It is only within the last few years that the full materials for a judgment on Lord Macaulay's life have been laid before the public; and now when a calm review of it is made, no impartial critic can deny that his talents were brilliant, that his public life was in the highest degree honourable and straightforward, and that as an orator, a jurist, and a politician, he acquired a reputation which has been eclipsed only by his success as a historian and essayist. It is therefore by his History chiefly that his renown as a man of letters,' will ultimately stand or fall, and we venture to assert that after the enthusiastic eulogy with which its appearance was greeted, and the inevitable re-action which followed, it has now recovered its equilibrium on a basis from which it will never be overthrown. In examining this great work, at the present time, we have only recently had the advantage of considering the author's biography along with it, and from his diary and letters we get a new insight into the labour and trouble expended on that task, which he called the business and pleasure of his life.’

Looking at history in its simplest aspect the principal qualities required to make a good historian would seem to be chiefly three-unwearying diligence and accuracy in searching for the materials of his narrative; an impartial judgment in treating of those materials; and ability to clothe his story in language the finest and most effective. As regards the last, adverse criticism seems absurd. The brilliancy of his style, the picturesque force imparted by his antithesis and occasional epigram, the beauty and purity of his diction are generally admitted, and form undoubtedly his greatest attraction. But his biography has thrown considerable light upon his accuracy and diligence in collecting his information, and as this is a point in which he has been unfavourably criticised, it is desirable to take advantage of the information supplied by Mr. Trevelyan. In speaking of Macaulay's industry and toil, he tells us that Thackeray remarked long ago, 'He reads 20 books to write a sentence: he travels a hundred miles to make a line

He

the 8th of February 1849, he writes in his diary* after the publication of the first two volumes, I must get by reading and travelling a full acquaintance with William's reign: I reckon this will take me eighteen months. I must visit Holland, Belgium, Scotland, Ireland and France. The Dutch and French archives must be ransacked. I must see Londonderry, the Boyne, Aghrim, Limerick, Kinsale, Namur, Landend, Steinkirk. I must explore Lambeth, the Bodleian and other Oxford libraries, the Devonshire Papers, and the British Museum, and make notes. When the materials are ready and the history mapped out in my mind, I ought to write two of my pages daily. In two years, I shall have finished my second part. Then I reckon a year for polishing, retouching, and printing.' "This programme,' says Mr. Trevelyan, was faithfully carried out. He saw Glencoe in rain and sunshine. paid a second visit to Killiecrankie for the special purpose of walking up the old road which skirts the Garry in order to verify the received accounts of the time spent by the Lowland army in mounting the pass.' The notes made during his fortnight's tour through the scenes of the Irish war were equal in bulk to an article in the Edinburgh Review, and he passed two days in Londonderry, penetrating into every corner where there still lurked a vestige of the past, and calling upon every inhabitant who was acquainted with any tradition worth hearing. It is interesting to notice how his accurate notes of what he saw are extended and enlarged in the beautiful narrative of the history. For instance, after visiting the scene of the Battle of the Boyne, the following entry appears in his notebook-The country looked like a flourishing part of England. Cornfields, gardens, woods, succeeded each other just as in Kent and Warwickshire.' This hasty note of his personal observations is transformed into the following graceful description in the history. Beneath lay a valley now so rich and so cheerful that an Englishman who gazes on it may imagine himself to be in one of the most highly-favoured parts of his

* The quotations and facts regarding Macaulay's life are all from Mr. Trevelyan's Life and Letters.

own highly-favoured country. Fields of wheat, woodlands, meadows bright with daisies and clover, slope gently down to the edge of the Boyne. In the 17th century the aspect was very different,' &c.

As an example of his unremitting toil, observe the amount of time expended on the subject of the Massacre of Glencoe. Its narrative occupies only thirty octavo pages, yet his journal shows that he spent nineteen working days of about ten hours each in reading up the manuscripts relating to the subject, and in composing those few pages which describe so graphically the horrors of that tragedy; and this, be it remembered, in addition to two visits paid to the actual spot. Altogether, seven years were spent in preparing for and composing the first two volumes, and exactly the same period on the third and fourth. So much for his diligence in collecting his materials, and his accuracy in verifying them by personal inspection of the places.

