he had with difficulty been induced to refrain 
from throwing obstacles in the way of its being saved by oth- 
ers. Most Whigs believed, and one "Whig was ready on all 
fit occasions to maintain that his lordship had done nothing 
to deserve national admiration in the past, and a great deal 
to arouse the gravest apprehensions for the future. Macaulay 
had persuaded himself, and was now bent on persuading oth- 
ers, that, as long as Lord Ellenborough continued governor- 
general, the peace of our Eastern empire was not worth six 
months' purchase. 

Albany, February, 1843. 

Dear Ellis, — I never thought that I should live to sympa- 

seph Andrews,' ' Tom Jones,' and 'Amelia,' and, with the single exception 
of ' Waverley,' to all the novels of Sir Walter Scott, I give a longer term 
of copyright than my noble friend gives. Can he match that list ? Does 
not that list contain what England has produced greatest in many various 
ways — poetry, philosophy, history, eloquence, wit, skillful portraiture of 
life and manners ? I confidently, therefore, call on the committee to take 
my plan in preference to the plan of my uoble friend," 



124: LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. ix. 

thize with Brougham's abuse of the Whigs ; but I must own 
that we deserve it all. I suppose that you have heard of the 
stupid and disgraceful course which our leaders have resolved 
to take. I really can not speak or write of it with patience. 
They are going to vote thanks to Ellenborough, in direct oppo- 
sition to their opinion, and with an unanswerable case against 
him in their hands, only that they may save Auckland from 
recrimination. They will not save him, however. Coward- 
ice is a mighty poor defense against malice. And to sacrifice 
the whole weight and respectability of our party to the feel- 
ings of one man is — but the thing is too bad to talk about. I 
can not avert the disgrace of our party, but I do not choose 
to share it. I shall therefore go to Clapham quietly, and leave 
those who have cooked this dirt-pie for us to eat it. I did 
not think that any political matter would have excited me so 
much as this has done. I fought a very hard battle, but had 
nobody except Lord Minto and Lord Clanricarde to stand by 
me. I could easily get up a mutiny among our rank and file, 
if I chose; but an internal dissension is the single calamity 
from which the Whigs are at present exempt. I will not add 
it to all their other plagues. Ever yours, 

T. B. Macaulat. 

On the 20th of February the House of Commons was call- 
ed upon to express its gratitude to the governor-general ; and 
a debate ensued, in which the speeches from the front Oppo- 
sition bench were as good as could be made by statesmen who 
had assumed an attitude such that they could not very well 
avoid being either insincere or ungracious. The vote of 
thanks was unanimously passed; and, within three weeks' 
time, the Whigs were, almost to a man, engaged in hot sup- 
port of a motion of Mr. Yernon Smith involving a direct and 
crushing censure on Lord Ellenborough. Lord Stanley (mak- 
ing, as he was well able, the most of the opportunity) took 
very good care that there should be no mistake about the con- 
sistency of men who, between the opening of the session and 
the Easter holidays, had thanked a public officer for his " abil- 
ity and judgment," and had done their best to stigmatize him 



1841-'44.] LORD MACAULAY. 125 

as guilty of conduct " unwise, indecorous, and reprehensible." 
Happily, Macaulay's conscience was clear; and his speech, in 
so far as the reader's pleasure is a test of excellence, will bear 
comparison with any thing that still remains of those orations 
against Warren Hastings, in which the great men of a former 
generation contested with each other the crown of eloquence. 

The division went as divisions go, in the most good-nat- 
ured of all national assemblies, when the whole strength of a 
powerful government is exerted to protect a reputation. On • 
the 14th of March the Duke of Wellington wrote to Lord 
EUenborough : "Nothing could have been more satisfactory 
than the debate in the House of Lords, and I am told it 
was equally so in the Commons." The duke's informant 
could not have seen far below the surface. Macaulay's meas- 
ured and sustained denunciation of Lord EUenborough's peril- 
ous levity had not fallen on inattentive ears. He had made, 
or at any rate had implied, a prophecy. " Who can say what 
new freak we may hear of by the next mail ? I am quite con- 
fident that neither the Court of Directors nor her majesty's 
ministers can look forwai'd to the arrival of that mail with- 
out uneasiness." He had given a piece of advice. " I can not 
sit down without addressing myself to those Directors of the 
East India Company who are present. I exhort them to 
consider the heavy responsibility which rests on them. They 
have the power to recall Lord EUenborough ; and I trust that 
they will not hesitate to exercise that power." The prophecy 
came time, and the advice was adopted to the letter. Before 
another twelvemonth had elapsed. Lord EUenborough was in 
a worse scrape than ever. This time Macaulay resolved to 
take the matter in hand himself. He had a notice of motion 
on the books of the House, and his speech was already in his 
head, when, on the 26th of April, 1844, Sir Eobert Peel an- 
nounced that her majesty's government had received a com- 
munication from the Court of Directors " stating that they 
had exercised the power which the law gives them to recall at 
their will and pleasure the Governor-general of India." 

Macaulay's reputation and authority in Parliament owed 
nothing to the outward graces of the orator. On this head 



126 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. ix. 

the recollections of the reporters' gallery (which have been 
as gratefully accepted as they were kindly offered) are unani- 
mous and precise. Mr. Clifford, of The Times, says : " His ac- 
tion — the little that he used — was rather ungainly. His voice 
was full and loud ; but it had not the light and shade, or the 
modulation, found in practiced speakers. His speeches were 
most carefully prepared, and were repeated without the loss 
or omission of a single word." 

This last observation deserves a few sentences of comment. 
Macaulay spoke frequently enough on the spur of the mo- 
ment, and some excellent judges were of opinion that on 
these occasions his style gained more in animation than it lost 
in ornament. Even when he rose in his place to take part in 
a discussion which had been long foreseen, he had no notes in 
his hand and no manuscript in his pocket. If a debate was 
in prospect, he would turn the subject over while he paced 
his chamber or tramped along the streets. Each thought, as 
it rose in his mind, embodied itself in phrases, and clothed it- 
self in an appropriate drapery of images, instances, and quota- 
tions ; and when, in the course of his speech, the thought re- 
curred, all the words which gave it point and beauty sponta- 
neously recurred with it. 

"He used scarcely any action," says a gentleman on the 
staff of The Standard. " He would turn round on his heel, 
and lean slightly on the table; but there was nothing like 
demonstrative or dramatic action. He spoke with great ra- 
pidity; and there was very little inflection in the voice, 
which, however, in itself was not unmusical. It was some- 
what monotonous, and seldom rose or fell. The cadences 
were of small range. He spoke with very great fluency, and 
very little emphasis. It was the matter and the language, 
rather than the manner, that took the audience captive." 

Mr. Downing, of The Daily News, writes : " It was quite 
evident that Macaulay had not learned the art of speaking 
from the platform, the pulpit, the forum, or any of the usual 
modes of obtaining a fluent diction. He was at once too ro- 
bust and too recondite for these methods of introduction to 
the oratorical art. In all probability it was that fullness of 



1841-'44.] LORD MACAULAY. 127 

mind, which broke out in many departments, that constituted 
him a born orator. Vehemence of thought, vehemence of 
language, vehemence of manner, were his chief characteristics. 
The listener might almost fancy he heard ideas and words 
gurgling in the speaker's throat for priority of utterance. 
There was nothing graduated or undulating about him. He 
plunged at once into the heart of the matter, and continued 
his loud resounding pace from beginning to end, without halt 
or pause. This vehemence and volume made Macaulay the 
terror of the reporters; and when he engaged in a subject 
outside their ordinary experience, they were fairly nonplused 
by the display of names, and dates, and titles. He was not 
a long-winded speaker. In fact, his earnestness was so great 
that it would have failed under a very long effort. He had 
the faculty, possessed by every great orator, of compressing a 
great deal in a short space." 

A fourth witness, after confirming the testimony of his col- 
leagues, concludes with the remark : " Macaulay was wonder- 
fully telling in the Plouse of Commons. Every sentence was 
perfectly devoured by the listeners." 

As soon as the session of 1843 ended, Macaulay started for 
a trip up and down the Loire. Steaming from Orleans to 
Nantes, and back again from ISTantes to Angers, he indulged 
to the full his liking for river travel and river scenery, and 
his passion for old cities which had been the theatre of memo- 
rable events. His letters to his sister abundantly prove that 
he could have spoken off a very passable historical hand-book 
for Central France, without having trained himself for the 
feat by a course of special reading. His catalogue of the suc- 
cessive occupants of Chambord is marvelously accurate and 
complete, from Francis the First and his Italian architects, to 
the time when " the royalists got up a subscription to purchase 
it for the Duke of Bern's posthumous son, whom they still 
call Henry the Fifth. The project was not popular, but, by 
dint of bullying, and telling all who objected that they would 
be marked men as long as they lived, a sufficient sum was ex- 
torted." There are touches that mark the historian in his de- 
scription of the Castle of Blois, when he speaks of " the chim- 



128 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. ix. 

ney at wMch Henry, Duke of Guise, sat down for the last 
time to warm himself," and " the observatory of Catherine 
de' Medici, designed rather for astrological than for astronom- 
ical observations ;" but, taken as a whole, the letters have too 
much of the tourist's journal about them to bear printing in 
their integrity. 

" Paris, August 31st, 1843. 

"Dearest Hannah, — What people travel for is a mystery. I Lave 
never during the last forty-eight hours had any ^vish so strong as to he at 
home again. To be sure, those forty-eight hours have hardly been a fair 
specimen of a traveler's life. They have heeu filled with little miseries, 
such as made Mr. Testy roar, and Mr. Sensitive sigh. I could very well 
add a chapter to the ' Miseries of Human Life.' For example : 

"Groan 1. The Brighton railway; in a slow train; a carriage crowded 
as fuU as it would hold ; a sick lady smelling of ether ; a healthy gentle- 
man smelling of brandy ; the thermometer at 102° in the shade, and I not 
in the shade, but exposed to the full glare of the sun from noon tiU half 
after two, the effect of which is that my white trousers have been scorched 
into a pair of very serviceable nankeens. 

" Groan 2 — and for this Fanny is answerable, who made me believe 
that the New Steyne Hotel at Brighton was a good one. A coffee-room 
Ingeniously contrived on the principle of an oven, the windows not made 
to open ; a diuner on yesterday's pease-soup and the day before yesterday's 
cutlets ; not an ounce of ice ; and all beverages — wine, water, and beer — 
in exactly the state of the Church of Laodicea. 

" Groan 3. My passage to Dieppe. We had not got out of sight of the 
Beachy Head lights when it began to rain hard. I was therefore driven 
into the cabin, and compelled to endure the spectacle, and to hear the un- 
utterable groans and gasps, of fifty sea-sick people. I went out when the 
rain ceased ; but every thing on deck was soaked. It was impossible to 
sit, so that I walked up and down the vessel all night. The wind was in 
our faces, and the clear gray dawn was visible before we entered the har- 
bor of Dieppe. Our baggage was to be examined at seven ; so that it was 
too late to go to bed, and yet too early to find any shop open, or any thing 
stirring. All our bags and boxes were in the custody of the authorities, 
and I had to pace sulkily about the pier for a long time, without even the 
solace of a book. 

" Groan 4. The custom-house. I never had a dispute with custom-house 
officers before, having found that honesty answered in England, France, 
and Belgium, and corruption in Italy. But the officer at Dieppe, finding 
among my baggage some cotton stockings which had not been yet worn, 
threatened to confiscate them, and exacted more than they were worth — 
between thirteen and fourteen francs — by way of duty. I had just bought 



1841-'44.] LORD MACAULAY. 129 

these unlucky stockings to do honor to our country in the eyes of foreign- 
ers; heing unwilling that the -washer- women of Paris and Orleans should 
see an English member of Parliament's stockings either in lioles or darned. 
See what the fruits of patriotism are ! 

" Groan 5. Mine inn at Dieppe. I need not describe it, for it was the 
very same at which we stopped for a night in 1840, and at which you eat 
of a gigot as memorable as Sam Johnson's shoulder of mutton.* I did not 
discover where I was till too late. I had a cup of coffee worse than I 
thought any French cook could make for a wager. In the bedroom, 
where I dressed, there was a sort of soap which I had half a mind to bring 
away, that men of science might analyze it. It would be, I should think, 
an excellent substitute for Spanish flies in a blister. I shaved with it, and 
the consequence is that I look as if I had that complaint which our moth- 
er held in such horror. If I used such cosmetics often, I should be forced 
to beg Queen Victoria to touch me. 

" The cathedral, which was my chief object at Chartres, rather disap- 
pointed me ; not that it is not a fine church ; but I had heard it described 
as one of the most magnificent in Europe. Now, I have seen finer Gothic 
churches in England, France, and Belgium. It wants vastness ; and its 
admirers make the matter worse by proving to you that it is a great deal 
larger than it looks, and by assuring you that the proportions are so ex- 
quisite as to produce the effect of littleness. I have heard the same cant 
canted about a much finer buUding — St. Peter's. But, surely, it is im- 
possible to say a more severe thing of an architect than that he has a 
knack of building edifices five hundred feet long, which look as if they 
were only three hundred feet long. If size be an element of the sublime 
in architecture — and this, I imagine, every body's feelings will prove — 
then a great architect ought to aim, not at making buildings look smaller 
than they are, but at making them look larger than they are. If there 
be any proportions which have the effect of making St. Paul's look larger 
than St. Peter's, those are good proportions. To say that an artist is so 
skillful that he makes buildings which are really large look small, is as 
absurd as it would be to say that a novelist has such skill in narration as 
to make amusing stories dull, or to say that a controversialist has such 
skill in argument, that strong reasons, when he states them, seem to be 
weak ones." 

"September Ist, 1843. — I performed my journey to Bourges comfortably 
enough, in the coup6 of the diligence. There was a prodigious noise all 

* In the review on Croker, Macaulay calls it a leg of mutton. As a mat- 
ter of fact, Boswell does not specify whether it was a leg or a shoulder. 
Whatever the joint may have been. Dr. Johnson immortalized it in these 
words, " It is as bad as bad can be — it is ill-fed, ill-killed, iU-kept, and iU- 
dressed." 

Vol. II.— 9 



130 LIFE AND LETTEES OP [chap. rs. 

night of people talking in English on the roof. At Vierzon, I found that 
this noise proceeded from seven English laborers, good-looking fellows 
enough, who were engaged to work on a line of railroad, and were just go- 
ing to quit the coach. I asked them about their state and prospects, told 
them that I hoped they would let a countryman treat them to breakfast, 
and gave them a napoleon for that purpose. They were really so pleased 
and grateful for being noticed in that way that I was almost too strongly 
moved by their thanks. Just before we started, one of them, a very intel- 
ligent man and a sort of spokesman, came to the window, and asked me 
with great earnestness to tell them my name, which I did. 'Ah, sir, we 
have all heard of you. Yon have always been a good friend to the country 
at home ; and it will be a great satisfaction to us all to know this.' He 
told me, to my comfort, that they did very well — being, as he said, sober 
men ; that the wages were good ; and that they were well treated, and had 
no quarrels with their French fellow-laborers. 

" I could not, after this, conceal my name from a very civil, good-nat- 
ured Frenchman who traveled in the coup6 with me, and with whom I 
had already had some conversation. He insisted on doing the honors of 
Bourges to me, and has really been officiously kind and obliging. Indeed, 
in this city I have found nothing but courtesy worthy of Louis the Four- 
teenth's time. Queer old-fashioned country gentlemen of long descent, 
who recovered part of their estates on their return from emigration, abound 
in the neighborhood. They have hotels in Bourges, where they often pass 
the winter, instead of going up to Paris. The manners of the place are 
most ceremonious. Hats come off at every word. If you ask your way, a 
gentleman insists on escorting you. Did you ever read ' Georges Dandin ?' 
If not, read it before you sleep. There you will see how Molifere has por- 
trayed the old-fashioned provincial gentry. I could fancy that many 
Messieurs and Mesdames de Sotenville were to be found at Bourges." 

"Septeniber 6tk. — I know nothing about politics except what I glean from 
French newspapers in the coffee-houses. The people here seem to be in 
very ill-humor about the queen's visit ; and I think it, I must own, an ill- 
judged step. Propriety requires that a gnest, a sovereign, and a woman 
should be received by Louis Philippe with something of chivalrous hom- 
age, and with an air of deference. To stand punctiliously on his quality 
in intercourse with a young lady wonld be uncourteous, and almost insult- 
ing. But the French have taken it strongly into their heads that th^ir 
Government is acting a servile part toward England, and they are there- 
fore disposed to consider every act of hospitality and gallantry on the part 
of the king as a national humiliation. I see that the journals are crying 
out that France is forever degraded because the band of a French regiment 
played ' God Save the Queen' when her majesty landed. I fear that Louis 
PhUippe can not possibly behave on this occasion so as at once to gratify 
his guest and his subjects. They are the most unreasonable people which 



341-'44.] LOED MACAULAY. 131 

sists; that is the truth; and they will never he wiser until they have 
ad another lesson like that of 1815." 

"September 9th, 1843. — It was just four in the morning when I reached 
ngers ; hut I found a caf6 open, made a tolerahle breakfast, and before 
ve was on board a steamer for Tours. It was a lovely day. The banks 
'ere seen to every advantage, and, without possessing beauty of the high- 
3t class, presented an endless succession of pretty and cheerful landscapes. 
?'ith the scenery, and a book, I was in no want of company. A French- 
lan, however, began to talk to me, and proved a sensible and well-bred 
lan. He had been in England, and, when ill, had been kindly treated by 
lie people among whom he found himself. He always, therefore, he said, 
lade a point of paying attention to Englishmen. I could not help telling 
im that he might easily get himself into a scrape with some swindler, or- 
rorse, if he carried his kindness to our nation too far. ' Sans doute,' said 
e, ' il faut distinguer ;' and then he paid me the highest compliment that 
ver was paid me in my life ; for he said that nobody who knew the world 
ould fail to perceive that I was what the English call a gentleman, ' homme 
omme il faut.' That yon may fully appreciate the value of this compli- 
lent, I must tell you that, having traveled all the preceding night, I had 
beard of two days' growth, that my hair was unbrushed, my linen of yes- 
srday, my coat like a miller's, and my waistcoat, which had been white 
rhen I left Nantes, in a state which filled me with self-abhorrence. Nor 
ad he the least notion who I was ; for I gave no hint, and my name was 
ot on my baggage. I shall therefore henceforward consider myself as a 
erson of singularly noble look and demeanor. 

" Win you let me recommend yon a novel ? Try ' Soeur Anne,' by Paul 
e Kock. It is not improper, and the comic parts are really delightful. I 
lave laughed over them till I cried. There are tragic parts which I skip- 
led for fear of crying in another sense." 

Albany, London, November 25th, 1843. 

Deae Napiee, — Many thanks for your excellent letter. I 
lave considered it fully, and I am convinced that by visiting 
Edinburgh at present I should do unmixed harm. 

The question respecting the Catholic clergy is precisely in 
hat state in which a discussion at a public meeting can do no 
;ood, and may do great mischief. It is in a state requiring 
he most painful attention of the ablest heads; nor is it by 
,ny means certain that any attention, or any ability, will pro- 
iuce a satisfactory solution of the problem. 

My own view is this : , I do not on principle object to the 
)aying of the Irish Catholic priests. I regret that such a step 



132 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. ix. 

was not taken in 1829. I would, even now, gladly support 
any well-digested plan which might be likely to succeed. But 
I fear that the difficulties are insurmountable. Against such 
a measure there are all the zealots of the High Church, and 
all the zealots of the Low Church ; the Bishop of Exeter, and 
Hugh Macneile ; Oxford, and Exeter Hall ; all the champions 
of the voluntary system ; all the English Dissenters ; all Scot- 
land ; all Ireland, both Orangemen and Papists. If you add 
together the mass which opposed the late Government on the 
Education question, the mass which opposed Sir James Gra- 
ham's Education clauses last year,* and the mass which is cry- 
ing out for repeal in Ireland, you get something like a notion 
of the force which will be arrayed against a bill for paying 
the Irish Catholic clergy. 

What have you on the other side ? You have the states- 
men, both Tory and Whig ; but no combination of statesmen 
is a match for a general combination of fools. And, even 
among the statesmen, there is by no means perfect concord. 
The Tory statesmen are for paying the Catholic priests, but 
not for touching one farthing of the revenue of the Protestant 
Church. The Liberal statesmen (I for one, if I may lay claim 
to the name) would transfer a large part of the Irish Church 
revenues from the Protestants to the Catholics. For such a 
measure I should think it my duty to vote, though I were cer- 
tain my vote would cost me my seat in Parliament. Wheth- 
er I would vote for a measure which, leaving the Protestant 
Church of Ireland imtouched, should add more than half a 
million to our public burdens for the maintenance of the pop- 
ish priesthood is another question. I am not ashamed to say 
that I have not quite made up my mind, and that I should be 
glad, before I made it up, to hear the opinions of others. 

As things stand, I do not believe that Sir Kobert or Lord 
John, or even Sir Eobert and Lord John united, could induce 
one third part of the members of the House of Commons to 



* In 1843, Sir James Graham, speaking for the Government, proposed a 
solieme for educating the population of our great towns, which was defeat- 
ed by the opposition of the Non-conformists. 



1841-'44.] LOED MACAULAY. I33 

vote for any plan whatever, of which the object shoTild be the 
direct payment of the Irish Catholic priests. Thinking thus, 
I have turned my mind to the best indirect ways of effecting 
this object, and I have some notions which may possibly bear 
fruit. I shall probably take an opportunity of submitting 
them to the House of Commons. Now, I can conceive noth- 
ing more inexpedient than that, with these views, I should at 
the present moment go down to Edinburgh. If I did, I should 
certainly take the buU by the horns. I should positively re- 
fuse to give any promise. I should declare that I was not, on 
principle, opposed to the payment of Catholic priests ; and I 
should reserve my judgment as to any particular mode of pay- 
ment till the details were before me. The effect would be a 
violent explosion of pubiic feeling. Other towns would fol- 
low the example of Edinburgh. Petitions would pour in by 
thousands as soon as Parliament had assembled ; and the diffi- 
culties with which we have to deal, and which are great enough 
as it is, would be doubled. 

I do not, however, think that the EdinburgK Review ought 
to be under the same restraint under which a Whig cabinet 
is necessarily placed. The Review has not to take the queen's 
pleasure, to count votes in the Houses, or to keep powerful 
supporters in good humor. It should expound and defend the 
Whig theory of government; a theory from which we are 
forced sometimes to depart in practice. There can be no ob- 
jection to Senior's arguing in the strongest manner for the 
paying of the Catholic priests. I should think it very injudi- 
cious to lay dovm the rule that the Whig Review should nev- 
er plead for any reforms except such as a Whig ministry could 
prudently propose to the Legislature. 

I have a plan in my head which I hope you will not dislike. 
I think of reviewing the " Memoirs " of Bar^re. I really am 
persuaded that I could make something of that subject. 
Ever yours, T. B. Macattlat. 

Albany, London, December 13th, 1843. 
Deae Napiee, — You shall have my paper on Bar^re before 
Parliament meets. I never took to writing any thing with 



134 LIFE AND LETTEES OF - [chap. ix. 

more hearty good-will. If I can, I will make the old villain 
shake, even in his grave. Some of the lies in which I have 
detected him are such as you, with all your experience in lit- 
erary matters, will find it difficult to believe without actual 
inspection of the authorities.* 

What do you hear of Jeffrey's book?t My own general 
impression is that the selection is ill made, and that a certain 
want of finish, which in a periodical work is readily excused, 
and has sometimes even the effect of a grace, is rather too 
perceptible in many passages. On the other hand, the vari- 
ety and versatility of Jeffrey's mind seem to me more ex- 
traordinary than ever. I think that there are few things in 
the four volumes which one or two other men could not have 
done as well ; but I do not think that any one man except 
Jeffrey — nay, that any three men — could have produced such 
diversified excellence. When I compare him with Sydney 
and myself, I feel, with humility perfectly sincere, that his 
range is immeasurably wider than ours. And this is only as 
a writer ; but he is not only a writer, he has been a great ad- 
vocate, and he is a great judge. Take him all in all, I think 
him more nearly a universal genius than any man of our 
time; certainly far more nearly than Brougham, much as 
Brougham affects the character. Brougham does one thing 
well, two or three things indifferently, and a hundred things 
detestably. His Parliamentary speaking is admirable, his fo- 
rensic speaking poor, his writings, at the very best, second-rate. 
As to his hydrostatics, his political philosophy, his equity judg- 
ments, his translations from the Greek, they are really below 
contempt. Jeffrey, on the other hand, has tried nothing in 
which he has not succeeded, except Parliamentary speaking; 
and there he obtained what to any other man would have 



* " As soon as he ceases to write trifles, he begins to write lies ; and such 
lies ! A man who has never heen within the tropics does not know what a 
thunder-storm means ; a man who has never looked on Niagara has but a 
faint idea of a cataract ; and he who has not read Barfere's ' Memoirs,' may 
he said not to know what it is to lie." — Maoaulaifa Article on Barire. 

t Lord Jeffrey's contributiouf,to the Edinburgh Beview. 



1841-'44.] LORD MACAULAY. 135 

been great success, and disappointed his hearers only because 
their expectations were extravagant. Ever yours, 

T. B. Macaulat. 



Albany, London, April lOth, 1844. 
Deae Napiee, — I am glad that you like my article. It 
does not please me now, by any means, as much as it did 
while I was writing it. It is shade, imrelieved by a gleam of 
light.* This is the fault of the subject rather than of the 
painter; but it takes away from the effect of the portrait. 
And thus, to the many reasons which all honest men have for 
hating Bar^re I may add a reason personal to myself, that the 
excess of his rascality has spoiled my paper on him. 

Ever yours, T. B. Macatjlay. 

* " Whatsoever things are false, whatsoever things are dishonest, what- 
soever things are unjust, whatsoever things are impure, whatsoever things 
are hateful, whatsoever things are of evil report, if there he any vice, and 
if there he any infamy, all these things were blended in Barfere." 



136 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. x. 



CHAPTEE X. 

1844-1847. 

Letters to Mr, Napier. — Macaulay modifies his Design for an Article on 
Burke and his Times into a Sketch of Lord Chatham's Later Years. — 
Tour in Holland. — Scene off Dordrecht. — Macaulay on the Irish Church. 
— Maynooth. — The Ministerial Crisis of December, 1845: Letters to 
Lady Trevelyan.— Letter to Mr. Macfarlan. — Fall of Sir Eohert Peel. — 
Macaulay becomes Paymaster-general. — His Re-election at Edinburgh. 
— His Position in the House of Commons. — General Election of 1847. — 
Macaolay's Defeat at Edinburgh. 

Albany, London, August 14th, 1844. 
Deau E"apiee, — I have been working hard for you during 
the last week, and have covered many sheets of foolscap ; and 
now I find that I have taken a subject altogether unmanage- 
able.* There is no want of materials. On the contrary, facts 
and thoughts, both interesting and new, are abundant. But this 
very abundance bewilders me. The stage is too small for the 
actors ; the canvas is too narrow for the multitude of figures. 
It is absolutely necessary that I should change my whole plan. 
I will try to write for you, not a history of England during 
the earlier part of George the Third's reign, but an account 

* The unmanageable subject was a review of Burke's life and writings. 
"I should wish," Macaulay writes, "to say a good deal about the ministe- 
rial revolutions of the early part of George the Third's reign ; about the 
characters of Bute, Mansfield, Chatham, Townshend, George Grenville, and 
many others ; about Wilkes's and Churchill's lampoons, and so forth. I 
should wish, also, to go into a critical examination of the ' Essay on the 
Sublime and Beautiful,' and to throw out some hints on the subject which 
have long been rolling up and down in my mind. But this would be 
enough for a long article ; and, when this is done, we have only brought 
Burke to the threshold of the House of Commons. The American War, 
the Coalition, the Impeachment of Hastings, the French Revolution, still 



1844-'47;] LOED MACAULAY. I37 

of the last years of Lord Chatham's life. I promised, or 
haM promised, this ten years ago, at the end of my review of 
Thackeray's book. Most of what I have written will come in 
very well. The fourth volume of the Chatham correspond- 
ence has not, I think, been reviewed. It will furnish a head- 
ing for the article. Ever yours truly, T. B. Macaulay. 

A week later Macaulay writes : " The article on Chatham 
goes on swimmingly. A great part of the information which 
I have is still in manuscript — Horace "Walpole's " Memoirs of 
George the Third's Eeign," which were transcribed for Mackin- 
tosh ; and the first Lord Holland's diary, which Lady Holland 
permitted me to read. I mean to be with you on Saturday, 
the 31st. I would gladly stay with you tiU the Tuesday ; but 
I shall not be quite my own master. It is certainly more 
agreeable to represent such a place as Paisley, or "Wolverhamp- 
ton, than such a place as Edinburgh. Hallam or Everett can 
enjoy the society and curiosities of your fine city ; but I am 
the one person to whom all those things are interdicted." 

Shortly before Macaulay's arrival in India, a civilian, em- 
ployed as Resident at a native court, came under the suspicion 
of having made use of his position to enrich himself by illicit 
means. Bills came to hand through Persia, drawn in his fa- 
vor for great sums of money on the East India Company it- 
self. The Court of Directors naturally took the alarm, and 
sent a hint to the governor-general, who wrote to the oificer in 
question inviting him to clear his character before a commis- 
sion of inquiry. But the bird had already flown. The late 
Eesident was well on his way to Europe ; and his answer to 
Lord William Bentinck, in which the ofEer of an investigation 
was civilly but most positively declined, was actually address- 
ed from the Sandheads at the mouth of the Hooghly. The 
following letters will s^ifiiciently indicate the aspect under 
which the transaction presented itself to Macaulay. His be- 
havior on this occasion may seem unnecessarily harsh to that 
section of society which, in its dealings with gilded rogues, 
takes very good care not to err on the side of intolerance; 
but most readers wiU think the better of him because, when 



138 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. x. 

he found himself in questionable company, he obeyed the in- 
stinct which prompted him to stand on his dignity as an hon- 
est man. 

Rotterdam, October 9th, 1844. 
Deae Hannah, — After a very pleasant day at Antwerp, I 
started at seven yesterday morning by the steamer for Rotter- 
dam. I had an odd conversation on board, and one which, I 
think, will amuse both you and Trevelyan. As we passed 
Dordrecht, one of the passengers, an Englishman, said that he 
had never seen any thing like it. Parts of it reminded me of 
some parts of Cape Town, and I said so. An elderly gentle- 
man immediately laid hold of me. " You have been at the 
Cape, sir?" "Yes, sir." " Perhaps you have been in India ?" 
" Yes, sir." " My dear, here is a gentleman who has been in 
India." So I became an object of attention to an ill-looking, 
vulgar woman, who appeared to be the wife of my question- 
er ; and to his daughter, a pretty girl enough, but by no means 
lady-like. "And how did you like India ? Is it not the most 
delightful place in the world ?" " It is well enough," I said, 
"for a place of exile." "Exile!" says the lady. "I think 
people are exiled when they come away from India." " I 
have never," said the old gentleman, " had a day's good health 
since I left India." A little chat followed about mangoes and 
mango-fish, punkas and palanquins, white ants and cockroach- 
es. I maintained, as I generally do on such occasions, that all 
the fruits of the tropics are not worth a pottle of Covent Gar- 
den strawberries, and that a lodging up three pairs of stairs in 
London is better than a palace in a compound at Chowrin- 
ghee. M.J gentleman was vehement in assertmg that India 
was the only country to live in. " I went there," he said, " at 
sixteen, in 1800, and staid till 1830, when I was superannuated. 
If the Company had not chosen to superannuate me, I should 
have been there still. I should like to end my days there." 
I could not conceive what he meant by being superannuated 
at a time when he could have been only forty-six years old, 
and consequently younger than most of the field-officers in the 
Indian army, and than half the senior merchants in the Civil 
Service ; but I was too polite to interrogate him. 



1844-'47.] LOED MACAULAY. 139 

That was a politeness, however, of which he had no notion. 
"How long," he asked, "were you in India?" "Between 
four and five years." " A clergyman, I suppose f Whether 
he drew this inference from the sanctity of my looks, or from 
my olive-colored coat and shawl waistcoat, I do not pretend 
to guess; but I answered that I had not the honor to be- 
long to so sacred a profession. "A mercantile gentleman, no 
doubt?" " ]S"o." Then his curiosity got the better of all the 
laws of good - breeding, and he went straight to the point. 
"May I ask, sir, to whom I have the honor of talking?" I 
told him. " Oh, sir," said he, " you must often have heard of 

me. I am Mr. . I was long at Lucknow." " Heard of 

you !" thought I. " Yes ; and a pretty account I have heard 
of you !" I should have at once turned on my heel and walk- 
ed away, if his daughter had not been close to us ; and, scoun- 
drel as he is, I could not affront him in her presence. I mere- 
ly said, with the coldest tone and look, " Certainly I have 

heard of Mr. ." He went on, " You are related, I think, 

to a Civil servant who made a stir about Sir Edward Cole- 
brooke." It was just on my lips to say, " Yes. It was by 
my brother-in-law's means that Sir Edward was superan- 
nuated f^ but I commanded myself, and merely said that I 
was nearly related to Mr. Trevelyan ; and I then called to the 
steward, and pretended to be very anxious to settle with him 
about some coffee that I had taken. "While he was changing 
me a gold "William, I got away from the old villain, went to 
the other end of the poop, took out my book, and avoided 
looking toward him during the rest of the passage. And yet 
I could not help thinking a little better of him for what had 
happened, for it reminded me of what poor Macnaghten once 

said to me at Ootacamund : " has certain excuses which 

Colebrooke and others have not had ; for he is reaJly so great 
a fool that he can hardly be called a responsible agent." I 
certainly never knew such an instance of folly as that to which 
I had just been witness. Had he been a man of common 
sense, he would have avoided all allusion to India ; or, at any 
rate, would have talked about India only to people who were 
likely to be unacquainted with his history. He must have 



140 LIFE AND LETTJiKS OF [chap. x". 

known that I was Secretary to the Board of Control when 
that Board expressed its entire concurrence in the measures 
taken by the Company against him. Ever yours, 

T. B. M. 

Four days later, Macaulay writes from Amsterdam : " I have 

been pestered by those s all the way from Eotterdam 

hither, and shall probably be pestered by them the whole way 
back. "We are always in the same inns ; we always go to mu- 
seums at the same hour ; and we have been as near as possi- 
ble to traveUng in the same diligence. I resolutely turn away 
from the old rogue, and pretend not to see him. He perfect- 
ly comprehends my meaning, and looks as if he were in the 
pillory. But it is not pleasant to have such scenes daily in 
the presence of his wife and daughter." 

During 1844 and 1845 Macaulay pretty frequently ad- 
dressed the House of Commons. He earned the gratitude of 
the Unitarians by his successful vindication of their disputed 
title to their own chapels and cemeteries. By his condemna- 
tion of theological tests at Scotch universities, and his advent- 
urous assault upon the Cliurch of Ireland, he appealed to the 
confidence of those Edinburgh dissenters whose favor he for 
some time past had been most undeservedly losing. It is hard 
to conceive how United Presbyterians, and Free Churchmen 
fresh from the Disruption, could have found it in their hearts 
to quarrel with a representative who was able to compose, and 
willing to utter, such a declaration as this : " I am not speak- 
ing in anger, or with any wish to excite anger in others ; I am 
not speaking with rhetorical exaggeration ; I am calmly and 
deliberately expressing, in the most appropriate terms, an opin- 
ion which I formed many years ago, which all my observations 
and reflections have confirmed, and which I am prepared to 
support by reasons, when I say that, of all the institutions of 
the civilized world, the Established Church of Ireland seems 
to me the most absurd." 

When Sir James Graham was called to account for opening 
Mazzini's envelopes, Macaulay attacked that unlucky states- 
man in a speech, which, in writing to a correspondent, he men- 



1844-'47.] LORD AIACAULAY. 141 

tions as having fallen " like a shell in a powder-magazine." 
He likewise was active and prominent in the controversy that 
raged over the measure by which the question of Maynooth 
College was sent to an uneasy sleep of five-and-twenty years. 
The passage in which he drew a contrast, glowing with life 
and color, between the squalor of the Irish seminary and the 
wealth of the colleges at Cambridge and Oxford, will rank 
higher than any other sample of his oratory in the estimation 
of school-boys ; and especially of such school-boys as are look- 
ing forward longingly to the material comforts of a univer- 
sity career.* But men who are acquainted with those temp- 
tations and anxieties which underhe the glitter of Parliament- 
ary success will give their preference to the closing sentences 
— sentences more honorable to him who spoke them than the 
most finished and famous among all his perorations. " Yes, 
sir, to this bill, and to every bill which shall seem to me likely 
to promote the real union of Great Britain and Ireland, I will 
give my support, regardless of obloquy, regardless of the risk 
which I may run of losing my seat in Parliament. For such 
obloquy I have learned to consider as true glory ; and as to 
my seat, I am determined that it never shall be held by an ig- 
nominious tenure ; and I am sure that it can never be lost in 
a more honorable cause." These words were not the idle 
flourish of an adroit speaker, certain of impunity, and eager 

* " When I think of the spacious and stately mausions of the heads of 
houses, of the commodious chambers of the fellows and scholars, of the re- 
fectories, the combination rooms, the bowling-greens, the stabling, of the 
state and luxury of the great feast-days, of the piles of old plate on the 
tables, of the savory steam of the kitchens, of the multitude of geese and 
capons which turn at once on the spits, of the oceans of excellent ale in the 
butteries ; and when I remember from whom all this splendor and plenty 
are derived ; when I remember what was the faith of Edward the Third and 
of Henry the Sixth, of Margaret of Anjou and Margaret of Eiohmond, of Wil- 
liam of Wykeham and William of Waynefleet, of Archbishop Chicheley and 
Cardinal Wolsey ; when I remember what we have taken from the Roman 
Catholics — King's College, New College, Christ Church, my own Trinity ; 
and when I look at the miserable Dotheboys Hall which we have given 
them in exchange, I feel, I must own, less proud than I could wish of be- 
ing a Protestant and a Cambridge man." — Page 366 of Macaulay's Speeches. 



142 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.x. 

only for the cheer which is the unfailing reward of a cheap 
affectation of courage and disinterestedness. They were giv- 
en forth in grave earnest, and dictated by an expectation of 
impending trouble which the event was not slow to justify. 

In September, 1853, when Macaulay, much against his will, 
was preparing his speeches for publication, he notes in his dia- 
ry : "After breakfast I wrote out the closing passages of May- 
nooth. How white poor Peel looked while I was speaking! 
I remember the effect of the words, ' There you sit — .' I have 
a letter from my Dutch translator. He is startled by the se- 
verity of some of my speeches, and no wonder. He knows 
nothing of the conflict of parties." 

Peel might well look white beneath the flood of unanswer- 
able taunts which was poured forth by his terrible ally. Even 
in his utmost need,, it was a heavy price to pay for the sup- 
port of Macaulay and his party. " There is too much ground 
for the reproaches of those who, having, in spite of a bitter 
experience, a second time trusted the right honorable baronet, 
now find themselves a second time deluded. It has been too 
much his practice, when in opposition, to make use of pas- 
sions with which he has not the slightest sympathy, and of 
prejudices which he regards with a profound contempt. As 
soon as he is in power a change takes place. The instruments 
which have done his work are flung aside; the ladder by 

which he has climbed is kicked down Can we wonder 

that the eager, honest, hot-headed Protestants, who raised you 
to power in the confident hope that you would curtail the 
privileges of the Eoman Catholics, should stare and grumble 
when you propose to give public money to the Eoman Catho- 
lics ? Can we wonder that from one end of the country to 
the other every thing should be ferment and uproar; that 
petitions should, night after night, whiten all our benches like 
a snow-storm ? Can we wonder that the people out-of-doors 
should be exasperated by seeing the very men who, when we 
were in oflice, voted against the old grant to Maynooth, now 
pushed and pulled into the House by your whippers-in to vote 
for an increased grant? The natural consequences follow. 
All those fierce spirits whom you hallooed on to harass us 



1844-'47.] LORD MACAULAY. 143 

now turn round and begin to worry you. The Orangeman 
raises his war-whoop ; Exeter Hall sets up its bray ; Mr. Mac- 
neile shudders to see more costly cheer than ever provided for 
the priests of Baal at the table of the queen ; and the Protest- 
ant operatives of Dublin call for impeachments in exceeding- 
ly bad English. But what did you expect ? Did you think, 
when, to serve your turn, you called the devil up, that it was 
as easy to lay him as to raise him ? Did you think, when you 
went on, session after session, thwarting and reviling those 
whom you knew to be in the right, and flattering all the worst 
passions of those whom you knew to be in the wrong, that the 
day of reckoning would never come ? It has come. There 
you sit, doing penance for the disingenuousness of years." 

Between the House of Commons and his " History," Macau- 
lay had no time to spare for writing articles. Early in 1845 
a rumor had found its way into the newspapers, to the effect 
that he had discontinued his connection with the Edinlurgh 
Review. He at once assured Mr. Napier that the rumor in 
question had not been set on foot by himself; but in the 
same letter he announced his resolution to employ himself 
exclusively upon his " History," until the first portion of it was 
completed. " H I had not taken that resolution, my " History " 
would have perished in embryo, like poor Mackintosh's. As 
soon as I have finished my first two volumes I shall be happy 
to assist you again; but when that will be it is difficult to 
say.* Parliamentary business, at present, prevents me from 
writing a line. I am preparing for Lord John's debate on 
sugar, and for Joseph Hume's debate on India ; and it is one 
of my infirmities — an infirmity, I grieve to say, quite incura- 
ble — that I can not coiTectly and heartily apply my mind to 
several subjects together. When an approaching debate is in 
my head, it is to no purpose that I sit down at my desk to 
write history, and I soon get up again in disgust." 

London, December 11th, 1845. 
Deae Hanitah, — I am detained for a few minutes at Ellis's 

* Maoaulay never again -wrote for the Edinburgh EevieiD. 



144: LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. x. 

chambers witli nothing to do. I will therefore employ my 
leisure in writing to you on a sheet of paper meant for some 
plea or replication. Yesterday morning I learned that the 
ministers had gone down to the Isle of "Wight for the purpose 
of resigning, and that Lord John had been sent for. This 
morning all the world knows it. There are many reports ; 
but my belief is that the Duke of Wellington, after having 
consented to support Peel, was alarmed by the symptoms of 
opposition among the Lords of the Tory party, and retracted. 
How this is we shall probably soon learn. In the mean time, 
London is in confusion. The politicians run from club to 
club picking up and circulating rumors, and nobody knows 
exactly what to expect. All discerning men, among whom I 
rank myself, are anxious and melancholy. What is to befall 
the country? Will Lord John attempt to form a govern- 
ment? Can such a government abolish the corn duties? 
Can it stand three months with the present House of Com- 
mons ? Would even a dissolution give the Whigs a working 
majority in the Commons ? And, even if we had such a ma- 
jority in the Commons, what could we do with the Lords? 
Are we to swamp them, as Lord Grey's ministry proposed to 
do ? Have we sufficient support in the country to try so ex- 
treme a measure? Are we to go on, as Lord Melbourne's 
ministry did — unable to carry our own bills, and content with 
holding the executive functions, and distributing the loaves 
and fishes ? Or are we, after an unsuccessful attempt to set- 
tle the Com question, to go out ? If so, do we not leave the 
question in a worse position than at present? Or are Peel 
and Lord John to unite in one government? How are per- 
sonal pretensions to be adjusted in such an arrangement? 
How are questions of foreign policy, and of Irish policy, to 
be settled ? How can Aberdeen and Palmerston pull togeth- 
er ? How can Lord John himself bear to sit in the same Cab- 
inet with Graham ? And, supposing all these difficulties got 
over, is it clear that even a coalition between Peel and the 
Whigs could carry the repeal of the Com Law through the 
Lords? What, then, remains, except an Ultra-Tory adminis- 
tration composed of such men as the Dukes of Buckingham 



1844-'47.] LOED MACAULAY. I45 

and Eiclimond? Yet how can such an administration look 
in the face an opposition which wUl contain every statesman 
and orator in the House of Commons ? What, too, will be 
the effect produced out-of-doors by such an administration? 
What is there that may not be apprehended if we should have 
a year of severe distress, and if the manufacturers should im- 
pute all their sufferings to the selfish tyranny and rapacity of 
the ministers of the crown ? It is difScult, I think, to conceive 
a darker prospect than that which lies before us. Yet I have 
a great confidence in the sense, virtue, and self-command of 
the nation ; and I therefore hope that we shall get out of this 
miserable situation, as we have got out of other situations not 
less miserable. 

I have spent some hours in carefully considering my own 
position, and determining on my own course. I have at last 
made up my mind ; and I send you the result of my delibera- 
tions. 

If, which is not absolutely impossible, though improbable, 
Peel should still try to patch up a Conservative administra- 
tion, and should, as the head of that administration, propose 
the repeal of the Corn Laws, my course is clear. I must sup- 
port him- with all the energy that I have, till the question is 
carried. Then I am free to oppose him. If an Ultra-Tory 
ministry should be framed, my course is equally clear. I 
must oppose them with every faculty that God has given 
me. 

If Lord John should undertake to form a Whig miaistry, 
and should ask for my assistance, I can not in honor refuse it. 
But I shall distinctly tell him, and tell my colleagues and con- 
stituents, that I will not again go through what I went through 
in Lord Melbourne's administration. I am determined never 
again to be one of a government which can not carry the 
measures which it thinks essential. I am satisfied that the 
great error of Lord Melbourne's government was, that they 
did not resign as soon as they found that they could not pass 
the Appropriation Clause. They would have gone out with 
flying colors, had they gone out then. This was while I was 
in India. When I came back, I found the Liberal ministry in 

YoL. II.— 10 



146 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap, x, 

a thoroughly false position ; but I did not think it right to 
separate myself from them. Now the case is different. Our 
hands are free. Our path is still clear before us ; and I never 
will be a party to any step which may bring us into that false 
position again. I will therefore, supposing that Lord John 
applies to me, accept office on this express condition — that if 
we find that we can not carry the total repeal of the Corn 
Laws, we will forthwith resign ; or, at all events, that I shall 
be at liberty forthwith to resign. I am quite sure that this 
is the right course ; and I am eqiially sure that, if I take it, I 
shall be out of office at Easter. 

There remains another possible case. "What if Lord John 
and Peel should coalesce, and should offer me a place ia their 
Cabinet? I have fully made up my mind to refuse it. I 
should not at all blame them for coalescing. I am willing, as 
an independent member, to support them as far as I can ; and, 
as respects the question of the Corn Laws, to support them 
with all my heart and soul. But, after the language which 
I have held respecting Peel, and which I am less than ever 
disposed to retract, I feel that I can not, without a loss of per- 
sonal dignity, and without exposing myself to suspicions and 
insinuations which would be insupportable to me, hold any sit- 
uation under him. The circumstance that my fortune, though 
amply sufficient for my wants, is small when compared with 
the fortunes of all the other Cabinet ministers of our time, 
makes it fit that I should avoid with punctilious care every 
thing which the multitude may attribute to sordid motives. 
There are other reasons, which do not apply to Lord John, to 
Lord Lansdowne, to Palmerston, to Baring, to Labouchere, and 
to Grey ; but which would prevent me from holding office in 
such an arrangement. My opinions about the Irish Church 
are stronger than those of my friends, and have recently been 
expressed in a manner which has excited attention. The ques- 
tion of the ballot would also be an insuperable obstacle. I 
have spoken and voted for it ; I will not vote against it for a 
place ; and I am certain that Peel will never consent to let it 
be an open question. This is an objection which does not ap- 
ply to Lord John, and to others whom I have named, for they 



1844-'47.] LORD MA.CAULAY. 147 

always opposed the ballot. My full resolution therefore is, if 
a coalition ministry should be formed, to support it, but not 
to be a member of it. 

I hope that you will not be dissatisfied with this long expo- 
sition of my views and intentions. I must now make haste 
home, to dress for dinner at Milman's, and for the Westmin- 
ster Play. Ever yours, T. B. M. 

Albany, December 13th, 1845. 
Deae Haiwah, — I am glad that you sympathize with me, 
and approve of my intentions. I should have written yester- 
day ; but I was detained till after post-time at a consultation 
of Whigs, which Lord John had summoned. We were only 
five — Lord John, Lord Cottenham, Clarendon, Palmerston, 
and myself. This morning we met again at eleven, and were 
joined by Baring, by Lord Lansdowne, and by the Duke of 
Bedford. The posture of affairs is this : Lord John has not 
consented to form a ministry. He has only told the queen 
that he would consult his friends and see what could be done. 
We are all most unwilling to take office, and so is he. I have 
never seen his natural audacity of spirit so much tempered by 
discretion, and by a sense of responsibility, as on this occasion. 
The question of the Com Laws throws all other questions into 
the shade. Yet even if that question were out of the way, 
there would be matters enough to perplex us. Ireland, we 
fear, is on the brink of something like a servile war — the ef- 
fect, not of Repeal agitation, but of the severe distress endured 
by the peasantry. Foreign politics look dark. An augmenta- 
tion of the army will be necessary. Pretty legacies to leave 
to a ministry which will be in a minority in both Houses ! I 
have no doubt that there is not a single man among us who 
would not at once refuse to enlist, if he could do so with a 
clear conscience. Nevertheless, our opinion is that, if we have 
a reasonable hope of being able to settle the all -important 
question of the Com Laws in a satisfactory way, we ought, at 
whatever sacrifice of quiet and comfort, to take office, though 
only for a few weeks. But can we entertain such a hope? 
That is the point ; and till we are satisfied about it we can 



148 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. x. 

not positively accept or refuse. A few days must pass before 
we are able to decide. 

It is clear that we can not win the battle with our own un- 
assisted strength. If we win it at all, it must be by the help 
of Peel, Graham, and their friends. Peel has not seen Lord 
John ; but he left with the queen a memorandum, containing 
a promise to support a com bill founded on the principles of 
Lord John's famous letter to the electors of London.* Gra- 
ham has had both a correspondence and a personal conference 
with Lord John and with Lord Lansdowne, and has given sim- 
ilar assurances. But we all feel that this is too vague, and 
that we may still be left in the lurch. Lord John has asked 
for a sketch of Peel's own plan. This we can not get. In 
fact, strange as it seems, the plan was never drawn up in a 
distinct form, or submitted to the late Cabinet in detail. As 
soon as the general nature of it was stated, the opposition be- 
came so strong that nothing was said as to minor points. We 
have therefore determined on the following course: All our 
friends who are likely to be Cabinet ministers are summoned 
to London, and will, with scarcely an exception, be here in a 
day or two. We shall then resolve on the heads of a Corn 
Law, such as we think that we can with honor introduce. 
When this is done, we shall send it to Peel and Graham, and 
demand categorically whether they will cordially support such 
a bill, ay or no. If they refuse, or use vague language, we 
shall at once decline to form a government. If they pledge 
themselves to stand by us, we must undertake the task. 

This is a very strange, indeed an unprecedented, course. 
But the situation is unprecedented. We are not coming into 
office as conquerors, leading a majority in Parliament, and 
driving out our predecessors. Our predecessors at a most 
critical moment throw up the reins in confusion and despair, 
while they have a strong majority in both Houses, and im- 
plore us, who are a minority, to extricate the country from its 

* " The imposition of any duty at present, without a provision for its 
extinction within a short period, would hut prolong a contest already suf- 
iiciently fruitful of animosity and discontent." Such was the cardinal sen- 
tence of Lord John Russell's celebrated letter. 



1844-'47.] LOEt) MACAULAY. i^q 

troubles. "We are therefore entitled, if we consent, to demand 
their honest support as a right, not to supplicate it as a favor. 
My hope is that Peel will not accede to our terms, and that 
we shall be set at liberty. He will then be forced to go on 
with a ministry patched up as well as he can patch it up. In 
the mean time, nothing can be more public-spirited or disin- 
terested than the feelings of all our friends who have yet been 
consulted. This is a good sign. 

If I do come in, I shall take a carriage by the month from 
Newman, and remain at the Albany for some weeks. I have 
no doubt that we shall all be out by Easter in any event. If 
we should remain longer, I must, of course, take a house ; but 
nobody can expect that I should be provided with a house at 
a day's notice. Ever yours, T. B. M. 

Albany, December 19tli, 1845. 
Deab Hannah, — It is an odd thing to see a ministry 
making. I never witnessed the process before. Lord John 
has been all day in his inner library. His antechamber has 
been filled with comers and goers, some talking in knots, some 
writing notes at tables. Every five minutes somebody is 
called into the inner room. As the people who have been 
closeted come out, the cry of the whole body of expectants is, 
"What are you?" I was summoned almost as soon as I ar- 
rived, and found Lord Auckland and Lord Clarendon sitting 
with Lord John. After some talk about other matters, Lord 
John told me that he had been trying to ascertain my vdshes, 
and that he found that I wanted leisure and quiet more than 
salary and business. Labouchere had told him this. He 
therefore offered me the Pay OflSce, one of the three places 
which, as I have often told you, I should prefer. I at once 
accepted it. The tenure by which I shall hold it is so pre- 
carious that it matters little what its advantages may be ; but 
I shall have two thousand a year for the trouble of signing 
my name. I must indeed attend Parliament more closely 
than I have of late done ; but my mornings will be as much 
my own as if I were out of office. If I give to my ' History ' 
the time which I used to pass in transacting business when I 



150 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap.x. 

was Secretary at "War, I shall get on nearly as fast as when I 
was in opposition. Some other arrangements promise to be 
less satisfactory. Pahnerston wiU hear of nothing but the 
Foreign Office, and Lord Grey therefore declines taking any 
place. I hope that Lord John will give one of the secretary- 
ships of state to George Grey. It would be a great eleva- 
tion ; but I am sure that it is the right thing to do. I have 
told Grey that I look to him as our future leader in the Com- 
mons, and that no pretensions of mine shall ever interfere 
with this. Labouchere feels exactly as I do. Labouehere 
and Baring are at least as good men of business as Grey ; and 
I may say without vanity that I have made speeches which 
were out of the reach of any of the three. But, takiag the 
talent for business and the talent for speaking together, Grey 
is undoubtedly the best qualified among us for the lead ; and 
we are perfectly sensible of this. Indeed, I may say that I 
do not believe that there was ever a set of public men who 
had less jealousy of each other, or who formed a more correct 
estimate of themselves, than the yoimger members of this 
Cabinet. Ever yours, T. B. M. 

Albany, London, December 20th, 1845. 

Deae Hannah, — All is over. Late at night, just as I was 
undressing, a knock was given at the door of my chambers. 
A messenger had come from Lord John with a short note. 
The quarrel between Lord Grey and Lord Palmerston had 
made it impossible to form a ministry. I went to bed and 
slept sound. In the morning I went to the corner of Belgrave 
Square, which is now the great place for political news, and 
found that Lord John had gone to Windsor to resign his trust 
into the queen's hands. 

I have no disposition to complain of the loss of office. On 
the contrary, my escape from the slavery of a place-man is 
my only consolation.* But I feel that we are in an ignomin- 

* " On the whole," Maoaulay wrote to Mr. Ellis, " I am inclined to think 
that what has happened will do more good than harm. Perhaps the 
pleasure with which I have this moruiug looked round my chambers and 



1844-'47.] LORD MACAULAT. 151 

ious position as a party. After agreeing on the principles of 
our measure, after agreeing that our public duty required us 
to take office, we have now thrown the game up, not on ac- 
count of any new matter aflEecting the national interests, but 
solely because we are, as the French say, mauvais coucheurs, 
and can not adjust ourselves to accommodate each other. I 
do not blatne Lord John ; but Lord Grey and Lord Pahner- 
ston are both at fault. I think Lord G-rey, highly as -I esteem 
his integrity and ability, chiefly responsible for the unfort- 
unate situation in which we are now placed ; but I suspect 
that Palmerston will be made the scape-goat. He is no fa- 
vorite with the public. A large portion of our own friends 
think him a dangerous minister. By the whole continental 
and American press he has been represented as the very 
Genius of War and Discord. People will now say that, when 
every other place was within his reach ; when he might have 
had the Home Office, the Colonies, the Admiralty, a peerage 
— in short, his own terms — ^he declared that unless he was al- 
lowed to be where he was generally considered as a firebrand 
he would blow up his party, at a crisis when the fate of his 
party involved the fate of his country. I suspect that a great 
storm of public indignation will burst upon him, and that he 
will sink under it. In the mean time, what is to happen ? 

I have had an anxious time since you were away ; but I can 
truly say that I have done nothing through aU these troubles 
which I should be ashamed to hear proclaimed at Charing 
Cross, or which I would not do again. Ever yours, 

T. B. M. 

' Macaulay's readiness to brave publicity was soon put to a 
most unpleasant test. Mr. Macfarlan, a constituent who was 
much in his confidence, had transmitted to him for presenta- 
tion a memorial to the queen praying for the removal of all 

resumed my 'History' Las something to do in making me thus cheerful. 
Let me advise you to put forth a little tract, after the fashion of the sev- 
enteenth century, entitled 'A Secret History of some Late Passages, as they 
•were communicated by a Person of Honor to T. F. E., a Gentleman of the 
Inner Temple.' " 



152 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.x. 

restriction on the importation of corn. Macaulay replied by 
a letter which commenced as follows : " You will have heard 
the termination of our attempt to form a government. All 
our plans were frustrated by Lord Grey. I hope that the 
public interests will not suffer. Sir Eobert Peel must now 
undertake the settlement of the question. It is certain that 
he can settle it. It is by no means certain that we could have 
done so : for we shall to a man support him ; and a large pro- 
portion of those who are now in office would have refused to 
support us. On my own share in these transactions I reflect 
with unmixed satisfaction. From the first, I told Lord John 
that I stipulated for one thing only — total and immediate re- 
peal of the Corn Laws ; that my objections to gradual abolition 
were insurmountable, but that, if he declared for total and im- 
mediate repeal, I would be, as to all other matters, absolutely 
in his hands ; that I would take any office or no office, just as 
it suited him best ; and that he should never be disturbed by 
any personal pretensions or jealousies on my part. If every 
body else had acted thus, there would now have been a Liberal 
ministry. However, as I said, perhaps it is the best as it is." 

It unfortunately happened that Mr. Macfarlan, forgetting 
both prudence and propriety in his eagerness to seize so good 
an opportunity of establishing his member's character as an 
uncompromising free-trader, thought the letter much too good 
to be kept to himself. It accordingly appeared in the columns 
of The Sootsmcm, and was copied into all the newspapers of the 
country, to the heartfelt, and, as his diaries prove, the life-long, 
regret of Macaulay. He was deeply pained at being paraded 
before the world as the critic of an old friend and colleague.* 

• "May 17(/i, 1850.— Macfarlan called; a man wbo did me a great in- 
jury; but lie meant no harm, and I have long forgiven him ; though to the 
end of my life I shall occasionally feel twinges of a, very painful sort at 
the recollection.'' 

And again : " July ith, 1851. — I staid at home all the morning, and wrote 
not amiss. Macfarlan called. What harm that man did me 1 What mis- 
ery for a time he caused me ! In my happy life that was one of the calam- 
ities which cut deep. There is stiU a soar.'* So keenly did Macaulay feel 
the only circumstance which ever threw a momentary doubt upon the loy- 
alty of his friendship. 



1844-'47.] LORD MACAULAY. 153 

Bowood, January 4th, 1846. 

Mt deae Napier, — I am, as ever, grateful for your kind- 
ness. Of course you were perfectly right in supposing that 
I was altogether taken by surprise when I saw my letter to 
Macfarlan in print. I do not think that I was ever more as- 
tonished or vexed. However, it is very little my way to brood 
over what is done and can not be helped. 

I am not surprised that many should blame me ; and yet I 
can not admit that I was much to blame. I was writing to an 
active, friendly constituent who had during some years been 
in almost constant communication with me. We had corre- 
sponded about Edinburgh intrigues, about the Free Church, 
about Maynooth; and I had always written with openness, 
and had never found any reason to complain of indiscretion. 
After all, I wrote only what every body at Brooks's, and at 
the Reform Club, was saying from morning to night. I will 
venture to affirm that if the post-bags of the last fortnight 
were rummaged, it would appear that Lord John, Lord Mor- 
peth, Lord Grey himself — in fact, every body concerned in 
the late negotiations — has written letters quite as unfit for the 
public eye as mine. However, I well know that the world al- 
ways judges by the event ; and I must be content to be well 
abused till some new occurrence puts Macfarlan's prank out 
of people's heads. 

I should be much obliged to you, whenever an opportunity 
oifers, to say from me that I am surprised and indignant at 
the unauthorized publication of a private letter unguardedly 
written ; but that, whatever I have written, guardedly or un- 
guardedly, is the truth by which I am prepai'ed to stand. 
Ever yours truly, T. B. Macaulay. 

Albany, London, January lOth, 1846. 

Deae Napiee, — Thanks for all your kindness. I am sorry 
to be the cause of so much trouble to my friends. I have 
received a penitent letter from Macfarlan, ofEering to do any 
thing in his power. 

The business is very disagreeable, but might have been 
worse. To say of a man that he has talents and virtue, but 



154: LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. x. 

wants judgment and temper, is no very deadly outrage. I 
declare that I should not have scrupled to put this unlucky 
sentence,* with a little softening, into the Edinburgh Bmiew. 
For example : " We can not but regret that a nobleman, whose 
talents and virtue we fully acknowledge, should have formed 
so high an estimate of his own pretensions, and should be so 
unwilling to make any concession to the opinions of others, 
that it is not easy to act in concert with him." There is 
nothing here which I would not say in the House of Com- 
mons. 

I do not know whether it is worth whUe to mention the fol- 
lowing circumstance: Macfarlan, soon after he got this un- 
lucky letter, wrote to tell me that he thought the publication 
of it would be of use to me. I instantly wrote to beg that he 
would not think of such a thing, and gave as my reason the 
great esteem and admiration which, in spite of recent events, 
I felt for Lord Grey. Whether any good use can be made of 
this fact I do not know. I am very unwilling to be on bad 
terms with a man whom I greatly respect and value. I rely 
implicitly on your discretion. Ever yours truly, 

T. B. Macaitlat. 

At this period of his life Macaulay was still a hard hitter ; 
but he timed his blows with due regard for the public inter- 
ests. In January, 1845, he writes to Mr. ISTapier: "Many 
thanks for your kind expressions about the last session. I 
have certainly been heard with great favor by the House 
whenever I have spokeli. As to the course which I have 
taken, I feel no misgivings. Many honest men think that 
there ought to be no retrospect in politics. I am firmly con- 
vinced that they are in error, and that much better measures 
than any which we owe to Peel would be very dearly pur- 
chased by the utter ruin of all public virtue, which must be 
the consequence of such immoral lenity." 

So much for Maynooth, and for the past. With regard to 



* The sentence which referred to "personal pretensions" and "jeal- 
ousies." 



1844-'47.] LORD MACAULAY. 155 

the future, and the Corn Laws, he says : " As to any remarks 
which I may make on Peel's gross inconsistency, they must 
wait till his bill is out of all danger. On the Maynooth ques- 
tion he ran no risk of a defeat, and therefore I had no scruple 
about attacking him. But to hit him hard while he is fight- 
ing the land-owners would be a very different thing. It will 
be aU that he can do to win the battle with the best help that 
we can give him. A time will come for looking back. At 
present our business is to get the country safe through a very 
serious and doubtful emergency." 

But no aid from his opponents, however loyally rendered, 
could keep Sir Eobert Peel in office when once that emer- 
gency was at an end. On the 26th of June, 1846, the Corn 
Law Bill passed the Peers ; and, before the night was over, 
the Government had l-eceived its cou^p de grace in the Com- 
mons. Lord John Russell was again commanded to form an 
administration. Macaulay obtained the post which he pre- 
ferred, as the least likely to interfere with his historical la- 
bors ; and, as Paymaster-general of the Army, he went down 
to Scotland to ask for re-election. On the 9th of July he 
wrote to Mrs. Trevelyan from the Royal Hotel : " I reached 
Edinburgh last night, and found the city in a storm. The 
Dissenters and Free Churchmen have got up an opposition on 
the old ground of Maynooth, and have sent for Sir Culling 
Eardley Smith. He is to be here this evening. Comically 
enough, we shall be at the same inn ; but the landlord, waiters, 
chamber-maid, and boots are all with me. I have no doubt 
about the result. We had to-day a great meeting of electors. 
The lord provost presided. N^ear three thousand well-dressed 
people, chiefly voters, were present. I spoke for an hour — as 
well, they tell me, as I ever spoke in my life, and certaialy 
with considerable effect. There was immense cheei'ing, min- 
gled with a little hissing. A show of hands was called for. 
I had a perfect forest, and the other side not fifty. I am ex- 
ceedingly well, and in high spirits. I had become somewhat 
effeminate in literary repose and leisure. You would not 
know me again, now that my blood is up. I am such as 
when, twelve years ago, I fought the battle with Sadler at 



156 LIFE AI^D LETTERS OF [chap. x. 

Leeds." This ardor for the fray augured badly for Sir Cul- 
ling Eardley. He proved no match for Macaulay, who out- 
talked him on the hustings ; beat him by two to one at the 
poll ; and returned to the Albany in triumph, none the worse 
for his exhilarating though rather expensive contest. 

"We are told by Gibbon, in the most delightful of autobiog- 
raphies, that he never found his mind more vigorous, nor his 
composition more happy, than in " the winter hurry of society 
and Parliament." The historian of the Roman empire found 
a gentle stimulus and a salutary distraction in the discharge 
of his functions as Commissioner of Trade and Plantations, 
and in the debates on Burke's measures of economical re- 
form. In like manner, the routine of the Pay Office, and 'the 
obligations of the Treasury bench in the House of Commons, 
were of benefit to Macaulay while he was engaged upon 
Monmouth's invasion, and the Eevolution of 1688. The new 
paymaster-general discovered his duties to be even 'less bur- 
densome than he had been given to suppose. An occasional 
board day at Chelsea, passed in checking off lists of names 
and signing grants of pension, made very moderate demands 
u.pon his time and energy ; and in Parliament his brother 
members treated him with a respectful indulgence on which 
he very seldom trespassed. He only spoke five times in all 
during the sessions of 1846 and 1847 ; but whenever, and on 
whatever subject, he opened his lips, the columns of Hansard 
are thickly studded with compliments paid to him either in 
retrospect or by anticipation. His intention to take part in a 
discussion was, as it were, advertised beforehand by the mis- 
givings of the speakers who differed from him. When the 
Ten Hours' Bill was under consideration, one of its most res- 
olute opponents, fearing the effect which would be produced 
upon the House by a dissertation from Macaulay in favor of 
the principle of the Factory Acts, humorously deprecated the 
wrath of " his right honorable friend, under whose wither- 
ing eloquence he would, there was little doubt, be very speedi- 
ily extinguished."* On another occasion he was unexpected- 

* On the 8tb of October, 1853, Macaulay says, with the frankness of a man 



1844-'47.] LOED MACAULAY. 157 

ly called upon his feet to account for a letter, in which he had 
expressed an opinion ahout the propriety of granting a par- 
don to the leaders of the Welsh Chartists. When the House 
had heard his explanation (into which he contrived to bring 
an allusion to Judge Jeffreys and the Bloody Assize — a remi- 
niscence, in all probability, of his morning's study), Mr. Dis- 
raeli gracefully enough expressed the general sentiment of 
the audience : " It is always, to me at least, and I beheve to 
the House, so agreeable to listen to the i-ight honorable gen- 
tleman under any circumstances, that we must have been all 

who is speaking about his own performances without the fear of being 
overheard : " I worked at the Factory speech, but did little. I like the 
speech amazingly. I rather think that it is my Tery best.'' 

At all events, it has proved a mine of wealth to those who, since Macau- 
lay's day, have argued for extending the Factory Acts. He made an ef- 
fective use of the analogy of the Sunday in order to defend the principle 
of regulating the hours of labor by law. " Man, man is the great instru- 
ment that produces wealth. The natural difference between Campania 
and Spitzbergen is trifling when compared with the difference between a 
country inhabited by men full of bodily and mental vigor, and a country 
inhabited by men sunk in bodily aud mental decrepitude. Therefore it is 
that we are not poorer but richer, because we have, through many ages, 
rested from our labor one day in seven. That day is not lost. While in- 
dustry is suspended, while the plow lies in the furrow, while the Exchange 
is silent, while no smoke ascends from the factory, a process is going on 
quite as important to the wealth of nations as any process which is per- 
formed on more busy days. Man, the machine of machines, the machine 
compared with which all the contrivances of the Watts and the Ark- 
wrights are worthless, is repaii'ing and winding up, so that he returns to 
his labors on the Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier spirits, with 
renewed corporal vigor. Never will I believe that what makes a popula- 
tion stronger, and healthier, and wiser, and better, can ultimately make it 
poorer. You try to frighten us by telling us that, in some German factories 
the young work seventeen hours in the twenty-four; that they work so 
hard that among thousands there is not one who grows to such a stature 
that he can be admitted into the army ; and you ask whether, if we pass 
this bill, we can possibly hold our own against such competition as this. 
Sir, I laugh at the thought of such competition. If ever we are forced to 
yield the foremost place among commercial nations, we shall yield it, not 
to a race of degenerate dwarfs, but to some people pre-eminently vigorous 
in body and in mind." 



158 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [CflAf.x. 

gratified to-night that he has found it necessary to vindicate 
his celebrated epistle." 

In October, 1846, Macaulay wi'ites to one of his sisters: "I 
have received the most disgusting letter, by many degrees, 
that I ever read in my life from old Mrs. . I can con- 
vey to you no idea of it but by transcribing it, and it is too 
long to transcribe. However, I will give you the opening: 
'My dear Feiend, — Many years have passed away since my 
revered husband and your excellent father walked together 
as Christian friends, and since I derived the sweetest comfort 
and pleasure from a close friendship with both your blessed 
parents.' After a great deal more about various revered and 
blessed people, she comes to the real object of her epistle, 
which is to ask for three livings and a bishopric. I have 
been accustomed to unreasonable and importunate suitors; 
but I protest that this old hag's impudence fairly took away 
my breath. In order to recommend her brats still more, she 
assures me that one of them has been curate to that blessed 
man, Mr. Close. She is so moderate as to say that for her son 
James she will accept, nay, very thankfully accept, even a liv- 
ing of five hundred a year. Another proof of her modera- 
tion is that, before she asks for a bishopric, she has the grace 
to say, ' I am now going to be very bold.' Keally the comedy 
of actual life is beyond all comedy." 

The repugnance which this deluge of unctuous importunity 
aroused ia Macaulay's breast was not aggravated by any pre- 
possession in favor of doctrines the opposite of evangelical. 
This is clearly proved, if proof be wanting, by the last sen- 
tence of a letter bearing upon what was perhaps the most im- 
portant piece of business which it fell to him to transact as 
paymaster-general of the army. 

Deae Ellis,— I have at this moment the disposal of a tol- 
erable piece of patronage, the chaplainship of Chelsea Hospi- 
tal ; light duty, a nice house, coal, candles, and three hundred 
pounds a year. It would be an exceedingly pleasant situation 
for a literary man. But he must also be a man of piety and 
feeling ; for, the hospital being full of old battered soldiers, 



1844-'47.] LORD MACAULAY. 159 

the duty, thougli by no means onerous, consists chiefly in at- 
tending sick-beds, and I would not for any consideration as- 
sign such a duty to a person who would hurry through it in a 
perfunctory manner. Is there any among the junior fellows 
of Trinity who would suit ? I do not want a politician ; and 
nothing shall induce me to take a Puseyite. 

Yours very truly, T. B. M. 

In Parliament, in society, and in literary and political circles 
throughout the country, Macaulay already enjoyed that gen- 
eral respect and good-will which attach themselves to a man 
who has done great things, and from whom something still 
greater is expected. But there was one city in the kingdom 
where he had ceased to be popular, and, unfortunately, that 
city was Edinburgh. The causes of his unpopularity were in 
part external and temporary, and in part can be detected only 
after an attentive review of his personal character. 

In the year 1847 the disruption of the Scotch Church was 
abeady an accomplished and accepted fact ; but that moment- 
ous crisis had left bitter feelings behind it. Our leading pub- 
lic men had displayed an indillerence to the tendencies of re- 
ligious opinion in Scotland, and a scandalous ignorance of her 
religious affairs, which had alienated from Whigs and English- 
men the confidence and attachment of the population north of 
Tweed. Macaulay, the most eminent Whig, and far the most 
eminent Englishman, who then sat for a Scotch constituency, 
was made the scape-goat for the sins of all his colleagues. He 
might have averted his fate by subservience, or mitigated it 
by prudence ; but the necessity of taking a side about May- 
nooth obliged him to announce his views on the question of 
religious endowments, and his nature did not allow him to 
soften down those views by the use of dainty and ambiguous 
phraseology. He wished all the world to know that, however 
much the people whom he represented might regard ecclesias- 
tical matters from the stand-point of the Church, he regarded 
them, and would always continue to regard them, exclusively 
from the stand-point of the State. 

