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contemplated. The scene must be read to see how much superiority and passion this calmness and bitterness imply:

"What mean you, my lord?" says the Prince, and muttered something about a guet-à-pens, which Esmond caught up.

"The snare, Sir," said he, "was not of our laying; it is not we that invited you. We came to avenge, and not to compass, the dishonour of our family." "“Dishonour! Morbleu! there has been no dishonour," says the Prince, turning scarlet, "only a little harmless playing."

"That was meant to end seriously."

"I swear," the Prince broke out impetuously, "upon the honour of a gentleman, my lords"

1

"That we arrived in time. No wrong hath been done, Frank," says Colonel Esmond, turning round to young Castlewood, who stood at the door as the talk was going on. "See! here is a paper whereon his Majesty hath deigned to commence some verses in honour, or dishonour, of Beatrix. Here is 'Madame' and 'Flamme,' 'Cruelle' and 'Rebelle,' and 'Amour' and 'Jour,' in the Royal writing and spelling. Had the Gracious lover been happy, he had not passed his time in sighing." In fact, and aequally as he was speaking, Esmond cast his eyes down towards the table, and saw a paper on which my young Prince had been scrawling a madrigal, that was to finish his charmer on the morrow.

"Sir," says the Prince, burning with rage (he had assumed his Royal coat unassisted by this time), “did I come here to receive insults?"

"To confer them, may it please your Majesty," says the Colonel, with a very low bow, "and the gentlemen of our family are come to thank you."

“Malédiction!” says the young man, tears starting into his eyes with helpless rage and mortification. "What will you with me, gentlemen?"

"If your Majesty will please to enter the next apartment," says Esmond, preserving his grave tone, "I have some papers there which I would gladly submit to you, and by your permission I will lead the way ;" and taking the taper up, and backing before the Prince with very great ceremony, Mr. Esmond passed into the little Chaplain's room, through which we had just entered into the house :-"Please to set a chair for his Majesty, Frank," says the Colonel to his companion, who wondered almost as much at this scene, and was as much puzzled by it, as the other actor in it. Then going to the crypt over the mantel-piece, the Colonel opened it, and drew thence the papers which so long had lain there.

"Here, may it please your Majesty," says he, "is the Patent of Marquis sent over by your Royal Father at St. Germain's to Viscount Castlewood, my father: here is the witnessed certificate of my father's marriage to my mother, and of my birth and christening; I was christened of that religion of which your sainted sire gave all through life so shining example. These are my titles, dear Frank, and this what I do with them: here go Baptism and Marriage, and here the Marquisate and the August Sign-Manual, with which your predecessor was pleased to honour our race." And as Esmond spoke he set the papers burning in the brazier. "You will please, sir, to remember," he continued, "that our family hath ruined itself by fidelity to yours; that my grandfather spent his estate, and gave his blood and his son to die for your service; that my dear lord's grandfather (for lord you are now, Frank, by right and title too) died for the same cause; that my poor kinswoman, my father's second wife, after giving away her honour to your wicked perjured race, sent all her wealth to the King, and got in return that precious title that lies in ashes, and this inestimable yard of blue riband. I lay this at your feet, and stamp upon it: I draw this sword, and break it and deny you; and had

you completed the wrong you designed us, by Heaven I would have driven it through your heart, and no more pardoned you than your father pardoned Monmouth.'

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Two pages later he speaks thus of his marriage to Lady Castlewood:

That happiness, which hath subsequently crowned it, cannot be written in words; 'tis of its nature sacred and secret, and not to be spoken of, though the heart be ever so full of thankfulness, save to Heaven and the One ear alone to one fond being, the truest and tenderest and purest wife ever man was blessed with. As I think of the immense happiness which was in store for me, and of the depth and intensity of that love which, for so many years, hath blessed me, I own to a transport of wonder and gratitude for such a boon—nay, am thankful to have been endowed with a heart capable of feeling and knowing the immense beauty and value of the gift which God hath bestowed upon me. Sure, love vincit omnia, is immeasurably above all ambition, more precious than wealth, more noble than name. He knows not life who knows not that: he hath not felt the highest faculty of the soul who hath not enjoyed it. In the name of my wife I write the completion of hope, and the summit of happiness. To have such a love is the one blessing, in comparison of which all earthly joy is of no value; and to think of her, is to praise God.'

