Lord Macaulay [pp. 241-250]

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.
A MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO LITERATURE, SCIENCE AND ART.
RICHMOND, APRIL, 1860.
LORD MACAULAY.
Raised to the peerage by the sponta neous recognition of his literary services,
and buried in Westminster Abbey, be side the illustrious writers of his country,
whose careers he had so vividly interpret ed, the reputation of Lord Macaulay notwithstanding its extent and brilliancy
-is so far anomalous as that, while gen uine and acknowledged, it is challenged
perpetually in what, in a social point of
view, at least, ma.f be considered high
quarters. The admiration and gratitude
felt and expressed by a vast concourse of
readers does not, in his case, seem to
converge into the memorable and dis criminaLting eulogy of the gifted few;
there is evident a certain exceptional
and qualified estimate; and it has be come the fashion, among those who aim
at credit for sound opinions and unexcep tionable taste in literature, to echo the
dictum regarding Macaulay-that he is
too dazzling to be trusted, too interesting
to be solid, too attractive to be true.
That there is a foundation for such strictures is undeniable; but it is altogether
too slight for the elaborate prejudice ingeniously educed therefronm. Considerations which should but occasionally modify the judgment, are exaggerated into a
general rule and an average estimate;
and casual defects swelled into such unjost proportions as to Side legitimate
claims. We cannot but admnit that this
is the result in part of a certain aristocracy in letters; there is a class of
men who lament that History has been
VOL. XXX.-16
taken from stilts and made to walk freely
through the crowd; they regret the days
of exclusive Gibbon, of Hume's coteries
and Robertson's elegant fame; they be grudge the popular discussion of political
ethics; and would have history a digni fied, select arena for the fastidious scholar
and ambitious child of fortune to culti vate, uninvaded either by the sympathies
or the admiration of the multitude. They
deny the possibility of uniting substan tial and profound historical research and
speculation-with a style and method
that shall win English workmen to lis ten with delight-beguile the collegian
from his revels, and keep the veteran
from his pillow. There must be a gla mour, a trick, a superficial, unreliable
charm, they argue, to produce such ef fects as these.
It has also been Macaulay's fortune to
alienate the clerical instinct-to offend
the conservative pride which, more or
less, pervades the ranks of the clergy.
ie has not spared this class in tracing
the social and civil development of Great
Britain; nor could he as an honest
chronicler have done so. To a nature
like his-the utter absence in so many,
both episcopal and dissenting ministers,
of that humility, self-oblivion, tenderness
and truth which constitute the vital elements of Christianity, and which hallow
the memories of Cowper and Burns, of
Herbert and Fenelon —made it not only
allowable but incumbent upon him to
emphatically delineate priestly or pious