ridicule of critical associates would have detracted from the pluck
which Mr. Dickens shows in all his writings. It requires a great deal
of courage to be a humorous writer; you are always afraid that people
will laugh at you instead of with you: undoubtedly there is a certain
eccentricity about it. You take up the esteemed writers, Thucydides and
the _Saturday Review_; after all, they do not make you laugh. It is not
the function of really artistic productions to contribute to the mirth of
human beings. All sensible men are afraid of it, and it is only with an
extreme effort that a printed joke attains to the perusal of the public:
the chances are many to one that the anxious producer loses heart in the
correction of the press, and that the world never laughs at all. Mr.
Dickens is quite exempt from this weakness. He has what a Frenchman might
call the courage of his faculty. The real daring which is shown in the
_Pickwick Papers_, in the whole character of Mr. Weller senior, as well
as in that of his son, is immense, far surpassing any which has been
shown by any other contemporary writer. The brooding irregular mind is in
its first stage prone to this sort of courage. It perhaps knows that its
ideas are ‘out of the way;’ but with the infantine simplicity of youth,
it supposes that originality is an advantage. Persons more familiar with
the ridicule of their equals in station (and this is to most men the
great instructress of the college time) well know that of all qualities
this one most requires to be clipped and pared and measured. Posterity,
we doubt not, will be entirely perfect in every conceivable element of
judgment; but the existing generation like what they have heard before—it
is much easier. It required great courage in Mr. Dickens to write what
his genius has compelled them to appreciate.
We have throughout spoken of Mr. Dickens as he was, rather than as he
is; or, to use a less discourteous phrase, and we hope a truer, of his
early works rather than of those which are more recent. We could not do
otherwise consistently with the true code of criticism. A man of great
genius, who has written great and enduring works, must be judged mainly
by them; and not by the inferior productions which, from the necessities
of personal position, a fatal facility of composition, or other cause, he
may pour forth at moments less favourable to his powers. Those who are
called on to review these inferior productions themselves, must speak of
them in the terms they may deserve; but those who have the more pleasant
task of estimating as a whole the genius of the writer, may confine their
attention almost wholly to those happier efforts which illustrate that
genius. We should not like to have to speak in detail of Mr. Dickens’s
later works, and we have not done so. There are, indeed, peculiar reasons
why a genius constituted as his is (at least if we are correct in the
view which we have taken of it) would not endure without injury during a
long life the applause of the many, the temptations of composition, and
the general excitement of existence. Even in his earlier works it was
impossible not to fancy that there was a weakness of fibre unfavourable
to the longevity of excellence. This was the effect of his deficiency in
those masculine faculties of which we have said so much,—the reasoning
understanding and firm far-seeing sagacity. It is these two component
elements which stiffen the mind, and give a consistency to the creed and
a coherence to its effects,—which enable it to protect itself from the
rush of circumstances. If to a deficiency in these we add an extreme
sensibility to circumstances,—a mobility, as Lord Byron used to call it,
of emotion, which is easily impressed, and still more easily carried
away by impression,—we have the idea of a character peculiarly unfitted
to bear the flux of time and chance. A man of very great determination
could hardly bear up against them with such slight aids from within and
with such peculiar sensibility to temptation. A man of merely ordinary
determination would succumb to it; and Mr. Dickens has succumbed. His
position was certainly unfavourable. He has told us that the works of
his later years, inferior as all good critics have deemed them, have
yet been more read than those of his earlier and healthier years. The
most characteristic part of his audience, the lower middle-class, were
ready to receive with delight the least favourable productions of his
genius. Human nature cannot endure this; it is too much to have to endure
a coincident temptation both from within and from without. Mr. Dickens
was too much inclined by natural disposition to lachrymose eloquence
and exaggerated caricature. Such was the kind of writing which he wrote
most easily. He found likewise that such was the kind of writing that
was read most readily; and of course he wrote that kind. Who would have
done otherwise? No critic is entitled to speak very harshly of such
degeneracy, if he is not sure that he could have coped with difficulties
so peculiar. If that rule is to be observed, who is there that will not
be silent? No other Englishman has attained such a hold on the vast
populace; it is little, therefore, to say that no other has surmounted
its attendant temptations.
_THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY._[11]
(1856.)
This is a marvellous book. Everybody has read it, and every one has read
it with pleasure. It has little advantage of subject. When the volumes
came out, an honest man said, ‘I suppose something happened between the
years 1689 and 1697; but what happened I do not know.’ Every one knows
now. No period with so little obvious interest will henceforth be so
familiarly known. Only a most felicitous and rather curious genius could
and would shed such a light on such an age. If in the following pages we
seem to cavil and find fault, let it be remembered, that the business of
a critic is criticism; that it is _not_ his business to be thankful; that
he must attempt an estimate rather than a eulogy.
Macaulay seems to have in a high degree the temperament most likely to
be that of a historian. This may be summarily defined as the temperament
which inclines men to take an interest in actions as contrasted with
objects, and in past actions in preference to present actions. We should
expand our meaning. Some people are unfortunately born scientific. They
take much interest in the objects of nature. They feel a curiosity
about shells, snails, horses, butterflies. They are delighted at an
ichthyosaurus, and excited at a polyp; they are learned in minerals,
vegetables, animals; they have skill in fishes, and attain renown in
pebbles: in the highest cases they know the great causes of grand
phenomena, can indicate the courses of the stars or the current of the
waves; but in every case their minds are directed not to the actions of
man, but to the scenery amidst which he lives; not to the inhabitants
of this world, but to the world itself; not to what most resembles
themselves, but to that which is most unlike. What compels men to take
an interest in what they do take an interest in, is commonly a difficult
question—for the most part, indeed, it is an insoluble one; but in this
case it would seem to have a negative cause—to result from the absence
of an intense and vivid nature. The inclination of mind which abstracts
the attention from that in which it can feel sympathy to that in which it
cannot, seems to arise from a want of sympathy. A tendency to devote the
mind to trees and stones as much as, or in preference to, men and women,
appears to imply that the intellectual qualities, the abstract reason,
and the inductive scrutiny which can be applied equally to trees and to
men, to stones and to women, predominate over the more special qualities
solely applicable to our own race,—the keen love, the eager admiration,
the lasting hatred, the lust of rule which fastens men’s interests on
people and to people. As a confirmation of this, we see that, even in
the greatest cases, scientific men have been calm men. Their actions
are unexceptionable; scarcely a spot stains their excellence: if a
doubt is to be thrown on their character, it would be rather that they
were insensible to the temptations than that they were involved in the
offences of ordinary men. An aloofness and abstractedness cleave to their
greatness. There is a coldness in their fame. We think of Euclid as of
fine ice; we admire Newton as we admire the Peak of Teneriffe. Even the
intensest labours, the most remote triumphs of the abstract intellect,
seem to carry us into a region different from our own—to be in a _terra
incognita_ of pure reasoning, to cast a chill on human glory.