Kadicalism, again, then as always, was stronger in Scotland 



160 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. x. 

than in any other portion of the United Kingdom, and strong- 
er in Edinburgh than in any other town of Scotland ; for in 
Edinburgh the internal differences of the Liberal party were 
intensiiied by local circumstances. " Twenty years ago," writes 
a former supporter of Macaulay, " there was among us a great 
deal of what in Oxford is called Town and Gown. The Par- 
liament-house, literature, and the university made the Gown. 
The tradesmen, as a class, maintained that the high Whigs, 
though calling themselves the friends of the people, were ex- 
clusive and overbearing ; and there was some truth in this. 
The Whigs were always under terror of being coupled with 
Cobbett, Hunt, and their kind." Macaulay had his full share 
of this feeling. In May, 1842, when the People's Charter 
was presented to Parliament, he spoke, with an emphasis 
which nothing but sincere conviction could supply, against 
Mr. Thomas Duncombe's motion that the petitioners should 
be heard at the bar of the House. " Sir," he said, " I can not 
conscientioiisly assent to the motion. And yet I must admit 
that the honorable member for Finsbury has framed it with 
considerable skill. He has done his best to obtain the support 
of all those timid and interested politicians who think much 
more about the security of their seats than about the security 
of their country. It would be very convenient to me to give 
a silent vote with him. I should then have it in my power to 
say to the Chartists of Edinburgh, ' When your petition was 
before the House, I was on your side : I was for giving you a 
full hearing.' I should at the same time be able to assure my 
Conservative constituents that I never had supported, and nev- 
er would support, the Charter. But, sir, though this course 
would be very convenient, it is one which my sense of duty 
will not suffer me to take." In a letter to Mr. Napier, dated 
the 10th of August, 1844, he writes : " I must put off my jour- 
ney northward for a week. One of my reasons for this post- 
ponement (but let it rest between ourselves) is that on Wednes- 
day, the 21st, Hume is to lay the first stone of a monument 
to the Eepublicans who were transported by Pitt and Dun- 
das. Now, though I by no means approve of the severity 
with which those people were treated,, I do not admire their 



1844-'47.] LOED MACAULAY. 161 

proceedings, nor should I choose to attend the ceremony. 
But, if I arrived just before it, I should certainly be expect- 
ed by a portion of my constituents either to attend or explain 
the reasons of my absence, and thus we should have another 
disagreeable controversy." 

But Macaulay might have been as much of a Whig and an 
Erastian as he chose, if he had had in his composition more 
of the man of the world, and less of the man of the study. 
There was a perceptible want of lightness of touch in his 
method of doing the ordinary business which falls to the lot 
of a member of Parliament. " The truth is," wrote Lord 
Cockburn in July, 184:6, " that Macaulay, with aU his admit- 
ted knowledge, talent, eloquence, and worth, is not popular. 
He cares more for his ' History ' than for the jobs of his con- 
stituents, and answers letters irregularly, and with a brevity 
deemed contemptuous ; and, above all other defects, he suffers 
severely from the vice of overtalking, and consequently of 
underhstening. A deputation goes to London to enlighten 
their representative. They are full of their own matter, and 
their chairman has a statement bottled and ripe, which he is 
anxious to draw and decant ; but, instead of being listened 
to, they no sooner enter the audience-chamber than they find 
themselves all superseded by the restless ability of their elo- 
quent member, who, besides mistaking speaking for hearing, 
has the indelicate candor not even to profess being struck by 
the importance of the affair." 

Macaulay had exalted, and, as some would hold, overstrain- 
ed ideas of the attitude which a representative should adopt 
in his pecuniary relations with the electors who have sent him 
to Parliament. Although one of the most generous of men, 
who knew no delight like giving, and who indulged himself 
in that respect with an indiscriminate and incautious facility 
which was at times little short of blameworthy, he was will- 
ing, when Edinburgh was in question, to be called stingy if he 
could only make it clear to his own conscience that he was not 
tampering with corruption. 

London, July 14th, 1841. 

My DEAij Me. Black, — I am much gratified by what you 

Vol. II.— 11 



162 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. x. 

say about the race-cup. I had already written to Craig to say 
that I should not subscribe, and I am glad that my determi- 
nation meets your approbation. In the first place, I am not 
clear that the object is a good one. In the next place, I am 
clear that, by giving money for such an object in obedience to 
such a summons, I should completely change the whole char- 
acter of my connection with Edinburgh. It has been usual 
enough for rich families to keep a hold on corrupt boroughs 
by defraying the expense of public amusements. Sometimes 
it is a ball, sometimes a regatta. The Derby family used to 
support the Preston races. The members for Beverley, I 
believe, find a bull for their constituents to bait. But these 
were not the conditions on which I undertook to represent 
Edinburgh. In return for your generous confidence, I offer 
Parliamentary service, and nothing else. I am, indeed, most 
willing to contribute the little that I can spare to your most 
useful public charities. But even this I do not consider as 
matter of contract. Nor should I think it proper that the 
Town Council should call on me to contribute even to an hos- 
pital or a school. But the call that is now made is one so ob- 
jectionable that, I must plainly say, I would rather take the 
Chiltern Hundreds than comply with it. 

I should feel this if I were a rich man. But I am not rich. 
I have the means of living very comfortably, according to my 
notions, and I shall still be able to spare something for the 
common objects of our party, and something for the distress- 
ed. But I have nothing to waste on gayeties which can at 
best only be considered harmless. If our friends want a 
member who will find them in public diversions, they can be 
at no loss. I know twenty people who, if you will elect them 
to Parliament, will gladly treat you to a race and a race-ball 
once a month. But I shall not be very easily induced to be- 
lieve that Edinburgh is disposed to select her representatives 
on such a principle. Ever yours truly, 

T. B. Macaulat. 

Macaulay was so free from some faults to which literary 
men are proverbially inclined, that many of those who had 



1844-'47.] LOED MACAULAY. 163 

claims upon his time and services were too apt to forget that, 
after all, he possessed the literary temperament. In the hey- 
day of youth he relished the bustle of crowds, and could find 
amusement in the company of strangers; but as years went 
forward — as his spirits lost their edge and his health its spring 
— ^he was ever more and more disposed to recoil from publici- 
ty. Insatiable of labor, he regarded the near approach, and 
stiU more the distant prospect, of worry with an exaggerated 
disquietude which in his case was a premonitory symptom of 
the disease that was to kill him. Perpetually overworked by 
his " History " (and there is no overwork like that of a task 
which has grown to be dearer to a man than life itself), he no 
longer had the nerve required to face the social efforts, and to 
undergo the minute and unceasing observation to which he 
was, or fancied himseK to be, exposed when on a visit to the 
city which he represented. " If the people of Edinburgh," he 
wrote to Mr. Napier, " were not my constituents, there is no 
place in the island where I should like so much to pass a few 
weeks ; but our relation imposes both such constant exertion 
and such constant reserve, that a trip thither is neither pleas- 
ant nor prudent." And again: "I hope to be at Edinburgh 
on August the 19th or 20th. At so dead a time of the year I 
should think that it might be possible for me to escape speech- 
es and meetings, particularly as I mean to go quietly, and 
without sending notice to any of our political managers. It 
is really very hard that I can not visit your city as any other 
gentleman and man of letters can do. My intention is to stay 
about a fortnight, and I should like to go out to you from 
Edinburgh on Saturday, the 20th, and to return on the Mon- 
day. I wish to avoid passing a Sunday in the good town ; for 
to whatever church I go, I shall give offense to somebody." 

Whatever may have been the origin and the extent of Mac- 
aulay's shortcomings as representative of Edinburgh, there 
were men at hand who were anxious, and very well able to 
turn them to their own account. But the injuries which he 
forgave I am forbidden to resent. ISTo drop of ink from this 
pen shall resuscitate the memory of the intrigues that pre- 
ceded and brought about the catastrophe of 1847 ; a catastro- 



164 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [Ohap.x 

phe which was the outcome of jealousies which have long been 
dead, and the stepping-stone of ambitions which have ere this 
been gratified. But justice demands that on one point a pro- 
test should be made. There are some still alive who have per- 
suaded themselves into the belief that they opposed Maeaulay 
because he was not sound on the Corn Laws — and this in the 
teeth of the facts that from the year 1843 onward he was a 
consistent and hearty supporter of the uncompromising reso- 
lution annually brought forward by Mr. Charles Yilliers ; and 
that (as his letter to Mr. Macfarlan made only too notorious), 
at the crowning moment of the free -trade controversy, he 
statedly and resolutely refused to lend his assistance in form- 
ing any ministry which did not pledge itself to the total and 
immediate removal of the duty upon corn.* If such an early 
and signal repentance as this — (and I will not enter into the 
question whether or not his previous conduct had been such 
as called for repentance) — was ineffectual to clear him in the 
eyes of his constituents, then indeed the authority of an elect- 
or over his representative would be a tyranny which no man 
of right feeling would desire to exercise, and no man of honor 
could be expected to endure. 

When Parliament was dissolved in the summer of 1847, all 
the various elements of discontent, political, ecclesiastical, and 
personal alike, mustered round the standard that was raised by 
Sir CuUing Eardley's former committee, "which," says Lord 
Cockburn, " contained Established Churchmen and wild Yol- 
untaries, intense Tories and declamatory Radicals, who agreed 
in nothing except in holding their peculiar religion as the 
Scriptural, and therefore the only safe, criterion of fitness for 
public duty. These men would have preferred Blackadder to 
Marlborough for the command of an army." " The struggle," 
says Hugh Miller, " is exciting the deepest interest, and, as the 
beginning of a decided movement on the part of Christians of 
various denominations to send men of avowed Christian prin- 
ciple to Parliament, may lead to great results." The common 
sense of the Scotch people brought this movement, such as it 

* See page 152 of this volume. 



1844-'47.] LOED MACAULAY. 165 

was, to a speedy close ; and it led to no greater result than 
tliat of inflicting a transient scandal upon the sacred name of 
religion, and giving Macaulay the leisure which he required in 
order to put the finishing touch to the first two volumes of his 
" History." 

The leaders of the agitation judged it necessary to select a 
stronger candidate than Sir Culling Eardley, and their choice 
fell upon Mr. Charles Cowan, a son of one of the most re- 
spected citizens of Edinburgh, and himseK a man of high pri- 
vate character, though not very conversant with public affairs. 
The gentleman who introduced Mr. Cowan to the electors at 
his first public meeting recommended him on the express 
ground that " Christian men ought to send Christian men to 
represent them." Eut when people inspired by these exem- 
plary motives had once begun to move, others whose views 
were of a more temporal and mundane complexion were not 
behindhand in following their example. A deputation of 
spirit-dealers waited upon Macaulay to urge the propriety of 
altering the excise duties in the interest of their trade. They 
failed to convince him; and he told them plainly that he 
would do nothing for them, and most probably should do 
something against them. The immediate consequence of this 
unsatisfactory interview was the appearance of a fourth candi- 
date, in the person of a Mr. Blackburn, who was described by 
his own proposer as one who " came forward for the excise 
trader, which showed that his heart was with the people," or 
at any rate with that section of the people whose politics con- 
sisted in dislike to the whisky duty. 

The contest was short, but sharp. For ten days the city 
was white with broadsides, and the narrow courts off the High 
Street rang with the dismal strains of innumerable ballad- 
singers. The opposition was nominally directed against both 
the sitting members ; but from the first it was evident that all 
the scurrility was meant exclusively for Macaulay. He came 
scathless even out of that ordeal. The vague charge of be- 
ing too much of an essayist and too little of a politician was 
the worst that either saint or sinner could find to say of him. 
The burden of half the election-songs was to the effect that 



166 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.x 

he had written poetry, and that one who knew so much about 
Ancient Eome could not possibly be the man for Modem 
Athens. The day of nomination was the 29th of July. The 
space in front of the hustings had been packed by the advo- 
cates of cheap whisky. Professor Aytoun, who stooped to 
second Mr. Blackburn, was applauded to his heart's content, 
while Macaulay was treated with a brutality the details of 
which are painful to read, and would be worse than useless to 
record. The polling took place on the morrow. A consid- 
erable number of the Tories, instead of plumping for Black- 
burn, or dividing their favors with the sitting members (who 
were both of them moderate Whigs and supporters of the 
Establishment), thought fit to give their second votes to Mr. 
Cowan, an avowed Voluntaryist in Church matters, and the 
accepted champion of the Eadical party. " I waited with Mr. 
Macaulay," says Mr. Adam Black, " in a room of the Mer- 
chants' Hall, to receive at every hour the numbers who had 
polled in all the districts. At ten o'clock we were confound- 
ed to find that he was 150 below Cowan, but still had faint 
hopes that the next hour might turn the scale. The next 
hour came, and a darker prospect. At twelve o'clock he was 
340 below Cowan. It was obvious now that the field was 
lost ; but we were left from hour to hour under the torture of 
a sinking poll, till at four o'clock it stood thus : Cowan, 2063 ; 
Craig, 1854; Macaulay, 1477 ; Blackburn, 980." 

Edinburgh, July 30th, 1847. 
Deaeest Hannah, — I hope that you will not be much vex- 
ed ; for I am not vexed, but as cheerful as ever I was in my 
life. I have been completely beaten. The poll has not closed ; 
but there is no chance that I shall retrieve the lost ground. 
Eadicals, Tories, Dissenters, Voluntaries, Free Churchmen, 
spirit drinkers who are angry because I will not pledge my- 
self to repeal all taxes on whisky, and great numbers of per- 
sons who are jealous of my chief supporters here, and think 
that the patronage of Edinlburgh has been too exclusively dis- 
tributed among a clique, have united to bear me down. I wiU 
make no hasty resolutions ; but every thing seems to indicate 



1844r-'47.] LORD MACAULAY. 167 

that I ought to take this opportunity of retiring from public 
life. Ever yours, T. B. M. 

Edinburgh, July 30th, 1847. 
Deae Ellis, — I am beaten, but not at all the less happy for 
being so. I think that having once been manumitted, after 
the old fashion, by a slap in the face, I shall not take to bond- 
age again. But there is time to consider that matter. 

Ever yours, T. B. Macaulat. 

That same night, while the town was still alive with jubila- 
tion over a triumph that soon lost its gloss even in the eyes 
of those who won it, Macaulay, in the grateful silence of his 
chamber, was weaving his perturbed thoughts into those ex- 
quisite liaes which tell within the compass of a score of stan- 
zas the essential secret of the life whose outward aspect these 
volumes have endeavored to portray. 

The day of tumult, strife, defeat, was o'er. 

Worn out with toil, and noise, and scorn, and spleen, 
I slumbered, and in slumber saw once more 

A room in an old mansion, long unseen. 

That room, methought, was curtained from the light ; 

Yet through the curtains shone the moon's cold ray 
Full on a cradle, where, in linen white. 

Sleeping life's first soft sleep, an infant lay. 

****** 

And lo ! the fairy queens who rule our birth 
Drew nigh to speak the new-born baby's doom : 

With noiseless step, which left no trace on earth, 
From gloom they came, and vanished into gloom. 

Not deigning on the boy a glance to cast, 

Swept careless by the gorgeous Queen of Gain. 

More scornful still, the Queen of Fashion passed, 
With mincing gait and sneer of cold disdain. 

The Queen of Power tossed high her jeweled head, 
And o'er her shoulder threw a wrathful frown. 

The Queen of Pleasure on the pillow shed 

Scarce one stray rose-leaf from her fragrant crown. 



168 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. x. 

Still fay in long procession followed fay ; 

And still the little couch remained unblest : 
But, when those wayward sprites had passed away, 

Came One, the last, the mightiest, and the best. 

Oh ! glorious lady, with the eyes of light. 

And laurels clustering round thy lofty brow, 
Who by the cradle's side didst watch that night, 

Warbling a sweet strange music, who wast thou ? 

" Yes, darling ; let them go," so ran the strain : 

" Yes ; let them go — gain, fashion, pleasure, power, 
And all the busy elves to whose domain 
Belongs the nether sphere, the fleeting hour. 

" Without one envious sigh, one anxious scheme, 
The nether sphere, the fleeting hour resign. 
Mine is the world of thought, the world of dream. 
Mine all the past, and all the future mine. 

" Of the fair brotherhood who share my grace, 
I, from thy natal day, pronounce thee free ; 
And, if for some I keep a nobler place, 
I keep for none a happier than for thee. 

" There are who, while to vulgar eyes they seem 
Of all my bounties largely to partake. 
Of me as of some rival's handmaid deem, 
And court me but for gain's, power's, fashion's sake. 

"To such, though deep their lore, though wide their fame. 
Shall my great mysteries be aU unknown : 
But thou, through good and evil, praise and blame, 
Wilt not thou love me for myself alone ? 

" Yes ; thou wilt love me with exceeding love ; 
And I will tenfold all that love repay : 
Still smiling, though the tender may reprove ; 
StUl faithful, though the trusted may betray. 

" In the dark hour of shame, I deigned to stand 
Before the frowning peers at Bacon's side ; 
On a far shore I smoothed with tender hand. 

Through months of pain, the sleepless bed of Hyde. 



1844-'47.] LOED MACAULAY. 169 

" I brought the wise and brave of ancient days 
To cheer the cell where Ealeigh pined alone. 
I lighted Milton's darkness with the blaze 

Of the bright ranks that guard the eternal throne. 

"And even so, my child, it is my pleasure 

That thou not then alone shouldst feel me nigh, 
When in domestic bliss and studious leisure 
Thy weeks uncounted come, uncounted fly. 

" No ; when on restless night dawns cheerless morrow. 
When weary soul and wasting body pine. 
Thine am I still, in danger, sickness, sorrow, 
In conflict, obloc[uy, want, exile, thine ; 

" Thine where on mountain waves the snow-birds scream. 
Where more than Thule's winter barbs the breeze, 
Where scarce, through lowering clouds, one sickly gleam 
Lights the drear May-day of Antarctic seas ; 

" Thine when around thy litter's track all day 

White sand-hills shall reflect the blinding glare ; 
Thine when, through forests breathing death, thy way 
All night shall wind by many a tiger's lair ; 

" Thine most, when friends turn pale, when traitors fly. 
When, hard beset, thy spirit, justly proud. 
For truth, peace, freedom, mercy, dares defy 
A sullen priesthood and a raving crowd. 

"Amidst the din of all things fell and vile. 

Hate's yell, and envy's hiss, and folly's bray. 
Remember me ; and with an unforced smile 
See riches, baubles, flatterers, pass away. 

" Yes, they will pass away, nor deem it strange ; 
They come and go, as comes and goes the sea : 
And let them come and go ; thou, through all change, 
Fix thy firm gaze on virtue and on me.'' 



170 LITE mD LETTERS OF [chap. xi. 



CHAPTEE XI. 

1847-1849. 

Macaulay retires iuto Private Life. — Extracts from Lord Carlisle's Journal. 
— Macaulay's Conversation. — His Memory. — His Distaste for General 
Society. — His Ways with Children. — Letters to his Niece Margaret. — 
" The Judicious Poet." — Valentines. — Sight-seeing. — Eastern Tours. — 
Macaulay's Method of Work. — His Diligence in collecting his Materials. 
— Glencoe. — Londonderry. — Macaulay's Accuracy : Opinions of Mr. Bage- 
hot and Mr. Buckle. — Macaulay's Industry at the Desk.- — His Love for 
his Task. — Extracts from his Diary. — His Attention to the Details of the 
Press. — The " History" appears. — Congratulations. — Lord Halifax ; Lord 
Jeffrey ; Lord Auckland ; Miss Edgeworth. — The Popularity of the Work. 
— Extract from Punch. — Macaulay's Attitude in Eelatiou to his Critics. 
— The Quarterly Beview. — The Sacrifices which Macaulay made to Lit- 
erature. 

Aftee a few nights of sound sleep, and a few days of quiet 
among his books, Macaulay had recovered both from the fa- 
tigues of the contest and the vexation of the defeat. On the 
6th of August, 1847, he writes to his sister Fanny : " I am 
here in solitude, reading and working with great satisfaction 
to myself. My table is covered with letters of condolence, 
and with invitations from half the places which have not yet 
chosen members. I have been asked to stand for Ayr, for 
"Wigton, and for Oxfordshire. At Wigton and in Oxfordshire 
I was actually put in nomination without my permission, and 
my supporters were with difficulty prevented from going to 
the poll. From The Sheffield Iris, which was sent me to-day, 
I see that a party wishes to put me up for the West Kiding. 
Craig tells me that there is a violent reaction at Edinburgh, 
and that those who voted against me are very generally 
ashamed of themselves, and wish to have me back again. I 
did not know how great a politician I was till my Edinburgh 



1847-'49.] LOED MACAULAY. 171 

friends chose to dismiss me from politics. I never can leave 
public life with more dignity and grace than at present." 

Such consolations as private life had to offer, Macaulay pos- 
sessed in abundance. He enjoyed the pleasures of society in 
their most delightful shape ; for he was one of a circle of em- 
inent and gifted men who were the warm friends of himself 
and of each other. How brilliantly these men talked is al- 
ready a matter of tradition. No report of their conversation 
has been pubhshed, and in all probability none exists. Scat- 
tered and meagre notices in the leaves of private diaries form 
the sole surviving record of many an Attic night and stiU 
more agreeable morning. Happily, Lord Carlisle's journal 
has preserved for us (as may be seen in the extracts which 
follow) at least the names of those with whom Macaulay lived, 
the houses which he frequented, and some few of the topics 
which he discussed. That journal proves, by many an aiiec- 
tionate and admiring expression, how highly my uncle was 
esteemed by one whose approbation and regard were never 
hghtly given.* 

" June Z7ih, 1843. — I breakfasted with Hallam, John Eussell, Macaulay, 
Everett, Van de Weyer, Mr. Hamilton, U. S., and Mahon. Never were 
such torrents of good talk as hurst and sputtered over from Macaulay and 
Hallam. A great deal about Latin and Greek inscriptions. They think 
the first unrivaled for that purpose; so free from articles and particles. 

* Macaulay's acquaintance with the Howard family was of old standing, 
as may be gathered from a passage in a letter of the year 1833. This ex- 
ceedingly droll production is too thickly strewn with personal allusions to 
admit of its being published, except in a fragmentary condition, which 
would be unjust to the writer, and not very interesting to the reader. 

" I dined at Holland House yesterday. 

Dkamatis Personje. 
Lord Eolland A fine old gentleman, very gouty and good-nat- 
ured. 

Earl Orey Prime minister ; a proud and majestic, yet polite 

and affable person. 

The Bev. Sydney Smith A holy and venerable ecclesiastic, director of the 

consciences of the above-named lords. 
******** 

Lady Dover. .A charming woman, like all the Howards of Car- 
lisle." 



172 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.xi. 

Hallam read some wondrous extracts from the "Lives of the Saints,"* now 
being edited by Newman. Macaulay repeated, after the Tankees were 
gone, an egregious extract from a Natchez repudiation paper, making out 
our Saviour to be the first great repudiator when he overthrew the seats 
of the money-changers.'' 

" March ith, 1848.— Macaulay says that they " [the Parisian republicans] 
" are refuting the doctrines of political economy in the way a man would 
refute the doctrine of gravitation by jumping off the Monument." 

"January Gtli, 1849. — Finished Macaulay's two volumes. How admira- 
ble they are — full of generous impulse, judicial impartiality, wide research, 
deep thought, picturesque description, and sustained eloquence ! Was his- 
tory ever better written ? Guizott praises Macaulay. He says that he has 
truly hit the ruling passion of William the Third — his hatred for Louis the 
Fourteenth. 

"February 12th,. — Breakfasted with Macaulay. There were Van de Wey- 
er, Hallam, Charles Austin, Panizzi, Colonel Mure, and Dicky Milnes ; but 
he went to Yorkshire after the first cup. The conversation ranged the 
world : art, ancient and modern ; the Greek tragedians ; characters of the 
orators, how Philip and Alexander probably felt toward them as we do 
toward a scurrilous newspaper editor. It is a refreshing break in com- 
monplace life. I staid till past twelve. His rooms at the top of the Al- 
bany are very liveable and studious-looking." 

"May 25th. — Breakfasted with Rogers. It was a beautiful morning, 
and his house, view, and garden looked lovely. It was extremely pleas- 
ant. Mahon tried to defend Clarendon, but was put down by Hallam and 
Macaulay. Macau,lay was very severe on Cranmer. Then we all quoted 
a good deal ; Macaulay (as I had heard him before) four very fine lines from 

* About this period Macaulay writes to Mr. Napier : " Newman announces 
an English Hagiology in numbers, which is to contain the lives of such 
blessed saints as Thomas h, Becket and Dunstan. I should not dislike to 
be the Avvocato del Diavolo on such an occasion." And again : "I hear 
much of the miracles of the third and fourth centuries by Newman. I 
think that I could treat that subject without giving scandal to any ration- 
al person, and I should like it much. The times require a Middleton." 

t Guizot was then a refugee in England. Shortly before this date, Mac- 
aulay writes to his sister Selina : " I left a card with Guizot, but did not 
ask to see him. I purposely avoided meeting him on Friday at Lord Hol- 
land's. The truth is, that I like and esteem the man, but I think the pol- 
icy of the minister both at home and abroad detestable. At home it was 
all corruption, and abroad all treachery. I could not hold to him the lan- 
guage of entire respect and complacency without a violation of truth ; and, 
in his present circumstances, I could not bear to show the least disappro- 
bation." 



1847-'49.} LORD MACAULAY. IY3 

the " Tristia," as beiug so contrary to tlieir usual wliining tone, and of even 
a Miltonio loftiness of sentiment : 

En ego, quum patri3, caream, votisque, domoque ; 

Eaptaque sint, adimi quae potuere, mihi ; 
Ingenio tamen ipse meo comitorque, fruorque. 

Caesar in hoc potuit juris habere nihU. 

I think we must have rather shot beyond Rogers sometimes." 

" October Wth. — [Dinner at Lord Carlisle's.] The evening went off very 
cozily and pleasantly, as must almost always happen with Macaulay. He 
was rather paradoxical, as is apt to be his manner, and almost his only so- 
cial fault. The greatest marvel about him is the quantity of trash he re- 
members. He went oif at score with Lord Thurlow's poetry." 

"March hth, 1850. — Dined at the Club. Dr. Holland in the chair. Lord 
Lansdowne, Bishop of London, Lord Mahon, Macaulay, Milman, Van de 
Weyer, I, David Dundas, Lord Harry Vane, Stafford O'Brien. The bishop 
talked of the wit of Rowland Hill. One day his chapel, with a thinner at- 
tendance than usual, suddenly filled during a shower of rain. He said : ' I 
have often heard of religion being used as a cloak, but never before as an 
umbrella.' In his later life he used to come to his chapel in a carriage. 
He got an anonymous letter rebuking him for this, because it was not the 
way his heavenly Master traveled. He read the letter from the pulpit, 
said it was quite true, and that if the writer would come to the vestry aft- 
erward with a saddle and bridle he^ould ride him home. They talked a 
good deal of French authors. The ' Tartuffe ' was thought Molifere's best 
play; then the 'Misanthrope.' Macaulay prefers 'L'Avare.' We recited 
Johnson's beautiful epitaphs on Philips and Levinge. Maoaulay's flow 
never ceased once during the four hours, but it is never overbeariug." 

"March 23(Z. — Breakfast with Macaulay. On being challenged, he re- 
peated the names of the owners of the several carriages that went to Cla^ 
rissa's funeral. We chiefly talked of Junius, and the irresistible proofs for 
Sir Philip Francis."* 

"May 9th. — Breakfast with Macaulay. We talked of Thiers and Lamar- 
tine as historians ; Thiers not having any moral principle ; Lamartine a 
great artist, but without the least care for truth. They were just passing 
to the Jesuits and Pascal when I thought it right (and I must claim some 
merit in this) to go to the Ascension morning service at St. James's. Aft- 
er I went, the conversation got upon moral obUgations, and was so eagerly 

* Two days previously Macaulay and Carlyle had met at Lord Ashbur- 
ton's house. It was, perhaps, on this occasion that Carlyle was wofuUy 
bored by the irresistible proofs for Sir Philip Francis. "As if it could mat- 
ter the value of a brass farthing to any living human being who was the 
author of Junius !" 



174 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.xi. 

carried on liy Hallam, Whewell, and Macaulay, though without the slight- 
est loss of temper, that not one sentence could any of them finish. " 

"Novembm- lift. — Breakfasted with Macaulay, Charles Greville, Hoh- 
house, Sir E. Murchison, and Charles (Howard). The talk was even more 
than usually agreeable and interesting, and it got on very high themes. 
Macaulay argued very forcibly against Hobhouse and Charles Greville for 
the difference between the evidence of Christ's miracles and of the truth 
of transubstantiation. To put them on a level, Lazarus ought to have 
remained inanimate, colorless, and decomposing in the grave, while we 
should be called upon to believe that he had at the word of Christ become 
alive. He does not consider the doctrine of the Trinity opposed to reason. 
He was rather less opposed to the No Popery cry, so rife at present, than I 
might have expected. He* thinks the nonsense of people may be advan- 

* Four days after this breakfast Macaulay wrote to his sister Fanny : 
" If I told you all that I think about these disputes, I should write a vol- 
ume. The Pope hates the English nation and government. He meant, I 
am convinced, to insult and annoy the queen and her ministers. His whole 
conduct in Ireland has evidently been directed to that end. Nevertheless, 
the reasons popularly urged against this bull seem to me absurd. We al- 
ways knew that the Pope claimed spiritual jurisdiction, and I do not see 
that he now claims temporal jurisdiction. I could wish that Lord John 
had written more guardedly ; and that, I plainly see, is the wish of some 
of his colleagues, and probably, by this time, is also his own. He has got 
much applause in England : but, when he was writing, he should have re- 
membered that he had to govern several millions of Eoman Catholics in 
Ireland ; that to govern them at all is no easy task ; and that any thing 
which looks like an affront to their religion is certain to call forth very 
dangerous passions. In the mean time, these things keep London all alive. 
Yesterday the ballad-singers were entertaining a great crow.d under my 
windows with bawling ; 

' Now all the old women are crying for fear 
The Pope is a-coming : oh dear ! oh dear !' 

The wall of Burlington Gardens is covered with 'No Popery,' 'No .'Wafer 
Gods.' I can not help enjoying the rage and terror of the Puseyites, who 
are utterly prostrated by this outbreak of popular feeling.'' 

And again, some days later, he says: "A deputation of my parish, St. 
James's, came to me yesterday to ask me to move a resolution at a public 
meeting. I refused, took their resolutions in my hand, and criticised them 
' in such a way as, for the time at least, converted the delegates. They told 
me, at parting, that the whole should be recast ; that intolerant sentiments 
should be expunged ; and that, instead of calling for laws to punish avowed 
Roman Catholics, the parish would express its dislike of the concealed Ro- 
man Catholics who hold beuelices in the Established Church." 



1847-'49.] LORD MACAULAY. I75 

tageously made use of to set them against the real mischief of popish in- 
terference." 

"May 13tA.— Dined at the Club. Bishjop of Oxford, Dean of St. Paul's, 
Whewell, Macaulay, Lord Overstone, Dr. Holland, Sir J. Staunton, George 
Lewis. A good company, and it was most agreeable. They were very 
droll about Sir John Sinclair — his writing to Pitt that it was very desira- 
ble that the President of the Scotch Agricultural Society " [which office he 
then held] " should be a peer. Pitt answered that he quite agreed with 
him ; accepted his resignation, and appointed Lord Somerville. The bish- 
op said he remembered his complaining of it at his father's, at Kensing- 
ton Gore ; it had been ' such a willful misnuderstanding.' Macaulay said 
that there are in his works two distinctions, the one the most complete, 
the other the most incomplete, that he remembers. The first is : ' There 
are two kinds of sleep : one with your night-cap, and the other without 
it.' The second : ' There are three kinds of bread : white bread, brown 
bread, and rolls.' At the end the bishop and I fought a mesmeric and 
electro-biological battle against the scornful opposition of all the rest."* 

" Maxj 15tA. — Breakfasted with the Bishop of Oxford. It was remarka- 
bly pleasant ; a little on derivations.t As an instance of unlucky quota- 
tion I gave Lord Fitzwilliam's, when calling on the Dissenters to join, the 
Established Clergy in subscribing for the rebuilding of York Minster, 

Flectere si nequeo superos Acheronta movebo. 

Van de Weyer remarked on the English horror of false quantities, which 
Macaulay defended justly on the plea that no one is bound to quote. No 
one resents the Duke of Wellington, in the theatre at Oxford, having call- 
ed it Carolns, after being corrected for saying JacObus. It was the duke's 
advice to Sir George Murray, when he said he never should be able to get 
on with speaking in the Commons, ' Say what you have to say, don't quote 
Latin, and sit down.' " 

"May ^tli. — Dined at the Club. The talk ran for some time on whether 
the north or south of dififerent countries had contributed most to their lit- 
erature. I remained on with Macaulay and Milman. The first gave a list 
of six poets, whom he places above all others, in the order of his prefer- 
ence : Shakspeare, Homer, Dante, Jischylus, Milton, Sophocles. Milman, 
on the whole, acquiesced. I fought some battle for Virgil coming before 

* Macaulay's account of the evening is: "Pleasant party at the Club: 
but we got a little too disputatious at last about mesmerism and clair- 
voyance. It is di^oult to discuss such matters without using language 
which seems to reflect on the understanding of those who believe what 
you think absurd. However, we kept within tolerable bounds." 

"t Lord Carlisle elsewhere says : " The conversation rather etymological, 
as perhaps it is too apt to be in this society." 



176 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xi. 

Sophocles : but 'What,' said Maoaulay, ' did Virgil ever write like the Phi- 
loctetes ?' He would place Lucretius and Ariosto before him. He thinks 
the iirst part of Henry the Fourth* Shakspeare's beat comic play; then 
the second part ; then ' Twelfth Night :' but Shakspeare's plays are not to 
be classed into Tragedy and Comedy. It was the object of the Elizabeth- 
an drama, the highest form of composition he can conceive, to represent life 
as it is.'' 

"February Uth, 1852. — Dined at Mrs. Drummond's. Trevelyans, Strutts, 
Fords, Meri vales, Macaulay. It was very pleasant. Macaulay and Mrs. 
Strutt both own to the feeling Doctor Johnson had, of thinking one's self 
bound sometimes to touch a particular rail or post, and to tread always in 
the middle of the paving-stone. I certainly have had this very strongly. 
Macaulay wished that he could spend a day of every century in London 
since the Romans ; though of the two he would rather spend a day in it 
eighteen hundred years hence, than eighteen hundred years ago, as he can 
less easily conceive it. We agreed there can never have been thirty years 
in which all mechanical improvements have made so much progress as in 
the last thirty; but he looks on printing as a greater discovery than steam, 
but not near so rapid in its obvious results. He told us of two letters he 
had received from America : one from a Mr. Crump, offering him five hun- 
dred dollars if he could introduce the name of Crump into his 'History:' 
another from a Young Men's Philosophical Society in New York, beginning, 
'Possibly our fame has not pinioned the Atlantic.'" 

"May 4fA. — ^Dined with the Club. Very pleasant, though select. Some- 
thing led to my reminding Lord Aberdeen that we both put 'Macbeth' the 
first of Shakspeare's great plays. Lord Lansdowne quite concurred. Mac- 
aulay thinks it may be a little owing to our recollections of Mrs. Siddons. 
He is much inclined to rank them thus: 'OtheUo,' 'Lear,' 'Macbeth,' 
'Hamlet.'"* 

" November 29i/i. — Breakfasted with Macaulay. He thinks that, though 
the last eight books of 'Paradise Lost' contain incomparable beauties, 
Milton's fame would have stood higher if only the first four had been pre- 
served. He would then have been placed above Homer." 

* In the course of the next month there was a breakfast at the Bishop 
of Oxford's. "Extremely agreeable," writes Lord Carlisle, "and would 
have been still more so, but there was a tendency to talk very loud, and 
all at once." On this occasion Macaulay told a story about one of the 
French prophets of the seventeeth century, who came into the Court of 
Queen's Bench and announced that the Holy Ghost had sent him to com- 
mand Lord Holt to enter a nolle prosequi. " If," said Lord Holt, " the Holy 
Ghost had wanted a nolle prosequi, he would have bid you apply to the at- 
torney-general. The Holy Ghost knows that I can not enter a nolle prose- 
qui. But there is one thing which I can do. I can lay a lying knave by 
the heels ;'' and thereupon he committed him to prison. 



1847-'49.] LOKD MACAULAY. I77 

There is nothing very attractive in a memorandum which 
baldly chronicles the fact that on a certain day, jS.ve-and-twen- 
ty years ago, Hallam and Milman and Macaulay undertook 
to classify in order of excellence the Greek tragedians or the 
Elizabethan dramatists. Eut it must be remembered that ev- 
ery one of these entries represents an hour of glowing decla- 
mation and sparkling repartee, interspersed with choice pas- 
sages from the writer whose merits were in question, recited 
as poetry is recited by men who learn without effort and ad- 
mire without affectation. "When I praise an author," Mac- 
aulay used to say, " I love to give a sample of his wares." 
That sample was sometimes only too favorable. He had so 
quick an eye for literary effect — so grateful was he to any 
book which had pleased him even for a moment — that he 
would pick out from such a book, and retain forever in his 
memory, what was perhaps the single telling anecdote or well- 
turned couplet which could be discovered in its pages.* A 
pointed story, extracted from some trumpery memoir of the 
last century, and retold in his own words— a purple patch from 
some third-rate sermon or political treatise, woven into the 
glittering fabric of his talk with that art which in his case was 
a second nature — have often and often tempted his younger 
hearers into toiling through volume after volume of prosy or 
flippant trash, in which a good paragraph was as rare as a sil- 
ver spoon in a dust-heap. 

"Whatever fault might be found with IVTacaulay'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 walk- 

* "My father," says Sara Coleridge, "had a way of seizing upon the one 
hright thing out of long tracts of dull and tedious matter. I rememher a 
great campanula which grew in a wood at Keswick. Two or three such I 
found in my native vale during the course of my flower-seeking days. As 
well might we present one of these as a sample of the blue-bells of bonny 
Cumberland, or the one or two oxslips which may be found among a mul- 
titude of cowslips in a Somersetshire meadow, as specimens of the flower- 
hood of the field — as give these extracts for proof of what the writer was 
generally wont to produce." 

Vol. II.— 12 



178 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xi. 

ing-stick ; knitting his great eyebrows if the subject was one 
whicli had to be thought out as he went along, or brighten- 
ing from the forehead downward 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 intelli- 
gible language. To get at his meaning, people had never the 
need to think twice, and they certainly had seldom the time. 
And with aU his ardor, and all his strength and energy of con- 
viction, he was so truly considerate toward others, so delicate- 
ly courteous with the courtesy which is of the essence, and not 
only in the manner! However eager had been the debate, 
and however prolonged the sitting, no one in the company 
ever had personal reasons for wishing a word of his unsaid, or 
a look or a tone recalled. His good things were never long in 
the making. During the CafEre war, at a time when we were 
getting rather the worst of it, he opened the street-door for 
a walk down Westboume Terrace. " The blacks are flying," 
said his companion. "I wish they were in South Africa," 
was the instant reply. His quotations were always ready, and 
never off the mark. On a Sunday afternoon, when the fami- 
ly were engaged in discussing a new curate, one of the chil- 
dren, with true Clapham instinct, asked whether the reverend 
gentleman had ever received a testimonial. " I am glad, my 
boy," said Macaulay, " that you would not muzzle the ox that 
treadeth out the com." Sometimes he would recast his 
thoughts, and give them over again in the shape of an epi- 
gram. " You call me a Liberal," he said ; " but I don't know 
that in these days I deserve the name. I am opposed to the 
abolition of standing armies. I am opposed to the abrogation 
of capital punishment. I am opposed to the destruction of 
the National Church. In short, I am in favor of war, hang- 
ing, and Church establishments." 

He was always willing to accept a friendly challenge to a 
feat of memory. One day, in the board-room of the British 
Musemn, Sir David Dundas saw him hand to Lord Aberdeen 
a sheet of foolscap covered with writing arranged in three 
parallel columns down each of the four pages. This docu- 



1847-'49.] LORD MACAULAY. I79 

ment, of which the ink was still wet, proved to be a full list 
of the senior wranglers at Cambridge, with their dates and 
colleges, for the hundred years during which the names of 
senior wranglers had been recorded in the University Calen- 
dar. On another occasion. Sir David asked, "Macaulay, do 
you know your popes?" "]Sro,"was the answer; "I always 
get wrong among the innocents." "But can you say your 
Archbishops of Canterbury ?" "Any fool," said Macaulay, 
"could say his Archbishops of Canterbury backward;" and 
he went off at score, drawing breath only once in order to re- 
mark on the oddity of there having been both an Archbishop 
Bancroft and an Archbishop Bancroft, until Sir David stop- 
ped him at Cranmer.* 

Macaulay could seldom be tempted to step outside his own 
immediate circle of friends and relations. His distaste for the 
chance society of a London drawing-room increased as years 
went on. Like Casaubon of old, he was well aware that a 
man can not live with the idlers, and with the Muses too. 
" He was peculiarly susceptible," says Lady Trevelyan, " of 
the feeling of ennui when in company. He really hated stay- 
ing out, even in the best and most agreeable houses. It was 
with an effort that he even dined out, and few of those who 
met him, and enjoyed his animated conversation, could guess 
how much rather he woidd have remained at home, and how 
much difficulty I had to force him to accept invitations and 
prevent his growing a recluse. But, though he was very easi- 
ly bored in general society, I think he never felt ennui when 
he was alone, or when he was with those he loved. Many 
people are very fond of children, but he was the only person 
I ever knew who never tired of being with them. Often has 
he come to our house, at Clapham or in "Westbourne Terrace, 
directly after breakfast, and, finding me out, has dawdled away 
the whole morning with the children ; and then, after sitting 



* Macanlay was proud of his good memory, and had little sympathy 
with people who affected to have a bad one. In a note on the margin of 
one of his books he reflects upon this not uncommon form of self-deprecia- 
tion, " They appear to reason thus : The more memory, the less invention." 



180 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap.xl 

with me at lunch, has taken Margaret a long walk through 
the City which lasted the whole afternoon. Such days are al- 
ways noted in his journals as especially happy." 

It is impossible to exaggerate the pleasure which Macaulay 
took in children, or the delight which he gave them. He was, 
beyond all comparison, the best of playfellows ; 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 au- 
dience. An old friend of the family writes to my sister. Lady 
Holland : " I well remember that there was one never-failing 
game of building up a den with newspapers behind the sofa, 
and of enacting robbers and tigers ; you shrieking with terror, 
but always fascinated, and begging him to begin again : and 
there was a daily recurring observation from him that, after 
all, children were the only true poets." 

Whenever he was at -a distance from his little companions, 
he consoled himself and them by the exchange of long and 
frequent letters. The earliest in date of those which he wrote 
in prose begins as follows : 

September 15th, 1842. 
Mt deae Baba,* — Thank you for your very pretty letter. 
I am always glad to make my little girl happy, and nothing 
pleases me so much as to see that she likes books. For, when 
she is as old as I am, she will find that they are better than 
all the tarts, and cakes, and toys, and plays, and sights in the 
world. If any body would make me the greatest king that 
ever lived, with palaces, and gardens, and fine dinners, and 
wine, and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of serv- 
ants, on condition that I would not read books, I would not be 
a king. I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty 
of books, than a king who did not love reading- 
Five years later on he writes: "I must begin sooner. or 

* Baba was a pet name for his niece Margaret, derived from the Indian 
nursery. 



and, 



1847-'49.] • LOED MACAULAY. 181 

later to call you ' Margaret ;' and I am always making good 
resolutions to do so, and then breaking them. But I will pro- 
crastinate no longer. 

Procrastination is the thief of time, 

says Dr. Young. He also says, 

Be wise to-day. 'Tis madness to defer, 

Next day the fatal precedent will plead. 

That is to say, if I do not take care, I shall go on calling my 
darling ' Baba ' till she is as old as her mamma, and has a doz- 
en Babas of her own. Therefore I wiU be wise to-day and 
call her ' Margaret.' I should very much like to see you and 
Aunt Eanny at Broadstairs : but I fear, I fear, that it can not 
,be. Tour aunt asks me to shirk the Chelsea Board. I am 
staying in England chiefly, in order to attend it. When Par- 
liament is not sitting, my duty there is all that I do for two 
thousand fotu- hundred pounds a year. We must have some 
conscience. 

" Michaehnas will, I hope, find us all at Clapham over a no- 
ble goose. Do you remember the beautiful Puseyite hymn 
on Michaelmas-day ? It is a great favorite with all the Trac- 
tarians. You and Alice should learn it. It begins : 

Though Quakers scowl, though Baptists howl, 

Though Plymouth Brethren rage, 
We Churchmen gay will wallow to-day 

In apple-sauce, onions, and sage. 

Ply knife and fork, and draw the cork, 

And have the bottle handy : 
For each slice of goose will introduce 

A thimbleful of brandy. 

Is it not good? I wonder who the author can be. Not 'Nevf- 
man, I think. It is above him. Perhaps it is Bishop Wilber- 
force." 

The following letter is in a graver tone, as befits the cor- 
respondent of a young lady who has only two years of the 
school-room stiU before her : 



182 LIFE Aim LETTERS OP [chap. xi. 

October 14th, 1851. 

Deae Maegaeet, — Tell me how you like Schiller's " Mary 
Stuart." It is not one of my favorite pieces. I should put 
it fourth among his plays. I arrange them thus : " Wallen- 
stein," ""William Tell," "Don Carlos," "Mary Stuart," the 
" Maid of Orleans." At a great interval comes the " Bride 
of Messina ;" and then, at another great interval, " Fieschi." 
" Cabal and Love " I never could get through. " The Eob- 
bers " is a mere school-boy rant, below serious criticism, but 
not without indications of mental vigor which required to be 
disciplined by much thought and study. But though I do not 
put " Mary Stuart " very high among Schiller's works, I think 
the Fotheringay scenes in the fifth act equal to any thing that 
he ever wrote — indeed, equal to any thing dramatic that has 
been produced in Europe siace Shakspeare. I hope that you 
will feel the wondei'ful truth and beauty of that pai't of the 
play. 

I can not agree with you in admiring " Sintram." There 
is an age at which we are disposed to think that whatever is 
odd and extravagant is great. At that age we are liable to be 
taken in by such orators as Irving, such painters as Fuseli, 
such plays as " The Eobbers," such romances as " Sintram." A 
better time comes, when we would give all Fuseli's hobgob- 
lins for one of Eeynolds's little children, and all Sintram's dia- 
logues with Death and the Devil for one speech of Mrs. ISTor- 
ris or Miss Bates. Tell me, however, as of course you will, 
quite truly what you think of " Sintram." 

I saw a description of myself yesterday in a New York pa- 
per. The writer says that I am a stout man, with hazel eyes ; 
that I always walk with an umbrella ; that I sometimes bang 
the umbrella against the ground ; that I often dine in the cof- 
fee-room of the Trafalgar on fish ; that once he saw me break 
a decanter there, but that I did not appear to be at all 
ashamed of my awkwardness, but called for my bill as coolly 
as if nothing had happened. I have no recollection of such 
an occurrence ; but, if it did take place, I do not think that it 
would have deprived me of my self-possession. This is fame. 
This is the advantage of making a figure in the world. 



1847-'49.] LOED MACAULAY. 183 

This has beeii the last week of the Great Exhibition. It 
makes me quite sad to think of our many, many happy walks 
there. To-morrow I shall go to the final ceremony, and try to 
hear the Bishop of London's thanksgiving, in which I shall 
very cordially join. This will long be remembered as a sin- 
gularly happy year, of peace, plenty, good feeling, innocent 
pleasure, national glory of the best and purest sort., 

I have bespoken a Schiller for you. It is in the binder's 
hands, and will be ready, I hope, before your return. 

Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. 

His poetical, no less than his epistolary, style was carefully 
adapted to the age and understanding of those whom he was 
addressing. Some of his pieces of verse are almost perfect 
specimens of the nursery lyric. From five to ten stanzas in 
length, and with each word carefully formed in capitals, most 
comforting to the eyes of a student who is not very sure of 
his small letters, they are real children's poems, and they pro- 
fess to be nothing more. They contain none of those strokes 
of satire, and allusions to the topics and personages of the day, 
by which the authors of what is now called juvenile literature 
so often attempt to prove that they are fit for something bet- 
ter than the task on which they are engaged. But this very 
absence of pretension, which is the special merit of these trifles, 
renders them unworthy of a place in a book intended for 
grown-up readers. There are, however, few little people be- 
tween three and five years old who would not care to hear 
how 

There once was a nice little girl, 

With a nice little rosy face. 
She always said " Oar Father," 
And she always said her grace : 

and how, as the reward of her good behavior, 

They brought the browned potatoes, 

And minced veal, nice and hot, 
And such a good bread-pudding, 

All smoking from the pot ! 



184 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap.xi. 

And there are still fewer who would be indifferent to the fate 
which befell the two boys who talked in church, when 

The beadle got a good big stick, 

Thicker than uncle's thumb. 
Oh, what a fright those boys were in 

To see the beadle come ! 

And they were turned out of the church, 

And they were soundly beat : 
And both those wicked, naughty boys 

Went bawling down the street. 

All his rhymes, whether written or improvised, he put down 
to the credit of " The Judicious Poet." The gravity with 
which he maintained the innocent delusion was too much for 
children, who more than half believed in the existence of a 
writer for whose collected works they searched the library in 
vain ; though their faith was from time to time shaken by the 
almost miraculous applicability of a quotation to the most un- 
expected circumstances of the moment. St. "Valentine's Day 
brought Macaulay's nieces a yearly offering of rhyme, until 
he thought them too old to care for verses which he himself 
pronounced to be on a level with the bellman's, but which are 
certainly as good, and probably as sincere, as nine-tenths of the 
pastoral poetry that has been written during the last two cent- 
uries. In 1847 the annual effusion ran as follows : 

And canst thou spurn a kneeling bard. 

Mine own, mine only "Valentine ? 
The heart of beauty still is hard, 

But ne'er was heart so hard as thine. 
Each year a shepherd sings thy praise, 

And sings it in no vulgar strain ; 
Each year a shepherd ends his days, 

A victim to thy cold disdain. 

In forty-five, relentless maid. 

For thee melodious Strephon died ; 
For thee was gentle Thyrsis laid. 

In forty-six, by Strephon's side. 



1847-'49.] LOED MACAULAY. 185 

The swain who to thy footstool bears, 
Next spring, the tribute of his verses, 

Will tell thee that poor Damon shares 
The grave of Strephon and of Thyrsis. 

Then will the whole Arcadian choir 

Their sweetest songster's fate bemoan, 
Hang o'er his tomb his crook and lyre, 
And carve this ditty on the stone : 
" Stop, passenger. Here Damon lies, 
Beloved of aU the tuneful nine ; 
The third who perished by the eyes 
Of one too-charming Valentine.'' 

The BrokeiJ-heaeted Damon. 

The longest and the most elaborate of these little composi- 
tions was addressed to the daughter of Earl Stanhope, now 
the Coimtess Beauchamp. The allusion to the statiie of Mr. 
Pitt in Hanover Square is one of the happiest touches that 
can be found in Macaulay's writings. 

Good-morrow, gentle child, and then 

Again good-morrow, and ^again. 

Good-morrow following still good-morrow, 

Without one cloud of strife or sorrow. 

And when the god to whom we pay 

In jest our homages to-day 

Shall come to claim, no more in jest. 

His rightful empire o'er thy breast, 

Benignant may his aspect be, 

His yoke the truest liberty : 

And if a tear his power confess. 

Be it a tear of happiness ! 

It shall be so. The Muse displays 

The future to her votary's gaze. 

Prophetic rage my bosom swells. 

I taste the cake ! I hear the bells ! 

From Conduit Street the close array 

Of chariots barricades the way 

To where I see, with outstretched hand, 

Majestic, thy great kinsman stand. 

And half unbend his brow of pride, 

As welcoming so fait a bride. 



186 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. xi. 

The feelings with which Maeaulay regarded children were 
near akin to those of the great writer to whom we owe the 
death of little Paul, and the meeting between the school-boy 
and his mother in the eighth chapter of " David Copperfield." 
"Have you seen the first number of Dombey?" he writes. 
"There is not much in it; but there is one passage which 
made me cry as if my heart would break. It is the descrip- 
tion of a little girl who has lost an affectionate mother, and 
is unkindly treated by every body. Images of that sort al- 
ways overpower me, even when the artist is less skillful than 
Dickens." In truth, Macaalay's extreme sensibihty to all 
which appealed to the sentiment of pity, whether in art or in 
nature, was nothing short of a positive inconvenience to him.* 
He was so moved by the visible representation of distressing 
scenes that he went most unwillingly to the theatre, for which 
during his Cambridge days he had entertained a passion- 
ate though passing f ondness.f I remember well how, during 
the performance of " Masks and Faces," the sorrows of the 
broken-down author and his starving family in their Grub 
Street garret entirely destroyed the pleasure which he other- 
wise would have taken in Mrs. Stirling's admirable acting. 
And he was hardly less easily affected to tears by that which 
was sublime and stirring in literature, than by that which was 
melancholy and pathetic. In August, 1851, he writes from 
Malvern to his niece Margaret : " I finished the ' Iliad ' to-day. 
I had not read it through since the end of 1837, when I was 
at Calcutta, and when you often called me away from my 
studies to show you pictui-es and to feed the crows. I never 
admired the old fellow so much, or was so strongly moved by 

* "April nth, 1858. — In the Times of this morning there was an account 
of a suicide of a poor girl which quite broke my heart. I can not get it 
out of my thoughts, or help crying when I think of it." 

+ 1 recollect hearing Maeaulay describe the wonder and delight with 
which, during a long vacation spent at the university, he saw his first 
play acted by a strolling company in the Barnwell Theatre. " Did you, 
then, never go to the play as a boy ?" asked some one who was present. 
" No," said he ; " after the straitest sect of our religion I was bred a Phar- 
isee." 



1847-'49.] LOED MACAULAT. 187 

him. What a privilege genius like his enjoys ! I could not 
tear myself away. I read the last five books at a stretch dur- 
ing my walk to-day, and was at last forced to turn into a by- 
path, lest the parties of walkers should see me blubbering for 
imaginary beings, the creations of a ballad -maker who has 
been dead two thousand seven hundred years. What is the 
power and glory of Caesar and Alexander to that? Think 
what it would be to be assured that the inhabitants of Mono- 
motapa would weep over one's writings Anno Domini 4551 !" 

Macaulay was so devoid of egotism, and exacted so little 
deference and attention from those with whom he lived, that 
the young people around him were under an illusion which to 
this day it is pleasant to recall. It was long, very long, before 
we guessed that the world thought much of one who appear- 
ed to think so little of himself. I remember telling my 
school-fellows that I had an uncle who was about to publish a 
" History of England " in two volumes, each containing six 
hundi'ed and fifty pages ; but it never crossed my mind that 
the work in question would have any thing to distinguish it 
except its length. As years went on, it seemed strange and 
unnatural to hear him more and more frequently talked of as 
a great man ; and we slowly, and almost reluctantly, awoke to 
the conviction that "Uncle Tom" was cleverer, as weU as 
more good-natured, than his neighbors. 

Among other tastes which he had in common with children 
was an avidity for sight-seeing. " What say you," he asks 
Mr. Ellis, " to a visit to the Chinese Museum ? It is the most 
interesting and curious sight that I know. If you like the 
plan, I will call on you at four. Or will you call on me ? 
For I am half-way between the Temple and the wonders of 
the Celestial empire." And again : " We treated the Clifton 
Zoo much too contemptuously. I lounged thither, and found 
more than sixpennyworth of amusement." "After breakfast 
I went to the Tower," he writes in his journal of 1839 : " I 
found great changes. The wild beasts were all gone. The 
Zoological Gardens have driven paved courts and dark narrow 
cages quite out of fashion. I was glad for the sake of the 
tigers and leopards." 



188 LIFE AIO) LETTERS OF [chap.xi. 

He was never so happy as when he could spend an after- 
noon in taking his nieces and nephews a round of London 
sights, until, to use his favorite expression, they " could not 
drag one leg after the other." 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 every thing that we liked 
best was accompanied by oysters, caviare, and olives, some of 
which delicacies 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 
Kegent's Park, or to the enjoyment of the delicious terror in- 
spired by Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors. When 
the more attractive exhibitions had been exhausted by too 
frequent visits, he would enliven with his iiTepressible 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 innu- 
merable anecdotes, paraphrased off-hand from the pages of 
Plutarch and Suetonius. One of these expeditions is described 
in a letter to my mother in January, 1845 : " Fanny brought 
George and Margaret, with Charley Cropper, to the Albany 
at one yesterday. I gave them some dinner : fowl, ham, mar- 
row-bones, tart, ice, olives, and Champagne. I found it diffi- 
cult to think of any sight for the children : however, I took 
them to the National Gallery, and was excessively amused 
with the airs of connoisseurship which Charley and Margaret 
gave themselves, and with Georgy's honestly avowed weari- 
ness : ' Let us go. There is nothing here that I care for at 
all.' When I put him into the carriage, he said, half sulkily : 
' I do not call this seeing sights. I have seen no sight to-day.' 
Many a man who has laid out thirty thousand pounds on 
paintings would, if he spoke the truth, own that he cared as 
little for the art as poor Georgy." 

Eegularly every Easter, when the closing of the public of- 
fices drove my father from the Treasury for a brief holiday, 
Macaulay took our family on a tour among cathedral-towns. 



1847-'49.] LORD MACATJLAY. 189 

varied by an occasional visit to the universities. We started 
on the Thursday ; spent Good-Friday in one city and Easter 
Sunday in another, and went back to town on the Monday. 
This year it was Worcester and Gloucester; the next, York 
and Lincoln ; then Lichfield and Chester, IS^orwich and Peter- 
borough, Ely and Cambridge, Salisbury and Winchester. E'ow 
and then the routine was interrupted by a trip to Paris, or to 
the great churches on the Loire ; but in the course of twenty 
years we had inspected at least once all the cathedrals of En- 
gland, or indeed of England and Wales, for we carried our re- 
searches after ecclesiastical architecture as far down in the list 
as Bangor. " Our party just filled a railway carriage," says 
Lady Trevelyan, " and the journey found his flow of spirits 
unfailing. It was a return to old times; a running fire of 
jokes, rhymes, puns, never ceasing. It was a peculiarity of his 
that he never got tired on a journey. As the day wore on he 
did not feel the desire to lie back and be quiet, and he liked 
to find his companions ready to be entertained to the last." 

Any one who reads the account of Norwich and Bristol in 
the third chapter, or the account of Magdalen College in the 
eighth chapter, of the " History," may form an idea of Macau- 
lay's merits as a cicerone in an old English provincial capital. 
To walk with him round the walls of York, or through the 
Eows of Chester ; to look up at the towers of Lichfield from 
the spot where Lord Brooke received his death-wound, or down 
upon Durham from the brow of the hill behind Neville's 
Cross ; to hear him discourse on Monmouth and Bishop Ken 
beneath the roof of Longleat Hall, or give the rein to all the 
fancies and reminiscences, political, personal, and historical, 
which were conjured up by a drive past Old Sarum to Stone- 
henge, were privileges which a child could appreciate, but 
which the most learned of scholars might have envied. 

When we returned to our inn in the evening, it was only 
an exchange of pleasures. Sometimes he would translate to us 
choice morsels from Greek, Latin, Italian, or Spanish writers, 
with a vigor of language and vivacity of manner which com- 
municated to his impromptu version not a little of the air and 
the charm of the original. Sometimes he would read from 



190 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xi. 

the works of Sterne, or Smollett, or Fielding those scenes to 
which ladies might listen, but which they could not well vent- 
ure to pick out for themselves. And when we had heard 
enough of the siege of Carthagena in " Eoderick Eandom," 
or of Lieutenant Le Fevre's death in " Tristram Shandy," we 
would fall to capping verses, or stringing rhymes, or amusing 
ourselves with some game devised for the occasion which oft- 
en made a considerable demand upon the memory or inven- 
tion of the players. Of these games only a single trace re- 
mains. One of his nieces, unable to forecast the future of her 
sex, had expressed a regret that she could never hope to go 
in for a college examination. Macaulay thereupon produced 
what he was pleased to call a paper of questions in divinity, 
the contents of which afford a curious proof how constantly 
the lighter aspects of English sectarianism were present to his 
thoughts. The first three questions ran as follows : 

1. "And this is law, I will maintain 
Until my dying day, sir, 
That whatsoever king shall reign, 
I'll be the Vicar of Bray, sir." 

" Then read Paul's epistles, 
You rotten Arminian ! 
You won't find a passage 
To support your opinion." 

" When the lads of the village so merrily, ah 1 
Sound their tabors, I'll hand thee along. 
And verily, verily, verily, ah ! 

Thou and I will be first in the throng." 

To what sects did the three persons belong who express their sentiments 
in the three passages cited above ? Is there any thing in the third pas- 
sage at variance with the usages of the sect to which it relates ? Which 
of those three sects do you prefer? Which of the three bears the closest 
resemblance to Popery? Where is Bray? Through what reigns did the 
political life of the Vicar of Bray extend ? 
* 2. Define " Jumper," " Shaker," " Ranter," " Diinker." 

3. Translate the following passage into the Quakerio dialect : " You and 
Sir Edward Eyan breakfasted with me on Friday, the 11th of December." 

Like all other men who play with a will, and who work to 



1847-'49.] LORD MACAULAT. 191 

a purpose, Macaulay was very well aware of the distinction 
between work and play. He did not carry on the business of 
his life by desultory efforts, or in the happy moments of an 
elegant inspiration. Men have disputed, and will long con- 
tinue to dispute, whether or not his fame was deserved ; but 
no one who himself has written books will doubt that, at any 
rate, it was hardly earned. " Take at hazard," says Thack- 
eray, " any three pages of the ' Essays ' or ' Histoiy ;' and, glim- 
mering below the stream of the narrative, you, an average 
reader, see one, two, three, a half-score of allusions to other 
historic facts, characters, literature, poetry, with which you are 
acquainted. Your neighbor, who has his reading and his lit- 
tle stock of literature stowed away in his mind, shall detect 
more points, allusions, happy touches, indicating not only the 
prodigious memory and vast learning of this master, but the 
wonderful industry, the honest, humble previous toil of this 
great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence; 
he travels a hundred miles to make a line of description." 

That this praise, though high, was not excessive, is amply 
proved by that portion of Macaulay's papers which extends 
over the period when his " History " was in course of prepara- 
tion. Justice demands that, even at the risk of being tedious, 
a specimen should be given of the scrupulous care and the un- 
flagging energy with which he conducted his investigations. 

July 17th, 1848. 
Deae Ellis, — Many thanks for your kindness. Pray let 
Dr. Hook know, whenever you have an opportunity, how much 
I am obliged to him.* The information which he has pro- 
cured for me, I am sorry to say, is not such as I can use. But 
you need not tell him so. I feel convinced that he has made 
some mistake : for he sends me only a part of the Leeds buri- 
als in 1685 ; and yet the number is double that of the Man- 
chester burials in the same year. If the ordinary rules of cal- 
culation are applied to these data, it will be found that Leeds 
must in 1685 have contained 16,000 souls or thereabouts. 

* Mr. Ellis was Eeoorder of Leeds, and Dr. Hook its vicar. 



192 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.xi. 

Now, at the beginning of the American war Leeds contained 
only 16,000 sonls, as appears from Dr. Hook's own letter. No- 
body can suppose that there had been no increase between 
1685 and 1775. Besides, neither York nor Exeter contained 
16,000 inhabitants in 1685, and nobody who knows the state 
of things at that time can believe that Leeds was then a great- 
er town than York or Exeter. Either some error has been 
committed, or else there was an extraordinary mortality at 
Leeds in 1685. In either case the numbers are useless for my 
purpose. Ever yours, T. B. M. 

July 27th, 1848. 

Dear Ellis, — Many thanks. "Wardell* is the man. He 
gives a much better thing than a list of burials ; a list of the 
houses returned by the hearth-money collectors. It appears 
that Leeds contained, in 1663, just 1400 houses. And ob- 
serve ; all the townships are included. The average number 
of people to a house in a country town was, according to the 
best statistical writers of the seventeenth century, 4-3. If that 
estimate be just, Leeds must, in 1663, have contained about 
6000 souls. As it increased in trade and wealth during the 
reign of Charles II., we may well suppose that in 1685 the 
population was near 8000 ; that is to say, about as much as 
the population of Manchester. I had expected this result 
from observing that by the writers of that time . Manchester 
and Leeds are always mentioned as of about the same size. 
But this evidence proves to demonstration either that there 
was some mistake about the number of burials, or that the 
year 1685 was a singularly unhealthy year, from which no in- 
ference can be drawn. One person must have died in every 
third house within twelve months ; a rate of mortality quite 
frightful. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulat. 

It must be remembered that these letters represent only a 
part of the trouble which Macaulay underwent in order to in- 
sure the cori'ectness of five and a half lines of print. He had 
a right to the feeling of self-satisfaction which, a month later 

* The author of the " Municipal History of the Borough of Leeds." 



1847-'49.] LOED MACAULAY. I93 

on, allowed him to say : " I am -working intensely, and, I hope, 
not unsuccessfully. My third chapter, which is the most diffi- 
cult part of my task, is done, and, I think, not ill done." Any 
one who will turn to the description of the town of Leeds, and 
will read the six paragraphs that precede it and the three that 
follow it, may form a conception of the pains which those 
clear and flowing periods must have cost an author who ex- 
pended on the pointing of a phrase as much conscientious re- 
search as would have provided some writers who speak of 
Macaulay as showy and shallow with at least half a dozen 
pages of ostentatious statistics. 

On the 8th of February, 1849, after the publication of his 
first two volumes, he writes in his journal : " I have now made 
up my mind to change my plan about my 'History.' I will 
first set myself to know the whole subject ; to get, Iby reading 
and traveling, a full acquaintance with "William's reign. I 
reckon that it will take me eighteen months to do this. I 
must visit Holland, Belgium, Scotland, Ireland, France. The 
Dutch archives and French archives must be ransacked. I 
will see whether any thing is to be got from other diplomatic 
collections. I must see Londonderry, the Boyne, Aghrim, 
Limerick, Kinsale, Namur again, Landen, Steinkirk. I must 
turn over hundreds, thousands, of pamphlets. Lambeth, the 
Bodleian, and the other Oxford libraries,* the Devonshire 

* " October 2d, 1854. — I called on the warden of All Souls', -who was the 
only soul in residence. He was most kind ; got me the manuscript of Nar- 
cissus Luttrell's Diary — seven thick volumes in cramped writing — put me 
into a comfortable room ; and then left me to myself. I worked till past 
five ; then walked for an hour or so, and dined at my inn, reading Cooper's 
'Pathfinder.' 

" October 3d — I went to All Souls' at ten, and worked till five. Nar- 
cissus is dreadfully illegible in 1696 ; but that matters the less, as by that 
time the newspapers had come in. I found some curious things. The 
Jacobites had a way of drinking treasonable healths by limping about the 
rooms with glasses at their lips. 

To limp meant L. Lewis XIV. 
I. James. 

M. Mary of Modena. 
P. Prince of Wales. 
Vol. II.— 13 



194 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.xi. 

Papers, the British Museum, must be explored, and notes 
made : and then I shall go to work. When the materials are 
ready, and the History mapped out in my mind, I ought easi- 
ly to wi'ite, on an average, two of my pages daily. In two 
years from the time I begin writing I shall have more than 
finished my second part Then I reckon a year for polishing, 
retouching, and printing. This brings me to the autumn of 
1853. I like this scheme much. I began to-day with Avaux's 
dispatches from Ireland, abstracted almost a whole thick vol- 
ume, and compared his narrative with James's. There is much 
to be said as to these events." 

This programme was faithfully Carried out. He saw Glen- 
coe in rain and in sunshine : " Yet even with sunshine what 
a place it is ! The very valley of the shadow of death." He 
paid a second visit to Killiecrankie for the special purpose of 
walking up the old road which skirts the Garry, in order to 
verify the received accounts of the time spent by the Enghsh 
army in mounting the pass which they were to descend at 
a quicker rate. The notes made during his fortnight's torn* 
through the scenes of the Irish war are equal in bulk to a 
first-class article in the Edinburgh or Quarterly Reviews. He 
gives four closely written folio pages to the Boyne, and six to 
Londonderry. It is interesting to compare the shape which 
each idea took as it arose in his mind, with the shape in which 
he eventually gave it to the world. As he drove up the river 
from Drogheda he notices that "the country looked like a 
flourishing part of England. Corn-fields, gardens, woods, suc- 
ceeded each other just as in Kent and Warwickshire." And 
again: "Handsome seats, fields of wheat and clover, noble 
trees: it would be called a fine country even in Somerset- 

" October 4fA. — I have done -with All Souls'. At ten I went to the Bod- 
leian. I got out the Tanner MSS., and worked on them two or three 
hours. Then the Wharton MSS. Then the far more remarkahle Nalrne 
MSS. At three they rang me out. I do think that from ten to three is a 
very short time to keep so noble a library open. 

" October 5th. — Pamphlets in abundance ; but pamphlets I can get else- 
where; so I fell on the Naime MSS. again. I could amuse myself here ten 
years witliout a moment of ennui." 



1847-'49.] LORD MACAULAY. I95 

shire." In the sixteenth chapter of the " History" these hasty 
jottings have been transmuted into the sentences : " Beneath 
lay a ralley now so rich and so cheerful that an Englishman 
who gazes on it may imagine himself to be in one of the 
most highly favored parts of his own highly favored country. 
Fields of wheat, woodlands, meadows bright with daisies and 
clover, slope gently down to the edge of the Boyne." 

Macaulay passed two days in Londonderry, and made the 
most of each minute of daylight. He penetrated into every 
comer where there still lurked a vestige of the past, and called 
upon every inhabitant who was acquainted with any tradi- 
tion worth the hearing. He drove through the suburbs ; he 
sketched a ground-plan of the streets; alone or in company, 
he walked four times round the walls of the city for which he 
was to do what Thucydides had done for Platsea. A few ex- 
tracts from the voluminous records of those two days will give 
some notion of what Macaulay meant by saying that he had 
seen a town. 

"August Zlst, 1849. — I left a card for Captain Leach, of the Ordnance 
Survey, and then wandered round the •walls, and saw the cathedral. It 
has heen spoiled hy architects, who tried to imitate the Gothic style with- 
out knowing what they were about.* The choir, however, is neat and in- 
teresting. Leach came, a sensible, amiable young officer, as far as I could 
judge. I went agaiu round the walls with him. The circuit is a short 
one. It may be performed, I should say, in twenty minutes. Then we got 
into a car, crossed the wooden bridge, and took a view of the city from the 
opposite bank of the river. Walker's pillart is weU placed, and is not con- 

* " On the highest ground stood the cathedral, a church which, though 
erected when the secret of Gothic architecture was lost, and though ill 
qualified to sustain a comparison with the awful temples of the Middle 
Ages, is not without grace and dignity." — Macaulay's Sistory of England, 
ch. xii. 

t "A lofty pillar, rising from a bastion which bore during many weeks 
the heaviest fire of the enemy, is seen far up and far down the Foyle. On 
the summit is the statue of Walker, such as when, in the last and most 
terrible emergency, his eloquence roused the fainting courage of his breth- 
ren. In one hand he grasps a Bible. The other, pointing down the river, 
seems to direct the eyes of his famished audience to the English topmasts 
in the distant bay." 



196 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xi. 

temptible. The honest divine, in his canonicals, haranguing with vehe- 
mence, is at the top, and makes a tolerable figure at some distance. Then 
we crossed again, and drove to Boom Hall, so called from the memorable 
boom. The mistress of the house, a very civil lady, came out and acted 
as cicerone. We walked down to the very spot where the boom was fast- 
ened. It was secured by a chain which passed through the earth of the 
bank, and was attached to a huge stone. Our hospitable guide would in- 
sist that an iron ring fixed in one of the rocks close by had been part of 
the apparatus to secure the boom. I felt very skeptical, and my doubts 
were soon changed into certainties ; for I lifted up my eyes, and, about 
fifty yards ofi", I saw just such another ring fastened to another rock. I 
did not tell the good lady what I thought, but, as soon as we had taken 
our leave, I told Leach that these rings were evidently put there for the 
same purpose, that of securing shipping. He quite agreed with me, and 
seemed to admire my sagacious incredulity a great deal more than it at 
all deserved." 

" Saturday, September Is*. — As soon as I had breakfasted. Sir E. Ferguson 
came and walked round the walla with me. Then he took me to the read- 
ing-room, where I met Captain Leach, and a Mr. Gilmour, a great man here. 
They walked with me round the walls, which I have thus gone over four 
times. The bastions are planted as gardens. The old pieces of ordnance 
lie among the flowers and shrubs — strange, antique guns of the time of 
Elizabeth and Charles the First : Eoaring Meg, a present of the fish- 
mongers, with the date 1642; another piece of the same date, given by the 
vintners ; and another by the merchant tailors. The citizens are to the 
last degree jealous of the integrity of these walls.* No improvement which 
would deface them would be proposed without raising a storm : and I do 
not blame them. Every stone has some fact, or at least some legend, con- 
nected with it. I found no difficulty, sometimes, in separating the facts 
from the legends. The picture of the whole is in my mind, and I do not 
know that there would be any advantage in putting the plan on paper." 

* " The wall is carefully preserved ; nor would any plea of health or 
convenience be held by the inhabitants sufiicient to justify the demolition 
of that sacred inolosure, which, in the evil time, gave shelter to their race 

and their religion It is impossible not to respect the sentiment which 

indicates itself by these tokens. It is a sentiment which belongs to the 
higher and purer part of human nature, and which adds not a little to the 
strength of States. A people which takes no pride in the noble achieve- 
ments of remote ancestors will never achieve any thing to be remembered 
with pride by remote descendants. Yet it is impossible for the moralist or 
the statesman to look with unmixed complacency on the solemnities with 
which Londonderry commemorates her deliverance, and on the honors 
which she pays to those who saved her.'' 



1847-'49.] LOED MACAULAY. I97 

Put it on paper, however, he did ; and indeed, when em- 
ployed upon his " History," he habitually preserved iu writ- 
ing such materials as were gathered elsewhere than from the 
shelves of his own library, instead of continuing the facile, 
though hazardous, course which he had pursued as a review- 
er, and- trusting to his memory alone. The fruits of many a 
long hour passed among the Pepysian book-cases, the manu- 
scripts at Althorp, or the archives of the French War Office, 
were garnered into a multitude of pocket-books of every pos- 
sible shape and color. Of these a dozen stUl remain, ready to 
the hands of aiiy among Macaulay's remote heirs, who may be 
tempted to commit the posthumous treachery of publishing 
the commonplace-book of a great writer. 

