did not add to Carlyle's popularity, which had been undermined by his
bitter attacks on society in his various pamphlets. At this period he
was still looked up to with reverence as a great intellectual giant; but
that love for him which had been felt by those who were aroused to
honest thinking by his earlier writings had passed away. A new
generation looked upon him as an embittered and surly old man. His
services were not forgotten, but he was no longer a favorite,--no longer
an inspiring guide. His writings continued to stimulate thought, but
were no longer regarded as sound. Commonplace people never did like him,
probably because they never understood him. His admirers were among the
young, the enthusiastic, the hopeful, the inquiring; and when their
veneration passed away, there were few left to uphold his real greatness
and noble character. One might suppose that Carlyle would have been
unhappy to alienate so many persons, especially old admirers. In fact, I
apprehend that he cared little for anybody's admiration or flattery. He
lived in an atmosphere so infinitely above small and envious and
detracting people that he was practically independent of human
sympathies. Had he been doomed to live with commonplace persons, he
might have sought to conciliate them; but he really lived in another
sphere,--not perhaps higher than theirs, but eternally distinct,--in the
sphere of abstract truth. To him most people were either babblers or
bores. What did he care for their envious shafts, or even for their
honest disapprobation!
Hence, the last days of this great man were not his best days, although
he was not without honor. He was made Lord Rector of the University of
Edinburgh, and delivered a fine address on the occasion; and later,
Disraeli, when prime minister, offered him knighthood, with the Grand
Cross of the Order of the Bath and a pension, which he declined. The
author of the "Sartor Resartus" did not care for titles. He preferred to
remain simply Thomas Carlyle.
While Carlyle was in the midst of honors in Edinburgh, his wife, who had
long been in poor health, suddenly died, April 21, 1866. This affliction
was a terrible blow to Carlyle, from which he never recovered. It filled
out his measure of sorrow, deep and sad, and hard to be borne. His
letters after this are full of pathos and plaintive sadness. He could
not get resigned to his loss, for his wife had been more and more his
staff and companion as years had advanced. The Queen sent her sympathy,
but nothing could console him. He was then seventy-one years old, and
his work was done. His remaining years were those of loneliness and
sorrow and suffering. He visited friends, but they amused him not. He
wrote reminiscences, but his isolation remained. He sought out
charities when he himself was the object of compassion,--a sad old man
who could not sleep. He tried to interest himself in politics, but time
hung heavy on his hands. He read much and thought more, but assumed no
fresh literary work. He had enough to do to correct proof-sheets of new
editions of his works. His fiercest protests were now against atheism in
its varied forms. In 1870, Mr. Erskine, his last Scotch friend, died. In
1873 he writes: "More and more dreary, barren, base, and ugly seem to me
all the aspects of this poor, diminishing quack-world,--fallen openly
anarchic, doomed to a death which one can wish to be speedy."
Poor old man! He has survived his friends, his pleasures, his labors,
almost his fame; he is sick, and weary of life, which to him has become
a blank. Pity it is, he could not have died when "Cromwell" was
completed. He drags on his forlorn life, without wife or children, and
with only a few friends, in disease and ennui and discontent, almost
alone, until he is eighty-five.
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps on this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
The relief came at last. It was on a cold day in February, 1881, that
Lecky, Froude, and Tyndall, alone of his London friends, accompanied his
mortal remains to Ecclefechan, where he was buried by the graves of his
father and mother. He might have rested in the vaults of Westminster;
but he chose to lie in a humble churchyard, near where he was born.
"In future years," says his able and interesting biographer, "Scotland
will have raised a monument over his remains; but no monument is needed
for one who has made an eternal memorial for himself in the hearts of
all to whom truth is the dearest possession.