6

It is, however, more with regard to the second quality which we have designated as necessary to form a perfect historiannamely, impartial judgment-that Macaulay's critics have assailed him. Mr. Morison, for instance, accuses him of allowing his prejudice' to lead him into serious inaccuracies in his treatment of Marlborough, Penn, and Dundee. In what respect the latter is unfairly dealt with, Mr. Morison does not condescend to explain, and we should have thought that Macaulay's sketch of that great but cruel leader was a singularly just one. He delineates his cruelty and his commanding qualities and military genius with equal force and truth, and altogether presents very much the same picture as such a strong supporter of Crown and Church as Sir Walter Scott does in Old Mortality. To prove that Macaulay has been unjust to Marlborough and Penn, Mr. Morison enters on no details, but seems to think he has settled the question by referring his readers to Mr. Paget. On the whole, we prefer the authority of Macaulay, especially considering how conclusively he has proved his case regarding Penn and the Maids of Taunton in his notes to his second edition. As to Marlborough,

Mr. Green takes quite as unfavourable a view of Marlborough's character, and accuses him of 'going far beyond his fellowtraitors in baseness by revealing to James, and through him to France, the war-projects of the English Cabinet.'* He also agrees with Macaulay that the great general at one time meditated a double treachery—that, namely, of playing false both to William and James, in order to establish Anne upon the throne-surely as deep a piece of villany as was ever conceived by human breast. And on what an extraordinary trio is Macaulay accused of having betrayed his injustice—a Whig general, a Tory general, and a Nonconformist Tory! At all events, he showed no party spirit in distributing his partiality.

There is indeed one substantial reason why Macaulay should have aroused suspicions of partiality, and it is one which probably caused his critics to look out for faults with an anxiety and eagerness to find them which is happily not to be met with in the case of other historians. For many years he had been a vigorous politician; he had held some of the highest posts of Government; on more than one occasion his eloquence was considered to have decided the issue of an important debate; and all these services had been rendered to the Whig party. It was but natural that one who had taken such a leading part on one side, should be considered incapable of looking upon those who would probably have been his opponents in former times, with the calm impartiality of a student of history who has never descended into the arena of party warfare. Was it to be expected that a man who would probably have been a Roundhead in the time of Charles, and a Revolutionist in the time of James, and who in Parliament had invariably fought upon the side of the successors of these great parties—was it possible, his critics might ask, that he could relate the deeds of cavaliers and Tories with the rigid impartiality necessary to a historian? Yet it seems to us, in spite of this very plausible reasoning, that the very fact of his being known as a strong Whig politician caused him to treat the opposite party in the State with a more careful justice and a more resolute impar

tiality than he would otherwise have done. He was, as it were, put upon his honour to show that he could be fair, and he knew perfectly well to what suspicion as a historian his public life would expose him. Even Mr. Morison admits his justice to the opposite party, and accuses him of no political partiality; but he takes care to make up for this concession by saying that his anxiety to make history like a novel caused him to paint his characters in exaggerated colours. No wellconstructed play or novel,' he remarks, in his usual vein of patronising superiority, can dispense with a villain whose vices throw up in brighter relief the virtues of the hero and heroine,* and therefore he considers that, though Macaulay did not misrepresent the characters of his period from political prejudice, he exaggerated their virtues or their vices from his desire to make a good story. The latter would certainly be a more despicable and paltry proceeding than the former; but even his own opinion of what constitutes a good novel would have kept him from such a fault. It is only in bad novels,' he remarks in one of his essays, that men are either demons or angels.'

It would not be very difficult to show that he deals out blame on the whole very evenly amongst the different characters and parties who rise up before him in his history. Take, for instance, his remarks upon the Scottish Covenanters. Dundee is one of those characters whom Mr. Morison no doubt considers he has turned into a villain of too deep a dye for the purposes of his novel,' yet the following admirable little picture is as true as it is graphic. It occurs in the 13th chapter:

'The Covenanters of the West were assuredly not wanting in courage, and they hated Dundee with deadly hatred. In their part of the country the memory of his cruelty was still fresh. Every village had its own tale of blood. The grey-headed father was missed in one dwelling, the hopeful stripling in another. It was remembered but too well how the dragoons had stalked into the peasant's cottage, damning him, themselves, and each other at every second word, pushing from the ingle-nook his grandmother of eighty, and thrusting their hands into the bosom of his daughter of sixteen; how the abjuration had been tendered to him; how he had folded