His industry has had its reward. The extent and exactness 
of his knowledge have won him the commendation of learned 
and candid writers who have traveled over ground which he 
has trod before. Each, in his own particular field, recognizes 
the high quality of Macaulay's work ; and there is no testi- 
monial so valuable as the praise of an enlightened specialist. 
Such praise has been freely given by Mr. Bagehot, the editor 
of the Economist, in that delightful treatise which goes by 
the name of " Lombard Street." He commences one impor- 
tant section of the book with the sentence in which, except for 
its modesty, I am unwilling to find a fault : " The origin of 
the Bank of England has been told by Macaulay, and it is nev- 
er wise for an ordinary writer to tell again what he has told 
so much better." And Mr. Buckle, who was as well acquaint- 
ed with the social manners of our ancestors as is Mr. Bagehot 
with their finance, appends the following note to what is per- 
haps the most interesting chapter in his " History of Civiliza- 
tion :" " Every thing Mr. Macaulay has said on the contempt 
into which the clergy fell in the reign of Charles the Second 
is perfectly accurate ;* and, from evidence which I have col- 
lected, I know that this very able writer, of whose immense 

* "I shall soon have done this ecclesiastical part of my narrative. 
Some people may imagine that I infer too much from slight indications ; 
but no one who has not soaked his mind with the transitory literature of 
the day is reaUy entitled to judge." — Maamlay's Journal. 



198 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [Chap.xi. 

research few people are competent judges, has rather under- 
stated the case than overstated it. On several subjects I 
should venture to differ from Mr. Macaulay ; but I tan not re- 
frain from expressing my admiration of his unwearied dili- 
gence, of the consummate skill with which he has arranged 
his materials, and of the noble love of liberty which animates 
his entire work. These are qualities which wiU long survive 
the aspersions of his puny detractors^men who, in point of 
knowledge and ability, are unworthy to loosen the shoe-latchet 
of him they foolishly attack." 

The main secret of Maeaulay'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 

There is na workeman 
That can bothe ■worken 'wel and bastille. 
This must be done at leisure parfaitlie. 

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 im- 
pulse 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 con- 
sist 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. / It was from 
amidst a chaos of such hieroglyphics that Lady Trevelyan, 
after her brother's death, deciphered that account of the last 
days of William which fitly closes the " History."* 

* Lord Carlisle relates how Mr. Prescott, as a brother historian, was 
much interested by the sight of these manuscript sheets, " in which words 
are as much abbreviated as ' cle ' for ' castle.' " 



1847-'49.] LOED MACAUIAY. I99 

As soon as Maeaulay 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 eras- 
ures,* that, the whole six pages were, on an average, compress- 
ed into two pages of print. This portion he called his " task," 
and he was never quite easy imless he completed it daily. 
More he seldom sought to accomphsh ; 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.! "I had no heart to write," he says in his journal of 
March 6th, 1851. " I am too self-indulgent in this matter, it 
may be : and yet I attribute much of the success which I have 
had to my habit of writing only when I am in the humor, 
and of stopping as soon as the thoughts and words cease to 
flow fast. There are, therefore, few lees in my wine. It is 
all the cream of the bottle."t 



* Mr. Woodrow, in the preface to his collection of the Indian Education 
minutes, says : "Scarcely five consecutive lines in any of Macaulay's min- 
utes will be found unmarked by blots or corrections. He himself, in a min- 
ute dated November 3d, 1835, says, 'After blotting a great deal of paper, I 
can recommend nothing but a reference to the governor-general in Coun- 
cil.' My copyist was always able instantly to single out his writing by 
the multiplicity of corrections and blots which mark the page. These cor- 
rections are now exceedingly valuable. When the first master of the En- 
glish language corrects his own composition, which appeared faultless be- 
fore, the correction must be based on the highest rules of criticism." 

+ In small things as well as in great, Maeaulay held that what was 
worth doing at all was worth doing well. He had promised to compose 
an epitaph for his uncle, Mr. Babington. lu June, 1851, he writes : " My 
delay has not arisen from any want of respect or tenderness for my uncle's 
memory. I loved and honored him most sincerely. But the truth is, that 
I have not been able to satisfy myself People who are not accustomed to 
this sort of literary exercise often imagine that a man can do it as he can 
work a sum in rule of three, or answer an invitation to dinner. But these 
short compositions, in which every word ought to tell strongly, and in 
which there ought to be at once some point and much feeling, are not to 
he produced by mere labor. There must be a concurrence of luck with 
Industry. It is natural that those who have not considered the matter 
should think that a man, who has sometimes written ten or twelve effect- 
ive pages in a day, must certainly be able to write five lines in less than a 



200, LIFE AND LETTEKS OF [chap. xi. 

Macaulay never allowed a sentence to pass muster until it 
was as good as he could make it. He thought little of recast- 
ing a chapter in order to obtain a more lucid arrangement, 
and nothing whatever of reconstructing a paragraph for the 
sake of one happy stroke or apt illustration. Whatever the 
worth of his labor, at any rate it was a labor of love. 

Antonio Stradivari has an eye 

That winces at false work, and loves the true. 

Leonardo da Vinci would walk the whole length of Milan that 
he might alter a single tint in his picture of the Last Supper. 
Napoleon kept the returns of his army under his pillow at 
night, to refer to in case he was sleepless ; and would set him- 
self problems at the Opera while the overture was playing : 
" I have ten thousand men at Strasbourg ; fifteen thousand at 
Magdeburg ; twenty thousand at Wurtzburg. By what stages 
must they march so as to arrive at Eatisbon on three successive 
days ?" What his violins were to Stradivarius, and his fres- 
co to Leonardo, and his campaigns to iNapoleon, that was his 
"History" to Macaulay. How fully it occupied his thoughts 
did not appear in his conversation ; for he steadily and suc- 
cessfully resisted any inclination to that most subtle form of 
selfishness which often renders the period of literary creation 
one long penance to all the members of an author's family. 
But none the less his book was always in his mind ; and sel- 
dom, indeed, did he pass a day, or turn over a volume, without 
lighting upon a suggestion which could be turned to useful 
purpose. In May, 1851, he writes: "I went to the Exhibi- 
tion, and lounged there during some hours. I never knew a 
sight which extorted from all ages, classes, and nations such 
unanimous and genuine admiration. I felt a glow of elo- 
quence, or something like it, come on me from the mere ef- 
fect of the place, and I thought of some touches which will 



year. But it is not so ; and if you think over the really good epitaphs 
which you have read, and consider how small a proportion they bear to 
the thousands that have been written by clever men, you will own that I 
am right." 



1847-'49.] LOED MACAULAY. 201 

greatly improve my Steinkirk." It is curious to trace whence 
was derived the iire whicli sparkles through every line of that 
terse and animated narrative, which has preserved from un- 
merited oblivion the story of a defeat more glorious to the 
British arms than not a few of our victories. 

Macaulay deserved the compliment which CeeU paid to Sir 
Walter Kaleigh as the supreme of commendations : " I know 
that he can labor terribly." One example will serve for many, 
in order to attest the pains which were ungrudgingly bestowed 
upon every section of the " History :" 

"March 21s*. — To-morrow I must begin upon a difficult and painful sub- 
ject, Gleuooe." 

"March 23d. — I looked at some books about Glenooe. Then to tlie Athe- 
naeum, and examined the Scotch Acts of Parliament on the same subject. 
Walked a good way, meditating. I see my line. Home, and wrote a lit- 
tle, but thought and prepared more." 

"March 25th. — Wrote a little. Mr. Lovell Eeeve, editor of the Literary 
Gazette, called, and offered to defend me about Penn. I gave him some 
memoranda. Then to Glencoe again, and worked all day with energy, 
pleasure, and, I think, success." 

"March 26th. — Wrote much. I have seldom worked to better purpose 
than on these three days." 

"March 27th. — ^After breakfast I wrote a little, and then walked through 
April weather to Westbourne Terrace, and saw my dear little nieces.* 
Home, and wrote more. I am getting on fast with this most horrible 
story. It is even worse than I thought. The Master of Stair is a perfect 
lago." 

"March 28iA. — I went to the Museum, and made some extracts about 
Glencoe." 

On the 29th, 30th, and 31st of March, and the 1st and 2d of 
April, there is nothing relating to the " History " except the 
daily entry, " Wrote." 

"April Zd. — ^Wrote. This Glencoe business is infernal." 

"April 4th. — Wrote ; walked round by London Bridge, and wrote again. 
To-day I finished the massacre. This episode will, I hope, be interesting." 

"April 6th. — ^Wrote to good purpose." 

"April 7th. — ^Wrote and corrected. The account of the massacre is now, 
I think, finished." 

* In the summer of 1849 my father changed house from Clapham Com- 
mon to No. 20 Westbourne Terrace. 



202 LIFE AKD IiETTEES OF [chap.xi. 

"April 8th. — I -vfent to the Museum, and turned over the Gazette de Paris, 
and the Dutch dispatches of 1692. I learned much from the errors of the 
French Gazette, and from the profound silence of the Dutch ministers on 
the subject of Glencoe. Home, and wrote." 

"April 9th. — A rainy and disagreeable day. I read a 'Life of Eomney,' 
■which I picked up uncut in Chancery Lane yesterday : a quarto. That 
there should be two showy quarto lives of a man who did not deserve a 
duodecimo ! Wrote hard, rewriting Glencoe." 

"April 10th. — Finished 'Don Carlos.' I have been long about it; but 
twenty pages a day in bed while I am waiting for the newspaper will 
serve to keep up my German. A fine play, with all its faults. Schiller's 
good and evil genius struggled in it ; as Shatspeare's good and evil genius, 
to compare greater things with smaller, struggled in ' Romeo and Juliet.' 
'Carlos' is half by the author of 'The Eobbers' and half by the author of 
'Wallenstein;' as 'Romeo and Juliet' is half by the author of 'Love's La- 
bor Lost' and half by the author of ' Othello.' After ' Romeo and Juliet ' 
Shakspeare never went back, nor Schiller after ' Carlos.' Wrote all the 
morning, and then to Westbourne Terrace. I chatted, played chess, and 
dined there." 

"April 11th. — ^Wrote all the morning. Ellis came to dinner. I read him 
Glencoe. He did not seem to like it much, which vexed me, though I am 
not partial to it. It is a good thing to find sincerity." 

That author must have had a strong head, and no very ex- 
aggerated self-esteem, who, while fresh from a literary success 
which had probably never been equaled, and certainly never 
surpassed — at a time when the bookrsellers were waiting with 
almost feverish eagerness for any thing that he chose to give 
them — spent nineteen working days over thirty octavo pages, 
and ended by humbly acknowledging that the result was not 
to his mind. 

When at length, after repeated revisions, Macaulay had sat- 
isfied himself that his writing was as good as he could make 
it, he would submit it to the severest of all tests, that of being 
read aloud to others. Though he never ventured on this ex- 
periment in the presence of any except his own family and 
his friend Mr. Ellis, it may well be believed that, even within 
that restricted circle, he had no difficulty in finding hearers. 
" I read," he says in December, 1849, " a portion of my ' His- 
tory ' to Hannah and Trevelyan with great effect. Hannah 
cried, and Trevelyan kept awake. I think what I have done 



1847-'49.] LORD MACAULAY. 203 

as good as any part of the former volumes : and so thinks 
Ellis." 

Whenever one of his books was passing through the press, 
Macaulay extended his indefatigable industry and his scrupu- 
lous precision to the minutest mechanical drudgery of the lit- 
erary calling. There was no end to the trouble that he de- 
voted to matters which most authors are only too glad to leave 
to the care and experience of their publisher. He could not 
rest until the lines were level to a hair's breadth, and the punct- 
uation correct to a comma ; until every paragraph concluded 
with a telling sentence, and every sentence flowed hke run- 
ning water.* I remember the pleasure with which he showed 
us a communication from one of the readers in Mr. Spottis- 
woode's office, who respectfully informed him that there was 
one expression, and one only, throughout the two volumes of 
which he did not catch the meaning at a glance. And it must 
be remembered that Macaulay's punctilious attention to de- 
tails was prompted by an honest wish to increase the enjoy- 
ment, and smooth the difficulties, of those who did him the 
honor to buy his books. His was not the accuracy of those 
who judge it necessaiy to keep up a distinction in small mat- 



* Macaulay -writes to Mr. Longman about tlie edition of 1858 : " I have no 
more corrections to make at present. I am inclined to hope that the book 
will he as nearly faultless, as to typographical execution, as any work of 
equal extent that is to be found in the world." 

On another occasion he says : " I am very unwilling to seem captions 
about such a work as an Index. By all means let Mr. go on. But of- 
fer him, with all delicacy and courtesy, from me this suggestion : I would 
advise him to have very few heads except proper names. A few there must 
be, such as Convocation, Non-jurors, Bank of England, National Debt. These 
are heads to which readers who wish for information on those subjects will 

naturally turn. But I think that Mr. will, on consideration, perceive 

that such heads as Priestcraft, Priesthood, Party Spirit, Insurrection, War, 
Bible, Crown, Controversies, Dissent, are quite useless. Nobody will ever 
look at them ; and if every passage in which party spirit, dissent, the art 
of war, and the power of the crown are mentioned is to be noticed in the 
Index, the size of the volumes will be doubled. The best rule is to keep 
close to proper names, and never to deviate from the rule without some 
■special occasion." 



204 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. xi. 

ters between the learned and the unlearned. As little of a 
purist as it is possible for a scholar to be, his distaste for Mr. 
Grote's exalted standard of orthography interfered sadly with 
his admiration for the judgment, the power, and the knowl- 
edge of that truly great historian. He never could reconcile 
himseK to seeing the friends of his boyhood figure as Kleon, 
and AlkibiadSs, and Poseidon, and Odysseus ; and I tremble 
to think of the outburst of indignation with which, if he had 
lived to open some of the more recent editions of the Latin 
poets, he would have lighted upon the " Dialogue with Lydia," 
or the " Ode to Lyce," printed with a small letter at the head 
of each familiar line. 

Macaulay's correspondence in the summer and autumn of 
1848 is full of allusions to his great work, the first volumes 
of which were then in the hands of the publisher. On the 
22d of June he writes to Mr. Longman : " If you wish to say, 
' History of England from the Accession of James H.,' I have 
no objection ; but I can not consent to put in any thing about 
an Introductory Essay. There is no Introductory Essay, un- 
less you call the first Book of Davila, and the first three chap- 
ters of Gibbon, Introductory Essays." In a letter to his sis- 
ter Selina he says : " Longman seems content with his bargain. 
Jeffrey, EUis, and Hannah all agree in predicting that the 
book will succeed. I ought to add Marian Ellis's judgment ; 
for her father tells me that he can not get the proof-sheets 
out of her hand. These things keep up my spirits : yet I see 
every day more and more clearly how far my performance is 
below excellence." On the 24th of October, 1848, he writes 
to my mother : " I do not know whether you have heard how 
pleasant a day Margaret passed with me. We had a long 
walk, a great deal of chat, a very nice dinner, and a quiet, 
happy evening. That was my only holiday last week. I 
work with scarcely any intermission from seven in the morn- 
ing to seven in the afternoon, and shall probably continue to 
do so during the next ten days. Then my labors will be- 
come lighter, and, in about three weeks, will completely cease. 
There will still be a fortnight before publication. I have 
armed myseK with all my philosophy for the event of a failure. 



1847-'49.] LORD MACAULAY. 205 

Jeffrey, Ellis, Longman, and Mrs. Longman seem to think 
that there is no chance of such a catastrophe. I might add 
Macleod, who has read the third chapter, and professes to 
be, on the whole, better pleased than with any other history 
that he has read. The state of my own 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-as- 
sured." 

He might have spared his fears. "Within three days after 
its first appearance the fortune of the book was already secure. 
It was greeted by an ebullition of national pride and satis- 
faction which delighted Macaulay's friends, and reconciled to 
him most who remained of his old political adversaries. Other 
hands than his have copied and preserved the letters of con- 
gratulation and approval which for months together flowed in 
upon him from every quarter of the compass ; but prudence 
forbids me to admit into these pages more than a very few 
samples of a species of correspondence which forms the most 
uniQviting portion of only too many literary biographies. It 
is, however, worth while to reproduce the phrases in which 
Lord Halifax expressed the general feeling that the " Histo- 
ry " was singularly well-timed. " I have finished," he writes, 
" your second volume, and I can not tell you how grateful all 
lovers of truth, all lovers of liberty, all lovers of order and of 
civilized freedom, ought to be to you for having so set before 
them the History of our Revolution of 1688. It has come at 
a moment when the lessons it inculcates ought to produce 
great practical effects on the conduct of the educated leaders 
of what is now going on abroad ; but I fear that the long ed- 
ucation in the working of a constitution such as ours is not to 
be supplied by any reading or meditation. Jameses we may 
find ; but Europe shows no likeness of William." 

" My dear Macaulay," says Lord Jeffrey, " the mother that 
bore you, had she been yet alive, could scarcely have felt 
prouder or happier than I do at this outburst of your graver 
fame. I have long had a sort of parental interest in your 
glory ; and it is now mingled with a feeling of deference to 



206 LIFE AM) LETTERS OF [chap.xi. 

your intellectual superiority wMcli can only consort, I take it, 
with the character of a female parent." 

A still older friend even than Lord Jeffrey — Lord Auck- 
land, the Bishop of Sodor and Man — wrote of him in more 
racy, but not less affectionate, language. " Tom Maeaulay 
should be embalmed and kept. I delight in his book, though 
luckily I am not half through it, for I have just had an ordi- 
nation, and my house is pervaded by Butler's 'Analogy' and 
young priests. Do you think that Tom is not a little hard on 
old Cranmer ? He certainly biings him down a peg or two in 
my estimation. I had also hated Cromwell more than I now 
do; for I always agree with Tom; and it saves trouble to 
agree with him at once, because he is sure to make ^ou do so 
at last. Since I have had this book I have hated the best 
insular friend we have for coming in and breaking up the 
evening. At any other crisis we should have embraced him 
on both sides of his face." 

Among all the incidents connected with the publication of 
his "History," nothing pleased Maeaulay so much as the 
gratification that he contrived to give to Maria Edgeworth, as 
a small return for the enjoyment which, during more than 
forty years, he had derived from her charming writings.* 
That lady, who was then in her eighty-third winter, and with- 
in a few months of her death, says, in the course of a letter 
addressed to Dr. Holland : "And now, my good friend, I re- 
quire you to believe that all the admiration I have expressed 
of Macaulay's work is quite uninfluenced by the self-satisfac- 
tion, vanity, pride, surprise, I had in finding my own name in 
a note ! ! ! ! ! I had formed my opinion, and expressed it to 
my friends who were reading the book to me, before I came 
to that note.f Moreover, there was a mixture of shame, and 

* Maeaulay on one occasion pronounces that the scene in the "Ahseutee," 
■where Lord Colambre discovers himself to his tenantry and to their op- 
pressor, is the best thing of the sort since the opening of the Twenty-sec- 
ond book of the " Odyssey." 

t This note is in the sixth chapter, at the bottom of a page describing 
the habits of the old native Irish proprietors in the seventeenth century: 
"Miss Edgeworth's King Corny belongs to a later and much more civ- 



1847-'49.] LOBD MACAUIAY. 20T 

a twinge of pain, with the pleasure and the pride I felt in 
having a line in this immortal 'History' given to me, when 
there is no mention of Sir Walter Scott throughout the work, 
even in places where it seems impossible that the historian 
could resist paying the becoming tribute which genius owes, 
and loves to pay, to genius. Perhaps he reserves himseH for 
the '45 ; and I hope in heaven it is so. Meanwhile be so good 
as to make my grateful and deeply felt thanks to the great 
author for the honor which he has done me." 

Macaulay's journal will relate the phases and gradations 
which marked the growing popularity of his book, in so far 
as that popularity could be measured by the figures in a pub- 
lisher's ledger. But, over and above Mr. Longman's triumph- 
ant bulletins, every day brought to his ears a fresh indication 
of the hold which the work had taken on the public mind. 
Some of the instances which he has recorded are quaint 
enough. An officer of good family had been committed for 
a fortnight to the House of Correction for knocking down a 
policeman. The authorities intercepted the prisoner's French 
novels, but allowed him to have the Bible, and Macaulay's 
"History."* At Dukinfield, near Manchester, a gentleman 
who thought that there would be a certain selfishness in keep- 
ing so great a pleasure to himself, invited his poorer neigh- 
bors to attend every evening after their work was finished, 
and read the "History" aloud to them from beginning to 
end. At the close of the last meeting, one of the audience 
rose, and moved, ia North-country fashion, a vote of thanks to 

ilized generation ; but whoever has studied that admirable portrait can 
form some notion of what King Corny's great-grandfather must have 
been." 

* London gossip went on to say that the gallant captain preferred pick- 
ing oaknm to reading about theKevolution of 1688 ; gossip which avenged 
Gnicciardini for the anecdote told by Macaulay in the second paragraph of 
his "Essay on Burleigh." 

"There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his 
choice between Gnicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But 
the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind, and went 
to the oar." 



208 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xi. 

Mr. Macaulay, " for having written a history which working- 
men can understand."* 

The people of the United States were even more eager than 
the people of the United Kingdom to read about their com- 
mon ancestors ; with the advantage that, from the absence 
of an international copyright, they were able to read about 
them for next to nothing. On the 4th of April, 1849, Messrs. 
Harper, of New York, wrote to Macaulay : " We beg you to 
accept herewith a copy of our cheap edition of your work. 
There have been three other editions published by different 
houses, and another is now in preparation ; so there will be 
six different editions in the market. We have already sold 
forty thousand copies, and we presume that over sixty thou- 
sand copies have been disposed of. Probably, within three 
months of this time, the sale will amount to two hundred 
thousand copies. No work, of any kind, has ever so com- 
pletely taken our whole country by storm." An indirect com- 
pliment to the celebrity of the book was afforded by a desper- 
ate, and almost internecine, controversy which raged through- 
out the American newspapers as to whether the Messrs. Har- 
per were justified in having altered Macaulay's spelling to suit 
the orthographical canons laid down in Noah Webster's dic- 
tionary. 

Nor were the entei-prising publishers of Paris and Brussels 
behindhand in catering for readprs whose appetite for cheap 
literature made them less particular than they should have 
been as to the means by which they gratified it. Punch de- 
voted half of one of his columns to a serio-comic review of 
Galignani's edition of the " History :" 

"This is an extraordinary work. A miracle of cheapness. 
A handsomely printed book, in royal octavo (if any thing be 
royal in republican Fi-ance), and all at the low charge of some 
Ts. %(l. of English money. Many thousands of this impression 
of Mr. Macaulay's works — it must delight his amour propre 
as an author to know it — ^have been circulated in England. 
' Sir,' said a Boulogne book-seller, his voice slightly trembling 

* Macaulay says in his journal, "I really prize this vote." 



1847-'49.] LORD MACAULAY. 209 

with emotion, ' Sir, it is impossible to supply travelers ; but we 
expect a few thousand kilogrammes more of the work by to- 
morrow's train, and then, for a week, we may rub on.' It is 
cheering to find that French, Belgian, and American book-sell- 
ers are doing their best to scatter abroad, and at home too, the 
seeds of English literature. ' Sir,' said the French book-seller, 
holding up the tome, ' you will smuggle it thus : divide the 
book in two ; spread it over your breast ; button your waist- 
coat close ; and, when you land, look the picture of innocence 
in the face of the searchers.' " 

It is a characteristic trait in Macaulay that, as soon as his 
last proof-sheet had been dispatched to the printers, he at once 
fell to reading a course of historians, from Herodotus down- 
ward. The sense of his own inferiority to Thucydides did 
more to put him out of conceit with himself than all the un- 
favorable comments which were bestowed upon him (sparing- 
ly enough, it must be allowed) by the newspapers and reviews 
of the day. He was even less thin-skinned as a writer than 
as a politician. When he felt conscious that he had done his 
very best — when all that lay within his own power had been 
faithfully and diligently performed— it was not his way to 
chafe under hostile criticism, or to waste time and temper by 
engaging in controversies on the subject of his own works. 
Like Dr. Johnson, " he had learned, both from his own obser- 
vation and from literary history, in which he was deeply read, 
that the place of books in the public estimation is fixed, not 
by what is written about them, but by what is written in 
them ; and that an author whose works are likely to live is 
very unwise if he stoops to wrangle with detractors whose 
works are certain to die." "I have never been able," Mac- 
aulay says, in a letter dated December, 1849, " to discover that 
a man is at all the worse for being attacked. One foolish line 
of his own does him more harm than the ablest pamphlets 
written against him by other people." 

It must be owned that, as far as his " History " was con- 
cerned, Macaulay had not occasion to draw largely upon his 
stock of philosophy. Some few notes of disapprobation and 
detraction might here and there be heard ; but they were for 

Vol. II.— 14 



210 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap.xi. 

the most part too faint to mar the effect produced by so full 
a chorus of eulogy ; and the only loud one among them was 
harsh and discordant to that degree that all the by-standers 
were fain to stop their ears. It was generally believed that 
Mr. Croker had long been praying that he might be spared to 
settle accounts with his old antagonist. His opportunity had 
now arrived ; and people gave themselves up with a safer con- 
science to the fascination of the historian's narrative, because 
the Quarterly Eeview woidd be certain to inform them of all 
that could be said either against the book or against the au- 
thor. But Macaulay's good fortune attended him even here. 
He could not have fared better had he been privileged to 
fchoose his own adversary, and to select the very weapons with 
which the assault was to be conducted. After spending four 
most unprofitable months in preparing his thunder, Mr. Croker 
discharged it in an article so bitter, so foolish, and, above all, 
so tedious, that scarcely any body could get through it, and 
nobody was convinced by it. Many readers, who looked to 
professional critics for an authoritative opinion on the learn- 
ing and accuracy of a contemporary writer, came to the not 
unreasonable conclusion that the case against Macaulay had 
irretrievably broken down, when they saw how little had been 
made of it by so acrimonious and so long-winded an advocate. 
Nothing would have opened the pages of the Qua/rterly Re- 
view to that farrago of angry trash except the deference with 
which its proprietor thought himself bound to treat one who, 
forty years before, had assisted Canning to found the period- 
ical. The sole effect which the article produced upon the pub- 
lic was to set it reading Macaulay's review of Croker's " Bos- 
well," in order to learn what the injury might be which, after 
the lapse of eighteen years, had sting enough left to provoke 
a veteran writer, politician, and man of the world into such 
utter oblivion of common sense, common fairness, and com- 
mon courtesy. 

The Whig press, headed by the Times and the Scotsman, 
hastened to defend the historian ; and the Tory press was at 
least equally forward to disown the critic. A subsequent 
page in this volume will show that Croker's arrow did not go 



1847-'49.] LORD MACAULAY. 211 

very far home. Indeed, in the whole of Macaulay's journal 
for the year 1849 there can be detected but one single indica- 
tion of his having possessed even the germ of an author's sen- 
sibility : "February 11th. — I went to the Athenseum, and saw 
in a weekly literary journal a siUy, spiteful attack on what 
I have said about Procopius in the first pages of my first 
chapter. I was vexed for a moment, but only for a moment. 
Both Austin and Mahonhad looked into Procopius, and were 
satisfied that I was right ; as I am. I shall take no notice." 
A year later he wrote to Mr. Longman : "I have looked 
through the tenth volume of Lingard's 'History' in the new 
edition. I am not aware that a single error has been pointed 
out by Lingard in my narrative. His estimate of men and of 
institutions natui'ally differs from mine. There is no direct 
reference to me, but much pilfering from me, and a little cai-p- 
ing at me. I shall take no notice either of the pilfering or 
the carping." After once his judgment had become mature, 
Macaulay, at all times and under all temptations, acted in 
strict accordance with Bentley's famous maxim (which, in 
print and talk alike, he dearly loved to quote), that no man 
was ever written down, except by himself.* 

" Lord Macaulay," said an acute observer, who knew him 
well, " is an almost unique instance of a man of transcendent 

* Bentley's career was one long exemplification of his famous saying. 
In the year 1856, Macaulay writes, after what was perhaps his tenth repe- 
rusal of Bishop Monk's life of the great critic : " Bentley seems to me an 
eminent instance of the extent to which intellectual powers of a most rare 
and admirable kind may he impaired by moral defects. It was not on ac- 
count of any obscuration of his memory, or of any decay in his inventive 
faculties, that he fell from the very first place among critics to the third 
or fourth rank. It was his insolence, his arrogance, his boundless confi- 
dence in himself and disdain of every body else, that lowered him. In- 
stead of taking subjects which he thoroughly understood, and which he 
would have treated better than all the other scholars in Europe together, 
he would take subjects which he had but superficially studied. He ceased 
to give his whole mind to what he wrote. He scribbled a dozen sheets of 
Latin at a sitting, sent them to the press without reading them over, and 
then, as was natural, had to bear the baiting of word-catching pedants 
who were on the watch for all his blunders." 



212 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xi. 

force of character, mighty will, mighty energy, giving all that 
to literature instead of to practical work ;" and it can not be 
denied that, in his vocation of historian, he gave proof of qual- 
ities which would have commanded success in almost any field. 
To sacrifice the accessory to the principal; to plan an exten- 
sive and arduous task, and to pursue it without remission and 
without misgiving ; to withstand resolutely all counter-attrac- 
tions, whether they come in the shape of distracting pleasures 
or of competing duties^such are the indispensable conditions 
for attaining to that high and sustained excellence of artistic 
performance which, in the beautiful words of George Eliot, 
" must be wooed with industrious thought and patient renun- 
ciation of small desires." At a period when the mere rumor 
of his presence would have made the fortune of an evening in 
any drawing-room in London, Macaulay consented to see less 
and less, and at length almost nothing, of general society, in 
order that he might devote all his energies to the work which 
he had in hand. He relinquished that House of Commons 
which the first sentence of his speeches hushed into silence, 
and the first five minutes filled to overflowing. He watched, 
without a shade of regret or a twinge of envy, men, who would 
never have ventured to set their claims against his, rise one 
after another to the summit of the State. " I am sincerely 
glad," said Sir James Graham, " that Macaulay has so greatly 
succeeded. The sacrifices which he has made to literature de- 
serve no ordinary triumph ; and, when the statesmen of this 
present day are forgotten, the historian of the Eevolution will 
be remembered." Among men of letters there were some 
who maintained that the fame of Macaulay's volumes exceed- 
ed their deserts ; but his former rivals and colleagues in. Par- 
liament, one and all, rejoiced in the prosperous issue of an un- 
dertaking for the sake of which he had surrendered more than 
others could ever hope to win. 



1848-'52.] LOBD MACAULAY. 213 



CHAPTEE XII. 

1848-1852. 

Extracts from Maoaulay's Diary. — Herodotus.— Mr. Roebuck. — Anticipa- 
tions of Failure and Success. — Appearance of tlie " History." — Progress 
of the Sale. — Duke of Wellington. — Lord Palmerston. — Letters to Mr. 
Ellis. — Lord Brougham on Euripides. — Maoaulay is elected Lord Kector 
of Glasgow University. — His Inaugural Address. — Good Kesolutions. — 
Croker. — Dr. Parr.-r-The Historical Professorship at Cambridge. — By- 
ron. — Tour in Ireland. — Althorp. — Lord Sidmouth. — Lord Thurlow. — 
Death of Jeifrey. — Mr. Richmond's Portrait of Macaulay. — Dinner at the 
Palace. — Robert Montgomery. — Death of Sir Robert Peel. — The Prelude. 
— Ventnor. — Letters to Mr. Ellis. — Plautus. — Era Paolo. — Gibbon. — The 
Papal Bull. — Death of Henry Hallam. — Person's Letters to Archdeacon 
Travis. — Charles Mathews. — Windsor Castle. — Macaulay sets up his 
Carriage. — Opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851. — Cobbett. — Mal- 
vern. — Letters to Mr. Ellis. — Wilhelm Meister. — The Battle of Worces- 
ter. — Palmerston leaves the Foreign Office. — Macaulay refuses an Offer 
of the Cabinet. — Windsor Castle.— King John.— Scene of the Assassina- 
tion Plot. — Royal Academy Dinner. 

"NovsiCEMR 18th, 1848 : Albany. — After the lapse of more than nine years 
I begin my journal again.* What a change ! I have been, since the last 

* It must be remembered that whatever was in Macaulay's mind may be 
found in his diary. That diary was written, throughout, with the uncon- 
scious candor of a man who freely and frankly notes down remarks which 
he expects to be read by himself alone ; and with the copiousness natural 
to one who, except where it was demanded for the purpose of literary ef- 
fect, did not willingly compress any thing which he had to say. It may, 
therefore, be hoped that the extracts presented in these volumes possess 
those qualities in which, as he has himself pronounced, the special merit of 
a private journal lies. In a letter dated August 4th, 1853, he says : " The 
article on the ' Life of Moore ' is spiteful. Moore, however, afforded but 
too good an opportunity to a malevolent assailant. His diary, it is evident 
to me, was written to be published, and this destroys the charm proper to 
diaries." 



214 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.xii. 

lines were -written, a member of two Parliaments and of two Cabinets. I 
have published several volumes with success. I have escaped from Parlia- 
ment, and am living in the way best suited to my temper. I lead a college 
life in Loudon, with the comforts of domestic life near me ; for Hannah 
and her children are very dear to me. I have an easy fortune. I have 
finished the first two volumes of my ' History.' Yesterday the last sheets 
went to America, and within a fortnight, I hope, the publication will take 
place in London. I am pretty well satisfied. As compared with excel- 
lence, the work is a failure ; but, as compared with other similar books, I 
can not think so. We shall soon know what the world says. To-day I 
enjoyed my new liberty, after having been most severely vrorked during 
three months in finishing my 'History' and correcting proofs. I rose at 
half after nine, read at breakfast Fearon's ' Sketches of America,' and then 
finished Lucian's critique on the bad historians of his time, and felt my 
own withers unwrung. Ellis came to dinner at seven. I gave him a lob- 
ster curry, woodcock, and macaroni. I think that I will note dinners, as 
honest Pepys did." 

" Monday, November 20tli. — Read Pepys at breakfast, and then sat down 
to Herodotus, and finished 'Melpomene' at a sitting. I went out, looked 
into the Athensenm, and walked about the streets for some time ; came 
home, and read 'Terpsichore,' and began 'Erato.' I never went through 
Herodotus at such a pace before. He is an admirable artist in many re- 
spects ; but undoubtedly his arrangement is faulty." 

" Noveniber 23d. — I received to-day a translation of Kant from Ellis's 
friend at Liverpool. I tried to read it, but found it utterly unintelligible, 
just as if it had been written in Sanskrit. Not one word of it gave me 
any thing like an idea except a Latin quotation from 'Persius.' It seems 
to me that it ought to be possible to explain a true theory of metaphysics 
in words which I can understand. I can understand Locke, and Berke- 
ley, and Hume, and Reid, and Stewart. I can understand Cicero's Aca- 
demics, and most of Plato : and it seems odd that in a book on the ele- 
ments of metaphysics, by a Liverpool merchant, I should not be able to 
comprehend a word. I wrote my acknowledgments, with a little touch of 
the Socratio irony. 

" Roebuck called, and talked to me about the West Riding. He asked 
me to stand. I told him that it was quite out of the question ; that I had 
made up my mind never again to make the smallest concession to fanatic- 
al clamor on the subject of Papal endowment. I would not certainly ad- 
vise the Government to propose such endowment, but I would say nothing 
tending to flatter the absurd prejudices which exist ou that subject. I 
thanked him for his good-will, and asked him to breakfast on Monday. I 
find that MaocuUoch and Hastie have a wager on the sale of my ' History.' 
Maccnllooh has betted that it will sell better than Lord Campbell's book. 
Hastie bets on Lord Campbell. Green, of Longman's house, is to be arbiter." 



1848-'52.] LOED MACAULAY. 215 

" November 25JA. — Bead my book -while dressing, and thonght it better 
than Campbell's, with all deference to Mr. Hastie. But these things are a 
strange lottery. After breakfast I went to the British Museum. I was in 
the chair. It is a stupid, useless way of doing business. An hour was 
lost in reading trashy minutes. All boards are bad, and this is the worst 
of boards. If I live, I wiU see whether I can not work a reform here. 
Home, and read Thucydides. I admire him more than ever. He is the 
great historian. The others one may hope to match : him, never." 

"Noveniter 29th, 1848, Wednesday.— I was shocked to learn the death of 
poor Charles Buller. It took me quite by surprise. I could almost cry 
for him.* I found copies of my ' History ' on my table. Tiie suspense 
must now soou be over. I read my book, and Thucydides's, which, I am 
sorry to say, I found much better than mine." 

"November '30th. — Tufnellt sent for me, and proposed Liskeard to me. I 
hesitated ; and went home, leaving the matter doubtful. Eoebuck called 
at near seven to ask about my intentions, as he had also been thought of. 
This at once decided me ; and I said that I would not stand, and wrote to 
Tufnell telling him so. Eoebuck has on more than one occasion behaved 
to me with great kindness and generosity, and I did not choose to stand 
in his way." 

"December ith, 1848. — Staid at home all the day, making corrections for 
the second edition. Shaw, the printer, came to tell me that they are want- 
ed with speed, and that the first edition of three thousand is nearly out. 
Then I read the eighth hook of Thucydides. On the whole, he is the first 
of historians. What is good in him is better than any thing that can he 
found elsewhere. But his dry parts are dreadfully dry, and his arrange- 
ment is bad. Mere chronological order is not the order for a complicated 
narrative. 

" I have felt to-day somewhat anxious about the fate of my book. The 
sale has surpassed expectation : but that proves only that people have 
formed a high idea of what they are to have. The disappointment, if there 
is disappointment, will be great. All that I hear is laudatory. But who 
can trust to praise which is poured into his own ear ? At all events, I 
have aimed high ; I have tried to do something that may be remembered ; 

* " In Parliament I shall look in vain for virtues which I loved, and for 
abilities which I admired. Often in debate, and never more than when we 
discuss those questions of colonial policy which are every day acquiring a 
new importance, I shall remember with regret how much eloquence and 
wit, how much acuteness and knowledge, how many engaging qualities, 
how many fair hopes, are buried in the grave of poor Charles Buller." — 
Maeaulay's Speech at Edinburgh in 1852. 

t Mr. Tufnell was then patronage secretary, or, in more familiar parlance, 
treasury whip. 



216 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.xu: 

I liave had tlie year 2000, and even the year 3000, often in my mind ; I have 
sacrificed nothing to temporary fashions of thought and style ; and if I 
fail, my failure will he more honorable than nine-tenths of the successes 
that I have witnessed." 

"December 12th, 1848.— Longman called. A new edition of three thou- 
sand copies is preparing as fast as they can work. I have reason to he 
pleased. Of the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel' two thousand two hundred 
and fifty copies were sold in the first year; of 'Marmion' two thousand 
copies in the first month ; of my hook three thousand copies in ten days. 
Black says that there has been no such sale since the days of ' Waverley.' 
The success is in every way complete beyond all hope, and is the more 
agreeable to me because expectation had been wound up so high that dis- 
appointment was almost inevitable. I think, though with some misgiv- 
ings, that the book will live. I put two volumes of Foote into my pock- 
ets, and walked to Clapbam. They were reading my book again. How 
happy their praise made me, and how little by comparison I care for any 
other praise ! A quiet, happy, affectionate evening. Mr. Conybeare makes 
a criticism, in which Hannah seems to agree, that I sometimes repeat my- 
self. I suspect there is truth iu this. Yet it is very hard to know what 
to do. If an important principle is laid down only once, it is unnoticed 
or forgotten by dull readers, who are the majority. If it is inculcated in 
several places, quick-witted persons think that the writer harps too much 
on one string. Probably I have erred on the side of repetition. This is 
really the only important criticism that I have yet heard. 

" I looked at the ' Life of Campbell,' by a foolish Dr. Beattie : a glorious 
specimen of the book-makiug of this age. Campbell may have written in 
all his life three hundred good lines, rather less than more. His letters, 
his conversation, were mere trash.* A life such as Johnson has written 

* This was rather ungrateful to Campbell, who had provided Macaulay 
with an anecdote, which he told well and often, to illustrate the sentimeut 
with which the authors of old days regarded their publishers. At a liter- 
ary dinner Campbell asked leave to propose a toast, and gave the health 
of Napoleon Bonaparte. The war was at its height, and the very mention 
of Napoleon's name, except in conjunction with some uncomplimentary ep- 
ithet, was in most circles regarded as an outrage. A storm of groans broke 
out, and Campbell with difficulty could get a few sentences heard. " Gen- 
tlemen," he said, " you must not mistake me. I admit that the French 
emperor is a tyrant. I admit that he is a monster. I admit that he is the 
sworn foe of our own nation, and, if you will, of the whole human race. 
But, gentlemen, we must be jnst to our great enemy. We must not forget 
that he once shot a book-seller." The guests, of whom two out of every 
three lived by their pens, burst into a roar of laughter, and Campbell sat 
down in triumph. 



X'e48-'52.] LORD MACAULAY. 217 

of Shenstone, or Akenside, would have been quite long enough for the sub- 
ject ; but here are three mortal volumes. I suppose that, if I die to-mor- 
row, I shall have three volumes. Really, I begin to understand why Cole- 
ridge says that life in death is more horrible than death. 

" I dined with Miss Berry. She and her guests made an idol of me : 
but I know the value of London idolatry, aud how soon these fashions pass 
away."* 

" January l\th, 1849. — I am glad to find how well my book continues to 
sell. The second edition of three thousand was out of print almost as 
soon as it appeared, and one thousand two hundred and fifty of the third 
edition are already bespoken. I hope all this will not make me a cox- 
comb. I feel no intoxicatiug effect ; but a man may be drunk without 
knowing it. If my abilities do not fail me, I shall be a rich man ; as rich, 
that is to say, as I wish to be. But that I am already, if it were not for 
my dear ones. I am content, and should have been so with less. On the 
whole, I remember no success so complete ; and I remember all Byron's 
poems and all Scott's novels." 

" Saturday, January 27th, — Longman has written to say that only sixteen 
hundred copies are left of the third edition of five thousand, and that two 
thousand more copies must be immediately printed, still to be called the 
third edition. I went into the City to discuss the matter, and found 
William Longman and Green. They convinced me that the proposed 
course was right ; but I am half afraid of this strange prosperity. Thir- 
teen thousand copies, they seem quite confident, will have been taken off 
in less than six months.t Of such a run I had never dreamed. But I had 
thought that the book would have a permanent place in our literature ; 
and I see no reason to alter that opinion. Yet I feel extremely anxious 
about the second part. Can it possibly come up to the first ? Does the 
subject admit of such vivid description and such exciting narrative ? Will 
not the judgment of the public be unduly severe ? All this disturbs me. 
Yet the risk must be run ; and whatever art and labor can do shall be done." 

"February 'id. — Mahon sent me a letter from Arbuthnot, saying that the 
Duke of Wellington was enthusiastic in admiration of my book. Though 

* " There is nothing," Macaulay says elsewhere, " more pitiable than an 
ex-lion or ex-lioness. London, I have often thought, is like the sorceress 
in the 'Arabian Nights,' who, by some mysterious law, can love the same 
object only forty days. During forty days she is all fondness. As soon as 
they are over, she not only discards the poor favorite, but turns him into 
some wretched shape — a mangy dog or spavined horse. How many hun- 
dreds of victims have undergone this fate since I was born ! The strong- 
est instances, I think, have been Betty, who was called the young Roscius ; 
Edward Irving ; and Mrs. Beecher Stowe." 

t As a matter of fact, they were taken off in less than fonr months. 



218 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xii. 

I am almost callous to praise now, this praise made me happy for two 
minutes. A fine old fellow ! The Quakers have fixed Monday at eleven 
for my opportunity.* Many a man, says Sancho, comes for wool, and goes 
home shorn. To dinner at Lansdowne House. All were kind and cordial. 
I thought myself agreeable, but perhaps I was mistaken. Lord Lansdowne 
almost made up his mind to come to the interview with the Quakers ; but 
a sense of decorum withheld him. Lord Shelburne begged so hard to be 
admitted that I could not refuse him, though I must provide myself with 
a different kind of second in such a combat. Milman will come if he can." 
" Saturday, February Zd. — Longman came. He brought two reviews of 
my book. North British and British Quarterly. When he was gone I read 
both. They are more than sufflcieutly eulogistic. In both there are 
squeezes of acid. Part of the censure I admit to be just, but not all. 
Much of the praise I know to be undeserved. I began my second part, 
and wrote two foolscap sheets. I am glad to see how well things are go- 
ing in Parliament. Stanley is surely very foolish and incousiderate. 
What would he have done if he had succeeded? He is a great debater; 
but a« to every thing else he is still what he was thirty years ago, a clever 
boy. All right in the Commons. Excellent speech of Palmerston. What 
a knack he has for falling ou his feet ! I never will believe, after this, that 
there is any scrape out of which his cleverness and his good fortune will 
not extricate him. And I rejoice in his luck most sincerely ; for, though, 
he now and then trips, he is an excellent minister, and I can not bear the 
thought of his being a sacrifice to the spite of foreign powers." 

Of all English statesmen, Macaulay liked Lord Palmerston 
the best ; and never was that liking stronger than during the 
crisis through which the nations of the Continent were pass- 
ing in 1848 and 1849. His heart was entirely with the minis- 
ter who, whenever and wherever the interests of liberty and 
humanity were at stake, was eager to prove that those to 
whom the power of England was committed did not wield 
the pen, and on occasion did not bear the sword, in vain. But 
Palmerston's foreign policy was little to the taste of some 
among his political opponents. They had not been able to 
digest his civility to republican governments ; nor could they 
forgive him for having approved the conduct of the admiral 
who anchored British men-of-war between the broadsides of 

* A deputation from the Society of Friends proposed to wait upon Mac- 
aulay to remonstrate with hira about his treatment of William Penu in 
the fifth and eighth chapters of the " History.'' 



1848-'52.] LORD MACAULAY. 219 

the King of Naples's ships and the defenseless streets of Pa- 
lermo. An amendment on the Address was moved in both 
Houses, humbly representing to her majesty that her affairs 
were not in such a state as to justify Parliament in addressing 
her in the language of congratulation. The Peers, dazzled by 
Lord Stanley's reckless eloquence, ran the ministry within 
two votes of a defeat which, in the then existing condition of 
affairs abroad, would have been nothing short of a European 
calamity. In the Commons, Lord Palmerston opposed the 
amendment in a speech of extraordinary spirit,* which at once 

* " If you say tliat you can not cougratulate us, I say ' Wait till you are 
asked.' It would be highly improper to ask the House to express on the 

present occasion any opinion on the foreign relations of the country 

The real fault found with her majesty's Government is that we are not at 
war with some of our allies. Our great oifeuse is that we have remained 
on amicable terms with the republican government of France. There are 
those who think that the government of a republic is not sufficiently good 
company for the government of a monarchy. Now, I hold that the rela- 
tions between governments are, in fact, the relations between those na- 
tions to which the governments belong. What business is it of ours to 
ask whether the French nation thinks proper to be governed by a king, an 
emperor, a president, or a consul ? Our object, and our duty, is to cement 
the closest ties of friendship between ourselves and our nearest neighbor 
— that neighbor who in war would be our most formidable enemy, and in 

peace our most useful ally This, then, is the state of the matter. We 

stand here charged with the grave offense of having preserved a good un- 
derstanding with the republic of France, and of having thereby essential- 
ly contributed to the maintenance of peace in Europe. We are charged 
with having put an end to hostilities in Schleswig-Holstein which might 
have led to a European war. We are accused of having persuaded Austria 
and Sardinia to lay down their arms, when their differences might have 
involved the other powers of Europe in contention. We are reproached 
with having prevented great calamities in Sicily, and with laboring to 
restore friendly relations between the King of Naples and his subjects. 
These are the charges which the House is called upon to determine for, or 
against, us. We stand here as men who have labored assiduously to pre- 
vent war, and, where it had broken out, to put an end to it as soon as was 
practicable. We stand here as the promoters of peace under charges 
brought against us by the advocates of war. I leave it to the House to 
decide between us and our accusers, and I look forward with confidence to 
the verdict which the House will give.'' 



220 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap, xii; 

decided the fortune of the debate ; a motion for adjournment 
was thrown out by 221 Totes to 80 ; and Mr. Disraeli, rightly 
interpreting the general feeling of the House, took the judi- 
cious course of withdrawing the hostile amendment. 

" Sunday, February ifh. — I Walked out to Clapham yesterday afternoon ; 
had a quiet, happy evening; and went to church this morning. I love the 
church for the sake of old times. I love even that absurd painted window 
with the dove, the lamb, the urn, the two cornucopias, and the profusion 
of sunflowers, passion-flowers, and peonies. Heard a Puseyite sermon, very 
different from the oratory which I formerly used to hear from the same 
pulpit." 

"February 5ft, 1849. — Lord Shelburne, Charles Austin, and Milman to 
breakfast. A pleasant meal. Then the Quakers, five in number. Never 
was there such a rout. They had absolutely nothing to say. Every charge 
against Penn came out as clear as any case at the Old Bailey. They had 
nothing to urge but what was true enough : that he looked worse in my 
' History ' than he would have looked on a general survey of his whole life. 
But that is not my fault. I wrote the history of four years during which 
he was exposed to great temptations ; during which he was the favorite of 
a bad king; and an active solicitor in a most corrupt court. His character 
was injured by his associations. Ten years before, or ten years later, he 
would have made a much better figure.* But was I to begin my book ten 
years earlier or ten years later for William Peuu's sake? The Quakers 
were extremely civil. So was I. They complimented me on my courtesy 
and candor.'' 

This will, perhaps, be the most convenient place to insert 
some extracts from Macaulay's letters to Mr. Ellis. 

"Albany, January 10th, 1849. 
"I have had a pastoral epistle in three sheets from St. Henry, of Exon, 
and have sent him three sheets in answer. We are the most courteous 
and affectionate of adversaries. You can not think how different an opin- 
ion I entertain of him since he has taken to subscribing himself, ' with 
very high esteem, my admiring reader.' How is it possible to hold out 
against a man whose censure is conveyed in the following sort of phrase ? 

* If Macaulay's " History " was not a Life of William Penn, this book is 
still less so. Those who are honorably jealous for Penn's reputation will 
forgive me if I do not express an opinion of my own with regard to the 
controversy ; an opinion which, after all, would be valueless. In my un- 
cle's papers there can be found no trace of his ever having changed his 
mind on the merits of the question. 



184&-'52.] LOED MACAULAY. 221 

' Pardon me if I say that a different course would have been more gener- 
ous, more candid, more philosophical, all which I may sum up in the words, 
more like yourself.' This is the extreme point of his severity. And to 
think how long I have denied to this man all share of Christian charity !"* 

" March 6th, 1849. 

" Pray tell Adolphus how much obliged I am to him for his criticisms. 
I see that I now and then fell into error. I got into a passion with the 
Stuarts, and consequently did less damage than I should have done if I 
had kept my temper. 

" I hear that Croker has written a furious article against me, and that 
Lookhart wishes to suppress it, declaring that the current of public opin- 
ion runs strongly on my side, and that a violent attack by a personal ene- 
my will do no harm to me and much harm to the Quarterly Beview. How 
they settle the matter I care not, as the duke says, one two-penny damn."t 

" March 8th, 1849. 
"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 introduction to Macaulay.' I laugh- 
ed so convulsively that the other people who were staring at the books 
took me for a poor demented gentleman. Alas for poor David! As for 
me, only one height of renown yet remains to be attained. I am not yet 
in Madame Tussaud's wax-work. I live, however, in hope of seeing one 
day an advertisement of a new group of figures — Mr. Macaulay, in one of 

* Unfortunately, these were only the preliminaries of the combat. When 
the bishop passed from compliments to arguments, he soon showed that he 
had not forgotten his swashing blow. Macaulay writes with the air of a 
man whose sole object is to be ont of a controversy on the shortest and the 
most civil terms. " Before another edition of my book appears, I shall 
have time to weigh your observations carefully, and to examine the works 
to which you have called my attention. You have convinced me of the 
propriety of making some alterations. But I hope that you will not ac- 
cuse me of pertinacity if I add that, as far as I can at present judge, the 
alterations will be slight, and that on the great point at issue my opinion 
is unchanged." To this the bishop rejoins : " Do not think me very angry, 
when I say that a person mlling to come to such a conclusion would make 
an invaluable foreman of a jury to convict another Algernon Sidney. Sin- 
cerely, I never met so monstrous an attempt to support a foregone conclu- 
sion." 

t It was the Duke of Wellington who invented this oath, so dispropor- 
tioned to the greatness of its author. 



222 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap, xil 

liis own coats, conversing witli Mr. Silk Buckingham in Oriental costume, 
and Mr. Eobert Montgomery in full canonicals." 

"March 9th, 1850. 

"I hope that Roebuck will do well. If he fails, it will not he from the 
strength of his competitors. What a nerveless, milk-and-water set the 

young fellows of the present day are ! declares that there is 

not in the whole House of Commons any stuff, under five-and-thirty, of 
which a junior lord of the treasury can be made. It is the same in litera- 
ture, and, I imagine, at the bar. It is odd that the last twenty-five years, 
which have witnessed the greatest progress ever made in physical science 
— the greatest victories ever achieved by man over matter — should have 
produced hardly a volume that will be remembered in 1900, and should 
have seen the breed of great advocates and Parliamentary orators become 
extinct among us. 

"One good composition of its kind was produced yesterday;* the judg- 
ment in Gorham's case. I hope you like it. I think it excellent, worthy 
of D'Aguesseau or Mansfield. I meant to have heard it delivered ; but, 
when I came to Whitehall, I found the stairs, the passages, and the veiy 
street so full of parsons, Puseyite and Simeonite, that there was no access 
even for privy councilors ; and, not caring to elbow so many successors of 
the apostles, I walked away. 

" I have seen the hippopotamus, both asleep and awake ; and I can as- 
sure 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-wit- 
ness and ear-witness of the proudest event of my life. Two damsels were 
j ust about to pass that door-way which we, on Monday, in vain attempted 
to enter, when I was pointed out to them. ' Mr. Macaulay !' cried the love- 
ly pair. ' Is that Mr. Macaulay ? Never mind the hippopotamus.' And, 
having 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. I can wish for nothing more on earth, now that Ma- 
dame Tnssaud, in whose Pantheon I once hoped for a place, is dead." 

"February 12th,. — I bought a superb sheet of paper for a guinea, and 
wrote on it a Valentine for Alice. I dined at Lady Charlotte Lindsay's 
with Hallam and Kinglake. I am afraid that I talked too much about 
my book. Yet really the fault was not mine. People would introduce 
the subject. I will be more guarded ; yet how difficult it is to hit the 
right point ! To turn the conversation might look ungracious and affected." 

"Feh-uary 13th, 1849. — I sent off Alice's Valentine to Fanny to be for- 
warded.t The sale keeps up — eighty or more a day. It is strauge. Peo- 

* On March 8th, 18.')0, Lord Langdale delivered the judgment of the Ju- 
dicial Committee of the Privy Council. 
t The Miss Macaulays resided at Brighton. The many weeks which 



1848-'52.] LOED MACAULAY. 223 

pie tell me that Miss Aikin abuses my book like a fury, and can not for- 
give my treatment of her ' Life of Addison.' Poor creature ! If she knew 
how little I deserve her ill-will, and how little I care for it, she would he 
quieter. If she would have let me save her from exposing herself, I would 
have done so ;* and, when she rudely rejected my help, and I could not es- 
cape from the necessity of censuring her, I censured her more leniently, I 
will venture to say, than so bad a book was ever censured by any critic of 
the smallest discernment. From the first word to the last, I never forgot 
my respect for her petticoats. Even now, I do not reprint one of my best 
reviews for fear of giving her pain. But there is no great magnanimity in 
an this." 

"February lith. — At three came Fanny and the children. Alice was in 
perfect raptures over her Valentine. She begged quite pathetically to be 
told the truth about it. When we were alone together she said, ' I am go- 
ing to be very serious.' Down she fell before me on her knees, and lifted 
up her hands : ' Dear uncle, do tell the truth to your little girl. Did you 
send the Valentine ?' I did not choose to tell a real lie to a child even 
about such a trifle, and so I owned it." 

"February ISift. — To dinner with Baron Parke. Brougham was noisily 
friendly. I know how mortally he hates and how bitterly he reviles me. 
But it matters little. He has long outlived his power to injure. He has 
not, however, outlived his power to amuse. He was very pleasant, but, as 
usual, excessively absurd, and exposed himself quite ludicrously ou one 
subject. He maintained that it was doubtful whether the tragic poet was 
Euripides or Euripides. It was Euripides in his Ainsworth. There was, 
he said, no authority either way. I answered by quoting a couple of lines 
from Aristophanes. I could have overwhelmed him with quotations. 
' Oh !' said this great scholar, ' those are iambics. Iambics are very ca- 
pricious and irregular ; not like hexameters.' I kept my countenance, 
and so did Parke. Nobody else who heard the discussion understood the 
subject." 

In ITovember, 1848, Macaulay had been elected Lord Eector 
of the University of Glasgow. The time was now approach- 
ing for the ceremony of his installation — one of those occa- 
sions which are the special terror of an orator, when much is 

their brother spent there in their company added much to his health and 
comfort. For the most part he lived at the Norfolk Hotel, but he some- 
times took a lodging in the neighborhood of their house. His article 
on Bunyau in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" was written in one of the 
houses in Regency Square. 
* See pages 115 and 116. 



224 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xii. 

expected, and every thing has been well said many times be- 
fore. His year of oflSce fortunately chanced to be the fourth 
centenary of the body over which he had been chosen to pre- 
side; and he contrived to give point and novelty to his in- 
augural address by framing it into a retrospect of the history 
and condition of the University at the commencement of each 
successive century of its existence. 

"March Vith. — I called od the lord advocate, settled the date of my 
journey to Glasgow, and consulted him about the plan of my speech. He 
thought the notion very good ; grand, indeed, he said ; and I think that it 
is striking and original, without being at all affected or eccentric. I was 
vexed to hear that there is some thought of giving me the freedom of 
Glasgow in a gold box. This may make it necessary for me to make a 
speech, on which I had not reckoned. It is strange, even to myself, to find 
how the horror of public exhibitions grows on me. Having made my way 
in the world by haranguing, I am now as unwilling to make a speech as 
any timid stammerer in Great Britain.'' 

The event proved that his apprehensions were superfluous. 
" I took the oath of oflQce," he writes in his journal of March 
21st, 1849; "signed my name, and delivered my address. It 
was very successful ; for, though of little intrinsic value, it 
was not unskillfuUy framed for its purpose, and for the place 
and time. The acclamations were prodigious." 

" March Z^d. — Another eventful and exciting day. I was much annoy- 
ed and anxious, in consequence of hearing that there were great expecta- 
tions of a fine oration from me at the town-hall. I had broken rest, part- 
ly from the effect of the bustle which was over, and partly from the appre- 
hension of the bustle which was to come. I turned over a few sentences 
iu my head, but was very ill satisfied with them. Well or ill satisfied, 
however, I was forced to be ready when the lord provost called for me. I 
felt like a mau going to be hanged ; and, as such a man generally does, 
plucked up courage to behave with decency. We went to the city hall, 
which is a fine room, and was crowded as full as it could hold. Nothing 
but huzzaing and clapping of hands. The provost presented me with a 
handsome box, silver-gilt, containing the freedom of the city, and made a 
very fair speech on the occasion. I returned thanks with sincere emotion, 
and, I hope, with propriety. What I said was very well received, and I 
was vehemently applauded at the close. At half-past two I took flight 
for Edinburgh, and, on arriving, drove straight from the station to Craig 



1848-'52.] LOED MACAULAY. 225 

Crook. I had a pleasant, painful half- hour with Jeffrey — perhaps the 
last. He was in almost hysterical excitement. His kindness and praise 
were quite overwhelming. The tears were in the eyes of both of us." 

"March 26th. — Longman has written to, say that the third edition is 
aU s6ld off to the last copy. I wrote up my journal for the past week : 
an hour for fourteen pages, at ahout four minutes a page. Then came a 
long call from Macleod, with whom I had much good talk, which occupied 
most of the morning. I must not go on in this dawdling way. Soon the 
correspondence to which my book has given occasion will be over; the 
correcting of proof-sheets for fresh editions will also be over ; the morn- 
ings wiU be mild ; the sun will be up early ; and I will try to be up early 
too. I should like to get again into the habit of working three hours be- 
fore breakfast. Once I had it, and I may easily recover it. A man feels 
his conscience so light during the day when he has done a good piece of 
work with a clear head before leaving his bedroom. I think I will fix 
Easter Tuesday for the beginning of this new system. It is hardly worth 
while to make the change before we return from our tour."* 

"April 13ft. — To the British Museum. I looked over the ' Travels of the 
Duke of Tuscany,' and found the passage the existence of which Croker 
denies. His blunders are really incredible. The article has been received 
with general contempt. Eeally, Croker has done me a great service. I ap- 
prehended a strong reaction, the natural effect of such a success ; and, if 
hatred had left him free to use his very slender faculties to the best advan- 
tage, he might have injured me much. He should have been large in ac- 
knowledgment ; should have taken a mild aud expostulatory tone; and 
should have looked out for real blemishes, which, as I too well know, he 
might easily have found. Instead of that, he has written with such rancor 
as to make every body sick. I could almost pity him. But he is a bad, a 
very bad, man : a scandal to politics and to letters. 

"I corrected my article on Addison for insertion in the collected Essays. 
I shall leave out all the animadversions on Miss Aikin's blunders. She has 
used me iU, and this is the honorable aud gentleman-like revenge." 

"Friday, May 5th, 1849. — A lucky day on which to begin a new volume of 
my journal. Glorious weather. A letter from Lord John to say that he 
has given my brother John the living of Aldingham, worth eleven hundred 
pounds a year, in a fine country, and amidst a fine population. Was there 
ever such prosperity ? I wrote a few lines of warm thanks to Lord John. 
To Longman's. A thousand of the fifth edition bespoken. Longman has 
sent me Southey's ' Commonplace Book ' — trash, if ever there was trash in 
a book-seller's shop. 

" I read some of Dr. Parr's correspondence while I dressed. I have been 
dawdling, at odd moments, over his writings, and over the memoirs of him, 

* At Easter, 1849, we went to Chester, Bangor, aud Lichfield. 
Vol. II.— 15 



226 LIFE Am) LETTERS OF [chap.xii. 

during the last week. He certainly was very far from being all humbug. 
Yet the proportion of humbug was so great that one is tempted to deny 
him the merit which he really possessed. The preface to the Warburto- 
nian Tracts is, I think, the best piece." 

" June 28th. — After breakfast to the Museum, and sat till three, reading 
and making extracts. I turned over three volumes of newspapers and 
tracts — Flying Posts, Postboys, and Postmen. I found some curious things 
which will be of direct service ; but the chief advantage of these research- 
es is that the mind is transported back a century and a half, and gets fa- 
miliar with the ways of thinking, and with the habits, of a past genera- 
tion. I feel that I am fast becoming master of my subject; at least, more 
master of it than any writer who has yet handled it." 

" June 29</i.^To the British Museum, and read and extracted there till 
near five. I find a growing pleasure in this employment. The reign of 
William the Third, so mysterious to me a few weeks ago, is beginning to 
take a clear form. I begin to see the men, and to understand all their dif- 
ficulties and jealousies." 

"June dOth. — To-day my yearly account with Longman is wound up. I 
may now say that my book has run the gauntlet of criticism pretty thor- 
oughly. I have every reason to be content. The most savage and dishon- 
est assailant has not been able to deny me merit as a writer. All critics 
who have the least pretense to impartiality have given me praise which I 
may be glad to think that I at all deserve. My present enterprise is a 
more arduous one, and will probably be rewarded with less applause. Yet 
I feel strong in hope. 

" I received a note from Prince Albert. He wants to see me at Bucking- 
ham Palace at three to-morrow. I answered like a courtier ; yet what am 
I to say to him ? For, of course, he wants to consult me about the Cam- 
bridge professorship.* How can I be just at once to Stephen and to Kem- 
ble?" 

" Saturday, July 1st. — To the Palace. The prince, to my extreme aston- 
ishment, offered me the professorship ; and very earnestly, and with many 
flattering expressions, pressed me to accept it. I was resolute, and grate- 
fully and respectfully declined. I should have declined, indeed, if only in 
order to give no ground to any body to accuse me of foul play ; for I have 
had difficulty enough in steering my course so as to deal properly both by 
Stephen and by Kemble ; and if I had marched off with the prize, I could 
not have been astonished if both had entertained a very unjust suspicion 
of me. But, in truth, my temper is that of the wolf in the fable. I can 
not bear the collar, and I have got rid of much finer and richer collars than 
this. It would be strange if, having sacrificed for liberty a seat in the 

* The Professorship of Modern History. The chair was eventually filled 
by Sir James Stephen. 



1848-'52.] LOED MACAULAY. 227 

Cabinet and twenty-five hundred pounds a year, I should now sacrifice lib- 
erty for a chair at Cambridge and four hundred pounds a year. Besides, I 
never could do two things at once. If I lectured well, my ' History ' must 
be given up ; and to give up my ' History ' would be to give up much more 
than the emoluments of the professorship — if emolument were my chief 
object, which it is not now, nor ever was. The prince, when he found me 
determined, asked me about the other candidates." 

" July 21s<. — I went to a shop near Westminster Bridge, where I yester- 
day remarked some volumes of the Morning Chronicle, and bought some of 
them to continue my set. I read the Morning Chronicle of 1811. How 
scandalously the Whig press treated the Duke of Wellington, till his merit 
became too great to be disputed! How extravagantly unjust party spirit 
makes men ! 

" Some scribbler in the Morning Post has just now a spite to Trevelyan, 
and writes several absurd papers against him every week. He will never 
hear of them, probably, and will certainly not care for them. They can 
do him no harm ; and yet I, who am never moved by such attacks on my- 
self, and who would not walk across the room to change all the abuse that 
the Morning Post has ever put forth against me into panegyric, can not 
help being irritated by this low, dirty wickedness. To the Museum, and 
passed two or three hours usefully and agreeably over maps and tracts 
relating to Londonderry. I can make something of that matter, unless I 
have lost my cunning." 

"August 3d. — I am now near the end of Tom Moore's ' Life of Byron.' It 
is a sad book. Poor fellow ! Yet he was a bad fellow, and horribly affect- 
ed. But then what, that could spoil a character, was wanting ? Had I 
at twenty-four had a peerage, and been the most popular poet and the most 
successful Lovelace of the day, I should have been as great a coxcomb, and 
possibly as bad a man. I passed some hours over 'Don Juan,' and saw no 
reason to change the opinion which I formed twenty-five years ago. The 
first two cantos are Byron's masterpieces. The next two may pass as not 
below his average. Then begins the descent, and at last he sinks to the 
level of his own imitators in the magazines." 

Macaulay spent the last half of August in Ireland,* and, as 
his custom was, employed himself during the days that pre- 
ceded his tour in studying the literature of the country. He 
turned over Swift's "Correspondence," and at least a shelf -full 
of Irish novels; and read more carefully Moore's "Life of 
Sheridan," and the " Life of Flood," which did not at all meet 
his fancy. "A stupid, ill-spelled, ill-written book it is. He 

* See pages 194-196. 



228 LIFE AKD LETTERS OF [chap. xii. 

was a remarkable man ; but one not much to be esteemed or 
loved. I looked through the ' Memoirs of "Wolfe Tone.' In 
spite of the fellow's savage, unreasonable hatred of England, 
there is something about him which I can not help liking. 
Why is it that an Irishman's, or Frenchman's, hatred of En- 
gland does not excite in me an answering hatred ? I imagine 
that my national pride prevents it. England is so great that 
an Englishman cares little what others think of her, or how 
they talk of her." 

"August l&th, 1849. — The express train reached Holyhead about seven in 
the evening. I read, between London and Bangor, the ' Lives of the Em- 
peTors,' from Maximin to Carinus inclusive, in the Augustan History, and 
•was greatly amused and interested. It is a pity that Philip and Decius 
are wanting to the series. Philip's strange leaning toward Christianity, 
and the vigor and ability of Decius, and his inveterate hostility to the new 
religion, would be interesting even in the worst history ; and certainly 
worse historians than Trebellius Capitolinus and Vopiscus are not easily 
to be found. Yet I like their silliest garrulity. It sometimes has a Pepys- 
like effect. 

"We sailed as soon as we got on board. The breeze was fresh and ad- 
verse, and the sea rough. The sun set in glory, and then the starlight was 
like the starlight of the Trades. I put on my great-coat, and sat on deck 
during the whole voyage. As I could not read, I used an excellent substi- 
tute for reading. I went through ' Paradise Lost ' in my head. I could 
still repeat half of it, and that the best half. I really never enjoyed it so 
much. In the dialogue at the end of the fourth book, Satan and Gabriel 
became to me quite like two of Shakspeare's men. Old Sharp once told 
me that Henderson, the actor, used to say to him that there was no better 
acting scene in the English drama than this. I now felt the truth of the 
criticism. How admirable is that hit in the manner of Euripides : 

But wherefore thou alone? Wherefore with thee 
Came not all hell broke loose? 

I win try my hand on the passage in Greek iambics ; or set Ellis to do it, 
who will do it better. 

"I had got to the end of the conversation between Eaphael and Adam, 
admiring more than ever the sublime courtesy of the Archangel, when I 
saw the lights of Dublin Bay. I love entering a port at night. The con- 
trast between the wild, lonely sea, and the life and tumult of a harbor 
when a ship is coming in, have always impressed me much." 

"August Vith. — Off to Dublin by railway. The public buildings, at 
this first glance, struck me as very fine, and would be considered fine even 



1848-'52.] LOED MACAULAY. 229 

at Paris. Yet the old Parliament House, from whioli I had expected most, 
fell below my expectations. It is handsome, undoubtedly ; indeed, more 
than handsome ; but it is too low. If it were twice as high as it is, it 
would be one of the noblest edifices in Europe. It is remarkable that 
architecture is the only art in which mere bulli is an element of sublimity. 
There is more grandeur in a Greek gem of a quarter of an inch diameter, 
than in the statue of Peter the Great at Petersburg. There is more grand- 
eur in Raphael's 'Vision of Ezekiel' than in all West's and Barry's acres 
of spoiled canvas. But no building of very small dimensions can be grand, 
and no building as lofty as the Pyramids or the Colosseum can he mean. 
The Pyramids are a proof; for what on earth could be viler than a pyra- 
mid thirty feet high 1 

" The rain was so heavy that I was forced to come back in a covered 
car. While in this detestable vehicle, I looked rapidly through the corre- 
spondence between Pliny and Trajan, and thought that Trajan made a 
most creditable figure. I saw the outside of Christ Church Cathedral, and 
felt very little inclination to see the inside. Not so with St. Patrick's. 
Euinous, and ruinous in the worst way — undergoing repairs which there 
are not funds to make — it is still a striking church ; but the interest which 
belongs to it is chiefly historical. In the choir I saw Schomberg's grave, 
and Swift's furious libel* written above. Opposite hang the spurs of St. 
Euth, and the chain-ball which killed him ; not a very Christian-like orna- 
ment for the neighborhood of an altar. In the nave Swift and Stella are 
buried. Swift's bust is much the best likeness of him that I ever saw ; 
striking and full of character. Going away through Kevin Street I saw 
the Deanery ; not Swift's house, though on the same site. Some of the 
hovels opposite must have been standing in his time ; and the inmates 
were probably among the people who borrowed small sums of him, or took 
off their hats to him in the street." 

"August 24ft, Killarney. — A busy day. I found that I must either fore- 
go the finest part of the sight, or mount a pony. Ponies are not much in 
my way. However, I was ashamed to flinch, and rode twelve miles, with 
a guide, to the head of the Upper Lake, where we met the boat which had 
been sent forward with four rowers. One of the boatmen gloried in hav- 
ing rowed Sir Walter Scott and Miss Edgeworth, twenty-four years ago. 
It was, he said, a compensation to him for having missed a hanging which 
took place that very day. Nothing can exceed the beauty of the Upper 

* The inscription on Schomberg's tablet relates, in most outspoken 
phrases, how the Dean and Chapter of St. Patrick's in vain impor- 
tuned the duke's heirs to erect him a monument, and how at length 
they were induced to erect one themselves. The last line runs thus: 
"Plus potuit fama virtutis apud alienos, quam sanguinis proximitas apud 
sues." 



230 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xn. 

Lake.* I got home after a seven hours' ramble, during which I went 
twelve miles on horseback, and about twenty by boat. I had not crossed 
a horse since in June, 1834, 1 rode with Captain Smith through the Mango 
Garden, near Aroot. I was pleased to find that I had a good seat ; and my 
guide, whom I had apprised of my unskillfulness, professed himself quite 
an admirer of the way in which I trotted and cantered. His flattery 
pleased me more than many fine compliments which have been paid to my 
' History .'t 

After his f ortniglit in Ireland, Macaulay took another fort- 
night in France, and then applied himself, sedulously and 
continuously, to the completion of his twelfth chapter. For 
weeks together the account of each day ends or begins with 
the words : " My task ;" " Did my task ;" " My task, and some- 
thing over." 



* " Killarney is worth some trouble," Macaulay writes to Mr. Ellis. " I 
never in my life saw any thing more beautiful ; I might say, so beautiful. 
Imagine a fairer Windermere in that part of Devonshire where the myrtle 
grows wild. The ash-berries are redder, the heath richer, the very fern 
more delicately articulated than elsewhere. The wood is everywhere. 
The grass is greener than any thing that I ever saw. There is a positive 
sensual pleasure in looking at it. No sheep is suffered to remain more 
than a few months on any of the islands of the lakes. I asked why not. 
I was told that they would die of fat ; and, indeed, those that I saw looked 
like aldermen who had passed the chair." 