"'For, giving his soul to the common cause, he won for himself a wreath
which will not fade, and a tomb the most honorable,--not where his dust
is decaying, but where his glory lives in everlasting remembrance. For
of illustrious men all the earth is the sepulchre; and it is not the
inscribed column in their own land which is the record of their virtues,
but the unwritten memories of them in the hearts and minds of all
mankind.'" [1]
[Footnote 1: Quoted by Froude from the Funeral Oration of Pericles in
honor of the Athenians slain during the first summer of the
Peloponnesian War, as given by Thucydides,--"their," "they," etc. being
changed to "his," "he," etc.]
Thomas Carlyle will always have an honorable place among the great men
of his time. He was pre-eminently a profound thinker, a severe critic, a
great word-painter,--a man of uncommon original gifts, who aroused and
instructed his generation. In the literal sense, he was neither
philosopher nor poet nor statesman, but a man of genius, who cast his
searching and fearless glance into all creeds, systems, and public
movements, denouncing hypocrisies, shams, and lies with such power that
he lost friends almost as fast as he made them,--without, however,
losing the respect and admiration of his literary rivals, or of the
ablest and best men both in England and America. Although no believer in
the scientific philosophies of our time, he was a great breaker of
ground for them, having been a pioneer in the cause of honest thinking
and plain speaking. His passion for truth, and courage in declaring his
own vision of it, were potent for spiritual liberty. He stands as one of
the earliest and stoutest champions of that revolt against authority in
religious, intellectual, and social matters which has chiefly marked the
Nineteenth Century.
LORD MACAULAY.
1800-1859.
ARTISTIC HISTORICAL WRITING.
Among the eminent men of letters of the present century, Thomas
Babington Macaulay takes a very high position. In original genius he was
inferior to Carlyle, but was greater in learning, in judgment, and
especially in felicity of style. He was an historical artist of the
foremost rank, the like of whom has not appeared since Voltaire; and he
was, moreover, no mean poet, and might have been distinguished as such,
had poetry been his highest pleasure and ambition. The same may be said
of him as a political orator. Very few men in the House of Commons ever
surpassed him in the power of making an eloquent speech. He was too
impetuous and dogmatic to be a great debater, like Fox or Pitt or Peel
or Gladstone; but he might have reached a more exalted and influential
position as a statesman had he confined his remarkable talents
to politics.
But letters were the passion of Macaulay, from his youth up; and his
remarkably tenacious memory--abnormal, as it seems to me--enabled him to
bring his vast store of facts to support plausibly any position he chose
to take. At fifty years of age, he had probably read more books than any
man in Europe since Gibbon and Niebuhr; he literally devoured everything
he could put his hands upon, without cramming for a special
object,--especially the Greek and Latin Classics, which he read over and
over again, not so much for knowledge as for the pleasure it gave him as
a literary critic and a student of artistic excellence.
Macaulay was of Scotch descent, like so many eminent historians, poets,
critics, and statesmen who adorned the early and middle part of the
nineteenth century,--Scott, Burns, Carlyle, Jeffrey, Dundas, Playfair,
Wilson, Napier, Mackintosh, Robertson, Alison; a group of geniuses that
lived in Edinburgh, and made its society famous,--to say nothing of
great divines and philosophers like Chalmers and Stewart and Hamilton.
Macaulay belonged to a good family, the most distinguished members of
which were clergymen,--with the exception of his uncle, General
Macaulay, who made a fortune in India; and his father, the celebrated
merchant and philanthropist, Zachary Macaulay, who did more than any
other man, Wilberforce excepted, to do away with the slave-trade, and
to abolish slavery in the West India Islands.
Zachary Macaulay was the most modest and religious of men, and after an
eventful life in Africa as governor of the colony of Sierra Leone,
settled in Clapham, near London, with a handsome fortune. He belonged to
that famous evangelical set who made Clapham famous, and whose
extraordinary piety and philanthropy are commemorated by Sir James
Stephen in one of his most interesting essays. They resembled in
peculiarities the early Quakers and primitive Methodists, and though
very narrow were much respected for their unostentatious benevolence,
blended with public spirit.
Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire, Oct. 25, 1800,
but it was at Clapham that his boyhood was chiefly spent. His precocity
startled every one who visited his father's hospitable home. At the age
of three he would lie at full length on the carpet eagerly reading. He
was never seen without an open book in his hands, even during his walks.
He cared nothing for the sports of his companions. He could neither
ride, nor drive, nor swim, nor row a boat, nor play a game of tennis or
foot-ball. He cared only for books of all sorts, which he seized upon
with inextinguishable curiosity, and stored their contents in his
memory. When a boy, he had learned the "Paradise Lost" by heart. He did
not care to go to school, because it interrupted his reading. Hannah
More, a frequent visitor at Clapham and a warm friend of the family,
gazed upon him with amazement, but was too wise and conscientious to
spoil him by her commendations. At eight years of age he also had great
facility in making verses, which were more than tolerable.
Zachary Macaulay objected to his son being educated in one of the great
schools in England, like Westminster and Harrow, and he was therefore
sent to a private school kept by an evangelical divine who had been a
fellow at Cambridge,--a good scholar, but narrow in his theological
views. Indeed, Macaulay got enough of Calvinism before he went to
college, and was so unwisely crammed with it at home and at school, that
through life he had a repugnance to the evangelical doctrines of the Low
Church, with which, much to the grief of his father, he associated cant,
always his especial abhorrence and disgust. While Macaulay venerated his
father, he had little sympathy with his views, and never loved him as he
did his own sisters. He did his filial duty, and that was
all,--contributed largely to his father's support in later life, treated
him with profound respect, but was never drawn to him in affectionate
frankness and confidence.
It cannot be disguised that Macaulay was worldly in his turn of mind,
intensely practical, and ambitious of distinction as soon as he became
conscious of his great powers, although in his school-days he was very
modest and retiring. He was not religiously inclined, nor at all
spiritually minded. An omnivorous reader seldom is narrow, and seldom is
profound. Macaulay was no exception. He admired Pascal, but only for his
exquisite style and his trenchant irony. He saw little in Augustine
except his vast acquaintance with Latin authors. He carefully avoided
writing on the Schoolmen, or Calvin, or the great divines of the
seventeenth century. Bunyan he admired for his genius and perspicuous
style rather than for his sentiments. Even his famous article on Bacon
is deficient in spiritual insight; it is a description of the man rather
than a dissertation on his philosophy. Macaulay's greatness was
intellectual rather than moral; and his mental power was that of the
scholar and the rhetorical artist rather than the thinker. In his
masterly way of arraying facts he has never been surpassed; and in this
he was so skilful that it mattered little which side he took. Like
Daniel Webster, he could make any side appear plausible. Doubtless in
the law he might have become a great advocate, had he not preferred
literary composition instead. Had he lived in the times of the Grecian
Sophists, he might have baffled Socrates,--not by his logic, but by his
learning and his aptness of illustration.
Macaulay entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1818, being a healthy,
robust young man of eighteen, after five years' training in Greek and
Latin, having the eldest son of Wilberforce for a school companion.
Among his contemporaries and friends at Cambridge were Charles Austin,
Praed, Derwent Coleridge, Hyde Villiers, and Romilly; but I infer from
his Life by Trevelyan that his circle of intimate friends was not so
large as it would have been had he been fitted for college at
Westminster or Eton. Nor at this time were his pecuniary circumstances
encouraging. After he had obtained his first degree he supported
himself, while studying for a fellowship, by taking a couple of pupils
for £100 a year. Eventually he gained a fellowship worth £300 a year,
which was his main support for seven years, until he obtained a
government office in London. He probably would have found it easier to
get a fellowship at Oxford than at Cambridge, since mathematics were
uncongenial to him, his forte being languages. He was most distinguished
at college for English composition and Latin declamation. In 1819 he
wrote a poem, "Pompeii," which gained him the chancellor's medal,--a
distinction won again in 1821 by a poem on "Evening," while the same
year gave him the Craven scholarship for his classical attainments. He
took his bachelor's degree in 1822, and was made a fellow of Trinity
College. He did not obtain his fellowship, however, until his third
trial, being no favorite with those who had prizes and honors to bestow,
because of his neglect of science and mathematics.
