even while

"Broader and deeper," says Emerson, "must practice of novel-reading, requires to be imbibed we write our annals." The true idea of history in great moderation, and needs a robust constituis only as yet dawning on the world; the old tion to bear it. Reading his papers is employalmanac form of history has been generally re- ment but too delicious-the mind is too seldom nounced, but much of the old almanac spirit irritated and provoked-the higher faculties are remains. The avowed partisan still presumes to too seldom appealed to-the sense of the infinite write his special pleading, and to call it a history. is never given-there is perpetual excitement, but The romance writer still decorates his fancy-piece, it is that of a game of tennis-ball, and not the and, for fear of mistake, writes under it, "This is Titanic play of rocks and mountains-there is cona history." The bald retailer of the dry bones stant exercise, but it is rather the swing of an of history is not yet entirely banished from our easy chair than the grasp and tug of a strong literature-nor is the hardy, but one-sided Icono- rower striving to keep time with one stronger clast, who has a quarrel with all established repu- than himself. Ought we ask a grave and solid tation, and would spring a mine against the sun reputation, as extensive as that of Shakspeare or if he could-nor is the sagacious philosophiste, Milton, to be entirely founded on what is essenwho has access to the inner thoughts and motives tially a course of light reading? of men who have been dead for centuries, and We do not venture on his merits as a politician often imputes to deep, deliberate purpose what or statesman. But, as a speaker, we humbly was the result of momentary impulse, fresh and think he has been over-rated. He is not a subsudden as the breeze, who accurately sums up and lime orator, who fulminates, and fiercely, and alably reasons on all calculable principles, but omits most contemptuously, sways his audience; he is the incalculable, such as inspiration and frenzy. not a subtle declaimer, who winds around and We are waiting for the full avatar of the ideal within the sympathies of his hearers, till, like the historian, who to the intellectual qualities of clear damsel in the "Castle of Indolence," they weaken sight, sagacity, picturesque power, and learning, as they warm, and are at last sighingly but luxushall add the far rarer qualities of a love for truth riously lost. He is not a being piercing a lonely only equalled by a love for man-a belief in and way for his own mind, through the thick of his sympathy with progress, thorough independence audience-wondered at, looked after, but not foland impartiality, and an all-embracing charity-lowed-dwelling apart from them and after Macaulay's History of England has seen rivetting them to his lips-still less is he an inthe light, may still be found waiting. carnation of moral dignity, whose slightest sentence The real purpose of a writer is perhaps best is true to the inmost soul of honor, and whose plain, concluded from the effect he produces on the blunt speech is as much better than oratory, as minds of his readers. And what is the boon oratory is better than rhetoric. He is the primed which Macaulay's writings do actually confer upon mouth-piece of an elaborate discharge, who pretheir millions of readers? Much information, sents, applies the linstock, and fires off. He doubtless many ingenious views are given and speaks rather before than to his audience. We developed, but the main effect is pleasure-either felt this strongly when hearing him at the opening a lulling, soothing opiatic, or a rousing and stimu- of the New Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh; lating gratification. But what is their mental or that appearance had on us the effect of disenchantmoral influence? What new and great truths do ment; our lofty ideal of Macaulay the orator-an they throw like bomb-shells into nascent spirits, ideal founded on the perusal of all sorts of fulsome disturbing forever their repose? What sense of panegyrics-sank like a dream. Macaulay the the moral sublime have they ever infused into the orator? Why had they not raved as well of imagination, or what thrilling and strange joy Macaulay the beauty? He is, indeed, a master "beyond the name of pleasure" have they ever of rhetorical display; he aspires to be a philosocirculated through the heart? What long, deep pher; he is a brilliant literateur; but, besides not trains of thought have his thoughts ever started, speaking oratorically, he does not speak at all, if and to what melodies in other minds have his speaking means free communication with the souls words struck the key-note? Some authors men- and hearts of his hearers. If Demosthenes, Fox, tally "beget children-they travail in birth with and O'Connell were orators, he is none. children;" thus from Coleridge sprang Hazlitt, not merely that we were disappointed with his but who is Macaulay's eldest born? Who dates personal appearance—that is sturdy and manlike, any great era in his history from the reading of if not graceful-it is, besides, hereditary, and canhis works, or has received from him even the not be helped; but the speech was an elaborate bright edge of any apocalyptic revelation? Pleas- and ungraceful accommodation to the presumed ure, we repeat, is the principal boon he has con- prejudices and tastes of the hearers-a piece of ferred on the age; and without under-estimating literary electioneering and the manner, in its this, (which, indeed, were ungrateful, for none fluent monotony, showed a heart untouched amid have derived more pleasure from him than our- all the palaver. Here is one, we thought, whose selves,) we must say that it is comparatively a very tones prove that his success has been far too trivial gift-a fruiterer's or a confectioner's office easy and exulting, and who has never known by -and, moreover, that the pleasure he gives, like experience the meaning of the grand old words, that arising from the use of wine, or from the "perfect through suffering." Here is one in

