is clear, sunny, definite. But this very excellence is attained in some sort by the sacrifice of a higher excellence. Brilliant it is, and vivacious; but it wants the deep organtones of impassioned oratory, it wants the luminous repose of great convictions. Commonplaces are stated with a gravity and elaboration which other writers would bestow only on their important points. His level style is so emphatic, that to rise above it he is forced into exaggeration. Consequently the least critical reader is always conscious that Macaulay is writing for effect. Nor must we omit to mention his unrivalled powers of illustration. Here his extraor- Exaggeration, indeed, may be called his dinary erudition stands him in good stead. standing literary sin. It has given rise to a No matter what subject he is treating, he is suspicion that he is wholly insensible to truth. sure to adorn it with some delightful illustra- This is unjust. He is only too sensible of tion from ancient history or from fairy legend; effect, and a little too solicitous to achieve it. poets, philosophers, ballads, old chronicles He cannot blame men if they receive his and novelists are made "to do his spiriting judgments with suspicion, for his exaggeragently." Thus, to take a single example, he tion sometimes precipitates him even into bacompares Bacon's mind to the tent which the thos. He describes a character with such Fairy Paribanou gave to Prince Ahmed; fold extraordinary power, he vituperates with it, and it seemed a toy for a lady's hand; such amazing virulence, that he carries your spread it, and the armies of powerful sultans hatred along with him until the moment might repose beneath its shade. This power when, by some unhappy blunder, he quits of illustration, which arises from a quick generalities and descends to particulars, and "perception of resemblances in things dis- then it is that these particulars turn out to similar," has been called wit. A distinction, be so incommensurate with the language they however, suggests itself to us: although the are intended to warrant, that the bathos is power comes under the definition of wit, the inevitable. Look at his treatment of Nuncoillustrations themselves do not come under mar. With all his varied powers of illustrathe feeling of wit. Respecting these illustration he elaborately depicts the immorality of tions we remark also, as significant of Macaulay's accomplished but not observant mind, that they are almost always drawn from books. Prodigal as he is of analogies drawn from literature, he is niggardly in those drawn from life; Memory, not Observation, furnishes him with his subjects. Of those taken from nature, perhaps the very best is the following, which is the "second edition, revised and corrected," of a passage previously given in his article on Dryden: this Bengalee, till you imagine him to be some moral monster, as far transcending in turpitude any British scoundrel of your acquaintance, as the dark-striped tiger of the jungle transcends the domestic cat which purrs upon your hearth-rug. "Of his moral character," we are told, "it is difficult to give a notion to those who are acquainted with human nature only as it appears in our island. What the Italian is to the Englishman, what the Hindoo is to the Italian, what the Bengalee is to the Hindoo, that was Nun"The highest intellects, like the tops of moun- comar to other Bengalees." After such an tains, are the first to catch and reflect the dawn. exordium, and after being told at great They are bright while the level below is in dark-length that "in Nuncomar the national charness. But soon the light which at first illumina-acter was strongly, and with exaggeration, ted only the loftiest eminences, descends on the personified," is it not ridiculous to proceed, plain and penetrates to the deepest valley. First come hints; then fragments of systems, then comas he does with perfect gravity, to inform us, plete and harmonious systems. The opinion held by way of striking samples of this character, for a time by one bold speculator becomes the that "On one occasion he brought a false opinion of a small minority, of a strong minority, charge against another Hindoo, and tried to of a majority of mankind." substantiate it by producing forged documents. On another occasion it was discovered, that while professing the strongest attachment to the English he was engaged in several conspiraces against them ?" If, as Macaulay assures us, deceit is to the Bengalee what beauty is to a woman, what a sting is to the bee, what a horn is to the buffalo, why is Nuncomar pilloried in that extravagant contempt because he was deceitful? Surely perjury and treachery are not crimes Richness of illustration, splendor of diction, and transparency of statement make Macaulay a fascinating writer; so fascinating, indeed, that the dazzled eye has barely power to detect faults until familiarity has accustomed it to the glitter. Then indeed we perceive defects. One of these defects is an excess of the excellent quality-" relief." Every sentence stands out as if sculptured. so unparalleled as to be inconceivable by | It would not be right to make such an asserthose who only know