for the Edinburgh Review, and gave an immense impulse to its sale, for
which he was amply rewarded. Brougham complained to Jeffrey that his
essays took up too much space in the Review, but the politic editor knew
what was for its interest and popularity. Macaulay's long articles of
sometimes over a hundred pages were received without a murmur; and every
article he wrote added to his fame, since he always did his best. His
essays in 1830 on Southey and Montgomery, and one in 1831 on Croker's
edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, were fierce, scathing onslaughts,
even cruel and crushing,--revealing Macaulay's tremendous powers of
invective and remorseless criticism, but reflecting little credit on his
disposition or his judgment. His Hampden (1831) and his Burleigh (1832)
remain among his finest and most inspiring historical paintings. His
first essay on Lord Chatham (1834) is a notable piece of
characterization; the one on Sir James Mackintosh (1835) is a most acute
and brilliant historical criticism; the one on Lord Bacon (1837) is
striking and has become famous, but shows Macaulay's deficiency in
philosophic thought, besides being sophistical in spirit; and the
article on Sir William Temple (1837)--really a history of England during
the reign of William III.--is thoroughly fine.
Macaulay's residence in India, so far as political ambition was
concerned, may have been a mistake. It withdrew him from an arena in
which he could have risen to great distinction and influence as a
parliamentary orator. He might have been a second Fox, whom he resembled
in the impetuosity of his rhetoric, if he had also possessed Fox's
talents as a debater. Yet he was not a born leader of men. As a
parliamentary orator he was simply a speech-maker, like the Unitarian
minister Fox, or that still abler man the Quaker Bright, both of whom
were great rhetoricians. It is probable that he himself understood his
true sphere, which was that of a literary man,--an historical critic,
appealing to intelligent people rather than to learned pedants in the
universities. His service in India enabled him to write for the
remainder of his life with an untrammelled pen, and to live in comfort
and ease, enjoying the _otium cum dignitate_, to which he attached
supreme importance,--so different from Carlyle, who toiled in poverty at
Chelsea to declare truth for truth's sake, grumbling, yet lofty in his
meditations, the depth of which Macaulay was incapable of appreciating.
It is, then, as a man of letters rather than as a politician that our
author merits his exalted fame. Respectable as a member of the House of
Commons, or as a jurist in India in compiling a code of laws, yet
neither as a statesman nor as a jurist was he in his right place. The
leaders of his party may have admired and praised his oratory, but they
wanted something more practical than orations,--they wanted the control
of men; and so, too, the government demanded a code which would exact
the esteem of lawyers and meet the wants of India rather than a
composition which would read well. But as an historical critic and a
luminous writer, Macaulay had no superior,--a fact which no one knew
better than himself.
In 1838, on his return from India,--where he had regarded himself as in
honorable exile,--Macaulay had accumulated a fortune of £30,000, to him
more than a competency. This, added to the legacy of £10,000 which he
had received from his uncle, General Macaulay, secured to him
independence and leisure to pursue his literary work, which was
paramount to every other consideration. If both from pleasure and
ambition there ever was a man devoted heart and soul and body to a
literary career, it was Macaulay. Nor would he now accept any political
office which seriously interfered with the passion of his life. Still
less would he waste his time at the dinner parties of the great, no
longer to him a novelty. He was eminently social by nature, and fond of
talk and controversy, with a superb physique capable of digesting the
richest dishes, and of enduring the fatigues and ceremonies of
fashionable life; but even the pleasures of the banquet and of
cultivated society, to many a mere relaxation, were sacrificed to his
fondness for books,--to him the greatest and truest companionship,
especially when they introduced him to the life and manners of by-gone
ages, and to communion with the master-minds of the world.
For relaxation, Macaulay preferred to take long walks; lounge around the
book-stalls; visit the sights of London with his nieces; invite his
intimate friends to simple dinners at The Albany; amuse himself with
trifles, especially in company with those he loved best, in the domestic
circle of his relatives, whom he treated ever with the most familiar and
affectionate sympathy,--so that while they loved and revered him, they
had no idea that "Uncle Tom" was a great man. His most interesting
letters were to his sisters and nieces, whose amusement and welfare he
had constantly in view, and who were more to him than all the world
besides. Indeed, he did not write many letters except to his relatives,
his publishers, and his intimate friends, who were few, considering the
number of persons he was obliged to meet. He was a thoroughly domestic
man, although he never married or wished to marry.
It surprises me that Macaulay's intercourse with eminent authors was so
constrained. He saw very little of them; but while he did not avoid
talking with them when thrown among them, and keeping up the courtesies
of life even with those he thoroughly disliked, I cannot see any
evidence that he sought the society of those who were regarded as his
equals in genius. He liked Milman and Mackintosh and Napier and Jeffrey
and Rogers, and a few others; but his intimate intercourse was confined
chiefly to these and to his family.
