Again Macaulay's range of sympathy and therefore his insight into character is restricted. Something has already been said of the intellectual and moral limitations revealed in many of his judgments upon individuals. Even where he was not biassed, the constitution of his mind led him to sharp antitheses and overcharged statement, and where he was swayed by love or hate the outcome was still worse. Here the memoir writers like St. Simon, whom he so much admired, were hurtful examples, for memoir writing always runs to personalities, and personalities end by making monsters of vice and virtue. We have only to recall the way in which Macaulay sets Strafford against Hampden, Pope against Addison and James II. against William of Orange to see how far a shrewd and honest man may be misled in this direction. Even where there was no contrast to be enforced, the love of that completeness which is almost unknown in human nature led Macaulay to elaborate out of slight materials the accomplished hero like Lord Peterborough or the unqualified villain like Sir Elijah Impey If now and then Macaulay admits of inconsistency in the character of a public man, that inconsistency is heightened and enforced until the man is well-nigh cut in two. In short, Macaulay's treatment of character is too commonly rhetorical, and this is a very serious fault in any kind of historical writing, for the object of the orator is to gain a verdict either of condemnation or of acquittal, whereas the object of the historian is merely to understand.

But Macaulay's experience as a public man was an advantage in dealing with historical facts which almost outweighed his infirmities as a man of science. At the present day the enormous volume of accessible material and the severe standard

of accuracy enforced compel the man who would write history to spend his life a recluse in libraries and in record offices. Only a man of peculiar temperament can endure this prolonged and solitary toil, which in turn accentuates his peculiarities. Such a historian is apt to lose in the sense for reality and in comprehension of his fellow-creatures what he gains in exhaustive and precise knowledge of documents. Too often his works savour of the cloister. He has never watched the wheels of State in operation, he has never been familiar with statesmen, he has never studied or manipulated

great masses of human beings. It would not be difficult to name works produced in recent years by historians of this class which contain an immense store of facts, but give no sense of reality. In such works the very personages most minutely depicted do not seem alive; they elude our grasp like the inhabitants of the classical Hades; they had, we learn, opinions and they performed actions, but they can never have been men and women like those who now inhabit the earth. Such books are often encumbered with theories about past political events which any public man in any age would instinctively feel to be artificial and flimsy, or with strategic theories which would make a soldier smile. Books of this class may be serviceable to the student who knows how to extract materials from them, but they are not histories in the proper sense. It may well be doubted whether any man can write satisfactorily about any form of practical activity which he has not tried for himself, or be a consummate writer of political history without some experience of political life.

Macaulay had gained this political experience; he knew something of the temper of the multitude; he was familiar with parliamentary debate and with cabinet councils; he had presided over a public office and had drawn up laws for an empire. Public affairs had been his business, and accordingly he wrote about the public affairs of another age as about things which he had touched and handled. The incalculable advantage which the statesman has over the professor in this respect cannot be better seen than by contrasting his History with Ranke's History of England in the Seventeenth Century. Ranke was a far more disinterested student; he had larger sympathies, a calmer and more judicial mind; he was heir to all the contemplative wisdom of the great age of Germany; and yet with all these advantages how dim, how lifeless, how difficult to read, how impossible to remember is Ranke's description of even the most stirring crises in parliamentary history, of the fierce debates on the Exclusion Bill or the final struggles in the Convention! Whereas Macaulay's description of such incidents makes the least partisan of readers feel as though he hung upon the debate and listened anxiously for the result of the division. No doubt Macaulay was by nature more excitable and more

eloquent than Ranke. But what made most difference was that the English citizen of the seventeenth century was to Ranke no more than the specimen of an extinct animal in a museum is to the zoologist, a thing curious to contemplate, hard to reconstruct and impossible to revivify, but to Macaulay was an actual man, more or less like Mr. Croker or Lord Althorp, more or less like the electors of Leeds or of Edinburgh, a man whose heart was heard beating through the thin partition of time, a man so close to ourselves that the only difficult thing was to judge him with equanimity. This eager sense of life and reality has its own dangers, and, as we have already seen, led Macaulay into many mistakes; and yet without it patient research and analytical power produce no history which can satisfy our reasonable expectation. A perfect history we can hardly hope to see, for it would imply the union of qualities very rare and commonly opposed to each other; a creative imagination and a critical

reason.