+ In a letter written from Dublin on his way home, Macaulay says : " I 
was agreeably disappointed with what I saw of the condition of the peo- 
ple in Meath and Louth, when I went to the Boyne, and not much shocked 
by any thing that I fell in with in going by railway from Dublin to Lim- 
erick. But from Limerick to Killarney, and from Killarney to Cork, I 
hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. Hundreds of dwellings in ruins, 
abandoned by the late iumates, who have fled to America ; the laboring 
people dressed literally, not rhetorically, worse than the scarecrows of En- 
gland ; the children of whole villages turning out to beg of every coach 
and car that goes by. But I will have done. I can not meud this state 
of things, and there is no use in breaking my heart about it. I am com- 
forted by thinking that between the poorest English peasant and the Irish 
peasant there is ample room for ten or twelve well-marked degrees of pov- 
erty. As to political agitation, it is dead and buried. Never did I see a 
society apparently so well satisfied with its rulers. The queen made a 
conquest of all hearts," 



1848-'52.] LOED MACAULAY. 231 

"September 22d. — Wrote my regular quantity — six foolscap pages of my 
scrawl, which will be about two pages in print. I hope to hold on at this 
pace through the greater part of the year. If I do this, I shall, by next 
September, have rough-hewn my third volume. Of coarse, the polishing 
and retouching will be au immense labor." 

" October 2d. — Wrote fast and long. I do not know that I ever composed 
■with more ease and pleasure than of late. I have got far beyond my task. 
I will only mention days when I fall short of it ; and I'hope that it will be 
long before I have occasion to make such an entry." 

"October 9th. — Sat down again to write, but not in the vein. I hope 
that I shall not break my wholesome practice to-day, for the first time since 
I came back from France. A Frenchman called on me, a sort of man of 
letters, who has translated some bits of my ' History.' When he went, I 
sat down doggedly, as Johnson used to say, and did my task, but somewhat 
against my will." 

"October 25th, 1849. — My birthday. Forty-nine years old. I have no 
cause of complaint. Tolerable health ; competence ; liberty ; leisure; very 
dear relations and firiends ; a great, I may say a very great, literary repu- 
tation. 

Nil amplius oro, 
Maid nate, nisi ut propria hsec mihi munera faxis.* 

But how will that be ? My fortune is tolerably secure against any thing 
but a great public calamity. My liberty depends on myself, and I shall 
not easily part with it. As to fame, it may fade and die ; but I hope that 
mine has deeper roots. This I can not but perceive, that even the hasty 
and imperfect articles which I wrote for the Edinburgh Beview are valued 
by a generation which has sprung up since they were first published. 
While two editions of Jeffrey's papers, and four of Sydney's, have sold, mine 
are reprinting for the seventh time. Then, as to my 'History,' there is no 
change yet in the public feeling of England. I find that the United States, 
France, and Germany confirm the judgment of my own country. I have 
seen not less than six German reviews, all in the highest degree laudatory. 
This is a sufficient answer to those detractors who attribute the success 
of my book here to the skill with which I have addressed myself to mere 
local and temporary feelings. I am conscious that I did not mean to ad- 
dress myself to such feelings, and that I wrote with a remote past, and 
a remote future, constantly in my mind. The applause of people at 
Charleston, people at Heidelberg, and people at Paris has reached me 
this very week ; and this consent of men so differently situated leads 
me to hope that I have really achieved the high adventure which I un- 
dertook, and produced something which will live. What a long rigma- 

* " My only prayer is, O son of Maia, that thou wilt make these blessings 
my own.'' 



232 LIFE AHD LETTERS OF [chap. xn. 

role ! But on a birthday a man may be esoTised for looking backward and 
forward. 

" Not quite my whole task ; but I have a grand purple patch to sew on,* 
and I must take time. I have been delighted to hear of Milman's appoint- 
ment to St. Paul's — honestly delighted, as much as if a good legacy had 
been left me." 

"Deceniber 5fh. — In the afternoon to Westbonrne Terrace. I read my 
Irish narrative to Hannah. Trevelyan came in the middle. After dinner 
I read again. They seemed much, very much, interested. Hannah cried. 
I could not at all command my voice. I think that if I ever wrote well, I 
have done so here. But this is but a small part of my task. However, 
I was pleased at the effect which I produced ; and the more so as I am 
sensible that I do not read ray own compositions well." 

"Deceniber 7th. — I bought Thiers's new volume, and read it in the street. 
He is fair enough about Vimiera and Corunna, and just to the English offi- 
cers, but hardly so to the private soldiers. After dinner I read Thiers 
again, and finished him. I am afraid of saying to other people how much 
I miss in historians who pass for good. The truth is that I admire no his- 
torians much except Herodotus, Thucydides, and Tacitus. Perhaps, in his 
way, a very peculiar way, I might add Fra Paolo. The modern writers 
who have most of the great qualities of the ancient masters of history are 
some memoir writers ; St. Simon, for example. There is merit, no doubt, 
in Hume, Robertson, Voltaire, and Gibbon. Yet it is not the thing. I 
have a conception of history more just, I am confident, than theirs. The 
execution is another matter. But I hope to improve." 

In a letter of December 19th, 1849, Macaulay writes : " Lord 
Spencer has invited me to rummage his family papers ; a great 
proof of liberality, when it is considered that he is the lineal 
descendant of Sunderland and Marlborough. In general, it is 
ludicrous to notice how sore people are at the truth being told 
about their ancestors. I am curious to see that noble library ; 
the finest private library, I believe, in England." 

"Deeeniber 20t^ ; Alfhorp. — This is a very early house. We had break- 
fast at nine, preceded by prayers in the chapel. I was just in time for 
them. After breakfast I went to the library. The first glance showed 
what a vast collection it was. Mr. Appleyard was cicerone. Though not 
much given to admire the merely curious parts of libraries, I was greatly 
pleased with the old block -printing; the very early specimens of the art 
at Mentz ; the Caxtons ; the Florence Homer ; the Alduses ; the famous 

* The Relief of Londonderry. 



1848-'52.] LORD MACAULAY. 333 

Boccaccio. I looked with particular interest into the two editions of Chau- 
cer by Caxton, and at the preface of the latter. Lord Spencer expressed 
his regret that his sea education had kept him ignorant of much that was 
known to scholars, and said that his chief pleasure in his library was de- 
rived from the pleasure of his friends. This he said so frankly and kind- 
ly that it was impossible not to be humbled by his superiority in a thing 
more important even than learning. He reminded me of his brother, my 
old friend and leader.'' 

"Deeemier 21sf. — After breakfast to-day I sat down to work. Appleyard 
showed me the pamphlet corner, and I fell to vigorously. There is here a 
large collection of pamphlets, formerly the property of General Conway. 
The volumes relating to William's reign can not have been fewer than four- 
teen or fifteen : the pamphlets, I should think, at least a dozen to a volume. 
Many I have, and many are, to my knowledge, at the British Museum. But 
there were many which I had never seen ; and I found abundant, and use- 
ful, and pleasing occupation for five or six hours. I filled several sheets 
of paper with notes. Though I do not love country-house society, I got 
pleasantly through the evening. In truth, when people are so kind and 
80 honest, it would be brutal not to be pleased. To-day I sent ten pounds 

to poor 's family. I do not complain of such calls ; but I must save 

in other things In order to meet them." 

" Decemher 2Gth. — I bought Thackeray's 'Rebecca and Eowena' — a very 
pretty, clever piece of fooling; but I doubt whether every body will taste 
the humor as I do. I wish him success heartily. I finished the ' Life of 
Lord Sidmouth.' Addington seems to mo to have had more pluck than 
I had given him credit for. As to the rest, he was narrow-minded and im- 
becile, beyond any person who has filled such posts since the Revolution. 
Lord Sidmouth might have made a highly creditable figure if he had con- 
tinued to be speaker, as he well might have done, twenty years longer. 
He would then have left as considerable a name as Onslow's. He was well 
qualified for that sort of work. But his sudden elevation to the highest 
place in the State not only exposed his incapacity, but turned his head. 
He began to think highly of himself exactly at the moment when every 
body else began to think meanly of him. There is a punctiliousness, a 
sense of personal dignity, an expectation of being consulted, a disposition 
to resent slights, to the end of his life. These were the efiects, I appre- 
hend, of his having been put above his station. He had a dream like 
Abon Hassan's, and was the worse for it all his days. I do not wonder 
at the contempt which Pitt felt for him ; but it was below Pitt to be 
angry." 

" December 27th. — Disagreeable weather, and disagreeable news. is 

in difficulty again. I sent fifty pounds, and I shall send the same to , 

who does not ask it. But I can not help being- vexed. All the fruits of 
my book have for this year been swallowed up. It will be all that I can 



234 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xii. 

do to make both ends meet without breaking in upou capital. In the 
mean time, people who know my incomings, and do not know the drains, 
have no scruple about boring me for subscriptions and assistance. 

" I read ' Eomilly's Memoirs.' A fine fellow ; but too stoical for my 
taste. I love a little of the Epicurean element in virtue." 

" January 12th, 1850. — To the Board at the Museum, and shook hands 
with Peel. We did business — board-fashion. Would it were otherwise ! 
I went home, worked some hours, and got on tolerably. No doubt what I 
am writing will require much correction ; but in the main, I think, it will 
do. How little the all-important art of making meaning pellucid is stud- 
ied now ! Hardly any popular writer, except myself, thinks of it. Many 
seem to aim at being obscure. Indeed, they may be right enough in one 
sense ; for many readers give credit for profundity to whatever is obscure, 
and call all that is perspicuous, shallow. But, coraggio ! and think of A.D. 
2850. Where_will yo ur Emers ons be then ? But Herodotus will still be 
read with delight. We must do our best to be read too. 

" A letter from Campbell with news that I am a bencher of Lincoln's 
Inn. I am pleased and amused.* I read some of Campbell's ' Lives.' To 
Thurlow's abilities he is surely unjust. It is idle to question powers of 
mind which a generation of able men admitted. Thurlow was in the 
House of Commons when Fox and Burke were against him, and made a 
great figure there. He dominated over the Lords, in spite of Camden, 
Mansfield, and Loughborough. His talents were acknowledged by the 
writers of the ' KoUiad,' and even by Peter Pindar. It is too late to dis- 
pute them now." 

"January 28ft. — Jefiiey is gone. Dear fellow! I loved him as much 
as it is easy to love a man who belongs to an older generation. And how 
good, and kind, and generous he was to me ! His goodness, too, was the 
more precious because his perspicacity was so great. He saw through and 
through you. He marked every fault of taste, every weakness, every ridi- 
cule ; and yet he loved you as if he had been the dullest fellow in England. 
He had a much better heart than Sydney Smith. I do not mean that 
Sydney was in that respect below par. In ability I should say that Jeffrey 
was higher, but Sydney rarer. I would^ rather have been Jeffrey ; but 
there will be several Jeffreys, before there is a Sydney. After all, dear 
Jeffrey's death is hardly matter for mourning. God grant that I may die 
so ! Full of years ; full of honors ; faculties bright, and affections warm, 

* A benchership of Lincoln's Inn has rarely fallen to a stuff gown ; and 
to a stuff gown whose wearer had, in the course of his life, earned but one 
solitary guinea. The notion of conferring this high honor upon Macaulay 
was mooted by Lord Justice Knight Bruce, who had been one of his most 
determined adversaries in the House of Commons during the heat of the 
great controversies of 1833. 



1848-'53.] LORD MACAULAY. 235 

to the last ; lamented by the public, and by many valuable private friends. 
This is the euthanasia. 

"I dined at home, and read in the evening Rousseau's 'Letter to the 
Archbishop of Paris,' and ' Letter to D'Alembert.' In spite of my hatred 
of the feUow, I can not deny that he had great eloquence and vigor of 
mind. At the same time, he does not amuse me, and to me a book which 
is not amusing wants the highest of all recommendations." 

"February 19iA. — Went with Hannah to Richmond's studio, to see my 
picture. He seemed anxious and excited ; but at last, when he produced 
his work, she pronounced it excellent. I am no judge of the likeness, but 
the face is characteristic. It is the face of a man of considerable mental 
powers, great boldness and frankness, and a quick relish for pleasure. It 
is not unlike Mr. Fox's face in general expression. I am quite content to 
have such a physiognomy. Home, and counted my books. Those which 
are in front are, in round numbers, six thousand one hundred. There are 
several hundreds behind, chiefly novels. I may call the whole collection 
at least seven thousand. It will probably amount to ten thousand by the 
time that my lease of these chambers expires ; unless, indeed, I expire first, 
which I think very probable. It is o dd how indifferent I have become to 
the fear of death l and y et I enjoy life greatly. I looked at some Spanish 
ballads, and was struck by the superiority of Lockhart's versions to the 
originals. 

" To dinner at the Club, and very pleasant it was."* 

" March 2d. — I was pained by hearing at Westbourne Terrace that 

is deeply hurt by the failure of his portrait of me.t I am very sorry for it. 
He seemed a good fellow, and a pleasing painter ; and I have a great ten- 
derness for the sensibility of artists whose bread depends on their success. 
I have had as few checks to my vanity in my owu line as most men ; but 
I have felt enough to teach me sympathy. I have been reading a book 
called ' Les Gentilshommes Chasseurs.' The old regime would have been 
a fine thing if the world had been made only for gentlemen, and if gentle- 
men had been made only for hunting." 

"March 9th, 1850. — To dinner at the Palace. The queen was most 
gracious to me. She talked much about my book, and owned that she had 

* Lord Carlisle says, in his diary of February 19th, 1850 : " Dined at the 
Club. Hallam in the chair. It was remarkably pleasant, except once, 
when we got on Scotch entails. I saw Pemberton Leigh look amused 
when Maoaulay turned on him : Don't you remember — as he always begins 
— then something in 'Don Gusman d'Alfarache.' He said Drydeu had 
three great dialogues in his plays : Sebastian and Dorax ; Antony and 
Ventidius (I forget the third) ; but he considers all immeasurably below 
the Brutus and Cassius." 

+ This does not refer to Mr. Richmond's picture. 



236 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xir. 

nothing to say for her poor ancestor, James the Second. ' Not your majes- 
ty's ancestor,' said I; 'your majesty's predecessor.' I hope this was not 
an uucourtly correction. I meant it as a compliment, and she seemed to 
take it so." 

In the year 1839 Macaulay dined at the Palace for the first 
time, and described his entertainment in a letter to one of his 
sisters. " We all spoke in whispers ; and, when dinner was 
over, almost every body went to cards or chess. I was pre- 
sented ; knelt down ; kissed her majesty's hand ; had the hon- 
or of a conversation with her of about two minutes, and as- 
sured her that India was hot, and that I kept my health there." 
It may well be believed that Macaulay did not relish a society 
where he fancied himself bound to condense his remarks into 
the space of two minutes, and to speak in the nearest approach 
to a whisper which he had at his command. But, in truth, 
the restraint under which he found himself was mainly due to 
his own inexperience of court life ; and, as time went on, he 
began to perceive that he could not make himself more ac- 
ceptable than by talking as he talked elsewhere. Before long, 
a lady who met him frequently at the Palace, whether in the 
character of a cabinet minister or of a private guest, writes : 
" Mr. Macaulay was very interesting to listen to ; quite im- 
measurably abundant in anecdote and knowledge." 

"March 11th. — I wrote the arrival of the news of the Boyne at White- 
hall. I go ou slowly, but, I think, pretty well. There are not many weeks 
in which I do not write enough to fill seven or eight printed pages. The 
rule of never going ou when the vein does not flow readily would not do 
for all men, or for all kinds of work. But I, who am not tied to time, who 
do not write for money, and who aim at interesting and pleasing readers 
whom ordinary histories repel, can hardly do better. How can a man ex- 
pect that others will be amused by reading what he finds it dull to com- 
pose? 

" Still north-east wind. Alas for the days when N.E. and S.W. were all 
one to me ! Yet I have compensations, and ought to be conteuted ; and so 
I am, though now and then I wince for a moment." 

"March 21s(. — I have been plagued to know what to do about a letter 
from that poor creature, Robert Montgomery. He has written to me beg- 
ging, in fact, that I will let him out of the pillory. I wrote, and re-wrote 
my answer. It was very difficult to hit the exact point — to refuse all con- 



1848-'52.] LORD MACAULAY. 237 

cession without offering any new offense, and, without any fresh asperity, 
to defend the asperity of my article." 

"April 15th. — After breakfast I fell to work on the conspiracy of the 
Jacobites in 1690. This is a tough chapter. To make the narrative flow 
along as it ought, every part naturally springing from that which precedes 
— to carry the reader backward and forward across St. George's Channel 
without distracting his attention — is not easy. Yet it may be done. I 
believe that this art of transition is as important, or nearly so, to history, 
as the art of narration. I read the last volume of ' Clarissa,' which I have 
not opened since my voyage from India in the Lord Sungerford. I nearly 
cried my eyes out." 

"April 27th. — To Westbourne Terrace, and passed an hour in playing 
with Alice. A very intelligent and engaging playfellow I fouud her. I 
was Dando at a pastry-cook's, and then at an oyster-shop.* Afterward I 
was a dog-stealer, who had carried away her little spaniel. Diamond, while 
she was playing in Kensington Gardens, and who came to get the reward 
advertised in the Times. Dear little creature! How such things twine 
themselves about our hearts ! 

" To dinner with Inglis. Hardinge told some good campaigning stories ; 
and, among others, the cold language which the duke used about a brave 
officer on the staff, who was killed by exposing himself injudiciously. 
' What business had he larking there ? I shall not mention his name. I 
shall teach officers that, dead or alive, they shall not be praised if they 
throw their lives away.' William the Third all over.t 

" Longman gives a capital account of the sale of my works. The sixth 
edition of the ' History ' is gone. That makes 32,000 copies." 

"May 9th. — To the British Museum. We put Peel into the chair. Very 
handy he is, to use the vulgar phrase. A capital man of business. We 
got on fast." 

"May Uth. — To the Museum. Peel brought his project of a report. I 
admire the neatness and readiness with which he does such things. It is 

* A generation has arisen of whom not one in fifty knows Dando, the 
" bouncing, seedy swell," hero of a hundred ballads, who was at least 
twice in every month brought before the magistrates for having refused to 
settle his bill after overeating himself in an oyster-shop. 

+ " Walker was treated less respectfully. William thought him a busy- 
body who had been properly punished for running into danger without 
any call of duty, and expressed that feeling with characteristic bluntness, 
on the field of battle. ' Sir,' said an attendant, ' the Bishop of Derry has 
been killed by a shot at the ford.' 'What took him there?' growled the 
king." See likewise, in the twenty-first chapter of the " History," the 
whole paragraph containing the account of the death of Mr. Godfrey at 
the siege of Namur. 



238 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xii. 

of a piece with liis Parliamentary performances. He and I get on won- 
derfully well together." 

"June 1st. — Dined with Peel. How odd !"* 

Three weeks afterward, Macaulay started for his tour to 
Glencoe and Killiecrankie. 

"July M. — As we drove into Glasgow, I saw ' Death of Sir Robert Peel' 
placarded at a newsman's. I was extremely shocked. Thank God, I had 
shaken hands cordially with the poor fellow, after all our blows given and 
received."t 

"July ith. — Poor Peel's death in the Times. I have been more affected 
by it than I could have believed. It was in the dining-room that he died. 
I dined with him there for the first, and the last, time about a month ago. 
If he is buried publicly, I will certainly follow his cofifiin. Once I little 
thought that I should have cried for his death." 

"July 28tA. — My account of the Highlands is getting into tolerable 
shape. To-morrow I shall begin to transcribe again, and to polish. What 
trouble these few pages will have cost rae ! The great object is that, after 
all this trouble, they may read as if they had been spoken off, and may 
seem to flow as easily as table-talk. We shall see. 

"I brought home, and read, the 'PreUide.' It is a poorer 'Excursion ;' 
the same sort of faults and beauties ; but the faults greater and the beau- 
ties fainter, both in themselves and because faults are always made more 
offensive, and beauties less pleasing, by repetition. The story is the old 
story. There are the old raptures about mountains and cataracts ; the old 

* The strangeness consisted in Macaulay's dining under Sir Robert Peel's 
roof. He had, at least once before this, met his old antagonist at the house 
of a common friend. "April 2d (1839). — I dined at Inglls's, and met Peel. 
He was pleasant enough ; not a brilliant talker, but conversible and easy, 
with a little turn in private, as in public, to egotism. We got on very 
well. I recollect only his account of Sir William Scott's excessive timid- 
ity about speaking in Parliament. 'My dear young friend, how does the 
House seem ? Is Brougham there ? Does he look very savage ?' " 

+ "I shall hardly know the House of Commons without Sir Robert 

Peel His figure is now before me: all the tones of his voice are in my 

ears ; and the pain with which I think that I shall never hear them again 
would be imbittered by the recollection of some sharp encounters which 
took place between us, were it not that at last there was an entire and 
cordial reconciliation, and that, only a very few days before his death, I 
had the pleasure of receiving from him marks of kindness and esteem, of 
which I shall always cherish the recollection." — Macaulay's Speech at Edin- 
iurgli in 1852. 



1848-'52.] LOED MACAULAY. 239 

flimsy philosophy about the effect of scenery on the mind ; the old crazy, 
mystical metaphysics; the endless Tvildernesses of dull, flat, prosaic twad- 
dle ; and here and there fine descriptions and energetic declamations in- 
terspersed. The story of the French Revolution, and of its influence on 
the character of a young enthusiast, is told again at greater length, and 
■with less force and pathos, than iu the 'Excursion.' The poem is to the 
last degree Jacobinical, indeed Socialist. I understand perfectly ■why 
Wordsworth did not choose to publish it in his life-time. 

" I looked over ' Coleridge's Remains.' What stuff some of his criticisms 
on style are! Thitik of his saying that scarcely any English writer before 
the Revolution used the Saxon genitive, except with a name indicating a 
living being, or where a personification was intended ! About twenty lines 
of Shakspeare occurred to me in five minutes. Iu 'King John/ 

In dreadful trial of our kingdom's king: 
"Again, 

Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course. 

"In 'Hamlet:' 

The law's delay. 

" In ' Romeo and Juliet,' 

My bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne. 

" In 'Richard the Third,' strongest of all. 

Why, then, All-souls-day is my body's doomsday." 

Macaulay spent the September of 1850 in a pleasant villa 
on the south coast of the Isle of Wight. The letters in -which 
he urges Mr. Ellis to share his retreat may lack the poetical 
beauty of Horace's invitation to Maecenas and Tennyson's in- 
vitation to Mr. Maurice ; but it is probable that the entertain- 
ment, both material and intellectual, which awaited a guest at 
Madeira Hall, did not yield in quality to that provided either at 
Tibur or at Freshwater. 

Madeira Hall, Ventnor, September 3d, 1850. 

Dear Ellis, — Here I am, lodged most delightfully. I look 
out on one side to the crags and myrtles of the UnderclifE, 
against -which my hoTise is built. On the other side I have a 
view of the sea, which is at this moment as blue as the sky 
and as calm as the Serpentine. My little garden is charming. 
I wish that I may not, like "Will Honeycomb, forget the sin 
and sea-coal of London for innocence and hay-cocks. To be 
sure, innocence and hay-cocks do not always go together. 



240 LITE AUD LETTERS OF [chap. xn. 

When will you come? Take yoiir own time: but I am 
rather anxious that you should not lose this delicious weather, 
and defer your trip till the equinoctial storms are setting in. 
I can promise you plenty of water and of towels ; good wine ; 
good tea ; good cheese from town ; good eggs, butter, and 
milk from the farm at my door; a beautiful prospect from 
your bedroom window ; and (if the weather keeps us within 
doors), Plautus's " Comedies," Plutarch's " Lives," twenty or 
thirty comedies of Calderon, Fra Paolo's " History," and a lit- 
tle library of novels — to say nothing of my own compositions, 
which, like Ligurinus, I will read to you stanU, sedenii, etc., etc. 

I am just returned from a walk of near seven hours, and of 
full fifteen miles ; part of it as steep as the Monument. In- 
deed, I was so knocked up with climbing Black Gang Chine 
that I lay on the turf at the top for a quarter of an hour. 
Ever yours, T. B. Macaflat. 

Ventnor, Septemlber 8th, 1850. 
Deae Ellis, — I shall be at Pyde to meet you next Satiu'- 
day. I only hope that the weather may continue to be just 
what it is. The evenings are a little chilly out-of-doors ; but 
the days are glorious. I rise before seven ; breakfast at nine ; 
write a page ; ramble five or six hours over rocks and through 
copse-wood, with Plutarch in my hand ; come home ; write an- 
other page ; take Fra Paolo, and sit in the garden reading till 
the sun sinks behind the Undercliff. Then it begins to be 
cold ; so I carry my Fra Paolo into the house and read on till 
dinner. While I am at dinner the Tvmes comes in, and is a 
good accompaniment to a delicious dessert of peaches, which 
are abundant here. I have also a novel of Theodore Hook by 
my side, to relish my wine. I then take a short stroll by star- 
light, and go to bed at ten. I am perfectly solitary ; almost 
as much so as Eobinson Crusoe before he caught Friday. I 
have not opened my lips, that I remember, these six weeks, ex- 
cept to say " Bread, if you please," or, " Bring a bottle of soda- 
water ;" yet I have not had a moment of ennui. Nevertheless 
I am heartily glad that you can give me nine days. I wish it 
were eighteen. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulat. 



1848-'52.] LORD MACAULAY. 241 

" September 9ift. — Up soon after six, and read Cobbett with admiration, 
pleasure, and abhorrence.* After breakfast I gave orders about culinary 
preparations for Ellis, who is more of an Apioius than I am. Then, after 
writing a little, I put a volume of Plautus in my pocket, and wandered 
througt the thickets under Bonchui'ch. I sat down here and there, and 
read the ' Pcsuulua.' It is amusing ; but there is a heavy, lumbering way 
about honest Plautus which makes him as bad a substitute for the Attic 
masters of the later comedy as the ass was for the spaniel in the fable. 
You see every now and then that what he does coarsely and blunderingly 
was done in the original with exquisite delicacy. The name of Hanuo in 
the play reminded me of Hanno in my lay of Virginia,t and I went through 
it all during the rest of my ramble, and was pretty well pleased With it. 
Those poems have now been eight years published. They still sell, and 
seem still to give pleasure. I do not rate them high ; but I do not remem- 
ber that any better poetry has been published since. 

"On my return home I took Fra Paolo into the garden. Admirable 
writer ! How I enjoy my solitude — the sunshine, the fresh air, the scenery, 
and quiet study! I do not know why I have suffered myself to get into 
the habit of thinking that I could not live out of London. After dinner I . 
walked again, looking at the stars, and thinking how I used to watch them 
on board the Ada. Those were unhappy times compared with these. I 
find no disposition in myself to regret the past by comparison with the 
present." 

"September 16t7i. — I walked again in the beautiful thicket under Bon- 
church, and turned the dialogue in the Eudens between Gripus and Daj- 
mones, ' Gripe, Gripe,' back again into Greek — nineteen lines, which I 
should not be ashamed to send in for a university scholarship, or a medal. 
They were made under every disadvantage, for there is no Greek book 

* " I read Cobbett," Macaulay writes. " Interesting ; but the impression 
of a prolonged perusal of such venomous invective and gross sophistry be- 
comes painful. After he came into Parliament, he was nothing. He spoke 
freely there when I heard him, which was often. He made, I believe, one 
successful speech — mere banter on Plunkett — when I was absent. He 
proved that he was quite incapable of doing any thing great in debate ; 
and his Parliamentary attendance prevented him from doing any thing 
great with his pen. His Register became as stupid as the Morning Herald. 
In truth, his faculties were impaired by age ; and the late hours of the 
House probably assisted to enfeeble his body, and consequently his mind. 
His egotism and his suspicion that every body was in a plot against him 
increased, and at last attained such a height that he was really as mad as 
Rousseau. I could write a very curious article on him, if I chose." 
t The money-changer Crispus, with his long silver hairs, 
And Hanno from the stately booth glittering with Punic wares. 

Vol. II.— 16 



242 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xii. 

within my reach except a Plutarch and a 'New Testament, neither of which 
is of much use here."* 

Macaulay was of opinion that men, the business of whose 
lives lies elsewhere than among the classics, may easily amuse 
themselves to more purpose than by turning good English 
poetry into Greek and Latin verses which may have merit, 
but can not possibly have any value. It has been well said 
that " Greek iambics, of which Euripides wrote ten at a sit- 
ting — Latin hexameters, of which Virgil wrote five in a day — 
are not things to be thrown off by dozens " in the course of an 
afternoon's walk by an Enghsh lawyer or statesman who is 
out for a holiday. Indeed, Macaulay went farther still, and 
held that the incongruities between modern and ancient modes 
of feeling and expression are such as to defy the skill of the 
most practiced and industrious translator — working, as he 
must woi'k, in a language which is not his own. It was in 
accordance with this notion that the only experiment in Greek 
composition, which he made since the day that he left college, 
took the shape of an attempt to reproduce a lost antique original. 

" Septembei- 28th. — I read part of the ' Life of Era Paolo ' prefixed to his 
history. A wonderful man ; hut the biographer would have done better 
to have softened down the almost incredible things which he relates. Ac- 
cording to him Pra Paolo was Galileo's predecessor in mathematics, 
Locke's in metaphysics — this last, I think, is true — and the real discoverer 
of the circulation of the blood. This is a little too much. To have writ- 
ten the 'History of the Council of Trent,' and the tracts on the Venetian 
dispute with Eome, is enough for one man's fame. As to the attempt to 
make out that he was a real Eoman Catholic, even according to the lowest 
Galilean notions, the thing is impossible. Bossuet, whom the ultramon- 
tane divines regard as little better than a heretic, was himself a bigoted 
ultramontane when compared with Fra Paolo."t 

* These lines may be found at the end of the 'Miscellaneous Writings.' A 
Greek drama, which is no longer extant, by the poet Diphilus, is supposed 
to have been the original of the Eudens. 

+ Macaulay says, in a letter dated September, 1850 : " Fra Paolo is my 
favorite modern historian. His subject did not admit of vivid painting; 
but what he did, he did better than any body. I wish that he had not 
kept his friar's gown ; for he was undoubtedly at heart as much a Protest- 
ant as Latimer." 



1848-'53.] LORD MACAULAY. 243 

" October 9th. — I picked np Whitaker's criticism on Gibbon. Pointless 
spite, witb here and there a just remark. It would be strange if in so 
large a work as Gibbon's there were nothing open to just remark. How 
utterly all the attacks on his ' History ' are forgotten !* this of Whitaker ; 
Randolph's ; Chelsum's ; Davies's ; that stupid beast, Joseph Milner's ;t even 
Watson's. And still the book, with all its great faults of substance and 
style, retains, and will retain, its place in our literature ; and this though 
it is offensive to the religious feeling of the country, and really most un- 
fair where religion is concerned. But Whitaker was as dirty a cur as I 
remember." 

" October nth. — In the morning called. He seems to be getting on 

well. He is almost the only person to whom I ever gave liberal assistance 
without having reason to regret it. Of course I do not speak of my own 
family; but I am confident that, within the last ten years, I have laid out 
several hundreds of pounds in trying to benefit people whose own vices 
and follies have frustrated every attempt to serve them. I have had a let- 
ter from a Miss , asking me to lend, that is, to give her, a hundred 

* "A victory," says Gibbon, " over such antagonists was a snfiScient hu- 
miliation. They were, however, rewarded in this world. Poor Chelsum 
is indeed neglected ; and I dare not boast the making Dr. Watson a bishop. 
He is a prelate of a large mind and liberal spirit. But I enjoyed the pleas- 
ure of giving a royal pension to Dr. Davies, and of collating Dr. Apthorpe 
to an archiepiscopal living.'' 

t Macaulay's view of Milner is pretty strongly expressed on the margin 
of his copy of the " History of the Church." " My quarrel with you," he 
says in one place, "is that you are ridiculously credulous; that you wrest 
every thing to your own purpose in defiance of all the rules of sound con- 
struction ; that you are profoundly ignorant of your subject ; that your in- 
formation is second-hand, and that your style is nauseous." On the mar- 
gin of the passage where Basil says of Gregory Thaumaturgns (in whose 
miraculous powers Milner devoutly believed), " He never allowed himself 
to call his brother fool," Macaulay writes : " He never knew such a fool 
as Milner, then.'' 

Dean Milman, writing for the public eye, indicates the same opinion in 
terms more befitting the pen of a clergyman : " Milner's ' History of the 
Church ' enjoys an extensive popularity with a considerable class of read- 
ers, who are content to accept fervent piety and an accordance with their 
own religions views, instead of the profound original research, the various 
erudition, and dispassionate judgment which more rational Christians con- 
sider indispensable to an historian. In his answer to Gibbon, Milner 
unfortunately betrays the incapacity of his mind for historical criticism. 
When he enters into detail, it is in general on indefensible points, long 
abandoned by sound scholars." 



24:4: LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xn. 

pounds. I never saw her ; I know nothing of her ; her only claim on me is 
that I once gave her money. She will, of course, hate me and abuse me for 

not complying with this modest request. Except in the single case of , 

I never, as far as I know, reaped any thing in return for charities, which 
have often been large for my means, except positive ill-will. My facility 
has tempted those whom I have relieved to make one unreasonable request 
after another. At last I have been forced to stop, and then they thought 
themselves wronged. 

"I picked up a tract on the Blockade of Norway, by Sir Philip Francis : 
Junius all over, but Junius grown old. Among other things I read New- 
man's ' Lectures,' which have just been published. They are ingenious 
enough, and, I dare say, cogent to those people who call themselves An- 
glo-Catholics ; but to me they are futile as any Rabbinical tradition. One 
lecture is evidently directed against me, though not by name : and I am 
quite willing that the public should judge between us. 

" I walked to Westbourue Terrace, and talked with Hannah about set- 
ting up a brougham. I really shall do it. The cost will be small, and the 
comfort great. It is but fair, too, that I should have some of the advantage 
of my own labor." 

" October 25tli, 1850. — My birthday. I am fifty. Well, I have had a hap- 
I py life. I do not know that any body, whom I have seen close, has had a 
1 happier. Some things I regret ; but, on the whole, who is better off ? I 
have not children of my own, it is true ; but I have children whom I love 
as if they were my own, and who, I believe, love me. I wish that the next 
ten years may be as happy as the last ten. But I rather wish it than 
hope it." 

"November 1st. — I was shocked to find a letter from Dr. Holland, to the 
effect that poor Harry Hallam is dyiug at Sienna. What a trial for my 
dear old friend ! I feel for the lad himself, too. Much distressed. I dined, 
however. We dine, unless the blow comes very, very near the heart indeed. 

" Holland is angry and alarmed about the Papal BnU and the Archbishop 
of Westminster. I am not ; but I am not sorry that other people take 
fright, for such fright is an additional security to us against that execrable 
superstition. I begin to feel the same disgust at the Anglo-Catholic and 
Roman Catholic cant which people after the Restoration felt for the Puri- 
tan cant. Their saints' days affect me as the Puritan Sabbath affected 
drunken Barnaby. Their dates of letters — the Eve of St. Bridget — the 
Octave of St. Swithin — provoke me as I used to be provoked by the First 
Month and First Day of the Quakers. I shall not at all wonder if this 
feeling should become general, and these follies should sink amidst a 
storm of laughter. Oh for a Butler !"* 

* It is, perhaps, needless to say that this prayer refers to the author of 
" Hudibras," and not to the author of the "Analogy." 



1848-'53.] LORD MACAULAY. 245 

"Noveniber 2d. — At breakfast I was comforted by a line from Holland 
saying that young Hallam Is better, and likely to do well. God send it! 
To Brooks's, and talked on the Wiseman question. I made my hearers 
very merry." 

" November 4&. — I am deeply concerned to hear that poor Harry Hallam 
is gone. Alas ! alas ! He died on my birthday. There must have been near 
a quarter of a century between us. I could find it in my heart to cry. 
Poor Hallam ! what will he do? He is more stoical than I am, to be sure. 
I walked, reading Epiotetus in the streets. Anointing for broken bones ! 
Let him try how Hallam will be consoled by being told that the lives of 
children are ouk £0' I'l/uv."* 

"November 5th. — I went to poor Hallam's. The servants had heard from 
him to-day. He was at Florence, hastening home, perhaps with the body. 
He brought home his son Arthur.t Alas ! Looked at the ' Life of Hugh 
Blair ' — a stupid book, by a stupid man, about a stupid man. Surely it is 
strange that so poor a creature as Blair should ever have had any literary 
reputation at all. The 'Life' is in that very vile fashion which Dugald 
Stewart set — not a life, but a series of disquisitions on all sorts of sub- 
jects.'' 

"December 2d. — To poor Hallam's. He was much as before. At first he 
wept, and was a good deal affected. Then he brightened up, and we talked, 
as in old times, for the best part of an hour." 

" December 10th. — I wrote, or rather transcribed and corrected, much. The 
declamatory disquisition which I have substituted for the orations of the 
ancient historians seems to me likely to answer.J: It is a sort of composi- 
tion which suits my style, and will probably take with the public. I met 
Sir Bnlwer Lytton, or Lytton Bulwer. He is anxious about some scheme 
for some association of literary men. I detest all such associations. I hate 
the notion of gregarious authors. The less we have to do with each other, 
the better." 

"December 25th. — In bed, and at breakfast, I read Person's 'Letters to 
Archdeacon Travis,' and compared the collected letters with the Gentle- 
man's Magazine, in which they originally appeared. The book has a little 

* " Matters beyond our control." 

" Fair ship, that from the Italian shore 
Sailest the placid ocean's plains 
With my lost Arthur's loved remains, 
Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er." — In Memonam. 

t Maoaulay was then employed upon the controversy about the lawful- 
ness of swearing allegiance to William and Mary, which split the High- 
church divines of 1689 into two parties. See Chapter XIV. of the " His- 
tory." 



246 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xii. 

suffered from the awkwardness of turning what were letters to Sylvanus 
Urban* into letters to Archdeacon Travis ; hut it is a masterly work. A 
comparison between it and the 'Phalaris' would he a comparison between 
Person's mind and Bentley's mind. Person's more sure-footed, more exact, 
more neat ; Bentley's far more comprehensive and inventive. While walk- 
ing, I read Bishop Burgess's trash in answer to Person. Home, and read 
Turton's defense of Person against Burgess ; an impenetrable dunce, to 
reason with whom is like kicking a wool-pack. Was there ever such an 
instance of the blinding power of bigotry as the fact that some men, who 
were not absolute fools, continued, after reading Person and Turten, to 
believe in the authenticity of the text of the ' Three Witnesses V " 

"January 10ft, 1851.— Bain. Eain. Wrote a little, but am out of heart. 
The events take new shapes. I iind that what I have done must be done 
over again. Yet so much the better. This is the old story. How many 
times it was so with the first two volumes, and how well it ended at last ! 
I took heart again, and worked. 

"I finished the 'Life of Mathews.' It is a strange book; too much of 
it, but highly interesting. A singular man ; certainly the greatest actor 
that I ever saw; far greater than Munden, Dowton, Listen, or Fawcett ; 
far greater than Kean, though there it is not so easy to make a comparison. 
I can hardly believe Garriok to have had more of the genuine mimetic 
genius than Mathews. I often regret that I did not see him more fre- 
quently. Why did I not? I can not tell; for I admired him, and 
laughed my sides sore whenever I saw him." 

"January 13th. — At breakfast came a summons to Windsor Castle for 
to-morrow. I feel a twinge at the name. Was ever man so persecuted 
for such a trifle as I was about that business ? And, if the truth were 
known, without the shadow of a reason. Yet my life must be allowed to 
have been a very happy one, seeing that such a persecution was among 
my greatest misfortunes." 

"January Utli. — To Windsor, and walked up to the Castle. I found my 
room very comfortable, and read a volume of Jacobite pamphlets by a 
blazing fiie. At eight I went into the Corridor, and was struck by its 
immense length, and the number and beauty of the objects which it con- 
tains. It is near twelve years since I was here. How changed is every 
thing, and myself among other things ! I had a few words with the prince 
about the Eegius professorship of medicine at Cambridge, now vacant by 
HavUand's death. I remarked that it was impossible to make either Ox- 
ford or Cambridge a great medical school. He said, truly enough, that 
Oxford and Cambridge are larger towns than Heidelberg, and yet that 

* Sylvanus Urban was the nom de plume adopted by the editor of the 
Gentleman^a Magazine. In another part of his diary Maoaulay says : " Eead 
Person's ' Letters to Francis.' I am never weary of them." 



184&-'52.] LOED MACAULAY. 247 

Heidelberg is eminent as a place of medical education. He added, how- 
ever, something -wliicli explained why this was. There was hardly, he said, 
a physician in Germany, even at Berlin, even at Vienna, who made one 
thousand pounds a year by his profession. In that case, a professorship at 
Heidelberg may well be worth as much as the best practice in the great 
cities. Here, where Brodie and Bright make more than ten thousand 
pounds a year, and where, if settled at Cambridge or Oxford, they proba- 
bly could not make fifteen hundred pounds, there is no chance that the 
academic chairs will be filled by the heads of the profession. 

"At table I was between the Duchess of Norfolk and a foreign woman 
who could hardly speak English intelligibly. I got on as well as I could. 
The band covered the talk with a succession of sonorous tunes. ' The 
Campbells are Coming' was one.* When we went into the drawing-room, 
the queen came to me with great animation, and insisted on my telling 
her some of my stories, which she had heard at second-hand from George 
Grey. I certainly made her laugh heartily. She talked on for some time, 
most courteously and pleasantly. Nothing could be more sensible than 
her remarks on German affairs. She asked me about Merle d'Aubign^'s 
book ; and I answered that it was not to be implicitly trusted ; that the 
writer was a strong partisan, and too much of a colorist ; but that his 
work well deserved a perusal, and would greatly interest and amuse her. 
Then came cards, during which I sat and chatted with two maids of hon- 
or. The dinner was late, and, consequently, the evening short. At eleven 
precisely the queen withdrew." 

"January XGth. — To the station. Lord Aberdeen and George Grey went 
with me. Throughout this visit we have been inseparable, and have agreed 
perfectly. We talked much together till another party got into the car- 
riage — a canting fellow, and a canting woman. Their cant was not re- 
ligious, but philanthropioal and phrenological. I never heard such stuff. 
It was all that we could do to avoid laughing out loud. The lady pro- 
nounced that the Exhibition of 1851 would enlarge her ideality, and ex- 
ercise her locality. Lord Aberdeen had a little before told us some droll 
stories of the old Scotch judges. Lord Braxfield, at whist, exclaimed to a 

lady with whom he was playing, ' What are ye doing, ye d — d auld ?' 

and then, recollecting himself, ' Your pardon's begged, madam. I took ye 
for my ain wife.' 

"At half-past seven the brougham came, and I went to dine at Lord 
John EusseU's, pleased and proud, and thinking how unjustly poor Pepys 
was abused for noting in his diary the satisfaction it gave him to ride in 
his own coach. This is the first time I ever had a carriage of my own, ex- 
cept when in office." 

* This is the only authentic instance on record of Macaulay's having 
known cue tune from another. 



24:8 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. xii. 

"February 5th. — At breakfast I read the correspondeuce between Vol- 
taire and Frederic ; a precious pair! I looked over my paper on Frederic. 
It contains much that is just, and much that is lively and spirited ; but, 
on the whole, I think I judged rightly in not reprinting it.* I bought a 
superb valentine in the Colonnade, and wrote my lines to Miss Stanhope. 
Pretty lines they are. Then to Westbourue Terrace, and picked up by the 
way a well-remembered volume, which I had not seeu for many years ; a 
translation of some Spanish comedies, one of the few bright specks in our 
very sullen library at Clapham. Hannah was in delight at seeing it again. 

" I read a good deal of what I have written, and was not iU-pleased, 
especially with the account of the Treason Trials Bill in the eighteenth 
chapter. These abstracts of Parliamentary debates will be a new, and, 
I hope, a striking feature in the book." 

" Thursday, May 1st, 1851. — A fine day for the opening of the Exhibition. 
A little cloudy in the morning, but generally, sunny and pleasant. I was 
struck by the number of foreigners in the streets. All, however, were re- 
spectable and decent people. I saw none of the men of action with whom 
the Socialists were threatening us. I went to the Park, and along the Ser- 
pentine. There were immense crowds on both sides of the water. I should 
think that there must have been near three hundred thousand people 
in Hyde Park at once. The sight among the green boughs was delightful. 
The boats and little frigates darting across the lake; the flags; the mu- 
sic ; the guns ; every thing was exhilarating, and the temper of the mul- 
titude the best possible. I fell in with Punch Greville, and walked with 
him for an hour. He, like me, thought the outside spectacle better worth 
seeing than the pageant under cover. He showed me a letter from Ma- 
dame de Lieven, foolish, with an affectation of cleverness and profundity, 
just like herself. She calls this Exhibition a bold, a rash experiment. 
She apprehends a horrible explosion : ' Yon may get through it safe ; and, 
if you do, yon will give yourselves more airs than ever.' And this woman 
is thought a political oracle in some circles ! There is just as much chance 
of a revolution in England as of the falling of the moon. 

" I made my way into the building : a most gorgeous sight ; vast ; grace- 
ful; beyond the dreams of the Arabian romances.t I can not think that 
the Ctesars ever exhibited a more splendid spectacle. I was quite dazzled, 

* Macaulay changed his mind before long, and the essay on Frederic 
took its place in the collected edition. 

+ In October Macaulay writes : "As the Exhibition is drawing toward 
its close the crowd becomes greater and greater. Yesterday I let my serv- 
ants go for the last time. I shall go no more. Alas ! alas ! It was a glori- 
ous sight ; and it is associated in my miud with all whom I love most. I 
am glad that the building is to be removed. I have no wish to see the 
corpse when the life has departed." 



1848-'52.] LOED MACAULAY. 2i9 

and I felt as I did ou entering St. Peter's. I wandered about, and elbowed 
my way tirougli the crowd which filled the nave, admiring the general ef- 
fect, but not attending much to details. 

" Home, and finished ' Persuasion.' I have now read over again all Miss 
Austin's novels. Charming they are ; but I found a little more to criti- 
cise than formerly. Yet there are in the world no compositions which ap- j 
proach nearer to perfection." I 

"May 26tli. — To-day the Exhibition opens at a shilling. It seems to be 
the fate of this extraordinary show to confound all predictions, favorable 
and unfavorable. Fewer people went on the shilling day than on the five- 
shilling day. I got a letter from , who is in great distress about his 

son's debts. I am vexed and sorry; but I wrote, insisting on being al- 
lowed to settle the matter; and I was pleased that (though there have 
been, and will be, other calls ou me) I made this offer from the heart and 
with the wish to have it accepted. 

" I finished ' Joan of Arc' The last act is absurd beyond description. 
The monstrous violation of history which every body knows is not to be 
defended. Schiller might just as well have made Wallenstein dethrone 
the emperor, and reign himself over Germany — or Mary become Queen of 
England, and out ofi^ Elizabeth's head — as make Joan fall in the moment 
of victory.'' 

"June 12(h. — After breakfast called. I must make one more effort 

to save him, and it shall be the last.* Margaret came, to take me to 
Thackeray's lecture. He is full of humor and imagination, and I only wish 
that these lectures may answer both in the way of fame and money. He 
told me, as I was going out, that the scheme had done wonders for him ; 
and I told him, and from my heart, that I wished he had made ten times as 
much. Dear Lord Lansdowne was there, looking much better ; much. I 
dined at Baron Parke's. It was pleasant, and I thought that I pleased ; 
but perhaps was mistaken. Then to Lady Granville's rout, where I found 
many friends, and all kind. I seldom appear, and therefore am the better 
received. This racketing does not suit me ; but civility requires me to go 
once for ten times that I am asked to parties.'' 

" June 9th. — I picked up the volumes of 1832 and 1833 of Cobbett's Reg- 
ister. His style had then gone off, and the circumstance that he was in 
Parliament was against him. His mind was drawn away from that which 
he did well to that which he did very poorly. My own name often ap- 
pears in these volumes. Many people thought that he had a peculiar ani- 
mosity to me ; but I doubt it. He abuses me ; but less than he abused al- 
most every other public man whom he mentioned. 

* It was not the last, by a good many. The person of whom Macaulay 
writes thus had no claim whatever upon him except their common hu- 
manity. 



250 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xu. 

"An American has written to me from Arkansas, and sent me a copy of 
Bancroft's ' History.' Very civil and kind ; but by some odd mistake he 
directs to me at Abbotsford. Does he think that all Britishers who write 
books live there together ?" 

Macaulay spent August and September at Malvern, in a 
pleasant villa, embowered in "a wood full of blackbirds." 
Mr. Ellis gave him ten days of his company, timing his visit 
so as to attend the Musical Festival at Worcester. 

Malvern, August 21st, 1851. 

Deae Ellis, — I shall expect you on Wednesday next. I 
have got the tickets for the " Messiah." There may be some 
difficulty about conveyances during the festival. But the sup- 
ply here is immense. On every road round Malvern coaches 
and flies pass you every ten minutes, to say nothing of irregu- 
lar vehicles. For example, the other day I was overtaken by 
a hearse as I was strolling along, and reading the night ex- 
pedition of Diomede and Ulysses. "Would you like a ride, 
sir f said the driver. " Plenty of room." I could not help 
laughing. " I dare say I shall want such a carriage some day 
or other. But I am not ready yet." The fellow, with the 
most consummate professional gravity, answered, " I meant, 
sir, that there was plenty of room on the box." 

I do not think that I ever, at Cambridge or in India, did a 
better day's work in Greek than to-day. I have read at one 
stretch fourteen books of the " Odyssey," from the Sixth to 
the Nineteenth inclusive.* I did it while walking to Worces- 
ter and back. I have a great deal to say about the old fellow. 
I admire him more than ever ; but I am now quite sure that 
the " Iliad " is a piece of mosaic, made very skillfully long 



, * In his journal of August 19th Macaulay writes : " I walked far into 
Herefordshire, and read, while walking, the last five hooks of the ' Iliad,' 
with deep interest and many tears. I was afraid to be seen crying by the 
parties of walkers that met me as I came back ; crying for Achilles cutting 
off his hair ; crying for Priam rolling on the ground in the court-yard of his 
house : mere imaginary beings, creatures of an old ballad-maker who died 
near three thousand years ago." 



1848-'52.] LOKD MACAULAY. 251 

after his time out of several of his lays, with bits here and 
there of the compositions of inferior minstrels. 

I am planning various excursions. "We can easily see Here- 
ford between breakfast and dinner one day, and Gloucester on 
another. Cheltenham, and Tewkesbmy, with its fine church, 
are still more accessible. The rain is over ; the afternoon has 
been brilliant, and I hope that we have another glorious month 
before us. You shall have water in plenty. I have a well- 
polished cKTa/uivOog* for you, into which going you may wash, 
and out of which you may come, looking like a god. 

Ever yours, T. B. Macaulat. 

Malvern, September 12th, 1851. 

Dear Ellis, — I have sent "William to look after your busi- 
ness. In the mean time, I must own that your iU-luck rather 
titillates the malicious parts of my nature. The taking of a 
place by a railway train, which the vulgar, myself included, 
perform in thirty seconds, is with you an operation requiring 
as much thought and time as the purchase of an estate. On 
two successive days did I kick my heels in the street, first be- 
fore the railway office, and then before the Bellevue Hotel, 
while you were examining and cross-examining the book-keep- 
ers, and arranging and rearranging your plans. I must say 
that your letter is well calculated to make me uneasy as to 
my own return to London. For if all your forethought and 
anxiety, your acute inquiries and ingenious combinations, have 
ended thus, how can such a careless fellow as I am hope to 
reach town without immeasurable disappointment and losses ? 

Here is "William at last with a letter from the coach-office, 
but no money. As to the three shillings, ovnoTe Ij^ovai Trpoe 
CTf oinroTE r^^ovcFiv.'f I send the book-keeper's explanation. 
You took your place in one coach : you rode to "Worcester in 
another: you have paid the full fare to both: and you will 
not recover a half-penny from either. Your case, if that is 

* The Homeric word for a bath. The sentence is, of course, a ludicrous- 
ly literal translation from the Greek. 
+ " You will never get them back : never." 



252 LIFE AND LETTEES OP [chap. xn. 

any comfort, is not a rare one. Indeed, it seems to be the 
common practice at Malvern to travel in this way. And here 
we have an explanation of the extraordinary number of 
coaches at this place. There is room for a great many rival 
establishments, when passengers pay both for the conveyance 
by which they go and for that by which they do not go. 

Good-bye. I miss you much, and console myself as well as 
I can with Demosthenes, Goethe, Lord Campbell, and Miss 
Ferrier. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulay. 

"September 19th. — I put 'Wilhelm Meister' into my pocket; walked to 
the Cleavelaud Ferry ; crossed the Severn, and rambled along the eastern 
bank to Upton. The confessions of the pious Stiftsdame interested me, as 
they have always done, more than I can well explain. I felt this when I 
read them first on the Indian Ocean, and I felt it again when I read them 
at the inn at Hereford in 1844. I think that the cause of the interest 
which I feel in them is that Goethe was here exerting himself to do, as an 
artist, what, as far as I know, no other mere artist has ever tried to do. 
From Augustin downward, people strongly under religious impressions 
have written their confessions, or, in the cant phrase, their experience ; 
and very curious many of their narratives are. John Newton's, Bunyan's, 
Will Huntington's, Cowper's, Wesley's, Whitefield's, Scott's— there is no 
end of them. When worldly men have imitated these narratives, it has 
almost always been in a satirical and hostile spirit. Goethe is the single 
instance of an unbeliever who has attempted to put himself into the per- 
son of one of these pious autobiographers. He has tried to imitate them, 
just as he tried to imitate the Greek dramatists in his ' Iphigenia,' and the 
Roman poets in his elegies. A vulgar artist would have multiplied texts 
and savory phrases. He has done nothing of the kind ; but has tried to 
exhibit the spirit of piety in the highest exaltation ; and a, very singular 
performance he has produced.* 

" What odd things happen ! Two gentlemen, or at least two men in 
good coats and hats, overtook me as I was strolling through one of the 
meadows close to the river. One of them stared at me, touched his hat, 
and said, ' Mr. Macaulay, I believe.' I admitted the truth of the imputa- 
tion. So the fellow went on : 'I suppose, sir, you are come here to study 

* When Macaulay was at Frankfort he went to Goethe's house, and 
"found it with some difficulty. I was greatly interested; not that he is 
one of my first favorites ; but the earlier books of his life of himsehf have 
a great charm for me ; and the old house plays a great part in the narra- 
tive. The house of Wilhelm Meister's father, too, is evidently this house 
at Frankfort." 



1848-'52.] LORD MACAULAY. 253 

tlie localities of the battle of Worcester. We shall expect a very fine ac- 
count of the battle of Worcester.' I hiuted with all delicacy that I had 
no more to do with the battle of Worcester than with the battle of Mar- 
athon. ' Of course not, sir, of course not. The battle of Worcester cer- 
tainly does not enter into your plan.' So we bpwed and parted. I thought 
of the proverb,* and I thought, too, that on this occasion the name of Tom 
Fool might be properly applied to more than one of the parties concerned." 
"September 21s<. — I saw in the hedge the largest snake that I remember 
to have seen in wild natural liberty. I remembered the agonies of terror 
into which the sight of a snake, creeping among the shrubs at Barley 
Wood, threw me when I was a boy of sis. It was a deep, and really 
terrible, impression. My mother feared that it would make me ill. It 
was to no purpose that they told me, and that I told myself, that there 
was no danger. A serpent was to me like a giant or a ghost — a horrible 
thing which was mentioned in' story-books, but which had no existence 
in England ; and the actual sight affected me as if a hobgoblin had really 
appeared. I followed the snake of to-day for some distance. He seemed 
as much afraid of me as I was of his kinsman forty-four years ago. During 
this long walk I read ' Wilhelm Meister' occasionally. I never liked it so 
little. Even the account of Aurelia's and Marianne's deaths, which used 
to break my heart, moved me as little as it moved those brutes Lothario 
and Wilhelm." 

At the close of 1851 Palmerston was ejected from the For- 
eign Office. The Government needed no small accession of 
prestige in order to balance so heavy a loss, and overtures 
were made, without much hope of success, to induce Macaulay 
to accept a seat in the Cabinet. 

"December 24ft. — Palmerston is out. It was high time; but I can not 
help being sorry. A daring, indefatigable, high-spirited man; but too 
fond of conflict, and too ready to sacrifice every thing to victory when 
once he was In the ring. Lord Granville, I suppose, will succeed. I wish 
him well. 1851 has done a great deal for him." 

"December 25ft. — I met Lord Granville at Brooks's. I congratulated 
him, and gave him good wishes warmly and sincerely ; but I spoke kind- 
ly, and with regret, as I felt, about Palmerston. From Granville's answer, 
guarded as it very properly was, I judge that we have not yet seen the true 
explanation. He told me that anxiety had kept him awake two nights.'' 

"December 31st. — I met Peacock; a clever fellow, and a good scholar.! 

* "More people know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows." 
t This passage refers to the author of " Headlong Hall," and not to the 
Dean of Ely, as some readers might possibly suppose. 



254 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chaP.xit. 

I am glad to have an opportunity of Ibeing better acquainted, witli liim. 
We had out Aristophanes, ^schylus, Sophocles, and several other old fel- 
lows, and tried each other's quality pretty well. We are both strong 
enough in these matters for gentlemen. But he is editing the ' Supplices.' 
Jilsohylus is not to be edited by a man whose Greek is only a secondary 
pursuit." 

" January 18th, 1852. — At dinner I received a note from Lord John ask- 
ing to see me to-morrow at eleven." 

" January 19th. — I was anxious ; but determined, if I found myself 
hard pressed, to beg a day for consideration, and then to send a refusal in 
writing. I find it difficult to refuse people face to face. I went to Chesh- 
am Place. He at once asked me to join the Cabinet. I refused, and gave 
about a quarter of my reasons, though half a quarter would have been 
sufficient. I told him that I should be of no use ; that I was not a debater ; 
that it was too late for me to become one ; that I might once have turned 
out effective in that way, but that now my literary habits, and my literary 
reputation, had made it impossible. I pleaded health, temper, and tastes. 
He did not urge me much, and I think has been rather induced by others, 
than by his o wu judgment, to make the proposition. I added that I would 
not sit for any nomination borough, and that my turn of mind disqualified 
me for canvassing great constituent bodies. I might have added that I 
did not wish to be forced to take part against Palmerston in a personal 
dispute ; that I much doubt whether I should like the new Eeform Bill ; 
and that I had no reason to believe that all that I think right will be 
done as respects national defense. I did speak very strongly on this point, 
as I feel." 

"January 31si. — I see that Lord Broughton retires, and that Maule goes 
to the India Board. I might have had that place, I believe ; the pleasant- 
est in the Government, and the best suited to me ; but I judged far better 
for my reputation and peace of mind." 

In February, Macaulay paid another visit to Windsor Castle. 

" February 6th. — We breakfasted at nine. I strolled np and down the 
fine gallery for an hour ; then with Mahon to the Library ; and then to the 
top of the Round Tower, and enjoyed a noble view. In the Library, taking 
up by the merest chance a finely bound book, it proved to be Ticknor's — a 
presentation copy, with a letter from the anthor to the queen saying that 
he had sent his volumes because he had been told by the American minis- 
ter that an eminent literary man had recommended them to her majesty. 
I was the eminent literary man ; and I dare say that I could find the day 
in my journal. It is an odd coincidence that I should light on his letter. 
Dinner was at a quarter to seven, on account of the play which was to fol- 
low. The theatre was handsome, the scenery good, and the play 'King 
John.' There were faults in the acting, as there are great faults in the 



1848-'52.] LOED MACAULAT. 255 

play, considered as an acting play ; but there waa great effect likewise. 
Constance made me cry. The scene between King John and Hubert, and 
that between Hubert and Arthur, -were Tery telling. Faulconbridge swag- 
gered well. The allusions to a French invasion and to the Popish en- 
croachments would have been furiously applauded at Drury Lane or Cov- 
ent Garden. Here we applauded with some reserve. The little girl who 
acted Arthur did wonders.* Lord Salisbury seemed not to like the part 
■which his namesake performed in the play."t 

" February 16iA. — I finished ' St. Simon's Memoirs,' and am more struck 
with the goodness of the good parts than ever. To be sure, the road from 
fountain to fountain lies through a very dry desert." 

"May 1st — A cold 1st of May. After breakfast I went to Turnham 
Green, to look at the place. I found it after some search ; the very spot 
beyond all doubt, and admirably suited for an assassinatiou.t 

" On my return I looked into Shakspeare, and could not get away from 
him. I passed the whole day, till it was time to dress, in turning him over. 
Then to dine with the Eoyal Academy.^ A great number of my friends, 
and immense smiling and shaking of hands. I got a seat in a pleasant 
situation near Thesiger, Hallam, and Inglis. The scene was lively, and 
many of the pictures good. I was charmed by Staniield's Eochelle, and 
Eoberts's three paintings. It is the old duke's birthday : he is eighty- 
three to-day. I never see him now without a painful interest. I look at 
him every time with the thought that this may be the last. We drank 

* It is almost worth while to be past middle life in order to have seen 
Miss Kate Terry in Arthur. 

t " Sal. Stand by, or I shall gall you, Faulconbridge. 

Bast. Thou wert better gall the devil, Salisbury. 
If thou but frown on me, or stir thy foot. 
Or teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame, 
I'll strike thee dead. Put up thy sword betime ; 
Or I'll so maul you and your toasting-iron 
That you shall think the devil is come from hell." 

t See the account of the assassination plot in chapter xxi. of the "His- 
tory." " The place and time were fixed. The place was to be a narrow 
and winding lane leading from the landing-place on the north of the river 
to Turnham Green. The spot may still easily be found. The ground has 
since been drained by trenches. But in the seventeenth century it was a 
quagmire, through which the royal coach was with difliculty tugged at a 
foot's pace. The time was to be the afternoon of Saturday, the 15th of 
February." 

5 Macaulay attended the dinner in his character of Professor of Ancient 
Literature to the Eoyal Academy. 



256 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xii. 

his health with immense shouting and tahle - banging. He returned 
thanks, and spoke of the loss of the Birkenhead. I remarked (and Law- 
rence, the American minister, said that he had remarked the same thing) 
that, in his eulogy of the poor fellows who were lost, the duke never spoke 
of their courage, but always of their discipline and subordination. He re- 
peated it several times over. The courage, I suppose, he treated as a 
thing of course. Lord Derby spoke with spirit, but with more hesitation 
than on any occasion on which I have heard him. Disraeli's speech was 
clever. In defiance of all rule, he gave Lord John Russell's health. Lord 
John answered good-humoredly and well. I was glad of it. Although a 
speech at the Eoyal Academy is not much, it is important that, whatever 
he does now, should be well done." 



185a-'56.] LOKD MACAULAY. 257 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

1852-1856. 

The Magnetoscope, and Table-turmng. — Maoaulay's Ee-election for Edin- 
burgh, and the General Satisfaction wHoh it occasioned. — He has a Se- 
rious Attack of Illness. — Clifton. — Extracts from Macaulay's Journal. — 
His Strong Feelings for Old Associations. — Barley Wood. — Letters to Mr. 
Ellis. — Great Change in Macaulay's Health and Habits. — His Speech at 
Edinburgh. — The House of Commons. — Mr. Disraeli's Budget. — -Forma- 
tion of Lord Aberdeen's Ministry. — The Judges' Exclusion Bill. — The 
India Bill. — The Annuity Tax. — -Macaulay ceases to take an Active 
Part in Politics. — Letters to Mr. Ellis. — Mrs. Beecher Stowe. — Tunbridge 
Wells. — Plato. — Mr. VizeteUy. — Macaulay's Patriotism. — The Crimean 
War. — Open Competition. — The "History." — Thames Ditton. — Publi- 
cation of Macaulay's Third and Fourth Volumes. — Statistics of the 
Sale of the "History." — Honors conferred on Macaulay. — The Brit- 
ish Museum. 

The year 1852 opened very pleasantly for Macaulay. From 
January to July his diary presents a record of topef ul and un- 
interrupted literary labor, and of cheerful dinners and break- 
fasts at the houses which he cared to frequent. About this 
period the friends among whom he lived were much given 
to inquiries into fields of speculation that may not unfairly 
be classed under the head of the occult sciences ; allusions to 
which more than once occur both in Lord Carlisle's and in 
Macaulay's journals. Lord Carlisle writes : 

"May Will, 1852.— Breakfasted with the Mahons. We talked a good deal 
of the magnetoscope, which has received a staggerer from Dufferin, who 
went rather disguised a second time, and got quite a different character. 
The man told Macaulay that he was an historical painter, which the Bish- 
op of Oxford thinks a very just character. Macaulay, I hear, denounces 
the wretched quack without measure. At twelve there was a large assem- 
blage at the bishop's to see a clairvoyant, brought by Sir David Brewster 

Vol. II.— 17 



258 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.xih. 

very much for the purpose of encountering Whewell, who is an arch-skep- 
tic. About twelve of us in turns put our hands upon her eyes, and in ev- 
ery instance she read without mistake one, two, or three lines from books 
taken at random. We believed, except Whewell ; who has very resilient 
eyes himself, which he thinks can see through every thing." 

Macaulay held the same opinion about his own eyes, at any 
rate so far as concerned the magnetoscope, as the following 
extract from his diary will show : 

"May IBtk, 1852. — ^Mahon came, and we went to a house in Street, 

where a Dr. performs his feats of phrenology and mesmerism. I was 

half ashamed of going, but Mahon made a point of it. The Bishop of Ox- 
ford, and his brother Robert, came soon after us. Never was there such 
paltry quackery. The fraud was absolutely transparent. I can not con- 
ceive how it should impose upon a child. The man knew nothing about 
me, and therefore his trickery completely failed him. He made me out to 
be a painter — a landscape painter or a historical painter. He had made 
out Hallam to be a musician. I could hardly restrain myself from ex- 
pressing my contempt and disgust while he was pawing my head, and 
poring over the rotations and oscillations of his pendulum, and the devia- 
tions to different points of the compass. Dined at the club. We have 
taught Lord Aberdeen to talk. He is really quite gay." 

"May 19th. — To dine with the Blahop of London. The party should 
have been pleasant : the Bishop of Oxford, Milman, Hallam, and Eajah 
Brooke. But unluckily we got into a somewhat keen argument about 
clairvoyance. The two bishops lost their temper. Indeed, we were all 
too disputatious, though I hope I was not offensively so. The ladies, 
who wanted to be off to the queen's ball, wished us, I dare say, at Jer- 
icho." 

Macaulay writes on a subsequent occasion : " A breakfast- 
party at my chambers. There was talk about electricity, and 
the rotatory motion of tables under electrical influence. I 
was very incredulous. "We tried the experiment on my ta- 
ble ; and there certainly was a rotatory motion, but probably 
impressed by the Bishop of Oxford, though he declared that 
he was not quite certain whether he had pushed or not. "We 
tried again ; and then, after we had given it up, he certainly 
pushed, and caused a rotatory motion exactly similar to what 
we had seen before. The experiment therefore failed. At 
the same time, I would not confidently say in this case, as I 



185a-'56.] LOED MACAULAY. 259 

say in cases of clairvoyance, that there must be deception. I 
know too little of electricity to judge."* 

Equable and tranquil as was the course of Macaulay's life 
during the earlier months of 1852, that year had still both 
good and evil in store for him. The Parliamentary session 
had been fruitful in events. " I met Greville in the street," 
Macaulay writes. "He is going to Broadlands, and seems 
persuaded that Palmerston has nothing but revenge on Lord 
John in his head and heart, and that he will soon be leader of 
the House of Commons under Lord Derby. I doubt." He 
might well doubt; The late Foreign Secretary was not the 
man to sit down under a grievance ; but he knew how to pay 
off old scores in accordance with the rules of political decency. 
By his powerful aid, the Conservatives succeeded in defeating 
the ministry on a detail of the Militia Bill ; and Lord Derby 
came in with a minority, and scrambled through the session 
as best he might. While the summer was yet young. Parlia- 
ment was dissolved, and the general election took place in 
July, with no very great issue definitely at stake. The min- 
isterial programme was not of a nature to arouse enthusiasm. 
Lord Derby -confined himself to vague hints, which might be 
construed to mean either that protection was capable of being 

* Macaulay did not love charlatans ; and he included in that category 
some who pretty confidently arrogated to themselves the title of philoso- 
phers. " There came," he once writes to Lady Trevelyan, " a knock at my 

door, and in walked that miserable old impostor , who, I hoped, had 

been hanged or guillotined years ago. You must have heard of him. He 
is a votary of Spurzheim ; a compound of all the quackeries, physiological 
and theological, of half a century. I always detested the fellow ; but I 
could not turn him out of the room ; for he came up with, ' Do you not re- 
member? You are so like the dear man, Zachary. It was just so that he 
used to look on me.' (I looked, by-the-bye, as sulky as a bear.) ' I felt 
your dear skull when you was a child, and I prophesied that you should 
be a minister of state. Paff ! That is a demonstration. I keep my eye 
on you ever since. Paff ! It come true !' So I desired the man to sit 
down, and was as civil as I could be to one whom I know to be a mere 
Dousterswivel." Macaulay, very characteristically, ended his letter by re- 
gretting that his visitor did not ask for pecuniary assistance, in order that 
he might have given him a ten-pound note. 



260 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [CHAP.xiu. 

revived, or that he personally had not ceased to be a mourner 
for its death ; but he made up for his reticence on the ques- 
tion of the day by entreating the country to believe that his 
government had every intention of upholding the Establish- 
ed Church. The country, which was very well aware that the 
Church could keep on its feet without the assistance of a Tory- 
administration, but which was sincerely anxious to be re-as- 
sured that the Cabinet had no wish to tamper with free trade, 
did not respond to the appeal, and the electioneerers of the 
Carlton failed to make any marked impression upon the bor- 
ough constituencies. 

Edinburgh was one of the places where the Conservatives 
resolved to try an almost desperate chance. The Liberals of 
that city were at odds among themselves ; and the occurrences 
of 1847 had not been such as to attract any candidate who en- 
joyed the position and reputation which would have enabled 
him to unite a divided party. Honorably ambitious to obtain 
a worthy representative for the capital of Scotland, and sin- 
cerely desirous to make amends for their harsh usage of a 
great man who had done his best to serve them, the electors 
turned their eyes toward Macaulay. A resolution in favor of 
taking the necessary measures for furthering his return was 
carried in a crowded public meeting by unanimous accla- 
mation. The speeches in support of that resolution did hon- 
or to those who made them. " No man," said Mr. Adam 
Black, " has given stronger pledges than Mr. Macaulay that 
he wUl defend the rights of the people against the encroach- 
ments of despotism and the licentiousness of democracy. His 
pledges have not been given upon the hustings during the ex- 
citement of an election ; but they have been published to the 
world in the calm deliberation of the closet ; and he stands 
and falls by them. If Mr. Macaulay has a fault, it is that he 
is too straightforward, too open ; that he uses no ambiguities 
to disarm opposition. By many his early, his eloquent, his 
constant, his consistent advocacy of civil liberty is forgotten, 
while a few unconsidered words are harped upon. Will you 
lose the most powerful defender for a piece of etiquette? 
Will you rob the British Senate of one of its brightest orna- 



185a-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 261 

ments ? Will yon deprive Edinburgh of the honor of associ- 
ation with one of the most illustrious men of the day ? Will 
you silence that voice whose tones would sustain the sinking 
spirits of the friends of constitutional liberty in Europe ? No. 
I know the inhabitants of Edinburgh are not so unwise. It 
is iu their power to secure the most able advocate of their 
own cause, and of the cause of truth and hberty in the world ; 
and they will secure him." The resolution, proposed in these 
words by the chief of the Edinburgh Whigs, was seconded by 
a Eadical ; a fine fellow, whose remarks were very brief, as is 
almost universally the case in Scotland and in the North of 
England with local leaders who have any real influence over 
the political conduct of their fellow-citizens. " The vexatious 
question," he said, " being long ago settled upon which alone 
I, along with several hundred other electors, felt reluctantly 
constrained to withhold our support from Mr. Macaulay at the 
last election, I have great pleasure in having this opportunity 
afforded me of returning to my first love by seconding the 
nomination of that illustrious historian and statesman." 

To Miss Macaulay. 

Albany, June 19th, 1852. 
Deae Fankt, — I have not made, and do not mean to make, 
the smallest move toward the people of Edinburgh. But 
they, to my great surprise, have found out that they treated 
me ill five years ago, and that they are now paying the penal- 
ty. They can get nobody to stand who is likely to do them 
credit; and it seemed as if they were in danger of having 
members who would have made them regret not only me, but 
Cowan. Then, without any communication with me, it was 
suggested by some of the most respectable citizens that the 
town might solve its difiiculties by electing me without asking 
me to go down, or to give any pledges, or even any opinion, 
on political matters. The hint was eagerly taken up ; and I 
am assured that the feeling in my favor is strong, and that I 
shall probably be at the head of the poll. All that I have 
been asked to do is to say that, if I am chosen on those 
terms, I vrill sit. On full consideration, I did not think 



262 LITE AND LETTEES OF [chap. xm. 

that I could, consistently with my duty, decline the invita- 
tion. 

To me, personally, the sacrifice is great. Though I shall 
not make a drudge of myself, and though I certainly shall 
never, in any event, accept office, the appearance of my next 
volumes may be postponed a year, or even two. But it seems 
to me to be of the highest importance that great constituent 
bodies should learn to respect the conscience and the honor of 
their representatives ; should not expect slavish obedience from 
men of spirit and ability ; and should, instead of catechising 
such men, and caviling at them, repose in them a large confi- 
dence. The way in which such bodies have of late behaved 
has driven many excellent persons from public life, and will, 
unless a remedy is found, drive away many more. The con- 
duct of Edinburgh toward me was not worse than that of sev- 
eral other places to their members; but it attracted more no- 
tice, and has been often mentioned, in Parliament and out of 
Parliament, as a fiagrant instance of the caprice and perverse- 
ness of even the most intelligent bodies of electors. It is, 
therefore, not an unimportant nor an undesirable thing that 
Edinburgh should, quite spontaneously, make a very signal, I 
may say, an unprecedented, reparation. 

Do not talk about this more than you find absolutely nec- 
essary ; but treat it lightly, as I do in all companies where I 
hear it mentioned. Ever yours, T. B. Macaulat. 

Macaulay's diary amply proves that in this letter to his sis- 
ter he had vn-itten about the Edinburgh election exactly as he 
had felt ; if, indeed, he had been capable of writing otherwise 
to any person, or on any subject. 