We know that the taste of most persons is quite opposite. The tendency
of man is to take an interest in man, and almost in man only. The world
has a vested interest in itself. Analyse the minds of the crowd of men,
and what will you find? Something of the outer earth, no doubt,—odd
geography, odd astronomy, doubts whether Scutari is in the Crimea,
investigations whether the moon is less or greater than Jupiter; some
idea of herbs, more of horses; ideas, too, more or less vague, of the
remote and supernatural,—notions which the tongue cannot speak, which
it would seem the world would hardly bear if thoroughly spoken. Yet,
setting aside these which fill the remote corners and lesser outworks
of the brain, the whole stress and vigour of the ordinary faculties is
expended on their possessor and his associates, on the man and on his
fellows. In almost all men, indeed, this is not simply an intellectual
contemplation; we not only look on, but act. The impulse to busy
ourselves with the affairs of men goes further than the simple attempt to
know and comprehend them: it warms us with a further life; it incites us
to stir and influence those affairs; its animated energy will not rest
till it has hurried us into toil and conflict. At this stage the mind
of the historian, as we abstractedly fancy it, naturally breaks off: it
has more interest in human affairs than the naturalist; it instinctively
selects the actions of man for occupation and scrutiny, in preference to
the habits of fishes or the structure of stones; but it has not so much
vivid interest in them as the warm and active man. To know is sufficient
for it; it can bear not to take a part. A want of impulse seems born with
the disposition. To be constantly occupied about the actions of others;
to have constantly presented to your contemplation and attention events
and occurrences memorable only as evincing certain qualities of mind and
will, which very qualities in a measure you feel within yourself, and yet
to be without an impulse to exhibit them in the real world, ‘which is the
world of all of us;’ to contemplate, yet never act; ‘to have the House
before you,’ and yet to be content with the reporters’ gallery,—shows a
chill impassiveness of temperament, a sluggish insensibility to ardent
impulse, a heavy immobility under ordinary emotion. The image of the
stout Gibbon placidly contemplating the animated conflicts, the stirring
pleadings of Fox and Burke, watching a revolution and heavily taking no
part in it, gives an idea of the historian as he is likely to be. ‘Why,’
it is often asked, ‘is history dull? It is a narrative of life, and life
is of all things the most interesting.’ The answer is, that it is written
by men too dull to take the common interest in life, in whom languor
predominates over zeal, and sluggishness over passion.
Macaulay is not dull, and it may seem hard to attempt to bring him within
the scope of a theory which is so successful in explaining dulness. Yet,
in a modified and peculiar form, we can perhaps find in his remarkable
character unusually distinct traces of the insensibility which we ascribe
to the historian. The means of scrutiny are ample. Macaulay has not spent
his life in a corner; if posterity should refuse—of course they will not
refuse—to read a line of his writings, they would yet be sought out by
studious inquirers, as those of a man of high political position, great
notoriety, and greater oratorical power. We are not therefore obliged, as
in so many cases even among contemporaries, to search for the author’s
character in his books alone; we are able from other sources to find
out his character, and then apply it to explain the peculiarities of
his works. Macaulay has exhibited many high attainments, many dazzling
talents, much singular and well-trained power; but the quality which
would most strike the observers of the interior man is what may be called
his _in_experiencing nature. Men of genius are in general distinguished
by their extreme susceptibility to external experience. Finer and softer
than other men, every exertion of their will, every incident of their
lives, influences them more deeply than it would others. Their essence
is at once finer and more impressible; it receives a distincter mark,
and receives it more easily than the souls of the herd. From a peculiar
sensibility, the man of genius bears the stamp of life commonly more
clearly than his fellows; even casual associations make a deep impression
on him: examine his mind, and you may discern his fortunes. Macaulay has
nothing of this. You could not tell what he has been. His mind shows no
trace of change. What he is, he was; and what he was, he is. He early
attained a high development, but he has not increased it since; years
have come, but they have whispered little; as was said of the second
Pitt, ‘He never grew, he was cast.’ The volume of ‘speeches’ which he
has published places the proof of this in every man’s hand. His first
speeches are as good as his last; his last scarcely richer than his
first. He came into public life at an exciting season; he shared of
course in that excitement, and the same excitement still quivers in his
mind. He delivered marvellous rhetorical exercises on the Reform Bill
when it passed; he speaks of it with rhetorical interest even now. He is
still the man of ’32. From that era he looks on the past. He sees ‘Old
Sarum’ in the seventeenth century, and Gatton in the civil wars. You may
fancy an undertone. The Norman barons commenced the series of reforms
which ‘_we_ consummated;’ Hampden was ‘preparing for the occasion in
which I had a part;’ William ‘for the debate in which I took occasion to
observe.’ With a view to that era everything begins; up to that moment
everything ascends. That was the ‘fifth act’ of the human race; the
remainder of history is only an afterpiece. All this was very natural at
the moment; nothing could be more probable than that a young man of the
greatest talents, entering at once into important life at a conspicuous
opportunity, should exaggerate its importance; he would fancy it was
the ‘crowning achievement,’ the greatest ‘in the tide of time.’ But the
singularity is, that he should retain the idea now; that years have
brought no influence, experience no change. The events of twenty years
have been full of rich instruction on the events of twenty years ago;
but they have not instructed him. His creed is a fixture. It is the same
on his peculiar topic—on India. Before he went there he made a speech on
the subject; Lord Canterbury, who must have heard a million speeches,
said it was the best he had ever heard. It is difficult to fancy that so
much vivid knowledge could be gained from books—from horrible Indian
treatises; that such imaginative mastery should be possible without
actual experience. Not forgetting, or excepting, the orations of Burke,
it was perhaps as remarkable a speech as was ever made on India by an
Englishman who had not been in India. Now he has been there he speaks no
better—rather worse; he spoke excellently without experience, he speaks
no better with it,—if anything, it rather puts him out. His speech on the
Indian charter a year or two ago was not finer than that on the charter
of 1833. Before he went to India he recommended that writers should be
examined in the classics; after being in India he recommended that they
should be examined in the same way. He did not say he had seen the place
in the meantime; he did not think that had anything to do with it. You
could never tell from any difference in his style what he had seen, or
what he had not seen. He is so insensible to passing objects, that they
leave no distinctive mark, no intimate peculiar trace.
