LORD MACAULAY.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 4, Issue 186, 12 April 1860, Page 4

LORD MACAULAY.

Tlie premature death of Lord Macaulay it an irreparable loss to the British nation, a part of the annals of which he had begun to illustrate w r ith those transcendent powers with ! which nature had gifted, him, and those prodigious stores of learning which constant study had accumulated. Of the History of the Revolution w*e have again only a magnificent fragment, but enough to make us deplore the untimely fate which has prevented the accom-. plisliment of his great undertaking. Thos. Babington Macaulay, the grandson of a Scottish clergyman, and the son of the well known philanthropist, Zachary,. Macaulay, the coadjutor of Wilberforce; Clarkson, and those other noble men who struggled so long against the gigantic evils of the slave trade, was born on the 25th October, 1800, at Rothly Temple, Leicestershire. Educated privately, he entered Trinity College, Cam- ! bridge, in his 18th year, and his career there , was indicative of his great ability. He took , the degree of B.A. in 1822, and in 1825 laid ‘ the foundation of his literary fame by an article 1 on Milton in the Edinburgh Review' —the first

i of a series extending over many years, all pos- , sessed by sound judgment, accurate knowledge, (fascinating descriptive powrnr, and aboundless- ( ness of illustration drawn from the literature r °f all ages and all countries, which equally | astonishes and delights. In 1830 he w T as appointed a Commissioner of Bankrupts, and en- , tered Parliament as Member for Caine. Here, though not a good debater, he added to his reputation by the splendid orations he delivered from time to time. After the passing of the Reform Bill he was returned to Parliament by the constituency of Leeds, aud was appointed secretary to the Board of Control. He went

out to India in 1834 as member of the Su preme Council, and after four years produced a code of law's which were admirable in themselves, but scarcely adapted to the social state of. the Hindoos. Returning to England in 1838, he became in the following year the representative of Edinburgh in the House of 1 Commons, and Secretary at War. He retained his seat till 1847, when he retired into private life, but was in 1852 again elected by Edin- \ burgh, and remained in Parliament till failing ] health induced him to retire. In 1858 he was ‘ raised to the Peerage, as a reward not so much J for his political services as for his extraordinary literary abilities, displayed especially in ; his History of England, of which only four ‘ volumes have been published. On the even- 1 ing of 26th December last he entertained a j party of his relatives in his house at Kensington, and on the 28th December died of ( heart disease. We extract the following esti- £ mate of his political and literary character from the Scotsman of 3rd January last. :

i As a politician, he was for “ liberty, with order”—if it can be permitted to speak of two things as distiuet which cannot exist separately. But by liberty he did not mean the session of a power to vote, nor did he regard the extension of that particular power as the surest means to the liberty he desired. He knew indeed that the broader the basis the stionger the superstructure, providing the basis be sound ; h*»t he thought it better to build on a rood of solid ground thau on ftuacrsof S&uu. Thus, vending iio popular sentiments, though sometimes the most brilliant and effective promoter of popular objects, he was always in danger —a danger which h© always faced-—of resisting popular cries by very unpopular arguments. Herein we admired him, because be

spoke as lie thought, although we do not say that he might not have thought and acted as honestly, without speaking so plainly to people who, to their shame, did not appreciate plain speaking. Nevertheless we are not speaking of Macaulay as if he had been in all respects a model politician. It is not for mortals to do everytning, and the qualities of a great man' may sometimes be more distinctly perceived and estimated if we separate wbat he could not or. did not do from the actual extent of his labours. This, indeed, in his case, is large enough to make us astonished. It was his province to know and deal with everything that had been done in the world and not absolutely forgotten, and to be acquainted with all the literature that had been written in the world. A mind thus crowded with substantial active realities had not room for pure speculation. Hence he did not deal with abstract

views on the future of mankind, though he could fully appreciate the method with which others dealt with them. He did not even originate projects of free trade, of sanitary reform, of national education, or the like. But when they were brought in by others, he saw, in the repetition of what he knew as an enduring historical type, enlightened speculation showing, the t™** *«'■ —>■ -j—■«Jvfmi©nts ot hu-~“Ml-iiifprovement, and stolid obstinate ignorance doing its best to keep everything back. He saw that those enlightened changes were projected by the intellectual leaders of the liberal party, in whose honesty and wisdom he trusted ; and though he was not among those who devised them, they had tbe.substantial aid

cf hi»"poteut rliel.ai;ic- : and Jiia iHexhaustiblo knowledge of th# past,'to push: them on to a triumphant conclusion. «.As a historian, lie has been strongly assailed ||th as to accuracy and -stylo.. Although he vrambtedly and inevitably did fall into two or ■■ferrors,' there need be no stronger testiSHRo the contemptible proportion these bear to Ss work in its general character, than the sharp,, violent, yet impotent assault made by Mr. Croker. There is now, alas 1 the more grateful testimony of the sorrow, universal among all parties and conditions of men, that the greater, and perhaps better, portion of bis great work is for ever lost to the world. "What a fatality seems to attend all the great writers of English history who have approached the eighteenth century 1 /fume, Fox, Macintosh, all have, stopped or have been interrupted before entering the reign of Anne. And yet it is from our full knowledge of the men and events—from the exciting character of the transactions, and the practical bearing of those on modern political life——that the reign of Anne gives more scope than perhaps any other for a narrative of absorbing interest. How great Macaulay would have been on Marlborough, St. John, and Harley—-on Sachoverell and Swift—on the critical intrigues by the deathbed of Queen Anm, and the insurrection that ushered in the Hanover dynasty 1 “ Gone is gone—lost is lost.” JVe may wish to ‘‘ Raise up him who left half told, . The story of Cambuscau bold

but our desires to contemplate the tale as Macaulay would have told it are as vain as the wishes to restore the dead to life—the intellectual treasure is lost to the world for ever. So let us hope that whoever in his own way may go over the same ground, it will not be in Macaulay’s'name and with the view of completing hia work. Let that, by all means,remain a great fragment, even if we should see the crane and the rough end of the masonry left standing, as in Cologne Cathedral. Let no conti nuator or editor meddle with it—his work, even were he a man of genius and thorough knowledge, would be like a picture by Eubens completed by Terbourgh or Hobbima. At the beginning of his career, and again when it was far spent, Macaulay appeared as a poet. When there are disputes extending over many generations as to whether a certain man was a great poet or ho poet at all, it is not to be expected that there should be unanimity as to Macaulay’s rank as a poet, anymore than as to his character as a politician. But that art must be great, whatever its name, which could give life and fire to conjecturally imitatory ballads relating to< ages and nations long, passed away, and could make the hand clench for the battle or the blood tingle at the wrongs of three thousand years'agor—and could do all this not by the use of the meretricious or the grandly vague, but by words and images simple to apparent tameness. This one imong scores of great effects by apparently small and easy means—may perhaps be something else than ‘ poetry,’ hut it is something ?reat and high, beyond what many honoured md unquestioned poets could hope to reach. More' generally, Macaulay was endowed vith great gifts. All the theories that have leen uttered about the practicability of parents naking anything they please of a vouth by raining and education, or of a man' making : my tiling he pleased of himself by sedulous j lerseverance, were knocked to pieces by the < :ontemplation of such a man. In fhnf in rtn.N

ticirig his great powers, we were apt to take a hopeless view of the usefulness of. cultivating 1 and improving ordinary faculties, and to think * that Providence had prearranged an intellec- ' tual hierarchy, in which such men occupied a . position so far above others as to render all ' effort to come near them hopeless. The idea | was true to a certain extent, for, naturally, ; and by the will of the Creator, his intellectual faculties were as distinctly stronger than those of ordinary people as the oak is stronger than the willow. The thoroughly completed piece of work which ordinary people could only sunpose to be accomplished through weary toil and intense resolution, was in him only the .natural development of liis luxuriant powers. If he sat down to write on anything—a piece of his History—au article for a Review’ or for

cue iimcycioptecia rmtanmca—even a letter to a friend-lie could not help pouring into it intellectual riches from the overflowing fulness of his intellectual stores. For instance, to come to particulars about the various qualities - which placed him originally and by nature in an intellectual rank above other men, his wonderful memory may be mentioned. He had so completely at his command the works of the great authors in all the ..languages in which great works of genius have been written, that he could cite memorable and appropriate passages from them at will, and, in fact, bad them all at hand ready for use. At the same time, in the course of his historical researches, he had to read, as every honest historian must, a quantity of documents of a kind far remote from genius or even good taste. These, too, had their place in ifflylfmory, and he used to complain that

i'th ejppEre no pieces of wretched doggerel, i vlrvg&t no stupid, malignant pasquil or epii gnfii', he had ever read—which did not retain - its place in his memory, sometimes disagree* ; aUy.recalling to him its existence there. People gifted extraordinary tenacity of memory: are not uncommon, but they are usually otherwisepf Very limited capacity, and addicted: to the pouring out of the facts m their possession in some eoutinuous stream’, turbid, dingy, aud worthless. But Macaulay cast aside whatever was worthless, and purified the remainder to the highest perfection of excellence. There never was an author who told so much, with s o small a proportion -of what was worthless and frilling. He did this by the unlimited

extent of them at liis disposal, and bis wonderful taste in selecting. Authors with fewer gifts of acquisition, however good their taste may be, not having the: same rich abundance to choose from, cannot place snch a selection before their readers. The materials which they generally have to seareh for came to him in spontaneous abundance. Hence he was never given to the historical vice of dwelling on matters, not because they are. important, but because they are only to be found by the study of obscure and unknown materials. In Macaulay’s eyes a manuscript or a rare hook was nothing in itself, and was important only for the same reason that made more common books important—the value of the matter they contained,