Enough has been given in illustration of the minuter play of antithesis. Pupils in composition may be exercised in referring examples to the various modes of antithesis, extreme and secondary. Here it may not be superfluous to dwell at some length upon a few of our author's more prominent ways of manufacturing this stage-lightning in its ampler forms.

He deals very largely in what is technically known as obverse statement; and gives it a peculiar abrupt point by denying the negative before affirming the positive. În explaining his abrupt transitions we called attention to something of this nature: we remarked on one example (p. 88), that before affirming that a certain form of government prevailed in one tract of country, he affirmed that it did not prevail in another. As another example, take the following passage from a disquisition on the style of Johnson :

"Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even agreeable, when the manner, though vicious, is natural. Few readers, for example, would be willing to part with the mannerism of Milton or of Burke.

But a mannerism which does not sit easy on the mannerist, which has been adopted on principle, and which can be sustained only by constant effort, is always offensive. And such is the mannerism of Johnson."

There is a good deal of antithetic pungency in thus taking the obverse first. We expect, from the general tone of his remarks, that he means to condemn the mannerism of Johnson, and we start with surprise when he abruptly declares that "mannerism is pardonable." "What!" flashes across our mind, "Johnson's mannerism?" We eagerly read on, and are pleasingly reassured when we see the qualification-" when the manner, though vicious, is natural." Nor is this the only startle we receive in the course of the short paragraph; there is another shock in reserve to keep our attention awake. We have been called away from some minute particulars about Johnson to this general principle, and the illustration of it from remote quarters. At the end of the paragraph we are brought abruptly back to Johnson-" And such is the mannerism of Johnson." Many writers would have executed neither of these brilliant turns. Many would have begun by saying that the mannerism of Johnson is unpardonable, and would then have proceeded to state why it is so, and then, perhaps, by way of counter-illustration, would have explained when mannerism is pardonable. Macaulay's order of statement would thus have been inverted, and the contrast, brought in by an equable transition, would have produced a much less flashing effect.

A favourite and characteristic way of getting up an antithesis is, before narrating an event, to recount all the circumstances that concurred to make it different from what it ultimately proved to be. Thus, before narrating Frederick the Great's breach of faith

with Maria Theresa, he describes the Pragmatic Sanction, and dilates upon the considerations weighing with the various European Governments to make them observe what they had stipulated. In like manner, he contrasts the general expectation before an event with the event itself. A good example of this is his account of the disbanding of Cromwell's veterans :

"The troops were now to be disbanded. Fifty thousand men, accustomed to the profession of arms, were at once thrown on the world; and experience seemed to warrant the belief that this change would produce much misery and crime, that the discharged veterans would be seen begging in every street, or would be driven by hunger to pillage. But no such result followed. In a few months there remained not a trace indicating that the most formidable army in the world had just been absorbed into the mass of the community. The Royalists themselves confessed that in every department of honest industry, the discarded warriors prospered beyond other men; that none was charged with any theft or robbery; that none was heard to ask an alms; and that, if a baker, a mason, or a waggoner attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all probability one of Oliver's old soldiers."

Another favourite device is in the course of his narrative to speculate what might have happened had the circumstances been different. He does this at every turning-point in English history. The struggle between Crown and Parliament might have come on early in the reign of Elizabeth, had not intestine quarrels been suspended in the face of a common danger. Had the administration of James been able and splendid, the Parliament might have been suppressed, and the Crown become absolute. In like manner, upon the execution of Charles I., the fall of Richard Cromwell, the Restoration, and the Revolution, he pauses to imagine what might have been the course of events had they been directed by men of different character. The same vein of reflection is continually cropping up in all his narratives.

Everywhere in his writings we can trace the dominating love of antithesis. His "celebrated third chapter" sustains the excitement of paradox through more than a hundred pages. In his History the conflict of opposing parties affords him constant opportunities. What the one party thought of a particular measure is set off against what the other party thought; "the temper of the Whigs" is contrasted with the " temper of the Tories." We are kept in the seat of judgment till we have heard the historian plead first on the one side, and then, still more convincingly, on the other.

In the delineation of characters he finds greater scope for his favourite effect. In these pictures, the scintillations of antithesis are almost incessant.

Antithesis is such an undeniable advantage in the statement of a fact, as a means of awakening us to its full import, that it is hard

to say in any particular case that Macaulay was at fault in using an antithetic form of statement. That he was not too pointed for the mass of readers was shown by their eagerness in running after his productions. That he was too abrupt and startling for refined judges of composition is no less apparent by the unanimity of their condemnation. We have seen what the Edinburgh Review' said about the "too curious balance" of his sentences: the same presumably partial authority allows that he employed "unnecessary antithesis to express very simple propositions."

The great objection to the frequent use of antithesis, as already observed, is the danger of its betraying a writer into exaggerations, into deepening the shadow and raising the light. It is not denied that Macaulay has a tendency to make slight sacrifices of truth to antithesis. The chapter on the state of society in 1685 has been convicted of many exaggerated statements by less dazzling antiquarians. In his numerous comparisons between different men, he unquestionably tampers with the realities for the sake of enhancing the effect. He exaggerates the melancholy of Dante's character on the one hand, and the cheerfulness of Milton's on the other; he puts too strongly the purely illustrative character of Dante's similes in contradistinction to the purely poetic or ornamental character of Milton's. So he probably overstates the shallowness and flippancy of Montesquieu, to heighten by contrast the solidity and stateliness of Machiavelli.

