Critical Miscellanies

Critical Miscellanies, Volume I
(of 3), by

John Morley
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Title: Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) Essay 4: Macaulay
Author: John Morley

Release Date: December 22, 2006 [eBook #20164]
Language: English
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MISCELLANIES, VOLUME I (OF 3)***
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CRITICAL MISCELLANIES
by
JOHN MORLEY
VOL. I.
ESSAY 4: MACAULAY

London MacMillan and Co., Limited New York: The MacMillan
Company 1904

MACAULAY.
The Life of Macaulay 253
Macaulay's vast popularity 254
He and Mill, the two masters of the modern journalist 256
His marked quality 259
Set his stamp on style 260
His genius for narration 262
His copiousness of illustration 264
Macaulay's, the style of literary knowledge 266
His use of generous commonplace 267
Perfect accord with his audience 271
Dislike of analysis 272

Not meditative 273
Macaulay's is the prose of spoken deliverance 276
Character of his geniality 278
Metallic hardness and brightness 279
Compared with Carlyle 281
Harsh modulations and shallow cadences 283
Compared with Burke 283
Or with Southey 285
Faults of intellectual conscience 286
Vulgarity of thought 289
Conclusion 290

MACAULAY.
'After glancing my eye over the design and order of a new book,' says
Gibbon, 'I suspended the perusal till I had finished the task of
self-examination, till I had revolved in a solitary walk all that I knew or
believed or had thought on the subject of the whole work or of some
particular chapter; I was then qualified to discern how much the author
added to my original stock; and if I was sometimes satisfied by the
agreement, I was sometimes warned by the opposition of our ideas.' It
is also told of Strafford that before reading any book for the first time,
he would call for a sheet of paper, and then proceed to write down upon
it some sketch of the ideas that he already had upon the subject of the
book, and of the questions that he expected to find answered. No one
who has been at the pains to try the experiment, will doubt the
usefulness of this practice: it gives to our acquisitions from books

clearness and reality, a right place and an independent shape. At this
moment we are all looking for the biography of an illustrious man of
letters, written by a near kinsman, who is himself naturally endowed
with keen literary interests, and who has invigorated his academic
cultivation by practical engagement in considerable affairs of public
business. Before taking up Mr. Trevelyan's two volumes, it is perhaps
worth while, on Strafford's plan, to ask ourselves shortly what kind of
significance or value belongs to Lord Macaulay's achievements, and to
what place he has a claim among the forces of English literature. It is
seventeen years since he died, and those of us who never knew him nor
ever saw him, may now think about his work with that perfect
detachment which is impossible in the case of actual
contemporaries.[1]
[Footnote 1: Since the following piece was written, Mr. Trevelyan's
biography of Lord Macaulay has appeared, and has enjoyed the great
popularity to which its careful execution, its brightness of style, its
good taste, its sound judgment, so richly entitle it. If Mr. Trevelyan's
course in politics were not so useful as it is, one might be tempted to
regret that he had not chosen literature for the main field of his career.
The portrait which he draws of Lord Macaulay is so irresistibly
attractive in many ways, that a critic may be glad to have delivered his
soul before his judgment was subject to a dangerous bias, by the picture
of Macaulay's personal character--its domestic amiability, its
benevolence to unlucky followers of letters, its manliness, its high
public spirit and generous patriotism. On reading my criticism over
again, I am well pleased to find that not an epithet needs to be
altered,--so independent is opinion as to this strong man's work, of our
esteem for his loyal and upright character.]
That Macaulay comes in the very front rank in the mind of the ordinary
bookbuyer of our day is quite certain. It is an amusement with some
people to put an imaginary case of banishment to a desert island, with
the privilege of choosing the works of one author, and no more than
one, to furnish literary companionship and refreshment for the rest of a
lifetime. Whom would one select for this momentous