[From _The Quarterly Review_, March, 1849]
_The History of England from the Accession of James II_.
By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 2 vols. 8vo. 1849.
The reading world will not need our testimony, though we willingly give
it, that Mr. Macaulay possesses great talents and extraordinary
acquirements. He unites powers and has achieved successes, not only
various, but different in their character, and seldom indeed conjoined
in one individual. He was while in Parliament, though not quite an
orator, and still less a debater, the most brilliant rhetorician of the
House. His Roman ballads (as we said in an article on their first
appearance) exhibit a novel idea worked out with a rare felicity, so as
to combine the spirit of the ancient minstrels with the regularity of
construction and sweetness of versification which modern taste requires;
and his critical Essays exhibit a wide variety of knowledge with a great
fertility of illustration, and enough of the salt of pleasantry and
sarcasm to flavour and in some degree disguise a somewhat declamatory
and pretentious dogmatism. It may seem too epigrammatic, but it is, in
our serious judgment, strictly true, to say that his History seems to be
a kind of combination and exaggeration of the peculiarities of all his
former efforts. It is as full of political prejudice and partisan
advocacy as any of his parliamentary speeches. It makes the facts of
English History as fabulous as his Lays do those of Roman tradition; and
it is written with as captious, as dogmatical, and as cynical a spirit
as the bitterest of his Reviews. That upon so serious an undertaking he
has lavished uncommon exertion, is not to be doubted; nor can any one
during the first reading escape the _entraînement_ of his picturesque,
vivid, and pregnant execution: but we have fairly stated the impression
left on ourselves by a more calm and leisurely perusal. We have been so
long the opponents of the political party to which Mr. Macaulay belongs
that we welcomed the prospect of again meeting him on the neutral ground
of literature. We are of that class of Tories--Protestant Tories, as
they were called--that have no sympathy with the Jacobites. We are as
strongly convinced as Mr. Macaulay can be of the necessity of the
Revolution of 1688--of the general prudence and expediency of the steps
taken by our Whig and Tory ancestors of the Convention Parliament, and
of the happiness, for a century and a half, of the constitutional
results. We were, therefore, not without hope that at least in these two
volumes, almost entirely occupied with the progress and accomplishment
of that Revolution, we might without any sacrifice of our political
feelings enjoy unalloyed the pleasures reasonably to be expected from
Mr. Macaulay's high powers both of research and illustration. That hope
has been deceived: Mr. Macaulay's historical narrative is poisoned with
a rancour more violent than even the passions of the time; and the
literary qualities of the work, though in some respects very remarkable,
are far from redeeming its substantial defects. There is hardly a page--
we speak literally, hardly a page--that does not contain something
objectionable either in substance or in colour: and the whole of the
brilliant and at first captivating narrative is perceived on examination
to be impregnated to a really marvellous degree with bad taste, bad
feeling, and, we are under the painful necessity of adding--bad faith.
These are grave charges: but we make them in sincerity, and we think
that we shall be able to prove them; and if, here or hereafter, we
should seem to our readers to use harsher terms than good taste might
approve, we beg in excuse to plead that it is impossible to fix one's
attention on, and to transcribe large portions of a work, without being
in some degree infected with its spirit; and Mr. Macaulay's pages,
whatever may be their other characteristics, are as copious a
repertorium of vituperative eloquence as, we believe, our language can
produce, and especially against everything in which he chooses (whether
right or wrong) to recognise the shibboleth of Toryism. We shall
endeavour, however, in the expression of our opinions, to remember the
respect we owe to our readers and to Mr. Macaulay's general character
and standing in the world of letters, rather than the provocations and
examples of the volumes immediately before us.
Mr. Macaulay announces his intention of bringing down the history of
England almost to our own times; but these two volumes are complete in
themselves, and we may fairly consider them as a history of the
Revolution; and in that light the first question that presents itself to
us is why Mr. Macaulay has been induced to re-write what had already
been so often and even so recently written--among others, by Dalrymple,
a strenuous but honest Whig, and by Mr. Macaulay's own oracles, Fox and
Mackintosh? It may be answered that both Fox and Mackintosh left their
works imperfect. Fox got no farther than Monmouth's death; but
Mackintosh came down to the Orange invasion, and covered full nine-tenths
of the period as yet occupied by Mr. Macaulay. Why then did Mr.
Macaulay not content himself with beginning where Mackintosh left off--
that is, with the Revolution? and it would have been the more natural,
because, as our readers know, it is there that Hume's history
terminates.
What reason does he give for this work of supererogation? None. He does
not (as we shall see more fully by and by) take the slightest notice of
Mackintosh's history, no more than if it had never existed. Has he
produced a new fact? Not one. Has he discovered any new materials? None,
as far as we can judge, but the collections of Fox and Mackintosh,
confided to him by their families.[1] It seems to us a novelty in
literary practice that a writer raised far by fame and fortune above the
vulgar temptations of the craft should undertake to tell a story already
frequently and recently told by masters of the highest authority and
most extensive information, without having, or even professing to have,
any additional means or special motive to account for the attempt.
[1] It appears from two notes of acknowledgments to M. Guizot and the
keepers of the archives at The Hague, that Mr. Macaulay obtained
some additions to the copies which Mackintosh already had of the
letters of Ronquillo the Spanish and Citters the Dutch minister at
the court of James. We may conjecture that these additions were
insignificant, since Mr. Macaulay has nowhere, that we have
observed, specially noticed them; but except these, whatever they
may be, we find no trace of anything that Fox and Mackintosh had not
already examined and classed.
We suspect, however, that we can trace Mr. Macaulay's design to its true
source--the example and success of the author of Waverley. The
historical novel, if not invented, at least first developed and
illustrated by the happy genius of Scott, took a sudden and extensive
hold of the public taste; he himself, in most of his subsequent novels,
availed himself largely of the historical element which had contributed
so much to the popularity of Waverley. The press has since that time
groaned with his imitators. We have had historical novels of all classes
and grades. We have had served up in this form the Norman Conquest and
the Wars of the Roses, the Gunpowder Plot and the Fire of London,
Darnley and Richelieu--and almost at the same moment with Mr. Macaulay's
appeared a professed romance of Mr. Ainsworth's on the same subject--
James II. Nay, on a novelist of this popular order has been conferred
the office of _Historiographer_ to the Queen.