Macaulay's fame, however, was substantially founded and built. Sydney
Smith's witty characterization of him is worth recalling:--
"I always prophesied his greatness from the first moment I saw him, then
a very young and unknown man on the Northern Circuit. There are no
limits to his knowledge, on small subjects as well as great; he is like
a book in breeches.
"Yes, I agree, he is certainly more agreeable since his return from
India. His enemies might have said before (though _I_ never did so) that
he talked rather too much; but now he has occasional flashes of silence
that make his conversation perfectly delightful. But what is far better
and more important than all this is, that I believe Macaulay to be
incorruptible. You might lay ribbons, stars, garters, wealth, title,
before him in vain. He has an honest, genuine love of his country; and
the world could not bribe him to neglect her interests."
Macaulay now devoted several weeks of every year to travel, visiting
different parts of England and the Continent as the mood took him. In
the autumn of 1838 he visited Italy, it would seem for the first time,
and was, of course, enchanted. He appreciated natural scenery, but was
not enthusiastic over it; nor did it make a very deep impression on him
except for the moment. He loved best to visit cities and places
consecrated by classical associations.
While at Rome, Macaulay received from Lord Melbourne the offer of the
office of Judge Advocate; but he unhesitatingly declined it. The salary
of £2500 was nothing to a scholar who already had a comfortable
independence; and the duties the situation imposed were not only
uncongenial, but would interfere with his literary labors.
In February, 1839, he returned to London; and now the pressure on him by
his political friends to re-enter public life was greater than he could
resist. He was elected to Parliament as one of the members from
Edinburgh, and gave his usual support to his party. In September he
became War Secretary, with a seat in the Whig Cabinet under Lord
Melbourne. Consequently he suspended for a while his literary tasks,
conducting the business of his department with commendable industry, but
without enthusiasm. In the session of 1840 and 1841, during the angry
discussions pertaining to the registration of votes in Ireland, he gave
proof of having profited by the severe legal training he had received
from his labors in India. During these years he found time to write a
few reviews, the one on Lord Olive being the most prominent.
The great subject of political agitation at this period was the repeal
of the Corn Laws. The Whig leaders had lost the earnestness which had
marked their grand efforts when they carried the Reform Bill of 1832,
and were more indifferent to further reforms than suited their
constituents; so that, at a dangerous financial crisis in 1841, the
direction of public affairs fell into the hands of the Tories, under Sir
Robert Peel. This great man not only rescued the nation from its fiscal
embarrassments, but having been convinced by the arguments of Cobden of
the necessity of repealing the Corn Laws, he carried through that great
reform, to the disgust of his party and to his own undying fame. I have
treated of this period more at large in another volume of this
series.[2]
[Footnote 2: Beacon Lights of History: European Leaders.]
Macaulay was not much moved by the fall of the ministry to which he
belonged, and gladly resumed his literary labors,--the first fruits of
his leisure being an essay on Warren Hastings, a companion piece to the
one on Clive.
These East Indian essays constitute the most picturesque and graphic
account of British conquests in that ancient land that has been given
to the public. Macaulay's intimate knowledge of the ground, and his
literary resources, enabled him to picture the dazzling successes of
Clive and Hastings; so that the careers of those superb military
chieftains and commercial robber-statesmen, in securing for their
country the control of a distant province larger than France, and in
enriching the British Empire and themselves beyond all precedent in
conquest, stand splendidly portrayed forever.
Macaulay had now taken apartments in The Albany, on the second floor, to
which he removed his large library, and in which he comfortably lived
for fifteen years. His article on Warren Hastings was followed by that
on Frederic the Great. His numerous articles in the Edinburgh Review had
now become so popular that there was a great demand for them in a
separate form. Curiously enough, as in the case of Carlyle, it was in
America that the public appreciation of these essays first took the form
of book publication; and Macaulay's "Miscellanies" were published in
Boston in 1840, and in Philadelphia in 1842. As these volumes began to
go to England, for Macaulay's own protection they were republished by
Longman, revised by the author, in 1843, and obtained an immediate and
immense sale,--reaching one hundred and twenty thousand copies in
England,--which added to the fame and income of Macaulay. But he was
never satisfied with the finish of his own productions; the only thing
which seemed to comfort him was that the last essays were better than
the first. In addition to his labors for the Edinburgh, was the
publication of a volume of his poems in 1842, which was also
enthusiastically received by his admirers. His last notable essays were
a chivalrous article on Madame D'Arblay (January, 1843); an entirely
charming account of Addison and the wits of Queen Anne's reign (July,
1843); an interesting review of the Memoirs of Barère, the French
revolutionist and writer (April, 1844); and finally a second article on
Lord Chatham (October, 1844), which is considered finer than the first
one written twenty years earlier. More and more, however, the project of
writing a History of England had taken possession of him, and he began
now to forego all other literary occupation, and to devote all his
leisure time to that great work.