human nature as it ap- tion without adducing examples, and we will pears in our island? That Nuncomar was a content ourselves with one literary and one gentleman whose acquaintance was desirable, historical example: that on the decline of may be doubted; one would rather not take poetry, and that on the policy of the Church him into the family circle. But that his ac- of Rome. cuser should only be able to bring home to him two charges of perjury and treachery, after having so elaborately excited our execration, reminds us of the bathos in that famous couplet: Then came Dalhousie, that great god of war, Lieutenant Colonel to the Earl of Mar. To a similar sacrifice of justice to effect must we ascribe the unexampled contempt with which he speaks of Boswell. The case is clear. He wanted a paradox, and the nature of Boswell's "Life of Johnson" furnished one, viz: that one of the greatest fools ever known to mankind had written one of the best books ever published. Many writers had remarked that Boswell's abilities did not seem to warrant the excellence of his book. But this would not content Macaulay. He was resolved to put Bozzy in the pillory. He did so; and did it with his usual power. We laugh, and allow laughter to overthrow judgment. But whoever seriously examines the matter, will perceive that the portrait drawn by Macaulay is an amusing caricature. So far from being the foolishest of men, Boswell, judged by the work in which he has shamelessly exhibited his weakness, his vanity, his sottishness, his curiosity, and his toadyism, will be found a scholar, a man of information, a respectable talker, and more than respectable writer. It was not an age abounding in genius; nor had he any claim to rank amongst the good writers of his age; but judged according to the standard of his contemporaries he was far from contemptible. Does any one suppose that Malone, Hawkins, Hawkesworth, or even Garrick, would have much surpassed Boswell in the literary portions of the Life of Johnson?" We say literary portions, because we set aside the peculiar excellence of the work its faithful record of Johnson's sayings. In taste, in knowledge, and in style, Boswell, though certainly a mediocre writer, was very far from being the contemptible dolt Macaulay has represented. Macaulay's speculations, when they have any novelty, appear to us not only untenable, but such as a deeply meditative mind would not have seriously put forth. This we will say for him, that having once taken up his position he defends it in dashing style. In his article on Milton, and subsequently in that on Dryden, (not reprinted,) he propounded, and illustrated with his wonted vivacity, the theory "that as civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines." The paradox is not altogether novel, but he pushed it further than any writer we remember. The question is wide and deep it strikes down to the root of literature, and is worthy the attention of every serious mind. If it be true, as he says, that civilization, by cultivating the reason, and by enlarging the bounds of human intelligence, necessarily destroys the poetic faculty, the poet's office, once so potent, has now become a nonentity, or worse, a frivolity. But is it true? We think not. It has been often said that no age is poetic to itself, and thus have men ever looked backward to a golden age of poetry. The history of the world teaches us that whenever there has been an awakening to new convictions, whenever there has been a period fraught with a "new birth of society" there have arisen singers to give melodious utterance to those convictions. The poet has never been wanting to his age. Macaulay says he cannot understand why those who believe in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception; "surely the uniformity of the phenomena indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause." here is a statement which we venture to say is contradicted by all known facts. The earliest poets are not the best. With the single exceptions of Homer and the Niebelungen Lied, the argument has not a fact to stand on, unless the vague term, early, may include the highly civilized poets of Athens, Florence and England. Homer had contemporaries; where are their great poems? Chaucer is a great poet; but are Gower, Barbour, Occleve, and Lydgate superior to such civilized poets as Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, or Tennyson? Observe, the question, as Macaulay puts it, is not one of individual genius, it is one of antiquity; and the earliest poets are said to be generally the best, not because they have greater genius, but because their age was more poetical. The greatest poets of each nation are Homer and Sophocles, Lucretius and Virgil, Dante and Ariosto, Lope de Vega and Calderon, Shakspeare and Milton, Göthe and Schiller; of these, how many flourished in periods when reasoning," "analysis," and "criticism" did not also flourish? But as Macaulay may dispute the cogency of the above objections, let us at once grapple with his principles. It will excite some astonishment in our readers to learn, that he believes a "certain unsoundness of mind" to be the necessary condition of