legislation, Hallam's cool impartiality is probably less likely to please or influence than the industrious energy and brilliant eloquence of his historical successors, Green, Buckle, and Lord Macaulay.

66

While many Protestants have written on British history, Dr. John Lingard (1771-1851) is, perhaps, the chief English Roman Catholic historian. His History of England," though naturally in favour of his own persuasion, is written with great moderation. His sincere Catholicism never makes him forget he is an Englishman. Unlike some Irish Catholic historians, he never sympathises with England's foes. Lingard's feelings, views, and sentiments, were, and still are, evidently shared by many English coreligionists, who, though sincerely Catholic, have always preserved their attachment to the English monarchy.

CHAPTER XII

M

LORD MACAULAY

ACAULAY (1800-1859), inspired by political views more like those of Addison, if not Milton, than of Hume or Walter Scott, wrote Essays," "Miscellaneous Works," and finally his "History of England," including Scotland and Ireland, during the reigns of James II. and William III. In this work he gives a short yet most instructive sketch of previous British history from the Norman conquest. his Essays he often regrets the usually dull style of historical narration, declaring that, if made interesting, it would be as attractive as a sensational novel.

In

Among the learned writers of the last century, none perhaps equal Macaulay in making almost every subject interesting, even to people without literary taste. Like his cotemporary novelist, Mr. Charles Dickens, he had the rare delightful art of attracting the fancy as well as attention of readers. His talents first appeared in the Essays, which comprise a large variety of subjects. The lives of eminent men, with literary and historical reviews of important events and books, he enriched with the learning, intelligence,

and information due alike to his peculiar genius and to the vast assistance derivable from the general enlightenment of the last century.

Macaulay, in many respects, displays the spirit of his inquiring, enterprising age. Though a Scotchman, much preferring Lowland Whigs to Highland Tories, he shows none of that partiality to Scotland so general among his nation. He is thoroughly English in ideas, feelings, sympathies, and tastes. He seems, indeed, in literary life like the prize youth of the English educational system, to which he was a rare credit. He not only enjoyed Greek and Roman classics, but joyfully recalls the time when their instructive pleasures were first imparted to his youthful mind. By devoting his talents, thoughts, and efforts to British interests, a monarchist, yet an ardent Liberal, he perhaps offended some fellowcountrymen of Alison's or Scott's views by his utter contempt not only for the Jacobite cause, but for most of its supporters.

To Macaulay's accomplished mind, longing to see Britain first in the growing progress of science, literature, art, and all the peaceful blessings of civilisation, recollections of the banished Stuarts or their adherents had no charm whatever. The exploits of Greek and Roman heroes of antiquity he thoroughly enjoyed, but those of Scottish kings and Highland chiefs he almost disregards. His mind apparently transmits admiring homage from classic authors and heroes to Milton's poetry, Cromwell's triumphs, and, above all, to the sagacious policy of his chief hero, William III.

From the decline of the literary glories of Greece and Rome to the rise of those of England, which he first seems to recognise in Shakespeare, Macaulay sees little to praise in intellectual history. He admires Shakespeare's "supreme and universal excellence," I which he acknowledges in literary appreciation, not as a political partisan. His admiration for Milton, as poet and politician, makes him write rather imprudently, yet always in an attractive style. His earliest essay on him is really a beautiful panegyric | throughout; yet in a subsequent edition Macaulay declares that it contains scarcely a paragraph of which his "matured judgment" approved.

Again, in an imaginary conversation between Milton and the poet Cowley,2 Macaulay makes the former reason like a wise, enlightened Liberal of the last century, but his prose works show little sign of any such love of justice or calm moderation as Macaulay attributes to him. Evidently the Milton of Macaulay and the Milton of reality were very different men. The former seems consistent enough with what the gifted author of "Paradise Lost" may be imagined, but is different, indeed, from the implacable denouncer of all his or Cromwell's political foes.

This numerous class, whether Catholic or Protestant, he termed "rebels" to the sovereign majesty of England, meaning the brave general who, representing a triumphant minority, had really "no party," as Macaulay himself owns, "beyond the limits of his Essay on Mitford's "Greece."

2 See "Miscellaneous Works."

camps and fortresses." 1 In fact, the "hero-worship" so admired by Macaulay's literary cotemporary, Thomas Carlyle,2 not perhaps in his instance, though it may sometimes arise from generous impulses, is most prejudicial to historic truth, and therefore to a historian's value. Thus Macaulay, in his "History," severely blames James II. for sternly enforcing the cruel laws of his time against rebels. But in describing William III.'s conduct towards the captured Jacobite, Sir John Fenwick, he can hardly pity the unfortunate foe of his great hero. He even mentions William's gentle manner while refusing Lady Mary Fenwick's petition for her husband's life, though a pardon granted in the roughest possible way would have better deserved a fair historian's praise.

This is one among many instances where Macaulay, through grateful enthusiasm for the brave, wise king, cannot resist writing like "an accomplished advocate,' as he calls Hume.3 This expression, though occa

"History of England," Vol. 2nd.

2 Essay on "Heroes and Hero-Worship" (p. 138), where, in noticing John Knox, Carlyle shows little objection to religious bigotry when opposing "falsehoods." "We are here to extinguish falsehoods and put an end to them in some wise way. I will not quarrel so much with the way; the doing of the thing is our great concern." But the question, what is falsehood and what is not, has perplexed wiser minds than those of either Knox or Carlyle.-See Sir G. C. Lewis's "Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion."

3 "Essay on History" (Miscellaneous Works), Vol. 1st, p. 170, where Macaulay's description of Hume's party spirit, written long before his own "History," seems to describe himself with unconscious exactness.