It was

public sight selling his birthright for a mess of picture could be more exactly his antithesis? But pottage and worthless praise, and who may live neither has he, in any high degree, either the gift bitterly to rue the senseless bargain, for that ap- of philosophic analysis, or the subtle idealizing plause is as certainly insincere as that birthright power of the poet. Clear, direct, uncircumspective is high. Here is one who, ingloriously sinking thought-vivid vision of the characters he describes with compulsion and laborious flight, consciously -an eye to see, rather than an imagination to confounds culture with mere knowledge-speaking combine-strong, but subdued enthusiasm-learnas if a boarding-school Miss, who had read Ew-ing of a wide range, and information still more ing's Geography, were therein superior to Strabo. wonderful in its minuteness and accuracy—a style There, Thomas Macaulay, we thought thou art limited and circumscribed by mannerism, but havcontradicting thy former and better self, for we ing all power and richness possible within its own well remember thee speaking in an article with range-full of force, though void of freedom-and withering contempt of those who prefer to that a tone of conscious mastery, in his treatment of "fine old geography of Strabo" the pompous in- every subject, are some of the qualities which build anities of Pinkerton. And dost thou deem thyself, him up a strong and thoroughly furnished man, all accomplished as thou art, nearer to the infinite fit surely for more massive deeds than either a mind than Pythagoras or Plato, because thou series of sparkling essays, or what shall probably knowest more? And when he spoke again ex-be a one-sided history. tempore, he sounded a still lower deep, and we In passing from his general characteristics to began almost to fancy that there must be some natural deficiency in a mind so intensely cultivated, which could not shake as good, or better speeches, than even his first, "out of his sleeve." But the other proceedings and haranguings of that evening were not certainly fitted to eclipse his brightness, though they were calculated, in the opinion of many, to drive the truly eloquent to the woods, to find in the old trees a more congenial audience.

his particular works, there is one circumstance in favor of the critic. While many authors are much, their writings are little known; but if ever any writings were published, it is Macaulay's. A glare of publicity, as wide almost as the sunshine of the globe, rests upon them; and it is always easier to speak to men of what they know perfectly, than of what they know in part. To this there is perhaps an exception in his contributions to "Knight's Quarterly Magazine." That periodical, some of our readers may be aware, was of limited circulation, and limited life. "It sparkled-was exhaled, and went to- -;" yet Professor Wilson has been

The House of Commons, we are told, hushes to hear him, but this may arise from other reasons than the mere power of his eloquence. He has a name, and there is far too much even in parliament of that base parasitical element, which, while de-known to say, that its four or five volumes are nying ordinary courtesy to the untried, has its knee delicately hinged to bend in supple homage to the acknowledged. He avoids, again, the utterance of all extreme opinions-never startles or offends -never shoots abroad forked flashes of truth; and besides, his speaking is, in its way, a very peculiar

treat.

