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Outlines of English and American Literature
Thomas Babington Macaulay
by Long, William J.
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To many readers the life of Macaulay is more interesting than any of his
books. For the details of that brilliantly successful life, which fairly
won and richly deserved its success, the student is referred to Trevelyan's
fine biography. We record here only such personal matters as may help to
explain the exuberant spirit of Macaulay's literary work.
Life
One notes first of all the man's inheritance. The Norse
element predominated in him, for the name Macaulay (son of Aulay)
is a late form of the Scandinavian Olafson. His mother was a
brilliant woman of Quaker descent; his father, at one time governor
of the Sierra Leone Colony in Africa, was a business man who gained
a fortune in trade, and who spent the whole of it in helping to
free the slaves. In consequence, when Macaulay left college he
faced the immediate problem of supporting himself and his family, a
hard matter, which he handled not only with his customary success
but also with characteristic enthusiasm.
Next we note Macaulay's personal endowment, his gift of rapid
reading, his marvelous memory which suggests Coleridge and Cotton
Mather. He read everything from Plato to the trashiest novel, and
after reading a book could recall practically the whole of it after
a lapse of twenty years. To this photographic memory we are
indebted for the wealth of quotation, allusion and anecdote which
brightens almost every page of his writings.
His Brilliant Career
After a brilliant career at college Macaulay began the study of
law. At twenty-five he jumped into prominence by a magazine essay
on Milton, and after that his progress was uninterrupted. He was
repeatedly elected to Parliament; he was appointed legal adviser to
the Supreme Council of India, in which position he acquired the
knowledge that appears in his essays on Clive and Hastings; he
became Secretary for War, and was elevated to the peerage as Baron
Macaulay of Rothley. It was said of him at that time that he was
"the only man whom England ever made a lord for the power of his
pen."
His Recreation
The last thing we note, because it was to Macaulay of least moment,
is his literary work. With the exception of the History of
England his writing was done at spare moments, as a relaxation
from what he considered more important labors. In this respect, of
writing for pleasure in the midst of practical affairs, he
resembles the Elizabethan rather than the Victorian authors.
While at work on his masterpiece Macaulay suddenly faltered, worn
out by too much work. He died on Christmas Day (1859) and was
buried in the place which he liked best to visit, the Poets' Corner
of Westminster Abbey. From the day on which he attracted notice by
his Milton essay he had never once lost his hold on the attention
of England. Gladstone summed up the matter in oratorical fashion
when he said, "Full-orbed Macaulay was seen above the horizon; and
full-orbed, after thirty-five years of constantly emitted splendor,
he sank below it." But Macaulay's final comment, "Well, I have had
a happy life," is more suggestive of the man and his work.
Works of Macaulay
Macaulay's poems, which he regarded as of no
consequence, are practically all in the ballad style. Among them are
various narratives from French or English history, such as "The Battle of
Ivry" and "The Armada," and a few others which made a popular little book
when they were published as Lays of Ancient Rome (1842). The prime
favorite not only of the Lays but of all Macaulay's works is
"Horatius Cocles," or "Horatius at the Bridge." Those who read its stirring
lines should know that Macaulay intended it not as a modern ballad but as
an example of ancient methods of teaching history. According to Niebuhr the
early history of Rome was written in the form of popular ballads; and
Macaulay attempted to reproduce a few of these historical documents in the
heroic style that roused a Roman audience of long ago to pride and love of
country.
The Essays
The essays of Macaulay appeared in the magazines of that day; but though
official England acclaimed their brilliancy and flooded their author with
invitations to dine, nobody seemed to think of them as food for ordinary
readers till a Philadelphia publisher collected a few of them into a book,
which sold in America like a good novel. That was in 1841, and not till two
years had passed did a London publisher gain courage to issue the
Critical and Historical Essays, a book which vindicated the taste of
readers of that day by becoming immensely popular.
The charm of such a book is evident in the very first essay, on Milton.
Here is no critic, airing his rules or making his dry talk palatable by a
few quotations; here is a live man pleading for another man whom he
considers one of the greatest figures in history. Macaulay may be mistaken,
possibly, but he is going to make you doff your hat to a hero before he is
done; so he speaks eloquently not only of Milton but of the classics on
which Milton fed, of the ideals and struggles of his age, of the
Commonwealth and the Restoration,--of everything which may catch your
attention and then focus it on one Titanic figure battling like Samson
among the Philistines. It may be that your sympathies are with the
Philistines rather than with Samson; but presently you stop objecting and
are carried along by the author's eloquence as by a torrent. His style is
the combined style of novelist and public speaker, the one striving to make
his characters real, the other bound to make his subject interesting.
That is Macaulay's way in all his essays. They are seldom wholly right in
their judgments; they are so often one-sided that the author declared in
later life he would burn them all if he could; but they are all splendid,
all worth reading, not simply for their matter but for their style and for
the wealth of allusion with which Macaulay makes his subject vital and
interesting. Among the best of the literary essays are those on Bunyan,
Addison, Bacon, Johnson, Goldsmith and Byron; among the historical essays
one may sample Macaulay's variety in Lord Clive, Frederick the Great,
Machiavelli and Mirabeau.
Careful readers may note a difference between these literary and historical
essays. Those on Bunyan, Johnson and Goldsmith, for example (written
originally for the Encyclopaedia Britannica), are more finished and
more careful of statement than others in which the author talks freely,
sharing without measure or restraint "the heaped-up treasures of his
memory."
History of England
Macaulay began to write his History of England with the declaration
that he would cover the century and a half following the accession of James
II (1685), and that he would make his story as interesting as any novel.
Only the latter promise was fulfilled. His five volumes, the labor of more
than a decade, cover only sixteen years of English history; but these are
pictured with such minuteness and such splendor that we can hardly imagine
anyone brave enough to attempt to finish the record in a single lifetime.
Of this masterpiece of Macaulay we may confidently say three things: that
for many years it was the most popular historical work in our language;
that by its brilliant style and absorbing interest it deserved its
popularity, as literature if not as history; and that, though it contains
its share of error and more than its share of Whig partisanship, it has
probably as few serious faults as any other history which attempts to cover
the immense field of the political, social and intellectual life of a
nation. Read, for example, one of the introductory chapters (the third is
excellent) which draws such a picture of England in the days of the Stuarts
as no other historian has ever attempted. When you have finished that
chapter, with its wealth of picturesque detail, you may be content to read
Macaulay simply for the pleasure he gives you, and go to some other
historian for accurate information.
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