During much of the time that Macaulay had continued writing his reviews,
at the rate of about two in a year, he was an active member of
Parliament, frequently addressing the House of Commons, and earning the
gratitude of the country by his liberal and enlightened
views,--especially those in reference to the right of Unitarians to
their chapels, to the enlarged money-grant given to the Irish Roman
Catholic Maynooth College, and to the extension of copyrights. He
rarely spoke without careful preparation. His speeches were forcible and
fine. In the higher field of debate, however, as we have already
intimated, he was not successful. In 1845 Sir Robert Peel retired, the
Whigs again coming into power; and in 1846 Macaulay accepted the office
of Paymaster of the Forces, because its duties were comparatively light
and would not much interfere with his literary labors, while it added
£2000 a year to his income. During the session of 1846 and 1847, while
still in Parliament, he spoke only five times, although the House was
ever ready to listen to him.
In the year 1847 the disruption of the Scotch Church was effected, and
in the bitterness engendered by that movement Macaulay lost his
popularity with his Edinburgh constituents. He seemed indifferent to
their affairs; he answered their letters irregularly and with almost
contemptuous brevity. He had no sympathy with the radicals who at that
time controlled a large number of votes, and he refused to contribute
towards electioneering expenses. Above all, he was absorbed in his
History, and had lost much of his interest in politics. In consequence
he failed to be re-elected, and not unwillingly retired to private life.
Macaulay now concentrated all his energies on the History, which
occupied his thoughts, his studies, and his pen for the most part during
the remainder of his life. The first two volumes were published in the
latter part of 1848; and the sale was immense, surpassing that of any
historical work in the history of literature, and coming near to the
sale of the novels of Sir Walter Scott. The popularity of the work was
not confined to scholars and statesmen and critics, but it was equally
admired by ordinary readers; and not in England and Scotland alone, but
in the United States, in France, in Holland, in Germany, and other
countries.
The labor expended on these books was prodigious. The author visited in
person nearly all the localities in England and Ireland where the events
he narrated took place. He ransacked the archives of most of the
governments of Europe, and all the libraries to which he could gain
access, public and private. He worked twelve hours a day, and yet
produced on an average only two printed pages daily,--so careful was he
in verifying his facts and in arranging his materials, writing and
rewriting until no further improvement could be made.
This book was not merely the result of his researches for the last
fifteen years of his life, but of his general reading for nearly fifty
years, when everything he read he remembered. Says Thackeray, "He reads
twenty books to write a sentence; he travels one hundred miles to make a
line of description." The extent and exactness of his knowledge were not
only marvellous, but almost incredible. Mr. Buckle declared that
Macaulay was perfectly accurate in all the facts which Buckle had
himself investigated to write his "History of Civilization;" and so
particular was he in the selection of words that he never allowed a
sentence to pass muster until it was as good as he could make it. "He
thought little of reconstructing a paragraph," says his biographer, "for
the sake of one happy illustration." He submitted to the most tiresome
mechanical drudgery in the correction of his proof-sheets. The clearness
of his thought amid the profusion of his knowledge was represented in
his writing by a remarkable conciseness of expression. His short,
vigorous sentences are compact with details of fact, yet rich with
color. His terseness has been compared to that of Tacitus. His power of
condensation, aptness of phrase and epithet, and indomitable industry
made him a master of rhetorical effect, in the use of his multifarious
learning for the illustration of his themes.
As soon as his last proof-sheet had been despatched to the printers,
Macaulay at once fell to reading a series of historians from Herodotus
downward, to measure his writings with theirs. Thucydides especially
utterly destroyed all the conceit which naturally would arise from his
unbounded popularity, as expressed in every social and literary circle,
as well as in the Reviews. Like Michael Angelo, this Englishman was
never satisfied with his own productions; and the only comfort he took
in the impossibility of realizing his ideal was in the comparison he
made of his own works with similar ones by contemporary authors. Then he
was content; and then only appeared in his letters and diary that
good-natured, self-satisfied feeling which arose from the consciousness
that he was one of the most fortunate authors who had ever lived. There
was nothing cynical in his sense of superiority, but an amiable
self-assertion and self-confidence that only made men smile,--as when
Lord Palmerston remarked that "he wished he was as certain of any one
thing as Tom Macaulay was of everything." This self-confidence rarely
provoked opposition, except when he was positive as to things outside
his sphere. He wrote and talked sensibly and luminously on financial and
social questions, on art, on poetry and the drama, on philosophy and
theology; but on these subjects he was not an authority with
specialists. In other words, he did not, so to speak, know everything
profoundly, but only superficially; yet in history, especially English
history, he was profound in analysis as well as brilliant in the
narration of facts, even when there was disagreement between himself and
others as to inductions he drew from those facts,--inductions colored by
his strong prejudices and aristocratic surroundings.