equal in talent to any four or five in the compass of periodical literature. To this opinion we must respectfully demur-at least we found the reading of two or three of them rather a hard task, the sole relief being in the papers of Macaulay, and would be disposed to prefer an equal number of Like his articles, it generally gives pleas-"Blackwood," "Tait," or the "Old London ure; and who can deny themselves an opportunity Magazine." of being pleased, any more than a dish of straw- Macaulay's best contributions to this are a series berries and cream in summer time. Therefore, of poems entitled, "Lays of the Roundheads." the house was silent-its perpetual undersong sub- These, though less known than his "Lays of the sided-even Roebuck's bristles were wont to lower, League," which also appeared in "Knight," are, and Joseph Hume's careful front to relax when we think, superior. They are fine anticipations the right honorable member for Edinburgh was on of the "Lays of Ancient Rome." Like Scott, his legs. But he is, in our idea, the orator who vaulting between Claverhouse and Burley, and fronts the storm and crushes it into silence-who entering with equal gusto into the souls of both, snatches the prejudice from three hundred frowning Macaulay sings with equal spirit the song of the foreheads and binds it as a crown unto him-and enthusiastic Cavalier and that of the stern Roundwho, not on some other and less difficult arena, head. He could have acted as poet-laureate to but on that very field, wins the laurels which he Hannibal as well as to the republic, and his "Lays is to wear. Those are the eloquent sentences of Carthage" would have been as sweet, as strong, which, though hardly heard above the tempest of and more pathetic than his " Lays of Rome." opposition, yet are heard—and felt as well as heard" How happy could he be with either, were t' other —and obeyed as well as felt, which bespeak the dear charmer away." Not thus could Carlyle pass surges at their loudest, and immediately there is a from his "Life of Cromwell" to a panegyric on great calm. the "Man of Blood," whose eyes

on war.

We are compelled, therefore, as our last gen-"Could bear to look on torture, but durst not look eral remark on Macaulay, to call him rather a large and broad, than a subtle sincere, or profound spirit. A simple child of Nature, trembling before the air played by some invisible musician behind him, what

But Macaulay is the artist, sympathizing more with the poetry than with the principles of the great Puritanic contest.

Each

This brings us to say a few words on his contributions to the "Edinburgh Review." We confess, that had we been called on while new from reading those productions, our verdict on them would have been much more enthusiastic. Their immediate effect is absolutely intoxicating. reads like a new Waverley tale. "More-give us more-it is divine!" we cry, like the Cyclops when he tasted of the wine of Outis. As Pitt adjourned the court after Sheridan's Begum speech, so, in order to judge fairly, we are compelled to adjourn the criticism. Days even have to elapse ere the stern question begins slowly, through the golden mist, to lift up its head-" What have you gained? Have you only risen from a more refined

His Roman Lays, though of a later date, fall works had not previously and amply disclosed. In naturally under the same category of consideration. fact, their excessive popularity arose in a great These, when published, took the majority of the measure from the new attitude in which they prepublic by surprise, who were nearly as astonished sented their writer. Long accustomed to speak at this late flowering of poetry in the celebrated to the public, he suddenly volunteered to sing, and critic, as were the Edinburgh people, more recently, his song was harmonious, and between gratitude at the portentous tidings that Patrick Robertson, and surprise was vehemently encored. It was as also, was among the poets. The initiated, how- if Helen Faucit were to commence to lecture, and ever, acquainted with his previous effusions, hailed should lecture well; or as though Douglas Jerrold the phenomenon, (not as in Patrick's case, with were to announce a volume of sermons, and the shouts of spurting laughter,) but with bursts of sermons turn out to be excellent. This, after all, applause, which the general voice more than con- would only prove versatility of talent; it would not firmed. The day when the Lays appeared, though | enlarge our conception of the real calibre of their deep in autumn, seemed a belated dog-day, so powers. Nay, we hesitate not to assert, that cerfrantic did their admirers become. Homer, Scott, tain passages of Macaulay's prose rise higher than Wordsworth, and Byron, were now to hide their the finest raptures of his poetry, and that the term diminished heads, for an old friend under a new eloquence will measure the loftiest reaches of face had arisen to eclipse them all. And, for either. martial spirit, we are free to confess the Lays have never been surpassed, save by Homer, Scott, and by Burns, whose one epithet "red wat shod," whose one description of the dying Scotch soldier in the "Earnest Cry," and whose one song, “Go fetch for me a pint of wine,” are enough to stamp him among the foremost of martial poets. Macaulay's ballads sound in parts like the thongs of Bellona. Written, it is said, in the war office, the Genius of Battle might be figured bending over the author, sternly smiling on her last poet, and shedding from her wings a ruddy light upon his rapidly and furiously-filling page. But the poetry of war is not of the highest order. Seldom, except when the war is ennobled by some great cause, as when Deborah uttered her unequalled. Noctes Ambrosiana? Have you only been conthanksgiving, can the touch of the sword extract versing with an elegant artist? or has a prophet the richest life's blood of poetry. Selfish is the been detaining you in his terrible grasp or has exultation over victory, selfish the wailing under Apollo been touching your trembling ears?" As defeat. The song of the sword must soon give we answer, we almost blush, remembering our place to the song of the bell; and the pastoral tame and sweet subjection; and yet the moment ditty pronounced over the reaping hook shall sur-that the enchantment again assails us, it again is pass all lyrical baptisms of the spear. As it is, certain to prevail. the gulf between the Lays-amazingly spirited But what is the explanation of this power? Is though they be-and intellectual, imaginative, or it altogether magical, or does it admit of analysis? moral poetry, is nearly as wide as between Chevy Macaulay's writings have one very peculiar and Chase and Laodamia. Besides, the Lays are in very popular quality. They are eminently clear. a great measure centos; the images are no more They can by no possibility, at any time, be nebuoriginal than the facts, and the poetic effect is pro-lous. You can read them as you run. Schoolduced through the singular rapidity, energy, and boys devour them with as much zest as bearded felicity of the narration, and the breathless rush of the verse," which rings to boot and saddle." One of the finest touches, for example, is imitated from Scott.