Mr. Macaulay, too mature not to have well measured his own peculiar
capacities, not rich in invention but ingenious in application, saw the
use that might be made of this principle, and that history itself would
be much more popular with a large embroidery of personal, social, and
even topographical anecdote and illustration, instead of the sober garb
in which we had been in the habit of seeing it. Few histories indeed
ever were or could be written without some admixture of this sort. The
father of the art himself, old Herodotus, vivified his text with a
greater share of what we may call personal anecdote than any of his
classical followers. Modern historians, as they happened to have more or
less of what we may call _artistic_ feeling, admitted more or less of
this decoration into their text, but always with an eye (which Mr.
Macaulay never exercises) to the appropriateness and value of the
illustration. Generally, however, such matters have been thrown into
notes, or, in a few instances--as by Dr. Henry and in Mr. Knight's
interesting and instructive "Pictorial History"--into separate chapters.
The large class of memoir-writers may also be fairly considered as
anecdotical historians--and they are in fact the sources from which the
novelists of the new school extract their principal characters and main
incidents.
Mr. Macaulay deals with history, evidently, as we think, in imitation of
the novelists--his first object being always picturesque effect--his
constant endeavour to give from all the repositories of gossip that have
reached us a kind of circumstantial reality to his incidents, and a sort
of dramatic life to his personages. For this purpose he would not be
very solicitous about contributing any substantial addition to history,
strictly so called; on the contrary, indeed, he seems to have willingly
taken it as he found it, adding to it such lace and trimmings as he
could collect from the Monmouth-street of literature, seldom it may be
safely presumed of very delicate quality. It is, as Johnson drolly said,
"an old coat with a new facing--the old dog in a new doublet." The
conception was bold, and--so far as availing himself, like other
novelists, of the fashion of the day to produce a popular and profitable
effect--the experiment has been eminently successful.
But besides the obvious incentives just noticed, Mr. Macaulay had also
the stimulus of what we may compendiously call a strong party spirit.
One would have thought that the Whigs might have been satisfied with
their share in the historical library of the Revolution:--besides Rapin,
Echard, and Jones, who, though of moderate politics in general, were
stout friends to the Revolution, they have had of professed and zealous
Whigs, Burnet, the foundation of all, Kennett, Oldmixon, Dalrymple,
Laing, Brodie, Fox, and finally Mackintosh and his continuator, besides
innumerable writers of less note, who naturally adopted the successful
side; and we should not have supposed that the reader of any of those
historians, and particularly the later ones, could complain that they
had been too sparing of imputation, or even vituperation, to the
opposite party. But not so Mr. Macaulay. The most distinctive feature on
the face of his pages is personal virulence--if he has at all succeeded
in throwing an air of fresh life into his characters, it is mainly due,
as any impartial and collected reader will soon discover, to the simple
circumstance of his hating the individuals of the opposite party as
bitterly, as passionately, as if they were his own personal enemies--
more so, indeed, we hope than he would a mere political antagonist of
his own day. When some one suggested to the angry O'Neil that one of the
Anglo-Irish families whom he was reviling as strangers had been four
hundred years settled in Ireland, the Milesian replied, "_I hate the
churls as if they had come but yesterday_." Mr. Macaulay seems largely
endowed with this (as with a more enviable) species of memory, and he
hates, for example, King Charles I as if he had been murdered only
yesterday. Let us not be understood as wishing to abridge an historian's
full liberty of censure--but he should not be a satirist, still less a
libeller. We do not say nor think that Mr. Macaulay's censures were
always unmerited--far from it--but they are always, we think without
exception, immoderate. Nay, it would scarcely be too much to say that
this massacre of character is the point on which Mr. Macaulay must
chiefly rest any claims he can advance to the praise of impartiality,
for while he paints everything that looks like a Tory in the blackest
colours, he does not altogether spare any of the Whigs against whom he
takes a spite, though he always visits them with a gentler correction.
In fact, except Oliver Cromwell, King William, a few gentlemen who had
the misfortune to be executed or exiled for high treason, and every
dissenting minister that he has or can find occasion to notice, there
are hardly any persons mentioned who are not stigmatized as knaves or
fools, differing only in degrees of "turpitude" and "imbecility". Mr.
Macaulay has almost realized the work that Alexander Chalmers's playful
imagination had fancied, a _Biographia Flagitiosa_, or _The Lives of
Eminent Scoundrels_. This is also an imitation of the Historical Novel,
though rather in the track of Eugene Aram and Jack Sheppard than of
Waverley or Woodstock; but what would you have? To attain the
picturesque--the chief object of our artist--he adopts the ready process
of dark colours and a rough brush. Nature, even at the worst, is never
gloomy enough for a Spagnoletto, and Judge Jeffries himself, for the
first time, excites a kind of pity when we find him (like one to whom he
was nearly akin) not so black as he is painted.
From this first general view of Mr. Macaulay's Historical Novel, we now
proceed to exhibit in detail some grounds for the opinion which we have
ventured to express.
We premise that we are about to enter into details, because there is in
fact little to question or debate about but details. We have already
hinted that there is absolutely no new fact of any consequence, and, we
think we can safely add, hardly a new view of any historical fact, in
the whole book. Whatever there may remain questionable or debatable in
the history of the period, we should have to argue with Burnet,
Dalrymple, or Mackintosh, and not with Mr. Macaulay. It would, we know,
have a grander air if we were to make his book the occasion of
disquisitions on the rise and progress of the constitution--on the
causes by which the monarchy of the Tudors passed, through the murder of
Charles, to the despotism of Cromwell--how again that produced a
restoration which settled none of the great moral or political questions
which had generated all those agitations, and which, in return, those
agitations had complicated and inflamed--and how, at last, the
undefined, discordant, and antagonistic pretensions of the royal and
democratical elements were reconciled by the Revolution and the Bill of
Rights--and finally, whether with too much or too little violence to the
principles of the ancient constitution--all these topics, we say, would,
if we were so inclined, supply us, as they have supplied Mr. Macaulay,
with abundant opportunities of grave tautology and commonplace; but we
decline to raise sham debates on points where there is no contest. We
can have little historic difference, properly so called, with one who
has no historical difference on the main facts with anybody else:
instead, then, of pretending to treat any great questions, either of
constitutional learning or political philosophy, we shall confine
ourselves to the humbler but more practical and more useful task above
stated.
