Oh! thou great silent city, with thy spires They may go rest their free limbs where they will; Anne Boleyn, a Tragedy. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. CERTAINLY the most attractive, and one of the most, if not the most learned and eloquent of the essayists and critics of the nineteenth century, is Thomas Babington Macaulay. He is the son of Zachary Macaulay, who was the warm friend of Wilberforce, and his active co laborer in all his noble and untiring anti-slavery efforts. In 1818, he entered Trinity Col. lege, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1822. Here he gave proof of his great intellectual powers, obtaining a scholarship, and twice gaining the chancellor's medal for English verse. To crown his triumphs, he secured the second "Craven Scholarship," the highest distinction in classics which the university confers. After leaving the university, he studied law at Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1826. It was in this year that his celebrated "Essay on Milton' appeared in the "Edinburgh Review," and henceforth he contributed to that journal, from time to time, papers of such learning, eloquence, and power, as to place him at the head of the very first rank of reviewers. His "Essays from the Edinburgh Review" have been collected and pub lished in three volumes, and have attained a popularity far greater than any other contributions to the periodical works of the day.1 Mr. Macaulay has been also distinguished in politics. He was elected a member for Colne, of the first reformed Parliament; was then made Secretary to the India Board; and, in 1834, was returned as member for Leeds. He resigned his seat the same year, on being appointed to the Supreme Council in Calcutta, under the East India Company's new charter. He returned to England in 1838, with a high reputation for having administered his office in India with great justice and impartiality between the Europeans and the natives, as well as with great ability. The following Of the five ablest contributors to the "Edinburgh Review," Mr. Stanton, in his "Reforms and Reformers of Great Britain," thus eloquently writes:"Another class of writers have, during the present century, secured a firm footing within the pale of English literature-the Essayists. Indeed, at one time, it looked as if the new-comers would succeed in excluding everybody from it but themselves. At the head of this class stand the leading contributors of the Edinburgh Review,' of whom Mr. Whipple has aptly said, they made reviewing more respectable than authorship.' Jeffrey, for twentysix years its editor, shed over its pages a strong, steady, and beautiful light, which tempered and irradiated the whole. His papers are a rare compend of literary criticism. Though sometimes more sophistical than philosophical, more brilliant than profound, and betraying prejudices when he should elucidate principles, he was, upon the whole, not unworthy to be called The Prince of Critics.' For a quarter of a century his fiat was law in far the larger portion of the republic of English letters. Since he left the throne, many of his canons have been disputed, and some have been totally annulled. His contributions to the Review,' when published in a separate form, appear more homogeneous, more like a work,' than those of his brethren who have put theirs to press. Sydney Smith bore undisputed sway in the realm of wit and sarcasm. Papists, prisoners, poachers, paupers, schoolboys, and chimneysweepers, owe him a monument each, for he was their very friend; and if the Pennsylvanians repudiate, nonconformists might purchase a pension for his heirs with the lawn he tore from the shoulders of persecuting bishops.' Brougham glared from the pages of the Review' a baleful meteor, striking terror into dunces in Grub street and charlatans in Downing street, now scorching a poetaster, and then roasting a prime minister, nor quenching his fires till they had penetrated and lit up the royal harem of Carlton House and Windsor Castle. Mackintosh made the Edinburgh' the medium for exhibiting to the public eye some of those philosophical disquisitions, laden with the lore of the schoolmen, and embellished with the graces of the poets, which justified the assertion of Robert Hall that, if he had been less indolent and discursive, he might have attained the first place amongst modern metaphysicians. Macaulay has been one of the chief literary attractions of the 'Review' for the last eighteen years. His contributions are no more criticisms than are his descriptions of the state of England in 1685, or his sketch of the death-bed of Charles II. in his recent history. True, he places the title of a book at the head of a page. But his papers have men for their subjects rather than books, are essays rather than articles, panoramas of events instead of histories, living portraits of individuals rather than biographies of the dead. According to the old standards, they would have been more appropriate in the history of England than in the Edinburgh Review.' But the old standards have decayed. They are read and imitated in two hemispheres. The scholar admires their learning, the philosopher their penetration, the rhetorician their art, the poet their imagery, the million their politics. "And these five are the greatest of the Edinburgh Reviewers.' Freedom in every part of the world owes them a heavy debt of gratitude." year he was elected member of Parliament for Edinburgh, and took a very leading position among the orators of that renowned assembly. Within a few years he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, and his address on the occasion was greatly admired. As a poet (for Mr. Macaulay has courted the muse) he has rather failed; not, indeed, from any intrinsic demerits in the "Lays of Ancient Rome"--for, had he written nothing else, he would be remembered for these--but because their lustre fades away before the exceeding brilliancy of his prose writings. Here he is unrivalled. His reading and erudition are immense. "In questions of classical learning and criticism-in English poetry, philosophy, and history-in all the minutia of biography and literary anecdote-in the principles and details of government-in the revolutions of parties and opinions-in the progress of science and philosophy-in all these he seems equally versant and equally felicitous as a critic. Perhaps he is most striking and original in his historical articles, which present complete pictures of the times of which he treats, adorned with portraits of the principal actors, and copious illustrations of contemporary events and characters in other countries. His reviews of Hallam's Constitutional History, and the memoirs of Lord Clive, Warren Hastings, Sir Robert Walpole, Sir William Temple, Sir Walter Raleigh, &c., contain a series of brilliant and copious historical retrospects, unequalled in our literature. His eloquent papers on Lord Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Horace Walpole's Letters, Boswell's Johnson, Addison's Memoirs, and other philosophical and literary subjects, are also of first-rate excellence. Whatever topic he takes up, he fairly exhausts-nothing is left to the imagination, and the most ample curiosity is gratified." Mr. Macaulay's last publication is his "History of England," than which no book of the present century has been more popular. It is what a history ought to be-A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE. It is written in a style of great clearness, force, and eloquence, and the scenes he describes, he places, by the vividness of his pencil, directly before your eyes. You see them and feel them too. The third chapter of this great work, wherein he describes the advance of the people, for the last three centuries, from ignorance to knowledge, from barbarism to civilization, from serfdom to freedom, should be read by all, especially by those elderly gentlemen whose chief delight is to praise the "good old times." Nerissa.-When the moon shone, we did not see the candle. A substitute shines brightly as a king, Merchant of Venice, Act 5, Scene 1. 55 MILTON. We venture to say, paradoxical as the remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with more unfavorable circumstances than Milton. He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he had not been born "an age too late." For this notion Johnson has thought fit to make him the butt of his clumsy ridicule. The poet, we believe, understood the nature of his art better than the critic. He knew that his poetical genius derived no advantage from the civilization which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired: and he looked back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple words and vivid impressions. We We think that, as civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though we admire those great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age. cannot understand why those who believe in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception. Surely the uniformity of the phenomenon indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause. * * * He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has, perhaps, constituted hitherto his chief title of superiority. His very talents will be a hinderance to him. His difficulties will be proportioned to his proficiency in the pursuits which are fashionable among his contemporaries; and that proficiency will in general be proportioned to the vigor and activity of his mind. And it is well, if, after all his sacrifices and exertions, his works do not resemble a lisping man, or a modern ruin. have seen, in our own time, great talents, intense labor, and long meditation, employed in this struggle against the spirit of the age, and employed, we will not say absolutely in vain, but with dubious success and feeble applause. We If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over greater difficulties than Milton. He received a learned education. He was a profound and elegant classical scholar: he had studied all the mysteries of Rabbinical literature: he was intimately ac quainted with every language of modern Europe, from which either pleasure or information was then to be derived. He was, perhaps, the only great poet of later times who has been distinguished by the excellence of his Latin verse. * * It is not our intention to attempt anything like a complete examination of the poetry of Milton. The public has long been agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, the incomparable harmony of the numbers, and the excellence of that style which no rival has been able to equal, and no parodist to degrade; which displays in their highest perfection the idiomatic powers of the English tongue, and to which every ancient and every modern language has contributed something of grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast field of criticism in which we are entering, innumerable reapers have already put their sickles. Yet the harvest is so abundant, that the negligent search of a straggling gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf. The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton is the extreme remoteness of the associations by means of which it acts on the reader. Its effect is produced, not so much by what it expresses, as by what it suggests; not so much by the ideas which it directly conveys, as by other ideas which are connected with them. He electrifies the mind through conductors. The most unimaginative man must understand the "Iliad." Homer gives him no choice, and requires from him no exertion; but takes the whole upon himself, and sets his images in so clear a light that it is impossible to be blind to them. The works of Milton cannot be comprehended or enjoyed, unless the mind of the reader cooperate with that of the writer. He does not paint a finished picture, or play for a mere passive listener. He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the outline. He strikes the key-note, and expects his hearer to make out the melody. We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression in general means nothing; but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment; no sooner are they pronounced, than the past is present, and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up their dead. Change the structure of the sentence, substitute one synonyme for another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power: and he who should then hope to conjure with it, would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, |