Such a man would naturally think literature more instructive than life.
Hazlitt said of Mackintosh, ‘He might like to read an _account_ of India;
but India itself, with its burning, shining face, was a mere blank, an
endless waste to him. Persons of this class have no more to say to a
plain matter of fact staring them in the face than they have to say to
a _hippopotamus_.’ This was a keen criticism on Sir James, savouring of
the splenetic mind from which it came. As a complete estimate, it would
be a most unjust one of Macaulay; but we know that there is a whole class
of minds which prefers the literary delineation of objects to the actual
eyesight of them. To some life is difficult. An insensible nature, like a
rough hide, resists the breath of passing things; an unobserving retina
in vain depicts whatever a quicker eye does not explain. But any one can
understand a book; the work is done, the facts observed, the formulæ
suggested, the subjects classified. Of course it needs labour, and a
following fancy, to peruse the long lucubrations and descriptions of
others; but a fine detective sensibility is unnecessary; type is plain,
an earnest attention will follow it and know it. To this class Macaulay
belongs: and he has characteristically maintained that dead authors are
more fascinating than living people.
‘Those friendships,’ he tells us, ‘are exposed to no danger
from the occurrences by which other attachments are weakened
or dissolved. Time glides by; fortune is inconstant; tempers
are soured; bonds which seemed indissoluble are daily sundered
by interest, by emulation, or by caprice. But no such cause
can affect the silent converse which we hold with the highest
of human intellects. That placid intercourse is disturbed by
no jealousies or resentments. These are the old friends who
are never seen with new faces; who are the same in wealth and
in poverty, in glory and in obscurity. With the dead there is
no rivalry. In the dead there is no change. Plato is never
sullen. Cervantes is never petulant. Demosthenes never comes
unseasonably. Dante never stays too long. No difference of
political opinion can alienate Cicero. No heresy can excite the
horror of Bossuet.’
But Bossuet is dead; and Cicero was a Roman; and Plato wrote in Greek.
Years and manners separate us from the great. After dinner, Demosthenes
_may_ come unseasonably; Dante _might_ stay too long. _We_ are alienated
from the politician, and have a horror of the theologian. Dreadful
idea, having Demosthenes for an intimate friend! He had pebbles in his
mouth; he was always urging action; he spoke such good Greek; we cannot
dwell on it,—it is too much. Only a mind impassive to our daily life,
unalive to bores and evils, to joys and sorrows, incapable of the deepest
sympathies, a prey to print, could imagine it. The mass of men have
stronger ties and warmer hopes. The exclusive devotion to books tires. We
require to love and hate, to act and live.
It is not unnatural that a person of this temperament should preserve a
certain aloofness even in the busiest life. Macaulay has ever done so. He
has been in the thick of political warfare, in the van of party conflict.
Whatever a keen excitability would select for food and opportunity, has
been his; but he has not been excited. He has never thrown himself upon
action, he has never followed trivial details with an anxious passion.