Our first complaint is of a comparatively small and almost mechanical,
and yet very real, defect--the paucity and irregularity of his dates,
and the mode in which the few that he does give are overlaid, as it
were, by the text. This, though it may be very convenient to the writer,
and quite indifferent to the reader, of an historical romance, is
perplexing to any one who might wish to read and weigh the book as a
serious history, of which dates are the guides and landmarks; and when
they are visibly neglected we cannot but suspect that the historian will
be found not very solicitous about strict accuracy. This negligence is
carried to such an extent that, in what looks like a very copious table
of contents, one of the most important events of the whole history--
that, indeed, on which the Revolution finally turned--the marriage of
Princess Mary to the Prince of Orange, is not noticed; nor is any date
affixed to the very cursory mention of it in the text. It is rather hard
to force the reader who buys this last new model history, in general so
profuse of details, to recur to one of the old-fashioned ones to
discover that this important event happened in the year 1675, and on the
4th of November--a day thrice over remarkable in William's history--for
his birth, his marriage, and his arrival with his invading army on the
coast of Devon.
Our second complaint is of one of the least important, perhaps, but most
prominent defects of Mr. Macaulay's book--his Style--not merely the
choice and order of words, commonly called style, but the turn of mind
which prompts the choice of expressions as well as of topics. We need
not repeat that Mr. Macaulay has a great facility of language, a
prodigal _copia verborum_--that he narrates rapidly and clearly--that he
paints very forcibly,--and that his readers throughout the tale are
carried on, or away, by something of the sorcery which a brilliant
orator exercises over his auditory. But he has also in a great degree
the faults of the oratorical style. He deals much too largely in
epithets--a habit exceedingly dangerous to historical truth. He
habitually constructs a piece of what should be calm, dispassionate
narrative, upon the model of the most passionate peroration--adhering in
numberless instances to precisely the same specific formula of artifice.
His diction is often inflated into fustian, and he indulges in
exaggeration till it sometimes, unconsciously no doubt, amounts to
falsehood. It is a common fault of those who strive at producing
oratorical effects, to oscillate between commonplace and extravagance;
and while studying Mr. Macaulay, one feels as if vibrating between facts
that every one knows and consequences which nobody can believe. We are
satisfied that whoever will take, as we have been obliged to do, the
pains of sifting what Mr. Macaulay has produced from his own mind with
what he has borrowed from others, will be entirely of our opinion. In
truth, when, after reading a page or two of this book, we have occasion
to turn to the same transaction in Burnet, Dalrymple, or Hume, we feel
as if we were exchanging the glittering agility of a rope-dancer for
gentlemen in the attire and attitude of society. And we must say that
there is not one of those writers that does not give a clearer and more
trustworthy account of all that is really historical in the period than
can be collected from Mr. Macaulay's more decorated pages. We invite our
readers to try Mr. Macaulay's merits as an historian by the test of
comparison with his predecessors.
* * * * *
Every great painter is supposed to make a larger use of one particular
colour. What a monstrous bladderful of _infamy_ Mr. Macaulay must have
squeezed on his palette when he took to portrait-painting! We have no
concern, except as friends to historical justice, for the characters of
any of the parties thus stigmatized, nor have we room or time to discuss
these, or the hundred other somewhat similar cases which the volumes
present; but we have looked at the authorities cited by Mr. Macaulay,
and we do not hesitate to say that, "as is his wont," he has, with the
exception of Jeffries, outrageously exaggerated them.
We must next notice the way in which Mr. Macaulay refers to and uses his
authorities--no trivial points in the execution of a historical work--
though we shall begin with comparatively small matters. In his chapter
on manners, which we may call the most remarkable in his book, one of
his most frequent references is to "Chamberlayne's State of England,
1684." It is referred to at least a dozen or fourteen times in that
chapter alone; but we really have some doubt whether Mr. Macaulay knew
the nature of the book he so frequently quoted. Chamberlayne's work, of
which the real title is "_Angliae_ [or, after the Scotch Union, _Magnae
Britanniae_] _Notitia, or the Present State of England_" [or _Great
Britain_], was a kind of periodical publication, half history and half
court-calendar. It was first published in 1669, and new editions or
reprints, with new dates, were issued, not annually, we believe, but so
frequently that there are between thirty and forty of them in the
Museum, ending with 1755. From the way and for the purposes for which
Mr. Macaulay quotes Chamberlayne, we should almost suspect that he had
lighted on the volume for 1684, and, knowing of no other, considered it
as a substantive work published in that year. _Once_ indeed he cites the
date of 1686, but there was, it seems, no edition of that year, and this
may be an accidental error; but however that may be, our readers will
smile when they hear that the two first and several following passages
which Mr. Macaulay cites from Chamberlayne (i. 290 and 291), as
_characteristic_ of the _days of Charles II_, distinctively from more
modern times, are to be found _literatim_ in every succeeding
"Chamberlayne" down to 1755--the last we have seen--were thus
continually reproduced because the proprietors and editors of the table
book knew they were _not_ particularly characteristical of one year or
reign more than another--and now, in 1849, might be as well quoted as
characteristics of the reign of George II as of Charles II. We must add
that there are references to Chamberlayne and to several weightier books
(some of which we shall notice more particularly hereafter), as
justifying assertions for which, on examining the said books with our
best diligence, we have not been able to find a shadow of authority.
Our readers know that there was a Dr. John Eachard who wrote a
celebrated work on the "Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the
Clergy." They also know that there was a Dr. Lawrence Echard who wrote
both a History of England, and a History of the Revolution. Both of
these were remarkable men; but we almost doubt whether Mr. Macaulay, who
quotes the works of each, does not confound their persons, for he refers
to them both by the common (as it may once have been) name of _Each_ard,
and at least twenty times by the wrong name. This, we admit, is a small
matter; but what will some Edinburgh Reviewer (_temp_. Albert V) say if
he finds a writer confounding _Catherine_ and _Thomas_ Macaulay as "the
celebrated author of the great Whig History of England"--a confusion
hardly worse than that of the two Eachards--for Catherine, though now
forgotten by an ungrateful public, made quite as much noise in her day
as Thomas does in ours.
But we are sorry to say we have a heavier complaint against Mr.
