If we must have a caricature secondary title for the book, it would perhaps be more accurately described as "A Plea for the Glorious Memory," or "A short and easy Method with the Stuarts."

One of Macaulay's pet theories, advocated with his usual enthusiasm, was his view as to the proper method of writing history. He was eager for the admission of greater scenical interest. He loses no opportunity of striking at "the dignity of history," which would confine the historian to "a detail of public occurrences-the operations of sieges-the changes of administrations-the treaties. -the conspiracies-the rebellions." He would "intersperse the The per

details which are the charm of historical romances." fect historian is he in whose work the character and spirit of an age is exhibited in miniature." "We should not have to look for the wars and votes of the Puritans in Clarendon, and for their phraseology in 'Old Mortality'; for one half of King James in Hume, and for the other half in the Fortunes of Nigel.'"

Following out this theory, he gives to his work a strong tincture of personal interest. Even in the introductory summary, when briefly sketching the Commonwealth and the Restoration, he does not forget his ideal; he brings up the "great characteristics of the age, the loyal enthusiasm of the brave English gentry, the fierce licentiousness of the swearing, dicing, drunken reprobates, whose excesses disgraced the royal cause the austerity of the Presbyterian Sabbaths in the city, the extravagance of the Independent preachers in the camp, the precise garb, the severe countenance, the petty scruples, the affected accent, the absurd names and phrases which marked the Puritans,”—and so on. When he enters on the reign of James II. he turns aside much more from public transactions to the details of private life. He resuscitates all the Court gossip of the period. He draws the character of every courtier of any note-rakes up their foibles, repeats their choicest strokes of wit. He read thousands of forgotten tracts, sermons, and satires in order to revive for us the personalities of the age. He devotes fifteen pages to the last illness and death of Charles II., and forty to the persecution and trial of the Seven Bishops.

It may well be asked whether with all this infusion of personal interest he comes near his ideal of presenting a miniature of the age.

If any one had objected to him that he shows us the life of the courtiers and the clergy rather than the life of the people, he would probably have pointed to the passage in his History where he despatches all that he has to say about the people in six pages, with the remark that so little is known concerning "those who held the ploughs, who tended the oxen, who toiled at the looms of Norwich, and squared the Portland stone for St Paul's."

The interest of personality is not the only interest in his nar

rative. He has a natural tendency to give it a dramatic turn. When he introduces his personages, and explains what part they are playing, he drops a hint that by-and-by they may be found playing a very different part. We have already seen how inveterate is his habit of deferring an event till he has told us what ought to have happened or what might have happened. This bears a strong resemblance to dramatic plotting, and excites very much the same interest; it is one of the best recognised means of raising expectation and keeping it in suspense. In like manner he expatiates on all the preliminaries of an action till he has awakened in us something like the excitement of those that are watching and waiting for the event.

fact.

Another great charm in Macaulay's narrative is his hopeful tone, his hearty sympathy with progress, and confident belief in the He has no faith in the dogma that former times were better than the present; he maintains with great variety of eloquence that mankind is steadily and rapidly moving forward. Sanguine minds are never weary of quoting the triumphal opening of his History, and in particular his unhesitating declaration that "the history of our country during the last hundred and sixty years is eminently the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement.'

For English readers this charm is increased by the historian's patriotism. The world is advancing, and England is walking in the van.

The "celebrated Third Chapter."-This chapter professes to give a picture of the social condition of "the England which Charles II. governed." It is interesting as an elaborate attempt to delineate a cross section of history.

Many of the details have been challenged. He has been accused of colouring facts to suit his prejudice in favour of modern cultivation, and to gratify his favourite passion for antithesis. His accounts of the country squire and the country clergyman, of Buxton, of the suburbs of London, and of one or two other things, are said to be greatly exaggerated. He is charged with taking the lampoons of the time as documents of literal fidelity.

Without pronouncing upon the merits of these charges, which the historian's defenders declare to be trivial, we may enter two objections to the chapter.

(1.) The information is far from complete; it gives a very imperfect view of the state of society during the period chosen. A preference is given to flash and startling facts-to the material that is good for pictures and for dazzling paradoxes. Hardly any thing is told us concerning the machinery of commerce, the machi nery of government, or the system of ranks; he says nothing

about that important social fact how far it was possible to pass from one station in life to another. The chapter remains a great achievement for a historian who was not also a special antiquarian, and who did not make even history his exclusive work; but it is far from being a complete sketch of the period.

(2.) There is, as already noticed, no principle of order-no endeavour to help the reader's memory. When we study the chapter, we can trace in the succession of subjects a certain train of association; but there is slight connection apparent upon the surface, and one's impression at the end of the whole is not a little confused. The population leads him to speak of the taxation as the only reliable means of getting at the population; the taxation suggests the public expenditure; the public expenditure the public resources, agriculture and mining; agriculture leads to rent; rent to the country squire; the squire to the clergyman,-and so on. On such a metho, or rather no-method, there could be nothing but intricacy and confusion.

Exposition.