"May IWh.—l met Dandas in Bond Street, and went with him to 
Brooks's. Craig showed me a letter from Adam Black, by which it ap- 
pears that some of the people at Edinburgh think of putting me up with- 
out applying to me. I said a little to discourage the notion, but thought 
it best not to appear to treat it seriously. I dined with Lord Broughton. 
Lord John and I sat together, and got on very well. I can not help loving 
him ; and I regret the diminution of his weight and popularity both for 
his own sake and for that of the country," 



1852-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 263 

"MayU7th. — Breakfast witli Mahon. Very pleasant it was. I had a 
letter from Hannah, inclosing one from Craig about Edinburgh. She has 
acquitted herself with true feminine skill and tact. I feel quite indiffer- 
ent about the matter. I should like the amende. I should dislike the 
trouble. The two feelings balance each other ; so I have only to follow a 
perfectly straightforward course, which indeed is always best." 

"June 9th. — I received a letter from James Simpson about the election, 
and answered him as I resolved. I am fully determined that no trace of 
vacillation or inconsistency shall be discerned in what I write and say. I 
shall stick to one plain story." 



Little as lie wished it, Macaulay soon had to tell that story 
to the public at large. The Committee of the Scottish Eefor- 
mation Society, insisting on their privilege as electors, wrote 
to him in respectful terms to inquire whether, in the event of 
his being returned to Parliament, he was prepared to vote 
against the grant to Maynooth. He replied as follows : 

To the Secretary of the Scottish Reformation Socieiy. 

June 23d, 1852. 
Sm, — I must beg to be excused from answering the ques- 
tions which you put to me. I have great respect for the gen- 
tlemen in whose name you write, but I have nothing to ask 
of them. I am not a candidate for their suffrages ; I have no 
desire to sit again in Parliament, and I certainly shall never 
again sit there, except in an event which I did not till very 
lately contemplate as possible, and which even now seems to 
me highly improbable. If, indeed, the electors of such a city 
as Edinburgh should, without requiring from me any explana- 
tion or any guarantee, think fit to confide their interests to 
my care, I should not feel myself justified in refusing to ac- 
cept a public trust offered me in a manner so honorable and 
so peculiar. I have not, I am sensible, the smallest right to 
expect that I shall on such terms be chosen to represent a 
great constituent body ; but I have a right to say that on no 
other terms can I be induced to leave that quiet and happy 
retirement in which I have passed the last four years. 
I have the, honor to be yours, etc., 

T. B. Maoaulat. 



264: ' LIFE ANB LETTERS OP [chap. xm. 

The dignified minuteness with which Macanlay defined his 
position did not altogether meet the views of his supporters ; 
and yet it is not easy to see how, under circumstances of such 
extreme delicacy, the letter could have been better written. 

"June ZOfh. — I heard from Adam Black, who is alarmed about the effect 
which my answer to the Reformation Society may have upon the election. 
It is very odd that, careless as I am about the result of the whole business, 
a certain disagreeable physical excitement was produced by Black's letter. 
All day I have felt unstrung ; a weight at my heart, and an indescribable 
sense of anxiety. These are the penalties of advancing life. My reason 
is as clear as ever, and tells me that I have not the slightest cause for un- 
easiness. I answered Adam, using language much gentler than I should 
have used except out of consideration for him." 

"July 5tk. — I see in The Scotsman my answer to Adam, or most of it. I 
hardly like this ; but no doubt it was done for the best. I can not bear 
any thing that looks like stooping." 

It is difficult to imagine how even Macaulay could discern 
any trace of obsequiousness in the language of his letter to Mr. 
Black. " I despair," he writes, " of being able to use words 
which will not be distorted. How stands the case? I say 
that such a distinction is so rare that I lately thought it unat- 
tainable, and that even now I hardly venture to expect that I 
shall attain it ; and I am told that I hold it cheap. I say that 
to be elected member for Edinburgh, without appearing as 
a candidate, would be a high and peculiar honor — an honor 
which would induce me to make a sacrifice such as I would in 
no other case — and I am told that this is to treat the electors 
contemptuously. My language, naturally construed, was re- 
spectful—nay, humble. If any person finds an insult in it, 
the reason must be that he is determined to find an insult in 
every thing I write." 

"July 7th. — Broken sleep at night, and then an eventful day. The Times 
is full of election oratory. All is right, on the whole. The City is well; 
the Tower Hamlets well ; at Greenwich a check, but very slight ; gains at 
Reading, Aylesbury, Horsham, and Hertford ; but for the gain at Hertford 
I am sorry, from personal regard for Mahon. I am glad that Strutt heads 
the poU at Nottingham." 

"July 8th, — Another day of excitement, following another bad night. 



1852-'56.] LORD MACAULAT. 265 

Immediately after breakfast I went to Golden Square, and polled for Shel- 
ley and Evans. All the day was taken up with questioning, and answer- 
ing questions ; waiting for news, and devouring it. Brooks's was quite 
like a hee-hive. We were anxious to the last about Westminster. I have 
had news from Black and Craig — -welcome, and unwelcome. My success, 
if it is to be so called, seems certain. I shall not go down to the declara- 
tion of the poll. I can not travel all night in my present state of health ; 
and, as to starting on Tuesday morning, and going as far as Berwick with 
the chance of having to turn back in case of a reverse, the thing is not to 
be thought of. I have held my head pretty high ; and this would be a 
humiliation aggravated tenfold by the reserve, approaching to haughti- 
ness, which I have hitherto maintained." 

In spite of Mr. Black's friendly apprehensions, Macaulay's 
high and rigid bearing had not been distasteful to the Edin- 
burgh electors. They justly considered that the self-respect 
of a member of Parliament reflects itself upon his constitu- 
ents ; and they were rather proud, than not, of voting for a 
candidate who was probably the worst electioneerer since 
Coriolanus. The enthusiasm in his favor was not confined to 
his own party. Professor Wilson, the most distinguished sur- 
vivor from the old school of Scotch Toryism, as Toryism was 
understood by Lord Melville and Sir Walter Scott, performed 
the last public act of his bustling and jovial existence by go- 
ing to the poll for Macaulay. At the close of the day the 
numbers stood : 

Macaulay 1846 

Cowan 1753 

M'Laren 1561 

Bruce 1068 

Campbell 625 

It is no exaggeration to say that from one end of the island to 
the other the tidings were received with keen and all but uni- 
versal satisfaction.* Amidst the passions and ambitions and 

* "All over the country the news of his election was received with a 
burst of joy. Men congratulated each other as if some dear friend or rela- 
tion of their own had received so signal an honor. People who had never 
seen his face shook hands with one another in an unreasoning way on the 
receipt of such glorious news." — The Public Life of Lord Macaulay. By the 
Eev. Frederick Arnold, B.A. 



266 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [CHAP.xm. 

jealousies of a general election that was to decide the fate of 
a ministry, the combatants on both sides found time to rejoice 
oyer an event which was regarded, not as a party victory, but 
as the triumph of intellectual eminence and political integrity. 
I well remember blushing and trembling with a boy's delight 
when Albert Smith, in two or three dashing couplets inserted 
o£E-hand into the best of his admirable songs, announced that 
Edinburgh had at last put itself right with Mr. Macaulay ; 
and I still seem to hear the prolonged and repeated cheering 
that broke forth from every comer of an audience which, un- 
less it differed from every other London audience of its class, 
must have been at least three-fourths Tory. 

But the very same week which honored Macaulay with so 
marked a proof of the esteem and admiration of his country- 
men brought with it likewise sad and sure indications that 
the great labors to which his fame was due had not been un- 
dertaken with impunity. "In the midst of my triumphs," 
he writes, " I am but poorly ;" and he was one who never com- 
plained lightly. For some months past such ominous passages 
as these had been frequent in his journal : " I turned over the 
new volumes of Thiers's book — the Austrian campaign of 
1809. It is heavy. I hope that my volumes will be more at- 
tractive reading. I am out of sorts, however, at present, and 
can not write. Why ? I can not teL. I will wait a day or 
two, and then try anew." And again : " I wrote some of my 
' History ;' not amiss ; but I am not in the stream yet. I feel 
quite oppressed by the weight of the task. How odd a thing 
the human mind is ! Mine, at least. I could write a queer 
Montaignish essay on my morbidities. I sometimes lose 
months, I do not know how ; accusing myseK daily, and yet 
really incapable of vigorous exertion. I seem under a spell of 
laziness. Then I warm, and can go on working twelve hours 
at a stretch. How I worked a year ago ! And why can not 
I work so now ?" 

He was soon to know. On the 15th of July, two days aft- 
er the election was decided, he describes himseK as extremely 
languid and oppressed; hardly able to walk or breathe. A 
week later he says : " I was not well to-day ; something the 



1852-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 267 

matter with the heart. I felt a load on my breast. I was 
much unstrung, and could hardly help shedding tears of mere 
weakness: but I did help it. I shrink from the journey to 
Edinburgh, and the public appearance. I am sure that, in the 
state in which I am, I shall be forced to sit down ia five min- 
utes ; if, indeed, I do not faint, which I have repeatedly ex- 
pected to do of late." 

The day on which he was to address his constituents was 
close at hand, and there was no time to be lost. " I sent for 
Bright. He came with a stethoscope; pronounced that the 
action of the heart was much deranged, and positively forbade 
me to think of going to Edinburgh. I went out, but could 
hardly get along with the help of my stick ; so I took a cab 
to Westbourne Terrace, and returned in the same way. Their 
society and kindness keep up my spirits, which are but low. 
I am vexed with myseM for having suffered myself to be en- 
ticed back to public life. My book seems to me certain to be 
a failure. Yet, when I look up any part, and read it, I can 
not but see that it is better than the other works on the same 
subject. That, to be sure, is not saying much; for Ealph, 
Smollett, Kennett, Somerville, Belsham, Lord Dungannon, are 
all of them wretched writers of history ; and Burnet, who down 
to the Revolution is most valuable and amusing, becomes dull 
as soon as he reaches the reign of William. I should be sor- 
ry to leave that reign unfinished." 

For some weeks to come Macaulay was very ill indeed; 
and he never recovered the secure and superabundant health 
which he had hitherto enjoyed. It is needless to say that the 
affection which he had passed his life in deserving did not fail 
him now. Lady Trevelyan saw Dr. Bright, and learned that 
the case was more serious than she believed her brother him- 
self to be aware of; a belief which was quite erroneous, as 
his journal proves, but under which he very wiUingly allowed 
her to lie. She took upon herself the arrangements necessa- 
ry for the postponement of the Edinburgh meeting, and then 
accompanied Macaulay down to Clifton ; where she saw him 
comfortably settled, and staid with him until he began to 
mend. 



268 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xm. 

" Clifton, August 8th, 1852. — I went out, reading 'Julius Csesar' in Sueto- 
nius, and was overtaken by heavy rain and thunder. I could not get un- 
der a tree for fear of lightning, and could not run home for fear of bring- 
ing on the palpitation ; so I walked through the rain as slowly and grave- 
ly as if I had been a mourner in a funeral. The slightest excitement or 
anxiety affects the play of my heart. In spite of myself my spirits are 
low ; but my reason tells me that hardly any man living has so much to 
be thankful for. And I will be thankful, and firm, as far as I am master 
of myself. Hannah and I did not venture out after dinner, but chatted 
over old times, affectionately, and very pleasantly." 

" Sunday, August Wlk. — To Christ Church. I got a place among the free 
seats, and heard not a bad sermon on the word ' Therefore.' The preacher 
disclaimed all intention of startling us by oddity, after the fashion of the 
seventeenth century ; but I doubt whether he did not find in St. Paul's 
'therefore' much more than St. Paul thought of. There was a collection 
for church-building, and I slipped my sovereign into the plate the more 
willingly because the preacher asked for our money on sensible grounds, 
and in a manly manner." 

"August 16iA. — The Times brought the news of Sir James Parker's d^ath. 
He died of heart-complaint. Poor fellow ! I feel for him. The attack 
came on just as he was made vice-chancellor. Mine came on just as I 
was elected for Edinburgh. Mine may, very likely, end as his has ended ; 
and it may be for the best that it should do so. My eyes fill with tears 
when I think of those whom I must leave ; but there is no mixture of 
pusillanimity in my tenderness. I long to see Hannah and Margaret. I 
wish that they were back again from the Continent ; but I do not think 
that the end is so near. To-day I wrote a pretty fair quantity of ' Histo- 
ry.' I should be glad to finish William before I go. But this is like the 
old excuses that were made to Charon." 

Some fastidious critics think it proper to deny Macaulay the 
title of a poet ; and it was a title which he did not claim. No 
one was more ready than himself to allow that the bay-tree 
does not grow kindly in the regions among which his lot had 
been cast. He had lived in the world, and had held his own 
there ; and a man who would hold his own in the world must 
learn betimes to think, as well as write, in prose. Downing 
, Street and Calcutta, the Edinburgh Review and the House of 
Commons, had exercised his judgment and curbed his fancy ; 
but those who knew his inner mind never doubted that, how- 
ever much it had been overlaid by the habits and the acquire- 
ments of an active and varied career, the poetic nature was 



1853-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 269 

there. If any one will read the story of the copying- clerk 
who found himself unexpectedly transformed into a poet, as 
told in Hans Andersen's exquisite little fairy tale, he will get 
an exact picture of the manner in which Macaulay's memory 
and imagination worked during the greater part of his idle 
hom's. He positively lived upon the associations of his own 
past. A sixpenny print which had hung in a Clapham nurs- 
ery or school-room gave him more real delight than any mas- 
terpiece of Keynolds. The day on which he detected, in the 
darkest recesses of a Holborn book-stall, some trumpery ro- 
mance that had been in the Cambridge circulating libraries of 
the year 1820, was a date marked with a white stone in his 
calendar. He exrdts in his diary over the discovery of a 
wretched novel called " Conscience," which he himself con- 
fesses to be " execrable ti'ash," as triumphantly as if it had 
been a first folio edition of Shakspeare, with an inch and a 
half of margin. But nothing caused him so much pleasure (a 
pleasure which frequent repetition did not perceptibly dimin- 
ish) as a visit to any scene that he had known in earlier years. 
It mattered not with what period of his existence that scene 
was connected, or whether the reminiscences which it conjured 
up were gay or gloomy, utterly trivial or profoundly interest- 
ing. The inn at Durham, where he had dined badly when on 
circuit ; the court-house at Lancaster, where as a briefless bar- 
rister he had listened to Brougham exchanging retorts with 
Pollock ; the dining-room in Great George Street, in a comer 
of which he had written his articles on Lord Holland and War- 
ren Hastings ; the church at Cheddar, where as a child he had 
sat of a Sunday afternoon, longing to get at the great black- 
letter volume of the " Book of Martyrs " which was chained 
to the neighboring readiug-desk, while the vicar, whom Mrs. 
Hannah More had pronounced to be a poor " preacher and not 
at all a Gospel minister," was droning unheeded overhead — 
these, and others such as these, were localities possessing in his 
eyes a charm far surpassing that which the most stately and 
famous cities derive from historic tradition or architectural 
splendor. I^ever had he a better opportunity of indulging 
hiinseK in his favorite amusement of hunting up old recoUec- 



270 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiii. 

tions than when he was living at Clifton, within a short drive 
of the cottage which had once been Mrs. Hannah More's, and 
under the strictest orders from his physicians to do nothing 
but amuse himself. 

"August 21st. — A fine day. At eleven, the Harfords of Blaise Castle 
called in their barouche to take Margaret and me to Barley Wood. The 
VaUey of Wrington was as rich and lovely as ever. The Mendip ridge, 
the church tower, the islands in the distance, were what they were forty 
years ago, and more. But Barley Wood itself is greatly changed. There 
has been no want of care, or taste, or respect for old recollections ; but the 
trees would grow, and the summer-houses would decay. The cottage it- 
self, once visible from a considerable distance, is now so completely sur- 
rounded with wood that you do not see it until you actually drive up to 
the door. The shrubs, which were not as high as I was at eleven years 
old, have become great masses of verdure ; and at many points from which 
there once was an extensive prospect nothing can now be seen. The 
house, and the esplanade of turf just before it, are the least changed. The 
dining-room and drawing-room are what they were, the old engravings ex- 
cepted, the place of almost every one of which I well remembered. The 
old roses run up the old trellis-work, or up trellis-work very like the old. 
But the Temple of the Winds is in ruins ; and the root-house, which was 
called the ' Tecta pauperis Evandri,' has quite disappeared. That was my 
favorite haunt. The urn of Locke has been moved. The urn of Porteua 
stands where it did. The place is improved ; but it is not the place where 
I passed so many happy days in my childhood." 

"Septemier Uth. — A beautiful day. After breakfast Ellis and I drove to 
Wrington in an open carriage and pair. We first paid a visit to the church. 
I recognized the old pew, and one of the epitaphs ; but I missed the pulpit- 
cloth of scarlet velvet, with an inscription in remarkably long gold letters. 
The sexton recollected it. There were the books chained to the desks ; 
and, to my surprise, the 'Book of Martyrs' was among them. I did not 
remember that there was one here, though I perfectly remember that at 
Cheddar. I saw my dear old friend's grave, with a foolish, canting inscrip- 
tion. We then walked to Barley Wood. They very kindly asked me to 
go upstairs. We saw Mrs. Hannah More's room. The bed is where her 
sofa and desk used to stand. The old book-cases, some of them at least, 
remain. I could point out the very place where the ' Don Quixote,' in four 
volumes, stood, and the very place from which I took down, at ten years 
old, the ' Lyrical Ballads.' With what delight and horror I read the 'An- 
cient Mariner !' Home, much pleased with this second visit." 

"September IGth. — A knock, and a carriage. Who should it be but my 
old Trinity tutor, Monk, the bishop of the diocese ! I was really glad to 



1852-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 271 

see him and to shake hands with him ; for he was kind to me when I 
was young, and I was ungrateful and impertinent to him." 

"October Uh. — I finished 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' a powerful and disagreea- 
ble book ; too dark and Spagnoletto-like for my taste, when considered as 
a work of art. But, on the whole, it is the most valuable addition that 
America has made to English literature.'' 

While in the West of England, Macaulay read as much as 
ever, but he wrote little except his weekly letter to Mr. Ellis. 

16 Caledonia Place, Clifton. 

Here I am ; not the worse, on the whole, for the journey. I already feel 
the influence of this balmy air. Remember that you are booked for the 
10th of September. You will find a good bedroom, a great tub, a tolerably 
furnished book-case, lovely walks, fine churches, a dozen of special sherry, 
half a dozen of special hook, and a tureen of turtle soup. I read this last 
paragraph to Hannah, who is writing at the table beside me. She ex- 
claimed against the turtle : " Such gluttons men are !" " For shame !" I 
said ; " when a friend comes to us, we ought to kill the fatted calf." " Yes," 
says she; "but from the fatted calf you wiU get only mock turtle." 

Rely on it that I shall never be in ofiSce again. Every motive is against 
it ; avarice and ambition, as well as the love of ease and the love of liberty. 
I have been twice a Cabinet minister, and never made a farthing by being 
so. I have now been four years out of office, and I have added ten thou- 
sand pounds to my capital. So much for avarice. Then, as for ambition, 
I should be a far greater man as M.P. for Edinburgh, supporting a Liberal 
government cordially, but not servilely, than as chancellor of the duchy 
or pay-master of the forces. I receive congratulations from all quarters. 
The most fervent, perhaps, are from Graham. My own feelings are mixed. 
If I analyze them strictly, I find that I am glad and sorry ; glad to have 
been elected, sorry to have to sit. The election was a great honor. The 
sitting will be a great bore. 

August 13th, 1853. 

I am better than when I left town, but still far from well. The weath- 
er has been against me as yet. During the last forty-eight hours I have 
been close prisoner to the house. The Deluge, which Lord Maidstone told 
us was to come after Lord Derby, has come already ; so that we are cursed 
with Derby and the Deluge too. I have very little to complain of. I suf- 
fer no pain. My mind is unclouded. My temper is not soured. I sleep 
sound. I eat and drink heartily. Nothing that care or tenderness can do 
for me is wanting. Indeed, it would be unjust and selfish in me to accept 
all the sacrifices which those whom I love are eager to make. 

September 35th, 1853. 
On Thursday I walked to Leigh Court, on the other side of the ferry, 



/ 



272 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xm. 

to see the famous collection of pictures, and found that report had not 
done them justice. Nothing struck me so much as Eubens's "Woman 
taken in Adultery." The figures have a look of life which I do not know 
that I ever saw elsewhere on canvas. On the road between Leigh Court 
and the ferry, however, I saw a more delightful picture than any in the 
collection. In a deep shady lane was a donkey-cart driven by a lad ; and 
in it were four very pretty girls from eleven to six, evidently sisters. They 
were quite mad with spirits at having so rare a treat as a ride ; and they 
were laughing and singing in a way that almost made me cry with mere 
sense of the beautiful. They saw that I was pleased, and answered me 
very prettily when I made some inquiry about my route. I begged them 
to go on singing ; and they all four began caroling, in perfect concert, and 
in tones as joyous as a lark's. I gave them the silver that I had about me 
to buy dolls. I should like to have a picture of the cart and the cargo. 
Gainsborough would have been the man. But I should not like to have 
an execrably bad poem on the subject, such as Wordsworth would have 
written. I am really quite well; though my Clifton doctor adjures me 
not to take liberties, and Bright writes, advising me to ask for the Chiltem 
Hundreds. 

Dr. Bright had good reason for the advice which he gave. So 
far from being quite well, it may be said that Macaulay never 
was well again. " Last July was a crisis in my life," he writes 
in March, 1853. " I became twenty years older in a week. A 
mile is more to me now than ten miles a year ago." In the 
winter that followed his re-election at Edinburgh he had a se- 
vere attack of bronchitis ; and during all his remaining years 
he suffered from coniirmed asthma, and was tormented by 
frequent and distressing fits of violent coughing. One after 
another, in quick succession, his favorite habits were abandon- 
ed, without any prospect of being resumed. His day-long 
rambles, in company with Homer or Goethe, along river 
banks, and over ridge and common ; his afternoons spent in 
leisurely explorations of all the book-stalls and print-shops be- 
tween Charing Cross and Bethnal Green ; his Sunday walks 
from the Albany to Clapham, and from Clapham to Rich- 
mond or Blackwall, were now, during long periods together, 
exchanged for a crawl along the sunny side of the street in 
the middle hours of any day which happened to be fine. In- 
stead of writing, as on a pinch he loved to write, straight on 
from his late and somewhat lazy breakfast until the moment 



1853-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 2Y3 

of dinner found him hungry and complacent, with a heavy 
task successfully performed, he was condemned, for the first 
time in his life, to the detested necessity of breaking the la- 
bors of the day by luncheon. He was forced, sorely against 
his will, to give up reading aloud, which, ever since he was 
four years old, he had enjoyed even more than readiug to 
himself. He was almost totally debarred from general socie- 
ty ; for his doctor rarely permitted him to go out of an even- 
ing, and often forbade him to go out at all. In February, 
1855, he writes to Mr. Ellis : " I am still a prisoner ; I have 
now had nearly three months of it, with rather less range than 
Sir Francis Burdett had in the Tower, or Leigh Hunt at New- 
gate." In May, 1854, Lord Carlisle writes : " I met Macaulay 
at a few breakfasts, and was sorry to think his health less 
good." And again : " It was tolerably pleasant — always so 
when Macaulay talked. The ' flashes of silence ' come much 
more frequently now."* 

The change for the worse in Macaulay's health was appar- 
ent even to those who watched him less closely and less anx- 
iously than did Lord Carlisle ; but, though that change might 
be read on his countenance, it was seldom, indeed, that any 
allusion to it passed his lips. Sufficient for himseK, he made 
no demands upon the compassion of others. His equanimity 
had never been found wanting amidst the difficulties and re- 
verses of a not uncheckered public career; and it now stood 
the severer test of a life which, for long periods together, was 
the life of an invalid who had to depend largely upon his own 
fortitude for support, and upon his own mental resources for 
occupation and amusement. It might have been expected 
that he would have made his private journal the safety-valve 
for that querulousness which an egotist vents upon his rela- 
tives, and a self-conscious author upon his readers. But as 
each birthday and each New-year's recurs, instead of peevishly 



* "Yes," said Sydney Smith, "he is certainly more agreeable since his 
return from India. His enemies might perhaps have said before (though I 
never did so) that he talked rather too much ; but now he has occasional 
flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful." 

Vol. II.— 18 



274 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. xni. 

mourning over the blessings whicli had departed from him, he 
records in manly terms his gratitude for those that had been 
left to him. 

"December 31st, 1853. — Another day of wort and solitude. I enjoy this 
invalid life extremely. In spite of my gradually sinking health, this has 
been a happy year. My strength is failing. My life will not, I think, be 
long. But I have clear faculties, warm affections, abundant sources of 
pleasure." 

At very distant intervals, he gives expression, in two or 
three pathetic sentences, to the dejection which is the inevi- 
table attendant upon the most depressing of all ailments : " I 
am not what I was, and every month my heart tells it me more 
and more clearly. I am a little low ; not from apprehension, 
for I look forward to the inevitable close with perfect seren- 
ity; but from regret for what I love. I sometimes hardly 
command my tears when I think how soon I may leave them. 
I feel that the fund of life is nearly spent." But, throughout 
the volumes of his journals, Macaulay never for a single in- 
stant assumes the air of an unfortunate or an ill-used man. 
One or two of his contemporaries, who grudged him his pros- 
perity, have said that discontent was a sin to which he had 
small temptation. At any rate, it was a sin of which he never 
was guilty. Instead of murmuring and repining, we find him 
exhorting himself to work while it was day, and to increase his 
exertions as the sand sunk ever lower in the glass; rescuing 
some from the poverty from which he long ago had set him- 
self free, and consoling others for the pangs of disappointed 
ambition from which he had never suffered; providing the 
young people around him only too lavishly with the pleasures 
that he could no longer enjoy, and striving by every possible 
method to make their lives all the brighter, as the shadows 
deepened down upon his own. To admit the world unreserv- 
edly behind the scenes of Macaulay's life would be an act 
which the world. itself would blame; but those who have spe- 
cial reason to cherish his memory may be allowed to say, that, 
proud as they are of his brilliant and elaborate compositions, 
which in half a score of languages have been the delight of a 
million readers, they set a still higher value upon the careless 



1852-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 275 

pages of that diary wMch testifies how, through seven years 
of trying and constant illness, he maintained his industry, his 
courage, his patience, and his benevolence unimpaired and un- 
broken to the last. 

By the end of October, 1852, Macaulay had recovered his 
health sufficiently to fulfill his engagements with the people 
of Edinburgh. After spending some days there in the socie- 
ty of his friends, both old and new, he delivered an address in 
the Music Hall on the 2d of November. He began, as became 
an historian, by reviewing the events of the past five years, 
both foreign and domestic, in a strain of lofty impartiality, to 
which his audience listened with respectful and not dissatisfied 
attention ; and then, of a sudden, he changed his tone, and did 
his best to satisfy the expectations of his constituents by giv- 
ing them forty minutes of as rattling a party speech as ever 
was delivered from the Westminster hustings, or the platform 
of the Free-trade Hall at Manchester. And yet, party speech 
as it was, it occasioned very little ofiense ia any quarter ; for 
its easy flow of raillery was marked by an absence of asperity 
which betokened to experienced eyes that Macaulay, as far as 
modern politics were concerned, had ceased to be at heart a 
party man. As an author, he had met with so much indul- 
gence from his Conservative fellow-countrymen that he was 
thenceforward most unwilling, as a statesman, to say any thing 
which could hurt their feelings or shock their sincere convic- 
tions. The most determined Tory found little to quarrel with 
in the spirit of the speech, and thought himself justified in 
laughing, as heartily as if he had been a Whig, over the jokes 
about Lord Maidstone's hexameters, and the enfranchising 
clause which Lord Derby's Cabinet had proposed to tack on 
to the Militia Bill.* 

* This clause gave a vote to every man who had served for two years in 
the militia. "And what," said Macaulay, "is the qualification? Why, 
the first qualification is youth. These electors are not to be above a cer- 
tain age ; but the nearer you can get them to eighteen, the better. The 
second qualification is poverty. The elector is to be a person to whom a 
shilling a day is an object. The third qualification is ignorance ; for I 
venture to say that, if you take the trouble to observe the appearance of 



276 LIFE AND LETTEES'OF [CHAP.xm 

"Sunday, October 31st, Edinburgh. — This is a Sunday — a Presbyterian 
Sunday — a Presbyterian Sacrament Sunday. The town is as still as if it 
were midnight. Whoever opposes himself to the prevailing humor would 
run a great risk of being affronted. There was one person, whom Chris- 
tians generally mention with respect, who, I am sure, could not have walk- 
ed Prince's Street in safety, and who would have addressed some very cut- 
ting rebukes to my grave constituents.* 

" I have just been to Guthrie's church. I had once before seen the Pres- 
byterian administration of the Eucharist, in July, 1817. There was much 
appearance of devotion, and even of religious excitement, among the com- 
municants ; and the rite was decently performed; but, though Guthrie is a 
man of considerable powers, his prayers were at a prodigious distance from 
those of our liturgy. There was nothing which, even for a moment, rose 
to the level of ' Therefore with angels and archangels.' There were some 
fine passages, in the midst of much that was bad, in his sermon. The man 
is a noble, honest, courageous specimen of humanity .t I staid at home aU 

those young fellows who follow the recruiting-sergeant in the streets, you 
will at once say that, among your laboring classes, they are not the most 
educated, they are not the most intelligent. And, then, a young man who 
goes ffom the plow-tail into the army is generally rather thoughtless, and 
disposed to idleness. Oh ! but there is another qualification which I had 
forgotten : the voter must be five feet two. There is a qualification for 
you! Only think of measuring a man for the franchise! And this is the 
work of a Conservative government — this plan which would swamp all 
the counties in England with electors who possess the qualifications of 
youth, poverty, ignorance, a roving disposition, and five feet two. Why, 
what right have people who have proposed such a change as this to talk 
about — I do not say Lord John Rnssell's imprudence — -but the imprudence 
of Ernest Jones, or of any other Chartist ? The Chartists, to do them jus- 
tice, would give the franchise to wealth as well as to poverty, to knowl- 
edge as well as to ignorance, to mature age as well as to youth. But to 
make a qualification compounded of disqualifications is a feat of which the 
whole glory belongs to our Conservative rulers." 

* "Your old parson is a dunce," Macaulay writes to one of his sisters. 
"There is nothing in Homer, or in Hesiod either, about the observation of 
every seventh day. Hesiod, to be sure, says that the seventh day of every 
month (a very different thing) is a holiday ; and the reason which he gives 
is that, on the seventh day of the month, Latona brought Apollo into the 
world. A pretty reason for Christians !" 

+ Some years before this, Macaulay had found himself in Scotland on a 
fast-day, without the luck of being in the same town with Guthrie. "A 
kirk-fast. The place had all the aspect of a Puritan Sunday. Every shop 
was shut, and every church open. I heard the worst and longest sermon 



1852-'56.] LOED MACAULAY. 277 

the afternoon, dined alone, and stole out lu the dark for a walk. The 
view of the Old Town at night from my windows is the finest thing in the 
world. They have taken to lighting their houses with gas, and the effect 
is wonderful." 

" Tttesdaij, November 2d. — A great day. Very fine ; a splendid specimen 
of St. Martin's little summer. I was pretty well prepared for the exhibi- 
tion, and doubted only about my bodily strength. People were too con- 
siderate to call this morning. At half-past twelve came my escort, and 
brought me to the Hall, which was as full as it could hold. Multitudes 
had gone away, unable to find room. At one we went in. A vast gather- 
ing. They received me, with a prodigious uproar of kindness. Black took 
the chair, on Craig's motion, and said a very few words. Then I rose, and 
spoke more than an hour, always with the sympathy and applause of the 
whole audience. I found that I could not go on longer ; so I contrived to 
leave off at a good moment, and to escape from some dangerous topics. 
Nothing could be more successful. There was immense acclamation, in 
the midst of which I retired, exhausted, but relieved from a weight which 
has been pressing on my heart during four months. . I dined at Moncrieff 's 
with a large party. Lord Ivory talked loud, with Cowan at his elbow, 
about the disgrace of 1847, and the recovered character of the city. I felt 
for Cowan, who has been very civil to me, and to whom I have not, and 
never have had, any unkind feelings. As I was undressing, came the proofs 
of The Scotsman's report of my speech. I was too much exhausted to cor- 
rect them, and sent them back with a civil line to the editor, who is both 
a good and a clever fellow.'' 

The new Parliament assembled early in November, and 
on the 3d of December Mr. Disraeli opened his budget. " It 
was well done," writes Macaulay, " both as to manner and lan- 
guage. The statement was lucid, though much too long. I 
could have said the whole as clearly, or more clearly, in two 
hours ; and Disraeli was up five. The plan was nothing but 
taking money out of the pockets of people in towns, and put- 
ting it into the pockets of growers of malt. I greatly doubt 

that I ever remember. Every sentence was repeated three or four times 
over, and nothing in any sentence deserved to be said once. I withdrew 
iny attention, and read the Epistle to the Eomans. I was much struck by 
the eloquence and force of some passages, and made out the connection 
and argument of some others which had formerly seemed to me unmean- 
ing ; but there were others, again, which I was still quite unable to com- 
prehend. I know few things finer than the end of the first chapter, and 
the ' Who shall separate us from the love of Christ V " 



278 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. xiii. 

whether he will be able to carry it ; but he has raised his rep- 
utation for practical ability." 

During the first six weeks of his renewed experience of the 
House of Commons, Macaulay, as befitted a re -enlisted vet- 
eran, thought that the standard of speaking was lower than of 
old. But he soon had reason to change his mind : 1832 it- 
self could boast few more animated and exciting scenes than 
that which was enacted during the first three hours in the 
morning of the ITth of December, 1852 ; when the Tory 
leader, more formidable than ever in the audacity of despair, 
turned to bay in defense of his doomed budget ; and when, 
at the moment that friends and foes alike thought that the 
last word had been spoken on either side, Mr. Gladstone 
bounded on to the fioor amidst a storm of cheering and coun- 
ter-cheering such as the walls of Parliament have never re- 
echoed since, and plunged straight into the heart of an ora- 
tion which, in a single day, doubled his influence in Parlia- 
ment and his popularity in the country. "At half -past ten," 
says Macaulay, " I went to the House, and staid till near f oiu- ; 
generally in the library, or the division lobby, reading. I 
heard a little of Disraeli, who was clever, but inconclusive ; 
and most unhandsome. A little of Gladstone, gravely and 
severely bitter. At last came the division. There was an 
immense crowd ; a deafening cheer, when Hayter took the 
right hand of the row of tellers; and a still louder cheer 
when the numbers were read — 305 to 286. In the midst of 
the shouting I stole away, got to my carriage, and reached 
home just at four, much exhausted." 

Then came the change of government, with all that accom- 
panies the process of forming a cabinet. The stir; the gos- 
sip ; the political clubs, swarming with groups of talkers, who 
exchange morsels of news and of criticism in eager whispers ; 
the hansom cabs dashing about Belgravia and Mayfair, or 
waiting for hours together at the door of the incoming Pre- 
mier; the ever -in creasing discomfort of eminent statesmen 
who sit in their studies, waiting for the possible arrival of a 
Treasury messenger; the cozy dinners at the houses of the 
new ministers, growing larger and merrier daily, as another, 



1853-'56.] LORD MACAULAT. 279 

and yet another, right honorable gentleman is added to the 
number of the elect. " I doubt," says Macaulay, " whether 
so many members of the two Houses have been in town on 
Christmas - day since 1783, sixty -nine years ago. Then, as 
now, there was a change of ministry in Christmas week. In- 
deed, there was a great debate in a full House of Commons 
on the 22d of December, and Lord North made, on that occa- 
sion, a very celebrated speech." 

"December 20lh. — An eventful day. After breakfast, at the Atbenaenm, 
I met Senior, who told me that he had been at my chambers to beg me 
to go to Lansdowne House ; that Lord Lansdowne wished to see me be- 
fore half-past twelve. I went. I found him and Lord John closeted to- 
gether. Lord John read us a letter which he had received from the queen ; 
very good, like all her letters that I have seen. She told him that she saw 
hope of making a strong and durable government, at ouce conservative 
and reforming ; that she had asked Lord Aberdeen to form such a govern- 
ment ; that great exertions and sacrifices would be necessary, and that she 
relied on the patriotism of Lord John not to refuse his valuable aid. They 
asked me what I thought. I said that I could improve the queen's letter 
neither in substance nor in language, and that she had expressed my sen- 
timents to a tittle. Then Lord John said that of course he should try to 
help Lord Aberdeen — but how f There were two ways. He might take 
the lead of the Commons with the Foreign Office, or he might refuse office, 
and give his support from the back benches. I adjured him not to think 
of this last course, and I argued it with him during a quarter of an hour 
with, I thought, a great flow of thoughts and words. I was encouraged 
by Lord Lansdowne, who nodded, smiled, and rubbed his hands at every 
thing that I said. I reminded him that the Duke of Wellington had taken 
the Foreign Office, after having been at the Treasury, and I quoted his 
own pretty speech on the duke. ' You said. Lord John, that we could not 
all win battles of Waterloo ; but that we might all imitate the old man's 
patriotism, sense of duty, and iudifference to selfish interests and vanities 
when the public welfare was concerned ; and now is the time for you to 
make a sacrifice. Your past services and your name give us a right to 
expect it.' He weut away evidently much impressed by what had been 
said, and promising to consult others. When he was gone. Lord Lans- 
downe told me that I had come just as opportunely as Blficher did at Wa- 
terloo. He told me also, what affected me and struck me exceedingly, 
that, in the last resort, he would himself, in spite of the danger to his 
health and the destruction of his comfort, take the Treasury, if in no oth- 
er way Lord John could be induced to lead the Commons. But this he 
keeps wisely secret for the present." 



280 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xra. 

When the question of the leadership in the Commons had 
once been settled, Macaulay's interest in the personal arrange- 
ments of Lord Aberdeen's ministry did not go further than 
the sympathy, not unmixed with amusement, with which he 
listened to the confidences of his old "Whig colleagues. " I 
went to Brooks's," he says, " and heard not a little grumbling 
about the large share of the spoil which had been allotted to 
the Peelites. I myself think that we ought to have had either 
the Lord-lieutenant, or the Secretary for Ireland. How glad 
I am that I so positively announced at Edinburgh my resolu- 
tion never again to hold office ! Otherwise people might fan- 
cy that I was disappointed. I went home, but wrote nothing. 
I never can work in these times of crisis." 

Macaulay did well to stand aside from official life. He 
never opened his lips in Parliament without receiving a fresh 
proof that his authority there could gain nothing even from 
a seat in the Cabinet. Lord Hotham, a much-respected mem- 
ber of the Conservative party, had introduced a measure whose 
chief object was to exclude the Master of the KoUs from the 
House of Commons. He had brought it unopposed through 
all its stages but the last ; and when, on the 1st of June, 1853, 
he rose to move the third reading, he was fully justified in re- 
garding his success as a foregone conclusion. But the ulti- 
mate fate of the bill was curiously at variance with the antici- 
pations which were entertained by its promoter, and, indeed, 
by all other members of Parliament who knew that such a 
bill was in existence. The story was told at the time in the 
Leader newspaper, with a minuteness of circumstance which 
calls for some degree of abridgment : 

"It was pleasanter talking on Wednesday, Tvhen the position of Mr. 
Macaulay in Great Britain was measured in a great way. On a Wednesday 
the House, and the committees, are sitting at once. The talk was not 
interesting — on a Wednesday it seldom is — and you were loitering along 
the committee lobby upstairs, wondering which of the rooms you should 
take next, when, as you paused uncertain, you were bumped against by 
somebody. He begged your pardon, and rushed on ; a member ; a stout 
member; a man you couldn't conceive in a run, and yet he's running like 
mad. You are still staring at him, when two more men trot past you, one 



1852-'56.] LOED MACAULAY. 281 

on each side, and they are ipembers too. The door close to you, marked 
' Members' Entrance,' is flung open, and five members dash from it, and 
plunge furiously down the lobby. More doors open ; more members rush 
out ; members are tearing past you, from all points, but in one direction. 
Then wigs and gowns appear. Their owners tell you, with happy faces, 
that their committees have adjourned ; and then come a third class, the 
gentlemen of the Press, hilarious. Why, what's the matter? Matter? 
Macaulay is np! It was an announcement that one had not heard for 
years, and the passing of the word had emptied the committee-rooms as, 
of old, it emptied clubs. 

" You join the runners in a moment, and are in the gallery in time to 
see the senators, who had start of you, perspiring into their -places. It 
was true. He was up, and in for a long speech. He was in a new place ; 
standing in the second row above the Treasury Bench ; and looking and 
sounding all the better for the elevation, and the clearer atmosphere for 
an orator. The old voice, the old ilianner, and the old style — glorious 
speaking! Well prepared, carefully elaborated, confessedly essayish; but 
spoken with perfect art and consummate management; the grand con- 
versation of a man of the world, confiding his learning, his recollections, 
and his logic to a party of gentlemen, and just raising his voice enough to 
be heard through the room. Such it was while he was only opening his 
subject, and waiting for his audience ; but as the House filled, which it did 
with marvelous celerity, he got prouder and more oratorical ; and then he 
poured out his speech, with rapidity increasing after every sentence, till it 
became a torrent of the richest words, carrying his hearers with him into 
enthusiasm, and yet not leaving them time to cheer. A torrent of words 
— that is the only description of Macaulay's style, when he has warmed 
into speed. And such words ! Why, it wasn't four in the afternoon ; 
lunch hardly digested ; and the quiet, reserved English gentlemen were as 
wild with delight as an opera-house, after Grisi, at ten. You doubt it? 
See the division ; and yet, before Mr. Macaulay had spoken, you might 
have safely bet fifty to one that Lord Hotham would have carried his bill. 
After that speech the bill was not thrown out, but pitched out. One be- 
gan to have a higher opinion of the House of Commons, seeing, as one did, 
that, if the Macaulay class of minds would bid for leadership, they would 
get it. But it was not all congratulation. Mr. Macaulay had rushed 
through his oration of forty minutes with masterly vigor; but the doubts 
about his health, which arise when you meet him in the street — when you 
take advantage of his sphinx-like reverie. 

Staring right on with calm, eternal eyes, 

to study the sickly face — would be confirmed by a close inspection on 
Wednesday. The great orator was trembling when he sat down ; the ex- 
citement of a triumph overcame him ; and he had scarcely the self-posses- 



282 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xin. 

eion to acknowledge the eager praises which were offered by the ministers 
and others in the neighborhood." 

Lord Hotham, with the courage of a man who had been 
wounded at Salamanca, did his best, in his reply, to stem the 
cataract of arguments and illustrations with which his unfort- 
unate measure had been overwhelmed. But all was in vain. 
There were at least two hundred men in the House who had 
been brought there to hear Macaulay, and who knew nothing 
about the question except what he had thought fit to tell them. 
The bill was thrown out by 224 votes to 123. After the lapse 
of twenty years, the act which created the Supreme Court of 
Judicature at length gave effect to Lord Hotham's policy. 
That portion of the act which provided for the exclusion of 
the Master of the Rolls from the House of Commons was 
caiTied through the Parliament of 1873 without opposition, 
and without discussion. " Clauses 9 to 11, inclusive, agreed 
to," is the sole notice which Llansard takes of the proceedings 
which reversed the decision of 1853. The enthusiastic adhe- 
sion to Macaulay's views of a House of Commons which had 
heard those views stated by himself, as compared with the si- 
lent unanimity, in the opposite direction, of a House of Com- 
mons which he was not there to persuade, together constitute 
as high, and at the same time as unintentional, a compli- 
ment as ever was paid to the character and the genius of an 
orator. 

Macaulay's own account of the affair proves how short a 
time he gave to the preparation of a speech, conspicuous, even 
among his speeches, for wealth of material and perfection of 
finish. He spent exactly two mornings' work over the ar- 
rangement of what he intended to say on an occasion which 
he regarded as critical, for personal as M^ell as for public rea- 
sons. On the evening preceding the debate, he writes: "I 
thought of Lord Hotham's bill. Craig called, and sat for two 
hours. His account of the state of things at Edinburgh is as 
good as possible. In the evening I again thought of the bill. 
I was anxious, and apprehensive of complete failure ; and yet 
I must stand the hazard." 



1852-'56.] LOED MACAULAY. 283 

" Wednesday, June 1st. — A day of painful anxiety and great success. I 
thought that I should fail, and, though no failure can now destroy my rep- 
utation, which rests on other than Parliamentary successes, it would have 
mortified me deeply. I was vexed to find how much expectation had 
been excited. I was sure that I should not speak well enough to satisfy 
that expectation. However, down I went. First we were three hours on 
an Irish criminal law bill, and then the Judges Exclusion Bill came on. 
Drummond moved to put off the third reading for six months, and spoke 
tersely and keenly, but did not anticipate any thing at all important that 
had occurred to me. When he sat down, nobody rose. There was a cry 
of ' Divide !' Then I stood up. The House filled, and was as still as death 
— a severe trial to the nerves of a man returning, after an absence of six 
years, to an arena where he had once made a great figure. I should have 
been more discomposed if I had known that my dear Hannah and Margaret 
were in the gallery. They had got tickets, but kept their intention strict- 
ly secret from me, meaning, if I failed, not to let me know that they had 
witnessed my failure. I spoke with great ease to myself, great applause, 
and, better than applause, complete success. We beat Lord Hotham by 
more than a hundred votes, and every body ascribes the victory to me. I 
was warmly congratulated by all my friends and acquaintances. In the 
midst of the first tumult of applause, a note was handed to me from Mar- 
garet, to say that she and her mamma were above. I went up to them, 
and they were very kind and very happy. To have given them pleasure 
is to me the best part of this triumph. To be sure, I am glad to have 
stopped a most mischievous course of legislation, and to find that, even for 
public conflict, my faculties are in full vigor and alertness. Craig, I hear, 
was in the gallery ; and his kind heart will be pleased with my success. 
But I was knocked up." 

Just twenty years had passed since Macaulay won his spurs 
as a minister by the workman-like style in which he conducted 
through Parliament the India Bill of 1833. In 1853 the time 
had again come round for the periodical revision of our rela- 
tions with our Eastern dependency ; and Sir Charles "Wood, 
as President of the Board of Control, introduced a bill which 
met with Macaulay's warmest approbation. He recognized 
the courage and public spirit which prompted the minister to 
call upon Parliament to enact that a nomination for the Civil 
Service of India should thenceforward become the reward of 
industry and ability, instead of being the price of political sup- 
port, or the appanage of private interest and family connec- 
tion. He had himself imported into the act of 1833 clauses 



284 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xm. 

which re -arranged the system of appointment to the Civil 
Service on a basis of competition.* But the Directors of the 
East India Company had then been too strong for him. They 
were not going to resign without a struggle the most valuable 
patronage which had existed in the world since the days when 
the Roman senate sent proconsuls and propraetors to Syria, 
Sicily, and Egypt. Back-stairs influence in Leadenhall Street 

* The passage in which Macaulay explained and defended these clauses 
is still worth reading : "It is said, I know, that examinations in Latin, in 
Greek, and in mathematics are no tests of what men will prove to be in 
life. I am perfectly aware that they are not infallible tests ; but that they 
are tests I confidently maintain. Look at every walk of life, at this House, 
at the other House, at the Bar, at the Bench, at the Church, and see wheth- 
er it be not true that those who attain high distinction in the world were 
generally men who were distinguished in their academic career. Indeed, 
sir, this objection would prove far too much even for those who use it. It 
would prove that there is no use at all in education. Education would be 
a mere useless torture, if, at two or three and twenty, a man who had neg- 
lected his studies were exactly on a par with a man who had applied him- 
self to them — exactly as likely to perform all the oflSces of public life with 
credit to himself and with advantage to society. Whether the English 
system of education be good or bad is not now the question. Perhaps I 
may think that too much time is given to the ancient languages and to 
the abstract sciences. But what then ? Whatever be the languages, what- 
ever be the sciences, which it is, in any age or country, the fashion to teach, 
the persons who become the greatest proficients in those languages and 
those sciences will generally be the flower of the youth ; the most acute, 
the most industrious, the most ambitious of honorable distinctions. If the 
Ptolemaic system were taught at Cambridge instead of the Newtonian, the 
senior wrangler would, nevertheless, be in general a superior man to the 
wooden spoon. If, instead of learning Greek, we learned the Cherokee, 
the man who understood the Cherokee best, who made the most correct 
and melodious Cherokee verses, who comprehended most accurately the 
effect of the Cherokee particles, would generally be a superior man to him 
who was destitute of those accomplishments. If astrology were taught at 
our universities, the young man who cast nativities best would generally 
turn out a superior man. If alchemy were taught, the young man who 
showed most activity in the pursuit of the philosopher's stone would gen- 
erally turn out a superior man.'' 

When Macaulay was correcting this speech for the press in 1853, he says 
with pardonable complacency, " Every subject has a striking and inter- 
esting side to it, if people could find it out." 



1852-'56.] LOED MACAULAY. 285 

contrived that the clauses embodying Macaulay's plan lay dor- 
mant in a pigeon - hole at the Board of Control, until back- 
stairs influence in Parliament at length found an opportunity 
to procure their repeal. 

Unfortunately, the India Bill of 1853 fell short of Mr. 
Bright's expectations. That statesman, in his generous en- 
thusiasm for the welfare of the Indian people, pronounced 
that the ministerial scheme did little or nothing to promote 
those salutary reforms which, in his opinion, our duty as a 
nation imperatively demanded of us to effect without delay. 
The discussion in the House of Commons on the first reading 
damaged the prospects of Sir Charles Wood's measure. The 
effect of cold water, when thrown by Mr. Bright, is never very 
bracing; and Macaulay was sei'iously alarmed for the future 
of a biU, the positive advantages of which, in his opinion, out- 
weighed aU defects and shortcomings whatsoever. " I read 
Wood's speech," he writes on the 6th of June ; " and thought 
the plan a great improvement on the present system. Some 
of Bright's objections are groundless, and others exaggerated ; 
but the vigor of his speech will do harm. On the second 
reading I will try whether I can not deal with the Manchester 
champion." 

The second reading of the India Bill was moved on the 23d 
of Jime. Sir Charles Wood urged Macaulay to speak as early 
in the debate as possible ; but his health was already in a state 
which required that special arrangements should be made in 
order to enable him to speak at all. The oppression on his 
chest would not allow him to exert his voice for some hours 
after eating; and, on the other hand, with his tendency to 
faintness, he could not go far into the evening without the 
support of food. There was a general wish that he should 
take the first place on the afternoon of the 24th; but the 
ministers were not sufficiently on the alert ; and, late at night 
on the 23d, Mr. Joseph Hume moved the adjournment, and • 
secured the precedence for himself. 

When the morrow came, the House was crammed. Every 
one who could venture to remonstrate with the member for 
Montrose on so delicate a subject entreated him not to stand 



286 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xm. 

between Macaulay and his audience ; but Mr. Hume replied 
that his own chest was weak ; that his health was as important 
as that of any other person ; that he knew just as much about 
India as Mr. Macaulay ; and, in short, that speak he would. 
In spite of his assurances that he would detain honorable gen- 
tlemen for no " great length of time," the House, which had 
very little compassion for an invalid who had been on his legs 
six times within the last ten days, received him with signs of 
impatience so marked that Hansard has thought it incumbent 
upon him to record them with greater minuteness than he has 
bestowed upon the speech itself. Hume and his hearers had 
different notions as to length of time ; and the clock was well 
on toward eight before Macaulay rose. " It was the deadest 
time of the evening," he writes ; " but the House was very 
well filled. I spoke for an hour and a half, pretty well — oth- 
ers say very well. I did not satisfy myself; but, on the 
whole, I succeeded better than I expected. I was much ex- 
hausted, though I had by no means exhausted my subject." 

As a consequence of his having been forced to bring his 
speech to an abrupt and premature conclusion, Macaulay did 
not judge it worthy of a place in the collected edition. He 
was too much an artist to consent to rest his reputation upon 
unfinished work, and too much a man of the world to print 
what he had never spoken. But it would have been well if he 
had done some violence to his literary taste by publishing, as 
a fragment, the most masterly vindication of the principle of 
appointment by competition that ever was left unanswered. 
He began by a few remarks about the relations between 
the Board of Control and the Court of Directors, and then 
glided off, by a happy transition, from that portion of the bill 
which related to the men who were to rule India from home 
to that portion which related to the men who were to rule it 
on the spot. " The test," he said, " by which I am inclined to 
judge of the present bill is the probable effect it will have 
upon the Civil Service in India. Is it likely to raise, or is it 
likely to lower, the character and spirit of that distinguished 
body which furnishes India with its judges and collectors ?" 
The question for the House was to consider the process by 



185a-'56.J LOED MACAULAY. 287 

wliich these functionaries were henceforward to be selected. 
There had been talk of giving the governor-general an unlim- 
ited power of appointing whom he chose. 

" There is something plausible in the proposition that you 
should allow him to take able men wherever he finds them. 
But my firm opinion is, that the day on which the Civil Serv- i 
ice of India ceases to be a close service will be the beginning 1 
of an age of jobbing — the most monstrous, the most extensive, 
and the most perilous system of abuse in the distribution of / 
patronage that we have ever witnessed. Every governor-gen- 
eral would take out with him, or would soon be followed by, 
a crowd of nephews, first and second cousins, friends, sons of 
friends, and political hangers-on ; while every steamer arriv- 
ing from the Eed Sea would carry to India some adventurer 
bearing with him testimonials from people of influence in En- 
gland. The governor-general would have it in his power to 
distribute residencies, seats at the council board, seats at the 
revenue board, places of from four thousand to six thousand 
pounds a year, upon men without the least acquaintance 
with the character or habits of the natives, and with only 
such knowledge of the language as would enable them to call 
for another bottle of pale ale, or desire their attendant to pull 
the punka faster. In what way could you put a cheek on 
such proceedings ? Would you, the House of Commons, con- 
trol them? Have you been so successful in extirpating nep- 
otism at your own door, and in excluding all abuses from 
Whitehall and Somerset House, that you should fancy that 
you could establish purity in countries the situation of which 
you do not know, and the names of which you can not pro- 
nounce ? I believe most fully that, instead of purity resulting 
from that arrangement to India, England itself would soon be 
tainted ; and that before long, when a son or brother of some 
active member of this House went out to Calcutta, carrying 
with him a letter of recommendation from the prime minister ' 
to the governor - general, that letter would be really a bill of '. 
exchange drawn on the revenues of India for value received 
in Parliamentary support in this House. 



288 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap.xiu. 

" We are uot without experience on this point. We have 
only to look back to those shameful and lamentable years 
which followed the first establishment of our power in Ben- 
gal. If you turn to any poet, satirist, or essayist of those 
times, you may see in what manner that system of appoint- 
ment operated. There was a tradition in Calcutta that, dur- 
ing Lord Olive's second administration, a man came out with 
a strong letter of recommendation from one of the ministers. 
Lord Olive said in his peculiar way, ' Well, chap, how much 
do you want?' Not being accustomed to be spoken to so 
plainly, the man replied that he only hoped for some situation 
in which his services might be useful. ' That is no answer, 
chap,' said Lord Olive. 'How much do you want? will a 
hundred thousand pounds do ?'* The person replied that he 
should be delighted if, by laborious service, he could obtain 
that competence. Lord Olive at once wrote out an order for 
the sum, and told the applicant to leave India by the ship he 
came in, and, once back in England, to remain there. I think 
that the story is very probable, and I also think that India 
ought to be grateful for the course which Lord Olive pursued ; 
for, though he pillaged the people of Bengal to enrich this 
lucky adventurer, yet, if the man had received an appoint- 
ment, they would have been pillaged, and misgoverned as 
well. Against evils like these there is one security, and, I be- 
lieve, but one ; and that is, that the Civil Service should be 
kept close." 

Macaulay then referred to Sir Charles Wood's proposal, that 
admissions to the Civil Service of India should be distri- 
buted according to the result of an open competitive exam- 
ination. He expressed his satisfaction at the support which 
that proposal had received from the present Earl of Derby, 



* I have kept the amount of money as it stands in Hansard ; but it is 
more than probable that Macaulay said " a hundred thousand rupees," in 
accordance with the version vrhich in his day was current at Calcutta. A 
hundred thousand rupees was a favorite sum with Lord Clive. When he 
was called upon for a sentiment after dinner, he used to give' "Alas and 
a-laokaday !" (a lass, and a lao a day). 



1852-'56.] LOED MACAULAY. 289 

and the surprise and disappointment which had been aroused 
in his mind by the nature of Lord EUenborough's opposi- 
tion to it. 

" If I understand the opinions imputed to that noble lord, 
he thinks that the proficiency of a young man in those pur- 
suits which constitute a liberal education is not only no indi- 
cation that he is likely to make a figure in after-life, but that 
it positively raises a presumption that he will be passed by 
those whom he overcame in these early contests. I understand 
that the noble lord holds that young men who gain distinction 
in such pursuits are likely to turn out dullards, utterly unfit 
for an active career ; and I am not sure that the noble lord 
did not say that it would be wiser to make boxing or cricket a 
test of fitness than a liberal education. It seems to me that 
there never was a fact proved by a larger mass of evidence, or 
a more unvaried experience than this : that men who distin- 
guish themselves in their youth above their contemporaries 
almost always keep, to the end of their lives, the start which 
they have gained. This experience is so vast that I should as 
soon expect to hear any one question it as to hear it denied 
that arsenic is poison, or that brandy is intoxicating. Take 
down, in any library, the Cambridge calendar. There you 
have the list of honors for a hundred years. Look at the list 
of wranglers and of junior optimes ; and I will venture to say 
that, for one man who has in after-life distinguished himself 
among the junior optimes, you will find twenty among the 
wranglers. Take the Oxford calendar, and compare the list 
of first-class men with an equal number of men in the third 
class. Is not our history full of instances which prove this 
fact ? Look at the Church or the Bar. Look at Parliament, 
from the time that Parliamentary government began in this 
country; from the days of Montague and St. John to those 
of Canning and Peel. Look to India. The ablest man who 
ever governed India was Warren Hastings, and was he not in 
the first rank at Westminster ? The ablest civil servant I ever 
knew in India was Sir Charles Metcalfe, and was he not of 
the first standing at Eton? The most eminent member of 
the aristocracy who ever governed India was Lord Wellesley. 

Vol. II.— 19 



290 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xni. 

What was his Eton reputation ? What was his Oxford repu- 
tation? I must also mention — I can not refrain from men- 
tioning—another noble and distinguished governor -general. 
A few days ago, while the memory of the speech to which I 
have alluded was still fresh in my mind, I read in the ' Musse 
Cantabrigienses ' a veiy eloquent and classical ode by a young 
poet of seventeen, which the University of Cambridge reward- 
ed with a gold medal ; and with pleasure, not altogether un- 
mingled with pain, I read at the bottom of that composition 
the name of the Honorable Edward Law, of St. John's College. 
I saw with pleasure that the name of Lord EUenborough may 
be added to the long list of men who, in early youth, have by 
success in academical studies given the augury of the part 
which they were afterward to play in public life ; and, at the 
same time, I could not but feel some concern and surprise that 
a nobleman so honorably distinguished in his youth by atten- 
tion to those studies should, in his maturer years, have descend- 
ed to use language respecting them which would have better 
become the lips of Ensign N^ortherton,* or the captain ia 
Swift's poem, who'says : 

A soholard when first from his college broke loose 
Cau hardly tell how to cry hoh! to a goose. 
Your Noveds, aud Blutnrchs, and Omnrs, and stuff, 
By George, they don't signify this pinch of snuff. 
To give a young gentleman right education 
The army's the only good school in the nation. 
My school-master called me a dunce aud a fool ; 
But at cuffs I was always the cock of the school. 

If a recollection of his own early triumphs did not restrain 
the noble earl from using this language, I should have thought 
that his filial piety would have had that effect. I should have 

* It was Ensign Northerton who, on a certain famous occasion, comment- 
ed over the mess -table upon Homer and Corderius in language far too 
strong for quotation, and with an audacious misapplication of epithets as 
ludicrous as any thing in Fielding. It can not be said that the young of- 
ficer's impertinence was unprovoked. Tom Jones's observations about the 
Greeks aud Trojans would have been voted a gratuitous piece of pedantry 
even in a college common-room. 



1852-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 291 

thought that he woiild have remembered how splendid was the 
academical career of that great and strong-minded magistrate, 

the late Lord Ellenborough It is no answer to say that 

yon can point — as it is desirable that you should be able to 
point — to two or three men of great powers who, having idled 
when they were young, stung with remorse and generous 
shame, have afterward exerted themselves to retrieve lost 
time. Such exceptions should be noted; for they seem in- 
tended to encourage those who, after having thrown away 
their youth from levity or love of pleasure, may be inclined 
to throw their manhood after it from despair ; but the general 
rule is, beyond all doubt, that the men who were first in the 
competition of the schools have been first in the competition 
of the world." 

Macaulay clearly explained to the House how a system of 
competitive examination, by an infallible and self-acting proc- 
ess, maintains, and even raises, the standard of excellence, 
and how a system of pass examination tends surely and con- 
stantly to lower it. He supported his view by a chain of rea- 
soning which has often been employed since, but to which no 
advocate of the old mode of appointment by private interest 
has even so much as attempted to reply.* He said something 

* His argument ran thus : Under a system of competition every man 
struggles to do his best ; and the consequence is that, without any effort 
on the part of the examiner, the standard keeps itself up. But the 
moment that you say to the examiner, not, " Shall A or B go to India ?" 
but "Here is A. Is he fit to go to India?" the question becomes alto- 
gether a different one. The examiner's compassion, his good nature, his 
unwillingness to blast the prospects of a young man, lead him to strain 
a point in order to let the candidate in if he possibly can. That would be 
the case even if we suppose the dispensers of patronage left merely to the 
operation of their own minds ; but you would have them subjected to so- 
licitations of a sort which it would be impossible to resist. The father 
comes with tears in his eyes; the mother writes the most pathetic and 
heart-breaking letters. Very firm minds have often been shaken by ap- 
peals of that sort. But the system of competition allows nothing of the 
kind. The parent can not come to the examiner and say, " I know very 
well that the other boy beat my son ; but please be good enough to say 
that my son beat the other boy !" 



292 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiii. 

against the superstition that proficiency in learning implies a 
want of energy and force of character ; which, like all other 
superstitions, is cherished only by those who are unwilling to 
observe facts, or unable to draw deductions. A man who has 
forced his way to the front of English politics has afforded at 
least a strong presumption that he can hold his own in practi- 
cal affairs ; and there has been a Cabinet in which six out of 
the seven ministers in the House of Commons, who had been 
educated at the English universities, were either first-class or 
double-first-class men. 

Macaulay did not vouchsafe more than a passing allusion to 
the theory that success in study is generally attended by phys- 
ical weakness and dearth of courage and animal spirits. As 
if a good place in an examination-list were any worse test of 
a sound constitution than the possession of family or political 
interest ! As if a young fellow who can get the heart out of 
a book, and concentrate his faculties over a paper of questions, 
must needs be less able to sit a horse or handle a bat, and, if 
need be, to lead a forlorn-hope or take charge of a famine- 
stricken district, than the son of a person of fashion who has 
the ear of a minister, or the nephew of an influential constit- 
uent who owns twenty public-houses in a Parliamentary bor- 
ough ! The Royal Engineers, the select of the select — every 
one of whom, before he obtains his commission, has run the 
gantlet of an almost endless series of intellectual contests — 
for years together could turn out the best foot-ball eleven in 
the kingdom, and within the last twelvemonth gained a suc- 
cess at cricket absolutely unprecedented in the annals of the 
game.* But special examples are not needed in order to con- 
fute the proposition that vigor of mind necessarily, or even 
frequently, goes with feebleness of body. It is not in defer- 
ence to such sophistry as this that the fathers of Great Britain 
will ever surrender what is now the acknowledged birthright 



* The match in question was played on the 20th and Slat of August, 
1875, against an eleven of I Zingari. Eight wickets of the Eoyal Engi- 
neers fell for an average of more than ninety runs a wicket ; and this stu- 
pendous score was made against good howling and excellent fielding. 



1853-'56.] LOED MACAULAY. 293 

of their sons — the privilege of doing their country's work, and 
eating their country's bread, if only, in a fair and open trial, 
they can win for themselves the right to be placed on the roll 
of their country's servants. 

Before he sat down, Macaulay had shown how little faith 
his opponents themselves had in their own arguments. " The 
noble lord," he said, " is of opinion that by encouraging na- 
tives to study the arts and learning of Europe we are prepar- 
ing the way for the destruction of our power in India. I am 
utterly at a loss to understand how, while contemning edu- 
cation when it is given to Europeans, he should regard it with 
dread when it is given to natives. This training, we are told, 
makes a European into a book-worm, a twaddler, a man unfit 
for the active duties of life ; but give the same education to 
the Hindoo, and it arms him with such an accession of in- 
tellectual strength, that an established government, with an 
army of two hundred and fifty thousand men, backed by the 
whole military and naval force of England, are to go down in- 
evitably before its irresistible power." 

Macaulay had done his duty by India ; and it now remain- 
ed for him to show his gratitude to his constituents. The Es- 
tabhshed Church in Edinburgh was mainly supported by the 
proceeds of a local impost which went by the name of the an- 
nuity tax. This tax was paid as reluctantly as church-rates 
were paid in England during the ten years that preceded their 
abolition; and, indeed, even more reluctantly; for it was lev- 
ied on an inequitable and oppressive system. In the session 
of 1853 a bUl was before Parliament which embodied a scheme 
for providing the stipends of the Edinburgh clergy by a less 
unjust, or, at any rate, a less invidious, method. The bill was 
supported on gi'ounds of expediency by the lord provost and 
the majority of the town council ; but it was vigorously op- 
posed by that party which objected on principle to making 
grants of public money for religious purposes of any amount, 
and under any disguise, whatsoever. Macaulay, who, as might 
be expected, took the Whig view of the matter, was very glad 
to have an opportunity of obliging his supporters, and not 
sorry to say his say on the general question of Church and 



294 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiii. 

State. On th.e 18th of July (during which month he was 
rusticating at Tunbridge Wells), he records his intention of 
trying " to make a Lysias-like speech on it." It is not easy 
for a Scotch member, who knows by experience what an an- 
nuity-tax debate is, to picture for himself the figure which 
an old Greek orator would make in so grim an argument. 
There is, indeed, very little in common between the contro- 
versies which engage the British Parliament on a "Wednesday 
afternoon, and the glowing topics of war and diplomacy and 
high imperial state-craft that were discussed on a spring or au- 
tumn morning beneath the shadow of the Parthenon, and in 
fuU view of Pentelicus and Hymettus.* 

"July IQth. — I was early at the railway station. On reaching town, I 
drove instantly to the House of Commons, and found the lord provost, 
Baillie Morrison, and Maitland, in the lobby, and had a short talk with 
them. There is a ridiculous mistake in tUeyvotes. Some fool has given an 
absurd notice about yachting, and my name has been put to it. At twelve 
business began. The lord advocate opened the matter ; and then Smith, 
the member for Stockport, made a strong speech against the Edinburgh 
clergy, and proposed to read the bill again on that day three months. 
Hadfield seconded him ; and I followed Hadfield, speaking without any 
preparation as to language, hut with perfect fluency, and with considera- 
ble effect. I was heartily glad to have got it over. I have now done the 
handsome thing by my constituents. The bitterness of the voluntaries 
surprised me. I have no particular love for establishments or for priests ; 
but I was irritated, and even disgusted, by the violence with which the 
bill was assailed," 

It was the old Maynooth difiSculty under a new aspect. 
" There is a rumor," said Mr. Hadfield, " that the right honor- 
able and eloquent gentleman, the member for Edinburgh, in- 
tends to give his support to the bill; and curious shall I be to 

* It is probable that by the epithet "Lysias-like," Macaulay meant 
nothing more than a short, unpretentious speech, on which he should be- 
stow less pains than usual. He only began to think the subject over on 
the day preceding the debate ; and on that day he likewise wrote out a 
good part of his speech of the 28th of February, 1832, on the representa- 
tion of the Tower Hamlets ; finished the " Nigrinus " of Lucian ; and be- 
gan to read Plato's " Gorgias," which he pronounced to be " my favorite 
dialogue, or nearly so, since my college days." 



1853-'56.] LOED MACAULAY. 295 

hear a defense of it from such eloquent lips. No man has 
more to lose in character, either in this House or the country, 
than the right honorable gentleman." " The honorable mem- 
ber for Sheffield," replied Macaulay, "must expect to hear 
nothing that deserves the name of eloquence from me." In 
truth, his speech was framed with the view of convincing, rath- 
er than of dazzling, his audience ; and the peroration (if so it 
might be called) contained nothing which could arouse the dis- 
approbation of even the most resolute voluntary. " The un- 
popularity of an Established Church is a very different thing 
from the mipopularity of the preventive service, of the army, 
of the police. The police, the army, and the coast-guard may 
be unpopular from the nature of the work which they have 
to do ; but of the Church it may be said that it is worse than 
useless if it is unpopular ; for it exists only to inspire affection 
and respect ; and, if it inspires feelings of a character opposite 
to respect and affection, it had better not exist at all. Most 
earnestly, therefore, I implore the. House not to support an in- 
stitution which is useless unless it is beloved by means which 
can only cause it to be hated." 

These were the last words which Macaulay spoke in the 
House of Commons. It would have been well for his com- 
fort if, to use a favorite quotation of his own, he had nev- 
er again quit for politics " la maison d'Aristippe, le jardin 
d'^fipicure." The first two debates in which he took part nit- 
er his return to Parliament proved to him by infallible indi- 
cations that he must renounce the career of an orator, unless 
he was prepared to incur a risk which no man has a right to 
run. The biographer of another famous student* has told us 
that " when the brain is preoccupied, and the energy is drawn 
off into books, calls for efforts, of external attention alarm and 
distress ;" and to distress of that nature the state of his heart 
rendered Macaulay peculiarly susceptible. He had at every 
period of his career his full share in those tremors of anticipa- 
tion from which no good speaker is free — ^the nature of which 
it is hard to analyze, and harder still to reconcile with reason 

* Isaac Casaubon. 



296 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiu. 

and experience; and during his later years his strength was 
quite unequal to the exertion and excitement of the speech it- 
self.* When he re-entered the House of Commons in 1852 
he had no intention of again aspiring to be a leader; and he 
very soon was taught that he must not even hope to count as 
an eflEective among the rank and file of politicians. He was 
slow to learn so painful a lesson. As regarded his attendance 
at "Westminster, the indulgence of his constituents knew no 
bounds ; but he himself had very little inclination to presume 
upon that indulgence. In the matter of party divisions, Mac- 
aulay's conscience was still that of a Whig who had served 
through the Committee of the great Eeform Bill, and who 
had sat in the Parliament of Lord Melbourne, when a vote 
was a vote, and the fate of the ministry trembled daily in the 
balance. But the very first late night in the winter session of 
1852 showed him that he was no longer the man of 1832 and 
1841. On the 26th of November he writes: "We divided 
twice, and a very wearisome business it was. I walked slow- 
ly home at two in the morning, and got to bed much exhaust- 
ed. A few such nights will make it necessary for me to go 
to Clifton again." After the defeat of Mr. Disraeli's budget 
he says : " I did not seem to be much the worse for yester- 
day's exertion until I went out; and then I found myself 
very weak, and felt as I used to do at Clifton." On an even- 
ing in January, he writes : " I was in pain and very poorly. I 
went down to the House, and paired. On my return, just as 
I was getting into bed, I received a note from Hayter to say 
~ that he had paired me. I was very unwilling to go out at 
that hour, and afraid of the night air ; but I have a horror of 
the least suspicion of foul play ; so I dressed, and went again 
to the House; settled the matter about the pairs; and came 
back at near twelve o'clock."f 

* "This speech," he writes when the Indian debate of June, 1853, was iu 
prospect, " which I must make, and which for many reasons can not be 
good, troubles me." And again : " I thought all day over my speech. I 
was painfully anxious f although, as usual, I recovered courage as the time 
drew near." 

t It would, of course, be highly irregular for one member to be paired 
against two of his opponents. 



1853-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 297 

If it had been a question of duty, Macaulay would have 
cared little whether or not his constitution could stand the 
strain of the House of Commons. He was no niggard of 
health and ease. To lavish on his work all that he had to 
give — to toil on, against the advice of physicians, and the still 
surer and more urgent warning of his own bodily sensations 
— to shorten, if need be, his life by a year, in order that his 
"History" might be longer by a volume — were sacrifices 
which he was ready to make, like all men who value their 
time on earth for the sake of what they accomplish, and not 
of what they enjoy. But he could not conceal from himself, 
and his friends would not suffer him to do so, that it was 
grievous waste, while the reign of Anne still remained un- 
written, for him to consume his scanty stock of vigor in the 
tedious but exhausting routine of a political existence ; wait- 
ing whole evenings for the vote, and then walking haK a 
mile at a foot's pace round and round the crowded lobbies ; 
dining amidst clamor and confusion, with a division of twen- 
ty minutes long between two of the mouthfuls; trudging 
home at three in the morning through the slush of a Feb- 
ruary thaw ; and sitting behind ministers in the centre of a 
closely packed bench during the hottest weeks of a London 
summer. 

It was, therefore, with good reason that Macaulay spared 
himself as a member of Parliament. He did not economize 
his energies in order to squander them in any other quarter. 
The altered character of his private correspondence hencefor- 
ward indicates how carefully he husbanded his powers, with 
the view of employing them exclusively upon his books. 
When writing to publishers or editors, he never again allowed 
his pen to revel in that picturesque amplitude of literary de- 
tail which rendered many of his business letters to Mr. ISTapier 
as readable as so many passages from Sainte-Beuve. When 
writing to his relations, he never again treated them to those 
spirited imitations of Bichardson, in which he described to his 
delighted sisters the routs, the dinner parties, and the debates 
of the London season of 1831. With Mr. Ellis he continued 
to correspond as frequently as ever. His letters sometimes 



298 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap, xm, 

consisted in little more than an invitation to dinner, imbed- 
ded in a couple of racy sentences ; but for the most part they 
were not deficient in length. Flowing, or rather meandering 
on, in the easy and almost desultory style of an unrestrained 
familiarity — ^like the talk of a bachelor, in dressing-gown and 
slippers, over his morning coffee — they contain occasional pas- 
sages which may be read with pleasure by those who care to 
know Macaulay as he showed himseK to his chosen friend. 