Macaulay. We accuse him of a habitual and really injurious perversion of
his authorities. This unfortunate indulgence, in whatever juvenile
levity it may have originated, and through whatever steps it may have
grown into an unconscious habit, seems to us to pervade the whole work--
from Alpha to Omega--from Procopius to Mackintosh--and it is on that
very account the more difficult to bring to the distinct conception of
our readers. Individual instances can be, and shall be, produced; but
how can we extract and exhibit the minute particles that colour every
thread of the texture?--how extract the impalpable atoms that have
fermented the whole brewing? We must do as Dr. Faraday does at the
Institution when he exhibits in miniature the larger processes of
Nature. We will suppose, then--taking a simple phrase as the fairest for
the experiment--that Mr. Macaulay found Barillon saying in French, "_le
drôle m'a fait peur_," or Burnet saying in English, "_the fellow
frightened me_." We should be pretty sure not to find the same words in
Mr. Macaulay. He would pause--he would first consider whether "the
fellow" spoken of was a _Whig_ or a _Tory_. If a Whig, the thing would
be treated as a joke, and Mr. Macaulay would transmute it playfully into
"_the rogue startled me_"; but if a _Tory_, it would take a deeper dye,
and we should find "_the villain assaulted me_"; and in either case we
should have a grave reference to
Jan. 31,
"Barillon,-------- 1686"; or, "Burnet, i. 907."
Feb. 1,
If our reader will keep this formula in his mind, he will find it a fair
exponent of Mr. Macaulay's _modus operandi_....
We shall now proceed to more general topics. We decline, as we set out
by saying, to treat this "New Atalantis" as a serious history, and
therefore we shall not trouble our readers with matters of such remote
interest as the errors and anachronisms with which the chapter that
affects to tell our earlier history abounds. Our readers would take no
great interest in a discussion whether Hengist was as fabulous as
Hercules, Alaric a Christian born, and "the fair chapels of New College
and St. George" at Windsor of the same date. But there is one subject in
that chapter on which we cannot refrain from saying a few words--THE
CHURCH.
We decline to draw any inferences from this work as to Mr. Macaulay's
own religious opinions; but it is our duty to say--and we trust we may
do so without offence--that Mr. Macaulay's mode of dealing with the
general principle of Church government, and the doctrine, discipline,
and influence of the Church of England, cannot fail to give serious
pain, and sometimes to excite a stronger feeling than pain, in the mind
of every friend to that Church, whether in its spiritual or corporate
character.
He starts with a notion that the fittest engine to redeem England from
the mischiefs and mistakes of oligarchical feudalism was to be found in
the imposing machinery and deception of the Roman Church; overlooking
the great truth that it was not the Romish Church, but the genius of
Christianity, working its vast but silent change, which was really
guiding on the chariot of civilization; but in this broad principle
there was not enough of the picturesqueness of detail to captivate his
mind. It would not suit him to distinguish between the Church of Christ
and the web of corruptions that had grown about her, but could not
effectually arrest the benignant influence inherent in her mainspring.
He therefore leads his readers to infer that Christianity came first to
Britain with St. Austin, and for aught that Mr. Macaulay condescends to
inform us, the existence of a prior Anglo-Saxon Church was a monkish
fiction. The many unhappy circumstances of the position taken up by the
Romish Church in its struggles for power--some of them unavoidable, it
may be, if such a battle were to be fought--are actually displayed as so
many blessings, attainable only by a system which the historian himself
condemns elsewhere as baneful and untrue. He maintains these strange
paradoxes and contradictions with a pertinacity quite surprising. He
doubts whether a true form of Christianity would have answered the
purposes of liberty and civilization half so well as the acknowledged
duplicities of the Church of Rome.
It may perhaps be doubted whether a purer religion might not have been
found a less efficient agent.--i. 23.
There is a point in the life both of an individual and a society at
which submission and faith, such as at a later period would be justly
called servility and credulity, are useful qualities.--i. 47.
These are specimens of the often exposed fallacies in which he delights
to indulge. Place right and wrong in a state of uncertainty by reflected
lights, and you may fill up your picture as you like. And such for ever
is Mr. Macaulay's principle of art. It is not the elimination of error
that he seeks for, but an artistic balance of conflicting forces. And
this he pursues throughout: deposing the dignity of the historian for
the clever antithesis of the pamphleteer. At last, on this great and
important point of religious history--a point which more than any other
influences every epoch of English progress, he arrives at this pregnant
and illustrative conclusion--
It is difficult to say whether England owes more to the Roman Catholic
religion or to the Reformation.--i. 49.
England owes nothing to "the Roman Catholic religion." She owes
everything to CHRISTIANITY, which Romanism injured and hampered but
could not destroy, and which the Reformation freed at least from the
worst of those impure and impeding excrescences.
With regard to his treatment of the Reformation, and especially of the
Church of England, it is very difficult to give our readers an adequate
idea. Throughout a system of depreciation--we had almost said insult--is
carried on: sneers, sarcasms, injurious comparisons, sly
misrepresentations, are all adroitly mingled throughout the narrative,
so as to produce an unfavourable impression, which the author has not
the frankness to attempt directly. Even when obliged to approach the
subject openly, it is curious to observe how, under a slight veil of
impartiality, imputations are raised and calumnies accredited. For
instance, early in the first volume he gives us his view of the English
Reformation, as a kind of middle term, emerging out of the antagonist
struggles of the Catholics and Calvinists: and it is impossible not to
see that, between the three parties, he awards to the Catholics the
merit of unity and consistency; to the Calvinists, of reason and
independence; to the Anglicans, the lowest motives of expediency and
compromise. To enforce this last topic he relies on the inconsistencies,
some real and some imaginary, imputed to Cranmer, whose notions of
worldly expedience he chooses to represent as the source of the Anglican
Church....
Every one of the circumstances on which we may presume that Mr. Macaulay
would rely as justifying these charges has been long since, to more
candid judgments, either disproved, explained, or excused, and in truth
whatever blame can be justly attributed to any of them, belongs mainly,
if not exclusively, to those whose violence and injustice drove a
naturally upright and most conscientious man into the shifts and
stratagems of self-defence. With the greatest fault and the only crime
that Charles in his whole life committed Mr. Macaulay does not reproach
him--the consent to the execution of Lord Strafford--that indeed, as he
himself penitentially confessed, was a deadly weight on his conscience,
and is an indelible stain on his character; but even that guilt and
shame belongs in a still greater degree to Mr. Macaulay's patriot
heroes.
