scoffed at "metaphysical" and "abstract" theories of government, and treated with scorn the idea that the lawgiver can derive any light from general principles of human nature. Doubtless he was prejudiced against political theorists, because the chief theorists in his day were Radicals. He himself theorised abundantly upon general principles of human nature-as, for example, in his account of the Italian States in the essay on Machiavelli; and he theorised under the disadvantage of not knowing that he did theorise.

In his historical verdicts, he is accused of allowing his judgment to be warped by party feeling. Perhaps too much has been made of this. His attachment to certain ideas was probably stronger than his attachment to party. He loved liberty, justice, toleration, and the fair fame of England, with the warmth of an ardent nature: whoever did violence to these ideas, he hated as if a personal enemy. He hated Laud as a bigot, and Charles as a tyrant. He admired Cromwell as the destroyer of a tyranny. He had not the heart to denounce Cromwell's usurpation, partly because the usurper used his power with moderation, and did not show a narrow partiality for his own sect, but, above all, because during the Protectorate the name of England was dreaded and respected on the Continent. He was a most ardent patriot; to be patriotic was an unfailing passport to his favour: and such as had betrayed their country were subjected to a jealous valuation, and let off with scant acknowledgment of their virtues, and a thorough exposure

of their crimes.

66

He has left comparatively little literary criticism, and that little is not at all valuable. His deliverance against Pope's correctness," in his Essay on Byron, is sometimes quoted. That his pungent analogies drive very wide of the mark, the student will see by reading the late Mr Conington's Essay on Pope, Oxford Essays, 1858.

Though in no sense a man of science, he pronounces with his usual confidence on questions of philosophy. He eulogises modern science because it does not "disdain the humble office of ministering to the comforts of mankind." But he sees little good in the Inductive Method. It has, he says, "been practised ever since the beginning of the world by every human being." He overlooks the all-important fact that it has been practised only in simple cases, and in those imperfectly, and that its sole pretension is to make available for complicated problems principles that have been acted upon and established in cases of greater simplicity. The following is a sharp criticism from the pen of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, a determined enemy of superficial knowledge:

"I have read Macaulay's article on Lord Bacon in the 'Edinburgh Review.' It is written in his usual sparkling, lively, antithetical style,

L

and the historical part of it is interesting and amusing. His remarks on the ancient philosophy are for the most part shallow and ignorant in the extreme; his objections to the utility of logic are the stale commonplaces which all the enemies of accurate knowledge, and the eulogists of common. sense, practical men, &c., have always been setting forth."

ELEMENTS OF STYLE

Vocabulary.

There is little to remark upon in Macaulay's vocabulary except its copiousness. He has no eccentricities of diction like De Quincey or Carlyle; he employs neither slang nor scholastic technicalities, and he never coins a new word. He cannot be said to use an excess of Latin words, and he is not a purist in the matter of Saxon. His command of expression was proportioned to the extraordinary compass of his memory. The copiousness appears not so much in the Shakspearian form of accumulating synonyms one upon another, as in a profuse way of repeating a thought in several different sentences. This is especially noticeable in the opening. passages of some of his Essays. In his review of Southey, for example, he starts an opinion that the laureate's forte was sentiment rather than reason, and luxuriates as if he never would have done with his voluptuous repetitions of the titillating doctrine.

Sentences.

Macaulay's is a style that may truly be called "artificial," from his excessive use of striking artifices of style balanced sentences, abrupt transitions, and pointed figures of speech.

The peculiarities of the mechanism of his style are expressed in such general terms as "abrupt,' pointed," "oratorical." We shall not attempt to gather together separately all the elements that justify these epithets; but, following the order indicated in the Introduction, the various particulars that go to the making of the "abruptness" and the "point" will be noticed as we proceed.

His sentences have the compact finish produced by the frequent occurrence of the periodic arrangement. He is not uniformly periodic; he often prefers a loose structure, and he very rarely has recourse to the forced inversions that we find occasionally in De Quincey. Yet there is a sufficient interspersion of periodic arrangements to produce an impression of firmness. Taken as a whole, his style is one of the last that we should call loose.

We here speak of the periodic arrangement or structure as defined in our Introduction (p. 5). If we take the word periodic in its restricted sense, we cannot describe Macaulay as a composer in the periodic style. The "periodic style," in its narrower sense, implies long and heavy-laden sentences, and Macaulay's tendency is towards the short and light.

Occasionally he uses the long oratorical climactic period, consist ing of a number of clauses in the same construction gradually increasing in length so as to form a climax. Thus

"The energy of Innocent the Third, the zeal of the young orders of Francis and Dominic, and the ferocity of the Crusaders, whom the priesthood let loose on an unwarlike population, crushed the Albigensian Churches."

Again, in a sketch of the Reformation—

"The study of the ancient writers, the rapid development of the powers of the modern languages, the unprecedented activity which was displayed in every department of literature, the political state of Europe, the vices of the Roman Court, the exactions of the Roman Chancery, the jealousy with which the wealth and privileges of the clergy were naturally regarded by laymen, the jealousy with which Italian ascendancy was naturally regarded by men born on our side of the Alps-all these things gave to the teachers of the new theology an advantage which they perfectly understood how to use.' In the last example there are two climaxes in sound.

A large proportion of his sentences contain words and clauses in formal balance; but the effect of this would not be so striking were it not that his composition contains so much antithesis in other modes. The general predominance of antithesis we shall consider in its place under Figures of Speech; here we have to do properly with balanced forms, whether embodying antithesis or not.

