The Press.
London, England, 1855-12-29 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

To the style of 'Mr. Macaulay's narrative
there are more valid objections than to its
length. The brilliant essayist is visible in
every page, but we seldom catch sight of the
candid and discriminating historian. His
mind is essentially the mind of an advocate.
He is always intent on dressing up a case for
effect. He must have violent contrasts, and,

as nature and truth but rarely afford them,
they must be manufactured out of the ample
materialir which are always at the historian's
disposal. So completely has this habit of
mind obtained ascendancy over Mr. Macaulay's
other and better faculties, that he is blind to
the contradictions into which it is perpetually
leading him. In describing the Highlanders
(iii. 302-9), he writes—

That a stab in the back, or a shot from behind a frag-
ment of rock, were approved modes of taking satisfaction

for insult.
But-

That there was no other part of the island where men,
sordily clothed, lodged, and fed, . . . had in such a
degree the better qualities of an aristocracy, grace, and
dignity of manner, self-respect, and that noble sensibility
which makes dishonour more terrible than death.

Does not the reader perceive that in these
passages, short as they are, the bad and good
qualities of the Highland people are both
greatly exaggerated? For how could the "better
qualities of an aristocracy," and the "noble
sensibility" of honour, subsist together with
the practice of cowardly assassination? A
stranger, says Mr. Macaulay, might be feasted
at a board,
where the company would have been covered with
cutaneous eruptions, and others smeared with tar like
sheep. His conch would have been the bare earth, dry or
wet as the weather might be ; and from that couch he
would have risen half poisoned with stench, half blind with
the reek of turf, and half mad with the itch.
But—

A gentleman whose clothes were begrimed with the
accumulated filth of years, and whose hovel smelt worse
than an English hogaty, would often do the honours of
that hovel with a lofty courtesy worthy of the splendid
circle of Versailles, . . . minstrels who did not know
their letters sometimes poured forth rhapsodies, in which
a discerning critic might have found passages which would
have reminded him of the tenderness of Otway, or of the
vigour of Dryden.
We all know that in a savage, or semi-savage,
state men may exhibit natural dignity of de-
meanour, and possess faculties of song, but
Mr. Macaulay is singularly infelicitous in his
tawdry illustrations. Their demeanour bears
no kind of resemblance to the artificial graces
of a ceremonious Court, and the song has little
in common with the verse of such poets as
Otway and Dryden.
At the commencement of the third volume
(23-4) we see some fresh allusions to the apos-
they of Dryden and to his poorness of spirit.
Nowhere is Mr. Macaulay's habit of inveterate
advocacy more conspicuous than in his in-
dictment against Dryden in the volume of
this history previously published. He makes
it a strong presumption against the sincerity
of Dryden's conversion to Popery that the
character of his writings underwent no change
after his change of faith. They were, says
Mr. Macaulay, as licentious as ever, while,
if his conversion had been sincere, his re-
ligious impressions must have influenced his
conduct, and exercised a chastening in-
fluence over his pen. This view of the case
is worked up as strongly as possible. But in
another place Mr. Macaulay has to remark on
the infatuation of James in supposing that no
amount of provocation or tyranny on his part
could induce the Church of England to act
against those principles of Divine right and
passive obedience professed by its ministers.
He is then severe on the besotted credulity
which could not see that very often men
act in direct opposition to the principles they
sincerely hold, and wonders that James did
not, by looking into his own breast, observe
how opposed his convictions often were to his
daily acts. No one doubted the sincerity of
James's religious belief, yet not all the remon-
strances of his confessors could tear him from
his courtezans. The world in all ages is full
of such examples. Nothing is more common
than for men to " know the right and yet the
" wrong pursue ;" to be drawn one way by
conviction and another by temptations they
are too weak to resist. If ali this be true, as
applied to James, must it not also be true as
applied to Dryden? and what are we to think

of the judgment of a writer who argues vehe-
mently against views and statements he has
himself advanced, as often as he has occasion
to make the most of passages of history, and
present them in what he takes to be the most
theatrical dress'

It is owing to the same unfortunate propen-
sity—the craving for effect at any cost—that
Mr. Macaulay jumps from small particular
facts to large general conclusions. This is a
most vicious practice in history, as the reader
can never be on his guard against it. At
p. 97, vol. iii., Mr. Macaulay describes the
situation of the non-conforming clergy to be
such as the great majority of the divines of
the Established Church might well envy :

Few, indeed, of the parochial clergy were so abundantly
supplied with comforts as the favorite orator of a great
assembly of Nonconformists in the City. The voluntary
contributions of his wealthy hearers—aldermen and de-
puties, West-India merchants and Turkey merchants,
Wardens of the Company of Fishmongers and Wardens of
the Company of Goldsmiths—enabled him to become a
landowner or a mortgagee. The best broadcloth from
Blackwell-hall, and the best poultry from Leadenhall-
market, were frequently left at his door. . . . While
a waiting•woman was generally considered as a helpmeet
fora chaplain in holy orders of the Established Church,
the widows and daughters of opulent citizens were sup-
posed to belong in a peculiar manner to Nonconformist
pastors, 6,:c.
If we turn to the author's own authorities
for all this florid statement, we find that Tom
Brown had said of the Presbyterian divines, in
what Mr. Macaulay calls "his scurrilous way,"
that their preaching
brings in money, and money buys land; and land is an
amusement they all desire, in spite of their hypocritical
cant. If it were not for the quarterly contributions there
would be no longer schism or separation.

We are also referred to the Spectator (317),
where one Nesbit, a popular dissenting
preacher, is represented as " regaled with
" marrow-bones, ox-cheek, and a bottle of
" Brooks and Hellier." In Wilson's " His-
tory of Dissenting Churches," another of
Mr. Macaulay's authorities, will be found,
he says,
several instances of Nonconformist preachers who, about
this time, made handsome fortunes, generally, it should
seem, by marriages.
But what of the aldermen and deputies—what
of the Wardens of the Company of Fish-
mongers and Company of Goldsmiths—what
of the West India merchants and Turkey
merchants—of the broadcloth from Blackwell-
hall and the poultry from Leadenhall-market—
what of the widows and daughters of opulent
citizens belonging in a " peculiar manner " to
Nonconformist pastors? For these sweeping
statements we fancy there is no authority
whatever. Some Presbyterian preachers
throve in the world, as sleek pious men will
occasionally do at all times, and the author's
imagination supplies the rest. We have
popular dissenting preachers iu our own day.
They doubtless fare as well as did the Non-
conformist divines in 1600; but who, except to
burlesque the character of our age, would think
of representing that the wives and daughters
of opulent citizens belong to them in a peculiar
manner ?
When Mr. Macaulay comes to speak of the
non-jurors, he represents them as incapable of
arguing in a rational manner :
The non•juror sacrificed, not liberty to order, not order
to liberty, but both liberty and order to a superstition as
stupid and degrading as the Egyptian worship of cats and
onions.—iii. 448.
But, on the previous page, he shows that
" the swearing clergy, as they were called,
" were not a little perplexed " by the reason-
ing of the non-jurors, and that they were
entirely unable to meet the argument that
obedience to Cromwell would have been as
lawful as obedience to William. Scarcely one
of the non-jurors can be named, says Mr.
Macaulay in support of his view of their
" stupid and degrading superstition," who was
qualified to discuss any large question of
morals or politics ; and, lest this dictum of a
Whig should be doubted, he refers us to an
opinion of Johnson in " Boswell's Life," to the
effect that, among the non jurors, there was
one, and one only, who could reason. Among
the four or five names mentioned by Jobneen
three are those of Leslie, Law, and Collier.
Leslie is the one of whom Johnson spolte. and
" Leslie," he said, " was a reasoner, and ei
" reasoner who could not be reasoned against,"
a proof that Johnson did not take the same

9

U 44

view as Macaulay of the degrading absurdity
of the non jurors' cause. Law is admitted by
Mr. Macaulay himself to have been a sound
reasoner, and that he did not live till a later
date makes no difference as regards 1)r.
Johnson's opinion ; while Collier is ad-
Initted by Mr. Macaulay to have been a
man of eminent abilities and a great master of
rhetoric. Sherlock, too, for a time warmly sup-
ported the non-jurors' view ; so that Mr.
Macaulay, by his own admissions, is hardly
justified in that low estimate of the reasoning
power of the non-jurors and the absurdity of
their cause which he so confidently affirms,
and he gains very little by his citation of John-
son's authority to support him.
When Mr. Macaulay has to defend William
fur keeping his own countrymen about him in
.high offices of State, he represents the charac-
ter of our public men as at the lowest point oft
degradation
:
Here and there, lost in that ignoble crowd, was to be
found a man of true integrity and public spirit. Yet even
such a man could not live long in such society without
much risk that the strictness of his principles would be
relaxed, and the delicacy of his sense of right and wrong
impaired. It was unjust to blame a prince, surrounded by
flatterers and traitors, for wishing to keep near him four or
live servants whom he knew by proof to be faithful even
to death.—iii. 60.
Turning forty pages back, we do not find that
the account given of William's first Ministry
supports this general condemnation of the
public men of the time. .flalifax was Speaker
of the Lords and Privy Seal, and—

Our Revolution, as far as it can be said to bear the cha-
racter of any single mind, assuredly bears the character of
the large yet cautious mind of Halifax.—iii. 17.
Nottingham was one of the Secretaries of
State, aud—
Even Burnet, who at a later period felt a strong anti-
pathy to Nottingham, owned, in some memoirs written soon
after the Revolution, that the King had judged well, and
that the influence of the Tory Secretary, honestly exerted
in support of the new sovereigns, had saved England from
great calamities.—iii. 19.
Sir John Lowther, who sat at the Admiralty
Board, was—
-

An honest and very moderate Tory, who in fortune and
parliamentary interest was among the first of the English
gentry.—iii. 20.
Godolphin, on whom the chief business of the
Treasury devolved—

Taciturn, clearminded, laborious, inoffensive, zealous
for no Government, and useful to every Government, had
gradually become an almost indispensable part of the
machinery of the State.—iii. 21.
For the judges—
Twelve men of conspicuous merit were selected.—
iii. 22.
For the household—
Two of the chief places in the royal household were
filled by two English noblemen eminently qualified to
adorn a Conit.
They were Dorset and Devonshire, always
firmly devoted to the King. And was there
not Somers, himself a host, whose praise Mr.
Macaulay is never weary of sounding? Most
:of these persons were faithful to the King
through all trials. He had, no doubt, great
ppposition to encounter from faction on both
sides, but the sweeping charge which the his-
torian endeavours to fix on the whole body of
public men of the time cannot be sustained by
facts.
In dealing with large questions, Mr.
Macaulay is an advocate still. If there be one
subject more than another on which we should
expect him to be candid it is the Massacre of
Glencoe. But his hero William must be
cleared of all participation in that atrocity,
and hence the whole narrative is falsified.
The Master of Stair had strong hopes, he tells
us, that the Highland clans would not submit,
and he wrote from London a letter instructing
the commander of the forces of Scotland how
he should act in case the Jacobite claim should
not come in by the end of December
Your troops will destroy entirely the country of
Lochaber, Loehiel's lands, Keppoolfs, Glengarry's, and
Glencoe's. Your power shall be large enough. I hope
the soldiers will not trouble the Government with prisoners.—
iv. 202.
Is it credible that the Master of Stair would
have forwarded these decisive instructions on
a matter of such magnitude without being first
assured of the King's concurrence ? The
Massacre of Glencoe was in every part delibe-
rately planned. The order sent from London
to the military commander in Scotland ran:—