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back again-the pendulum swings. In matters of serious judgment it is comparatively easy to discern the rationale of this oscillation from side to side. It is that the evils of what is present are strongly felt, while the evils of what is absent are forgotten; and so when the pendulum has swung over to A, the evils of A send it flying over to B, while when it reaches B the evils of B repel it again to A. In matters of feeling it is less easy to discover the how and why of the process we can do no more than take refuge in the general belief that nature loves the swing of the pendulum. There are people who at one time have an excessive affection for some friend and at another take a violent disgust at him and who (though sometimes permanently remaining at the latter point) oscillate between these positive and negative poles. You, being a sensible man, would not feel very happy if some men were loudly crying you up; for you would be very sure that in a little while they would be loudly crying you down. If you should ever happen to feel for one day an extraordinary lightness and exhilaration of spirits, you will know that you must pay for all this the price of corresponding depression-the hot fit must_be counterbalanced by the cold. Let us thank God that there are beliefs and sentiments as to which the pendulum does not swing, though even in these I have known it do so. I have known the young girl who appeared thoroughly good and pious, who devoted herself to works of charity, and (with even an overscrupulous spirit) eschewed vain company and who by and bye learned to laugh at all serious things, and ran into the utmost extremes of giddiness and extravagant gaiety. And not merely should all of us be thankful if we feel that in regard to the gravest sentiments and beliefs our mind and heart remain year after year at the same fixed point: I think we should be thankful if we find that as regards our favourite books and authors our taste remains unchanged; that the calm judgment

of our middle age approves the preferences of ten years since, and that these gather strength as time gives them the witchery of old remembrances and associations. You enthusiastically admired Byron once, you heartily despise him now. You once thought Festus finer than Paradise Lost, but you have swung away from that. But for a good many years you have held by Wordsworth, Shakspeare, and Tennyson; and this taste you are not likely to outgrow. It is very curious to look over a volume which we once thought magnificent, enthralling, incomparable, and to wonder how on earth we ever cared for that stilted rubbish. No doubt the pendulum swings quite as decidedly to your estimate of yourself as to your estimate of any one else. It would be nothing at all to have other people attacking and depreciating your writings, sermons, and the like, if you yourself had entire confidence in them. The mortifying thing is when your own taste and judgment say worse of your former productions than could be said by the most unfriendly critic; and the dreadful thought occurs, that if you yourself to-day think so badly of what you wrote ten years since, it is probable enough that on this day ten years hence (if you live to see it) you may think as badly of what you are writing to-day. Let us hope not. Let us trust that at length a standard of taste and judgment is reached from which we shall not ever materially swing away. Yet the pendulum will never be quite arrested as to your estimate of yourself. Now and then you will think yourself a blockhead by and bye you will think yourself very clever; and your judgment will oscillate between these opposite poles of belief. Sometimes you will think that your house is remarkably comfortable, sometimes that it is unendurably uncomfortable; sometimes you will think that your place in life is a very dignified and important one, sometimes that it is a very poor and insignificant one; sometimes you will think that some

1860.]

Hanging and Testimonials: how Connected.

misfortune or disappointment which has befallen you is a very crushing one; sometimes you will think that it is better as it is. Ah, my brother, it is a poor, weak, wayward thing, the human heart!

You know, of course, how the pendulum of public opinion swings backwards and forwards. The truth lies somewhere about the middle of the arc it describes, in most cases. You know how the popularity of political men oscillates, from A, the point of greatest popularity, to B, the point of no popularity at all. Think of Lord Brougham. Once, the pendulum swung far to the right: he was the most popular man in Britain. Then, for many years, the pendulum swung far to the left, into the cold regions of unpopularity, loss of influence, and opposition benches. And now, in his last days, the pendulum has come over to the right again. So with lesser men. When the new clergyman comes to a country parish, how high his estimation! Never was there preacher so impressive, pastor so diligent, man so frank and agreeable. By and bye his sermons are middling, his diligence middling; his manners rather stiff or rather too easy. In a year or two the pendulum rests at its proper point: and from that time onward the parson gets, in most cases, very nearly the credit he deserves. The like oscillation of public opinion and feeling exists in the case of unfavourable as of favourable judgments. A man commits a great crime. His guilt is thought

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awful. There is a general outcry for his condign punishment. He is sentenced to be hanged. In a few days the tide begins to turn. His crime was not so great. He had met great provocation. His education had been neglected. He deserves pity rather than reprobation. Petitions are got up that he should be let off; and largely signed by the self-same folk who were loudest in the outcry against him. And instead of this fact, that those folk were the keenest against the criminal, being received (as it ought) as proof that their opinion is worth nothing at all, many will receive it as proof that their opinion is entitled to special consideration. The principle of the pendulum in the matter of criminals is well understood by the Old Bailey practitioners of New York and their worthy clients. When a New Yorker is sentenced to be hanged, he remains as cool as a cucumber; for the New York law is, that a year must pass between the sentence and the execution. And long before the year passes, the public sympathy has turned in the criminal's favour. Endless petitions go up for his pardon. Of course he gets off.