Macaulay was not always consistent with his own theories, however. For
instance, he was a firm believer in the progress of society and of
civilization. He saw the enormous gulf between the ninth and the
nineteenth centuries, and the unmistakable advance which, since the
times of Hildebrand, the world had made in knowledge, in the arts, in
liberty, and in the comforts of life, although the tide of progress had
its ebb and flow in different ages and countries. Yet when he cast his
eye on America, where perhaps the greatest progress had been made in the
world's history within fifty years, he saw nothing but melancholy signs
of anarchy and decay,--signs portending the collapse of liberty and the
triumph of ignorance and crime. Thus he writes in 1857 to an American
correspondent:--
"As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land,
your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring
population of the Old World; but the time will come when wages will be
as low, and will fluctuate as much, with you as with us. Then your
institutions will fairly be brought to the test. Distress everywhere
makes the laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to listen
with eagerness to agitators who tell him that it is a monstrous
iniquity that one man should have a million, while another cannot get a
full meal. In bad years there is plenty of grumbling here, and sometimes
a little rioting; but it matters little, for here the sufferers are not
the rulers. The supreme power is in the hands of a class deeply
interested in the security of property and the maintenance of order;
accordingly the malcontents are restrained. But with you the majority is
the government, and has the rich, who are always in a minority,
absolutely at its mercy. The day will come when the multitude of people,
none of whom has had more than a half a breakfast, or expects to have
more than a half a dinner, will choose a legislature. Is it possible to
doubt what sort of legislature will be chosen? On the one side is a
statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict
observance of the public faith; and on the other a demagogue ranting
about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, and asking why anybody
should be permitted to drink champagne and ride in a carriage, while
thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries: which of the two
candidates is likely to be preferred by a working-man who hears his
children cry for more bread? There will be, I fear, spoliation. The
spoliation will increase the distress; the distress will produce fresh
spoliation. There is nothing to stop you; your Constitution is all sail
and no anchor. Either civilization or liberty will perish. Either some
Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong
hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by
barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in
the fifth."
I do not deny that there is great force in Macaulay's reasoning and
prophecy. History points to decline and ruin when public virtue has fled
and government is in the hands of demagogues; for their reign has ever
been succeeded by military usurpers who have preserved civilization
indeed, but at the expense of liberty. Yet this reasoning applies not
only to America but to England as well,--especially since, by the Reform
Bill and subsequent enactments of Parliament, she has opened the gates
to an increase of suffrage, which now threatens to become universal. The
enfranchisement of the people--the enlarged powers of the individual
under the protection and control of the commonwealth--is the Anglo-Saxon
contribution to progress. It is dangerous. So is all power until its use
is learned. But there is no backward step possible; the tremendous
experiment must go forward, for England and America alike.
Macaulay himself was one of the most prominent of English statesmen and
orators, in 1830, 1831, and 1832, to advocate the extension of the right
of suffrage and the increase of popular liberties. All his writings are
on the side of liberty in England; and all are in opposition to the
Toryism which was so triumphant during the reign of George III. Why did
he have faith in the English people of England, and yet show so little
in the English people of America? He believed in political and social
progress for his own countrymen; why should he doubt the utility of the
same in other countries? If vandalism is to be the fate of America,
where education, the only truly conservative element, is more diffused
than in England, why should it not equally triumph in that country when
the masses have gained political power, as they surely will at some
time, and even speedily, if the policy inaugurated by Gladstone is to
triumph? For England Macaulay had unbounded hope, because he believed in
progress,--in liberty, in education, in the civilizing influence of
machinery, in the increasing comforts of life through the constant
increase of wealth among the middle classes, and especially through the
power of Christianity, in spite of the dissensions of sects, the attacks
of crude philosophers, socialists, anarchists, scientists, and atheists,
from one end of Christendom to the other. Why should he not have equal
faith in American civilization, which, in spite of wars and strikes and
commercial distresses and political corruption, has yet made a marked
progress from the time of Jefferson, the apostle of equality, down to
our day,--as seen especially in the multiplication of schools and
colleges, in an untrammelled and watchful press, and in the active
benevolence of the rich in the foundation of every kind of institution
to relieve misery and want? The truth is that he, in common with most
educated Englishmen of his day,--and of too many even of our own
day,--cherished a silent contempt for Americans, for their literature
and their institutions; and hence he was not only inconsistent in the
principles which he advocated, but showed that he was not emancipated,
with all his learning, from prejudices of which he ought to have
been ashamed.