He seems to have been aware of his turn for exaggeration, and provides an excuse for it. A slightly over-coloured statement rouses lethargy, and does not leave upon the mind a false impression. The hurried reader remembers but faintly. The impression carried away from an exaggerated statement is probably nearer the truth than if the statement had been literally exact.

Such doctrine is, to say the least of it, dangerous. There is, however, one case where antithetic exaggeration may be useful. A skilful writing-master, when dealing with pupils that have a tendency to write a cramped hand, trains them to a more flowing penmanship by giving them liberty to make extravagant flourishes, and by encouraging them to exaggerate the final limbs of their ms and ns. On the same principle, a teacher of composition, dealing with tame pupils, may train them to a bolder movement by allowing them to exaggerate freely for purposes of antithesis.

Epigram.-Macaulay delights in epigrams. There is a dash of epigram in his unexpected transitions. His antithesis often takes an epigrammatic point. The arts of surprise being so predominant in his style, we may quote a few specimens of this the most piquant of those arts :

"Cranmer could vindicate himself from the charge of being a heretic only by arguments which made him out to be a murderer."

"They valued a prayer or a ceremony, not on account of the comfort which it conveyed to themselves, but on account of the vexation which it gave to the Roundheads; and were so far from being disposed to purchase union by concession, that they objected to concession, chiefly because it tended to produce union."

"One thing, and one thing only, could make Charles dangerous—a violent death. His subjects began to love his memory as heartily as they had hated his person; and posterity has estimated his character from his death rather than from his life."

"The great ruling principle of his [Robert Walpole's] public conduct was indeed a love of peace, but not in the sense in which Archdeacon Coxe uses the phrase. The peace which Walpole sought was not the peace of the country, but the peace of his own administration."

"There can be no greater error than to imagine that the device of meeting the exigencies of the State by loans was imported into our Island by William the Third. From a period of immemorial antiquity it had been the practice of every English Government to contract debts. What the Revolution introduced was the practice of honestly paying them.”

"The town of Bedford probably contained more than one politician who, after contriving to raise an estate by seeking the Lord during the reign of the saints, contrived to keep what he had got by persecuting the saints during the reign of the strumpets; and more than one priest who, during repeated changes in the discipline and doctrines of the Church, had remained constant to nothing but the benefice.'

"The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. Indeed he generally contrived to enjoy the double pleasure of tormenting both spectators and bear."

The

The art of the following is essentially epigrammatic. piquancy arises from the unexpected deliverance of such incongruities in the same sentence :—

"They therefore gave the command to Lord Galway, an experienced veteran, a man who was in war what Molière's doctors were in medicine, who thought it much more honourable to fail according to rule, than to succeed by innovation, and who would have been very much ashamed of himself if he had taken Monjuich by means so strange as those which Peterborough employed. This great commander conducted the campaign of 1707 in the most scientific manner. On the plain of Almanza he encountered the army of the Bourbons. He drew up his troops according to the methods prescribed by the best writers, and in a few hours lost eighteen thousand men, a hundred and twenty standards, all his baggage, and all his artillery.'

Climax.-A rhetorician of so decided a turn as Macaulay could not fail to use the rhetorician's greatest art. In every paragraph that rises above the ordinary level of feeling, we are conscious of being led on to a crowning demonstration.

His arts of contrast already exemplified have the effect of making a climax. See particularly the quotations at pp. 92, 100. He seems to pause in the course of his narrative or his

argument, and go back for a race that will carry him sweepingly over the next obstacle. As another example of this climactic use of contrast, take the following about Burke. He is comparing Bacon and Burke as two men whose later writings are more ornamented than their earlier :

"In his youth he wrote on the emotions produced by mountains and cascades, by the masterpieces of painting and sculpture, by the faces and necks of beautiful women, in the style of a parliamentary report. In his old age he discussed treaties and tariffs in the most fervid and brilliant language of romance. It is strange that the Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful,' and the 'Letter to a Noble Lord' should be the productions of one man. But it is far more strange that the essay should have been a production of his youth and the letter of his old age.'

In stating, as his manner is, the various motives that impel different parties at particular conjunctures, he is careful to reserve the most telling for the end, and artfully prepares the way for the final resolution.

One of his most studied attempts at climax is the famous passage about Charles in the Essay on Milton.

The only other Figure of Speech that is a marked ingredient in Macaulay's style is Hyperbole. An exaggerated turn of expression is one of the main elements of his animated manner: it will be fully discussed under the quality of Strength.

QUALITIES OF STYLE.

Simplicity.

Macaulay's composition is as far from being abstruse as printed matter can well be. One can trace in his writing a constant effort to make himself intelligible to the meanest capacity. He loves to dazzle and to argue, but above everything he is anxious to be understood. His ideal evidently is to turn a subject over on every side, to place it in all lights, and to address himself to every variety of prejudice and preoccupation in his audience.

Yet his simplicity is very different from the simplicity of such writers as Goldsmith and Paley. His is far from being a homely style. He does not studiously affect Saxon terms. Without being so scholastic and technical as De Quincey, he is not scrupulous about using words of Latin origin, and admits many terms that Dean Alford would have excluded from "the Queen's English." Besides, although he were an Anglo-Saxon Pharisee in his choice of words, his turns of expression are not simple in the sense of being familiar and easy. His balanced sentences, abrupt transitions, pointed antitheses, and climactic arrangement, elevate him