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first attempt. They cover a wide range of subjects, but they may be divided into two general classes, the literary or critical, and the historical. Of the literary essays the best are those on Milton, Addison, Goldsmith, Byron, Dryden, Leigh Hunt, Bunyan, Bacon, and Johnson. Among the best known of the historical essays are those on Lord Clive, Chatham, Warren Hastings, Hallam's Constitutional History, Von Ranke's History of the Papacy, Frederick the Great, Horace Walpole, William Pitt, Sir William Temple, Machiavelli, and Mirabeau. Most of these were produced in the vigor of young manhood, between 1825 and 1845, while the writer was busy with practical affairs of state. They are often one-sided and inaccurate, but always interesting, and from them a large number of busy people have derived their first knowledge of history and literature.

Lays of Ancient RomeThe best of Macaulay's poetical work is found in the Lays of Ancient Rome (1842), a collection of ballads in the style of Scott, which sing of the old heroic days of the Rome Roman republic. The ballad does not require much thought or emotion. It demands clearness, vigor, enthusiasm, action; and it suited Macaulay's genius perfectly. He was, however, much more careful than other ballad writers in making his narrative true to tradition. The stirring martial spirit of these ballads, their fine workmanship, and their appeal to courage and patriotism made them instantly popular. Even to-day, after more than fifty years, such ballads as those on Virginius and Horatius at the Bridge are favorite pieces in many school readers.

History of EnglandThe History of England, Macaulay's masterpiece, is still one of the most popular historical works in the English language. Originally it was intended to cover the period from the accession of James II, in 1685, to the death of George IV, in 1830. Only five volumes of the work were finished, and so thoroughly did Macaulay go into details that these five volumes cover only sixteen years. It has been estimated that to complete the work on the same scale would require some fifty volumes and the labor of one man for over a century.

In his historical method Macaulay suggests Gibbon. His own knowledge of history was very great, but before writing he read numberless pages, consulted original documents, and visited the scenes which he intended to describe. Thackeray's remark, that "Macaulay reads twenty books to write a sentence and travels one hundred miles to make a line of description," is, in view of his industry, a well-warranted exaggeration.

As in his literary essays, he is fond of making heroes, and he throws himself so heartily into the spirit of the scene he is describing that his word pictures almost startle us by their vivid reality. The story of Monmouth's rebellion, for instance, or the trial of the seven bishops, is as fascinating as the best chapters of Scott's historical novels.

While Macaulay's search for original sources of information suggests the scientific historian, his use of his material is much more like that of a novelist or playwright. In his essay on Machiavelli he writes: "The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature, and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy, but much is gained in effect."[243] Whether this estimate of historical writing be true or false, Macaulay employed it in his own work and made his narrative as absorbing as a novel. To all his characters he gives the reality of flesh and blood, and in his own words he "shows us over their houses and seats us at their tables." All that is excellent, but it has its disadvantages. In his admiration for heroism, Macaulay makes some of his characters too good and others too bad. In his zeal for details he misses the importance of great movements, and of great leaders who are accustomed to ignore details; and in his joy of describing events he often loses sight of underlying causes. In a word, he is without historical insight, and his work, though fascinating, is seldom placed among the reliable histories of England.

General Characteristics. To the reader who studies Macaulay's brilliant essays and a few chosen chapters of his History, three things soon become manifest. First, Macaulay's art is that of a public speaker rather than that of a literary man. He has a wonderful command of language, and he makes his meaning clear by striking phrases, vigorous antitheses, anecdotes, and illustrations. His style is so clear that "he who runs may read," and from beginning to end he never loses the attention of his readers. Second, Macaulay's good spirits and enthusiasm are contagious. As he said himself, he wrote "out of a full head," chiefly for his own pleasure or recreation; and one who writes joyously generally awakens a sense of pleasure in his readers. Third, Macaulay has "the defect of his qualities." He reads and remembers so much that he has no time to think or to form settled opinions. As Gladstone said, Macaulay is "always conversing or recollecting or reading or composing, but reflecting never." So he wrote his brilliant Essay on Milton, which took all England by storm, and said of it afterward that it contained "scarcely a paragraph which his mature judgment approved." Whether he speaks or writes, he has always before him an eager audience, and he feels within him the born orator's power to hold and fascinate. So he gives loose rein to his enthusiasm, quotes from a hundred books, and in his delight at entertaining us forgets that the first quality of a critical or historical work is to be accurate, and the second to be interesting.

THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881)

In marked contrast with Macaulay, the brilliant and cheerful essayist, is Thomas Carlyle, the prophet and censor of the nineteenth century. Macaulay is the practical man of affairs, helping and rejoicing in the progress of his beloved England. Carlyle lives apart from all practical interests, looks with distrust on the progress of his age, and tells men that truth, justice, and immortality are the only worthy objects of human endeavor. Macaulay is delighted with material comforts; he is most at home in brilliant and fashionable company; and he writes, even when ill and suffering, with unfailing hopefulness and good nature. Carlyle is like a Hebrew prophet just in from the desert, and the burden of his message is, "Woe to them that are at ease in Zion!" Both men are, in different ways, typical of the century, and somewhere between the two extremes--the practical, helpful activity of Macaulay and the spiritual agony and conflict of Carlyle--we shall find the measure of an age which has left the deepest impress upon our own.

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Life of Carlyle. Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, in 1795, a few months before Burns's death, and before Scott had published his first work. Like Burns, he came of peasant stock,--strong, simple, God-fearing folk, whose influence in Carlyle's later life is beyond calculation. Of his mother he says, "She was too mild and peaceful for the planet she lived in"; and of his father, a stone mason, he writes, "Could I write my books as he built his houses, walk my way so manfully through this shadow world, and leave it with so little blame, it were more than all my hopes."

Of Carlyle's early school life we have some interesting glimpses in Sartor Resartus. At nine years he entered the Annan grammar school, where he was bullied by the older boys, who nicknamed him Tom the Tearful. For the teachers of those days he has only ridicule, calling them "hide-bound pedants," and he calls the school by the suggestive German name of Hinterschlag Gymnasium. At the wish of his parents, who intended Carlyle for the ministry, he endured this hateful school life till 1809, when he entered Edinburgh University. There he spent five miserable years, of which his own record is: "I was without friends, experience, or connection in the sphere of human business, was of sly humor, proud enough and to spare, and had begun my long curriculum of dyspepsia." This nagging illness was the cause of much of that irritability of temper which frequently led him to scold the public, and for which he has been harshly handled by unfriendly critics.

Illustration: UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

The period following his university course was one of storm and stress for Carlyle. Much to the grief of the father whom he loved, he had given up the idea of entering the ministry. Wherever he turned, doubts like a thick fog surrounded him,--doubts of God, of his fellow-men, of human progress, of himself. He was poor, and to earn an honest living was his first problem. He tried successively teaching school, tutoring, the study of law, and writing miscellaneous articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia. All the while he was fighting his doubts, living, as he says, "in a continual, indefinite, pining fear." After six or seven years of mental agony, which has at times a suggestion of Bunyan's spiritual struggle, the crisis came in 1821, when Carlyle suddenly shook off his doubts and found himself. "All at once," he says in Sartor, "there arose a thought in me, and I asked myself: 'What Art thou afraid of? Wherefore like a coward dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! What is the sum total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, Death; and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, will, or can do against thee! Hast thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come then; I will meet it and defy it!' And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul; and I shook base Fear away from me forever." This struggle between fear and faith, and the triumph of the latter, is recorded in two remarkable chapters, "The Everlasting No" and "The Everlasting Yea," of Sartor Resartus.

Illustration: THOMAS CARLYLE After the portrait by James McNeill Whistler
THOMAS CARLYLE After the portrait by James McNeill Whistler

Carlyle now definitely resolved on a literary life, and began with any work that offered a bare livelihood. He translated Legendre's Geometry from the French, wrote numerous essays for the magazines, and continued his study of German while making translations from that language. His translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister Appeared in 1824, his Life of Schiller in 1825, and his Specimens of German Romance in 1827. He began at this time a correspondence with Goethe, his literary hero, which lasted till the German poet's death in 1832. While still busy with "hack work," Carlyle, in 1826, married Jane Welsh, a brilliant and beautiful woman, whose literary genius almost equaled that of her husband. Soon afterwards, influenced chiefly by poverty, the Carlyles retired to a farm, at Craigen-puttoch (Hawks' Hill), a dreary and lonely spot, far from friends and even neighbors. They remained here six years, during which time Carlyle wrote many of his best essays, and Sartor Resartus, his most original work. The latter went begging among publishers for two years, and was finally published serially in Fraser's Magazine, in 1833-1834. By this time Carlyle had begun to attract attention as a writer, and, thinking that one who made his living by the magazines should be in close touch with the editors, took his wife's advice and moved to London "to seek work and bread." He settled in Cheyne Row, Chelsea,--a place made famous by More, Erasmus, Bolingbroke, Smollett, Leigh Hunt, and many lesser lights of literature,--and began to enjoy the first real peace he had known since childhood. In 1837 appeared

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