He has ever been a man for a great occasion. He was by nature a _deus
ex machinâ_. Somebody has had to fetch him. His heart was in Queen
Anne’s time. When he came, he spoke as Lord Halifax might have spoken.
Of course, it may be contended that this is the _eximia ars_; that this
solitary removed excellence is particularly and essentially sublime.
But, simply and really, greater men have been more deeply ‘immersed
in matter.’ The highest eloquence quivers with excitement; there is
life-blood in the deepest action; a man like Strafford seems flung upon
the world. An orator should never talk like an observatory; no coldness
should strike upon the hearer.
It is characteristic also that Macaulay should be continually thinking
of posterity. In general, that expected authority is most ungrateful;
those who think of it most, it thinks of least. The way to secure its
favour is, to give vivid essential pictures of the life before you; to
leave a fresh glowing delineation of the scene to which you were born,
of the society to which you have peculiar access. This is gained, not by
thinking of your posterity, but by living in society; not by poring on
what is to be, but by enjoying what is. That spirit of thorough enjoyment
which pervades the great delineators of human life and human manners,
was not caused by ‘being made after supper, out of a cheese-paring;’
it drew its sustenance from a relishing, enjoying, sensitive life, and
the flavour of the description is the reality of that enjoyment. Of
course, this is not so in science. You may leave a name by an abstract
discovery, without having led a vigorous existence; yet what a name is
this! Taylor’s theorem will go down to posterity,—possibly its discoverer
was for ever dreaming and expecting it would; but what does posterity
know of the deceased Taylor? _Nominis umbra_ is rather a compliment; for
it is not substantial enough to have a shadow. But in other walks,—say in
political oratory, which is the part of Macaulay’s composition in which
his value for posterity’s opinion is most apparent,—the way to interest
posterity is to think but little of it. What gives to the speeches of
Demosthenes the interest they have? The intense, vivid, glowing interest
of the speaker in all that he is speaking about. Philip is not a person
whom ‘posterity will censure,’ but the man ‘whom I hate:’ the matter
in hand not one whose interest depends on the memory of men, but in
which an eager intense nature would have been absorbed if there had
been no posterity at all, on which he wished to deliver his own soul. A
_casual_ character, so to speak, is natural to the most intense words;
externally, even, they will interest the ‘after world’ more for having
interested the present world; they must have a life of _some_ place
and _some_ time before they can have one of all space and all time.
Macaulay’s oratory is the very opposite of this. School-boyish it is
not, for it is the oratory of a very sensible man; but the theme of a
schoolboy is not more devoid of the salt of circumstance. The speeches on
the Reform Bill have been headed, ‘Now, a man came up from college and
spoke thus;’ and, like a college man, he spoke rather to the abstract
world than to the present. He knew no more of the people who actually did
live in London than of people who would live in London, and there was
therefore no reason for speaking to one more than to the other. After
years of politics, he speaks so still. He looks on a question (he says)
as posterity will look on it; he appeals from this to future generations;
he regards existing men as painful prerequisites of great-grandchildren.
This seems to proceed, as has been said, from a distant and unimpressible
nature. But it is impossible to deny that it has one great advantage:
it has made him take pains. A man who speaks to people a thousand years
off will naturally speak carefully: he tries to be heard over the clang
of ages, over the rumours of myriads. Writing for posterity is like
writing on foreign post paper: you cannot say to a man at Calcutta what
you would say to a man at Hackney; you think ‘the yellow man is a very
long way off; this is fine paper, it will go by a ship;’ so you try to
say something worthy of the ship, something noble, which will keep and
travel. Writers like Macaulay, who think of future people, have a respect
for future people. Each syllable is solemn, each word distinct. No author
trained to periodical writing has so little of its slovenliness and its
imperfection.
This singularly constant contemplation of posterity has coloured his
estimate of social characters. He has no toleration for those great men
in whom a lively sensibility to momentary honours has prevailed over a
consistent reference to the posthumous tribunal. He is justly severe on
Lord Bacon: