The Press. — London, England, 1853-12-10 00:00:00

60 yittraturt. MAt'AULAY. Speeches of the 1601 Ilan. T. B. 31araway, M.l'. Corrected by Himself London : Longman and Co. ,'peeehes. Parliamentary and Misrellanenne, By the Eight Ilan. T. Babington M a c a ulay. Volumes.) London : Cloche, It and Co. " Do you know young Macaulay down at Cam bridge." "Is Macaulay to be a banister ? " " Have you ever heard Mr. Macaulay at the Union ? " Who is this Mr. Macaulay people are talking of ?" Such were the questions which were often addressed to us five and twenty years ago. Well do we remember, us if it were but yester day, the interest taken in the first politienl of of that brilliant writer, from whom' so intieh was exported, and who has realised u great part, though not all, of the ar dent expectations of his friends. The recol lection of his earlier days, and the interest which we then felt for bun, are strongly called to out- mind by the sight of these volumes of his collected speeches. Briefly glancing at his past career, let us first look back on his literar y achievements, and otter some conjectures on the degree of his future The son of the well-known humanitarian,an associate of Wilberforce, of the late Master Ste phen, and Henry Thornton, young Thomas Babington Macaulay started in the world with a better position titan ins generally supposed His family were connected extensively with commerce, and rank creditably in Leicester shire Of Scotch extraction, they had settled in England, and thriven so prosperously that young Macaulay on entering into the world bad not to undergo that terrible apprentice ship which so often grinds down men of genius into were mediocrities. Society, and that of the best kind, was open to him ; and it is im possible to listen to the streams of interesting gossip that pour from him in conversation, without being constantly reminded that when scarcely out of his teens he was brought into association with many of the first celebrities in England. The difficulties in his path were as nothing compared to the obstaoles that lay before Burke, Sheridan, and others. Master of all his time, he had never, like Sheridan. to write for his personal wants ; or, like Burke, to drudge for Dodsley on a miserable pittance. Ho graduated at Cambridge at a time when the attention of leading politicians was fixed on the Universities. Those were days when the war of polities was carried on by weapons of brighter polish aad keener temper than are used in battles w'acre the O'Connells and the Cobdeus conquer Wellingtons and Peels by organised force and seditious clamour. Then wits the time when the opposing argu ments of politics were sustained by the intel lects of the gifted and the wise—when Can tinge; and Plunkets, Copleys and Broughams, held enthralled the silent Senate, before Par liament was threatened with being vulgarised to the level of a parish vestry. " The Union " at Cambridge was then in its pahniest period. Crowded audiences were attracted by debates in which many living persons of eminence first distinguished them selves. Nor was it only in mimic combats of polities that the leading students displayed their talents. In Knight's Quarterly Magazind they appealed to the public to endorse the verdict passed upon them by their friends. Fluent, animated, and argumentative upon his legs in the " Union." in the pages of Knight's young Macaulay displayed all the marked fea tures of that altisonant style which, with its euphonious cadences and gorgeous diction, has hound so many readers in its fascinating spells. Francis Jeffrey read his es,ays with admiration, and Ilenry Brougham exulted over the shrill hut sincere eulogies which th e h e i r of Earl Grey poured forth upon Zachary Alneaulay . B brilliant and aecomplished • At Freemasons' favern the "Abolitionist cheered to the echo the rapidly-rolling the tome that poured from his lips , and in society he was complimented nit his college hunours THE PRESS. his clever essays, his ballads in the " Annuals," and the notice accorded to him by patronising peers. Invited by Jeffrey to become a contributor to the Edinburgh, young Maeaulay's fortune was decisively made by "the Milton article." Jeffrey had always been neat, correct, spark ling, clear, but superficial; his style scin tillated, but never blazed. Mackintosh was profbund, but ponderous ; his philosophy had a fatal laxity that palsied the nervous vigour of his style ; in the Commons his rhetoric rumbled along with a guttural Scotch accent ; he exhausted superlatives in saying kind things of every one ; while in metaphysical language that appeared to hide original thought he echoed what Brookes's proposed and Burlington-house accepted.* Hallam, deep in books, was not dazzling as a writer; and, though he excelled all mankind in the art of throwing cold water upon illustrious reputa tions, he never succeeded as a reviewer. Brougham wrote articles in a style that proved him an adept in literary " thunder." He clothed commonplaces with the costume of oratory, assumed the profound with an oracular gravity that amused nobody more than that excellent personage himself, and badgered Tory pamphleteers with the scowling and sarcastic style of literary vita prism Sydney Smith, like one of Shakspeare's fools in a cassock, was always droll and often dazzling. Shaking his cap and bells under the laurels of genius (never under a mitre), he tickled Methodists to death out of pure humanity, and rattled down man-traps and spring-guns under volleys of epigrams. But not one of these brilliant persons, nor all of them together, could write an essay like that on " Milton," where, amidst the tropical fertility of its metaphors, and the tangled luxuriance of its flowery rhetoric, MI original perception of the picturesque, and talent for producing it in words, is visible in every page. If Macaulay had then been a man entirely unconnected, like a Hazlitt or a Gifford, or other professional writers, he might have waited for many years before he was " taken up," as the phrase goes. But from his personal connections he had the entrance already to the high circles of his party. Lord Lansdowne bad an hereditary love for the patronage of dis tinguished talents, and Caine returned the eloquent essayist to the Commons. The Reform Bill came on, and the bitterest of " Quarterly " was pitted against the most brilliant of the Edinburgh reviewers. Wonders were expected from the tongue of the new recruit. Ardent Liberals boasted that their cause would be adorned by one who, with the genius of Burke for generalisation, would exhibit the muscle of Brougham in close en counter, and fascinate St. Stephen's with language more glowing than Canning had dis played, and subdue its convictions with argu ment more overwhelming than Plunket had employed. His first displays could scarcely be ranked with the masterpieces of parliamentary elo quence, and disappointed some whose cxpcc tations had been too highly raised. his figure was short, his elocution monotonous, his voice harsh, and his general manner par. taking of a public lecturer. Though his speak ing was rapid it suggested the swiftness of the stream that issues from the pondcd waters, rather than the rush of the mountain torrent bursting naturally from the Highland tarn. His most brilliant displays seemed more like recollections of the genius of others than revelations of his own ; as if the thoughts of Fox. Burke. Hallam, Mackintosh, and the Edinburgh Renew had been passed under a rhetorical rolling-machine and drawn out stamped with Lord Grey's Reform patterns. He never crushed an adversary in close en counter and left him prostrate on the field like Mr. Stanley in his famous encounter with Mr. Rigby ; and even Sir Robert Peel's very subordinate talent for the satirical was often effective against the pretentious manner of the member for Caine. His inferiority as an orator was more mani- • "The lira meeting I ever Atten.led ws• fit Burling ton-house. My Lnrd• Grenville and Grey sdoiressed the Lords, sud Mr. rnimitill Hutt Mr. Iteruey tut lreeseil the Certunems. - - /era J. Jitisoril. SATURDAY, feet from the contrast with two of his fellow members in the Commons. Then might be seen, night after night, the internecine contest between the greatest demagogue of modern times, and a masculine patrician, ready in tulip° and resolute in purpose. Then was that famous tribune, the boast of the Irish bar, and potent ruler for twenty 7ears of Celtic Ire land, doomed for the first time to meet, in the heir to the house of Derby, an oratorical anta gonist as rapid and fluent as himself, as pow erful to rouse the manly passions of an au dience, as forcible and far more finished in invective. What chance for a moment would the glancing foil of our great reviewer have had against the club of O'Connell, wielded with gigantic power and practised ease ? Against the onslaughts of the Celtic chief, and the ela borate tirades of Mr. Shell, Mr. Macaulay, in 1833, was called on to try his powers. Though our sympathies were entirely with him on that occasion, we must say that he failed. He could attitudinise like the best of political athletes, but he wanted the stern resolve and sinewy muscle which prostrate the sturdy foe. Yet his speeches on Reform were very bril liant performances of a particular kind. For the first time it might be said that the House listened to a mere " essayist." Though his mat ter was not comparable to that of Burke, his manner was better, his elocution more facile, and his accent had not the coarseness of the Irish brogue. His speeches on Reform were heard with attention, loudly cheered, eagerly read, extracted by journalists, and applauded by Ministers. Of their intrinsic merits and their peculiar defects we will speak presently. Their effect upon the fortunes of the brilliant speaker was humorously recorded by one of his adversaries. When a philosophical Radi cal was talking all the obvious commonplaces that a cavilling critic might apply to the great reviewer, Mr. Sheil, in our presence at Bellamy's, screeched out in his rasping voice, "Nonsense, sir! Don't attempt to run down Macaulay. He's the cleverest man in Christendom. Didn't he make four speeches on the Reform Bill, and get ten thousand a year ? Think of that,—and be dumb !" Pro moted to the Indian Council, he had leisure for his literary pursuits, and continued those charming essays with which his name will be permanently linked, whatever may be the esti mate passed on him as "a historian," when the voice of contemporary cliques is mute, and admiration can be extoited only by the genuine and great. Of all who wrote in the Edinburyb Reriew. not one contributor stamped his compositions with such inimitable workmanship. The arti cles were often unequal in truth of statement and weight of matter • but they were uniform in brilliancy, and in t he powers of a style that could decorate the superficial and hide the sophistical with varied graces, with inge nuity of thought, and variety of allusion , with sparkling fancies, and a sonorous ar rangement of words that titillated the earl with luscious cadences. He sparkled over the "Utilitarian Controversy " with the flip pancy of Voltaire writing of geology. Ho castigated the faults of Dryden, and feebly acknowledged his merits, in a manner that deserves to be forgotten by all except his cri tics. From the French Revolution he sought to extract as much literary capital as Mr. Rigby himself, and, while the latter sought to terrify the commercial classes with tales of ter ror, :kir. Macaulay rung the changes on the fall of the Faubourg St. Germain, for the spe cial intimidation of the nobility of Old Eng land. He scourged Horace Walpole, and sneered at Dr. Johnson with a one-sided seve rity not approved by the literary world. In his review of " Dumont's Mirabeau " he re clothed the greatest fallacies of Charles Fox. In his essay on " History" (judiciously not reprinted) he gave a summary more pictu resque than profound of the leading historians who have gained the approbation of ages, and he propounded his own theory of history, which is nothing more than " the Waverley Novel School." His essay on " Bacon " is an agreeable biographical sketch, but in philosophic think ing it is weak and unsatisfactory. It teaches little, suggests still less, and absolutely proves nothing. It appears to great disadvantage on