"Albany, December 8th, 1853. 

"Deak Empson,— I meant dear Ellis; but my mind is full of poor Emp- 
son. He is dying. I expect every hour to hear that all is over. Poor fel- 
low ! He was a most kind, generous friend to me, and as unselfish and un- 
envious as yourself. Longman has just been here ; sorry for Empson, and 
anxious about the Beview* I recommended Cornewall Lewis ; and I have 
little doubt that the offer _wiU be made to him." 

" December 13th, 1853. 

"Poor Empson died with admirable fortitude and cheerfulness. I find 
that his wife was lately brought to bed. He spoke to her, to his friends, 
and to his other children with kindness, but with perfect firmness ; but 
when the baby was put on his bed he burst into tears. Poor fellow ! For 
my part, I feel that I should die best in the situation of Charles the First, 
or Lewis the Sixteenth, or Montrose — I mean, quite alone, surrounded by 
enemies, and nobody that I cared for near me. The parting is the dread- 
ful thing. I do not wonder at Eussell's saying, ' The bitterness of death 
is past.' "+ 

" December 30th, 1852. 

"I am glad that you like Beaumarchais. The result was that the 
Goezmans were utterly ruined ; the husband forced to quit his office ; the 
wife driven to a convent. Beaumarchais was bl4m6 by the Court. The 
effect of that bMme was very serious. It made a man legally infamous, I 
believe, and deprived him of many civil rights. But the public feeling 
was so strongly with Beaumarchais that he paraded his stigma as if it 
had been a mark of honor. He gave himself such airs that somebody said 
to him, ' Monsieur, ce n'est pas assez que d'etre bMm^ : il faut 6tre modeste.' 
Do you see the whole finesse of this untranslatable mot? What a quanti- 

* Mr. Empson had succeeded Mr. Napier as editor of the Edinburgh 
Eeview. 

t The famous scene between Lord Eussell and his wife is described, 
briefly enough, by Hume : " With a tender and decent composure they 
took leave of each other on the day of his execution. ' The bitterness of 
death is now past,' said he, when he turned from her." 



1852-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 299 

ty of French words I have used ! I suppose that the subject Frenchifies 
my style.* 

"I am disengaged all next week. Fix some day for dining with me in 
honor of 1853. I hope that it will be as happy a year as, in spite of some 
bodily suffering, 1852 has been to me. It is odd that, though time is steal- 
ing from me perceptibly my -vigor and my pleasures, I am growing happier 
and happier. As Milnes says, it is shocking, it is scandalous, to enjoy life 
as I do." 

"Albany, July nth, 1853. 

," Eead Haydon's tnemoirs. Haydon was exactly the vulgar idea of a 
man of genius. He had all the morbid peculiarities which are supposed 
by fools to belong to intellectual superiority — eccentricity, jealousy, ca- 
price, infinite disdain for other men ; and yet he was as poor, commonplace 
a creature as any in the world. He painted signs, and gave himself more 

airs than if he had painted the Cartoons Whether you struck him or 

stroked him, starved him or fed him, he snapped at your hand in just the 
same way. He would beg you in piteous accents to buy an acre and a, 
half of canvas that he had spoiled. Some good-natured lord asks the 
price. Haydon demands a hundred guineas. His lordship gives the mon- 
ey out of mere charity, and is rewarded by some such entry as this in Hay- 
don's journal : 'A hundred guineas, and for such a work ! I expected that, 
for very shame, he would have made it a thousand. But he is a mean, sor- 
did wretch.' In the mean time the purchaser is looking out for the most 
retired spot in his house to hide the huge daub which he has bought, for 
ten times its value, out of mere compassion." 

"Tunbridge Wells, July 28th, 1853. 
" I hope that yon are looking forward to our tour. On Tuesday, the 23d, 
I shall be at the Albany, and shall proceed to hire a courier, and to get 
passports. My present notions of a route is Dover ; Ostend ; Cologne ; the 
Rhine to Strasburg ; the railway to Basle ; voiture or diligence to Berne, 
and from Berne to Lausanne ; steamboat on the Lake of Geneva ; post to 

* Mr. Goezman was the judge who threw Beaumarchais over, after Ma- 
dame Goezman had accepted a present from him. The unsuccessful suit- 
or got his present back, " and those who had disappointed him probably 
thought that he would not, for the mere gratification of his malevolence, 
make public a transaction which was discreditable to himself as well as 
to them. They knew little of him. He soon taught them to curse the^ 
day in which they had dared to trifle with a man of so revengeful and 
turbulent a spirit, of such dauntless effrontery, and of such eminent talents 
for controversy and satire." Macaulay's account of the Goezman scandal, 
in his essay on Bacon, makes it evident that to write about Beaumarchais 
did not necessarily Frenchify his style. 



300 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. xiu. 

Lyons; up the Safine by steam to Chalons; railway to Paris; three or 
four days at Paris ; and back to London in one day. But I shall readily 
agree to any modification -which you may propose. We could easily, I 
think, do aU this, and be in town on the 18th of September with a great 
stock of pleasant recollections, and images of fine objects, natural and ar- 
tificial. I dare say you will despise me for saying that, on the whole, I 
expect more pleasure from the cathedrals of Cologne and Strasburg than 
from the Bernese Alps or the Lake of Geneva."* 

"Tunbridge Wells, August 16th, 1853. 
" I am glad to find that we shall have a clear three weeks for our expe- 
dition. I hope to secure Wolmar. At all events, I shall have a good cou- 
rier. I can afford to indulge myself; for Longman informs me that he shall 
have more than thirteen hundred pounds to pay me on the 1st of Decem- 
ber, besides five hundred pounds in the first week of January ; so that my 
whole income this year will be about three thousand six hundred pounds, 
clear of property tax. Like Dogberry, I shall have two gowns, and every 
thing handsome about me. But, alas ! like Dogberry, I have had losses. 
The East India Company is going to pay me off some thousands ; and I 
must take four per cent, instead of five, and be thankful even to get four. 
How justly has an ancient poet observed that 

Crescentem eequitur cura peouniam ! 

However, as my Lord Smart says, ' Hang saving ! We'll have a penn'orth 
of cheese.'t I say, 'Hang saving! We'll have a jolly three weeks on the 
Continent.' 

"I send you a treasure. I do believe that it is the autograph of the 
great Robert Montgomery. Pray let me have it again. I would not lose 

* Like many other people, Macaulay was disappointed with the cathe- 
dral of Cologne. "My expectations," he says in his journal, "had been 
raised too high, and perhaps nothing could quite have satisfied me. It will 
never be equal to St. Ouen, and, I think, hardly to York Minster." Of the 
tower at Strasburg he writes : " I thought it the most exquisite morsel 
of Gothic architecture that I ever saw. The interior is grand, but has 
faults. The side aisles are too broad for their height. Even the central 
aisle would be better if it were narrower. The end of the vista is wretch- 
ed. Nevertheless, it is a church of the first rank." He thoroughly enjoy- 
ed his tour. " So ends this journal of my travels. Very pleasant travels 
they were. I had good health, generally good weather, a good friend, and 
a good servant." 

t Lord Smart is one of the characters in Swift's "Polite Conversations;" 
a book strangely neglected by a generation which ransacks the world from 
California to Calcutta for something to laugh at. 



1852-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 301 

such a jewel on any account. I have read it, as Mr. Montgomery desires, 
in the presence of God ; and in the presence of God I pronounce it to be in- 
comparable.* 

" Glorious news ! Robert Montgomery writes to Longman that there is 
a point at which human patience must give way. Since the resignation 
and Christian fortitude of a quarter of a century have made no impression 
on the hard heart and darkened conscience of Mr. Macaulay, an injured 
poet must appeal to the laws of his country, which will doubtless give him 
a redress the more signal because he has been so slow to ask for it. I re- 
tain you. Consider yourself as feed. You shall choose your own junior. 
I shall put nobody over your head in this cause. Will he apply for a crim- 
inal information ? Imagine Jack !+ ' I have thee graitest respect for the 
very eminent poet who makes this application, and for the very eminent 
critic against whom it is made. It must be very satisfactory to Mr. Mont- 
gomery to have had an opportunity of denying on oath the charge that he 
writes nonsense. But it is not the practice of this court to grant criminal 
informations against libels which have been a quarter of a century before 
the world.' I send you some exquisite lines which I saw placarded on 
a wall the other day. The versification and diction seem to me perfect. 
Byrom's ' My time, oh ye Muses,' is not so complete in its kiud."t 

Although it is wrong, I must frankly confess, 

To judge of the merits of folks by their dress, 

I can not but think that an ill-looking hat 

Is a very bad sign of a man, for all that ; 

Especially now, when James Johnson is willing 

To touch up our old ones in style for a shilling, 

And gives them a gloss of bo silky a hue 

As makes them look newer than when they were new. 

* "Robert Montgomery," Macaulay says in his journal, "has written to 
ask that he may be taken out of the pillory. Never, with my consent. He 
is the silliest scribbler of my time ; and that his book sells among a certain 
class is a reason for keeping my protest on record. Besides, he has calum- 
niated me in print, and I will not seem to be bullied into a concession." 

t It is to be feared that this unceremonious reference is to no less a per- 
sonage than Lord Campbell. 

i Byrom's lines. 

My time, oh ye Muses, was happily spent 
When Phoebe went with me wherever I went, 

were addressed to Joanna Bentley, the daughter of the great critic, and 
constitute the 603d paper of the /Spectator. The effect which this little 
poem produces upon the reader may best be described by one of its pretti- 
est couplets ; for it resembles 

The fountain that wont to run sweetly along. 
And dance to soft murmurs the pebbles among. 



302 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.xui. 

In the spring of 1853 the expectation of Mrs. Beecher 
Stowe's visit to England created some apprehension in the 
minds of those eminent men who were pretty sure to come 
within the circuit of her observation, and quite sure to find 
themselves in her book of travels. 

"March 16th, 1853. — To dinner, after a long interval, at Westbourne Ter- 
race. Gladstone, Lord Glenelg, and Goulburn. There was much laugh- 
ing about Mrs. Beecher Stowe, and what we were to give her. I referred 
the ladies to Goldsmith's poems for what I should give. Nobody but Han- 
nah understood me ; but some of them have since been thumbing Gold- 
smith to make out the riddle."* 

A year later, Macaulay writes : "A mighty foolish, imperti- 
nent book this of Mrs. Stowe. She puts into my mouth a 
great deal of stuff that I never uttered, particularly about 
cathedrals. What blunders she makes ! Robert Walpole for 
Horace "Walpole. Shaftesbury, the author of the Habeas- 
corpus Act, she confounds with Shaftesbury, the author of 
the ' Characteristics.' She can not even see. Palmerston, 
whose eyes are sky-blue, she calls dark-eyed. I am glad that 
I met her so seldom, and sorry that I met her at all." The 
passage in Mrs. Stowe's book to which Macaulay took excep- 
tion, runs as follows : 

"Macaulay made some suggestive remarks on cathedrals 
generally. I said that I thought that we so seldom know 
who were the architects that designed these great buildings, 
that they appeared to me the most sublime efforts of human 
genius. 

" He said that all the cathedrals of Europe were undoubted- 
ly the result of one or two minds ; that they rose into exist- 
ence very nearly contemporaneously, and were built by trav- 
eling companies of masons, under the direction of some sys- 
tematic organization. Perhaps you knew all this before, but 
I did not ; and so it struck me as a glorious idea. And, if it 
is not the true account of the origin of cathedrals, it certainly 



* The riddle is not difficult ; and its solution is well worth the pleasing 
trouble of turning over the few dozen pages of Goldsmith's poems. 



1852-'56.] LOED MACAULAY. 303 

ought to be ; and, as our old grandmother used to say, ' I'm 
going to believe it !' "* 

Macauky spent part of the summer of 1853 at Tunbridge 
Wells. On the 11th of July he writes to Mr. EUis that he 
has taken a house "in a delightful situation. The drawing- 
room is excellent ; the dining-room so much overshadowed by 
trees and a veranda that it is dark even iu the brightest noon. 
The country looks lovely. The heath is close to the door. I 
have a very pleasant room for you ; a large tub ; half a dozen 
of the best sherry, and a dozen of good Champagne ; and Plato 
and Lucian." Macaulay had known Tunbridge Wells in his 
boyhood ; and he now found a plentiful source of enjoyment 
in reviving his recollections of the past. He was pleased at 
feeling once more beneath his feet the red-brick pavement of 
the Pantiles, an ancient centre of social resort which, with a 
strange disregard for literary and historical associations where- 
of any town might well be proud, the inhabitants have lately 
rechristened by the title of " The Parade." As if a name that 
satisfied Johnson and Garrick, Eichardson and Gibber, the 
Earl of Chatham and Mr. Speaker Onslow, were not good 
enough to serve for us! On Sundays, Macaulay went to 
church " in the well-remembered old building ; the same that 
was erected in Charles the Second's days, and which the Tan- 
tivies wished to dedicate to St. Charles the Martyr."f And 
on more than one week-day he sat " in Nash's reading-room, 
in the old corner looking out upon the heath," and was 



* " Sunny Memories in Foreign Lands," Letter xix. It certainly would 
be difficult even to manufacture a less adequate representation than this 
of Macaulay's talk, either as regarded manner or matter. But Mrs. Beecher 
Stowe has unfortunately shown herself only too ready to rnsh into print 
when she has lighted upon what she conceives to be curious information 
about the private life of a great English author. 

t " In 1665 a subscription had j ust been raised among those who fre- 
quented the Wells for building a church, which the Tories, who then domi- 
neered everywhere, insisted on dedicating to St. Charles the Martyr." The 
third chapter of the "History" contains, within the compass of a page, a, 
pleasant little picture of the Tunbridge Wells of the Restoration, as bright- 
ly colored as one of Turner's vignettes. 



304 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiii. 

"amused by finding among the books the ' Self -tormentor,' 
published in 1789, and Sally More's novel, unseen since 1816." 

But during his stay at Tunbridge "Wells he was better en- 
gaged than in renewing his acquaintance with the dog-eared 
romances of a former day which still lingered on the back 
shelves of the circulating library. " I have determined," he 
writes to Mr. Ellis, " to read through Plato again. I began 
with the ' Phsedrus ' yesterday ; one of the most eloquent, in- 
genious, fantastic, and delicately ironical of the dialogues. I 
doubt whether there be any of Plato's works which has left so 
many traces in the literature and philosophy of Europe. And 
this is the more remarkable, because no ancient work is so 
thoroughly tainted with what in modern times is regarded as 
the most odious of all kinds of immorality."* Some days 
later he says : " I have read a good deal of Plato ; and the 
more I read, the more I admire his style, and the less I admire 
his reasonings." 

Macaulay's diary for the month of July, 1853, is full of Pla- 
to. " I read the ' Protagoras ' at dinner. The childish quib- 
bling of Socrates provokes me. It is odd that such trumpery 
fallacies should have imposed on such powerful minds. Sure- 
ly Protagoras reasoned in a better and more manly strain. I 
am more and more convinced that the merit of Plato lies in 
his talent for narrative and description, in his rhetoric, in his 
humor, and in his exquisite Greek. The introductions to the 



* " I read Plato's ' Phsedrus,' " he says in his journal. " Wonderful irony, 
eloquence, ingenuity, fancy. But what a state of morals ! What a distor- 
tion of the imagination !" Macaulay felt a hearty detestation for the per- 
verted sentiment (to use the mildest phrase) which disfigures some of the 
most beautiful works of antiquity. Below the twelfth Idyl of Theocritus 
he writes, "A fine poem on an odious subject ;" and at the end of the third 
Idyl, " A pretty little poem ; but it is inferior to Virgil's second Eclogue, in 
spite of the great inferiority of Virgil's subject." When Demosthenes re- 
buked his brother embassadors by the words "ouk dirov i>g xaKbe el' yvvrj 
yap Tuiv ovTinv iari KoXKiarov" Macaulay expresses in the margin his de- 
light at meeting with a Greek who had the feelings of a man, and who 
was not ashamed to avow them. "I am glad," he writes, "that Demos- 
thenes had so good a taste." 



1852-'56.] LOED MACAULAY. 305 

' Plisedrus,' the ' Lysis,' and the ' Protagoras ' are all three first- 
rate ; the ' Protagoras ' best."* And again : " I came home, and 



* For the sake of readers who do not know Greek, I venture to give a 
very inadequate translation, or rather paraphrase, of some portion of what 
Macaulay calls the " introduction " to the " Protagoras." Socrates and his 
friend Hippocrates had gone to call at the house of Callias, an Athenian 
person of quality, much given to letters. The purpose of their visit was to 
have a look at three famous sophists from foreign parts — Protagoras of Ab- 
dera, Hippias of Elis, and Prodicus of Ceos. " When we had arrived with- 
in the porch," says Socrates, " we stopped there to finish a discussion which 
had been started in the course of our walk. And I suppose that the por- 
ter heard us talking away outside the threshold ; which was unfortunate ; 
as he was already in a bad temper on account of the number of sophists 
who were about the premises. So when we knocked, he opened the door, 
and directly he saw us he cried, ' More sophists ! eh ! Master's not at 
home,' and slammed the door to. We, however, persevered, and beat the 
panels vigorously with both bauds : upon which he bawled through the 
key-hole, ' I tell you, mastei^'s not at home.' ' But, my good fellow,' said 
I, ' we don't want your master, and we do not happen to be sophists. We 
have come to see Protagoras; so just send in our names.' And then he 
grumbled a good deal, and let us in. 

"And when we were inside we found Callias and his friends walking 
about in the corridor, seven abreast, with Protagoras in the middle. And 
behind them came a crowd of his disciples, chiefly foreigners, whom the 
great man drags about in his train from city to city, listening with all 
their ears to whatever was said. And what amused me most was to ob- 
serve how carefully these people avoided getting in the way of their mas- 
ter, for, whenever he and the rest of the vanguard came to the end and 
turned round, his followers parted to right and left, let him pass through, 
and then wheeled about, and fell iuto the rear with admirable regularity 
and discretion. 

'"And after him I was aware,' as Homer says, of Hippias sitting on a 
chair in the opposite corridor ; and around him were seated on footstools 
Eryximaohus and Phsedrns, and a group of citizens and strangers. And 
they appeared to be putting questions to Hippias concerning natural sci- 
ence, and the celestial bodies ; and he, sitting on his chair, answered them 
in turn, and cleared up their several difficulties. And Prodicus was occu- 
pying a closet, which Callias ordinarily uses as a still-room ; but on this 
occasion, what with his sophists and their disciples, he was so hard put to 
it for space, that he had turned out all his stores, and made it into a bed- 
chamber. So Prodicus was lying there, rolled up in an immense number 
of blankets and counterpanes, while his hearers had planted themselves ou 

, Vol. II.— 20 



306 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. xm. 

finished the 'Apology,' and looked through the ' Crito.' Fine 
they are ; but the stories of the oracle, the divine monitor, and 
the dream are absurd. I imagine that, with all his skill in 
logomachy, Socrates was a strange, fanciful, superstitious old 
fellow. Extreme credulity has often gone with extreme logic- 
al subtlety. "Witness some of the school-men. "Witness John 
"Wesley. I do not much wonder at the violence of the hatred 
which Socrates had provoked. He had, evidently,- a thorough 
love for making men look small. There was a meek mali- 
ciousness about him which gave wounds such as must have 
smarted long, and his command of temper was more provok- 
ing than noisy triumph and insolence would have been." 
Macaulay, who loved Plato for the sake of what he called 
the " setting " of his dialogues, ranked them according to their 
literary beauty rather than their philosophical excellence. By 
the time that he had got through the ' Hippias Major ' and 
the best part of the ' Eepubhc,' and had nothing before him 
more entertaining than the 'Laws,' the 'Ephebus,' and the 
' Sophistes,' he allowed his attention once more to be divert- 
ed by modern books. " I walked on the heath," he says, " in 
glorious weather, and read the ' Myst&res de Paris.' Sue has 
quite put poor Plato's nose out of joint." 

The month that Macaulay passed at Tunbridge "Wells was 
not all play-time. An event had occurred which gave him 
great and just annoyance, and imposed upon him a considera- 
ble amount of unexpected though well -invested labor. "I 
have," he writes, " some work to do at Tunbridge "Wells which 
I had not reckoned upon. A book-seller, named Yizetelly, a 
sort of Curll,* has advertised an edition of my speeches hy 

the neighlDoring beds. But without going in I could not catch the sub- 
ject of their conversation, though I was anxious to hear what was said 
(for I consider Prodicus a wonderfully wise personage), because his voice 
was so deep that the closet seemed full of a sort of humming noise which 
rendered his words indistinguishable." 

* Macaulay, who took a warm interest in the great historical scandals 
and mysteries of literature, had at his iingers' ends all that was known in 
his own day concerning the relations between Pope and the notorious pub- 
lisher whom he accused of having printed his correspondence — ^relations 



1852-'56.] LOED MACAULAY. 3O7 

special license, and had the brazen impudence to write to 
Lord Lansdowne, and to ask his lordship to accept the dedica- 
tion." In order to checkmate this proceeding, Mr. Longman 
advised Macanlay to prepare forthwith for publication a selec- 
tion of his best speeches ; and, under the stress of circum- 
stances, he had no choice but to give an instant, though re- 
luctant, assent. " I found," he says, " that people really wished 
to have the speeches. I therefore, much against my will, de- 
termined to give a revised and corrected edition. The pre- 
paring of this edition will occupy me two or three hours a 
day during my holiday. Many of the speeches must be re- 
written from memory, and from the hints given by the re- 
ports. I think of adding two or three state papers — ^my min- 
ute on the education of the natives' of India, and my minute 
on the Black Act."* " It will take some time," he writes in 
his diary ; " but I do not know that I should have given that 
time to my ' History.' I can retouch a speech as well in the 
country as in town. The ' History ' is quite a different mat- 
ter." The day after his arrival at Tunbridge Wells he fell 
to work, transcribing every speech from beginning to end, at 
the rate of from nine to fifteen printed pages a day. On 
July the 14th, he says : " Heaps of letters. I sent eight or 
nine answers, and then employed myself upon the Eeform 
speech of July the 5th, 1831. I wrote vigorously during sev- 
eral hours. I could not go out ; for the rain was falling by 
pailf uls, and the wind blowing a hurricane. I wrote with 
spirit, as it seemed to me, and made a speech very like the 
real one in language, and in substance exactly the real one. I 
had half performed my task at five." And again, on the 4th 
of August, " I went on with the mnauth speech, which is 
among my very best. I can not help expecting that the vol- 

which were of a far more dubious character than his own with Mr. Vizetel- 
ly. He had a strong relish for Pope's celebrated pasquinade ; which, in its 
own rather questionable class, he held to be inferior only to Voltaire's Dia- 
tribe of Doctor Akakia. 

* In January, 1853, he notes in his journal: "I got from Westbourne 
Terrace a copy of my Education minute of 1835, and was pleased to see it 
again after eighteen years. It made a great revolution." 



308 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xni. 

Time will have some success. At all events, it will, I really 
think, deserve success." 

It was not until Mr. Yizetelly's publication appeared that 
his victim knew the full extent of the injury which had so 
gratuitously been inflicted upon him. How serious that injury 
was, and how peculiarly it was adapted to mortify and provoke 
Macaulay, may be seen in the preface to Mr. Longman's edi- 
tion of the " Speeches." Eeaders, who have a taste for strong 
food, will find that the time which they may spend over that 
preface will not be thrown away. " The substance of what I 
said," writes Macaulay, " is perpetually misrepresented. The 
connection of the arguments is altogether lost. Extravagant 
blunders are put into my mouth in almost every page. An 
editor who was not grossly ignorant would have perceived 
that no person to whom the House of Commons would listen 
could possibly have been guilty of such blunders. An editor 
who had the smallest regard for truth, or for the fame of the 
person whose speeches he had undertaken to publish, would 
have had recourse to the various sources of information which 
were readily accessible, and, by collating them, would have 
produced a book which would at least have contained no abso- 
lute nonsense. But I have unfortunately had an editor whose 
only object was to make a few pounds, and who was willing 
to sacrifice to that object my reputation and his own." 
******* 

" I could fill a volume with instances of the injustice with 
whibh I have been treated. But I will confine myself to a 
single speech, the speech on the Dissenters' Chapels Bill. I 
have selected that speech, not because Mr. YizeteUy's version 
of that speech is worse than his version of thirty or forty oth- 
er speeches, but because I have before me a report of that 
speech which an honest and diligent editor would have 
thought it his first duty to consult. The report of which I 
speak was published by the Unitarian Dissenters, who were 
naturally desirous that there should be an accurate record of 
what had passed in a debate deeply interesting to them." 
Macaulay, infusing into his style a certain grim humor which 
was not usual with him, then proceeds to give a detailed list 



1852-'56.] LOED MACAULAY. 309 

of absurdities which had been deliberately presented to the 
world as having been spoken by himself. " These samples," 
he goes on to say, " will probably be found sufficient. They 
all lie within the compass of seven or eight pages. It will be 
observed that all the faults which I have pointed out are 
grave faults of substance. Slighter faults of substance are 
numerous. As to faults of syntax and of style, hardly one 
sentence in a hundred is free from them. 

" I can not permit myseK to be exhibited in this ridiculous 
and degrading 'manner for the profit of an unprincipled man. 
I therefore unwillingly, and in mere self-defense, give this vol- 
ume to the public I have only, in conclusion, to beg that 

the readers of this preface will pardon an egotism which a 
great wrong has made necessary, and which is quite as disa- 
greeable to myself as it can be to them." 

By the time that Macaulay's speeches were in print he had 
already ceased to be a politician. Absorbed in his " History," 
he paid little attention to what was passing at Westminster. 
Mr. Gladstone's plan for the consolidation of the national debt 
was far less to him than Montague's scheme for restoring the 
standard of the coinage by calling in the clipped silver ; and 
the abortive Triennial Bill of 1692 was far more to him than 
the abortive Eeform Bill of 1854. " To-day," he writes on 
the 13th of February, "Lord John is to bring in his new Re- 
form Bill. I had meant to go down, but did not venture. 
This east wind keeps me a prisoner. How different a world 
from that which was convulsed by the first Eeform Bill! 
How different a day this from the 1st of March, 1831, an 
epoch in my life as well as in that of the nation !" He now 
was so seldom at the House of Commons that his presence 
there was something of an event. Old members recollect 
how, if ever he was seen standing behind the Speaker's chair, 
some friend or acquaintance would undertake the easy task 
of drawing him into conversation ; and very soon the space 
around him was as crowded as during the five minutes which 
precede a stand-and-fall division. He was very unwilling to 
continue to call himseK a member of Parliament. " The feel- 
ing that I ought not to be in the House of Commons " (so he 



310 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.xjii. 

wrote to Mr. Black) "preys upon my mind. I think that 
I am acting ungenerously and ungratefully to a constituent 
body which has been most indulgent to me." But the people 
of Edinburgh thought otherwise ; and the earnest and repeat- 
ed solicitations of his leading supporters prevailed upon him 
to retain for a while the title of representative of their city. 

Although, as a statesman, his day was past and gone, Mac- 
aulay watched with profound emotion the course of his coun- 
try's fortunes during the momentous years 1854 and 1855. He 
was a patriot, if ever there was one.* It would be difficult to 
find any body, whether great or small, who more heartily and 
more permanently enjoyed the consciousness of being an En- 
glishman. " When I am traveling on the Continent," he used 
to say, " I like to think that I am a citizen of no mean city." 
He hailed every sign which told that the fighting strength of 
the nation was undecayed, and its spirit as high as ever. Long 
before affairs in the east of Europe had assumed a threatening 
aspect, he had been unfeignedly anxioas about the condition of 
our armaments. In November, 1852, he writes : " Joe Hume 
talked to me very earnestly about the necessity of a union of 
Liberals. He said much about ballot and the franchise. I 
told him that I could easily come to some compromise with 
him and his friends on these matters, but that there were oth- 
er questions about which I feared that there was an in-econ- 
cilable difference, particularly the vital question of national 
defense. He seemed quite confounded, and had absolutely 
nothing to say. I am fully determined to make them eat their 
words on that point, or to have no political connection with 
them." 

* " Augtist 28tli, 1859. — Monsieur de Circourt has thrown some scurrilous 
reflections on the national character of the English into one of his pam- 
phlets. He ought not to have sent such a work to me. I was a good deal 
perplexed, being unwilling to act unoourteously toward a person who to 
me personally has shown the most marked civility; and being, on the oth- 
er hand, unwilling to put up with affronts to my country in consideration 
of compliments to myself. I wrote him a letter which, I am sure, ought 
not to offend him, but which, I really think, must make him a little ashamed 
of himself." 



1852-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 311 

Macaulay followed the progress of the Eussian war through 
all its stages with intense but discriminating interest. He 
freely expressed his disdain of the gossip which accused Prince 
Albert of having played an underhand part in the negotiations 
that preceded the outbreak of hostilities. In a letter dated 
the 17th January, 1854, he says : " The yelping against Prince 
Albert is a mere way of filling up the time till Parliament 
meets. If he has the sense and fortitude to despise it, the 
whole will blow over and be forgotten. I do not believe that 
he has done any thing unconstitutional; and I am sure that 
those who are loudest in bawling know neither what he has 
done nor what is unconstitutional." And on the day that the 
queen opened Parliament he writes in his diary: "I was 
pleased to find that the prince was not ill received. The late 
attacks on him have been infamous and absurd to the last 
degree. Nothing so shameful since the Warming-pan story. 
I am ashaiped for my country. However, the reaction has 
begun." 

The Baltic fleet sailed early in March, under the command 
of Sir Charles Napier, who, a few days before his departure, 
had been entertained at a public banquet, which was attended 
by some leading members of the Government. The speeches 
which were made upon this occasion can not even now be read 
without a sensation of shame. Their tone and substance are 
best described by the epithet un-English. It has never been 
the habit of British statesmen to declaim boastfully and pas- 
sionately against a foreign power with whom war has not been 
declared, and still less has it been the way with British sailors 
to exult beforehand over a victory which is yet to be won. 
Mr. Bright referred in the House of Commons to the fact that 
cabinet ministers had been present at this unlucky festival. 
" I have read," he said, " the proceedings of that banquet with 
pain and humiliation. The reckless levity displayed is, in my 
own opinion, discreditable to the grave and responsible states- 
men of a civilized and Christian nation." There was very lit- 
tle trace either of statesmanship or Christianity in Lord Pahn- 
erston's reply. He began by alluding to Mr. Bright as " the 
honorable and reverend gentleman." He was called to order 



312 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xni. 

for this gross violation of tlie ordinary courtesies of debate; 
but, instead of taking advantage of the interruption to recov- 
er his temper and self-respect, he continued his remarks in a 
strain which, though it did not justify the interference of the 
Speaker, was most repugnant to the taste and feeling of his 
brother members. For the first and last time in his life Mac- 
aulay had nothing to say in defense of his hero. " I went to 
the House on Monday," he writes ; " but for any pleasure I 
got, I might as well have staid away. I heard Bright say ev- 
ery thing that I thought ; and I heard Palmerston and Gra- 
ham expose themselves lamentably. Palmerston's want of tem- 
per, judgment, and good-breeding was almost incredible. He 
did himself more harm in three minutes than all his enemies 
and detractors throughout the world have been able to do him 
in twenty years. I came home quite dispirited." 

ThoiTgh Macaulay was not inclined by premature jubilation 
to discount triumphs which were still in the future, no one 
was more ready to feel an Englishman's pride as soon as our 
army should give him something to be proud of. He had not 
long to wait. " Grlorious news !" he says, on the 4th of Octo- 
ber, 1854r. " Too glorious, I am afraid, to be all true. How- 
ever, there is room for a large abatement. One effect, and a 
most important one, of these successes is that the war, which 
has not yet been national in France, will become so ; and that, 
consequently, neither the death of the emperor nor any rev- 
olution which may follow will easily dissolve the present al- 
liance." Throughout the winter months his journal shows 
how constantly the dangers and sufferings of our soldiers were 
present to his mind, and with what heart-felt admiration he 
regarded each successive proof of the discipline, the endur- 
ance, and the intrepidity which those dangers and sufferings 
so cruelly but so effectually tested. " I am anxious," he writes, 
on the 13th of November, "about our brave fellows in the 
Crimea, but proud for the countiy, and glad to think that the 
national spirit is so high and unconquerable. Invasion is a 
bugbear indeed while we retain our pluck." Macaulay view- 
ed with great and increasing satisfaction the eagerness of his 
fellow-countrymen to make all the sacrifices which the war 



1852-'56.] LOED MACAULAY. 313 

demanded. He was fond of reminding himself and others 
that the prosperity and the independence of England had not 
been bought for nothing, and could be retained only so long 
as we were willing to pay the price. A full and clear expres- 
sion of this sentiment was evoked from him by the tidings 
of the great battle that tried, more severely than it had been 
tried since Albuera, that British courage which, to use his own 
words, " is never so sedate and stubborn as toward the close of 
a doubtful and murderous day." These were the terms in 
which he wrote, with the gazette containing the account of 
Inkermann on the table before him : " The interest excited by 
the war is as great as that which in my boyish days used to be 
excited by the Duke of Wellington's operations. I am well 
pleased, on the whole. It is impossible not to regret so many 
brave men, and to feel for the distress of so many families. 
But it is a great thing that, after the longest peace ever known, 
our army should be in a higher state of elBciency than at the 
end of the last war. The spirit of the soldiers, and of the 
whole country, is a complete guarantee against those dangers 
with which we were threatened two or three years ago. No- 
body will be in a hurry to invade England for a long time to 
come."* 

* Macaulay says, in a letter dated August, 1857 : " Lord Panmnre has 
asked me to write an inscription for a column which is building at Scutari, 
in honor of our soldiers and sailors who died in the East during the last 
war. It is no easy task, as you may guess. Give me your opinion of what 
I have written. It is, as yon will see, concise and austerely simple. There 
is not a single adjective. So far I believe that I am right. But whether 
the execution be in other respects good is a matter about which I feel 
great misgivings. 

TO THE MEMORY 

OP THE BRITISH SOLDIERS AND SAILORS 

WHO, 

DURING THE YEARS 1854 AND 1855, 

DIED FAR FROM THEIR COUNTRY 

IN DEFENSE OP THE LIBERTIES OF EUROPE, 

THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED 

BY THE GRATITUDE 

OF QUEEN VICTORIA A^'D HER PEOPLE 

1857." 



314 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xm. 

The occasion had now arrived for carrying into effect that 
part of the India Act of 1853 which related to the appoint- 
ment of civil servants by open competition. Sir Charles 
Wood intrusted the duty of making the necessary arrange- 
ments to a committee of distinguished men, with Macaulay as 
chairman.* " I am to draw the report," he writes on the 1st 
of July, 1854. "I must and will finish it in a week." He 
completed his rough draft on the 7th of July, wrote it out fair 
on Saturday, the 8th, and read it to his brother-in-law on the 
Sunday. " Trevelyan," he says, " was much pleased ;" and 
no wonder ; for Macaulay had so framed his plan as to bring 
out all the strong points of the competitive system, and avoid 
its perils. He provided a simple but effective machinery for 
admitting into the service men of energy and ability, whose 
faculties were keen and whose acquirements were solid, and 
for excluding those who rested their hopes of success upon 
masses of half-digested, heterogeneous learning. 

" N"othing," he wrote, " can be further from our wish than 
to hold out premiums for knowledge of wide surface and of 
small depth. We are of opinion that a candidate ought to be 
allowed no credit at all for taking up a subject in which he is 
a mere smatterer. Profound and accurate acquaintance with 
a single language ought to tell more than bad translations and 
themes in six languages. A single paper which shows that 
the writer thoroughly understands the principles of the dif- 
ferential calculus ought to tell more than twenty superficial 
and incorrect answers to questions about chemistry, botany, 
mineralogy, metaphysics, logic, and English history 

" The marks ought, we conceive, to be distributed among 
the subjects of examination in such a manner that no part of 
the kingdom, and no class of schools, shall exclusively furnish 
servants to the East India Company. It would be grossly un- 
just, for example, to the great academical institutions of En- 
gland, not to allow skill in Greek and Latin versification to 
have a considerable share in determining the issue of the com- 

* Maoaulay's colleagues were Lord Ashburton ; Dr. Melvill, the Principal 
of Haileybury College ; Di-. Jowett ; and Sir John Shaw Lefevre. 



1852-'56.] LORD MACAULAT. 315 

petition, Skill in Greek and Latin versification has, indeed, 
no direct tendency to form a judge, a financier, or a diploma- 
tist. But the youth who does best what all the ablest and 
most ambitious youths about him are trying to do well, will 
generally prove a superior man; nor can we doubt that an 
accomplishment by which Fox and Canning, Grenville and 
Wellesley, Mansfield and Tenterden, first distinguished them- 
selves above their fellows, indicates powers of mind which, 
properly trained and directed, may do great service to the State. 
On the other hand, we must remember that in the north of this 
island the art of metrical composition in the ancient latiguages 
is very little cultivated, and that men so eminent as Dugald 
Stewart, Homer, Jeffrey, and Mackintosh would probably have 
been quite unable to write a good copy of Latin alcaics, or to 
translate ten lines of Shakspeare into Greek iambics. "We 
wish to see such a system of examination established as shall 
not exclude from the service of the East India Company ei- 
ther a Mackintosh or a Tenterden, either a Canning or a Hor- 
ner. We have, with an anxious desire to deal fairly by all 
parts of the United Kingdom, and by all places of liberal ed- 
ucation, framed the following scale, which we venture to sub- 
mit to your consideration." 

There follows hereupon a complete list of subjects of ex- 
amination, with the proportion of marks that was to be allot- 
ted to each. The Indian Government adopted this list in its 
integrity ; and the same very practical compliment was paid 
to all the recommendations of the committee, whether they 
related to the age of the candidates, the abolition of the Com- 
pany's college at Haileybury, or to the training of the proba- 
tioners during the two years which were to intervene between 
their first selection and their final departure for India. One 
other passage in the report deserves quotation, as testifying 
to the confidence with which Macaulay anticipated that in 
nicety of honor and uprightness of character the young civil- 
ians of the future would be inferior to no class of public serv- 
ants in the world. 

" We hope and believe, also, that it will very rarely be nec- 
essary to expel any probationer from the service on account 



316 LIFE AND LETTEES.OP [chap.xhi. 

of grossly profligate habits, or of any action unbecoming' a 
man of honor. The probationers will be young men superior 
to their fellows in science and literature ; and it is not among 
young men superior to their fellows in science and literature 
that scandalous immorality is generally found to prevail. It 
is notoriously not once in twenty years that a student who has 
attained high academical distinction is expelled from Oxford 
or Cambridge. Indeed, early superiority in science and litera- 
ture generally indicates the existence of some qualities which 
are securities against rice — industry, self-denial, a taste for 
pleasures not sensual, a laudable desire of honorable distinc- 
tion, a still more laudable desire to obtain the approbation of 
friends and relations. We therefore believe that the intellect- 
ual test which is about to be established will be found in prac- 
tice to be also the best moral test that can be desired." 

Macaulay had hopes, but not very strong hopes, that the 
example of the Indian Government would be followed in the 
offices at Whitehall. " There is good public news," he writes 
in January, 1854. " The plan for appointing public servants 
by competition is to be adopted on a large scale, and men- 
tioned in the queen's speech." " I had a long talk," he says 
again, " about the projected examination with Trevelyan. I 
am afraid that he will pay the examiners too high, and turn 
the whole thing into a job.* I am anxious on this head. If 
the thing succeeds, it will be of immense benefit to the coun- 
try." Civil Service reform had Mr. Gladstone for a champion 
in the Cabinet ; and the introduction of open competition had 
been earnestly recommended in a report drawn up by Sir 
Charles Trevelyan and Sir Stafford ISTorthcote, who had been 
associated together in a comprehensive and searching revision 
of our public departments. But it soon became evident that 
very few of our leading politicians had their hearts in the 

* Any such clanger was eventually obviated by the appointment of Sir 
Edward Ryan to the post of Chief Civil Service Commissioner. That 
truly eminent man, who to the authority and experience of age united the 
vigor and enthusiasm which too seldom survive the prime of life, nursed 
the infant system through its troubled childhood, until from a project and 
an experiment it had grown into an institution. 



1853-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 317 

matter. It was one thing for tHem to deprive the East India 
Directors of their patronage, and quite another to surrender 
their own. The outcry of the dispensers and expectants of 
public employment was loud and fierce, and the advocates of 
the new system were forced to admit that its hour had not 
come. " I went to Brooks's," says Macaulay on the 4th of 
March, " and f oimd every body open-mouthed, I am sorry to 
say, against Trevelyan's plans about the Civil Service. He 
has been too sanguine. The pear is not ripe. I always 
thought so. The time will come, but it is not come yet. I 
am afraid that he will be much mortified." 

He was mortified, and had good cause to be alarmed, for his 
career was seriously threatened by the hostility of some of the 
most powerful men of the day. But he did not lose his cour- 
age or composure. Accustomed, according to the frequent 
fate of permanent ofiicials, to be pushed to the front in the 
moment of jeopardy, and thrust into the rear in the moment 
of triumph, he had weathered more formidable storms than 
that which was now growling and blustering through all the 
clubs and board -rooms between Piccadilly and Parliament 
Street. Macaulay, who lived sufiiciently 'behind the scenes to 
discern the full gravity of the situation, was extremely uneasy 
on his brother-in-law's account. "The news is worse," he 
writes, " about Trevelyan. There is a set ' made at him by 
men who will not scruple to do their utmost. But he will 
get through his difliculties, which he feels less than I should 
in his place ; less, indeed, than I feel them for him. I was 
nervous about him, and out of spirits the whole evening." 
During the next few weeks Macaulay was never so depressed 
as when he had been spending part of his afternoon at 
Brooks's. Such were the views which then prevailed at the 
head-quarters of the great party that has long ere this identi- 
fied itself with the maintenance of a system to which, more 
than to any other cause, we owe it that our political morality 
grows purer as our political institutions become more popular 
^-a system which th& most far-seeing of American statesmen 
already regard with a generous envy, knowing, as they have 
only too good reason to know, that it is the one and only spe- 



318 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [cHAP.xm. 

cific against the jobbery and corruption wbich are fast nn- 
dermining tbe efficiency of their administration, and debasing 
their standard of national virtue.* 

When Macaulay had finished the business of preparing his 
speeches for the press, he returned to his " History," and con- 
tinued to work upon it almost without intermission for two 
years, from November, 1853, onward. His labors, during this 
period of his life, were always too severe for his strength, and 
sometimes even for his happiness. He felt the strain most 
painfully during the early months of 1854. 

"Sunday, January 1st, 1854. — This will, I hope, be a year of industry. I 
began pretty well. Chapter XIV. will require a good deal of work. I 
toiled on it some hours, and now and then felt dispirited. But we must 
be resolute, and work doggedly, as Johnson said. I read some of his Life 
with great delight, and then meditated a new arrangement of my 'Histo- 
ry.' Arrangement and transition are arts which I value much, but which 
I do not flatter myself that I have attained.' I amused myself with mak- 
ing out a Lapouian New Testament by the help of a Norwegian dictionary. 
^¥ith time I could learn a good deal of the two languages in this way." 

"February 6th. — I workefl hard at altering the arrangement of the first 
three chapters of the third volume. What labor it is to make a tolerable 
book, and how little readers know how much trouble the ordering of the 
parts has cost the writer! I have now finished reading again most of 
Burke's works. Admirable ! The greatest man since Milton." 

" Thursday, February 16th. — I staid at home and did nothing. An un- 
profitable day. I tried to write, but had a feeling of impotence and de- 
spoudency to which I am subject, but which I have not had now for some 

time. I sent twenty pounds to and . I thought that these 

high prices might pinch them. Then I sat down doggedly to work, and 
^ot on very tolerably — the state of England at the time of William's re- 

* The whole question of patronage as bearing upon the ofScial system 
of the United States is most ably and frankly discussed in the INm-ih 
American Beview of January, 1871. The author of the article, speaking of 
the proposal to introduce competition into his own country, says distinct- 
ly: "There should be no attempt to disguise the fact that it is the pur- 
pose of this theory of administration to prevent the public service from 
being used in any manner or to any extent as a means of party success." 
It is to be hoped that this is a case in which, instead of Americanizing our 
own institutions, we shall induce our transatlantic cousins to Anglicize 
theirs, 



1852-'56.] LOED MACAULAY. 319 

turn from the Continent in 1692. I read Monk Lewis's Life. A very odd 
fellow ! One of the best of men, if he had not bad a trick of writing pro- 
fane and. indecent books. Excellent son, excellent master ; and in the 
most trying circumstances ; for he was the son of a vile brace of parents, 
and the master of a stupid, ungrateful gang of negroes." 

"March 3d. — I staid at home all day. In the morning there was a fog 
which affected my breath, and made me cough much. I was sad and de- 
sponding all day. I thought that my book would be a failure ; that I had 
written myself out; that my reputation would go down in my life-time; 
and that I should be left, like Hayley and other such men, among people 
who would wonder why I had ever been thought much of. These clouds 
will pass away, no doubt." 

They passed away when the warm weather came, and did 
not return with the returning winter. Macaulay's health was 
confirmed by a fine summer, spent under circumstances which 
exactly suited his notions of enjoyment ; and, for a good while 
to come, he was a stronger man than he had been since his first 
great illness. His brother-in-law had taken a house in the vil- 
lage of Esher ; and Macaulay accordingly settled himself, with 
infinite content, exactly in the middle of the only ngly square 
mile of country which can be found in that delightful neigh- 
borhood. " I am pretty well pleased,"- he says, " with my 
house. The cabin, for a cabin it is, is convenient." " Here I 
am," he writes to Mr. Ellis, " in a pleasant, small dwelling, sur- 
rounded by geraniums and roses ; the house so clean that you 
might eat off the floor. The only complaint I have to make 
is that the view from my front windows is blocked by a rail- 
way embankment. The Trevelyans have a very pleasant 
place only a mile and a half off." Macaulay's cottage, which 
stood in Ditton Marsh, by the side of the high-road from 
Kingston to Esher, was called Greenwood Lodge. An occa- 
sional extract from his journal will show how smoothly ran 
the cun-ent of his days. 

"July 23d, 1854. — Tremendous heat. I put the first volume of Wilber- 
force's Life into my pocket, went by ferry across the Thames to Hampton 
Court, and lounged under the shade of the palace gardens and of Bushey 
Park during some hours. A hot walk back. I don't know that I ever felt 
it hotter." 

"August Vith. — I wrote to Longman. I think that I must take till Oo* 



320 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.xui. 

tober next.* By that time the book may be not what I wish, but as good 
as I can hope to make it. I read Dickens's ' Hard Times.' One excessive- 
ly touching, heart-breaking passage, and the rest sullen socialism. The 
evils which he attacks he caricatures grossly, and with little humor. An- 
other book of Pliny's letters. Eead ' Northanger Abbey ;' worth all Dick- 
ens and Pliny together. Yet it was the work of a girl. She was certainly 
not more than twenty-six. Wonderful creature ! Finished Pliny. Capi- 
tal fellow, Trajan, and deserving of a better Panegyric." 

"Septeniber 22d. — I am glad that our troops have landed in the Cherso- 
nese. As I walked back from Esher a shower came on. Afraid for my 
chest, which at best is in no very good state, I turned into a small ale- 
house, and called for a glass of ginger-beer. I found there a party of hop- 
pickers, come back from the neighborhood of Farnham. They had had 
but a bad season, and were returning, nearly walked off their legs. I liked 
their looks, and thought their English remarkably good for their rank of 
life. It was in truth the Surrey English, the English of the suburbs of 
London, which is to the Somersetshire and Yorkshire what Castilian is to 
Andalusian, or Tuscan to Neapolitan. The poor people had a foaming pot 
before them ; but as soon as they heard the price, they rose, and were going 
to leave it untasted. They could not, they said, afford so much. It was 
but fourpence-half-penny. I laid the mouey down ; and their delight and 
gratitude quite affected me. Two more of the party soon arrived. I or- 
dered another pot, and when the rain was over left them, followed by more 
blessings than, I believe, were ever purchased for ninepence. To be sure, 
the boon, though very small, was seasonable; and I did my best to play 
the courteous host." 

During liis residence in Surrey, Macaulay kept Mr. Ellis 
regularly informed of all that a friend would wish to know; 
but his letters contain little of general interest. On the 11th 
of July he writes : " I have been working four or five days at 
my report on the Indian Civil Service, and have at last finish- 
ed it. It is much longer than I anticipated that it would be, 
and has given me great trouble. To-morrow I go vigorously 
to work on my ' History.' I have been so busy here with my 
report that I have read nothing but comedies of Goldoni and 
novels of Eugene Sue. 

" I walked yesterday to Hampton Court along the Middle- 
sex bank of the Thames, and lounged among the avenues and 

* He underrated by fully three-quarters of a year the duration of the 
work which was still before him. 



1852-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 321 

flower-beds about an hour. I wonder that no poet has thought 
of writing a descriptive poem on the Thames. Particular 
spots have been celebrated ; but surely there is no finer sub- 
ject of the sort than the whole course of the river from Ox- 
ford downward — the noble University; Clifden; Windsor; 
Chertsey, the retreat of Cowley ; St. Anne's Hill, the retreat 
of Fox ; Hampton Court, with all the recollections of Wolsey, 
Cromwell, William and Mary, Belinda's hair, the Cartoons, 
the Beauties; then Strawberry Hill; then Twickenham and 
Pope's grotto ; then Richmond ; and so on to the great City, 
the forest of masts, the Tower, Greenwich Hospital, Tilbury 
Port, and the Armada. Is there any river in the world which, 
in so short a space, affords such subjects for poetry ? Not the 
Tiber, I am sure, nor the Seine." 

Prom the summer of 1854, until his third and fourth vol- 
umes were published, the composition of his " History " was 
to Macaulay a source of almost unmingled interest and delight ; 
" a work which never presses, and never ceases," as he called 
it in a letter to his sister ; " a work which is the business and 
the pleasure of my life," as he described it in the preface to 
his speeches. By September, 1854, he was so far forward 
that he thought himself justified in saying, after a visit to the 
Windsor collection : "I was told that there was scarcely any 
thing of earlier date than George I. A good hearing. I have 
now got to a point at which there is no more gratifying dis- 
covery than that nothing is to be discovered." As the months 
went on he worked harder, and ever harder. His labor, though 
a labor of love, was immense. He almost gave up letter-writ- 
ing ; he quite gave up society ; and at last he had not leisure 
even for his diary. 

" January lst,l?5^. — A new year. May it be as happy as tlie last ! To 
me it will probably be more eventful, as it will see, if I live and am ■well, 
the publication of the second part of my ' History.' " 

"January lOth. — I find that I am getting out of the habit of keeping my 
journal. I have, indeed, so much to do with my ' History ' that I have lit- 
tle inclination for any other writing. My life, too, is very uneventful. I 
am a prisoner to my room, or nearly so. I do nothing but write or read. 
I will, however, minute down interesting things from time to time. Some 
day the taste for journalizing may return." 

Vol. IL— 21 



322 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xn. 

"January 29th, 1855. — I open this book again after an interval of near 
three weeks ; three weeks passed by the fireside. Once I dined out ; on 
Tuesday, the 16th, at Westboume Terrace, to meet Gladstone. Nothing 
could be more lamentable than his account of affairs in the Crimea. 

" To-night there will, I suppose, be a vote against the Government, and 
to-morrow a change of Administration.* I am content that it should be 
so, and well pleased that my illness dispenses me from voting. I have 
made great progress with my book of late, and see no reason to doubt that 
I shall go to press in the summer. I am now deep in Chapter XIX. Odd 
that here, within a few yards of all the bustle of politics, I should be as 
quiet as a hermit ; as quiet as Cowper was at Olney ; much more quiet, 
thank God, than my old friend Hannah More at Barley Wood ; buried in 
old pamphlets and broadsides ; turning away from the miseries of Bala- 
klava to the battle of Steiukirk, on which I was busied to-day. The fates 
have spun me not the coarsest thread, as old Ben says. Hannah, Margaret, 
Alice, Trevelyan, and George are as kind as possible. I want no more ; but 
I have other very kind visitors. I can not think that this can go on long. 
But I hope that I shall bring out my two volumes. I am conscious of no 
intellectual decay. My memory I often try, and find it as good as ever ; 
and memory is the faculty which it is most easy to bring to decisive tests, 
and also the faculty which gives way first." 

"Nmeniber Gth, 1855. — After an interval of eight months I begin my 
journal again. My book is almost printed. It will appear before the 
middle of December, I hope. It will certainly make me rich, as I account 
riches. As to success I am less certain ; but I have a good hope. I mean 
to keep my journal as regularly as I did seven years ago when the first 
part came out. To-day I went to call on poor Hallam. How much 
changed! In the evening a proof of Chapter XX. came from Spottis- 
woode's." 

During the ensuing fortnight the entries in Macaulay's di- 
ary relate almost exclusively to the proof-sheets, which gen- 
erally occupied him both morning and afternoon, and to the 
books which he turned over for his amusement after the ap- 
pearance of the lamp had given him the signal to leave his 
desk, and draw his easy-chair to the hearth-rug. On the 13th 
of ITovember, to take an instance, he read " ' "Welsted's Life 
and Eemains;' mostly trash. At dinner the 'Love Match.' 

* On the 29th of January Mr. Roebuck carried his motion for a Commit- 
tee, of Inquiry into the condition of our army before Sebastopol, by 305 
votes- to 148. Lord Aberdeen at once resigned. 



1852-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 323 

In the evening Jesse's ' Selwyn Correspondence,' Skelton's 
' Deism Eevealed,' and a great deal of Bolingbroke's stupid 
infidelity." 

At length, on the 21st of November, he writes : " I looked 
over and sent ofi the last twenty pages. My work is done, 
thank God ! and now for the result. On the whole, I think 
that it can not be very unfavorable. At dinner I finished 
'Melpomene.'" The first effect upon Macaulay of having 
completed an installment of his own "History" was now, as 
in 1848, to set him reading Herodotus. 

"November 2Sd. — Longman came. All the twenty-five thousand copies 
are ordered. Monday, the 27th of December, is to be the day ; but on the 
evening of the preceding Saturday those book-sellers who take more than 
a thousand are to have their books. The stock lying at the book-binders' 
is insured for ten thousand pounds. The whole weight is fifty-six tons. 
It seems that no such edition was ever published of any work of the same 
bulk. I earnestly hope that neither age nor riches will narrow my heart." 

"November 27<A. — I finished Prescott's ' Philip the Second.' What strikes 
me most about him is, that, though he has had new materials, and tells his 
story well, he does not put any thing in a light very different from that in 
which I had before seen it; and I have never studied that part of history 
deeply. To-day I received from Longman the first copy of my book in the 
brown livery. I sent him yesterday the list of presentation copies.'' 

" November 28<ft. — I dawdled over my book most of the day, sometimes in 
good, sometimes in bad spirits about it. On the whole, I think that it must 
do. The only competition which, as far as I perceive, it has to dread, is 
that of the two former volumes. Certainly no other history of William's 
reign is either so trustworthy or so readable." 

"November 29ift. — I was again confined to my room all day, and again 
dawdled over my book. I wish that the next month were over. I am 
more anxious than I was about the first part, for then I had no highly 
raised expectations to satisfy, and now people expect so much that the 
Seventh Book of Thuoydides would hardly content them. On the other 
hand, the general sterility, the miserably enervated state of literature, is 
all in my favor. We shall see. It is odd that I should care so very little 
about the money, though it is full as much as I made by banishing my- 
self for four and a half of the best years of my life to India." 

"December 4th. — Another bleak day passed in my chambers. I am never 
tired of reading. Read some of Swift's ' Polite Conversations,' and Ar- 
buthnot's 'John Bull.' One never wearies of these excellent pieces."* 

* In Chapter XXIV. of his " History," Macaulay calls the " History of 



324 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [CHAP.xm. 

"December 6(h. — Pine, but cold. I staid at home all day, read ten cantos 
of the ' Morgante Maggiore,' and was languidly amnsed. A Yankee pub- 
lisher sends me very coolly an enormous folio in two closely printed col- 
umns, a ' Dictionary of Authors,' and asks me to give my opinion of it — 
that opinion, of course, to be printed as a puff. He has already used the 
opinions of Everett, Washington Irving, and others in that way. I sent it 
back with a note saying that I could not form an opinion of such a work 
at a glance, and that I had not time for a full examination. I hate such 
tricks. A propos of puiBng, I see that Robert Montgomery is gathered to 
Bavius and Blackmore. How he pestered me with his alternate cries for 
mercy and threats of vengeance !" 

"December 9th. — Colder and more gloomy than ever. I staid at home, 
and enjoyed my liberty, though a prisoner to my room. I feel much easier 
about my book ; very much. I read a great deal of Photius with much 
zest.* His account of Isocrates induces me to take down Isocrates again. 
I have not read him since I was in India. I looked at several speeches. 
He was never a favorite of mine, and I see no reason to change my opinion. 
I have found one serious mistake in my ' History.' I wonder whether any 
body else will find it out." 

The presentation copies were deliyered on tlie 15tli of De- 
cember. On Sunday, the 16th, which Macaulay, as usual, 
spent within - doors, " Sir Henry Holland called ; very kind. 
He had read the first chapter, and came to pay compliments, 
which were the more welcome because my chief misgivings 
are about that chapter." 

"Monday, December ntk. — An article on my book in the Times; in tone 

John Bull" "the most ingenious and humorous political satire in our lan- 
guage." His own imitation of it well deserves a reading. It appeared 
first in Knight's Quarterly Magazine, in April, 1824, under the title, " Some 
Account of the Great Lawsuit between the Parishes of St. Dennis and St. 
George in the Water,'' and may now be found in his " Miscellaneous Writ- 
ings." 

* Macaulay first attacked Photius during his country rambles round 
Thames Ditton, without the aid of notes or of a Latin version. " I do not 
get on with Photius," he says. " I read chiefly while walking, and my 
copy is not one which I can conveniently carry in my hand." The rumor 
that he read Photius for pleasure was current in the Athensenm Club, and 
was never mentioned without awe. The very name of the patriarch's 
great work, the " Myriobiblon,'' or " Bibliotheca," is enough for most schol- 
ars of our degenerate day. 



1852-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 335 

what I wished, that is to say, laudatory without any appearance of puffing. 
I had letters from Stephen and Adolphus — kind ; but neither of them can 
as yet have read enough to judge. Longman called to-day and told me 
that they must print more copies. He was for five thousand. I insisted 
that there ahould he only two thousand." 

"Deceniber 18th. — There came one of Longman's clerks, with news that 
the first two volumes of the ' History ' must be reprinted at once, as the 
sale of them has during the last few days been very great.* I wrote to 

and about money matters. I am glad that I am now able to 

make them quite comfortable." 

"Sunday, December 23d. — More of Photius. He sent me to 'Lysias ;' and 
I read with the greatest delight some of those incomparable speeches ; in- 
comparable, I mean, in their kind, which is not the highest kind. They 
are wonderful — Scarlett speaking in the style of Addison." 

" Wednesday, Deceinber 26ih. — Eead ' Cicero De Divinatione.' The second 
book is excellent. What a man he was ! To think that the ' Diviuatione,' 
the ' De Fato,' and the ' De Officiis ' should all have been the fruits of his 
leisure during the few months that he outlived the death of Caesar. Dur- 
ing those months Cicero was leader of the Senate, and as busy a man as 
any in the republic. The finest of his senatorial speeches, spoken or not, 
belongs to that time. He seems to have been at the head of the minds of 
the second order."t 

" Tuesday, January 1st, 1856. — A new year. I am happy in fame, fortune, 
family afflectiou — most eminently so. Under these heads I have nothing 
to ask more ; but my health is very indifferent. Yet I have no pain. My 
faculties are unimpaired. My spirits are very seldom depressed ; and I am 
not without hopes of being set up again. I read miscellaneous trifles from 
the back rows of my books ; Nathan's ' Reminiscences of Byron ;' Colman's 
'Broad Grins;' Strange's 'Letter to Lord Bute;' Gibbon's 'Vindication,' 
and his answer to Warburton about the Sixth JEneid. Letters and criti- 
cisms stUI ponr in. Praise greatly preponderates, but there is a strong 
admixture of censure. I can, however, see no sign that these volumes 
excite less interest than their predecessors. Fanny tells me that a ser- 
mon was preached at Brighton to my praise and glory last Sunday, and 
the Londonderry people seem in great glee." 

"Friday, January ith. — To-day I gave a breakfast to Jowett, Ellis, Han- 
nah, Margaret, and Montagu Butler and Vaughan Hawkins, young Fel- 

* The sale of the first two volumes rose, from eleven hundred and seven- 
ty-two copies in 1854-'55, to four thousand nine hundred and one copies in 
1855-'56 ; and this, be it observed, in the large library edition. 

t Macaulay had of late been reading " Cicero De Finibus." "I always 
liked it," he says, " the best of his philosophical works ; and I am still of 
the same mind." 



326 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiii. 

lows of Trinity. A pleasant party ; at least I thought so. After long si- 
lence and solitude, I poured myself out very freely and generally. They 
staid till past one ; a pretty good proof that they \rere entertained. I 
have a letter from Guizot, full of kind compliments. He asks a question 
about the place where the Lords received Charles the Second on May 29th, 
1660. It is odd that a foreigner should trouble himself ahout so minute a 
matter. I went to the Eoyal Institution, got down the Journals, and soon 
found that the Lords were iu the drawing-room at Whitehall. The Com- 
mons were in the Banqueting House." 

" Monday , January 7tk. — ^Yesterday and to-day I have been reading over 
my old journals of 1852 and 1853. What a strange interest they have ! 
No kind of reading is so delightful, so fascinating, as this minute history 
of a man's self. I received another heap of criticisms — praise and blame. 
But it matters little. The victory is won. The book has not disappoint- 
ed the very highly raised expectations of the public. The first fortnight 
was the time of peril. Now all is safe.'' 

The event more than justified Macaulay's confidence. The 
ground which his book then gained has never been lost since. 
" I shall not be satisfied," he wrote in 1841, " unless I pro- 
duce something which shall for a few days supersede the last 
fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies." It may be 
said, for the credit of his countrymen no less than for his o-\vn, 
that the annual sale of his " History " has frequently since 
1857 surpassed the sale of the fashionable novel of the current 
year. How firm a hold that " History " has obtained on the 
estimation of the reading world is well known to all whose 
business makes them acquainted with the intellectual side of 
common English life ; but the figures which testify to Macau- 
lay's stable and increasing popularity may well surprise even 
the guardian of a free library or the secretary of a mechan- 
ics' institute. Those figures shall be given in the simplest 
and the most precise shape. "Eound numbers are always 
false," said Dr. Johnson ; and a man need not be as convers- 
ant as Dr. Johnson with the trade secrets of literature in or- 
der to be aware that what are called " new editions " are some- 
times even more misleading than round numbers. Messrs. 
Longman's books show that, in an ordinary year, when noth- 
ing is done to stimulate the public appetite by novelty of form 
or reduction of price, their stock of the " History " goes out 



185a-'56.] LORD MACAULAY. 327 

of their hands at the rate of seventy complete copies a week. 
But a computation founded on this basis would give a very- 
inadequate notion of the extent to which Macaulay's most im- 
portant work is bought and read ; for no account would have 
been taken of the years in which large masses of new and 
cheap editions were sold off in the course of a few months : 
12,024 copies of a single volume of the " History " were put 
into circulation in 1858, and 22,925 copies of a single volume 
in 1864. During the nine years ending with the 25th of 
June, 1857, Messrs. Longman disposed of 30,478 copies of the 
first volume of the " History ;" 50,783 copies during the nine 
years ending with June, 1866 ; and 52,392 copies during the 
nine years ending with June, 1875. Within a generation of 
its first appearance, upward of a hundred and forty thousand 
copies of the " History " will have been printed and sold in 
the United Kingdom alone. 

But the influence of the work and the fame of its author 
were not confined to the United Kingdom. " I have," writes 
Macaulay, " a most intoxicating letter from Everett. He says 
that no book has ever had such a sale in the United States, 
except (note the exception) the Bible and one or two school- 
books of universal use. This, he says, he has been assured by 
book-sellers of the best authority."* On the continent of Eu- 

* With reference to the first two volumes of the " History," Macaulay 
wrote to Mr. Everett : " It would be mere affectation in me not to own that 
I am greatly pleased by the success of my ' History ' in America. But I am 
almost as much puzzled as pleased ; for the book is quite insular in spirit. 
There is nothing cosmopolitan about it. I can well understand that it 
might have an Interest for a few highly educated men in your country ; 
but I do not at all understand how it should be acceptable to the body of 
a people who have no king, no lords, no Established Church, no Tories, nay 
(I might say), no Whigs in the English sense of the word. The dispensing 
power, the ecclesiastical supremacy, the doctrines of Divine right and pas- 
sive obedience, must all, I should have thought, seemed strange, unmean- 
ing things to the vast majority of the inhabitants of Boston and Philadel- 
phia. Indeed, so very English is my book, that some Scotch critics, who 
have praised me far beyond my deserts, have yet complained that I have 
said so much of the crotchets of the Anglican High-churchmen — crotchets 
which scarcely any Scotchman seems able to comprehend," 



328 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xm. 

rope, witlim six months after the third and fourth volumes 
appeared, Baron Tauchnitz had sold near ten thousand copies ; 
" which proves," writes Macaulay, " that the number of per- 
sons who read English in France and Germany is very great." 
" The incomparable man " (says of him Professor Yon Eanke), 
" whose works have a European, or rather a world-wide, circu- 
lation, to a degree unequaled by any of his contemporaries." 
Six rival translators were engaged at one and the same time 
on the work of turning the " History " into German. It has 
been published in the Polish, the Danish, the Swedish, the 
Italian, the French, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Hungarian, 
the Eussian, the Bohemian languages, and is at this moment 
in course of translation into Persian. 

Macaulay received frequent and flattering marks of the 
respect and admiration with which he was regarded by the 
foreigner. He was made a member of the Academies of 
Utrecht, Munich, and Turin. The King of Prussia named 
him a Knight of the Order of Merit, on the presentation of 
the Poyal Academy of Sciences at Berlin ; and his nomina- 
tion was communicated to him in a letter from the Baron 
Von Humboldt, the chancellor of the order.* Guizot wrote 
to inform him that he had himself proposed him for the In- 
stitute of France. On one and the same day of February, 
1853, the official announcement of his election came from 
Paris, and his badge of the Order of Merit from Berlin. 

* .The Prussian Order of Merit is, to other honors, what its founder Fred- 
eric the Great was to other kings. The following paragraph appeared 
lately in The Academy : 

" It has excited some snrprise that Mr. Carlyle should have declined the 
Grand Cross of the Bath, after having accepted the Ordre pour le M^rite. 
There is, however, a great difference between the two. The Ordrepour le M4- 
rite is not given by the sovereign or the minister, hut hy the knights them- 
selves. The king only confirms their choice. The number of the knights 
of the Ordre pour le M&ite is strictly limited (there are no more than thir- 
ty German and thirty foreign knights), so that every knight knows who 
wiU be his peers. In Germany, not even Bismarck is a knight of the Ordre 
pour le MMte. Moltke was elected simply as the best representative of 
military science ; nor does he rank higher as a knight of that order than 
Bunsen, the representative of physical science, or Eanke, the historian." 



1852-'56.] LORD MACAULAT. 339 

In the following June, Macaulay was presented to the de- 
gree of Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford, where he was wel- 
comed enthusiastically by the crowd in the body of the thea- 
tre, and not unkindly even by the under-graduates, who al- 
most forgot to enter a protest against the compliment that 
their university had thought fit to bestow on the great Whig 
writer.* In 1854 he was chosen president of the Philosoph- 
ical Institution of Edinburgh, to the duties of which post he 
could give little of his time, though the Institution owes to 
his judgment and liberality some important additions to its 
stock of curious and valuable books. He showed himself, 
however, most assiduous in his attendance at the British Mu- 
seum, both as a trustee and as a student. His habit was to 
work in the King's Library; partly for quiet, and partly in 
order to have George the Third's wonderful collection of 
pamphlets within an easy walk of his chair. He did his writ- 
ing at one of the oak tables which stand in the centre of the 
room, sitting away from the outer wall, for the sake of the 
light. He availed himself of his official authority to search 
the shelves at pleasure without the intervention of a librarian ; 
and (says the attendant) " when he had taken down a volume, 
he generally looked as if he had found something in it." A 
manuscript page of his " History," thickly scored with dashes 
and erasures — it is the passage in the twenty -fifth chapter 
where Sir Hans Sloane is mentioned as "the founder of the 
magnificent museum which is one of the glories of our coun- 
try " — is preserved at that museum in a cabinet, which may 
truly be called the place of honor ; within whose narrow lim- 
its are gathered together a rare collection of objects such as 
Englishmen of all classes and parties regard with a common 
reverence and pride. There may be seen Nelson's hasty 

* The batch of new doctors mcluded Mr. Grote, Mr. Disraeli, Sir Edward 
Bulwer Lytton, and the present Lord Derby. "I congratulated Grote 
with special warmth,'' says Macaulay, " for, with all his faults of style, he 
has really done wonders I was pleased with Lord Derby's recep- 
tion of his son. 'Fili mi dilectissime,' he called him. When I entered 
somebody called out ' History of England !' Then came a great tumult of 
applause and hissing; but the applause greatly predominated." 



330 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. xra. 

sketch of the line of battle at the ISTile ; and the sheet of pa- 
per on which Wellington computed the strength of the caval- 
ry regiments that were to fight at Waterloo ; and the note- 
book of Locke; and the autographs of Samuel Johnson's 
"Irene," and Ben Jonson's "Masque of Queens;" and the 
rough copy of the translation of the " Iliad," written, as Pope 
loved to write, on the margin of frayed letters and the backs 
of tattered envelopes. It is pleasant to think what Macaulay's 
feelings would have been if, when he was rhyming and castle- 
building among the summer-houses at Barley Wood, or the 
laiu'el-walks at Aspenden, or under the limes and horse-chest- 
nuts in the Cambridge Gardens, he could have been assured 
that the day would come when he should be invited to take 
his place in such a noble company. 



185e-'58.] LOED MACAULAT. 331 



CHAPTER XIV. 

1856-1858. 

Macaulay resigns his Seat for Edinburgh. — He settles Himself at Holly- 
Lodge. — His House and Garden. — His Notions of Hospitality. — " L'Al- 
manach des Gourmands." — Country Visits. — Continental Tours. — Cha- 
teaubriand. — Macaulay as a Man of Business. — His Generosity in Money 
Matters. — His Kindness to his Relations and toward Children. — Pict- 
ure-galleries. — Macaulay as an Instructor. — He pays a Compliment to 
Lord Palmerston. — Macaulay is made a Peer. — His Attachment to his 
Old University. — He is elected Lord High Steward of the Borough of 
Cambridge. — Macaulay in the House of Lords. — French Politics. — The 
Indian Mutiny. — The National Fast-day. — The Capture of Delhi and 
Relief of Lucknow. — Professor Owen and the British Museum. — Liter- 
ary Ease. — The Fifth Volume of the "History." — Macaulay's Contri- 
butions to the " Encyclopaedia Britannica." — His Habit of learning by 
Heart. — Foreign Languages. — Macaulay's Modes of amusing Himself. — 
The Consequences of Celebrity. — Extracts from Macaulay's Journal. — 
His Literary Conservatism. — His Love for Theology and Church Histo- 
ry. — His Devotion to Literature. 

Macaulay's first care in the year 1856 was to make his ar- 
rangements for retiring from Parliament. He bid farewell 
to the electors of Edinburgh in a letter which, as we are told 
by his successor in the representation of the city, was received 
by them with "unfeigned sorrow." "The experience," he 
writes, " of the last two years has convinced me that I can 
not reasonably expect to be ever again capable of performing, 
even in an imperfect manner, those duties which the public 
has a right to expect from every member of the House of 
Commons. Tou meanwhile have borne with me in a man- 
ner which entitles you to my warmest gratitude. Had even 
a small mimber of my constituents hinted to me a wish that 
I would vacate my seat, I should have thought it my duty to 
comply with that wish. But from not one single elector have 



332 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiv. 

I ever received a line of reproach or complaint." This letter 
was dispatched on the 19th of January ; on the 21st he ap- 
plied for the Chiltern Hundreds ; and on the 2d of February 
he notes in his journal : " I received a letter from the Lord 
Provost of Edinburgh, inclosing an address from the electors 
unanimously voted in a great meeting. I was really touched." 
And now Macaulay, yielding a tardy obedience to the ad- 
vice of every one who had an interest in his welfare, began to 
enjoy the ease which he had so laboriously earned. He had 
more than once talked of shifting his quarters to some resi- 
dence less unsuited to his state of health than a set of cham- 
bers on a second floor between Yigo Street and Piccadilly. 
At one time he amused himself with the idea of renting one 
of the new viUas on Weybridge Common ; and at another he 
was sorely tempted to become the purchaser of a large man- 
sion and grounds at "dear old Clapham." But in January, 
1856, Dean Milman wrote to inform him that the lease of a 
very agi-eeable house and garden at Kensington was in the 
market. The immediate effect of this letter was to suggest to 
Macaulay the propriety of giving his old friend's book anoth- 
er reading. " I began," he says, " Milman's ' Latin Christiani- 
ty,' and was more impressed than ever by the contrast be- 
tween the substance and the style. The substance is excel- 
lent. The style very much otherwise."* On the morrow he 
heard from the Duchess of Argyll, who, knowing the place in 
question as only a next-door neighbor could, urged him not 
to miss what was indeed an excellent opportunity. Accord- 
ingly, on the 23d of January, he says : " I went with Hannah 
and Margaret to see the house about which the dttchess and 
the dean had written to me. It is in many respects the very 
thing ; but I must know more, and think more, before I de- 
cide." He soon made up his mind that he had lighted on the 
home which he wanted. Without more ado he bought the 
lease, and with great deliberation, and after many a pleasant 



* A few montlis after this Macaulay writes : " I was glad to hear that a 
new edition of Milman's History is called for. It is creditable to the age. 
I began to read it again." 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 333 

family discussion, he refurnished his new abode in conformity 
•with his sister's taste and his own notions of comfort. 

"May Is*, 1856. — The change draws very near. After fifteen happy 
years passed in the Albany, I am going to leave it, thrice as rich a man as 
vrhen I entered it, and far more famous ; with health impaired, but with 
affections as warm and faculties as vigorous as ever. I have lost nothing 
that was very near my heart while I was here. Kind friends have died, 
but they were not part of my daily circle. I do not at all expect to live 
fifteen years more. If I do, I can not hope that they will be so happy as 
the last fifteen. The removal makes me sad, and would make me sadder 
but for the extreme discomfort in which I have been living during the last 
week. The books are gone, and the shelves look like a skeleton. To- 
morrow I take final leave of this room where I have spent most of the 
waking hours of so many years. Already its aspect is changed. It is the 
corpse of what it was on Sunday. I hate partings. To-day, even while I 
climbed the endless steps, panting and weary, I thought that it was for the 
last time, and the tears would come into my eyes. I have been happy at 
the top of this toilsome stair. Ellis came to dinner — the last of probably 
four hundred dinners, or more, that we have had in these chambers. Then 
to bed. Every thing that I do is colored by the thought that it is for the 
last time. One day there wHL come a last in good earnest." 

I well remember that, about this period, my uncle used to 
speak of the affinity which existed between our feeling for 
houses and our feeling for people. "Nothing," he said, 
"would at one time have reconciled me to the thought of 
leaving the Albany ; but, when I go home, and see the rooms 
dismantled, and the book-cases empty, and the whole place the 
ghost of its former self, I acknowledge that the end can not 
come too soon." And then he spoke of those sad changes, 
the work of age and illness, which prepare us gradually, and 
even mercifully, for the loss of those from whom it once 
seemed as if we could never have borne to part. He was 
thinking of a very dear friend who was just then passing 
quietly, and very slowly, through the antechamber of death. 
On the 13th of February in this year he says : " I went to 
call on poor Hallam. I found him quite prisoner to his sofa, 
unable to walk. To write legibly he has long been unable. 
But in the conversation between us — not, to be' sure, a trying 
conversation — ^he showed no defect of memory or apprelien- 



334 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [c!Hap. xiv. 

sion. Poor dear fellow ! I put a cheerful face on the mat- 
ter ; but I was sad at heart. 

Let mo not live 
After my flame lacks oil, to be the scoff 
Of meaner spirits. 

Mean they must he indeed who scoff in such a case."* 

Macaulay was now lodged as his friends wished to see him. 
He could not well have bettered his choice. Holly Lodge, 
now called Airlie Lodge, occupies the most secluded corner of 
the little labyrinth of by-roads, which, bounded to the east by 
Palace Gardens and to the west by Holland House, constitutes 
the district known by the name of Campden Hill. The villa, 
for a villa it is, stands in a long and winding lane, which, with 
its high black paling concealing from the passer-by every thing 
except a mass of dense and varied foliage, presents an appear- 
ance as rural as Eoehampton and East Sheen presents still, 
and as Wandsworth and Streatham presented twenty years 
ago. The only entrance for carriages was at the end of the 
lane farthest from Holly Lodge ; and Macaulay had no one 
living beyond him except the Duke of Argyll, who loved quiet 
as much as himself, and for the same reasons. 

The rooms in Holly Lodge were for the most part small. 
The dining-room was that of a bachelor who was hkewise 
something of an invalid ; and the drawing-room, which, from 
old habit, my uncle could seldom bring himself to use, was 
little more than a vestibule to the dining-room. Eut the 
house afforded in perfection the two requisites for an author's 
ideal of happiness, a library and a garden. The library was a 
spacious and commodiously shaped room, enlarged, after the 
old fashion, by a pillared recess. It was a warm and airy re- 
treat in winter ; and in summer it afforded a student only too 

* Mr. Hallam lived into 1859. In the January of that year Macaulay 
wrote : " Poor Hallam ! To be sure, to me he died some years ago. I then 
' missed him much and often. Now the loss is hardly felt. I am inclined 
to think that there is scarcely any separation, even of those separations 
which break hearts and cause suicides, which might not be made endurable 
by gradual weaning. la the course of that weaning there will be much 
suffering, but it will at no moment be very acute.'' 



1856-'58.] LOKD MACAULAY. 335 

irresistible an inducement to step from among his book-shelves 
on to a' lawn whose unbroken slope of verdure was worthy of 
the country-house of a lord-lieutenant. Nothing in the gar- 
den exceeded thirty feet in height ; but there was in abun- 
dance all that hollies, and laurels, and hawthorns, and groves 
of standard roses, and bowers of lilacs and laburnums could 
give of shade and scent and color. The charms of the spot 
were not thrown away upon its owner. " How I love," he 
says, " my little paradise of shrubs and turf !" " I remember 
no such May," he writes in 1857. " It is delicious. The 
Klacs are now completely out; the laburnums almost com- 
pletely. The brilliant red flowers of my favorite thorn-tree 
began to show themselves yesterday. To-day they are beauti- 
ful. To morrow, I dare say, the whole tree will be in a blaze." 
And again, a few days later : " The rhododendrons are coming 
out ; the mulberry-tree, which, though small, is a principal ob- 
ject in the view of the garden from my library window, is 
staring into leaf." In the following September, when fresh 
from a tour down the Moselle and up the Ehine, through the 
glen of Yaucluse and across the pastures of the Italian Alps, 
he writes in high content, after his return to Holly Lodge : 
" My garden is really charming. The flowers are less brilliant 
than when I went away, but the turf is perfect emerald. All 
the countries through which I have been traveling could not 
show such a carpet of soft, rich green herbage as mine." 

The beauty of the objects around him, combined with the 
novel sense of possession, inspired Macaulay with an interest 
in small every-day matters to which he had hitherto been a 
stranger. He began to feel the proprietor's passion for seeing 
things in order within doors and without. He says in one 
place : " To-day I cleared my tables of a vast accumulation of 
books and pamphlets. This process I must carry a good deal 
further. The time so spent is not time lost. It is, as Bacon 
would say, iMciferum, if not directly fructiferumP One of 
the most fortunate consequences arising from his change of 
residence was that, if it were for only ten minutes in the day, 
he accustomed himself to do something besides write and talk 
and read. It must be admitted that his efforts at gardening 



336 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiV. 

were sufficiently humble. Far beneath any thing which is re- 
corded of such scientific horticulturists as Pope and Shenstone, 
his first attempts might have aroused the mild scorn even of 
"Wordsworth and of Cowper. " I have ordered," he says, " the 
dead sprigs to be cleared from the lilacs, and the grass to be 
weeded of dandelions ;" and, shortly after, " I had an hour's 
walk, and exterminated aU the dandelions which had sprouted 
up since yesterday."* But he soon became more ambitious. 
" I chose places for rhododendron-beds, and directed the work- 
men to set creepers iu my xystus.f On Christmas-day, 1856, 
he writes to his sister Eanny : " The holiday interrupts my 
gardeniag. I have turned gardener ; not indeed working-gar- 
dener, but master-gardener. I have just been putting creep- 
ers round my windows, and forming beds of rhododendrons 
round my fountain. In three- or four summers, if I live so 
long, I may expect to see the results of my care." 

The hospitality at Holly Lodge had about it a flavor of 
pleasant peculiarity. Macaulay was no epicure on his own 

* These unlucky weeds play a leading part in Macaulay's correspondence 
■with his youngest niece. " My dear little Alice," he writes, " I quite for- 
got my promised letter, but I assure you that you were never out of my 
mind for three waking hours together. I have, indeed, had little to put 
you and yours out of my thoughts ; for I have heen living, these last ten 
days, like Eobinson Crusoe in his desert island. I have had no friends near 
me but my books and my flowers, and no enemies but those execrable dan- 
delions. I thought that I was rid of the villains ; but the day before yes- 
terday, when I got up and looked out of my window, I could see five or six 
of their great, impudent, flaring, yellow faces turned up at me. ' Only you 
wait till I come down,' I said. How I grubbed them up ! How I enjoyed 
their destruction I Is it Christian-like to hate a dandelion so savagely ^ 
That is a curious question of casuistry." 

t The word " xystus " was a reminiscence from the letters of Cicero and 
Pliny. According to Dr. William Smith it signifies an " open colonnade or 
portico, for recreation, conversation, and philosophical discussion." The 
easier life which Macaulay henceforward led gave him a fresh lease of 
health, or, at any rate, of comfort. " I am wonderfully well," he writes ; 
" my sleep is deeper and sweeter than it has been for years." And again : 
"I had an excellent night. What a blessing to regain, so late, the refresh- 
ing sleep of early years ! I am altogether better than I have been since 
1852." 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 337 

account. In his Eeform Bill days, as many passages in his 
letters show, he enjoyed a banquet at the house of a Cabinet 
minister or a City magnate with all the zest of a hungry un- 
der-graduate ; but there never was a time when his daily wants 
would not have been amply satisfied by a couple of eggs with 
his coffee in the morning, and a dinner such as is served at a 
decent sea-side lodging-house. He could not, however, endure 
to see guests, even of the most tender age, seated round his 
board, unless there was upon it something very like a feast. 
He generally selected, by a haK-conscious preference, dishes of 
an established, and, if so it may be called, an historical rep- 
utation. He was fond of testifying to his friendliness for 
Dissenters by treating his friends to a fillet of veal, which he 
maintained to be the recognized Sunda}"- dinner in good old 
Non - conformist families. He liked still better to prove his 
loyalty to the Church by keeping her feasts, and keeping 
them in good company ; and by observing her fasts, so far, 
that is to say, as they could be observed by making additions 
to the ordinary bill of fare. A Michaelmas-day on which he 
did not eat goose, or ate it in solitude, was no Michaelmas 
to him; and regularly on Christmas -eve there came to our 
house a cod-fish, a barrel of oysters, and a chine, accompanied 
by the heaviest turkey which diligence could discover and 
money could purchase. If he were entertaining a couple of 
school-boys who could construe their fourth satire of Juvenal, 
he would reward them for their proficiency with a dish of 
mullet that might have passed muster on the table of an augur 
or an emperor's freedman. If he succeeded in collecting a 
party of his own Cambridge contemporaries, he took care that 
they should have no cause to remember with regret the Trin- 
ity butteries.* "I should be much obliged to you," so he 

* Maoaulay liked nothing better th"an a Trinity gathering. In Febru- 
ary, 1852, he says: "To the Clarendon at seven, where I had ordered din- 
ner for a party of ex-fellows of the dear old college. Maiden came first ; 
then the Lord Chief Baron, Baron Parke, Waddington,LefeTre, and Ellis. 
We had an excellent dinner. The Dean of Durham's favorite dish, iilet 
de bceuf saut^ an vin de Mad&re aux triiffes, was there. We all tried it, 
applauded it, and drank his health in Champagne recommended by him.'' 

Vol. II.— 23 



338 LIFE AJSfD LETTEES OF [chap. xiv. 

writes to Mr. Ellis, " to lend me a bottle or two of that excel- 
lent audit ale which you produced the last time that I dined 
with you. You shall have in return two hottles which still 
require time to make them perfect. I ask this, because our 
party on Tuesday will consist exclusively of old fellows and 
scholars of Trinity; and I should like to give them some of 
our own nectar."* With regard to the contents of his cellar, 
Macaulay prided himself on being able to say with Mr. John 
Thorpe, " Mine is famous good stuff, to be sure ;" and if my 
mother took him to task for his extravagance, he would reply, 
in the words used by another of their favorite characters in 
fiction, that there was " a great deal of good eating and drink- 
ing " in seven hundred a year, if people knew how to manage 

it.t 

But he never was so amusing as when it pleased him to sea- 
son a family repast by a series of quotations from the "Alma- 
nach des Gourmands" — that wonderful monument of the out- 
rageous self-indulgence prevalent in French society during the 
epoch of luxury and debauchery which succeeded to the sur- 
ly discomfort of the Ilevolution,:^ and ushered in the vulgar 
magnificence of the First Empii-e. He had by heart the choice 
morsels of humor and extravagance that are so freely scat- 
tered through the eight fat little volumes ; and he was at all 
times ready to undertake the feat of detailing the ceremonies 
of a Parisian banquet, from those awkward complications of 
arrangement, " que les personnes bien avis^es out I'attention 



* The party in question turned out a complete success. "Novmnie)- 9tJi. 
— Lord Mayor's Day ; aud I had a dinner as well as the lord-mayor. I did 
my best as host. The dinner was well cooked ; the audit ale perfect. We 
had so much to say about auld lang-syne that great powers of conversation 
were not wanted. I have been at parties of men celebrated for wit and 
eloquence which were much less lively. Every body seemed to be pleased." 

+ See Miss Ferrier's " Marriage," chapter xx. 

t "Les tables d'h6te," says the "Almanach," "ne se rouvrirent point 
alors. On continua d'aller manger isol^ment et tristement chez les restau- 
rateurs, oil ohaenn, assis k une petite table, et s<5par6 des autres, consomme 
en silence sa portion, sans se mfeler de ce que dit ou de ce que fait son 
Toisin." 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 339 

d'abreger en mettant d'avance le nom de chaque convive sur 
chaque convert, dans I'ordre de leur appdtit connu on presume," 
to the " visite de digestion" on the morrow, the length of which 
was supposed to be proportioned to the excellence of the en- 
tertainment. He could follow the repast through the whole 
series of delicacies, from the " potage brulant, tel qu'il doit 
^tre," on to the " biscuit d'ivrogne ;" taking care to impress 
upon the unwilling ears of his younger hearers that " tout bon 
mangeur a fini son diner apr^s le roti." He would assure us 
on the same high authority that, after the sixth dozen, oysters 
ceased to whet the appetite ; and he would repeat with infi- 
nite gusto the sentence that closes the description of a break- 
fast such as, during the last years of the century, a high official 
of the republic took prjde in giving : " Ceux qui veulent f aire 
grandement les choses, finissent par parf umer la bouche de leurs 
convives (ou plutot de leurs amis, car c'est ainsi que s'appel- 
lent les convives d'un dejeuner), avec deux ou trois tasses de 
glaees ; on se la rinse ensuite avec un grand verre de maras- 
quin; et puis chacun se retire en hate chez soi — pour aller 
manger la soupe."* 

It must be owned that even a " grand dejeuner " at the hotel 
of Cambaceres or Barras could hardly have lasted longer than 
a breakfast at Holly Lodge; but Macaulay's guests were de- 
tained at table by attractions less material than those which 
were provided by the Amphitryons of the Directory and the 
Consulate. Long after the cutlets and the potted char had 
been forgotten the circle would sit entranced, while their host 
disposed of topic after topic, and fetched from his shelves vol- 
ume after volume, until the noon-day sun invited the party to 
spare yet another hour for a stroll round the garden, so gay in 
its winter dress that it seemed " very enjoyable " even to the 

* Macaulay's favorite passage iu the "Almanach des Gourmands" was 
that which prescribes the period (varying from a week to six months, ac- 
cording to the goodness of the dinner) during which the guests may not 
speak ill of their host ; who has, moreover, the privilege of chaining their 
tongues afresh by sending out a new set of invitations before the full time 
has expired. " On conyiendra que, de toutes les mauiferes d'empficher de 
ma] parler do soi, celle-ci n'est pas la moins aimable." 



340 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiv. 

master of Castle Howard. Lord Carlisle says in his journal of 
December 19th, 1856 : ""Walked to Campden Hill on a beau- 
tiful morning. David Dundas had invited me to breakfast 
there. "Was received with surprise, but with warm welcome, 
by Macaulay. I never knew his memory more brilliant or 
surprising. A casual mention of the lion on the Howard 
shield brought down a volume of Skelton with his finger on 
the passage. Then there was a long charade on Polyphemus, 
which he remembered from an Age newspaper in 1825. He 
seemed to me to have gained in health by his transfer to his 
pleasant villa." 

So pleasant was it, that its occupant did not care to seek for 
pleasure elsewhere. Months would pass away without Mac- 
aulay's having once made his appearance in London society ; 
and years, during which he refused all invitations to stay with 
friends or acquaintances in the country. One or two nights 
spent at "Windsor Castle, and one or two visits to Lord Stan- 
hope's seat in Kent, formed almost the sole exceptions to a 
rule which the condition of his health imperatively prescribed, 
and against which his inclinations did not lead him to rebel. 

" Chevening, July 16th, 1856. — After breakfast Lord Stanhope very kindly 
and sensibly left me to rummage his library. A fine old library it is, of, I 
should guess, fifteen thousand volumes : much resembling a college library 
both in appearance and in the character of the books. I was very agreea- 
bly entertained till two in the afternoon. Then we set off for Mountstuart 
Elphinstone's, six miles off. I saw him probably for the last time; still 
himself, though very old and infirm. A great and accomplished man as 
any that I have known. In the evening Darwin, a geologist and traveler, 
came to dinner." 

"July nth. — The morning again in the library. In the afternoon to a 
pretty spot of common land which has fallen to Lord Stanhope under a 
late inclosure act ; fine wood and heath, and a fine prospect. My Valen- 
tine* was with us, dancing about among the flowers ; gathering fox-gloves 
and whortleberries, and very gay and happy. I love all little girls of that 
age for the sake of my own nieces ; and Lady Mary is a very amiable child. 
In the evening Lord Stanhope produced a tragedy written by Pitt, and his 
brother Lord Chatham, in 1772 ; detestable of course, but well enough for 
a boy of thirteen. Odd that there was no love at all in the plot : a dis- 

* See page 185. 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 34I 

pute about a regency, during tLe absence of the king, and the minority 
of his son Prince Floras. There were several passages which reminded 
me of 1789." 

There is a characteristic notice in Macaulay's diary of a win- 
ter visit to Bowood. 

"January 31st — A fine frosty day. Lord Lansdowne proposed a walk, 
and we went up to the hill where the old moat and the yew-tree are. The 
way lay through a perfect Slough of Despond. I, like Pliable, should have 
turned back, but Lady Mahon's courage shamed me. After lunch I went 
to walk alone in the pleasure-ground, but was pestered by a most sociable 
cur who would not be got rid of. I went into a plantation, railed off with 
gates at each end, and shut the brute out ; but he perfectly understood 
my tactics — curse his intelligence ! — and waited for me at the other gate. 
After vainly trying to escape him in this way, I shut him in, and staid out- 
side myself. When I walked away, he saw that he had been outgeneraled 
by human reason, and set up the most ludicrous howl that I ever heard in 
my life." 

It is to be hoped, for Macaulay's sake, that the biographers 
of great men who were partial to the company of animals over- 
state their case when they assert that the love of dogs is the 
surest test of a good heart. In 1850, when staying with some 
friends in the country, he writes : " After breakfast I walked 
with the young ladies ; nice, intelligent girls they are. A 
couple of ill-conditioned curs went with us, whom they were 
foolish enough to make pets of ; so that we were regaled by 
a dog-fight, and were very near having on our hands two or 
three other fights. How odd that people of sense should find 
any pleasure in being accompanied by a beast who is always 
spoiling conversation !"* It must be said that my uncle was 

* In July, 1856, Macaulay writes : " I went to Oatlands and walked with 
Margaret and Alice to a most singular monument of human folly. The 
Duchess of York had made a cemetery for her dogs. There is a gate- way 
like that under which coffins are laid in the church-yard of this part of the 
country; there is a sort of chapel; and there are the grave-stones of sixty- 
four of her royal highness'S curs. On some of these mausoleums were in- 
scriptions in verse. I was disgusted by this exceeding folly. Humanity 
to the inferior animals I feel and practice, I hope, as much as any man ; but 
seriously to make friends of dogs is not my taste. I can understand, how- 



342 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.xiv." 

Tery kind to tlie only dog whicli ever depended on him for 
kindness ; a very pretty and very small Mexican spaniel, that 
belonged to one of his nieces. He treated the little animal 
exactly as he treated children, bringing it presents from the 
toy-shops, and making rhymes about it by the quarter of an 
hour together. 

Little as Macaulay liked to spend his time under other peo- 
ple's roofs, he had no objection to hotels, and to foreign ho- 
tels least of all. Nothing short of a Continental war, or the 
impossibility of getting Mr. Ellis's company, would ever have 
prevented him from taking his autumn tour. In 1856 he 
once more crossed the Alps, and was at Milan by the end of 
August. " From the balcony we caught sight of the cathe- 
dral, which mad« us impatient to see the whole. We went. 
I never was more delighted and amazed by any building ex- 
cept St. Peter's. The great f a9ade is undoubtedly a blunder : 
but a most splendid and imposing blunder. I wish to heaven 
that our Soanes, and Nashes, and Wilkinses had blundered in 
the same way." Venice, with which, ever since his boyhood, 
he had been as familiar as book and picture could make him, 
when seen at length in her own sad grandeur, seemed to him 
" strange beyond all words." He did not fail to admire " the 
succession of palaces, towering out of the green salt water; 
now passing into decay, yet retaining many traces of their 

ever, that even a seuaible mau may have a fondness for a dog. But sixty- 
four dogs ! Why, it is hardly conceivable that there should be warm af- 
fection in any heart for sixty-four human beings. I had formed a better 
opinion of the duchess." It is difficult to say whether his opinion of the 
duchess was raised or lowered by some information which reached him a 
few days later, when he was dining with Lord Lyveden, " very agreeably 
seated between two clever women. Lady Morley and Lady Dufterin." The 
latter told him that she and Mrs. Norton had been much at Oatlands when 
they were girls of twelve or thirteen ; that the epitaphs were not, as Mac- 
aulay had supposed, the mature eiforts of Monk Lewis's genius, but the 
childish productions of herself and her sister; and that the great multi- 
tude of the graves might be accounted for by the fact that the duchess 
was plagued to death with presents of dogs, which she did not like to re- 
fuse, and which would have turned her house into a kennel, if she had not 
given them a dose of opium, and sent them to the cemetery. 



1856-'58.] LOED MACAULAY. 34,3 

ancient magnificence — rich carvings, incrustations of rare mar- 
bles, faint remains of gilding and fresco-painting. Of these 
great mansions there is scarcely one so modem as the oldest 
house in St. James's Square. Many were built, and crowded 
with brilliant company, in the days of Henry the Eighth and 
Elizabeth ; some as far back as the days of Hichard the Sec- 
ond and Henry the Fourth. For Venice then was to London 
what London now is to Sydney or Toronto." 

St. Mark's Church, without impairing his loyalty to the great 
Koman basilica, affected him in a manner which was beyond, 
or rather beside, his expectations. " I do not think it, nobody 
can think it, beautiful, and yet I never was more entertained 
by any building. I never saw a building except St. Peter's 
where I could be content to pass so many hours in looking 
about me. There is something attractive to me in the very 
badness of the rhyming monkish hexameters, and in the queer 
designs and false drawing of the pictures. Every thing car- 
ries back the mind to a remote age ; to a time when Cicero 
and Yirgil were hardly known in Italy ; to a time compared 
with which the time of Politian and even the time of Pe- 
trarch is modem. I returned in the course of the day, and 
spent an hour in making out the histories of Moses and Jo- 
seph, and the mottoes. They amused me as the pictures in 
very old Bibles used to amuse me when I was a child." 

After his first visit to the Academy, Macaulay makes some 
remarks which, with the fear of Mr. Euskin before my eyes, I 
almost tremble to transcribe : " The glow, the blaze, of warm 
Venetian coloring produces a wonderful effect. But there are 
few pieces which, considered separately as works of art, give 
me much pleasure. There is an eternal repetition of the same 
subjects— nine Holy Families, for example, in one small room. 
Then the monstrous absurdity of bringing doges, archangels, 
cardinals, apostles, persons of the Trinity, and members of the 
Council of Ten into one composition shocks and disgusts me. 
A spectator who can forgive such faults for the sake of a dex- 
terous disposition of red tints and green tints must have im- 
proved his eye, I think, at the expense of his understanding." 
Macaulay's last day at Venice was devoted to the Ducal Palace. 



344 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. xiv. 

" I was more indignant," he writes, " than I chose to show 
when I found not only that Petrarch's legacy of books had 
been suffered to perish, but that the public library of Venice 
did not contain a copy of one of Aldus's great editions of the 
Greek classics. I am sorry to leave this fascinating city ; for- 
ever, I suppose. I may now often use the word 'forever' 
when I leave things." 

He had brought with him instructions from his nieces to re- 
port at length upon Juliet's tomb ; and he accordingly writes 
to them from Verona to express his delight at finding himself 
in a city so rich in its matchless variety of beauties and associ- 
ations. " You have an amphitheatre which very likely Pliny 
may have frequented ; huge old palaces and towers, the work 
of princes who were contemporary with our Edward the First ; 
and most charming and graceful architecture of the time of 
Michael Angelo and Eaphael ; and all this within a space not 
larger than Belgrave Square." At the same time he threatens 
them with a Popish aunt, who will be able to assist them in 
their Italian studies. " But perhaps the questions of religion 
and residence may be as hard to get over in the case of the 
Chevalier Macaulay as in the case of the Chevalier Grandison ; 
and I may be forced to leave the too charming Giuseppa here 
with a blister on her head and a strait-waistcoat on her back." 

During his journeys abroad Macaulay always made a point 
of reading the literature of the country. He began his Italian 
tour with Cicero's " Letters,"* and ended it with " I Promessi 
Sposi." " I finished Manzoni's novel, not without many tears. 
The scene between the archbishop and Don Abbondio is one 
of the noblest that I know. The parting scene between the lov- 
ers and Father Cristoforo is most touching. If the Church 
of Rome really were what Manzoni represents her to be, I 
should be tempted to follow Newman's example." 

The next year, while traveling through France to the cities 

* " I have been reading," he says, " those letters of Cicero which were 
written jnst after Csesar had taken np arms. What materials for history ! 
What a picture of a mind which well deserves to he studied ! No novel 
ever interested me more. Often as I have read them, every sentence seema 
new." 



185&-'58.] LOED MACAULAY. 345 

of the Ehine and the Moselle, he bought on the way Chateau- 
briand's " Genie du Christianisme." " I was astonished," he 
says, " at the utter worthlessness of the book, both in matter 
and manner. The French may be beautiful, as far as mere 
selection and arrangement of words go. But in the higher 
graces of style — those graces which affect a foreigner as much 
as a native — those graces which delight -us in Plato, in Demos- 
thenes, and in Pascal — there is a lamentable deficiency. As 
to the substance, it is beneath criticism. Yet I have heard 
men of ten times Chateaubriand's powers talk of him as the 
first of French writers. He was simply a great humbug." 

On the last day of February, 1856, Macaulay writes in his 
journal: "Longman called. It is necessary to reprint. This 
is wonderful. Twenty-six thousand five hundred copies sold 
in ten weeks ! I should not wonder if I made twenty thou- 
sand pounds clear this year by literature. Pretty well, con- 
sidering that, twenty-two years ago, I had just nothing when 
my debts were paid ; and all that I have, with the exception 
of a small part left me by my uncle the general, has been made 
by myself, and made easily and honestly, by pursuits which 
were a pleasure to me, and without one insinuation from any 
slanderer that I was not even liberal in all my pecuniary deal- 
ings." 

"March 7th. — Longman came, with a very pleasant announcement. He 
and his partners find that they are overflowing with money, and think that 
they can not invest it better than by advancing to me — on the usual terms 
of course — part of what will be due to me in December. We agreed that 
they shall pay twenty thousand pounds into Williams'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, I went to Westbourne Terrace by a Paddington omnibus, 
and passed an hour there, laughing and laughed at. They are all much 
pleased. They have, indeed, as much reason to be pleased as I, who am 
pleased on their account rather than on my own, though I am glad that 
my last years will be comfortable. Comfortable, however, I could have 
been on a sixth part of the income which I shall now have." 

The check is still preserved as a curiosity among the ar- 
chives of Messrs. Longman's firm. " The transaction," says 



34:6 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [ohap. xiv. 

Macaulay, "is quite unparalleled in the history of the book- 
trade ; and both the people at Smith, Payne, & Smith's who 
are to pay the money, and my friends who are to receive it, 
have been much amused. I went into the City to-day to give 
instructions, and was most warmly congratulated on being a 
great moneyed man. I said that I had some thoughts of go- 
ing to the chancellor of the exchequer as a bidder for the next 
loan." 

My uncle was a great favorite with his bankers. Mr. Hen- 
ry Thornton, who was, and is, a partner in Messrs. Williams & 
Deacon's, carefully encouraged him in his fixed idea that busi- 
ness could only be done by word of mouth, and many a pleas- 
ant hour the two old college friends had together in the back 
parlor at Bircham Lane. On one occasion Mr. Thornton, by 
Macaulay's request, explained to him at some length the dis- 
tinction between the different classes of Spanish stock — Act- 
ive, Passive, and Deferred. " I think," said my uncle, " that I 
catch your meaning. Active Spanish bonds profess to pay in- 
terest now, and do not. Defended Spanish bonds profess to 
pay interest at some future time, and will not. Passive Span- 
ish bonds profess to pay interest neither now, nor at any 
future time. I think that you might hwj a large amount of 
Passive Spanish bonds for a very small sum." 

It mattered nothing to Macaulay personally whether or not 
Spain pretended to be solvent ; for he never touched crazy se- 
curities. He was essentially an investor, and not a speculator. 
" He had as sound a judgment in City matters," said Mr. 
Thornton, " as I ever met with. You might safely have fol- 
lowed him blindfold." "I have," my uncle writes in his 
journal, " a great turn for finance, though few people would 
suspect it. I have a pleasure in carrying on long arithmet- 
ical operations in my head. I 'used to find amusement, when 
I was secretary at war, in the army estimates. I generally 
went through my pecuniary statements without book, except 
when it was necessary to come to pence and farthings." 

Macaulay so arranged his affairs that their management was 
to him a pastime, instead of being a source of annoyance and 
anxiety. His economical maxims were of the simplest — to 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 34.-^ 

treat oflSeial and literary gains as capital,* and to pay all bills 
within the -twenty -four hours. "I think," he says, "that 
prompt payment is a moral duty ; knowing, as I do, how pain- 
ful it is to have such things deferred." Like other men who 
have more money than time, his only account-book was that 
which his banker kept for him ; and, to assist himself in mak- 
ing up his yearly balance-sheet, he embodied a list of his in- 
vestments, and the main items of his expenditure, in a couple 
of iiTegular, but not inharmonious, stanzas. 

North-west ; South-west ; South-east ; Two Irish Greats ; 

Denmark ; Bengal ; Commercial ; Loudou Dock ; 
Insurance ; Steamship ; aud United States ; 

Slave-state ; and Free-state ; and Old English Stock. 

Taxes; Eent; Sisters; Carriage; Wages; Clo'es; 

Coals; Wine; Alms; Pocket-cash; Subscriptions; Treats; 
Bills, weekly these, and miscellaneous those. 

Travel the list completes. 

The wealth which Macaulay gathered prudently he spent 
royally ; if to spend royally is to spend on others rather than 
yourself. From the time that he began to feel the money in 
his purse, almost every page in his diary contains evidence of 
his inexhaustible, and sometimes rather carelessly regulated, 
generosity. 

"Mrs. X applied to me, as she said, and as I believe, 

without her husband's knowledge, for help in his profession. 
He is a clergyman ; a good one, but too Puritanical for my 



* Macaulay had good historical authority for this method of proceeding. 
We are told by an admirer of the Eight Honorable George Grenville that 
it was the unvaried practice of that statesman, in all situations, to live 
upon his private fortune, and save the emoluments of whatever office he 
possessed. " He had early accustomed himself to a strict appropriation of 
his income, and an exact economy in its expenditure, as the only sure 
ground on which to build a reputation for public aud private integrity, 
and to support a dignified independence." The moral results which were 
expected to flow from the observance of these excellent precepts were not 
very visible in the case of Grenville, who ratted more shamelessly than 
any public man even of his own century. 



348 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiv. 

taste. I could not promise to ask any favors from the Got- 
ernment; but I sent him twenty-five pounds to assist him in 
supporting the orphan daughters of his brother. I mean to 
let him have the same sum annually." " I have been forced 

to refuse any further assistance to a Mrs. T , who has had 

thirty-five pounds from me in the course of a few months, and 
whose demands come thicker and thicker. 1 suppose that she 
will resent, my refusal bitterly. That is all that I ever got 
by conferring benefits on any but my own nearest relations 

and friends." " 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 suppose," he writes to one 

of his sisters, " that you told Mrs. Z that I was not angry 

with her; for to-day I have a letter from her begging for 
money most vehemently, and saying that, if I am obdurate, 
her husband must go to prison. I have sent her twenty 
pounds ; making up what she has had from me within a few 
months to a hundred and thirty pounds. But I have told her 
that her husband must take the consequences of his own 
acts, and that she must expect no further assistance from me. 
This importunity has provoked me not a little." In truth, 
the tone in which some of Macaulay's most regular pensioners 
were accustomed to address him contrasts almost absurdly 
with the respect paid toward him by the public at large. 

"That wretched K ," he writes, "has sent a scurrilous 

begging letter in his usual style. He hears that I have made 
thirty thousand poimds by my malignant abuse of good men. 
Will I not send some of it to him ?" 

To have written, or to pretend to have written, a book, 
whether good or bad, was the surest and shortest road to Mac- 
aulay's pocket. " 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 fom* or five days. I must 

pull in a little." " Mrs. again, begging and praying. 

' This the last time ; an execution ; etc., etc' I will send her 
five pounds more. This will make fifty pounds in a few 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 349 

montlis to a bad writer whom I never saw." " I have re- 
ceived," he writes to Mr. Longman, " a rather queer letter, pur- 
porting to be from the wife of Mr. D , the author of , 

and dated from Greenwich. Now, I have once or twice re- 
ceived similar letters which have afterward turned out to be 
forgeries. I sent ten pounds to a sham Mary Howitt, who 
complained that an unforeseen misfortune had reduced her to 
povei'ty ; and I can hardly help suspecting that there may be 
a sham Mrs. D . If, however, the author of is real- 
ly in distress, I would gladly assist him, though I am no ad- 
mirer of his poetry. Could you learn from his publishers 
whether he really lives at Greenwich ? If he does, I will send 
him a few pounds. If he does not, I wiU set the police to 
work." 

The Kev. Mr. Frederick Arnold tells the story of a German 
gentleman, the husband of a lady honorably connected with 
literature, who had fallen from affluence to unexpected pover- 
ty. He applied to Macaulay for assistance, and, instead of the 
guinea for which he had ventured to hope, he was instantly 
presented with thirty pounds. During the last year of my 
uncle's life, I called at Holly Lodge to bid him good-bye be- 
fore my return to the university. He told me that a person 
had presented himself that very morning, under the name of 
a Cambridge fellow of some mark, but no great mark, in the 
learned world. This gentleman (for such he appeared to be) 
stated himself to be in distress, and asked for pecuniary aid. 
Macaulay, then and there, gave him a hundred pounds. The 
visitor had no sooner left the room than my uncle began to 
reflect that he had never set eyes on him before. He accord- 
ingly desired me, as soon as I got back to Cambridge, to 
make, with all possible delicacy, such inquiries as might satisfy 
him that, when wishing to relieve the necessities of a brother 
scholar, he had not rewarded the audacity of a professional 
impostor.* 

* " September lith, 1859. — A Dr. called, and introduced himself as a 

needy man of letters. I was goiug to give him a sovereign, and send him 
away, when I discovered that he was the philologist, whom I should never 
have expected to see in such a plight. I felt for him, and gave him a liun- 



350 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiv. 

If he was sucli with regard to people whose very faces were 
strange to him, it may well be believed that every valid claim 
upon his liberality was readily acknowledged. He was. hand- 
some in all his dealings, both great and small. Wherever he 
went (to use his own phrase), he took care to make his moth- 
er's son welcome. Within his own household he was posi- 
tively worshiped, and with good reason ; for Sir Walter Scott 
himself was not a kinder master. He cheerfully and habitual- 
ly submitted to those petty sacrifices by means of which an un- 
selfish man can do so much to secure the comfort and to earn 
the attachment of those who are around him ; marching off in 
all weathers to his weekly dinner at the club, in order to give 
his servants their Sunday evening ; going far out of his way 
to make such arrangements as would enable them to enjoy 
and to prolong their holidays ; or permitting them, if so they 
preferred, to entertain their relations under his roof for a 
month together. " To-day," he says, " William and Elizabeth 
went off to fetch William's father. As I write, here come 
my travelers ; the old man with a stick. Well ? It is good 
to give pleasure and show sympathy. There is no vanity in 
saying that I am a good master." 

It would be superfluous to dwell upon Macaulay's conduct 
toward those with whom he was connected by the ties of 
blood, and by the recollections of early days which had not 
been exempt from poverty and sorrow. Suffice it to say that 
he regarded himself as the head of his family; responsible 
(to speak plainly) for seeing that all his brothers and sisters 
were no worse off than if his father had died a prosperous 
man. It was only in this respect that he assumed the pater- 
nal relation. In his ordinary behavior there was nothing 
which betokened that he was the benefactor of all with whom 
he had to do. He never interfered ; he never obtruded ad- 
vice ; he never demanded that his own tastes or views should 
be consulted, and he was studiously mindful of the feelings, 



fired pounds. A hard pnll on me, I must say. However, I have been pros- 
perous beyond the common lot of men, and may well assist those who' have 
been out of luck." 



1856-'58.] LOED MACAULAY. 351 

and even the fancies, of others. "With the omission of only- 
two words, we may justly apply to hun the eulogy pro- 
noimced upon another famous author by one who certainly 
had the best of reasons for knowing that it was deserved : " It 
is Southey's almost unexampled felicity to possess the best 
gifts of talent and genius, free from all their characteristic 
defects. As son, brother, husband, father, master, friend, he 
moves with firm yet light steps, alike unostentatious, and alike 
exemplary."* 

It is pleasant to reflect that Macaulay's goodness was repaid, 
as far as gratitude and affection could sufiice to repay it. He 
was contented with the share of domestic felicity which had 
fallen to his lot. " To-morrow," he says in one place, " the 
Trevelyans go to Weybridge. I feel these separations, though 
they are for short times, and short distances ; but a life is hap- 
py of which these are the misfortunes."f From graver ca- 
lamities and longer partings he was mercifully spared ; most 
mercifully, because, as will soon be seen, he was quite unfitted 
to bear them. Already he was painfully aware that the mal- 
adies under which he suffered had relaxed the elasticity of his 
spirits, had sapped his powers of mental endurance, and had 
rendered his happiness more dependent than ever upon the 
permanence of blessings which no human foresight could se- 
cure. The prayer that most often came to his lips was that 
he might not survive those whom he loved. " God- grant," 
he writes on the 1st of January, 1858, " that, if my dear little 



* This passage is from a letter written by Coleridge, Tvhich forms part 
of the extraordinarily interesting collection published by Mr. Cottle, the 
Bristol book -seller. The correspondence presents a winning picture of 
Southey's silent and unconscious heroism. " I feel," he once said (and his 
life showed how truly he felt it), " that dnty and happiness are insepara- 
ble." Neither he nor Macanlay laid claim to what are called the " privi- 
leges of genins." In a note on the margin of Nichols's " Literary Anec- 
dotes " my uncle says : " Genius ! What had Perceval Stockdale to do 
with genius ? But, as it is, the plea of genius is but a poor one for immo- 
rality, and nine-tenths of those who plead it are dunces." 

t He consoled himself on this occasion by reading Crabbe " during some 
hours, with pleasure ever fresh." 



352 LIFE Am) LETTERS OF [chap.xiv. 

circle is to be diminislied this year by any death, it may be by 
mine ! ISTot that I am weary of life. I am far from insensi- 
ble to the pleasure of having fame, rank, and this opulence 
which has come so late." His imagination was deeply im- 
pressed by an old Koman imprecation, which he had noticed 
long ago in a Gallery of Inscriptions: '"Ultimus suorum 
moriatur ;' an awful curse !" 

Once, and once only, during many years, he had any real 
ground for alarm. 

" January 29iA, 1855. — The severest shock that I have had since January, 
1835.* A note from Margaret to say that Hannah has scarlet fever. Mar- 
garet, too, is exposed. I was quite overset. They begged me not to go, 
but I could not stay away. I saw them both, and was much relieved. It 
seems that the crisis is over, and that the worst was past before the nat- 
ure of the disease was known." A few days afterward he says : " I went 
to Westbourne Terrace, and saw Margaret. I begin to be nervous about 
her, now that her mother is safe. Alas that I should have staked so much 
on what may be so easily lost! Tet I would uot have it otherwise !" 

He assuredly had no cause to wish it otherwise ; for he en- 
joyed the satisfaction of feeling, not only that his affection 
was appreciated and returned, but that those of whom he was 
fondest never wearied of his company. Full and diversified 
always, and often impassioned or profound, his conversation 
was never beyond the compass of his audience ; for his talk, 
like his writing, was explanatory rather than allusive ; and, 
born orator that he was, he contrived without any apparent 
effort that every sentence which he uttered should go home 
to every person who heard it. He was admirable with young 
people. Innumerable passages in his journals and correspond- 
ence prove how closely he watched them ; how completely he 
understood them ; and how, awake or asleep, they were f or- 



* It was in January, 1835, that he heard of his youngest sister's death. 
He writes, in April, 1856 : " I passed the day in burning and arranging pa- 
pers. Some things that met my eyes overcame me for a time. Margaret. 
Alas ! alas ! And yet she might have changed to me. But no ; that could 
never have been. To think that she has been near twenty-two years dead; 
and I am crying for her as if it were yesterday." 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 353 

ever in Ms thoughts. On the fragment of a letter to Mr. 
Ellis there is mention of a dream he had about his younger 
niece, " so vivid that I must tell it. She came to me with a 
penitential face, and told me that she had a great sin to con- 
fess; that 'Pepys's Diary' was all a forgery, and that she 
had forged it. I was in the greatest dismay. ' What ! I have 
been quoting in reviews, and in my " History," a forgery of 
yours as a book of the highest authority. How shall I ever 
hold my head up again V I woke with the fright, poor Alice's 
supplicating voice still in my ears." He now and then speaks 
of his wish to have some serious talk with one or another of 
the lads in whom he was specially interested " in a quiet way," 
and " without the forms of a lecture." His lectures were, in- 
deed, neither frequent nor formidable. I faintly remember 
his once attempting to shame me out of a fit of idleness by 
holding himself up as an awful example of the neglect of j 
mathematics. It must not, however, be supposed that Mac- 
aulay spoiled the children of whom he was fondest. On the 
contrary, he had strict notions of what their behavior should 
be ; and, in his own quiet way, he took no little pains to train 
their dispositions. He was visibly pained by any outbreak 
on their part of willfulness, or bad temper, or, above all, of 
selfishness. But he had very seldom occasion to give verbal 
expression to his disapprobation. His influence over us was 
so unbounded — there was something so impressive in the dis- 
pleasure of one whose afEection for us was so deep, and whose 
kindness was so unfailing — that no punishment could be de- 
vised one half as formidable as the knowledge that we had 
vexed our uncle. He was enabled to reserve his spoken re- 
proofs for the less heinous sins of false rhymes, misquotations, 
and solecisms (or what he chose to consider as such), in gram- 
mar, orthography, and accentuation — for saying " The tea is 
being made," and not "The tea is a -making;" for writing 
"Bosphorus" instead of "Bosporus," and "Syren" instead of 
" Siren ;" and, above all, for pronouncing the penultimate of 
"Metamorphosis" short. This was the more hard upon us 
because, in conforming to the fashion of the world, we were 
acting in accordance with the moral of the best among his 
YoL. II.— 23 



354 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. xiv. 

many stories about Dr. Parr. A gentleman who had been 
taken to task for speaking of the ancient capital of Egypt as 
"Alexandria" defended himself by the authority and exam- 
ple of Dr. Bentley. " Dr. Bentley and I," replied Dr. Parr, 
" may call it Alexandria ; but I think you had better call it 
Alexandria." 

It was a grievous loss to Macaulay when we grew too old for 
sight-seeing ; or, at any rate, for seeing the same sight many 
times over. As the best substitute for Madame Tussaud and 
the Colosseum he used, in later years, to take his nieces the 
round of the picture-galleries ; and, though far from an unim- 
peachable authority on matters of art, he was certainly a most 
agreeable cicerone. In painting, as in most things, he had 
his likes and dislikes, and had them strongly. In 1857 he 
writes : " Preraphaelitism is spreading, I am glad to see — glad, 
because it is by spreading that such affectations perish." He 
saw at the Frankfort Museum " several chefs-d'oeuvre, as they 
are considered, of modern German art ; all, to my thinking, 
very poor. There is a 'Daniel in the Den of Lions,' which 
it is a shame to exhibit. I did not even like the John Huss, 
and still less Overbeck's trashy allegory. One of Stanfield's 
landscapes or of Landseer's hunting pieces is worth all the 
mystic daubs of all the Germans." 

]^acaulay looked at pictures as a man of letters, rather than 
as a connoisseur ; judging them less by their technical merits 
than with reference to the painter's choice and treatment of 
his subject. " There was a Salvator," he says in one place, 
" which I was pleased to see, because the thought had occur- 
red to me in Horatius — an oak struck by lightning, with the 
augurs looking at it in dismay." In 1 853 he writes : " The Ex- 
hibition was very good indeed ; capital Landseers ; one excel- 
lent Stanfield ; a very good Roberts. Ward was good ; but I 
was struck by one obvious fault in his picture of Montrose's 
execution — a fault, perhaps, inseparable from such subjects. 
Montrose was a mean-looking man, and Ward thought it nec- 
essary to follow the lUceness, and perhaps he was right. But 
all the other figures are imaginary, and each is, in its own way, 
striking. The consequence is that the central figure is not 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 355 

only mean in itseK, but is made meaner by contrast. In pict- 
ures where all the figures are imaginary this will not occur, 
nor in pictures where all the figures are real." Macaulay's 
sentence about Dr. Johnson's literary verdicts might perhaps 
be applied to his own criticisms on art : " At the very worst, 
they mean something; a praise to which much of what is 
called criticism in our time has no pretensions."* 

Macaulay may not have been a reliable guide in the regions 
of high art, but there was one department of education in 
which, as an instructor, he might have challenged comparison 
with the best. A boy whose classical reading he watched, and 
in some degree directed, might, indeed, be lazy, but could not 
be indifferent to his work. The dullest of tyros would have 
been inspired by the ardor of one whose thoughts were often 
for weeks together more in Latium and Attica than in Mid- 
dlesex ; who knew the careers and the characters of the great 
men who paced the forum, and declaimed in the Temple of 
Concord, as intimately as those of his own rivals in Parlia- 
ment and his own colleagues in the Cabinet ; to whom Cicero 
was as real as Peel, and Cuiio as Stanley ; who was as famil- 
iar with his Lucian and his Augustan histories as other men 
of letters are with their Yoltaire and their Pepys ; who cried 
over Homer with emotion, and over Aristophanes with laugh- 
ter, and could not read the " De Corona " even for the twen- 
tieth time without striking his clenched fist at least once a 
miniite on the arm of his easy-chair. As he himself says of 

* Macaulay had a great admiration for that fine picture, the " Lady's 
Last Stake," which, strange to say, is not inchided in the ordinary editions 
of Hogarth. He suggested that an engraviag of it should be prefixed as 
frontispiece to a collection of Mrs. Piozzi's papers which Mr. Longman 
talked of publishing. " There is a great deal," he writes, " about that pict- 
ure in Mrs. Piozzi's life of herself The lady who is reduced to the last 
stake was a portrait of her ; and the likeness was discernible after the 
lapse of more than fifty years." The expression of puzzled amusement on 
the lady's face is as good as any thing in the breakfast scene of the " Mar- 
riage ^ la Mode ;" and the effect of the background — a plain parlor, with 
the ordinary furniture of the day — is a remarkable instance of the amount 
of pleasure that may be afforded to the spectator by the merest accessories 
of a picture which is the careful work of a great artist. 



356 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiv. 

Lord Somers, " he had studied ancient literature like a man ;" 
and he loved it as only a poet could. JSTo words can convey a 
notion of the glamour which Macaulay's robust and unaffect- 
ed enthusiasm threw over the books or the events which had 
aroused and which fed it; or of the permanent impression 
which- that enthusiasm left upon the minds of those who came 
within its influence. All the little interviews that took place 
between us as master and pupil, to which a multitude of 
notices in his diary refer, are as fresh in my memory as if 
they had occurred last summer, instead of twenty years ago. 
"Home, and took a cabful of books to Westbourne Terrace 
for George — Scapula, Ainsworth, Lucian, Quintus Curtius." 
And again : " George was at home, with a hurt which kept 
him from returning to school. I gave him a lecture on the 
tragic metres, which will be well worth a day's schooling to 
him'if he profits by it." Macaulay's care of my classics ceased 
with the holidays, for he knew that at school I was in safe 
hands. He writes to his sister in December, 1856: "I am 
truly glad that Vaughan remains for the present at Harrow. 
After next October, the sooner he is made a bishop the bet- 
ter." This last opinion was shared by all who wished well to 
the Church of England, with the most unfortunate exception 
of Dr. Yaughan himself. 

Macaulay wrote to me at Harrow pretty constantly, sealing 
his letters with an amorphous mass of red wax, which, in de- 
fiance of post-office regulations, not unfrequently concealed a 
piece of gold. " It is said " (so he once began), " that the best 
part of a lady's letter is the postscript. The best part of an 
uncle's is under the seal." 

Tunbridge Wells, August Ist, 1853. 

Deae Geoege, — I am glad that you are working hard. Did 
you ever read " Paradise Lost ?" If not, I would advise you 
to read it now ; for it is the best commentary that I know on 
the " Prometheus." There was a great resemblance between 
the genius of ^schylus and the genius of Milton ; and this 
appears most strikingly in those two wonderful creations of 
the imagination, Prometheus and Satan. I do not believe that 
Milton borrowed Satan from the Greek drama. For, though 



1856-'58.] LOED MACAULAY. 357 

he was an excellent scholar after the fashion of his time, ^s- 
chylus was, I suspect, a little beyond him. You can not con- 
ceive how much the facilities for reading the Greek writers 
have increased within the last two hundred years, how much 
better the text is now printed, and how much light the succes- 
sive labors of learned men have thrown on obscure passages. 
I was greatly struck with this when, at Althorp, I looked 
through Lord Spencer's magnificent collection of Aldine edi- 
tions. Numerous passages which are now perfectly simple 
were mere heaps of nonsense. And no writer suffered more 
than ^schylus. 

Note particularly in the "Prometheus" the magnificent 
history of the origin of arts and sciences. That passage shows 
jEschylus to have been not only a poet of the first order, but 
a great thinker. It is the fashion to call Euripides a philo- 
sophical poet ; but I remember nothing in Euripides so philo- 
sophical as that rapid enumeration of all the discoveries and 
inventions which make the difference between savage and 
civilized man. The latter part of the play is glorious. 

I am very busy here getting some of my speeches ready 
for the press, and during the day I get no reading, except 
while I walk on the heath, and then I read Plato, one of the 
five first-rate Athenians. The other four are your friends 
^Eschylus and Thucydides, Sophocles and Demosthenes. I 
know of no sixth Athenian who can be added to the list. Cer- 
tainly not Euripides, nor Xenophon, nor Isoerates, nor ^s- 
chines. But I forgot Aristophanes. More shame for me. 
He makes six, and I can certainly add nobody else to the six. 
How I go on gossiping about these old fellows when I should 
be thinking of other things ! Ever yours, 

T. B. Macaulay. 

During my last year at school my uncle did me the honor 
of making me the vehicle for a compliment to Lord Palmer- 
ston. " George's Latin Poem," he writes to Mr. Ellis, in the 
spring of 1857, "is an account of a tour up the Ehine in imi- 
tation of the Fifth Satire of Horace's First Book. The close 
does not please Yaughan, and, indeed, is not good. I have 



358 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.xiv. 

suggested what I think a happier termination. The travelers 
get into a scrape at Heidelberg, and are taken up. How to 
extricate them is the question. I advise George to represent 
himself as saying that he is an Englishman, and that there is 
one who will look to it that an Englishman shall be as much 
respected as a Eoman citizen. The name of Palmerston at 
once procures the prisoners their liberty. Palmerston, you 
remember, is a Harrow man. The following termination has 
occurred to me : 

Tantum valuit prsBiiobile nomen, 
Quod no8ter coUis, nostra h®c sibi vindicat aula ; 
Quod Scytha, quod tortS; rediinitus tempora mitr^ 
Persa timet, diroque gerens Ser beUa veneno. 

" Do not mention this. It might lead people to think that 
I have helped George, and there is not a line in any of his ex- 
ercises that is not his own." 

It may be imagined amidst what a storm of applause these 
spirited verses (redolent, perhaps, rather of Claudia than of 
Horace) were declaimed, on the Harrow speech-day, to an au- 
dience as proud of Palmerston as ever an Eton audience was 
of Canning.* 

"August 28th, 1857. — A great day in my life. I staid at home, very sad 
about India.t Not that I have any doubt about the result ; but the news 
is heart-breaking. I went, very low, to dinner, and had hardly begun to eat 
vrhen a messenger came with a letter from Palmerston. An oifer of a peer- 
age; 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 expressions ; but God knows that the poor 
women at Delhi and Cawnpore are more in my thoughts than my coronet. 

* It is necessary, in order to explain the allusions in Macaulay's lines, 
to remind the reader that in July, 1857, Palmerston's Kussian laurels were 
still fresh ; and that he had within the last few months brought the Per- 
sian difficulty to a successful issue, and commenced a war with China. 
Hostilities began with an attempt on the part of a Hong-Kong baker, of 
the suggestive name of A-lum,to poison Sir John Bowring. 

t The Sepoy Mutiny was then at its very worst. Something like the 
truth of the Cawnpore story was beginning to be known in England. 



l856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 359 

It was necessary for me to choose a title off-band. I determined to be 
Baron Macaulay of Eothley. I was born tbere ; I have lived much there ; 
I am named from the family which long had the manor ; my uncle was 
rector there. Nobody can complain of my taking a designation from a 
village which is nobody's property now.'' 

Macaulay went abroad on the 1st of September. After his 
return from the Continent he says : " On my way from the 
station to Holly Lodge yesterday, I called at the Koyal Insti- 
tution, and saw the papers of the last fortnight. There is a 
general cry of pleasure at my elevation. I am truly gratified 
by finding how well I stand with the public, and gratified by 
finding that Palmerston has made a hit for himself in bestow- 
ing this dignity on me." " I think " (so my mother writes) 
" that his being made a peer was one of the very few things 
that every body approved. I can not recall any opinion ad- 
verse to it. He enjoyed it himself, as he did every thing, 
simply and cordially. We were making a tour in the Ty- 
rol that summer ; and, on our return, we stopped at Paris, I 
and my children, to spend a few days at the Louvre Hotel 
with your uncle and Mr. Ellis. I often think of our arrival 
at eleven at night; the well -spread board awaiting us; his 
joyous welcome ; and then his desiring us to guess what his 
news was, and my disappointing him by instantly guessing it. 
Then our merry time together ; the last unbroken circle ; for 
change began the following year, and change has since been 
the order of my life." 

To the Em). Dr. WheweU. 

Holly Lodge, Kensington, October 9th, 1857. 
My dear Mastee, — Thanks for your kindness, which is 
what it has always been. Unhappily I have so bad a cold, 
and Trevelyan has so much to do, that neither of us will be 
able to accompany our boy— for we are equally interested in 
him — to Cambridge next week. It is pleasant to me to think 
that I have now a new tie to Trinity. Ever yours, 

Macaulay. 

My uncle had long been looking forward to the period of 



360 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. xiv. 

my residence at the university as an opportunity for renew- 
ing those early recollections and associations which he studi- 
ously cultivated, and which, after the lapse of iive-and-thirty 
years, filled as large a space as ever in his thoughts. I have 
at this moment before me his Cambridge Calendar for 1859. 
The book is fuU of his handwriting. He has been at the 
pains of supplementing the Tripos hsts, between 1750 and 
1835, with the names of all the distinguished men who took 
their degrees in each successive year, but who, failing to go 
out in honors, missed such immortality as the Cambridge 
Calendar can give. He has made an elaborate computation, 
which must have consumed a whole morning, in order to as- 
certain the collective annual value of the livings in the gift of 
the several colleges; from the twenty -four thousand pounds 
a year of St. John's and the eighteeen thousand of Trinity, 
down to the hundreds a year of St. Catherine's and of Down- 
ing. Many and many an entry in his diary proves that he 
never ceased to be proud of having won for himself a name 
at Cambridge. On the 11th of June, 1857, he writes : " I 
dined with Milnes, and sat between Thirlwall and Whewell — 
three Trinity fellows together ; and not bad specimens for a 
college to have turned out within six years, though I say it." 

If Macaulay's reverence for those personal anecdotes rela- 
ting to the habits and doings of famous students, which have 
come down to us from the Golden Age of classical criticism, 
was any indication of his tastes, he would willingly have once 
more been a member of his old college, leading the life of a 
senior fellow, such as it was, or such as he imagined it to have 
been, in the days of Person, Scholefield, or Dobree. Gladly 
(at least so he pretended to believe) would he have passed his 
summers by the banks of the Cam editing the " Pharsalia ;" 
collating* the manuscripts of the " Hecuba " which are among 
the treasures of the University Library ; and " dawdling over 
Tryphiodorus, Callimachus's Epigrams, and Tacitus's Histo- 



* Macanlay had a sincere admiration for that old scholar, who, when 
condoled with upon the misfortune of an illness which had injured his 
sight, thanked God that he had kept his " collating eye." 



1856-'58.] LOED MACAULAT. 361 

ries." He was always ready for a conversation, and even for a 
correspondence, on a nice point of scholarship ; and I have sel- 
dom seen him more genuinely gratified than by the intelli- 
gence that an emendation which he had suggested upon an 
obscure passage in Euripides was favorably regarded in the 
Trinity combination room.* 

During the May term of 1858 he paid me the first of those 
visits which he had taught me to anticipate with delight ever 
since I had been old enough to know what a college was. He 
detained a large breakfast-party of under-graduates far into the 
day, while he rolled out for their amusement and instruction 
his stores of information on the history, customs, and tradi- 
tions of the university; and I remember that after their de- 
parture he entertained himself with an excessively droll com- 
parison of his own position with that of Major Pendennis 
among the young heroes of St. Boniface. But, proud as I was 
of him, I can recall few things more painful than the con- 
trast between his strength of intellect and of memory, and his 
extreme weakness of body. In July, 1858, Lord Carlisle ex- 
pressed himself as distressed " to see and hear Macaulay much 
broken by cough ;" and in the previous May the symptoms 
of failing health were not less clearly discernible. With a 
mind still as fresh as when, in 1820, he wore the blue gown 
of Trinity, and disputed with Charles Austin till four in the 
morning over the comparative merits of the Inductive and the 
d priori method in politics, it was already apparent that a 
journey across Clare Bridge, and along the edge of the great 
lawn at King's, performed at the rate of half a mile in the 
hour, was an exertion too severe for his feeble frame.f 

* ri dijT en ^ui ; tiv viroXeiirofiaL rvx^v ; 
ydfiovQ kXou'evr} T&v KaKuv inraWayas, 
fiiT avSpbc oiKUV flapPapov, irpbg irKovaiav 
TpaTreZav 'iZova ; dW orav TroaiQ iriKpbg 
Kvvy yvvaiKlj Kal to <7aifi ioTiv TciKpov. 

The difficulty of this passage lies in the concluding line. One editor reads 
"ro aCiv kariv," another " rA awleaQai." Macaulay proposed to substitute 

•"/3p£jn"'for"(rV-" 

+ In November, 1857, Macaulay received invitations from Edinburgh and 



362 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. xiv. 

In the autumn of 1857 the high-stewardship of the Borough 
of Cambridge became vacant by the death of Earl Fitzwilliam, 
and Macaulay was elected in his place by the unanimous vote 
of the Town Council. " I find," he says, " that the ofBce has 
been held by a succession of men of the highest eminence in 
political and literary history — the Protector Somerset ; Dud- 
ley Duke of ISTorthumberland ; EUesmere ; Bacon ; Coventry ; 
Finch; Oliver Cromwell; Clarendon; and Eussell, the La 
Hogue man. Yery few places have been so filled." The 
ceremony of Macaulay's inauguration as high-steward was de- 
ferred till the warm weather of 1858. 

" Tuesday, May 11th. — I was at Cambridge by ten. The mayor was at 
the station to receive me ; and most hospitable he was, and kind. I went 
with him to the Town-hall, was sworn in, and then was ushered into the 
great room, where a public breakfast was set out. I had not been in that 
room since 1820, when I heard Miss Stephens sing there, and bore part in 
a furious contest between 'God save the King' and 'God save the Queen.' 
I had been earlier in this room. I was there at two meetings of the Cam- 
bridge Bible Society ; that of 1813, and that of 1815. On the later occa- 
sion I bought at Deighton's Scott's ' Waterloo,' just published, and read it 
on a frosty journey back to Aspenden Hall. But how I go on wandering ! 
The room now looked smaller than in old times. About forty municipal 
functionaries, and as many guests, chiefly of the university, were present. 
The mayor gave my health in a very graceful manner. I replied concisely, 
excusing myself, with much truth, on the plea of health, from haranguing 
longer. I was well received ; very well. Several speeches followed ; the 
vice-chancellor saying very handsomely that I was a pledge of the contin- 
uance of the present harmony between town and gown.'' 

Macaulay had good reason to shrink from the exertion of a 
long speech, as was only too evident to his audience in the 
Cambridge Assembly-room. There was a touch of sadness in 
the minds of all present as they listened to the brief but ex- 
pressive phrases in which he reminded them that the time had 



Glasgow to take part in the ceremonies of the Burns centenary. " I re- 
fused both invitations," he says, " for fifty reasons ; one of which is that, 
if I went down in the depth of winter to harangue in Scotland, I should 
never come back alive.'' 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. - 363 

been when he might have commanded a hearing " in larger 
and stormier assemblies," but that any service which he could 
henceforward do for his country must be done in the quiet 
of his own library. " It is now five years," he said, " since I 
raised my voice in public ; and it is not likely — unless there 
be some special call of duty — that I shall ever raise it in public 
again." 

That special call of duty never came. Macaulay's indiffer- 
ence to the vicissitudes of party politics had by this time 
grown into a confirmed habit of mind. His correspondence 
during the spring of 1857 contains but few and brief allusions 
even to catastrophes as striking as the ministerial defeat upon 
the China war, and the overwhelming reverse of fortune which 
ensued when the question was transferred to the polling 
booths. " "Was there ever any thing," he writes, " since the 
fall of the rebel angels, like the smash of the Anti-Corn-law 
League? How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer! I 
wish that Bright and Cobden had been returned." Macau- 
lay's opinion in the matter, as far as he had an opinion, was 
in favor of the Government, and against the coalition. " I 
am glad," he vrrote on the eve of the debate, " that I have 
done with politics. I should not have been able to avoid a 
pretty sharp encounter with Lord John." But his days for 
sharp encounters were over, and his feelings of partisanship 
were reserved for the controversies about standing armies and 
royal grants which convulsed the last two Parliaments of the 
seventeenth century. He was, to describe him in his own 
words, "a vehement ministerialist of 1698," who thought 
"more about Somers and Montague than about Campbell and 
Lord Palmerston." 

A faint interest, rather personal than political, in the pro- 
ceedings of the Upper House was awakened in his breast when, 
sitting for the first time on the red benches, he found himseK 
in the presence of the most eminent among his ancient rivals, 
adversaries, and allies. "Lord Derby," he writes, "was all 
himself — clever, keen, neat, clear ; never aiming high, but al- 
ways hitting what he aims at." A quarter of a century had 
not changed Macaulay's estimate of Lord Brougham, nor soft- 



364 LIFE AKD LETTERS OF [chap. xiv. 

ened his mode of expressing it. "Strange fellow! His 
powers gone. His spite immortal. A dead nettle."* 

During his first session the new peer more than once had a 
mind to speak upon matters relating to- India. In February, 
1858, Lord EUenborough gave notice of a motion for papers, 
with the view, as was presumed, of elicituig proofs that the 
Sepoy mutiny had been provoked by the proselytizing tend- 
encies of the British Government. Macaulay, prompted by 
an Englishman's sense of fair play, resolved to give the elo- 
quent and redoubtable ex-governor general a chance of pay- 
ing off outstanding scores. But it all came to nothing. 
"February l%th. — I worked hard, to make ready for a discus- 
sion of the great question of religion and education in India. 
I went down to the House. Lord EUenborough's speech 
merely related to a petty question about the report of a sin- 
gle inspector — a very silly one, I am afraid — in Bahar. Lord 
Granville answered weU, and much more than sufficiently. 
Then the debate closed. Many people thought that Lord 
EUenborough would have been much longer and more vehe- 
ment, if he had not been taken aback by seeing me ready to 
reply. They say that he has less pluck than his warm and 
somewhat petulant manner indicates. I can only say that I 
was quite as much afraid of him as he could be of me. I 
thought of Winkle and Dowler in the ' Pickwick Papers.' "f 
On the 1st of May in the same year Macaulay says : " I meant 
to go to the Museum ; but, seeing that Lord Shaftesbury has 
given notice of a petition which may produce a discussion 



* Macaulay's disapprobation of Lord Brougham had been revived and 
intensified by a recent occnrrenoe. "April 17 th, 1856. — I had a short con- 
versation with Lord Lansdowne about a disagreeable matter — that most 
cruel and calumnious attack ■which Brougham has made on Lord Euther- 
ford in a paper which has been printed and circulated among the peers 
■who form the Committee on Life Peerages. I was glad to find that there 
■was no chance that the paper would be published. Should it be publish- 
ed, poor Eutherford will not want defenders." 

t " ' Mr. Winkle, sir, be calm. Don't strike me. I won't bear it. A 
blow ! Never!' said Mr. Dowler, looking meeker than Mr. Winkle had ex- 
pected from a gentleman of his ferocity." 



1856-'58.] LOED MACAULAY. 



365 



about Christianity in India, I staid at home all day, preparing 
myself to speak if there should be occasion. I shall drop no 
hint of my intention. I can not help thinking that I shall 
succeed, if I have voice enough to make myself heard." But, 
when the day arrived, he writes : " Shaftesbury presented the 
petition with only a few words. Lord Ellenborough said only 
a few words in answer.* To make a long set speech in such 
circumstances would have been absurd; so I went quietly 
home." 

In the course of the year 1858 several of those eminent 
Frenchmen who refused to bow the knee before the Second 
Empire had frequent and friendly conversations with Mac- 
aulay on the future of their unhappy country ; but they failed 
to convince the historian of our great Eevolution that the ex- 
periment of 1688 could be successfully repeated on Gallic soil. 
" I argued strongly," he writes on one occasion, " against the 
notion that much good was likely to be done by insurrection 
even against the bad governments of the Continent. "What 
good have the revolutions of 1848 done ? Or, rather, what 
harm have they not done ? The only revolutions which have 
turned out well have been defensive revolutions — ours of 
1688 ; the French of 1830. The American was, to a great ex- 
tent, of the same kind." On the 15th of May he says : " Mont- 
alembert called. He talked long, vehemently, and with feel- 
ing about the degraded state of France. I could have said 
a good deal on the other side ; but I refrained. I like him 
much." A fortnight later: "Duvergier d'Hauranne called, 
and brought his son. How he exclaimed against the French 
emperor! I do not like the emperor or his system; but I 
can not find that his enemies are able to hold out any reason- 
able hope that, if he is pulled down, a better government will 
be set up. I can not say to a Frenchman what I think — that 
the French have only themselves to thank ; and that a people 
which violently pulls down constitutional governments, and 
lives quiet under despotism, must be, and ought to be, despot- 



* Between February and May Lord Ellenborougli had become Secretary 
of the Indian Board of Control. 



366 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chaj. xiv. 

ically go-verned. "We should have reformed the government 
of the House of Orleans without subverting it. "We should 
not have borne the yoke of celwi^ci for one day. However, 
I feel for men like Duvergier d'Hauranne and Montalembert, 
who are greatly in advance of the body of their countrymen." 
Macaulay had little attention to spare for the politics of the 
Westminster lobbies or the Parisian boulevards; but it must 
not be thought that he was growing indifferent to the wider 
and more permanent interests of the British nation and the 
British empire. The honor of our flag and the welfare of our 
people were now, as ever, the foremost objects of his solici- 
tude. " England," he writes, " seems to be profoundly quiet. 
God grant that she may long continue so, and that the history 
of the years which I may yet have to live may be the dullest 
portion of her history ! It is sad work to live in times about 
which it is amusing to read." The fervor of this prayer for 
public tranquillity was prompted by the recollections of 185Y, 
which were still fresh in Macaulay's mind. On the 29th of 
June in that terrible year he notes in his diary : " To break- 
fast with Milnes. Horrible news from India: massacre of 
Europeans at Delhi, and mutiny. I have no apprehen- 
sions for our Indian empire; but this is a frightful event. 
Home ; but had no heart to work. I will not try at present." 
Again he says, and yet again, " I can not settle to work while 
the Delhi affair is undecided." His correspondence during 
the coming months overflows with allusions to India. " No 
more news ; that is to say, no later news than we had before 
you started ; but private letters are appearing daily in the 
newspapers. The cruelties of the sepoys have inflamed the 
nation to a degree unprecedented within my memory. Peace 
Societies, and Aborigines Protection Societies, and Societies 
for the Reformation of Criminals are silenced. There is one 
terrible cry for revenge. The account of that dreadful milita- 
ry execution at Peshawur — forty men blown at once from the 
mouths of cannon, their heads, legs, arms flying in all direc- 
tions — was read with delight by people who three weeks ago 
were against all capital punishment. Bright himself declares 
for the vigorous suppression of the mutiny. The almost uni- 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 367 

versal feeling is that not a single sepoy within the walls of 
Delhi should be spared ; and I own that it is a feeling with 
which I can not help sympathizing." 

When Macaulay was writing these words, the crimes of the 
mutineers were still unpunished, and their power unbroken. 
The belief that mercy to the sepoy was no mercy, as long as 
Delhi remained in rebel hands, was sternly carried into action 
in the Punjaub and the ISTorth-west provinces of India by 
men who were sincerely humane both by temperament and 
by religious conviction. That belief was almost universal 
among people of our race on both sides of the Atlantic. The 
public opinion even of philanthropic and abolitionist Boston 
did not differ on this point from the public opinion of Lon- 
don. " The India mail," wrote Dr. Oliver "Wendell Holmes, 
" brings stories of women and children outraged and murder- 
ed. The royal stronghold is in the hands of the babe-killers. 
England takes down the map of the world, which she has 
girdled with empire, and makes a correction thus: DELHI. 
Dde. The civilized world says. Amen !" 

" September 19th, 1857. — The Indian business looks ill. This miserable 
affair at Dinapore may produce serious inconvenience.* However, the 
tide is near the turn. Within a month the flood of English will come in 
fast. Bat it is painful to be so revengeful as I feel myself. I, who can not 
bear to see a beast or bird in pain, could look on without winking while 
Nana Sahib underwent all the tortures of Eavaillac. And these feelings 
are not mine alone. Is it possible that a year passed under the influeuce 
of such feelings should not have some effect on the national character? 
The effect will be partly good and partly bad. The nerves of our minds 
will be braced. Effeminate, mawkish philanthropy will lose all its influ- 
ence. But shall we not hold human life generally cheaper than we have 
done? Having brought ourselves to exult in the misery of the guilty, 
shall we not feel less sympathy for the sufferings of the innocent ? In one 

* The Dinapore Brigade, a force of twenty-five hundred bayonets, muti- 
nied on the 25th of July, and a few days later routed, and well-nigh de- 
stroyed, au ill-oondnoted expedition which had been dispatched to relieve 
the European garrison at Arrah. The glorious defense of the little honse, 
and its equally glorious relief, have thrown into shade the memory of the 
lamentable blunders which gave occasion for that display of intelligent 
and heroic valor. 



368 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiv. 

sense, no doubt, in exacting a tremendous retribution we are doing onr 
duty and performing an act of mercy. So is Calcraft wlien lie hangs a 
murderer. Yet tlie liabit of hanging murderers is found to injure the char- 
acter." 

Macaulay did every thing which lay in his power to show 
that at such a crisis he felt a citizen's concern in the fortunes 
of the commonwealth. At the invitation of the lord mayor 
he became a member of the committee for the relief of the In- 
dian sufferers. On the day appointed for national humiliation 
and prayer he writes as follows : 

" October 7th. — Wind and rain. However, I went to ohnroh, though by 
no means well. Nothing could bo more solemn or earnest than the aspect 
of the congregation, which was numerous. The sermon was detestable — 
ignorance, stupidity, bigotry. If the maxims of this fool, and of others like 
him, are followed, we shall soon have, not the mutiny of an army, but the 
rebellion of a whole nation, to deal with. He would have the Government 
plant missionaries everywhere, invite the sepoy to listen to Christian in- 
strnction, and turn the Government schools into Christian seminaries. 
Happily there is some security against such mischievous doctrines in the 
good sense of the country, and a still stronger security in its nonsense. 
Christianity in teaching sounds very well ; but the moment that any plan 
is proposed, all the sects in the kingdom will be together by the ears. We 
who are for absolute neutrality shall be supported against such fools as 
this man by all the Dissenters, by the Scotch, and by the Boman Catho- 
lics." 