When we come to consider Macaulay's historical essays one by one we find that the later are generally superior to the earlier essays. This progress was due partly to the maturing effect of time upon his talent, partly to his increasing absorption in historical study, and partly to a more judicious choice of subjects. Among the essays written before Macaulay went to India the best is probably the essay on "Machiavelli." The subject was such that the bias of English party could affect its treatment only indirectly and to a very slight degree. As the scope of the essay was too wide to allow of much detail, it contains few inaccuracies of any consequence, whilst its train of thought is novel and suggestive. The essay on "Mirabeau" has all Macaulay's faults and few of his merits. The essays upon subjects taken from English history before the Restoration are decidedly inferior to the essay on "Machiavelli." Macaulay had access only to a small part of the materials for the history of that period; for the mass of the State papers of our own and of foreign countries then lay unarranged and unexplored and could have been rendered available only by long years of toil. These essays, therefore, are thin. The essay on "Lord Burleigh" audaciously dismisses the minister in a few para

graphs to discuss the general problem of religious toleration, more interesting to the author and to his readers. The essay on "Hampden" is little more than a panegyric and not in Macaulay's best manner. Even the essay on "Hallam's Constitutional History," a more ambitious effort, betrays at every turn that the writer is not steeped in the thought and feeling of the time of Charles I. and the Commonwealth. Roundheads and Cavaliers are to him merely Whigs and Tories in old-fashioned garb and of old-fashioned speech. The essay on the "War of the Spanish Succession" belongs to that period which has been indicated as Macaulay's own, and is written with great spirit; but Macaulay, like all contemporary historians, seems to have been deluded by his trust in the Memoirs of Captain Carleton. The political half of the essay on "Walpole" is excellent although too highly coloured, and the first essay on "Pitt," despite some blemishes, is a powerful and instructive piece of historical writing.

The two very long essays which Macaulay wrote while in India are on different grounds unsatisfactory. The historical half of the essay on "Bacon," although not at all so poor a performance as Bacon's apologists would have us believe, still betrays the writer's imperfect sympathy with the men and the ideas of that age. The essay upon "Mackintosh's History of the Revolution" is spread over too undefined a field, and having no hero is not suited to display Macaulay's powers at their best. But the essays written after his return from India are for the most part admirable specimens of his peculiar talent. The essays upon subjects taken from foreign history are indeed inferior to the rest. The essay on "Barère" breathes, indeed, Macaulay's wholesome abhorrence of a rascal, but does not attest any remarkable insight into the French Revolution. The essay on "Ranke's History of the Popes" contains a few brilliant sketches, but fails, as we have already said, because the subject required a more serious and philosophic treatment. The essay on "Frederic the Great," lively and graphic as it is, is injured by mistakes which were the fault less of the writer than of the time, and by a defect of insight into continental politics which was the fault of the writer. But the essay on "Sir William Temple" is full of matter and most enjoyable to

read. The essay on "Clive" is a masterpiece of biography in a small compass, correct in all essential particulars, singularly bold and impressive, and animated with an enthusiasm which yet does not ignore the laws of truth and integrity. The essay on "Warren Hastings," still finer as literature, has suffered irreparable injury from modern criticism. Yet the two remain even now the only popular studies of the history of the English in India, and whoever wishes to acquaint himself with that history must still be advised to read Macaulay by way of introduction. The second essay upon "Pitt," one of the most correct, impressive and dignified, worthily closes the series.

If, in conclusion, we ask what is the distinctive merit of Macaulay's historical essays, the merit which redeems imperfect knowledge, superficial philosophy and overheated eloquence, it might be answered that these essays are admirable specimens of popular writing in the noblest acceptation. Books which try to make history popular too often sink into silliness or vulgarity. But these essays, which have done more than any other book to kindle the desire for historical knowledge in myriads of young and untrained, or busy and preoccupied minds, are not written down to the nursery or the market-place. They are the free outflow of an active and richly stored intelligence. They maintain the dignity of their themes. They do not try to bring great men and great events within the reach of common minds by making them common. They are not stuck full of cant phrases and trite quotations or interlarded with vulgar pleasantry. It is the scholar and the statesman who speaks, and if the partisan too often speaks also, he is an orator who addresses a senate, not a ranter who amuses a crowd. To these merits much gratitude is due and many faults may be pardoned. As time goes on the imperfections of these essays will be more clearly seen and more generally recognised, but it is not likely that they will cease to be read. For we cannot name another book in all the wide range of English literature which displays their peculiar excellence in the same degree, and it is not freedom from faults, but the possession of unique qualities, which causes books as well as men to be held in living remembrance.