The Sun.
London, England, 1849-01-23 00:00:00

imNDON, TUESDAY EVENIN4O JAICIYAnir 28, 1840.

MACAULAY'S

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
FROM TL' E ACCES:iION OF JAMES Tin
SECOND,
VOLS. I. AND 11.

Already renowned as an Orator, admired as a PoE t
esteemed as a Statesman, respected as a Critic, and
distinguished as an Essayist, Mr. Macaulay has nou
risen to the celebrity of an Historian. We greet his
appearance in this new character with the cordiality
due to one who has resigned office as a Cabinet
Minister to record the annals of his country, and,
who, in so doing has added another master-piece to
those great productions which constitute the glory
of our national literature. We appreciate the sacri-
fice made by the late Paymaster of her Majesty's
Forces, in abandoning the charms of Administrition.
for the purpose of dedicating his Genius and his
Ambition to tie service of Letters. Nor is our esti-
mation of this sacrifice diminished by a sense of the
extraordinary toil required in the composition of such
volumes as are here submitted to our criticism. To
write a narrative of the foundation of an empire,
to describe the rise of a colony into existence, or
to record the origin and development of a nation, is
a task very different indeed from the one undertaken
by Mr. Macaulay. For the further the time of
history is removed towards the ages of antiquity, the
less difficult is it to accumulate the requisite authorities,
and, on the other hand, the nearer the time of history
approaches towards ourselves the more are the labours
of investigation, of compilation, and of discrimina-
tion, enhanced. We say this without in any manner
wishing to depreciate the compositions of such a
scholar as Mr. Grote, or of such an annalist as M.
Niebuhr. But we conceive it to be sufficiently mani-
fest that the toils of an historian in collecting together
the materials of his narrative must be proportionately
increased with the increase of those materials. There
is no question but :that more care is required in the
collation of manuscripts penned at a remote period,
than in the acceptance, as facts, of assertions com-
mitted to paper at an epoch more within our own
cognizance. Yet, even after taking this circumstance
into consideration, we do not hesitate to affirm that
the obstacles which have to be overcome in recount-
ing the vicissitudes of the Athenian Republic from
the reign of Pericles down to the invasion of the
Goths under Alaric, are in no degree comparable to
those which remain to be vanquished in recording
the progress of the English Monarchy, from the
accession of James the Second downwards. In
order the more fully to understand the vast energy
and the unremitting assiduity essential to success
in the latter instance, we need only refer
to the multiplicity of the resources from which Mr.
Macaulay has obtained his details. And in referring
to those resources we are filled with absolute amaze-
ment at the patience with which they have been ex-
amined, notwithstanding the obscurity of some, the
difficulty of obtaining access to others, and the
bewildering voluminousness of nearly all. MSS. at
the Hague, in the archives of France, in the
Government establishments of the Peninsula, in the
State-paper Offices scattered throughout London,
have all been conned, no matter how recondite in
character, or how illegible in penmanship. Enormous
masses of Journals—both the Parliamentary Journa'S
of the House of Commons, and the Public Journals,
beginning with the Observator of Sir Roger
L'Estrange, and coming down to contemporary news-
papers—have been pored over with a scrupulous cau-
tion almost amounting to punctilio. Fragmentary
chapters, such as those of Lord Clarendon, of Charles
Fox, and of Sir James Mackintosh, have been sub-
mitted to innumerable tests for the purpose of tracing
out an inaccuracy. Memoirs and autobiographies,
correspondence and tracts, philosophical treatises and
theological disputations, fly leaves and folios, doggrels
and epics, pasquinades and eulogiums, have each been
thrown into the crucible of inquiry to contribute their
grain of gold towards the fabrication of the Great
Work. Acts of Parliament, the mere enumeration
of which would be beyond the capacity of most men's
endurance, have found in Mr. Macaulay an unflag-
ging and laborious annotator. One while he ac-
knowledges in graceful terms (I. 391. note), the
benefit he has derived from scrutinizing the miscel-
laneous papers of his " dear and honoured friend"
Sir James Mackintosh. At another moment he pays
a magnificent tribute of respect to the genius of the
late Prime Minister of France (I. 465. note,) when,
alluding to the copies of dispatches obtained through
the instrumentality of that remarkable but fallen
statesman, he says, " It is with peculiar pleasure,
that, at this time, I acknowledge this mark of the
friendship of so great a man." [The homage is the
more beautiful seeing that M. Guizot is now in exile
and in misfortune.] In a third note our historian
mentions as his authority for the account given by
him of the cruelties inflicted upon the rebels sen-
tenced to transportation during the Bloody Assizes
(I. 653. note,) an original MS. written by a car-
penter named Coad, in 1685, the year of the Mon-
mouth Rebellion. In a fourth (I. 351. note,) he
refers for corroboration to Ward's scurrilous periodical
the London Spy, and, in the very act of confessing
his authority, makes this significant declaration—" I
am almost ashamed to quote such nauseous balder s
dash; but I have been forced to descend even
lower, if possible, in search of materials." It
is thus that he sometimes condescends to transcribe a
phrase from an epigram of Pomfret, or from a farce
of Buckingham. Out of such abysses of research,
and from this distracting chaos of books, MSS., dia-
ries, charts, pictures, al manacks, diagrams, pamphlets,
and epistles, has come forth the commencement of a
i
history which gives promise of symmetry nits
enormous proportions, and of a nobly sustained and
sonorous eloquence in its treatment. Of the sym-
metry, however, we can scarcely speak otherwise than
in the language of conjecture, judging it as we do ex
pede Ilerculem—the narrative opening with the Ac-
cession of James 11., and the two volumes before us
closing with the Accession of William 111. Of the
eloquence;on the contrary, we can speak from the ful-
ness of a rare and memorable experience. The annals
of the reign of the last Roman Catholic Sovereign of
England are written in periods worthy of so eminent
a rhetorician. Mr. Macaulay has here coincided
practically in the opinion expressed by his most
recent panegyrist :

" Wit charms the fancy, wisdom guides the sense ;
To make men nobler—that is eloquence."
King Arthur, V. 15.
And to demonstrate at once that the couplet is appli-
cable to our historian even in the quality which
might be least expected, we may adduce numerous
instances in which his sarcasm is either mellowed into
dry humour or crystallized into wit. In such a vein• he
describes the Puritan coffee-houses (I. 370.),
no oath was heard, and where lank haired men dis-
cussed election and reprobation through " where
noses ;
re
or, while recounting the manner in which these same
Puritans were quartered on the inhabitants of the me-
tropolis, he says (I. 149.) that "the wealthy citi▪
zens
grudged nothing to a red coat, and were indeed so
their
liberal of their best wine, that warlike saints were
sometimes seen in a condition not very honourable
either to their religious or to their military character."
Again, take his mention of the scholarship of the pro-
vincial Cavaliers, (I. 393.) "An esquire passed
among his neighbours for a great scholar, if
Hudibras, and Baker's Chronicle, Tarlton' s Jests,
and the Seven Champions of Christendom, lay
in his hall window among the fishing-rods
and fowling-pieces." Or, where after record.
ing the uproar of the slaughter at Sedgemoer,
between the belligerent forces of Monmouth and
Churchill, he writes thus (I. 610.)—" Feversham had
been awakened by the firing, had got out of bed, had
adjusted his cravat, had looked at himself well in the
glass, and had come to see what hi▪ s men were doing."
Or, what he says of Lawrence Hyde, the second son
of Chancellor Clarendon, (L 254,) " The clergy
especially looked upon i
him as their own man,
and extended to his foibles an ndualsgntdeonoa in
indulgence of
which, to say the truth, he
somehhe
ewa
swores n i en e
a like d ;
a rage—andpfoo rr t
e r h.
he drank
very
often
was in a rage—
deep ;
Alluding again to the Eng-
lish esquire of the seventeenth century, he says in the
same felicitous tone, half-comic, half-serious (1. 322)
He knew the genealogies and coats of arms
of all his neighbours, and could tell which of them
had assumed supporters without any right, and which
of them was so unfortunate as to be great grandsons
of aldermen." Ridiculing the exquisites of the same
e ash ashamed, and without
sink them,
epoch, he observes in a congenial mood (I. 400)
" The new breed of wits and fine eentlemen never
opened their mouths without uttering ribaldry of
callingwh ich ao
n porterth e
their
ill
al
kr
d eno w b
to
curse
confound them, blast them, and damn them." Inci-
dentally, however, we shall, in the course of our
remarks, show that, besides an occasional grotesque-
ness of diction, the historical writings of Mr. Ma-
caulay are characterised by a variety of far loftier
excellences. Nevertheless, even as a rhetorician, it
is possible sometimes to detect him tripping : as
where he tortures a fine Saxon sentence into a
construction of awkward Latinity (I. 45) :—" While
the Government of the Tudors was in its
highest vigour, took place an event which has
coloured the destinies of all Christian nations,
and in an especially manner the destinies of Eng-
land." Nor can we absolve hi▪ m from the casual
vice of pedantry, whether in syntax or in punctua-