"The kites know well the long stern swell That bids the Romans close"

Macaulay has it. In the Lady of the Lake it

is :

men.

This clearness is, we think, connected with deficiency in his speculative and imaginative faculties; but it does not so appear to the majority of readers. Walking in an even and distinct pathway, not one stumbling stone or alley of gloom in its whole course, no hill of difficulty rising, nor path of danger diverging, greeted, too, by endless vistas of interest and beauty, all are but too glad, and too grateful, to get so trippingly along. ity, also, whispers to the more ambitious: What She knew the voice of Alpine's war." we can so easily understand we could easily equal; Indeed, no part of the Lays rises higher than the and thus are the readers kept on happy terms both better passages of Scott. As a whole, they are with the author and themselves. His writings more imitative and less rich in figure and language have all the stimulus of oracular decision, without than his poetry; and we have been unable to dis-one particle of oracular darkness. His papers, too, cover any powers revealed in them which his orose are thickly studded with facts. This itself, in an

"The exulting eagle screamed afar,

Van

enthusiasm, which public life has not yet been able to chill. He is not an inspired child, but he is still an ardent schoolboy, and what many count and call his literary vice we count his literary salvation. It is this unfeigned love of letters and genius which (dexterously managed, indeed) is the animating and inspiring element of Macaulay's better criticisms, and the redeeming point in his worse. It is a love which many waters have been unable to destroy, and which shall burn till death. When he retires from public life, like Lord Grenville, he may say, "I return to Plato and the Iliad."

We must be permitted, ere we close, a few remarks on some of his leading papers. Milton was his "Reuben-his first-born-the beginning of his strength;" and thought by many "the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power." It was gorgeous as an eastern tale. He threw such a glare about Milton that at times you could not see him. The article came clashing down on the floor of our literature like a gauntlet of defiance, and all wondered what young Titan could have launched it. Many inquired, Starting at such a rate, whither is he likely to go?" Meanwhile the wiser, while admiring, quietly smiled, and whispered in reply, "At such a rate no man can or ought to advance." Meanwhile, too, a tribute to Milton from across the waters, less brilliant, but springing from a more complete and mellow sympathy with him, though at first overpowered, began steadily and slowly to gain the superior suffrage of the age, and from that pride of place has not yet receded. On the contrary, Macaulay's paper he himself now treats as the brilliant bastard of his mind. Of such splendida vitia he need not be ashamed. We linger as we remember the wild delight with which we first read his picture of the Puritans, ere it was hackneyed by quotation, and ere we thought it a rhetorical bravura. How burning his print of Dante? The best frontispiece to this paper on Milton would be the figure of Robert Hall, at the age of sixty, lying on his back, and learning Italian, in order to verify Macaulay's description of the "Man that had been in Hell."