And indeed it is not improbable that he may receive a public testimonial. It cannot be denied that the natural transition in the popular feeling is from applauding a man to hanging him, and from hanging a man to applauding him.

Even so does the pendulum swing, and the world run away!

A. K. H. B.

VOL. LXII. NO. CCCLXX.

G G

IT

A 'LAST WORD' ON LORD MACAULAY.

is too late and too soon to speak further of Lord Macaulay. The verdict of his contemporaries has been recorded; the verdict of posterity cannot be anticipated. Before the grave in the Abbey had been closed, a hundred rapid and brilliant pens had said almost all that could be said of the great man who had ceased from his labours. The brilliancy of our periodical literature is as marvellous as its rapidity. Leading articles which would have brought fortune and permanent fame to Addison or Steele appear every morning in the columns of the Times, and are forgotten before the second edition is published. That the sentence pronounced upon our great men by those organs of public opinion should be more brilliant than accurate, more antithetical than sound, is of course to be looked for. A man penning an article at midnight which is to be read in Paris on the following afternoon, has no time for nice discrimination or minute analysis. He selects the striking peculiarities of a character, the salient points of a career, and on these he bases an estimate which, though impressive and picturesque, is necessarily exaggerated.

Notwithstanding the conviction we have expressed, a few 'last words' may, without impropriety, be now added. Two bulky volumes of Miscellaneous Writings have been recently published, and some of the contents one piece in particular-place Lord Macaulay's character in what the public may justly consider a new light.

I should not speak honestly, or to the best of my belief, if I said that Macaulay belonged to the very highest order of minds. I do not think that he did. In no department except the historical did he show pre-eminent capacity, and even his History is open to the charge of being only a splendid and ornate panorama. His was not a creative intellect it could not have fashioned a Midsummer's Night's Dream, a Faust, or The Cenci. He wrote spirited lyrics in which the traditions and associations of a historic people are handled with consummate judgment; but we miss the spontaneous and unsyste matic music, the inartificial and childlike grace of the true ballad.* The lyrist is the creature of impulse, and Macaulay was impulsive. Lofty, unimpassioned, self-restrained, he never confesses

never

There is a very graceful little song written by Lord Macaulay in 1827, and included in his Miscellaneous Writings (ii. 417). But comparing it with any of the Laureate's, we detect at a glance the great gulf between true poetry and the most effective and finished copy.

O stay, Madonna ! stay;

'Tis not the dawn of day

That marks the skies with yonder opal streak;

The stars in silence shine;

Then press thy lips to mine,

And rest upon my neck thy fervid cheek.

O sleep, Madonna ! sleep;
Leave me to watch and weep

O'er the sad memory of departed joys,
O'er hope's extinguished beam,

O'er fancy's vanished dream,

O'er all that nature gives and man destroys.

O wake, Madonna ! wake;

Even now the purple lake

Is dappled o'er with amber flakes of light;
A glow is on the hill;

And every trickling rill

In golden threads leaps down from yonder height.

1860.]

Character of Lord Macaulay's Intellect.

But

to any of the frailties of genius. He had great natural powers, no doubt; his memory was prodigious and exact; his understanding just and masculine; still, it seems to me that he was in everything indebted more to art than to nature. He is the highest product of a profound and exquisite culture. This of course detracts from the quality of his handiwork. Only the work of authentic genius is imperishable. The work of the artificer, however elaborate, however curiously finished, does not survive. Macaulay unquestionably had genius of a kind: the genius which moulds the results of immense industry into a coherent and consistent whole. This is a fine and a most rare gift; and we are not wrong when we assert that its owner must always be (even when not of the highest order) a man of genius. Associated with the somewhat artificial constitution of his powers, is the want of flexibility which he shows. There is no great virtue in the agility of the jester or the suppleness of the mimic; but Macaulay wanted that natural lightness and airiness of touch which characterizes the working of a thoroughly creative mind. He assailed pigmies with eighty pounders. His heavy metal did its work well; but it smashed right and left, the small as well as the great, without comparison or a nice discrimination. He is one of the greatest masters of the English

O fly, Madonna ! fly;