We have already seen how far Macaulay possesses the gifts of an able expositor. With his mastery of language, he can repeat his statements in great variety of forms. In his love of antithesis

He has

Thus,

he often has recourse to the obverse form of repetition. an incomparable command of examples and illustrations. of all the four great arts of exposition he is a master. Yet he cannot rank as an expositor with such a writer as Paley. This is partly on account of a deduction that must be made from his powers of accurate exposition. He is too fond of extreme and "sensational" examples, and of easy concrete illustrations not restricted to the relevant point. But the great detraction is, that he did not exhibit his powers, like Paley, on subjects of considerable inherent difficulty.

Macaulay's bent was naturally towards subjects of popular interest. Whatever he cared to master he could expound with the utmost clearness; but he had little inclination for hard abstract principles. His 'Notes on the Indian Penal Code' are hardly an exception. He has to support the provisions of the Code by general considerations, and his statement of these considerations is very clear and very interesting. But the subject is not naturally dry and repulsive. There is no greater temptation to make the Notes abstruse than there is to make a critical essay abstruse. He makes them interesting and animated by exactly the same arts of style as give such interest and animation to his essays, He mixes up the statement of the general principles with particular cases sometimes, without stating the principle at all, he merely suggests it by saying that the particular provision he is defending

rests on the same principle as some familiar rule of English law. He finds ample scope for antithesis in contrasting other Penai Codes with the various provisions of the Code recommended for India. Not even paradoxes are wanting; he surprises us at times by finding unsuspected reasons for departing from some familiar practice such as the practice of allowing in certain cases an option between fine and imprisonment.

Persuasion.

Macaulay was a very popular orator. Soon after he entered Parliament, he spoke in the same debate with the late Lord Derby; and Sir James Mackintosh describes their speeches as "two of the finest speeches ever spoken in Parliament." And many men still living confess that their prejudices against the Reform Bill of 1832 were first overcome by his eloquent and perspicuous arguments.

His speeches are not the only evidence of his debating power. He is essentially a controversialist: it is hardly, an exaggeration to say that he never makes a statement without attempting to prove it. His history is a protracted argument in favour of the Revolution. The "Third Chapter" is a broadside against the superiority of former days. When he has no real opponent to refute, no actual prejudice to overturn, he imagines all sorts of objections for the purpose of proving them to be groundless. His Notes on the Indian Penal Code' are defences against supposed objections. His Essay on Warren Hastings is a plea under the disguise of a judicial summing up. Not that he argues solely from the love of argument; always in earnest, he is eager to bring others round to his own views-ever bent upon convincing and converting.

6

This determination to persuade is at the root of his efforts to make himself understood by everybody, already noticed as the main cause of his simplicity of style. He is not content to utter an opinion in a form intelligible from his own point of view: having constantly before him the desire to convince all classes of minds, he asks how the opinion will be regarded by people of opposite sentiments, and shapes his statement accordingly.

Knowledge of those addressed.-Macaulay's audience may be said to have been the whole English-speaking world. That he knew many favourite maxims and ways of looking at things, is sufficiently proved by his wide popularity.

He humoured in an especial manner two feelings that are said to be peculiarly English-love of the practical as opposed to the theoretical, and love of material progress. He "distrusts all general theories of government;" he was intensely inimical to

James Mill's Essay on Government. He loves gradual changes; he professes a horror of revolutions and a contempt for Radicals. And while a stanch friend to intellectual and moral progress, he is far from seeing any danger to either in the multiplication of physical comforts: he exults in the English "public credit fruitful of marvels;" and one of the ideals that he "wishes from his soul" to see realised is, "employment always plentiful, wages always high, food always cheap, and a large family considered not as an encumbrance, but as a blessing."

Another thing that could not fail to endear him is his outspoken pride of country. By the mixture of races in our island was formed, he says, "a people inferior to none existing in the world." Englishmen. "were then, as they are still, a brave, proud, and high-spirited race, unaccustomed to defeat, to shame, or to servitude.'

Means of Persuasion.-(1.) Always perfectly master of the facts of his subject, he displays the highest rhetorical ingenuity in giving happy turns to opposing arguments. This was one great secret of his success in the Reforming Parliaments of 1831 and 1832. Hardly an argument could be advanced but he turned it against the speaker-maintaining with all his paradoxical point that it was precisely the consideration that led him to advocate Reform. The Reformers were taunted with a leaning to universal suffrage. Every argument," returns Macaulay, "which would induce me to oppose universal suffrage, induces me to support the plan which is now before us. I am opposed to universal suffrage because I think that it would produce a destructive revolution. I support this plan because I am sure that it is our best security against a revolution." Again, in answer to the hackneyed appeal to the wisdom of our ancestors, he says, "We talk of the wisdom of our ancestors; and in one respect, at least, they were wiser than we. They legislated for their own times. They looked at the England which was before them. They did not think it necessary to give twice as many members to York as they gave to London, because York had been the capital of Britain in the time of Constantius Chlorus;" and so on. A gain, "It is precisely because our institutions are so good that we are not perfectly contented with them; for they have educated us into a capacity for enjoying still better institutions." Once more—the promoters of the Anatomy Bill were accused of trying to make a law to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. "Sir," said Macaulay, "the fact is the direct reverse. This is a bill which tends especially to benefit the poor;" and he proceeded to prove his assertion by examples.

66

Another of the devices of his fertile ingenuity and perfect ac