poetry, and that no man can rightly enjoy poetry without this unsoundness. He says: "Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry; but it is the truth of madness. The reasonings are just; but the premises are false. After the first suppositions have been made, everything ought to be consistent; but those first suppositions require a degree of credulity which almost amounts to a partial and temporary derangement of the intellect. Hence, of all people, children are the most imaginative. They abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to their mental eye produces on them the effect of reality. No man, whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear, as a little girl is affected by the story of poor Red Riding Hood. She knows that it is all false, that wolves cannot speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her knowledge she believes; she weeps, she trembles; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the despotism of the imagination over uncultivated minds. What does all this amount to? It amounts to saying that children and savages are more susceptible to imaginative impressions than natural and cultivated men. There needed no proof of that; and proving it, was not proving that the poetry which so affects children and savages is the greatest kind of poetry, nor that early poets are the best. Macaulay, we presume, is not prepared to Mohawk are finer works of art than the maintain that the songs which transport the Faust; or that Little Red Riding Hood is superior to Othello; though these are legitimate inferences from his position as to effect. He talks of our being unable to unite the incompatible advantages of reality and deception, as if the object of the poet were to produce deception! He must be aware that such never was the object of the poet, any more than it has been the object of the sculptor or the painter. Yet it is on this assumption of the object of poetry being to produce an illusion that the whole of his argument falls. But it requires no more elaborate rereposes. With that assumption it stands or futation than is given by a naked statement of the assumption. He has proved that the imagination is more susceptible in children and savages than in matured and cultivated men ; but to establish his theory on the necessary decline of poetry with the advance of civilization, he would have to prove-1. That in children and savages the imagination is not only more vivacious, but more capable of sustaining long flights. 2. That poetry is the unmixed product of imagination, and its excellence de "In a rude state of society, men are children with a greater variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society that we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its highest perfection. In an enlightened age there will be much intelligence, much science, much philosophy, abundance of just classification and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good ones, but little poetry Men will judge and compare; but they will not create. They will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and to a certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able to conceive the effect which poetry produced on their ruder ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The Greek Rhapsodists, according to Plato, could not recite Homer without almost fall-pends solely on the imaginative vivacity. 3. ing into convulsions. The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping knife while he shouts his death-song. The power which the ancient bards of Wales and Germany exercised over their auditors seems to modern readers almost miraculous. Such feelings are very rare in a civilized community, and most rare among those who participate most in its improvements. They linger longest among the peasantry. 66 Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a magic lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body. And as the magic lantern That poetry has for a test of its excellence the amount of illusion it produces. When these three positions are satisfactorily established, it will be time to give heed to his theory, and not till then. Now for the second example. In his arti cle on Ranke's Popes, he alarmed many timorous Protestants by the striking picture he presented of the polity of the Church of Rome-a polity which enabled it to recover from the blow struck by Protestantism, and to regain much of its ancient territory. He says it is impossible to deny this polity to be the very master-piece of human wisdom. Not at all impossible. We deny it! We deny that it is a master-piece, and we deny that it is peculiar to the Church of Rome. To give him every advantage, and to place ourselves at the mercy of his singularly effective power of stating an argument, we quote in extenso: "In England, it not unfrequently happens that a tinker or coal-heaver hears a sermon, or falls in with a tract, which alarms him about the state of his soul. If he be a man of excitable nerves and strong imagination, he thinks himself given over to the Evil Power. He doubts whether he has not committed the unpardonable sin. He imputes every wild fancy that springs