This leads us to the conclusive plea which we enter to Mr. Macaulay's
indictment, namely--that all those acts alleged as the excuses of
rebellion and regicide occurred after the rebellion had broken out, and
were at worst only devices of the unhappy King to escape from the
regicide which he early foresaw. It was really the old story of the wolf
and the lamb. It was far down the stream of rebellion that these acts of
supposed perfidy on the part of Charles could be said to have troubled
it.
But while he thus deals with the lamb, let us see how he treats the
wolf. We have neither space nor taste for groping through the long and
dark labyrinth of Cromwell's proverbial duplicity and audacious
apostacy: we shall content ourselves with two facts, which, though
stated in the gentlest way by Mr. Macaulay, will abundantly justify the
opinion which all mankind, except a few republican zealots, hold of that
man's sincerity, of whose abilities, wonderful as they were, the most
remarkable, and perhaps the most serviceable to his fortunes, was his
hypocrisy; so much so, that South--a most acute observer of mankind, and
who had been educated under the Commonwealth and Protectorate--in his
sermon on "Worldly Wisdom," adduces Cromwell as an instance of "habitual
dissimulation and imposture." Oliver, Mr. Macaulay tells us, modelled
his army on the principle of composing it of men fearing God, and
zealous for _public liberty_, and in the very next page he is forced to
confess that
thirteen years followed in which for the first and the last time the
civil power of our country was subjected to military dictation.--i.
120.
Again,
Oliver had made his choice. He had kept the hearts of his soldiers,
but he had _broken_ with every other class of his fellow citizens.--i.
129.
That is, he had broken through all the promises, pledges, and specious
pretences by which he had deceived and enslaved the nation, which Mr.
Macaulay calls with such opportune _naïveté, his fellow citizens_! Then
follows, not a censure of this faithless usurpation, but many laboured
apologies, and even defences of it, and a long series of laudatory
epithets, some of which are worth collecting as a rare contrast to Mr.
Macaulay's usual style, and particularly to the abuse of Charles, which
we have just exhibited.
His _genius and resolution_ made him more _absolute master of his
country_ than any of her legitimate Kings had been.--i. 129.
He having cut off the legitimate King's head on a pretence that Charles
had wished to make himself _absolutely master of the country_.
Everything yielded to the _vigour and ability_ of Cromwell.--i. 130.
The Government, though in the form of a Republic, was in truth a
despotism, moderated only by the _wisdom, the sober-mindedness, and
the magnanimity_ of the despot.--i. 137.
With a vast deal more of the same tone.
But Mr. Macaulay particularly expatiates on the influence that Cromwell
exercised over foreign states: and there is hardly any topic to which he
recurs with more pleasure, or, as we think, with less sagacity, than the
terror with which Cromwell and the contempt with which the Stuarts
inspired the nations of Europe. He somewhat exaggerates the extent of
this feeling, and greatly misstates or mistakes the cause; and as this
subject is in the present state of the world of more importance than any
others in the work, we hope we may be excused for some observations
tending to a sounder opinion on that subject.
It was not, as Mr. Macaulay everywhere insists, the personal abilities
and genius of Cromwell that exclusively, or even in the first degree,
carried his foreign influence higher than that of the Stuarts. The
internal struggles that distracted and consumed the strength of these
islands throughout their reigns necessarily rendered us little
formidable to our neighbours; and it is with no good grace that a Whig
historian stigmatises that result as shameful; for, without discussing
whether it was justifiable or not, the fact is certain, that it was
opposition of the Whigs--often in rebellion and always in faction
against the Government--which disturbed all progress at home and
paralysed every effort abroad. We are not, we say, now discussing
whether that opposition was not justifiable and may not have been
ultimately advantageous in several constitutional points; we think it
decidedly was: but at present all we mean to do is to show that it had a
great share in producing on our foreign influence the lowering effects
of which Mr. Macaulay complains.
And there is still another consideration which escapes Mr. Macaulay in
his estimate of such usurpers as Cromwell and Buonaparte. A usurper is
always more terrible both at home and abroad than a legitimate
sovereign: first, the usurper is likely to be (and in these two cases
was) a man of superior genius and military glory, wielding the
irresistible power of the sword; but there is still stronger contrast--
legitimate Governments are bound--at home by laws--abroad by treaties,
family ties, and international interests; they acknowledge the law of
nations, and are limited, even in hostilities, by many restraints and
bounds. The despotic usurpers had no fetters of either sort--they had no
opposition at home, and no scruples abroad. Law, treaties, rights, and
the like, had been already broken through like cobwebs, and kings
naturally humbled themselves before a vigour that had dethroned and
murdered kings, and foreign nations trembled at a power that had subdued
in their own fields and cities the pride of England and the gallantry of
France! To contrast Cromwell and Charles II, Napoleon and Louis XVIII,
is sheer nonsense and mere verbiage--it is as if one should compare the
house-dog and the wolf, and argue that the terror inspired by the latter
was very much to his honour. All this is such a mystery to Mr. Macaulay
that he wanders into two theories so whimsical, that we hesitate between
passing them by as absurdities, or producing them for amusement; we
adopt the latter. One is that Cromwell could have no interest and
therefore no personal share in the death of Charles. "Whatever Cromwell
was," says Mr. Macaulay, "he was no fool; and he must have known that
Charles I was obviously a less difficulty in his way than Charles II."
Cromwell, we retain the phrase, "was no fool," and he thought and
_found_ that Charles II, was, as far as he was concerned, no difficulty
at all. The real truth was, that the revolutionary party in England in
1648, like that in France in 1792, was but a rope of sand which nothing
could cement and consolidate but the _blood of the Kings--that_ was a
common crime and a common and indissoluble tie which gave all their
consistency and force to both revolutions--a stroke of original sagacity
in Cromwell and of imitative dexterity in Robespierre. If Mr. Macaulay
admits, as he subsequently does (i. 129), that the regicide was "a
sacrament of blood," by which the party became irrevocably bound to each
other and separated from the rest of the nation, how can he pretend that
Cromwell derived no advantage from it? In fact, his admiration--we had
almost said fanaticism--for Cromwell betrays him throughout into the
blindest inconsistencies.
The second vision of Mr. Macaulay is, if possible, still more absurd. He
imagines a Cromwell dynasty! If it had not been for Monk and his army,
the rest of the nation would have been loyal to the son of the
illustrious Oliver.
Had the Protector and the Parliament been suffered to proceed
undisturbed, there can be little doubt that an order of things similar
to that which was afterwards established under the House of Hanover,
would have been established under the house of Cromwell.--i. 142.