" October 25th, 1857. — My birthday. Fifty-seven. I have had a not un- 
pleasant year. My health is not good, but my head is clear and my heart 
is warm. I receive numerous marks of the good opinion of the public — a 
large public, including the educated men both of the old and of the new 
world. I have been made a peer, with, I think, as general an approbation 
as I remember in the case of any man that in my time has been made a 
peer. What is much more important to my happiness than wealth, titles, 
and even fame, those whom I love are well and happy, and very kind and 
affectionate to me. These are great things. I have some complaints, how- 
ever, to make of the past year. The Indian troubles have affected my spir- 
its more than any public events in the whole course of my life. To be 
sure, the danger which threatened the country at the beginning of April, 
1848, came nearer to me. But that danger was soon over; and the Indian 
Mutiny has now lasted several months, and may last months still. The 
emotions which it excites, too, are of a strong kind. I may say that, till 
this year, I did not know what real vindictive hatred meant. With what 
horror I used to read in Livy how Fulvius put to death the whole Capuan 



185&-'58.] LOED MACAULAY. 359 

Senate in the Second Panic War! And with what equanimity I could 
hear that the whole garrison of Delhi, all the Moulavies and Mussulman 
doctors there, and all the rabble of the bazaar had been treated in the same 
way! Is this wrong? Is not the severity which springs from a great 
sensibility to human suffering a better thing than the lenity which springs 
from indifference to human suffering ? The question may be argued long 
on both sides." 

" Octoler 27th. — Huzza ! huzza ! Thank God ! Delhi is taken. A great 
event. Glorious to the nation, and one which will resound through all 
Christendom and Islam. What an exploit for that handful of English- 
men in the heart of Asia to have performed !" 

" November nth. — Huzza! Good news! Lucknow relieved. Delhi ours. 
The old dotard a prisoner. God be praised ! Another letter from Long- 
man. They have already sold 7600 more copies. This is near six thou- 
sand pounds, as I reckoned, in my pocket. But it gratified me, I am glad 
to be able to say with truth, far, very far, less than the Indian news. I 
conld hardly eat my dinner for joy." 

The lovers of ballad poetry may be permitted to wonder 
how it was that the patriotic ardor which passing events 
aroused in Macaulay did not find vent in strains resembling 
those with which he celebrated Ivry and the Armada. It is 
still more remarkable that (if we except the stanzas which he 
wrote after his defeat at Edinburgh) he never embodied in 
verse any of those touching expressions of personal emotion 
which so constantly recur in the pages of his journal. The 
explanation probably lies in the fact that, from the time when 
he became a regular contributor to the Edinburgh Review, 
he always had on hand some weighty and continuous employ- 
ment which concentrated his imagination and consumed all 
his productive energies. There was but one short break in 
his labors; and that break gave us the "Lays of Ancient 
Eome." " If," said Goethe, " you have a great work in your 
head, nothing else thrives near it."* The truth of this apho- 

* This remark was addressed to Eckermann. The whole conversation 
is highly interesting. "Beware," Goethe said, "of attempting a large 
work. It is exactly that which injures our best minds, even those distin- 
guished by the finest talents and the most earnest efforts. I have suffered 
from this cause, and know how much it has injured me. What have I not 
let fall into the well! If I had written all that I well might, a hundred 
volumes would not contain it. 

Vol. II.— 24 



370 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. xiv. 

rism, representing, as it does, the life-long experience of the 
greatest master who ever consciously made an art of litera- 
ture, was at first not very acceptable to Macaulay. But he 
soon discovered that Clio was a mistress who would be satis- 
fied with no divided allegiance ; and her sister muses thence- 
forward lost the homage of one who might fairly have hoped 
to be numbered among their favored votaries. 

Long after Macaulay had abandoned aU other public busi- 
ness, he continued to occupy himself in the administration of 
the British Museum. In February, 1866, he wrote to Lord 
Lansdowne, with the view of securing that old friend's potent 
influence in favor of an arrangement by which Professor Owen 
might be placed in a position worthy of his reputation and of 
his services. The circumstance which gave rise to the letter 
was the impending appointment of Signor Panizzi to the post 
of secretary and principal librarian to the Museum. " I am 
glad of this," writes Macaulay, " both on public and private 
grounds. Yet I fear that the appointment will be unpopular 
both within and without the walls of the Museum. There is 
a growing jealousy among men of science which, between our* 
selves, appears even at the Board of Trustees. There is a no- 
tion that the department of natural history is neglected, and 
that the library and the sculpture gallery are unduly favored. 
This feeling will certainly not be allayed by the appointment 
of Panizzi, whose great object, during many years, has been to 
make our library the best in Europe, and who would at any 
time give three mammoths for an Aldus." 



"The Present will have its rights. The thoughts which daily press 
upon the poet will and should be expressed. But if you have a great 
work in your head, nothing else thrives near it ; all other thoughts are re- 
pelled, and the pleasantness of life itself is for the time lost. What exer- 
tion and expenditure of mental force are required to arrange and round 
off a great whole ! and then what powers, and what a tranquil, undis- 
turbed situation in life, to express it with the proper fluency ! But if 

he [the poet] daily seizes the present, and always treats with a freshness 
of feeling what is offered him, he always makes sure of something good, 
and, if he sometimes does not succeed, has, at least, lost nothing." 

The English of this passage is that of Mr. Oxenford's translation. 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. S71 

Macaulay then went on to propose that, simultaneously with 
Signor Panizzi's nomination to the secretaryship, Professor 
Owen should be constituted superintendent of the whole de- 
partment of natural history, including geology, zoology, bot- 
any, and mineralogy. " I can not but think," he says, " that 
this arrangement would be beneficial in the highest degree to 
the Museum. I am sure that it would be popular. I must add 
that I am extremely desirous that something should be done 
for Owen. I hardly know him to speak to. His pursuits are 
not mine. But his fame is spread over Europe. He is an 
honor to our country, and it is painful to me to think that a 
man of his merit should be approaching old age amidst anxie- 
ties and distresses. He told me that eight hundred a year, 
without a house in the Museum, would be opulence to him. 
He did not, he said, even wish for more. His seems to me to 
be a case for public patronage. Siich patronage is not needed 
by eminent literary men or artists. A poet, a novelist, an his- 
torian, a painter, a sculptor who stood in his own line as high 
as Owen stands among men of science, could never be in 
want except by his own fault. But the greatest natural phi- 
losopher may starve, while his countrymen are boasting of his 
discoveries, and while foreign academies are begging for the 
honor of being allowed to add his name to their list."* 

From the moment when, in the summer of 1854, Macaulay 
had definitely and deliberately braced himself to the work of 
completing the second great installment of the " History," he 
went to his daily labors without intermission and without re- 
luctance until his allotted task had been accomplished. When 
that result had been attained — when his third and fourth vol- 
umes were actually in the hands of the public — it was not at 
first that he became aware how profoundly his already enfee- 
bled health had been strained by the prolonged effort which 
the production of those volumes had cost him. At every pre- 
vious epoch in his life the termination of one undertaking had 



* On the 26th of May, 1856, Professer Owen was appointed superintend- 
ent of the department of natural history with a salary of eight hundred 
pounds a year. 



372 LIFE AliTD LETTERS OF [chap. xiv. 

been a signal for the immediate commencement of another ; 
but in 1866 summer succeeded to spring, and gave place to 
autumn, before he again took pen in hand. For many weeks 
together he indulged himseK in the pleasure of loitering over 
those agreeable occupations vrhich follow in the train of a lit- 
erary success ; answering letters of congratulation ; returning 
thanks, more or less sincere, for the suggestions and criticisms 
which poured in from the most opposite, and sometimes the 
most unexpected, quarters; preparing new editions; and read- 
ing every thing that the reviews had to say about him with 
the placid enjoyment of a veteran author. 

" I bought the British Qua/rierly Review : an article on my 
book — praise and blame. Like other writers, I swallow the 
praise, and think the blame absurd. But in truth I do think 
that the fault-finding is generally unreasonable, though the 
book is, no doubt, faulty enough. It is well for its reputa- 
tion that I do not review it, as I could review it." "Fraser's 
Magazine. Yery laudatory. The author evidently John 
Kemble. He is quite right in saying that I have passed light- 
ly over Continental politics. But was this wrong ? I think I 
could defend myself. I am writing a History of England; 
and as to grubbing, as he recommends, in Saxon and Hessian 
archives for the purpose of ascertaining all the details of the 
Continental negotiations of that time, I should have doubled 
my labor, already severe enough. That I have not given a 
generally correct view of our Continental relations he certain- 
ly has not shown." " After breakfast to the Athenaeum, and 
saw articles on my book in the Dublin Review, and the iTiji- 
tional Review. Very well satisfied to find that the whole 
skill and knowledge of Maynooth could make no impression 
on my account of the Irish war." "I received the Allge- 
mevne Zeitung, and found in it a long article on my book, very 
laudatory, and to me very agreeable ; for I hold the judgment 
of foreigners to be a more sure prognostic of what the judg- 
ment of posterity is likely to be than the judgment of my 
own countrymen." " I made some changes in my account of 
James's Declaration of 1692. If my critics had been well-in- 
formed, they might have worried me about one paragraph on 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 3^3 

that subject. But it escaped them, and now I have put every- 
thing to rights." " To-day I got a letter from , pointing 

out what I must admit to be a gross impropriety of language 
in my book — an impropriety of a sort rare, I hope, with me. 
It shall be corrected ; and I am obliged to the fellow, little as 
I like him." 

At length, on the 1st of October, 1856, Macaulay notes in 
his diary : " To the Museum, and turned over the Dutch dis- 
patches for information about the fire of Whitehall. Home, 
and wrote a sheet of foolscap, the first of Part III. God 
knows whether I shall ever finish that part. I begin it with 
little heart or hope." In the summer of 1857 he remarks : 
"How the days steal away, and nothing done ! I think often 
of Johnson's lamentations repeated every Easter over his own 
idleness. But the cases differ. Often I have felt this morbid 
incapacity to work ; but never so long and so strong as of late 
— the natural effect of age and ease." On the 14th of July 
in the same year : " I wrote a good deal to-day ; Darien. The 
humor has returned, and I shall woo it to continue. What 
better amusement can I have, if it should prove no more than 
an amusement ?" And again : " Read about the Darien affair. 
It will be impossible to tell the truth as to that matter with- 
out putting the Scotch into a rage. But the truth shall be 
told." 

The intrinsic importance of the work on which Macaulay 
was now engaged could hardly be overrated ; for the course 
of his " History " had brought him to a most momentous era 
in the political annals of our country. It was his business to 
tell the stoiy, and to point the lesson, of the years from 1697 
to 1701 — those years when the majority in the House of Com- 
mons was already the strongest force in the State, but when 
the doctrine that the executive administration must be in the 
hands of ministers who possessed the confidence of that major- 
ity had not as yet been recognized as a constitutional axiom. 
Nothing which he has ever written is more valuable than his 
account of the grave perils which beset the kingdom during 
that period of transition, or than his vivid and thoughtful 
commentary upon our method of government by alternation of 



374 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.xiv. 

parties. No passage in all his works more clearly illustrates 
the union of intellectual qualities which formed the real secret 
of his strength — the combination in one and the same man 
of literary power, historical learning, and practical familiarity 
with the conduct of great affairs.* 

Nor again, as specimens of narrative carefully planned and 
vigorously sustained, has he produced any thing with which 
his descriptions of the visit of the czar, the trial of Spencer 
Oowper,f and, above all, the fatal hallucination of Darien, may 
not fairly rank. And yet, however effective were the episodes 
which thickly strew the portion of his " History " that he did 
not live to publish, there can be no question that the alacrity 
with which he had once pursued his great undertaking had be- 
gun to languish. " I find it difficult," he writes in February, 
1857, " to settle to my work. This is an old malady of mine. 
It has not prevented me from doing a good deal in the course 
of my life. Of late I have felt this impotence more than usu- 
al. The chief reason, I believe, is the great doubt which I feel 
whether I shall live long enough to finish another volume of 
my book." He already knew, to use the expression which he 
applied to the dying William of Orange, " that his time was 
short, and grieved, with a grief such as only noble spirits feel, 
to think that he must leave his work but half finished." 

Gradually and unwillingly Macaulay acquiesced in the con- 
viction that he must submit to leave untold that very portion 
of English history which he was competent to treat as no man 
again will treat it. Others may study the reign of Anne with 



* See especially the two paragraphs in Chapter XXIV. ■which commence 
■with the ■words, " If a minister were now to find himself thus situated — " 
There is little doubt that Lord Carlisle had something of this in his mind 
when he wrote in his diary of the 28th of March, 1861 : " I finished Macau- 
lay's fifth volume, and felt in despair to close that brilliant pictured page. 
I think it even surpasses in interest and animation what had gone before ; 
and higher praise no man can give. The leading reflection is, how as a 
nation we have been rescued, led, and blessed ; by the side of this, how 
much of the old faults and leaven still remains." ' 

+ The page of Macaulay's manuscript which is preserved in the British 
Museum is taken from his account of the trial of Spencer Cowper. 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 375 

a more minute and exclusive diligence — the discovery of ma- 
terials hitherto concealed can not fail from time to time to 
throw fresh light upon transactions so extensive and compli- 
cated as those which took place between the rupture of the 
Peace of Kyswick and the accession of the House of Bruns- 
wick—but it may safely be aflBrmed that few or none of Mac- 
aulay's successors will be imbued Uke him with the enthusi- 
asm of the period. There are phases of literary taste which 
pass away, never to recur ; and the early associations of fu- 
ture men of letters will seldom be connected with the " Eape 
of the Lock" and the " Essay on Criticism " — with the Specta- 
tor, the Guardimi, the Freeholder, the " Memoirs of Martinus 
Scriblerus," and the " History of John Bull." But Macau- 
lay's youth was nourished upon Pope, and Bolingbroke, and 
Atterbury, and De Foe. Every thing which had been written 
by them, or about them, was as familiar to him as " The Lady 
of the Lake " and " The Bride of Abydos " were to the genera- 
tion which was growing up when Lockhart's " Life of Scott " 
and Moore's " Life of Byron " were making their first appear- 
ance in the circulating libraries. He had Prior's burlesque 
verses and Arbuthnot's pasquinades as completely at his fin- 
gers'-ends as a clever public-school boy of iifty years ago had 
the " Eejected Addresses " or the poetry of the Anti-Jacolm. 
He knew every pamphlet which had been put forth by Swift, 
or Steele, or Addison, as well as Tories of 1790 knew their 
Burke, or Radicals of 1820 knew their Cobbett. There were 
times when he amused himself with the hope that he might 
even yet be permitted to utilize these vast stores of informa- 
tion, on each separate fragment of which he could so easily lay 
his hand. His diary shows him to have spent' more than one 
summer afternoon " walking in the portico, and reading pam- 
phlets of Queen Anne's time." But he had no real expecta- 
tion that the knowledge which he thus acquired would ever be 
turned to account. Others, who could not bring themselves 
to believe that such raciness of phrase, and such vivacity of in- 
tellect, belonged to one whose days were already numbered, 
confidently reckoned upon his making good the brave words 
which form the opening sentence of the first chapter of his 



376 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.xiv. 

"History." One old friend describes himself ia a letter as 
looking forward to the seventh and eighth volumes in order 
to satisfy his curiosity about the reigns of the first two 
Georges ; which, he says, " are to me the dark ages." Anoth- 
er is sanguine enough to anticipate the pleasure of reading 
what Macaulay would have to say about " the great improve- 
ment of the steam-engine, and its consequences." But, by the 
time that he had written a few pages of his fifth volume, the 
author himself would have been well content to be assured 
that he would live to carry his " History," in a complete and 
connected form, down to the death of his hero, William of 
Orange. 

During the later years of his life, Macaulay sent an occasion- 
al article to the " Encyclopaedia Britannica." " He had ceased," 
says Mr. Adam Black, " to write for the reviews or other peri- 
odicals, though often earnestly solicited to do so. It is entire- 
ly to his friendly feeling that I am indebted for those literary 
gems, which could not have been purchased with money ; and 
it is but justice to his memory that I should record, as one of 
the many instances of the kindness and generosity of his heart, 
that he made it a stipulation of his contributing to the Ency- 
clopaedia that remuneration should not be so much as mention- 
ed." The articles in question are those on Atterbury, Bun- 
yan, Goldsmith, Doctor Johnson, and William Pitt. The last 
of these, which is little more than seventy octavo pages in 
length, was on hand for three quarters of a year. Early in 
November, 1857, Macaulay writes : " The plan of a good char- 
acter of Pitt is forming in my mind ;" and, on the 9th of Au- 
gust, 1858: "I finished and sent off the paper which has 
caused me so much trouble. I began it, I see, in last Novem- 
ber. What a time to have been dawdling over such a trifle !" 

The conscientious and unsparing industry of his former 
days now brought Macaulay a reward of a value quite inesti- 
mable in the eyes of every true author. The habit of always 
working up to the highest standard within his reach was so 
ingrained in his nature, that, however sure and rapid might 
be the decline of his physical strength, the quality of his pro- 
ductions remained the same as ever. Instead of writing 



185e-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 377 

worse, he only wrote less. Compact in form, crisp and nerv- 
ous in style, these five little essays are every thing which 
an article in an encyclopedia should be. The reader, as he 
travels softly and swiftly along, congratulates himself on 
having lighted upon what he regards as a most fascinating 
literary or political memoir ; but the student, on a closer ex- 
amination, discovers that every fact and date and circum- 
stance is distinctly and faithfully recorded in its due chrono- 
logical sequence. Macaulay's belief about himself as a writer 
was that he improved to the last; and the question of the 
superiority of his later over his earlier manner may securely 
be staked upon a comparison between the article on Johnson 
in the Edinburgh Review, and the article on Johnson in the 
" Encyclopaedia Britannica." The latter of the two is, indeed, 
a model of that which its eminent subject pronounced to be 
the essential qualification of a biographer — the art of writing 
trifles with dignity.* 

Macaulay was under no temptation to overwrite himself; 
for his time never hung heavy on his hands. He had a hun- 
dred devices for dissipating the monotony of his days. Now 
that he had ceased to strain his faculties, he thought it neces- 
sary to assure himself from time to time that they were not 
rusting, like an old Greek warrior who continued to exercise 
in the gymnasium the vigor which he no longer expended in 
the field. " I walked in the portico," he writes in October, 
1857, "and learned by heart the noble fourth act of the 
' Merchant of Yenice.' There are four hundred lines, of 
which I knew a hundred and fifty. I made myself perfect 
master of the whole, the prose letter included, in two hours." 
And again : " I learned the passage in which Lucretius rep- 
resents Nature expostulating with men, who complain of the 
general law of mortality. Yery fine it is ; but it strikes me 
that the Epicureans exaggerated immensely the effect which 



* A gentleman once observed to Dr. Johnson that he excelled his com- 
petitors in writing biography. " Sir," was the complacent reply, " I be- 
lieve that is true. The dogs don't know how to write trifles with dig- 
nity." 



378 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap, xiv, 

religious terrors and the fear of future punishment had on 
their contemporaries, for the purpose of exalting their master, 
as having delivered mankind from a horrible mental slavery. 
I see no trace of such feelings in any part of the literature 
of those times except in these Epicurean declamations." "I 
have pretty nearly learned all that I like best in Catullus. 
He grows on me with intimacy. One thing he has — I do not 
know whether it belongs to him or to something in myself — 
but there are some chords of my mind which he touches as 
nobody else does. The first lines of ' Miser Catulle ;' the lines 
to Cornificius, written evidently from a sick-bed ;* and part 
of the poem beginning 'Si qua recordanti,' a£Eect me more 
than I can explain. They always move me to tears." "I 
have now gone through the first seven books of Martial, and 
have learned about three hundred and sixty of the best lines. 
His merit seems to me to lie, not in wit, but in the rapid suc- 
cession of vivid images. I wish he were less nauseous. He 
is as great a beast as Aristophanes. He certainly is a very 
clever, pleasant writer. Sometimes he runs Catullus himself 
hard. But, besides his indecency, his servility and his men- 
dicancy disgust me. In his position, for he was a Eoman 
knight, something more like self-respect would have been be- 
coming. I make large allowance for the difference of man- 
ners ; but it never can have been camme ilfaut in any age or 
nation for a man of note — an accomplished man — a man living 
with the great — to be constantly asking for money, clothes, 
and dainties, and to pursue with volleys of abuse those who 
would give him nothing." 

In September, 1857, Macaulay writes : " I have at odd mo- 
ments been studying the ' Peerage.' I ought to be better in- 
formed about the assembly in which I am to sit." He soon 
could repeat off book the entire roll of the House of Lords ; 
and. a few days afterward comes the entry, "More exercise for 
my memory — second titles." "Wlien he had done with the 
" Peerage," he turned to the Cambridge, and then to the Ox- 

* " Male est, Cornifici, tiio Catnllo, 
Male est, mehercule, et laboriose." 



185&-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 379 

ford, Calendar. " I have now," lie says, " the whole of our 
university Fasti by heart ; all, I mean, that is worth remem- 
bering. An idle thing, but I wished to try whether my 
memory is as strong as it used to be, and I perceive no decay." 

"June Is^, 1858. — I am vexed to think I am losing my 
German. I resolved to win it back. No sooner said than 
done. I took Schiller's ' History of the War in the Nether- 
lands ' out iato the garden, and read a hundred pages. I will 
do the same daily all the summer." Having found the want 
of Italian on his annual tours, Macaulay engaged a master to 
assist him in speaking the language. " We talked," he says, 
" an hour and a quarter. I got on wonderfully ; much better 
than I at all expected." I well remember my uncle's account 
of the interview. As long as the lessons related to the ordi- 
nary colloquialisms of the road, the rail, and the hotel, Macau- 
lay had little to say and much to leam ; but, whenever the 
conversation turned upon politics or literature, his companion 
was fairly bewildered by the profusion of his somewhat ar- 
chaic vocabulary. The preceptor could scarcely believe his 
ears when a pupil, who had to be taught the current expres- 
sions required for getting his luggage through the custom- 
house or his letters from the poste restante, suddenly fell to 
denouncing the French occupation of Eome in a torrent of 
phrases that might have come straight from the pen of Fra 
Paolo. 

The zest with which Macaulay pursued the amusements that 
beguiled his solitary hours contributed not a little to his hap- 
piness and his equanimity. During his last two years he would 
often lay aside his book, and bury himself in financial calcula- 
, tions connected with the stock market, the revenue returns, 
the Civil Service estimates, and, above all, the clergy list. He 
would pass one evening in comparing the average duration of 
the lives of archbishops, prime ministers, and lord chancellors ; 
and another in tracing the careers of the first half-dozen men 
in each successive mathematical tripos, in order to ascertain 
whether, in the race of the world, the senior wrangler general- 
ly contrived to keep ahead of his former competitors. In de- 
fault of any other pastime, he would have recourse to the re- 



380 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.xiv; 

trospect of old experiences and achievements, or would divert 
himself by giving the rein to the vagaries of his fancy. " I 
took up KnigMs Magazine the other day, and, after an in- 
terval of perhaps thirty years, read a Eoman novel which I 
wrote at Trinity. To be sure, I was a smart lad, but a sadly 
unripe scholar for such an undertaking."* And again: "I 
read my own writings during some hours, and was not Hi- 
pleased, on the whole. Yet, alas ! how short life and how long 
art ! I feel as if I had just begun to understand how to write ; 
and the probability is that I have very nearly done writing." 
" I find," he says in another place, " that I dream away a good 
deal of time now ; not more, perhaps, than formerly ; but for- 
merly I dreamed my day-dreams chiefly while walking. Now 
I dream sitting or standing by my fire. I will write, if I live, 
a fuller disquisition than has ever yet been written on that 
strange habit — a good habit, in some respects. I, at least, im- 
pute to it a great part of my literary success."f 

And so Macaulay dwelt at ease in his pleasant retreat, a 
classic in his own life -time. His critics, and still more his 
readers, honored him with a deferential indulgence which is 
seldom exhibited toward a contemporary. One or another 
of the magazines occasionally published an article reflecting 
upon his partiality as an historian ; but he held his peace, and 
the matter, whatever it might be, soon died away. The world 
apparently refused to trouble itself with any misgivings that 
might impair the enjoyment which it derived from hfs pages. 
People were as little disposed to resent his disliking James, 
and admiring William, as they would have been to quarrel 
with Tacitus for making Tiberius a tyrant and Germanicus a 
hero. Macaulay, in his diary, mentions a circumstance illus- 
trating the position which he already occupied in the popular 

* The " Fragments of a Eoman Tale " are printed in Macaulay's " Miscel- 
laneous Writings." 

t " I went yesterday to Weybridge," he says in a letter to Mr. Ellis. 
" We talked about the habit of building castles in the air, a habit in which 
Lady Trevelyan and I indulge beyond any people that I ever knew. I 
mentioned to George what, as far as I know, no critic has observed, that 
the Greeks called this habit Kivii /xaKapia (empty happiness)." 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 



381 



estimation. A gentleman moving in good, and even high, so- 
ciety—as thorough a man of the world as any in London— 
who had the misfortune to be a natural son, called on him in 
order to make a formal remonstrance on his having used the 
term "bastard" in his "History," and earnestly entreated 
him not to sanction so cruel an epithet with his immense au- 
thority.* 

> It may easily be supposed that Macaulay's literary celebrity 
attracted round him his full share of imitators and plagiarists, 
assailants and apologists, busy bodies and mendicants. "A 
new number of the Eeview. There is an article which is a 
mocking-bird imitation of me. Somehow or other, the mimic 
can not catch the note, but many people would not be able to 
distinguish. Sometimes he borrows outright. ' Language so 
pure and holy that it would have become the lips of those an- 
gels — .' That is rather audacious. However, I shaU not com- 
plain. A man should have enough to spare something for 

thieves." " I looked through 's two volumes. He is, I 

see, an imitator of me. But I am a very unsafe model. My 
manner is, I think, and the world thinks, on the whole, a good 
one ; but it is very near to a very bad manner indeed, and 
those characteristics of my style which are most easily copied 
are the most questionable." " There are odd instances of fol- 
ly and impertinence. A clergyman of the Scotch Episcopal 
Church is lectui-ing at Windsor. He wrote to me three weeks 
ago to ask the meaning of the allusion to St. Cecilia in my ac- 
count of the trial of "Warren Hastings. I answered him civil- 
ly, and he wrote to thank me. Now he writes again to say 
that he has forgotten a verse of my ' Horatius,' and begs me to 
write it for him ; as if there were nobody in the kingdom ex- 
cept me to apply to. There is a fool at "Wiesbaden who sent 
me, some days ago, a heap of execrable verses. I told him 
that they were bad, and advised him to take to some other pur- 
suit. As examples illustrating my meaning, I pointed out half 
a dozen lines. Now he sends me twice as many verses, and 

* The word in question is applierl to the Dae de Maine in Macaulay's 
account of the siege of Namur in his twenty-first chapter. 



382 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiv. 

begs me to review them. He has, he assures me, corrected the 
lines to which I objected. I have sent him back his second 
batch with a letter which he can not misunderstand." "A 
letter from a man in Scotland, who says that he wants to pub- 
lish a novel, and that he will come up and show me the man- 
uscript if I will send him fifty poimds. Keally, I can get bet- 
ter novels cheaper." "What strange begging letters I re- 
ceive ! A fellow has written to me telling me that he is a 
painter, and adjuring me, as I love the fine arts, to hire or 
buy him a cow to paint from." 

"A school-master at Cheltenham," writes Macaulay to his 
sister, " sent me two years and a half ago a wretched pamphlet 
about British India. In answering him, I pointed out two 
gross blunders into which he had fallen, and which, as he pro- 
posed to publish a small edition for the use of schools, I ad- 
vised him to correct. My reward was that his book was ad- 
vertised as ' revised and corrected by Lord Macaulay.' It is 
idle to be angry with people of this sort. They do after their 
kind. One might as well blame a fly for buzzing." " An ar- 
ticle on me in Blackwood. The writer imagines that "William 
the Third wrote his letters in English, and takes Coxe's trans- 
lations for the original. A pretty fellow to set me to rights 

on points of history !" " I was worried by , who, in spite 

of repeated entreaties, pesters me with his officious defenses 
of my accuracy against all comers. Sometimes it is the Sat- 
urday Review ; then Paget ; and now it is Blackwood. I feel 
that I shall be provoked at last into saying something very 
sharp." " Some great fool has sent me a card printed with a 
distich, which he calls an impromptu on two bulky histories 
lately published : 

Two fabulists ; how different the reward ! 
One justly censured, t'other made a lord. 

Whom he means by the other I have not the slightest notion. 
That a man should be stupid enough to take such a couplet to 
a printer and have it printed purely in order to give pain, 
which, after all, he does not give ! I often think that an ex- 
tensive knowledge of literary history is of inestimable value to 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 383 

a literary man ; I mean as respects the regulating of Ms mind, 
the moderating of his hopes and of his fears, and the strength- 
ening of his fortitude. I have had detractors enough to an- 
noy me, if I had not known that no writer equally successful 
with myself has ever suffered so little from detraction ; and 
that many writers, more deserving and less successful than 
myself, have excited envy which has appeared in the form of 
the most horrible calumnies. The proper answer to abuse 
is contempt, to which I am by nature sufficiently prone; 
and contempt does not show itself by contemptuous expres- 
sions." 

Now and again, when Macaulay happened to be in a mood 
for criticism, he would fill a couple of pages in his journal 
with remarks suggested by the book which he had in read- 
ing at the time. A few of these little essays are worth pre- 
serving. 

" I can not understand the mania of some people about De 
Foe. They think liim a man of the first order of genius, and 
a paragon of virtue. He certainly wrote an excellent book — 
the first part of ' Kobinson Crusoe ' — one of those feats which 
can only be performed by the union of luck with ability. 
That awful solitude of a quarter of a century — that strange 
union of comfort, plenty, and security with the misery of lone- 
liness — was my delight before I was five years old, and has 
been the delight of hundreds of thousands of boys. But what 
has De Foe done great except the first part of ' Kobinson Cru- 
soe ?' The second part is poor in comparison. The ' History 
of the Plague' and the 'Memoirs of a Cavalier* are in one 
sense curious works of art. They are wonderfully like true 
histories ; but, considered as novels, which they are, there is 
not much in them. He had undoubtedly a knack at making 
fiction look like truth. But is such a knack much to be ad- 
mired ? Is it not of the same sort with the knack of a paint- 
er who takes in the birds with his fruit ? I have seen dead 
game painted in such a way that I thought the partridges and 
pheasants real ; but surely such pictures do not rank high as 
works of art. Yillemain, and before him Lord Chatham, were 



384 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiv. 

deceived by the ' Memoirs of a Cavalier ;' but when those 
' Memoirs ' are known to be fictitious, what are they worth ? 
How immeasurably inferior to ' Waverley,' or the ' Legend of 
Montrose,' or ' Old Mortality !' As to ' Moll Flanders,' ' Eox- 
ana,' and ' Captain Jack,' they are utterly wretched and nau- 
seous ; in no respect, that I can see, beyond the reach of Af ra 
Behn.* As a political writer, De Foe is merely one of the 
crowd. He seems to have been an unprincipled hack, ready 
to take any side of any question. Of all writers he was the 
most unlucky in irony. Twice he was prosecuted for what 
he meant to be ironical ; but he was so unskillful that every 
body understood him literally. Some of his tracts are worse 
than immoral ; quite beastly. Altogether I do not like him." 

" Lord Stanhope sent me the first volume of the Peel pa- 
pers. I devoured them. The volume relates entirely to the 
Catholic question. It contains some interesting details which 
are new ; but it leaves Peel where he was. I always noticed 
while he was alive, and I observe again in this his posthumous 
defense, an obstinate determination not to understand what the 
charge was which I, and others who agreed with me, brought 
against him. He always affected to think that we blamed him 
for his conduct in 1829, and he produced proofs of what we 
were perfectly ready to admit — that in 1829 the State would 
have been in great danger if the Catholic disabilities had not 
been removed. Now, what we blamed was his conduct in 1825, 
and still more in 1827. We said : ' Either you were blind not 
to foresee what was coming, or you acted culpably in not set- 
tling the question when it might have been settled without the 
disgrace of yielding to agitation and to the fear of insurrec- 
tion ; and you acted most culpably in deserting and persecuting 

* " Take back your bonny Mrs. Behn,'' said Mrs. Keith, of Ravelstone, to 
her grand-nephew, Sir Walter Scott ; " and, if you will take my advice, put 
her in the fire, for I found it impossible to get through the very first novel. 
But is it not a very odd thing th^t I, an old woman of eighty and upward, 
sitting alone, feel myself ashamed to read a book which, sixty years ago, I 
have heard read alond for the amusement of large circles, consisting of the 
iirst and most creditable society in London ?" 



1856-'58.] LORD MACAULAY. 335 

Canning.' To this, which was our real point, he does not 
even allude. He is a debater even in this book."* 

"I walked in the garden, and read Cicero's speeches for 
Sextius and Coelius, and the invective against Yatinius. The 
egotism is perfectly intolerable. I know nothing like it in 
literature. The man's self-importance amounted to a mono- 
mania. To me the speeches, tried by the standard of English 
forensic eloquence, seem very bad. They have no tendency 
to gain a verdict. They are fine lectures, fine declamations, 
excellent for Exeter Hall or the Music Eoom at Edinburgh; 
but not to be named with Scarlett's or Erskine's speeches, con- 
sidered as speeches meant to convince and persuade juries. 
"We ought to know, however, what the temper of those Eo- 
man tribunals was. Perhaps a mere political harangue may 
have had an effect on the Forum which it could not have in 
the Court of King's Bench. We ought also to know how far 
in some of these cases Hortensius and others had disposed of 
questions of evidence before Cicero's turn came. The perora- 
tion seems to have been reserved for him. But imagine a bar- 
rister now, defending a man accused of heading a riot at an 
election, telling the jury that he thought this an excellent op- 
portunity of instructing the younger part of the audience in 
the galleries touching the distinction between Whigs and To- 
ries ; and then proceeding to give an historical dissertation of 
an hour on the Civil War, the Exclusion BiU, the Eevolution, 
the Peace of Utrecht, and Heaven knows what ! Tet this is 
strictly analogous to what Cicero did in his defense of Sextius." 

" I went to the Athenaeum, and staid there two hours to 
read John Mill on Liberty and on Eeform. Much that is 
good in both. What he says about individuality in the trea- 
tise on liberty is open, I think, to some criticism. What is 



* Macanlay writes elsewhere : " I read Guizot's ' Sir Robert Peel.' Hard- 
ly quite worthy of Guizot's powers, I think ; nor can it be accepted as a 
just estimate of Peel. I could draw his portrait much better, but for 
many reasons I shall not do so." 

YoL. II.— 25 



386 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiv. 

meant by the complaint that there is no individuality now ? 
Genius takes its own course, as it always did. Bolder inven- 
tion was never known in science than in our time. The 
steam-ship, the steam-carriage, the electric telegraph, the gas- 
lights, the new military engines, are instances. Geology is 
quite a new true science. Phrenology is quite a new false 
one. Whatever may be thought of the theology, the meta- 
physics, the political theories of our time, boldness and nov- 
elty are not what they want. Comtism, Saint-Simonianism, 
Fourierism, are absurd enough, but surely they are not indica- 
tions of a servile respect for usage and authority. Then the 
clairvoyance, the spirit-rapping, the table-turning, and all those 
other dotages and knaveries, indicate rather a restless impa- 
tience of the beaten paths than a stupid determination to plod 
on in those paths. Our lighter literature, as far as I know it, 
is spasmodic and eccentric. Every writer seems to aim at do- 
ing something odd — at defying all rules and canons of criti- 
cism. The metre must be queer ; the diction queer. So great 
is the taste for oddity that men who have no recommendation 
but oddity hold a high place in vulgar estimation. I there- 
fore do not at all like to see a man of Mill's excellent abilities 
recommending eccentricity as a thing almost good in itself — 
as tending to prevent us from sinking into that Chinese, that 
Byzantine, state which I should agree with him in consider- 
ing as a great calamity. He is really crying ' Fire !' in Noah's 
flood." 

" I i-ead the QuarUrly Reviews of 1830, 1831, and 1832, 
and was astonished by the poorness and badness of the polit- 
ical articles. I do not think that this is either personal or po- 
litical prejudice in me, though I certainly did not like Southey, 
and though I had a strong antipathy to Croker, who were the 
two chief writers. But I see the merit of many of Southey's 
writings with which I am far from agreeing — 'Espriella's 
Letters,' for example, and the ' Life of Wesley ;' and I see 
the merit of the novels of Theodore Hook, whom I held in 
greater abhorrence than even Croker, stufEed as those novels 
are with scurrility against my political friends. Nay, I can 



1856-'58.] LOED MACAULAY. 387 

see merit in Warren's ' Ten Thousand a Year.' I therefore 
believe that my estimate of these political papers in the Quar- 
terly Review is a fair one ; and to me they seem to be mere 
trash — absurd perversions of history ; parallels which show no 
ingenuity, and from which no instruction can be derived ; pre- 
dictions which the event has singularly falsified; abuse sub- 
stituted for argument ; and not one paragraph of wit or elo- 
quence. It is all forgotten, all gone to the dogs. The non- 
sense which Southey talks about political enonomy is enough 
to settle my opinion of his understanding. He says that no 
man of sense ever troubles himself about such pseudo-scien- 
tific questions as what rent is, or what wages are. Surely he 
could not be such a dunce as not to know that a part of the 
produce of a landed estate goes to the proprietor, and a part 
to the cultivator ; and he must, unless he had a strange sort 
of skull, have supposed that there was some law or other 
which regulated the distribution of the produce between these 
parties. And if there be such a law, how can it be unworthy 
of a man of sense to try to find out what it is ? Can any in- 
quiry be more important to the welfare of society ? Croker 
is below Southey; for Southey had a good style, and Oroker 
had nothing but italics and capitals as substitutes for elo- 
quence and reason." 

" I read a great deal of the ' Memoirs of Southey ' by his 
son ; little more than Southey's own letters, for the most part. 
I do not know how it happened that I never read the book 
before. It has not at all altered my opinion of Southey. A 
good father, husband, brother, friend, but prone to hate peo- 
ple whom he did not know, solely on account of differences 
of opinion, and in his hatred singularly bitter and rancorous. 
Then he was arrogant beyond any man in literary history ; 
for his self-conceit was proof against the severest admonitions. 
The utter failure of one of his books only confirmed him in 
his opinion of its excellence. Then he had none of that dis- 
satisfaction with his own performances which I, perhaps be- 
cause I have a great deal of it, am prone to beheve to be a 
good sign. Southey says, some time after ' Madoc ' had been 



388 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiv. 

published, and when the first ardor of composition must have 
abated, that the execution is perfect ; that it can not be better. 
I have had infinitely greater success as a writer than Southey, 
and, though I have not vmtten a fiith part, not a tenth part, 
of what he wrote, have made more thousands by literature 
than he made himdreds. And yet I can truly say that I nev- 
er read again the most popular passages of my own works 
without painfully f eeUng how far my execution has fallen 
short of the standard which is in. my mind. He says that 
' Thalaba ' is equal or superior to the ' Orlando Furioso,' and 
that it is the greatest poem that has appeared during ages ; 
and this over and over again, when nobody would read it, and 
when the copies were heaped up in the book-sellers' garrets. 
His ' History of Brazil ' is to be immortal — to be a mine of 
wealth to his family under an improved system of copyright. 
His ' Peninsular War,' of which I never could get through the 
first volume, is to live forever. To do him justice, he had a 
fine manly spirit where money was concerned. His conduct 
about Chatterton and Kirke White, at a time when a guinea 
was an object to himself, was most honorable. I could for- 
give him a great deal for it." 

Macaulay had a very slight acquaintance with the works of 
some among the best writers of his own generation. He was 
not fond of new lights, unless they had been kindled at the 
ancient beacons ; and he was apt to prefer a third-rate author, 
who had formed himself after some recognized model, to a 
man of high genius whose style and method were strikingly 
different from any thing that had gone before. In books, as 
in people and places, he loved that, and that only, to which 
he had been accustomed from boyhood upward.* Very few 

* The remarks in Macaulay's journal on the " History of Civilization " 
curiously illustrate the spirit in which he approached a new author. 
What he liked best in Buckle was that he had some of the faults of War- 
burton. "March 2itli, 1858. — I read Buckle's book all day, and got to the 
end, skipping of course. A man of talent and of a good deal of reading, 
but paradoxical and incoherent. He is eminently an anticipator, as Bacon 
would have said. He wants to make a system before he has got the ma- 



1856-'58.] LOED MAC AULA Y. 



389 



among the students of Macaulay will have detected the inten- 
sity, and in some cases (it must be confessed) the willfulness, 
of his literary conservatism ; for, with the instinctive self-re- 
straint of a great artist, he permitted no trace of it to appear 
in his writings. In his character of a responsible critic, he 
carefully abstained from giving expression to prejudices in 
which, as a reader, he freely indulged. Those prejudices in- 
jured nobody but himself; and the punishment which befell 
him, from the very nature of the ease, was exactly propor- 
tioned to the offense. To be blind to the merits of a great 
author is a sin which brings its own penalty, and in Mac- 
aulay's instance that penalty was severe indeed. Little as he 
was aware of it, it was no slight privation that one who had 
by heart the " Battle of Marathon," as told by Herodotus, and 
the " Eaising of the Siege of Syracuse," as told by Thucydides, 
should have passed through life without having felt the glow 
which Mr. Oarlyle's story of the charge across the ravine at 
Dunbar could not fail to awake even in a Jacobite ; that one 
who so keenly relished the exquisite trifling of Plato should 
never have tasted the description of Coleridge's talk in the 
" Life of John Sterling " — a passage which yields to nothing 
of its own class in the " Protagoras " or the " Symposium ;" 
that one who eagerly and minutely studied all that Lessing 
has written on art, or Goethe on poetry, should have left un- 
read Mr. Euskin's comparison between the landscape of the 
" Odyssey " and the landscape of " The Divine Comedy," or 
his analysis of the effect produced on the imagination by 
long-continued familiarity with the aspect of the Campanile 
of Giotto. 

Great, beyond all question, was the intellectual enjoyment 
that Macaulay forfeited by his unwillingness to admit the ex- 
cellence of any thing which had been written in bold defiance 
of the old canons ; but, heavy as the sacrifice was, he could 
readily afford to make it. "With his omnivorous and insatia- 

terials ; and he has not the excuse which Aristotle had, of having an emi- 
nently systematizing mind. The hook reminds me perpetually of the ' Di- 
vine Legation.' I could draw the parallel out far." 



390 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiv. 

ble appetite for books there was, indeed, little danger that he 
would ever be at a loss for something to read. A few short 
extracts, taken at random from the last volume of his journals, 
will sufficiently indicate how extensive and diversified were 
the regions of literature over which he roved at will. " I 
turned over Philo, and compared his narrative with Josephus. 
It is amusing to observe with what skill those Jews, trained in 
Greek learning, exhibited the philosophical side of their relig- 
ion to the Pagan scholars and statesmen, and kept out of sight 
the ceremonial part. It was just the contrary, I imagine, with 
the lower class of Jews, who became, in some sense, the spirit- 
ual directors of silly women at Eome." " I read a good deal 
of ' Fray Gerundio.' A good book. The traits of manners 
are often interesting. There is something remarkable in the 
simple plenty and joyousness of the life of the rustics of Old 
Castile." "I read some of a novel about sporting — a Mr. 
Sponge the hero. It was a new world to me, so I bore with 
the hasty writing, and was entertained." "I read some of 
Tieck — ^the Brothers, and the preface to the collected works. 
He complains that his countrymen are slow to take a joke. 
He should consider that the jokes which he and some of his 
brother writers are in the habit of producing are not laughing 
matters. Then Sir "Walter Scott's Life. I had ' Eokeby ' out, 
and tm-ned it over. Poor work ; and yet there are gleams of 
genius few and far between. "What a blunder to make the 
scenery the foreground, and the human actors the background, 
of a picture ! In ' The Lay ' the human actors stand out as 
they should, and the Aill, and the Tweed, and Melrose Abbey 
are in proper subordination. Even in ' The Lady of the Lake,' 
Loch Katrine does not throw Fitzjames and Eoderic into the 
shade; but 'Eokeby' is primarily a descriptive poem like 
' Grongar Hill.' There was some foundation for Moore's sar- 
castic remark that Scott meant to do all the gentlemen's seats 
from Edinburgh to London. The only good thing in the 
poem is the Buccaneer." " I read '^lian ' for the first time. 
Odd that it should be for the first time. I dispatched the 
whole volume in a few hours, skimming and reading some- 
times the Greek and sometimes tlie Latin translation, which 



1856-'58.] LOED MACAULAY. 39I 

I thought more than usually well written. The most interest- 
ing fact which I learned from this very miscellaneous collec- 
tion of information was that there were said to be translations 
of Homer into the Persian and Indian languages, and that 
those translations were sung by the barbarians. I had never 
heard this mentioned. The thing is really not impossible. 
The conquests of Alexander must have made the Greek lan- 
guage well known to men whose mother-tongue was the Per- 
sian or the Sanskrit. I wish to Heaven that the translations 
could be found." 

Some of the great metaphysical philosophers, both ancient 
and modern, were among the authors with whom Macaulay 
was most familiar; but he read them for the pleasure of ad- 
miring the ingenuity of their arguments or the elegance of 
their literary manner, and not from any sympathy with the 
subject-matter of their works. He was, in fact, very much in- 
clined toward the opinion expressed by Yoltaire in " Zadig :" 
" II savait de la metaphysique ce qu'on a su dans tons les ages 
— c'est £l dire, foi"t peu de chose." But there was another field 
of inquiry and discussion in which he was never tired of ran- 
ging. He had a strong and enduring predilection for relig- 
ious speculation and controversy, and was widely and profound- 
ly read in ecclesiastical history. His partiality for studies of 
this nature is proved by the full and elaborate notes with 
which he has covered the margin of such books as Warburton's 
" Julian," Middleton's " Free Inquiry," Middleton's "Letters 
to Venn and Waterland," and all the rest of the crop of polem- 
ical treatises which the " Free Inquiry " produced.* But no- 

* " Middleton,'' writes Macaulay, " does not shine in any of his strictly 
controversial pieces. He is too querulous and egotistical. Above all, he is 
not honest. He knew that what alarmed the Church was not his conclu- 
sion, but the arguments by which he arrived at that conclusion. His con- 
clusion might be just, and yet Christianity might be of Divine origin ; but 
his arguments seem to be quite as applicable to the miracles related by St. 
Luke as to those related by Jerome. He was in a deplorable predicament. 
He boasted of his love of truth and of his courage, and yet he was paltering 
and shamming through the whole controversy. He should have made up 
his mind from the beginning whether he had the courage to face obloquy 



392 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. xiv. 

where are there such numerous and deeply marked traces of 
his passion for Church history as in the pages of Strype's bi- 
ographies of the bishops who played a leading part in the En- 
glish Eeformation. Those grim folios of six generations back 
— ^the Lives of Cranmer, and Grindal, and Whitgif t, and Park- 
er — acquire all the interest of a contemporary narrative if read 
with the accompaniment of Macaulay's vivid and varied com- 
ments. When, at the commencement of the " Life of Cran- 
mer," Strype apologizes for employing phraseology which even 
in his own day was obsolete and uncouth, he obtained an easy 
pardon from his assiduous student. " I like," says Macaulay, 
"his old-fashioned style. He writes like a man who lived 
with the people of an earlier age. He had thoroughly imbued 
himself with the spirit of the sixteenth century."* And again : 
" Strype was an honest man and a most valuable writer. Per- 
haps no person with so slender abilities has done so much to 
improve our knowledge of English history." Somewhat later 
in the same volume, when Gardiner first appears upon the 
scene, Macaulay writes : " Gardiner had very great vices. He 
was a dissembler and a persecutor. But he was, on the whole, 
the first public man of his generation in England. He had, I 
believe, a real love for his country. He showed a greater re- 
spect for Parliaments than any statesman of that time. He 
opposed the Spanish match. When forced to consent to it, he 
did his best to obtain such terms as might secure the independ- 
ence of the realm. He was a far more estimable man than 
Cranmer." Of Latimer he says : " He was the Cobbett of the 

and abuse, to give up all hopes of preferment, and to speak plainly out. 
If, from selfish motives (or, as I rather believe and hope, from a real convic- 
tion that by attacking the Christian religion he should do more harm than 
good to mankind), he determined to call himself a Christian, and to respect 
the sacred books, he should have kept altogether out of a controversy which 
inevitably brought him into the necessity of either declaring himself an in- 
fidel, or resorting to a thousand dishonest shifts, injarious to his arguments 
and discreditable to his character." 

* Strype himself was well enough aware that his style was suited to his 
subject. " In truth," he writes, " he that is a lover of antiquity loves the 
very language and phrases of antiquity." 



1856-'58.] LOED MACAULAT. 393 

Kef ormation, with more honesty than Cobbett, and more cour- 
age; but very like him in the character of his understanding." 
At the foot of a fine letter addressed by Eidley from his pris- 
on in " Bocardo, in Oxenford, to his former steward who had 
complied with the Komish religion," Macaulay notes "A stout- 
hearted, honest, brave man." Grindal he more than once pro- 
nounces to be " the best Archbishop of Canterbury since the 
Eeformation, except Tillotson." Indeed, it may safely be as- 
serted that, in one corner or another of Macaulay's library, 
there is in existence his estimate of every famous or notorious 
English prelate from the beginning of the sixteenth to the end 
of the eighteenth century. The most concise of these sketch- 
es of episcopal character may be foimd in his copy of the let- 
ters from Warburton to Hurd, the first of which is headed in 
pencil with the words, " Bully to Sneak." 

Valuable, indeed, is the privilege of following Macaulay 
through his favorite volumes, where every leaf is plentifully 
besprinkled with the annotations of the most lively of scholi- 
asts; but it would be an injustice toward his reputation to 
separate the commentary from the text, and present it to the 
public in a fragmentary condition. Such a process could give 
but a feeble idea of the animation and humor of that species 
of running conversation which he frequently kept up with his 
author for whole chapters together. Of all the memorials of 
himself which he has left behind him, these dialogues with the 
dead are the most characteristic. The energy of his remon- 
strances, the heartiness of his approbation, the contemptuous 
vehemence of his censure, the eagerness with which he urges 
and reiterates his own opinions, ai'e such as to make it at times 
difficult to realize that his remarks are addressed to people 
who died centuries, or perhaps tens of centuries, ago. But the 
writer of a book which had lived was always alive for Macau- 
lay. This sense of personal relation between himself and the 
men of the past increased as years went on — as he became less 
able and willing to mix with the world, and more and more 
thrown back upon the society which he found in his library. 
His way of life would have been deemed solitary by others, 
but it was not solitary to him. "While he had a volume in his 



394 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xrv. 

hands he never could be without a quaint companion to laugh 
with or laugh at, an adversary to stimulate his combativeness, 
a counselor to suggest wise or lofty thoughts, and a friend 
with whom to share them. "When he opened for the tenth or 
fifteenth time some history, or memoir, or romance — every in- 
cident and almost every sentence of which he had by heart — 
his feeling was precisely that which we experience on meeting 
an old comrade, whom we like all the better because we know 
the exact lines on which his talk will run. There was no so- 
ciety in London so agreeable that Macaulay would have pre- 
ferred it at breakfast or at dinner to the company of Sterne, 
or Fielding, or Horace Walpole, or Boswell; and there were 
many less distinguished authors with whose productions he 
was very well content to cheer his repasts. " I read," he says, 
"Henderson's Iceland at breakfast — a favorite breakfast book 
with me. "Why? How oddly we are made! Some books 
which I never should dream of opening at dinner please me 
at breakfast, and vice versa." In choosing what he should 
take down from his shelves he was guided at least as much by 
whim as by judgment. There were certain bad writers whose 
vanity and folly had a flavor of peculiarity which was irresist- 
ibly attractive to Macaulay. In August, 1859, he says to Lady 
Trevelyan : " The books which I had sent to the binder are 
come; and Miss Seward's letters are in a condition to bear 
twenty more reperusals." But, amidst the infinite variety of 
lighter literature with which he beguiled his leism-e, "Pride 
and Prejudice," and the five sister novels, remained without a 
rivali in his affections. He never for a moment wavered in his 
allegia;nce to Miss Austen. In 1858 he notes in his journal : 
" If I could get materials, I really would write a short life of 
that wonderful woman, and raise a little money to put up a 
monument to her in "Winchester Cathedral." Some of his old 
friends may remember how he prided himself on a correction 
of his own in the first page of " Persuasion," which he main- 
tained to be worthy of Bentley, and which undoubtedly fulfills 
all the conditions required to establish the credit of an emen- 
dation ; for, without the alteration of a word, or even of a let- 
ter, it turns into perfectly intelligible common-sense a passage 



1856-'58.] LOED MACAULAT. 



395 



whicli has puzzled, or which ought to have puzzled, two gener- 
ations of Miss Austen's readers.* 

Of the feelings which he entertained toward the great 
minds of by-gone ages it is not for any one except himself to 
speak. He has told us how his debt to them was incalculable • 
how they guided him to truth ; how they filled his mind with 
noble and graceful images ; how they stood by him in all vi- 
cissitudes — comforters in sorrow, nurses in sickness, compan- 
ions in solitude, " the old friends who are never seen with new 
faces ; who are the same in wealth and in poverty, in glory 
and in obscurity." Great as were the honors and possessions 
which Macaulay acquired by his pen, all who knew him were 
well aware that the titles and rewards which he gained by his 
own works were as nothing in the balance as compared with 
the pleasure which he derived from the works of others. 
That knowledge has largely contributed to the tenderness with 
which he has been treated by writers whose views on books, 
and events, and politics past and present, differ widely from 
his own. It has been well said that even the most hostile of 
his critics can not help being " awed and touched by his won- 
derful devotion to literature." And, while his ardent and sin- 
cere passion for letters has thus served as a protection to his 
memory, it was likewise the source of much which calls for 
admiration in his character and conduct. The confidence with 
which he could rely upon intellectual pursuits for occupa- 
tion and amusement assisted him not a little to preserve that 
dignified composure with which he met all the changes and 
chances of his public career, and that spirit of cheerful and 
patient endurance which sustained him through years of 
broken health and enforced seclusion. He had no pressing 
need to seek for excitement and applause abi'oad, when he had 

* A slight change in the punctuation effects all that is required. Ac- 
cording to Macaulay, the sentence was intended by its author to run thus : 
" There, any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed 
naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless cre- 
ations of the last century ; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, ho 
could read his own history with an interest which never failed. This was 
the page at which the favorite volume opened — " 



396 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xiv. 

beneatli his own roof a never-failing store of exquisite enjoy- 
ment. That "invincible love of reading," which Gibbon de- 
clared that he would not exchange for the treasures of India, 
was with Macaulay a main element of happiness in one of the 
happiest lives that it has ever fallen to the lot of a biographer 
to record. 



1859.] LORD MACAULAY. 397 



CHAPTEE XV. 

1859. 

Melancholy Anticipations. — Visit to the English Lakes and to Scotland.— 
Extracts from Macaulay's Journal. — His Death and Funeral. 

"When the year 1859 opened, it seemed little likely that any 
event was at hand which would disturb the tranquil course of 
Macaulay's existence. His ailments, severe as they were, did 
not render him discontented on his own account, nor diminish 
the warmth of his interest in the welfare of those who were 
around him. Toward the close of the preceding year, his niece 
Margaret Trevelyan had been married to the son of his old 
friend. Sir Henry Holland ; an event which her uncle regard- 
ed with heart -felt satisfaction. Mr. Holland resided ia Lon- 
don; and consequently the marriage, so far from depriving 
Macaulay of one whom he looked on as a daughter, gave him 
another household where he was as much at home as in his 
own. But a most tmexpected circumstance now occurred 
which changed in a moment the whole complexion of his life. 
Early in January, 1859, the governorship of Madras was of- 
fered to my father. He accepted the post, and sailed for In- 
dia in the third week of February. My mother remained in 
England for a while ; but she was to follow her husband 
after no very long interval, and Macaulay was fully convinced 
that when he and his sister parted they would part forever. 
Though he derived his belief from his own sensations, and not 
from any warning of physicians, he was none the less firmly 
persuaded that the end was now not far off. " I took leave of 
Trevelyan," he says on the 18th of February. "He said, 
' You have always been a most kind brother to me.' I cer- 
tainly tried to be so. Shall we ever meet again? I do not 



398 LIFE AST) LETTERS OF [chap.xv. 

expect it. My health is better; but another sharp winter 
would probably finish me." In another place he writes : " I 
am no better. This malady tries me severely. However, I 
bear up. As to my temper, it never has been soured, and, 
while I keep my understanding, will not, I think, be soured, 
by evils for which it is evident that no human being is respon- 
sible. To be angry with relations and servants because you 
suffer something which they did not inflict, and which they 
are desirous to alleviate, is unworthy, not merely of a good 
man, but of a rational being. Yet I see instances enough of 
such irritability to fear that I may be guilty of it. But I will 
take care. I have thought several times of late that the last 
scene of the play was approaching. I should wish to act it 
simply, but with fortitude and gentleness united." 

The prospect of a separation from one with whom he had 
lived in close and uninteiTupted companionship since her child- 
hood and his own early manhood — a prospect darkened by the 
thought that his last hour would surely come when she was 
thousands of miles away — was a trial which weighed heavily 
on Macaulay's sinking health. He endured it manfully, and 
almost silently ; but his spirits never recovered the blow. Dur- 
ing the spring and summer of 1859 his journal contains a few 
brief but significant allusions to the state of his feelings ; one 
of which, and one only, may fitly be inserted here. "July 
nth, 1859. — A letter from Hannah; very sad and affectionate. 
I answered her. There is a pleasure even in this exceeding 
sorrow ; for it brings out the expression of love with a tender- 
ness which is wanting in ordinary circumstances. But the sor- 
row is very, very bitter. The Duke of Argyll called, and left 
me the sheets of a forthcoming poem of Tennyson. I like 
it extremely — notwithstanding some faults, extremely. The 
parting of Lancelot and Gruinivere, her penitence, and Arthur's 
farewell, are all very affecting. I cried over some passages ; 
_ but I am now apri^aKpvg,* as Medea says." 

Toward the end of July my uncle spent a week with us at 
Lowood Hotel, on the shore of Windermere; and thence ac- 

• " With the tears near the eyes." 



1859.] LORD MACAULAY. 399 

companied my mother and my younger sister on a fortnight's 
tour through the Western Highlands, and by Stirling to Edin- 
burgh. Every stage of the journey brought some fresh proof 
of the eager interest which his presence aroused in the minds 
of his fellow-countrymen, to whom his face and figure were 
very much less familiar than is usual in the case of a man of 
his eminence and reputation. He now so rarely emerged from 
his retirement, that whenever he appeared abroad he was at- 
tended by a respect which gratified and a curiosity which did 
not annoy him. " I went the day before yesterday," he writes 
to Mr. Ellis, " to Grasmere church-yard, and saw Wordsworth's 
tomb. I thought of announcing my intention of going, and 
issuing guinea tickets to people who wished to see me there ; 
for a Yankee who was here a few days ago, and heard that I 
was expected, said that he would give the world to see that 
most sublime of all spectacles, Macaulay standing by the grave 
of Wordsworth." " In Scotland," my mother writes, " his re- 
ception was everywhere most enthusiastic. He was quickly 
recognized on steamers and at railway stations. At Tarbet 
we were escorted down to the boat by the whole household ; 
and, while they surrounded your uncle, finding a seat for him, 
and making him comfortable, I sat modestly in the shade next 
a young woman, who called a man to her, and asked who they 
were making such a fuss about. He replied that it was the 
great Lord Macaulay, who wrote the ' History.' ' Oh,' said 
she, ' I thought it was considered only a romance !' However, 
she added herself to the group of starers. When we went to 
Dr. Guthrie's church at Edinburgh, the congregation made a 
line for us through which to walk away." At the hotels, one 
not uncommon form of doing Macaulay honor consisted in 
serving up a better dinner than had been ordered — ^no easy 
matter when he was catering for others beside himself — and 
then refusing to accept payment for his entertainment." At 
Inverary he writes : " The landlord insisted on treating us to 
our drive of yesterday, but I was peremptory. I was half sor- 
ry afterward, and so was Hannah, who, at the time, took my 
part. It is good to accept as well as to give. My feeling is 
too much that of Calderon's hero : 



400 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xv. 

(/ C6mo sabr^ pedir 
Quien solo ha sabido dar ?* 

I shrink too mucli from receiving services wliich I love to 
render." 

During this visit to the N"orth my nncle vras still the same 
agreeable traveling companion that we had always known 
him ; with the same . readiness to please and be pleased, and 
the same sweet and even temper. When one of us happened 
to be alone with him, there sometimes was a touch of melan- 
choly about his conversation which imparted to it a singular 
charm ; but when the whole of our little circle was assembled, 
he showed himseH as ready as ever to welcome any topic 
which promised to afford material for amusing and abundant 
talk. I especially remember our sitting at the window through 
the best part of an afternoon, looking across "Windermere, and 
drawing up under his superintendence a list of forty names 
for an imaginary English academy. The result of our labors, 
in the shape in which it now lies before me, bears evident 
marks of having been a work of compromise, and can not, 
therefore, be presented to the world as a faithful and authen- 
tic expression of Macaulay's estimate of his literary and sci- 
entific contemporaries. 

In a letter to Mr. Ellis, written on the 24th of October, 
1859, Macaulay says: "I have been very well in body since 
we parted ; but in mind I have suffered much, and the more 
because I have had to put a force upon myself in order to ap- 
pear cheerful. It is at last settled that Hannah and Alice are 
to go to Madras in February. I can not deny that it is right ; 
and my duty is to avoid whatever can add to the pain which 
they suffer. But I am very unhappy. However, I read, and 
write, and contrive to forget my sorrow for whole hours. But 
it recurs, and will recur." 

The trial which now at no distant date awaited Macaulay 
was one of the heaviest that could by any possibility have 
been allotted to him, and he summoned all his resources in 

* " How will he know how to ask, who has only known how to give V 



1859.] LORD MACAULAY. 401 

order to meet it with firmness and resignation. He hence- 
forward made it a duty to occupy his mind, and fortify his 
powers of self-control, by hard and continuous intellectual 
exertion. " I must drive away," he says, " these thoughts by 
writing ;" and with diminished strength he returned to his la- 
bors, purposing not to relax them until he had completed an- 
other section of the " History." In October, he tells Mr. 
Longman that he is working regularly, and that he designs 
to publish the next volume by itseK. On the lith of Decem- 
ber he writes: "Finished at last the session of 1699-1700. 
There is a good deal in what I have written that is likely to 
interest readers. At any rate, this employment is a good 
thing for myself, and will be a better soon when I shall have 
little else left." Influenced by the same settled determina- 
tion forcibly to divert the current of his reflections from the 
sombre channel in which they were now prone to run, Mac- 
aulay, even during his hours of leisure, began to read on sys- 
tem. On the second day after he had received the unwelcome 
announcement of my mother's plans with regard to India, he 

commenced the perusal of Nichols's "Literary Anecdotes" 

a ponderous row of nine volumes, each containing seven or 
eight hundred closely printed pages. He searched and sifted 
this vast repertory of eighteenth-century erudition and gossip 
with a minute diligence such as few men have the patience 
to bestow upon a book which they do not intend to re-edit ; 
correctihg blunders, supplying omissions, stigmatizing faults 
in taste and grammar, and enriching every blank space which 
invited his pencil with a profusion of valuable and entertain- 
ing comments. Progressing steadily at the rate of a volume 
a week, he had read and annotated the entire work between 
the ITth day of October and the 21st of December. 

During this period of his life Macaulay certainly was least 
unhappy when alone in his own library ;* for, in the society 
of those whom he was about to lose, the enjoyment of the mo- 
ment could not fail to be overclouded by sad presentiments. 

* On the 16th of October he notes in his diary : "I read, and found, as 1 
have always found, that an interesting book acted as an anodyne.'' 
YoL. IL— 26 



402 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. xv. 

" I could almost wish," he writes, " that what is to he were to 
he immediately. I dread the next four months more than 
even the months which will follow the separation. This pro- 
longed parting— this slow sipping of the vinegar and the gall 
— is terrible." The future was indeed dark before him ; but 
God, who had so blessed him, dealt kindly with him even to 
the end, and his burden was not permitted to be greater than 
his strength could bear. 

" Friday, Decemter 16ft. — From this morning I reckon some of the least 
agreeable days of my life. The physic was necessary, but I believe it 
brought me very low. The frost was more intense than ever, and arrested 
my circulation.* Bating the irregularity of the pulse, I suffered all that I 
suffered when, in 1852, 1 was forced to go to Clifton. The depression, the 
weakness, the sinking of the heart, the incapacity to do any thing that re- 
quired steady exertion, were very distressing. To write, though but a 
few words, is disagreeable to me. However, I read German, Latin, and 
English, and got through the day tolerably." 

"December 17th. — Very hard frost. The weather has seldom been colder 
in this latitude. I sent for Martin, and told him my story.t He says that 
there is no organic affection of the heart, but that the heart is weak." 

"Deceniber 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 pass- 
ing of late would make me impatient to got to my little narrow crib, like 
a weary factory child." 

" Wednesday, December 21st. — Every thing changed ; the frost ajid frozen 
snow all gone ; heavy rain falling ; clouds from the south-west driving fast 
through the sky. The sun came, and it was so mild that I ventured into 
the veranda ; but I was far from well. My two doctors, Watson and Mar- 
tin,, caine to consult. They agreed in pronouncing my complaint a heart- 
complaint simply. If the heart acted with force, all the plagues would 
vanish together. They may be right. I am certainly very poorly — weak 
as a child. Yet I am less nervous than usual. I have shed no tears dur- 
ing some days, though with me tears ask only leave to flow, as poor Cow- 
per says. I am sensible of no intellectual decay — not the smallest." 

* Macaulay's habitual ill health had been aggravated by a walk which 
he took, in a bitter east wind, from the British Museum to the Athenaeum 
Club. 

t Sir Ranald Martin had been Macaulay's physician in Calcutta. 



1859.] LORD MAC AULA Y. 403 

"Friday, December 23(i. — In the midst of life— this morning I had scarce- 
ly left my closet when down came the ceiling in large masses. I should 
certainly have been stunned, probably killed, if I had staid a few minutes 
longer. I staid by my fire, not exerting myself to write, but making Christ- 
mas calculations, and reading. An odd declaration by Dickens, that he did 
not mean Leigh Hunt by Harold Skimpole. Yet he owns that he took the 
light externals of the character from Leigh Hunt, and surely it is by those 
light externals that the bulk of mankind will always recognize character. 
Besides, it is to be observed that the vices of Harold Skimpole are vices 
to which Leigh Hunt had, to say the least, some little leaning, and which 
the world generally imputed to him most unsparingly. That he had loose 
notions of mewm and tuuni, that he had no high feeling of independence, 
that he had no sense of obligation, that he took money wherever he could 
get it, that he felt no gratitude for it, that he was just as ready to defame 
a person who had relieved his distress as a person who had refused him re- 
lief — these were things which, as Dickens must have known, were said, 
truly or falsely, about Leigh Hunt, and had made a deep impression on 
the public mind. Indeed, Leigh Hunt had said himself : ' I have some pe- 
culiar notions about money. They will be found to involve considerable 
difference of opinion with the community, particularly in a commercial 
country. I have not that horror of being under obligation which is 
thought an essential refinement in money matters.' This is Harold Skim- 
pole all over. How, then, could D. donbt that H. S. would be supposed to 
be a portrait of L.H.?" 



At tliis point Macaulay's journal comes to an abrupt dose. 
Two days afterward he wrote to Mr. Ellis : " The physicians 
think me better ; but there is little change in my sensations. 
The day before yesterday I had a regular fainting-fit, and lay 
quite insensible. I wish that I had continued to be so ; for if 
death be no more — . Up I got, however ; and the doctors 
agree that the circumstance is altogether unimportant." ISTev- 
ertheless, from this time forward there was a marked change 
for the worse in Macaulay. "I spent Christmas - day with 
him," my mother writes. " He talked very little, and was 
constantly dropping asleep. We had our usual Christmas 
dinner with him, and the next day I thought him better. 
Never, as long as I live, can I lose the sense of misery that I 
ever left him after Christmas-day. But I did not feel alarm- 
ed. I thought the accident to the ceihng had caused a shock 
to his nerves from which he was gradually recovering ; and, 



404 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. xv. 

when we were alone together, he gave way to so much emo- 
tion, that, while he was so weak, I rather avoided being long 
with him." It may give occasion for surprise that Macaulay's 
relatives entertained no apprehension of his being in grave 
and immediate danger ; but the truth is that his evident unhap- 
piness (the outward manifestations of which, during the last 
few days of his life, he had no longer the force to suppress) 
was so constantly present to the minds of us all that our at- 
tention was diverted from his bodily condition. His silence 
and depression — due, in reality, to physical causes — were be- 
lieved by us to proceed almost entirely from mental dis- 
tress. 

In a contemporary account of Macaulay's last illness* it is 
related that on the morning of Wednesday, the 28th of De- 
cember, he mustered strength to dictate a letter addressed to 
a poor curate, inclosing twenty -five poimds; after signing 
which letter he never wrote his iiame again. Late in the aft- 
ernoon of the same day I called at Holly Lodge, intending to 
propose myseK to dinner ; an intention which was abandoned 
as soon as I entered the library. My uncle was sitting, with 
his head bent forward on his chest, in a languid and drowsy 
reverie. The first number of the Gornhill Magazine lay un- 
heeded before him, open at the first page of Thackeray's story 
of "Lovel the Widower." He did not utter a word, except 
in answer ; and the only one of my observations that at this 
distance of time I can recall suggested to him painful and 
pathetic reflections which altogether desti'oyed his self-com- 
mand. 

On hearing my report of his state, my mother resolved to 
spend the night at Holly Lodge. She had just left the draw- 
ing-room to make her preparations for the visit (it being, I 

* This account, whicti is very brief, but apparently autbeutic, is pre- 
served among the Marquis of Lansdowne's papers. Macaulay writes, on 
tlie 19th of August, 1859 : " I grieve to hear about my dear old friend, Lord 
Lausdowue. I owe more to him than to any man living; and he never 
seemed to be sensible that I owed him any thing. I shall look anxionsly 
for the next accounts.'' Lord Lansdowne recovered from this illness, and 
survived Macaulay more than three years. 



1859.] LORD MACAULAY. 405 

suppose, a little before seven in the evening), when a servant 
arrived with an urgent summons. As we drove up to the 
porch of my uncle's house, the maids ran, crying, out into the 
darkness to meet us, and we knew that all was over. "We 
found him in the library, seated in his easy-chair, and dressed 
as usual ; with his book on the table beside him, still open at 
the same page. He had told his butler that he should go to 
bed early, as he was very tired. The man proposed his lying 
on the sofa. He rose as if to move, sat down again, and 
ceased to breathe. He died as he had always wished to die — ■ 
without pain ; without any formal farewell ; preceding to the 
grave all whom he loved; and leaving behind him a great 
and honorable name, and the memory of a life every action 
of which was as clear and transparent as one of his own sen- 
tences. It would be imbecoming in me to dwell upon the 
regretful astonishment with which the tidings of his death 
were received wherever the English language is read; and 
quite unnecessary to describe the enduring grief of those upon 
whom he had lavished his afiection, and for whom life had 
been brightened by daily converse with his genius, and enno- 
bled by f amiharity with his lofty and upright example. " We 
have lost " (so my mother wrote) " the light of our home, the 
most tender, loving, generous, unselfish, devoted of friends. 
What he was to me for fifty years how can I tell? What a 
world of love he poured out upon me and mine ! The blank, 
the void, he has left — filling, as he did, so entirely both heart 
and intellect — no one can understand. For who ever knew 
such a life ^s mine passed as the cherished companion of such 
a man ?" 

He was buried in Westminster Abbey, on the 9th of Janu- 
aiy, 1860. The pall was borne by the Duke of Argyll, Lord 
John Eussell, Lord Stanhope, Lord Carlisle, Bishop Wilber- 
force, Sir David Dundas, Sir Henry Holland, Dean Milman, 
Sir George Cornewall Lewis, the Lord Chancellor, and the 
Speaker of the House of Commons. "A beautiful sunrise," 
wrote Lord Carlisle. " The pall-bearers met in the Jerusalem 
Chamber. The last time I had been there on a like errand 
was at Canning's funeral. The whole service and ceremony 



406 LIFE AND LETTERS OF LOKD MACAULAY. [chap. xv. 

were in the highest degree solemn and impressive. All be- 
fitted the man and the occasion." 

He rests with his peers in Poet's Corner, near the west wall 
of the south transept. There, amidst the tombs of Johnson, 
and Garrick, and Handel, and' Goldsmith, and Gay, stands 
conspicuous the statue of Addison ; and at the feet of Addison 
lies the stone which bears this inscription : 

THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD MACAULAY. 

BOEN AT ROTHLBY 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." 



THE END. 



MACAULAY'S 

HISTORY OF EIGLAID. 



The History of England from the Accession of James II. 
By Lord Macaulay. In Five Volumes. With elab- 
orate Index. 



Library Edition: 5 vols., 8vo, Cloth, $10 00; Sheep, 
$12 so; Half Calf, $21 25. 

Popular Edition: 5 vols., i2mo. Cloth, $5 00; Sheep, 
$7 00; Half Calf, $13 75. 

Cheap Editon : 5 vols., 8vo, Paper, $2 50. 

The volumes are sold separately. 



With the rest of the world we come with our homage to Macaulay. There 
is no occasion for us to quote from Macaulay, to criticise or to praise him. 
Our readers long ago have made their own quotations, selected their favorite 
passages, have read again and again every page of his history ; and the univer- 
sal approbation of the world has at once dispensed with the necessity of pane- 
gyric, and made censure impossible, except to those who are ambitious of a 
foolish singularity. On whatever side we look at this book, whether the style 
of it or the matter of it, it is alike astonishing. The style is faultlessly lumi- 
nous ; every word is in its right place ; every sentence is exquisitely balanced ; 
the current never flags. Homer, according to the Roman poet, may be some- 
times languid; Macaulay is always bright, sparkling, attractive. — Westminster 
Review. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 



J@^= Either of the above works sent by mail or express, postage or freight pre- 
paid, on receipt of the price.