up in his mind to the whisper of a fiend. His sleep is broken by dreams of the great judgment-seat, the open books, and the unquenchable fire. If, in order to escape from these vexing thoughts, he flies to amusement or to licentious indulgence, the delusive relief only makes his misery darker and more hopeless. At length a turn takes place. He is reconciled to his offended Maker. To borrow the fine imagery of one who had himself been thus tried, he emerges from the Valley of the Shadow of Death, from the dark land of gins and snares, of quagmires and precipices, of evil spirits and ravenous beasts. The sunshine is on his path. He ascends the Delectable Mountains, and catches from their summit a distant view of the shining city which is the end of his pilgrimage. Then arises in his mind a natural, and surely not a censurable, desire to impart to others the thoughts of which his own heart is full-to warn the careless, to comfort those who are troubled in spirit. The impulse which urges him to devote his whole life to the teaching of religion, is a strong passion in the guise of a duty. He exhorts his neighbors; and if he be a man of strong parts, he often does so with great effect. He pleads as if he were pleading for his life, with tears, and pathetic gestures, and burning words; and he soon finds with delight, not perhaps wholly unmixed with the alloy of human infirmity, that his rude eloquence rouses and melts hearers who sleep very composedly while the rector preaches on the apostolical succession. Zeal for God, love for his fellowcreatures, pleasure in the exercise of his newly discovered powers, impel him to become a preacher. He has no quarrel with the establishment; no objection to its formularies, its government, or its vestments. He would gladly be admitted among its humblest ministers. But, admitted or rejected, his vocation is determined. His orders have come down to him, not through a long and doubtful series of Arian and Papist bishops, but direct from on high. His commission is the same that on the Mountain of Ascension was given to the Eleven. Nor will he, for lack of human credentials, spare to deliver the glorious message with which he is charged by the true Head of the Church. For a man thus minded, there is within the pale of the establishment no place. He has been at no college; he cannot construe a Greek author, nor write a Latin theme; and he is told that, if he remains in the communion of the Church, he must do so as a hearer, and that, if he is resolved to be a teacher, he must begin by being a schismatic. His choice is soon made. He harangues on Tower Hill or in Smithfield. A congregation is formed. A license is obtained. A plain brick building, with a desk and benches, is run up, and named Ebenezer or Bethel. In a few weeks the Church has lost for ever a hundred families, not one of which entertained the least scruple about her articles, her liturgy, her government, or her ceremonies. "Far different is the policy of Rome. The ignorant enthusiast, whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy, and, whatever the learned and polite may think, a most dangerous enemy, the Catholic Church makes a champion. She bids him nurse his beard, covers him with a gown and hood of coarse dark stuff, ties a rope round his waist, and sends him forth to teach in her name. He costs her nothing. He takes not a ducat away from the revenues of her beneficed clergy. He lives by the alms of those who respect his spiritual character, and are grateful for his instructions. He preaches, not exactly in the style of Massillon, but in a way which moves the passions of uneducated hearers; and all his influence is employed to strengthen the church of which he is a minister. To that church he becomes as strongly attached as any of the cardinals, whose scarlet carriages and liveries crowd the entrance of the Palace or the Quirinal. In this way the Church of Rome unites in herself all the strength of establishment and all the strength of dissent. With the utmost pomp of a dominant hierarchy above, she has all the energy of the voluntary system below. It would be easy to mention very recent instances in which the hearts of hundreds of thousands, estranged from her by the selfishness, sloth, and cowardice of the beneficed clergy, have been brought back by the zeal of the begging friars. Even for female agency there is a place in her system. To devout women she assigns spiritual functions, dignities, and magistracies. In our country, if a noble lady is moved by more than ordinary zeal for the propagation of religion, the chance is, that though she may disapprove of no one doctrine or ceremony of the Established Church, she will end by giving her name to a new schism. If a pious and benevolent woman enters the cells of a prison, to pray with the most unhappy and degraded of her own sex, she does so without any authority from the Church. No line of action is traced out for her; and it is well if the Ordinary does not complain of her intrusion, and if the Bishop does not shake his head at such irregular benevolence. At Rome, the Countess of Huntingdon would have a place in the calendar as St. Selina, and Mrs. Fry would be