age like ours, is enough to recommend them, es- and superior to all these he has genuine literary pecially when these facts are so carefully selected -when told now with emphasis so striking, and now with negligence so graceful; and when suspended around a theory at once dazzling and slight -at once paradoxical and pleasing. The reader, beguiled, believes himself reading something more agreeable than history, and more veracious than fiction. It is a very waltz of facts that he witnesses; and yet how consoling to reflect that they are facts after all! Again, Macaulay, as we have repeatedly hinted, is given to paradoxes. But then these paradoxes are so harmless, so respectable, so well-behaved-his originalities are so orthodox—and his mode of expressing them is at once so strong and so measured-that people feel both the tickling sensation of novelty and a perfect sense of safety, and are slow to admit that the author, instead of being a bold, is a timorous thinker, one of the literary as well as political juste-milieu. Again, his manner and style are thoroughly English. As his sympathies are, to a great degree, with English modes of thought and habit of action, so his language is a stream of English undefiled. All the territories which it has traversed have enriched, without coloring, its waters. Even the most valuable of German refinements such as that common one of subjective and objective-are sternly shyed. That philosophic diction which has been from Germany so generally transplanted, is denied admittance into Macaulay's grounds, exciting a shrewd suspicion that he does not often require it for philosophical purposes. Scarcely a phrase or word is introduced which Swift would not have sanctioned. In anxiety to avoid a barbarous and Mosaic diction, he goes to the other extreme, and practises purism and elaborate simplicity. Perhaps under a weightier burden, like Charon's skiff, such a style might break down; but, as it is, it floats on, and carries the reader with it, in all safety, rapidity, and ease. Again, this writer has-apart from his clearness, his bridled paradox, and his English style-a power of interesting his readers, which we may call, for want of a more definite term, tact. This art he has taught himself gradually; for in his earlier articles, such as that on "Milton," and the In what a different light does the review of Cro"Present Administration," there were a prodigal-ker's Boswell exhibit our author? He sets out ity and a recklessness—a prodigality of image, and a recklessness of statement-which argued an impulsive nature, not likely so soon to subside into a tactician. Long ago, however, has he changé tout cela. Now he can set his elaborate passages at proper distances from each other; he peppers his page more sparingly with the condiments of metaphor and image; he interposes anecdotes to break the blaze of his splendor; he consciously stands at ease, nay, condescends to nod, the better to prepare his reader, and breathe himself for a grand gallop; and though he has not the art to conceal his art, yet he has the skill always to fix his reader -always to write, as he himself says of Horace Walpole, "what everybody will like to read." Still further, and finally, he has a quality different from

like Shenstone, by saying, "I will, I will be witty;" and like him, the will and the power are equal. Macaulay's wit is always sarcasm-sarcasm embittered by indignation, and yet performing its minute dissections with judicial gravity. Here he catches his Rhadamanthus of the Shades, in the upper air of literature, and his vengeance is more ferocious than his wont. He first flays, then kills, then tramples, and then hangs his victim in chains. It is the onset of one whose time is short, and who expects reprisals in another region. Nor will his sarcastic vein, once awakened against Croker, sleep till it has scorched poor Bozzy to ashes, and even singed the awful wig of Johnson. We cannot comprehend Macaulay's fury at Boswell, whom he crushes with a disproportionate ex

penditure of power and anger. Nor can we coin- | peculiar fondness-the paper on Bunyan. As no cide with his eloquent enforcement of the opinion, one has greater sympathy with the spirit of the first propounded by Burke, then seconded by Mack- Puritans without having any with their peculiar intosh, and which seems to have become general, sentiments than Carlyle, so no one sympathizes that Johnson is greater in Boswell's book than in more with the literature of that period, without his own works. To this we demur. Boswell's much else in common (unless we except Southey) book gives us little idea of Johnson's eloquence, as Macaulay. The "Pilgrim's Progress" is to or power of grappling with higher subjects