And yet in a page or two Mr. Macaulay is found making an admission--
made, indeed, with the object of disparaging Monk and the royalists--but
which gives to his theory of a Cromwellian dynasty the most conclusive
refutation.
It was probably not till Monk had been some days in the capital that
he made up his mind. The cry of the whole people was for a free
parliament; and there could _be no doubt that a parliament really free
would instantly restore the exiled family_.--i. 147.
All this hypothesis of a Cromwellian dynasty _looks_ like sheer
nonsense; but we have no doubt it has a meaning, and we request our
readers not to be diverted by the almost ludicrous partiality and
absurdity of Mr. Macaulay's speculations from an appreciation of the
deep hostility to the monarchy from which they arise. They are like
bubbles on the surface of a dark pool, which indicate there is something
rotten below.
We should if we had time have many other complaints to make of the
details of this chapter, which are deeply coloured with all Mr.
Macaulay's prejudices and passions. He is, we may almost say of course,
violent and unjust against Strafford and Clarendon; and the most
prominent touch of candour that we can find in this period of his
history is, that he slurs over the murder of Laud in an abscure
half-line (i. 119) as if he were--as we hope he really is--ashamed of
it.
We now arrive at what we have heard called the celebrated third chapter
--celebrated it deserves to be, and we hope our humble observations may
add something to its celebrity. There is no feature of Mr. Macaulay's
book on which, we believe, he more prides himself, and which has been in
truth more popular with his readers, than the descriptions which he
introduces of the residences, habits, and manners of our ancestors. They
are, provided you do not look below the surface, as entertaining as
Pepys or Pennant, or any of the many scrap-book histories which have
been recently fabricated from those old materials; but when we come to
examine them, we find that in these cases, as everywhere else, Mr.
Macaulay's propensity to caricature and exaggerate leads him not merely
to disfigure circumstances, but totally to forget the principle on which
such episodes are admissible into regular history--namely, the
illustration of the story. They should be, as it were, woven into the
narrative, and not, as Mr. Macaulay generally treats them, stitched on
like patches. This latter observation does not of course apply to the
collecting a body of miscellaneous facts into a separate chapter, as
Hume and others have done; but Mr. Macaulay's chapter, besides, as we
shall show, the prevailing inaccuracy of its details, has one general
and essential defect specially its own.
The moment Mr. Macaulay has selected for suspending his narrative to
take a view of the surface and society of England is the death of
Charles II. Now we think no worse point of time could have been chosen
for tracing the obscure but very certain connection between political
events and the manners of a people. The restoration, for instance, was
an era in manners as well as in politics--so was in a fainter degree the
Revolution--either, or both, of those periods would have afforded a
natural position for contemplating a going and a coming order of things;
but we believe that there are no two periods in our annals which were so
identical in morals and politics--so undistinguishable, in short, in any
national view--as the latter years of Charles and the earlier years of
James. Here then is an objection _in limine_ to this famous chapter--and
not _in limine_ only, but in substance; for in fact the period he has
chosen would not have furnished out the chapter, four-fifths of which
belong to a date later than that which he professes to treat of. In
short, the chapter is like an old curiosity-shop, into which--no matter
whether it happens to stand in Charles Street, William Street, or George
Street--the knick-knacks of a couple of centuries are promiscuously
jumbled. What does it signify, in a history of the reign of Charles II,
that a writer, "_sixty years after the Revolution_" (i. 347), says that
in the lodging-houses at Bath "the hearth-slabs" were "freestone, not
marble"--that "the best apartments were hung with coarse woollen stuff,
and furnished with rush-bottomed chairs"?--nay, that he should have the
personal good taste to lament that in those Boeotian days "_not a
wainscot was painted_" (348); and yet this twaddle of the reign of
George II, patched into the times of Charles II, is the appropriate
occasion which he takes to panegyrise this new mode of elucidating
history?--...
It is a curious and, to persons of our opinions, not unsatisfactory
circumstance, that, though Mr. Macaulay almost invariably applies the
term _Tory_ in an opprobrious or contemptuous sense, yet so great is the
power of truth in surmounting the fantastical forms and colours laid
over it by this brilliant _badigeonneur_, that on the whole no one, we
believe, can rise from the work without a conviction that the Tories
(whatever may be said of their prejudices) were the honestest and most
conscientious of the whole _dramatis personae_; and it is this fact that
in several instances and circumstances imprints, as it were by force,
upon Mr. Macaulay's pages an air of impartiality and candour very
discordant from their general spirit.
We are now arrived at the fourth chapter--really the first, strictly
speaking, of Mr. Macaulay's history--the accession of James II, where
also Sir James Mackintosh's history commences. And here we have to open
to our readers the most extraordinary instance of _parallelism_ between
two writers, unacknowledged by the later one, which we have ever seen.
Sir James Mackintosh left behind him a history of the Revolution, which
was published in 1834, three years after his death, in quarto: it comes
down to the Orange invasion, and, though it apparently had not received
the author's last corrections, and was clumsily edited, and tagged with
a continuation by a less able hand, the work is altogether (bating not a
little ultra-Whiggery) very creditable to Mackintosh's diligence, taste,
and power of writing; it is indeed, we think, his best and most
important work, and that by which he will be most favourably known to
posterity. From that work Mr. Macaulay has borrowed largely--prodigally--
helped himself with both hands--not merely without acknowledging his
obligation, but without so much as alluding to the existence of any such
work. Nay--though this we are sure was never designed--he inserts a note
full of kindness and respect to Sir James Mackintosh, which would
naturally lead an uninformed reader to conclude that Sir James
Mackintosh, though he had _meditated_ such a work, had never even begun
writing it. On the 391st page of Mr. Macaulay's first volume, at the
mention of the old news-letters which preceded our modern newspapers,
Mr. Macaulay says, that "they form a valuable part of the literary
treasures collected by the late Sir James Mackintosh"; and to this he
adds the following foot-note:
I take this opportunity of expressing my warm gratitude to the family
of my dear and honoured friend Sir James Mackintosh, for confiding to
me the materials collected by him _at a time when he meditated a work
similar to that which I have undertaken._ I have never seen, and I do
not believe that there anywhere exists, within the same compass, so
noble a _collection of extracts_ from public and private archives. The
judgment with which Sir James, in great masses of the rudest ore of
history, selected what was valuable and rejected what was worthless,
can be fully appreciated only by one who has toiled after him in the
same mine.--i. 391.