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tongue. The ordered march of his lordly prose, to use once more a worn-out simile, is stately as a Roman legion's. Still it is ponderous, compared at least with the unaffected freedom and the flexible life of Shakspeare's, or Fielding's, or Charles Lamb's. But the art with which this defect is concealed is, like every other detail in Lord Macaulay's art, perfect in its way. The style is ponderous, but there is no monotony. Short sentences, which, like the fire of sharpshooters through cannon, break the volume of sound, are introduced at stated intervals into each paragraph. A Martial or Junius-like epigram follows the imposing burst of eloquence with which Burke or Brougham might have clenched a great harangue. There is no slovenliness in these finished pages. But to make the severe and jealous supervision too obvious might break the spell. So any avowal of the labour that has been expended is studiously avoided. An air of negligence is at times affected. Colloquial expressions are introduced. The immense industry is covertly disowned.

Lord Macaulay's elaborate polish has proved, we think, exceedingly valuable to our rapid, perplexed, and somewhat incoherent age. Too many of our ablest men are apt to speak and think in heroics. Their likings and dislikings are equally violent and equally valueless. That there is something fascinating in

Lest day and envy spy

What only love and night may safely know;
Fly and tread softly, dear!

Lest those who hate us hear

The sounds of thy light footsteps as they go.

Then take at a venture any stanza of the Laureate's :-
Ask me no more; what answer should I give?
I love not hollow cheek or faded eye;
Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die!
Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live;
Ask me no more.

Ask me no more; thy fate and mine are sealed;
I strove against the stream, and all in vain;
Let the great river take me to the main ;
No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield;
Ask me no more.

the passionate theology and philosophy of the age, we all admit. The fanatic in politics and religion makes many converts; toleration is a plant of a slow, laborious, and difficult growth. Lord Macaulay was no fanatic. He was neither a moral nor an intellectual bigot. A rhetorician by temperament, he was saved from the sins of the rhetoricians by his vigorous manliness, his justice of judgment, and his admirable sense. It cannot be said that his speculations on any topic were very profound; but, as far as they went, they were clear, accurate, above all luminous. His logic, if not exhaustive, was exact and incisive. He seldom undertook any argument which he had not mastered. He never indeed quite rose to the height of the great argument of Puritanism; but, accepting the limited data with which he started, his conclusions were irresistible. There were spiritual capacities and mental needs in the heroes of the Commonwealth which

provoked them into action, and which made them what they were to England. These Macaulay never comprehended; his plummet could not fathom them; they lay beyond the reach of his even temper and unimpassioned intellect. His critical creed was marked by the same narrowness. He considered Samuel Rogers a greater singer than Samuel Coleridge. He relished the exquisite refinement of the Italy, and he respected a writer who was at once a finished gentleman and a fastidious poet. The uncouthness, the slovenliness, the eccentricities, the want of taste and judgment of the Windermere brethren, were sins that he could not tolerate. Nay, perhaps he was altogether incapable of understanding the vague and fitful feelings which they tried to render, and which give a peculiar charm to the muse of Shelley and Tennyson. He insisted that whatever was said should be said clearly -should be written in words which men could read as they ran:

This song was made to be sung at night,
And he who reads it in broad daylight
Will never read its mystery right,
And yet it is childlike easy.

'Nonsense,' he in effect replied; if there is anything whatever to be read, it will read much better in the daylight than in the dark.' Such a creed, of course, can only be held by one who is destitute of the supremest elements of the poetic faculty-by a critic who has never been pursued by the haunting forms that people the twilight of the imagination. Thus he seldom reached entire historical truth or entire critical truth. It is a thousand pities that he did not write a history of the reign of Queen Anne. Both the poets and the politicians of that age (with one superb and sombre exception) were men whom he could thoroughly gauge. His picture of that brilliant group of versatile, accomplished, witty, corrupt, and splendid gentlemen, would have sparkled like the life which it represented. He would have described with inimitable effect statesmen who were wits and poets, and poets who were wits and

statesmen. But his hand faltered when he had to register grander passions and darker conflicts. The spiritual pains, the stormy struggles which tore England asunder in the seventeenth century, were put aside by him with disrelish. The men who embodied and represented this mental strife in the nation-these disorganized aspirations after a Divine kingdom and governorwere treated with coldness and disrespect. The strongest, richest, most unconventional, most complicated characters become comparatively commonplace when he touches them. The virtue is taken out of them. Even the men he most admires are reduced to the most ordinary types. The historical Whig -steady, sagacious, moderate, never unselfishly imprudent, never honestly intemperate-is his ideal of human nature. A very good one in its way; though one sometimes fancies that the reckless and blundering devotion of these simple

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