foundress and first Superior of the Blessed Order of the Sisters of the Jails. "Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford. He is certain to become the head of a formidable secession. Place John Wesley at Rome. He is certain to be the first general of a new society devoted to the interests and honor of the Church. Place St. Theresa in London. Her restless enthusiasm ferments into madness, not untinctured with craft. She becomes the prophetess, the mother of the faithful, holds disputations with the devil, issues sealed pardons to her adorers, and lies in of the Shiloh. Place Joanna Southcote at Rome. She founds an order of barefooted Carmelites, every one of whom is ready to suffer martyrdom for the church; a solemn service is consecrated to her memory—and her statue, placed over the holy ters St. Peter's. We have dwelt long on this subject, because we believe, that of the many causes to which the Church of Rome owed her safety and her triumph at the close of the sixteenth century, the chief was the profound policy with which she used the fanaticism of such persons as St. Ignatius and St. Theresa." water, strikes the eye of every stranger who en When the reader has fairly recovered from the blow thus struck at his conviction, let him calmly weigh the following objections. All that Macaulay has written above is undeniably true, and, if taken as a satire on the Church of England, is very trenchant. But, except as regards the Church of England, all he says is beside the question. The great struggle was, and is, a struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism, not between the Church of England and Rome. Macaulay argues as if Protestantism began and ended with our Established Church. Rome, it is said, knows how to employ enthusiasm it enlists all earnest men under its banners. Therein consists its masterpiece of polity. Surely a moment's reflection will convince every one that Protestantism equally enlists enthusiasm in its cause! The tinker and coal-heaver alluded to by Macaulay as examples of lost sheep are really nothing of the kind; they are refused admittance, indeed, within the precincts of that aristocratic and privileged body named the Church of England, but they are eagerly admitted into the wide Church of Protestantism, where their enthusiasm does its office not less effectually than it would have done in Rome. John Wesley wears no mitre; that may be a matter of grievance; it may also be a matter of indifference, if not of rejoicing. He is appointed to no wealthy see; but is he therefore lost to the Church? He becomes the founder of a sect, but that sect is a Protestant sect. The Church of England has made an enemy, but Protestantism has not lost a friend. The Wesleyans form an order which we may compare with any order of the Catholic Church-either Benedictines or Franciscans, Dominicans or Capuchins. | They are separated from the Church established by the State; and that is all. They are faithful to the flock; and although classed in a separate pen, they are still in the same fold. Macaulay seems to have lost sight of the basis upon which Protestantism is foundedviz: the liberty of private judgment. Now, unless he take up arms against the very spirit of Protestantism, which he is not inclined to do, he must acknowledge that the very disunion he notices in our church arises from the strength and excellence of its principle. It is in the very nature of such liberty of private judgment to produce sects; and the minute subdivision of sects has greatly distressed some pious persons, more timorous than far-sighted. But remember, that if our church be split up into various sects, it is still one cause they have in common; however they may differ amongst themselves, they all unite in differing from Catholicism, the principle of which is an unconditional surrender of private judgment to the authority of the church. This is the vital antagonism of the two churches; the one proclaims Liberty, the other Despotism; the domain of the one is divided into several kingdoms, which, as republics and limited monarchies, flourish and keep alive the spirit and advantages of Liberty; the domain of the other is one great empire, kept together by the subjugation of men's minds, but impoverishing the very sources of health and vigor, and which, founded on Despotism, will perish at the birth of Liberty. Macaulay himself has written the condemnation of that polity which he professes to admire, in a passage which we extract from his "History of England," though substantially the same as one occurring in the essay we are combating "From the time when the barbarians overran the Western Empire to the time of the revival of letters, the influence of the Church of Rome had been generally favorable to science, to civilization, and to good government. But during the last three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind has been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been made in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in intellectual torpor, while Protestant countries, once proverbial for sterility and barbarism, have been turned by skill and industry into gardens, and can boast of |