As a profession, Macaulay made choice of the law, being called to the
bar in 1826, and at Leeds joined the Northern Circuit, of which Brougham
was the leading star. But the law was not his delight. He did not like
its technicalities. He spent most of his time in his chambers in
literary composition, or in the galleries of the House of Commons
listening to the debates. He never applied himself seriously to anything
which "went against the grain." At Court he got no briefs, but his
fellowship enabled him to live by practising economy. He also wrote
occasional essays--excellent but not remarkable--for Knight's Quarterly
Magazine. It was in this periodical, too, that his early poems were
published; but he did not devote much time to this field of letters,
although, as we have said, he might undoubtedly have succeeded in it.
His poetry, if he had never written anything else, would not be
considered much inferior to that of Sir Walter Scott, being full of life
and action, and, like most everything else he did, winning him applause.
Years later he felt the risk of publishing his "Lays of Ancient Rome;"
but as he knew what he could do and what he could not do, or rather what
would be popular, he was not disappointed. The poems were well
received, for they were eminently picturesque and vital, as well as
strong, masculine, and unadorned; the rhyme and metre were also
felicitous. He had no obscurities, and the spirit of his Lays was
patriotic and ardent, showing his love of liberty. I think his "Battle
of Ivry" is equal to anything that Scott wrote. Yet Macaulay is not
regarded by the critics as a true poet; that is, he did not write poetry
because he must, like Burns and Byron. His poetry was not spontaneous;
it was a manufactured article,--very good of its kind, but not such as
to have given him the fame which his prose writings made for him.
It was not, however, until his article on Milton appeared in the
Edinburgh Review in 1825, that Macaulay's great career began. Like
Byron, he woke up one morning to find himself famous. Everybody read and
admired an essay the style of which was new and striking. "Where did you
pick up that style?" wrote Jeffrey to the briefless barrister. It
transcended in brilliancy anything which had yet appeared in the
Edinburgh or Quarterly. Brougham became envious, and treated the rising
light with no magnanimity or admiration.
Of course, the author of such an uncommon article as that on Milton, the
praise of which was in everybody's mouth, had invitations to dinner from
distinguished people; and these were most eagerly accepted. Macaulay
rapidly became a social favorite, sought for his brilliant conversation,
which was as remarkable for a young man of twenty-six as were his
writings in the foremost literary journal of the world. He was not
handsome, and was carelessly dressed; but he had a massive head, and
rugged yet benevolent features, which lighted up with peculiar animation
when he was excited. One of the first persons of note to welcome him to
her table was Lady Holland, an accomplished but eccentric and
plain-spoken woman, who seems to have greatly admired him. He was a
frequent guest at Holland House, where for nearly half-a-century the
courtly and distinguished Lord Holland and his wife entertained the most
eminent men and women of the time. This gratified young Macaulay's
inordinate social ambition. He scarcely mentions in his letters at this
time any but peers and peeresses.
And yet he did not court the society of those he did not respect. He was
not a parasite or a flatterer even of the great, but met them apparently
on equal terms, as a monarch of the mind. He was at home in any circle
that was not ignorant or frivolous. He was more easy than genial, for
his prejudices or intellectual pride made him unkind to persons of
mediocrity. It was a bold thing to cross his path, for he came down
like an avalanche on those who opposed him, not so much in anger as in
contempt. I do not find that his circle of literary friends was large or
intimate. He seldom alludes to Carlyle or Bulwer or Thackeray or
Dickens. He has more to say of Rogers and Lord Jeffrey, and other pets
of aristocratic circles,--those who were conventionally favored, like
Sydney Smith; or those who gave banquets to people of fashion, like Lord
Lansdowne. These were the people he loved best to associate with, who
listened to his rhetoric with rapt admiration, who did not pique his
vanity, and who had something to give to him,--position and _éclat_.