A character capable of such contrasts is a lofty work; it is to be remembered that Thackeray has produced no other; we regret that moral intentions have perverted these fine literary faculties; and we deplore that satire has robbed art of such a talent.

X.

Who is he; and what is the value of this literature of which he is one of the princes? At bottom, like every literature, it is a definition of man; and to judge it, we must compare it with man. We can do so now; we have just studied a mind, Thackeray himself; we have considered his faculties, their connections, results, their different degrees; we have under our eyes a model of human nature. We have a right to judge of the copy by the model, and to shape the definition which his romances lay down by the definition which his character furnishes.

The two definitions are contrary, and his portrait is a criticism on his talent. We have seen that in him the same faculties produce the beautiful and the ugly, force and weakness, success and failure; that moral reflection, after having provided him with every satirical power, debases him in art; that, after having spread through his contemporary novels a tone of vulgarity and falseness, it raises his historical novel to the level of the finest productions; that the same constitution of mind teaches him the sarcastic and violent, as well as the modulated and simple style, the bitterness and harshness of hate with the effusions and delicacies of love. The evil and the good, the beautiful and the ugly, the repulsive and the agreeable, are then in him but remoter effects, of slight importance, born of changing circumstances, derived

1 The History of Henry Esmond, bk. iii. ch. xiii.

and fortuitous qualities, not essential and primitive, diverse forms which diverse streams trace in the same bed. So it is with other men. Doubtless moral qualities are of the first rank; they are the motive power of civilisation, and constitute the nobleness of the individual; society exists by them alone, and by them alone man is great. But if they are the finest fruit of the human plant, they are not its root; they give us our value, but do not constitute our elements. Neither the vices nor the virtues of man are his nature; to praise or to blame him is not to know him; approbation or disapprobation does not define him; the names of good or bad tell us nothing of what he is. Put the robber Cartouche in an Italian court of the fifteenth century; he would be a great statesman. Transport this nobleman, stingy and narrow-minded, into a shop; he will be an exemplary tradesman. This public man, of inflexible probity, is in his drawing-room an intolerable coxcomb. This father of a family, so humane, is an idiotic politician. Change a virtue in its circumstances, and it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of man is found concealed far below these moral badges; they only point out the useful or noxious effect of our inner constitution: they do not reveal our inner constitution. They are safety lamps or railway-lights attached to our names, to warn the passer-by to avoid or approach us; they are not the explanatory table of our being. Our true essence consists in the causes of our good or bad qualities, and these causes are discovered in the temperament, the species and degree of imagination, the amount and velocity of attention, the magnitude and direction of primitive passions. A character is a force, like gravity, weight, or steam, capable, as it may happen, of pernicious or profitable effects, and which must be defined otherwise than by the amount of the weight it can lift or the havoc it can cause. It is therefore to ignore man, to reduce him, as Thackeray and English literature generally do, to an aggregate of virtues and vices; it is to lose sight in him of all but the exterior and social side; it is to neglect the inner and natural element. You will find the same fault in English criticism, always moral, never psychological, bent on exactly measuring the degree of human honesty, ignorant of the mechanism of our sentiments and faculties; you will find the same fault in English religion, which is but an emotion or a discipline; in their philosophy, destitute of metaphysics; and if you ascend to the source, according to the rule which derives vices from virtues, and virtues from vices, you will see all these weaknesses derived from their native energy, their practical education, and that sort of severe and religious poetic instinct which has in time past made them Protestant and Puritan.

VOL. II.

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CHAPTER III.

Criticism and History.-Macaulay.

I. The vocation and position of Macaulay in England.

II. His Essays— Agreeable character and utility of the style-Opinions— Philosophy. Wherein it is English and practical-His Essay on Bacon -The true object, according to him, of the sciences-Comparison of Bacon with the ancients.