Could any one imagine from this that Mackintosh had not only _meditated_
a work, but actually written, and that his friends had published, a
large closely printed quarto volume, on the same subject, from the same
materials, and sometimes in the very same words as Mr. Macaulay's?
The coincidence--the identity, we might almost say--of the two works is
so great, that, while we have been comparing them, we have often been
hardly able to distinguish which was which. We rest little on the
similiarity of facts, for the facts were ready made for both; and Mr.
Macaulay tells us that he worked from Mackintosh's materials; there
would, therefore, even if he had never seen Mackintosh's work, be a
community of topics and authorities; but, seeing as we do in every page
that he was writing with Mackintosh's volume before his eyes, we cannot
account for his utter silence about it....
Having thus shown Mr. Macaulay's mode of dealing with what forms the
chief and most characteristic feature of his book--its anecdotical
gossip--we shall now endeavour to exhibit the deceptive style in which
he treats the larger historical facts: in truth the style is the same--a
general and unhesitating sacrifice of accuracy and reality to
picturesque effect and party prejudices. He treats historical personages
as the painter does his _layman_--a supple figure which he models into
what he thinks the most striking attitude, and dresses up with the
gaudiest colours and most fantastical draperies.
It is very difficult to condense into any manageable space the proofs of
a general system of accumulating and aggravating all that was ever,
whether truly or falsely, reproached to the Tories, and alleviating
towards the Whigs the charges which he cannot venture to deny or even to
question. The mode in which this is managed so as to keep up some show
of impartiality is very dexterous. The reproach, well or ill founded,
which he thinks most likely to damage the character of any one he
dislikes, is repeated over and over again in hope that the iteration
will at last be taken for proof, such as the perfidy of Charles I, the
profligacy and selfishness of Charles II, the cold and cruel stupidity
of James, the baseness of Churchill, the indecent violence of Rochester,
the contemptible subserviency of his brother, Clarendon, and so on
through a whole dictionary of abuse on every one whom he takes or
mistakes for a Tory, and on a few Whigs whom for some special reasons of
his own he treats like Tories. On the other hand, when he finds himself
reluctantly forced to acknowledge even the greatest enormity of the
Whigs--corruption--treason--murder he finds much gentler terms for the
facts; selects a scapegoat, some subaltern villain, or some one whom
history has already gibbeted, "to bear upon him all their iniquities,"
and that painful sacrifice once made, he avoids with tender care a
recurrence to so disagreeable a subject....
After so much political detail it will be some kind of diversion to our
readers to examine Mr. Macaulay's most elaborate strategic and
topographical effort, worked up with all the combined zeal and skill of
an ex-Secretary-at-War and a pictorial historian--a copious description
of the battle of Sedgemoor. Mr. Macaulay seems to have visited
Bridgwater with a zeal worthy of a better result: for it has produced a
description of the surrounding country as pompous and detailed as if it
had been the scene of some grand strategic operations--a parade not
merely unnecessary, but absurd, for the so-called battle was but a
bungling skirmish. Monmouth had intended to surprise the King's troops
in their quarters by a midnight attack, but was stopped by a wide and
deep trench, of which he was not apprised, called Bussex Rhine, behind
which the King's army lay. "The trenches which drain the moor are," Mr.
Macaulay adds, "in that country called _rhines_." On each side of this
ditch the parties stood firing at each other in the dark. Lord Grey and
the cavalry ran away without striking a blow; Monmouth followed them,
too, soon; for some time the foot stood with a degree of courage and
steadiness surprising in such raw and half-armed levies; at last the
King's cavalry got round their flank, and they too ran: the King's foot
then crossed the ditch with little or no resistance, and slaughtered,
with small loss on their own side, a considerable number of the
fugitives, the rest escaping back to Bridgwater. Our readers will judge
whether such a skirmish required a long preliminary description of the
surrounding country. Mr. Macaulay might just as usefully have described
the plain of Troy. Indeed at the close of his long topographical and
etymological narrative Mr. Macaulay has the tardy candour to confess
that--
little is now to be learned by visiting the field of battle, for the
face of the country has been greatly changed, and the old _Bussex
Rhine_, on the banks of which the great struggle took place, has long
disappeared.
This is droll. After spending a deal of space and fine writing in
describing the present prospect, he concludes by telling us candidly it
is all of no use, for the whole scene has changed. This is like
Walpole's story of the French lady who asked for her lover's picture;
and when he demurred observing that, if her husband were to see it, it
might betray their secret--"O dear, no," she said--just like Mr.
Macaulay--"I _will have the picture_, but it _need not be like_!"
But even as to the change, we again doubt Mr. Macaulay's accuracy. The
word _Rhine_ in Somersetshire, as perhaps--_parva componere magnis_--in
the great German river, means _running_ water, and we therefore think it
very unlikely that a running stream should have disappeared; but we also
find in the Ordnance Survey of Somersetshire, made in our own time, the
course and name of _Bussck's Rhine_ distinctly laid down in front of
Weston, where it probably ran in Monmouth's day; and we are further
informed, in return to some inquiries that we have caused to be made,
that the _Rhine_ is now, in 1849, as visible and well known as ever it
was.
But this grand piece of the military topography of a battlefield where
there was no battle must have its picturesque and pathetic episode, and
Mr. Macaulay finds one well suited to such a novel. When Monmouth had
made up his mind to attempt to _surprise_ the royal army, Mr. Macaulay
is willing (for a purpose which we shall see presently) to persuade
himself that the Duke let the whole town into his secret:--
That an attack was to be made under cover of the night was no secret
in Bridgwater. The town was full of women, who had repaired thither by
hundreds from the surrounding region to see their husbands, sons,
lovers, and brothers once more. There were many sad partings that day;
and many parted never to meet again. The report of the intended attack
came to the ears of a young girl who was zealous for the king. Though
of modest character, she had the courage to resolve that she would
herself bear the intelligence to Feversham. She stole out of
Bridgwater, and made her way to the royal camp. But that camp was not
a place where female innocence could be safe. Even the officers,
despising alike the irregular force to which they were opposed, and
the negligent general who commanded them, had indulged largely in
wine, and were ready for any excess of licentiousness and cruelty. One
of them seized the unhappy maiden, refused to listen to her errand,
and brutally outraged her. She fled in agonies of rage and shame,
leaving the wicked army to its doom.--i. 606, 7.
--the _doom of the wicked army_, be it noted _en passant_, being a
complete victory. Mr. Macaulay cites Kennett for this story, and adds
that he is "_forced_ to believe the story to be true, because Kennett
declares that it was communicated to him in the year 1718 by a brave
officer who had fought at Sedgemoor, and had himself seen the poor girl
depart in an agony of distress,"--_ib_.
We shall not dwell on the value of an anonymous story told
_three-and-thirty years_ after the Battle of Sedgemoor. The tale is
sufficiently refuted by notorious facts and dates, and indeed by its
internal absurdity. We know from the clear and indisputable evidence of
Wade, who commanded Monmouth's infantry, all the proceedings of that day.
Monmouth no doubt intended to move that night, and made open preparation
for it, and the partings so pathetically described may have, therefore,
taken place, and the rather because the intended movement was to leave
that part of the country altogether--_not_ to meet the King's troops, but
to endeavour to escape them by a forced march across the Avon and into
Gloucestershire. So far might have been known. But about _three_ o'clock
that afternoon Monmouth received intelligence by a spy that the King's
troops had advanced to Sedgemoor, but had taken their positions so
injudiciously, that there seemed a possibility of surprising them in a
night attack. On this Monmouth assembled a council of war, which agreed
that, instead of retreating that night towards the Avon as they had
intended, they should advance and attack, provided the spy, who was to
be sent out to a new reconnoissance, should report that the troops were
not intrenched. We may be sure that--as the news only arrived at three
in the afternoon--the assembling the council of war--the deliberation--
the sending back the spy--his return and another deliberation--must have
protracted the final decision to so late an hour that evening, that it
is utterly impossible that the change of the design of a march northward
to that of an "_attack to be made under cover of the night_," could have
been that _morning_ no secret in Bridgwater. But our readers see it was
necessary for Mr. Macaulay to raise this fable, in order to account for
the poor girl's knowing so important a secret. So far we have argued the
case on Mr. Macaulay's own showing, which, we confess, was very
incautious on our part; but on turning to his authority we find, as
usual, a story essentially different. Kennett says--
A brave Captain in the Horse Guards, now living (1718), was in the
action at Sedgemoor, and gave me the account of it:--That on _Sunday
morning, July 5_, a young woman came from Monmouth's quarters to give
notice of his design to surprise the King's camp _that night_; but
this young woman being carried to a chief officer in a neighbouring
village, she was led upstairs and debauched by him, and, coming down
in a great fright and disorder (as he himself saw her), she went back,
and her message was not told.--_Kennett_, in. 432.
This knocks the whole story on the head. Kennett was not aware (Wade's
narrative not being published when he wrote) that the King's troops did
not come in sight of Sedgemoor till about three o'clock P.M. of that
Sunday on the early morning of which he places the girl's visit to the
camp, and it was not till late that same evening that Monmouth changed
his original determination, and formed the sudden resolution with which,
to support Kennett's story, the whole town must have been acquainted at
least twelve hours before. These are considerations which ought not to
have escaped a philosophical historian who had the advantage, which
Kennett had not, of knowing the exact time when these details
occurred....
We must here conclude. We have exhausted our time and our space, but not
our topics. We have selected such of the more prominent defects and
errors of Mr. Macaulay as were manageable within our limits; but
numerous as they are, we beg that they may be considered as specimens
only of the infinitely larger assortment that the volumes would afford,
and be read not merely as individual instances, but as indications of
the general style of the work, and the prevailing _animus_ of the
writer. We have chiefly directed our attention to points of mere
historical inaccuracy and infidelity; but they are combined with a
greater admixture of other--we know not whether to call them literary or
moral--defects, than the insulated passages sufficiently exhibit. These
faults, as we think them, but which may to some readers be the prime
fascinations of the work, abound on its surface. And their very number
and their superficial prominence constitute a main charge against the
author, and prove, we think, his mind to be unfitted for the severity of
historical inquiry. He takes much pains to parade--perhaps he really
believes in--his impartiality, with what justice we appeal to the
foregoing pages; but he is guilty of a prejudice as injurious in its
consequences to truth as any political bias. He abhors whatever is not
in itself picturesque, while he clings with the tenacity of a Novelist
to the _piquant_ and the startling. Whether it be the boudoir of a
strumpet or the death-bed of a monarch--the strong character of a
statesman-warrior abounding in contrasts and rich in mystery, or the
personal history of a judge trained in the Old Bailey to vulgarize and
ensanguine the King's Bench--he luxuriates with a vigour and variety of
language and illustration which renders his "History" an attractive and
absorbing story-book. And so spontaneously redundant are these errors--
so inwoven in the very texture of Mr. Macaulay's mind--that he seems
never able to escape from them. Even after the reader is led to believe
that all that can be said either of praise or vituperation as to
character, of voluptuous description and minute delineation as to fact
and circumstance, has been passed in review before him--when a new
subject, indeed, seems to have been started--all at once the old theme
is renewed, and the old ideas are redressed in all the affluent imagery
and profuse eloquence of which Mr. Macaulay is so eminent a master. Now
of the fancy and fashion of this we should not complain--quite the
contrary--in a professed novel: there is a theatre in which it would be
exquisitely appropriate and attractive; but the Temple of History is not
the floor for a morris-dance--the Muse Clio is not to be worshipped in
the halls of Terpsichore. We protest against this species of _carnival_
history; no more like the reality than the Eglintoun Tournament or the
Costume Quadrilles of Buckingham Palace; and we deplore the squandering
of so much melodramatic talent on a subject which we have hitherto
reverenced as the figure of Truth arrayed in the simple argments
[Transcriber's note: sic] of Philosophy. We are ready to admit an
hundred times over Mr. Macaulay's literary powers--brilliant even under
the affectation with which he too frequently disfigures them. He is a
great painter, but a suspicious narrator; a grand proficient in the
picturesque, but a very poor professor of the historic. These volumes
have been, and his future volumes as they appear will be, devoured with
the same eagerness that _Oliver Twist_ or _Vanity Fair_ excite--with the
same quality of zest, though perhaps with a higher degree of it;--but
his pages will seldom, we think, receive a second perusal--and the work,
we apprehend, will hardly find a permanent place on the historic shelf--
nor ever assuredly, if continued in the spirit of the first two volumes,
be quoted as authority on any question or point of the History of
England.