Macaulay was not a vain man, nor even egotistical; but he had a
tremendous self-consciousness, which annoyed his equals in literary
fame, and repelled such a giant as Brougham, who had no idea of sharing
his throne with any one,--being more overbearing even than Macaulay, but
more human. This new rival in the Edinburgh Review, of which for a long
time Brougham had been dictator, was, much to Jeffrey's annoyance, not
convivial. He did not drink two bottles at a sitting, but guarded his
health and preserved his simple habits. Though he speaks with gusto of
Lord Holland's turtle and turbot and venison and grouse, he was content
when alone with a mutton-chop and a few glasses of sherry, or the
October ale of Cambridge, which was a part of his perquisites as
Fellow. He was very exclusive, in view of the fact that he was a poor
man, without aristocratic antecedents or many powerful friends. Outside
the class of rank and fashion, his friends seem to have been leading
politicians of the Liberal school, the stanch Whigs who passed the
Reform Bill, to whom he was true. To his credit, his happiest hours were
spent with his sisters in the quiet seclusion of his father's modest
home. All his best letters were to them; and in these he detailed his
intercourse with the great, and the splendor of their banquets
and balls.
Macaulay's rise, after he had written his famous article on Milton, was
rapid. The article itself, striking as it is, must be confessed to be
disappointing in so far as it attempted to criticise the "Paradise Lost"
and Milton's other poems. Macaulay's genius was historical, not
critical; and the essay is notable rather for its review of the times of
Charles I. and Archbishop Laud, of the Puritans and the Royalists, than
for its literary flavor, except as a brilliant piece of composition. It
was, however, the picturesque style of the new writer which was the
chief attraction, and the fact that the essay came from so young a man.
Macaulay followed the Milton essay with others on Macchiavelli, Dryden,
Hallam's "Constitutional History," and on history in general, which
displayed to great advantage his unusual learning, his keen historic
instinct, and his splendor of style. He became the most popular
contributor to the Edinburgh Review, which was beginning to be dull and
heavy; and this kept him before the eyes of politicians and
professional men.
Macaulay's ambition was now divided between literature and politics. His
first appearance as a public speaker was at an annual anti-slavery
convention in London, in 1826, when he made a marked impression. He
eagerly embraced the offer of a seat in the House of Commons, which was
secured to him in 1830; and as soon as he entered Parliament he began to
make speeches, which were carefully composed and probably committed to
memory. At a single bound he became one of the leading orators of that
renowned assembly. Some of his orations were masterpieces of argument
and rhetoric in favor of reform, and of all liberal movements in
philanthropy and education. In the opinion of eminent statesmen he was
the most "rising" member of the House, and sure to become a leader among
the Whigs. But he was poor, having only about £500 a year--the proceeds
of his fellowship and his literary productions--to support his dignity
as a legislator and meet the calls of society; so that in 1833 he was
rewarded with an office in the Board of Control, which regulated the
affairs of India; this doubled his income, and made him independent.
But he wanted an office in which he could lay up money for future
contingencies. Therefore, in 1834, he gladly resigned his seat in
Parliament and accepted the situation of a member of the Supreme Council
of India, on a salary of £10,000 a year, £7000 of which he continued to
save yearly; so that at the end of four years, when he returned to
England, he had become a rich man, or at least independent, with leisure
to do whatever he pleased.
In India, as chairman of the Board of Education, as legal adviser of the
Council, and in drafting a code of penal laws for that part of the
Empire, he was very useful,--although as a matter of fact the new code
was too theoretically fine to be practical, and was never put in force.
His personal good sense was equal to his industry and his talents, and
he preserved his health by strict habits of temperance. Even in that
tropical country he presented a strong contrast to the sallow, bilious
officials with whom he was surrounded, and in due time returned to
England in perfect health, one of the most robust of men, capable of
indefinite work, which never seemed to weary him.