Macaulay's knowledge of French.

Froissart and Comines

seem to have been the only medieval writers who attracted his attention. He never quotes Rabelais or even Montaigne, and seldom if ever does he mention in his letters or journals a French author of the romantic school. For him French literature might almost be said to begin with Corneille and to end with Voltaire. The roll of Italian classics begins in a more distant age. Contrary to what we might have fancied from his temperament, Macaulay knew Dante well and loved him dearly. With Petrarch and Boccaccio he was intimate. His familiarity with the Italian authors of the sixteenth century and even of the age of decline which followed, his ready allusions to Machiavelli or Guicciardini, to Tasso or to Filicaja, excite more remark now than they would have done seventy years ago, when cultivated Englishmen still piqued themselves on an acquaintance with the graceful literature of Italy. Macaulay's knowledge of the great Spanish writers was a rarer accomplishment. German was scarcely known to his youth, nor was German thought ever really appropriated by him, although, as time went on, he read and admired the more famous poets and critics of Germany. Dutch he learnt for the purpose of writing his History. Thus it should seem that Macaulay's knowledge of literature, although very great, was neither encyclopaedic nor unsurpassed. Even in England and in the nineteenth century several scholars might be named, his equals or possibly his superiors in this respect. But it would be hard to name any man of affairs who had read so much and at the same time so judiciously, for Macaulay seems to have profited by all his studies, and that which he ignored, however valuable in itself, would probably have been of little use to his somewhat rigid although capacious intellect.

To make Macaulay's fulness of reading popular there was needed Macaulay's style. His style has been by turns lauded and decried beyond reason, but none can doubt that it is genuine. As is the case with every born writer Macaulay's style reveals the man. Always vigorous, always clear, never careless, but often tending to become monotonous, it is the expression of a strong direct mind which glanced far over the fields of history and literature and saw vividly what

ever it saw at all. The sentences are always short, even when the space between two full stops is long. We may apply to Macaulay's most swelling periods what he himself observes about Temple's: "A critic who examines them carefully will find that they are not swollen by parenthetical matter, that their structure is scarcely ever intricate, that they are formed merely by accumulation, and that by the simple process of now and then leaving out a conjunction and now and then substituting a full stop for a semicolon, they might, without any alteration in the order of the words, be broken up into very short periods with no sacrifice except that of euphony." This simplicity of structure involves a simplicity of rhythm. Macaulay's rhythm is penetrating and serves to drive home his meaning, but it has little range or complexity of music. He has been well compared to a man playing everlastingly upon a silver trumpet. Macaulay was fastidious, but not finical in the choice of words, and his diction is pure and strong, but again, eloquent and fervid though he be, limited. His trick of repeating the same word over and over again the more forcibly to arrest the reader's attention is obvious and has always been remarked. However he may occasionally abuse it, it is an allowable artifice, consistent with the utmost command of language and with the utmost variety of phrase where variety is desired. tion, however, Macaulay does not exhibit. Such exquisite gradawords such as "great" or "eminent" occur repeatedly in Certain useful close neighbourhood, where a mind more sensitive to shades of difference in thought would probably have used different adjectives. The monotony of words, like the monotony of rhythm and structure, had its origin in a certain monotony of thought.

Yet even Macaulay's bitterest enemies will allow that this monotony does not issue in dulness and that the total impression of any of his best essays is strikingly rich and diversified. The genuine excellence of Macaulay's style consists above all in its fresh and hearty vigour. Macaulay interests us because he is so much interested in his subject himself. He has neither doubts as to its importance nor difficulties as to its meaning. It may be true that usually he sees only one aspect of the matter in hand, but for that very reason he

sees so clearly. Next to this abounding energy Macaulay's most compelling attraction is his fulness of mind. Not that Macaulay had invariably made a deep study of his theme, for his knowledge of that was often incomplete, sometimes superficial, but he had been reading all his life, he had gone into the great world, he had borne his part in administration and debate, and all his literature and experience were garnered in a most capacious memory where everything could be found as it was wanted. The mere movement of the pen seems to have excited his brain to that point at which parallels, quotations, allusions, sonorous and historic names poured forth without effort and without limit. If Macaulay does not give you many ideas, he reminds you of many things, and if he does not probe the soul deeply, he introduces you to a multitude of persons. In nothing does he show himself more adroit than in his use of proper names. Over and over again he produces a rich effect by disposing them lavishly yet artfully. Where a plain man might say that the Spanish possessions in America extended right across the tropics, Macaulay fills the ear and the imagination by telling us that "the American dependencies of the Castilian crown still extended far to the north of Cancer and far to the south of Capricorn." Cromwell, when he chastised the Bey of Tunis and interposed between the Waldenses and their tyrants, becomes the great man whose imperial voice had arrested the sails of the Libyan pirates and the persecuting fires of Rome." When Macaulay wishes to tell us that Addison in his Travels had nothing to say about Italian poetry he does it in this sumptuous manner :