III. His criticism-Moral prejudices-Comparison of criticism in France and England-Why he is religious-Connection of religion and Liberalism in England-Macaulay's Liberalism-Essay on Church and State.

IV. His passion for political liberty-How he is the orator and historian of the Whig party-Essays on the Revolution and the Stuarts.

V. His talent-Taste for demonstration-Taste for development-Oratorical character of his mind-Wherein he differs from classic orators-His estimation for particular facts, experiment on the senses, personal reminiscences-Importance of decisive phenomena in every branch of knowledge-Essays on Warren Hastings and Clive.

VI. English marks of his talent-Rudeness-Humour-Poetry.

VII. His work-Harmony of his talent, opinion, and work-Universality, unity, interest of his history-Picture of the Highlands-James II. in Ireland -The Act of Toleration-The Massacre of Glencoe-Traces of amplification and rhetoric.

VIII. Comparison of Macaulay with French historians-Wherein he is classicalWherein he is English-Intermediate position of his mind between the Latin and the Germanic mind.

I

I.

SHALL not here attempt to write the life of Lord Macaulay. It can only be related after twenty years, when his friends shall have put together all their recollections of him. As to what is public now, it seems to me useless to recall it: every one knows that his father was an abolitionist and a philanthropist; that our Macaulay passed through a most brilliant and complete classical education; that at twenty-five his essay on Milton made him famous; that at thirty he entered Parliament, and took his standing there amongst the first orators; that he went to India to reform the law, and that on his return he was appointed to high offices; that on one occasion his liberal opinions in religious matters lost him the votes of his constituents; that he was re-elected amidst universal congratulations; that he continued to be the most celebrated

publicist and the most accomplished writer of the Whig party; and that on this ground, at the close of his life, the gratitude of his party and the public admiration, made him a peer of England. It will be a fine biography to write-a life of honour and happiness, devoted to noble ideas, and occupied by manly enterprises; literary in the first place, but sufficiently charged with action and immersed in business to furnish substance and solidity to his eloquence and style,—to create the observer side by side with the artist, and the thinker side by side with the writer. On the present occasion I will only describe the thinker and writer: I leave the life, I take his works; and first his Essays.

II.

His Essays are an assemblage of articles: I confess that I am fond of books such as these. In the first place, we can throw down the volume after a score of pages, begin at the end, or in the middle; we are not its slave, but its master; we can treat it like a newspaper: in fact, it is a journal of a mind. In the second place, it is varied; in turning over a page, we pass from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, from England to India: this diversity surprises and pleases. Lastly, involuntarily, the author is indiscreet; he displays himself to us, keeping back nothing; it is a familiar conversation, and no conversation is worth so much as that of England's greatest historian. We are pleased to mark the origin of this generous and powerful mind, to discover what faculties have nourished his talent, what researches have shaped his knowledge; what opinions he has formed on philosophy, religion, the state, literature; what he was, and what he has become; what he wishes, and what he believes.

Seated in our arm-chair, with our feet on the fender, we see little by little, as we turn over the leaves of the book, an animated and pensive face arise before us; the countenance assumes expression and clearness; his different features are mutually explained and lightened up; presently the author lives again for us, and before us; we perceive the causes and birth of all his thoughts, we foresee what he is going to say; his bearing and mode of speech are as familiar to us as those of a man whom we see every day; his opinions correct and affect our own; he enters into our thoughts and our life; he is two hundred leagues away, and his book stamps his image on us, as the reflected light paints on the horizon the object from which it is emitted. Such is the charm of books, which deal with all kinds of subjects, which give the author's opinion on all sorts of things, which lead us in all directions of his thoughts, and make us, so to speak, walk around his mind.

Macaulay treats philosophy in the English fashion, as a practical man. He is a disciple of Bacon, and sets him above all philosophers; he decides that genuine science dates from him; that the speculations of old thinkers are only the sport of the mind; that for two thousand

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