He makes considerable use of conventional balanced phrases for amplifying the roll of the sentence. Thus "After full inquiry, and impartial reflection; "men who have been tried by equally strong temptations, and about whose lives we possess equally full information;" no hidden causes to develop, no remote consequences to predict;" very pleasing images of paternal tenderness and filial duty;" and so forth.

66

The following is an example of balance without antithesis. It is valuable as an artificial mode of giving separate emphasis to two things involved in the same argument-a preventive against confusion:

"Now it does not appear to us to be the first object that people should always believe in the established religion, or be attached to the established government. A religion may be false. A government may be oppressive. And whatever support governments give to false religions, or religion to oppressive governments, we consider as a clear evil.”

While this mode of statement has undeniably its advantages, it is obviously too startling an artifice to be often employed. The two short sentences, interjected without connectives, are examples of one element of our author's abruptness.

The following passages show balance combined with antithesis:"Thus the successors of the old Cavaliers had turned demagogues; the successors of the old Roundheads had turned courtiers. Yet was it long

before their mutual animosity began to abate; for it is the nature of parties to retain their original enmities far more firmly than their original principles. During many years, a generation of Whigs, whom Sidney would have spurned as slaves, continued to wage deadly war with a generation of Tories whom Jeffreys would have hanged for Republicans."

"With such feelings, both parties looked into the chronicles of the middle ages. Both readily found what they sought; and both obstinately refused to see anything but what they sought. The champions of the Stuarts could easily point out instances of oppression exercised on the subject. The defenders of the Roundheads could as easily produce instances of determined and successful resistance offered to the Crown. The Tories quoted from ancient writings expressions almost as servile as were heard from the pulpit of Mainwaring. The Whigs discovered expressions as bold and severe as any that resounded from the judgment-seat of Bradshaw. One set of writers adduced numerous instances in which kings had extorted money without the authority of Parliament. Another set cited cases in which the Parliament had resumed to itself the power of inflicting punishment on kings. Those who saw only one half of the evidence would have concluded that the Plantagenets were as absolute as the Sultans of Turkey; those who saw only the other half would have concluded that the Plantagenets had as little real power as the Doges of Venice; and both conclusions would have been equally remote from the truth."

It is a pretty general opinion among critics that Macaulay overdid this artifice of style. Even his apologist in the 'Edinburgh Review' admitted that his sentences were sometimes "too curiously balanced." As he himself said of Tacitus-" He tells a fine story finely, but he cannot tell a plain story plainly. He stimulates till stimulants lose their power." The worst of it is that exact balance cannot long be kept up, as in the above passage, without a sacrifice of strict truth; both sides are extremely exaggerated to make the antithesis more telling.

Paragraphs.

1. The striking characteristic of abruptness in Macaulay's style is caused chiefly by his peculiar ways of transition and connection. He does not conduct us from one statement to another with the deliberate formality of De Quincey. We are seldom left in doubt as to the bearing of his statements; but we are often kept in suspense, and generally we must make out connections for ourselves without the help of explicit phrases.

Let us, for example, study his way of introducing the general proposition italicised in the middle of the following passage :—

"The state of society in the Neapolitan dominions, and in some parts of the Ecclesiastical State, more nearly resembled that which existed in the great monarchies of Europe. But the governments of Lombardy and Tuscany, through all their revolutions, preserved a different character. A people when assembled in a town is far more formidable to its rulers than when dispersed over a wide extent of country. The most arbitrary of the Cæsars found it necessary to feed and divert the inhabitants of their unwieldy capital at the expense of the province. The citizens of Madrid have more than once

besieged their sovereign in his own palace, and extorted from him the most humiliating concessions. The Sultans have often been compelled to propitiate the furious rabble of Constantinople with the head of au unpopular vizier. From the same cause there was a certain tinge of democracy in the monarchies and aristocracies of Northern Italy."

The general proposition is introduced abruptly. We are expect ing a statement about the governments of Lombardy and Tuscany, when, with a sudden jerk, the circle of our vision is widened, and we are presented with a general comparison between the government natural to cities and the government natural to country districts. If we are familiar with the subject, and if our attention is fully awake, we at once have a dim perception of the writer's drift, and read on till it is distinctly enunciated. But undoubtedly the sudden transition has an abrupt effect. It has not the equable smoothness of De Quincey's transitions. The artifice is not unlike the common p..ctice of beginning an essay with a statement that has no obvious connection with the title. We feel a momentary astonishment, and we are put upon our mettle to anticipate the application. To be sure, these unapplied generalities have not quite so much of an abrupt effect when they come upon us at the beginning. At the beginning our attention is supposed to be free. Nothing has gone before to occupy us except the title. At any point in the body of the essay our attention is supposed to be engrossed with the particular subject of exposition; and we start when the expected flow of the discurse is suddenly checked, and we are jerked upon a new line.

So much for the abrupt introduction of generalities. Any page of Macaulay will furnish the reader with other examples. The first sentence of the above passage illustrates another mode of abrupt transition. The subject of the paragraph is the government of the States of Lombardy and Tuscany; but the paragraph opens with a statement concerning the government of the Neapolitan dominions. Instead of laying down directly the state of society in Lombardy and Tuscany, he begins with an independent assertion about the state of society in the Neapolitan dominions. He has been describing Lombarly, and Tuscany; and the reader is expected to understand, without any explicit connective, that the assertion about the Neapolitan States is meant as a contrast. The effect is very much the same as is produced by the sudden introduction of a generality. We presently see the drift of the statement, yet we experience a momentary astonishment. This mode of construction is much in favour with Macaulay. We are constantly being jerked away from the immediate subject, and jerked back with a "but." Thus, in a disquisition on the dramatists of the Restoration, he suddenly opens a new paragraph with the statement—

In the old drama there had been much that was reprehensible."