him, as to many, almost a craze. He cannot Rassellas" and the "Lives of the Poets" do. speak calmly about it. It continues to shine in Boswell's book does justice to Johnson's wit, read- the purple light of youth; and, amid all the paths iness, and fertility; but if we would see the full he has traversed, he has never forgotten that imforce of his fancy, the full energy of his invective, mortal path which Bunyan's genius has so boldly and his full sensibility to, and command over, the mapped out, so variously peopled, and so richly moral sublime, we must consult such papers in the adorned. How can it be forgotten, since it is at "Idler" as that wonderful one on the Vultures, or once the miniature of the entire world, and a type in the "Rambler," as Anningait and Ajut, his of the progress of every earnest soul? The City London, and his Vanity of Human Wishes. Bos- of Destruction, the Slough of Despond, the Delecwell, we venture to assert, has not saved one great table Mountains, the Valley of the Shadow of sentence of his idol-such as we may find pro- Death, Beulah, and the Black River, are still fusely scattered in his own writings-nor has re- extant, unchangeable realities, as long as man concorded fully any of those conversations, in which, tinues to be tried and to triumph. But it is less pitted against Parr or Burke, he talked his best. in this typical aspect than as an interesting tale If Macaulay merely means that Boswell, through that Macaulay seems to admire it. Were we to what he has preserved, and through his own un- look at it in this light alone, we should vastly preceasing admiration, gives us a higher conception fer "Turpin's Ride to York," or "Tam O'Shanof Johnson's every-day powers of mind than his ter's Progress to Alloway Kirk.” But as an writings supply, he is right; but in expressly unconscious mythic history of man's moral and claiming the immortality for that "careless table- spiritual advance, its immortality is secure, though talk," which he denies to the works, and forget-its merits are as yet in this point little appreciated. ting that the works discover higher faculties in Bunyan, indeed, knew not what he did; but then special display, we deem him mistaken.

In attacking Johnson's style, Macaulay is, unconsciously, a suicide-not that his style is modelled upon Johnson's, or that he abounds in sesqui-pedalia verba-he has never needed large or new words, either to cloak up mere commonplace, or to express absolute originality—but many of the faults he charges against Johnson belong to himself. Uniformity of march-want of flexibility and ease-consequent difficulty in adapting itself to common subjects-perpetual and artfully balanced antithesis, were, at any rate, once peculiarities of Macaulay's writings, as well as of Johnson's, nor are they yet entirely relinquished. After all, such faults are only the awkward steps of the elephant, which only the monkey can deride. Or we may compare them to the unwieldy, but sublime movements of a giant telescope, which turns slowly and solemnly, as if in time and tune with the stately steps of majesty with which the great objects it contemplates are revolving.

The article on Byron, for light and sparkling brilliance, is Macaulay's finest paper. Perhaps it is not sufficiently grave or profound for the subject. There are, we think, but two modes of properly writing about Byron-the one is the Monody, the other the Impeachment: this paper is neither. Mere criticism over such dread dust is impertinent; mere panegyric impossible. Either with condemnation melting down in irrepressible tears, or with tears drying up in strong censure, should we approach the memory of Byron, if, indeed, eternal silence were not better still.

Over one little paper we are apt to pause with al

he spake inspired; his deep heart prompted him to say that to which all deep hearts in all ages should respond; and we may confidently predict that never shall that road be shut up or deserted. As soon stop the current or change the course of the black and bridgeless river.

We might have dwelt, partly in praise and partly in blame, on some of his other articlesmight, for instance, have combatted his slump and summary condemnation, in "Dryden," of Ossian's poems-poems which, striking, as they did, all Europe to the soul, must have had some merit, and which, laid for years to the burning heart of Napoleon, must have had some corresponding fire. That, said Coleridge, of Thomson's “ Seasons," lying on the cottage window-sill, is true fame; but was there no true fame in the fact that Napoleon, as he bridged the Alps, and made at Lodi impossibility itself the slave of his genius, had these poems in his travelling carriage? Could the chosen companion of such a soul, in such moments, be altogether false and worthless? Ossian's Poems we regard as a ruder "Robbers"-a real though clouded voice of poetry, rising in a low age, prophesying and preparing the way for the miracles which followed; and we doubt if Macaulay himself has ever equalled some of the nobler flights of Macpherson. We may search his writings long ere we find anything so sublime, though we may find many passages equally ambitious, as the Address to the Sun.

He closes his collected articles with his Warrer. Hastings, as with a grand finale. This we read with the more interest, as we fancy it a chapter extracted from his forthcoming history. As such