"To the best of our remembrance Addison does not mention Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boiardo, Berni, Lorenzo de Medici or Machiavelli. He coldly tells us that at Ferrara he saw the tomb of Ariosto, and that at Venice he heard the gondoliers sing verses of Tasso. But for Tasso and Ariosto he cared far less than for Valerius Flaccus and Sidonius Apollinaris. The gentle flow of the Ticin brings a line of Silius to his mind. The sulphurous stream of Albula suggests to him several passages of Martial. But he has not a word to say of the illustrious dead of Santa Croce; he crosses the wood of Ravenna without recollecting the Spectre

Huntsman, and wanders up and down Rimini without a thought of Francesca."

What a melodious list of beautiful names! what a delightful train of poetic and historic association! what a sense of meeting a throng of great and famous or lovely and unhappy people! It should be noted, too, that Macaulay dispensed his enormous wealth of allusion with judgment. His references are to persons, places and things which a cultivated public might be supposed to know or at least to have heard of. He did not, like some learned authors, illustrate the familiar by the obscure, or the great by the little. To his mastery over the art of allusion it is chiefly due that the Essays, although they deal with subjects drawn for the most part from a narrow field, form a sort of introduction to history and to literature generally, and that they have such a virtue to excite curiosity, the wish to know more.

His

Charm of a more subtle and delicate kind is wanting, it is true, in Macaulay's works. A certain commonness already / noted in his thought could not but manifest itself in his style. Macaulay is always the rhetorician, that is, he is always addressing a crowd, and he therefore instinctively omits what the average man will not instinctively appreciate. logical power is very considerable so long as he keeps within the circle of ordinary interests, but he has neither the good nor the evil of subtlety. His heart is sound and he is loyal to the right, but he does not penetrate far into human nature. He has a healthy sense of the ridiculous, but no very exquisite gift of humour, a kindly affectionate nature, but no command of the highest pathos. Too often he overloads praise or blame, and enforces very simple psychological discoveries with superfluous energy. He very seldom strikes out a choice inimitable phrase. He never presents us with a lovely image. The disproportionate interest taken in the famous sentence about the New Zealander sufficiently shows that he was not rich in the imaginative vein. For these reasons Macaulay is, of all illustrious writers, the one least apt to be made an intimate, a lifelong companion by those who love literature. Providence designed him to be the admiration of many, not the delight of a few.

It is above all as a narrator that Macaulay has gained a

high place in English literature. Nothing seems easier than to tell a plain story well, and few things are more difficult, as all who have made the attempt know. Macaulay's narrative is clear and full as a brimming river. With the glance of genius he seizes all the particulars which can contribute to the general effect. He sets these in the most natural order and in the strongest light. He never hurries or becomes obscure in the endeavour to be brief, but moves onward swiftly and gracefully, always satisfying and always renewing the reader's curiosity. Many admirable specimens of his skill in narrative are scattered through the Essays, but for the full display of his power a larger scope was required and was afforded by the History. Were the History worthless as a source of information, it would still be highly valuable as a model of the way in which information should be given. Every reader feels the animation and the movement of each individual passage. The skill with which every little part is combined in the whole, the mastery with which the different threads of the story are interwoven, is less obvious, but is, as Mr. Cotter Morrison has observed, even more admirable. Faults, indeed, may be detected, as in every great fabric of art. The emphasis is too uniform; there is too little interchange of quiet with rhetorical passages; at one time trifles hardly worth noting are dwelt upon; at another, things of consequence are stated in terms too general; the writer too often deviates into the picturesque, or pauses in digressions which, though short, are scarcely connected with his tale. But when every blemish has been acknowledged, this grand fragment of historical narrative compels our admiration. Since Gibbon's Decline and Fall nothing comparable has appeared in English, and seldom has it been surpassed in any foreign language.

Macaulay's verse was only the amusement of idle hours. Had it never been written, his fame would stand pretty much where it does now. Nevertheless it deserves notice in any endeavour to estimate Macaulay as an author. Like his prose, it has been very severely judged by critics who carry weight, and like his prose it has enjoyed a long popularity. Most of his pieces profess to be ballads, literary imitations of narrative poems composed in a rude age by and for unlettered men. They were in some degree inspired by Scott

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