His literary surveys in the Letters.
The real locus classicus, however, for Macaulay’s criticism is perhaps to be found, not in his published works at all, but in the letters which he wrote to Flower Ellis from Calcutta,[[926]] taken in connection with their context in Sir George Trevelyan’s book, and especially with the remarkable avowal which occurs in a letter, a very little later, to Macvey Napier. Macaulay, as is well known, availed himself of his Indian sojourn to indulge in almost a debauch of reading, especially in pure literature, and especially (again) in the classics. And his reflections to Ellis, a kindred spirit, are of the most interesting kind. He tells his correspondent that he has gone back to Greek literature with a passion quite astonishing to himself. He had been enraptured with Italian, little less pleased with Spanish, but when he went back to Greek he felt as if he had never known before what intellectual enjoyment was. It is impossible to imagine a happier critical diathesis: and the individual symptoms confirm it. Admiration of Æschylus is practically a passport for a man claiming poetical taste: admiration of Thucydides holds the same place in prose. And Macaulay puts them both super æthera. But it is a tell-tale that his admiration for Thucydides (of whom he says he had formerly not thought much) seems to have been determined by his own recent attention to “historical researches and political affairs.” He does full justice to Lucian. He is capital on Niebuhr: a good deal less capital on the Greek Romances; for though Achilles Tatius is not impeccable in taste and exceeding peccable in morality, it is absurd to call his book “detestable trash.” Perhaps he is hard on Statius as compared with Lucan: but here taste is free. It is more difficult to excuse him for the remark that St Augustine in his Confessions (a book not without interest) “expresses himself in the style of a field-preacher.” The present writer is not fond of conventicles, either house or hedge. But if he knew of a field-preacher who preached as St Augustine writes, he fears he might be tempted astray.
His confession.
And then, after the six months’ voyage home in the slow Lord Hungerford (which must have been six months' hard reading, though not penal), comes the great avowal to Macvey Napier, now editor of the Edinburgh:—
You cannot suspect me of any affectation of modesty: and you will therefore believe me that I tell you what I sincerely think, when I say that I am not successful in analysing the effect of works of genius. I have written several things on historical, political, and moral questions of which, on the fullest reconsideration, I am not ashamed, and by which I should be willing to be estimated; but I have never written a page of criticism on poetry or the fine arts which I would not burn if I had the power. Hazlitt used to say of himself, “I am nothing if not critical.” The case with me is exactly the reverse; I have a strong and acute enjoyment of works of the imagination, but I have never habituated myself to dissect them.... Trust to my knowledge of myself; I never in my life was more certain of anything than of what I tell you, and I am sure that Lord Jeffrey will tell you exactly the same.[[927]]
Such a deliberate judgment on himself by such a man, close on the “age of wisdom,”[[928]] after fifteen years’ constant literary practice, is practically final; but probably not a few readers of Sir George’s book felt, as the present writer did, that it merely confirms an opinion formed by themselves long before they ever read it.
The Essays.
At any rate, in nearly all the best known Essays the literary interest dwindles and the social-historic grows. I do not object, as some do, to the famous “Robert Montgomery.” This sort of criticism ought not to be done too often: and no one but a Dennis of the other kind enjoys doing it, except when the criminal’s desert is of peculiar richness. But it has to be done sometimes, and it is here done scientifically, without rudeness I think, with as much justice[[929]] as need be “for the good of the people,” and well. Still, it is not in the hangman’s drudgery, it is in the herald’s good office, that Macaulay’s critical weakness shows. There are some who, in all good faith and honest indignation, will doubtless cry “What![“What!] is there no literary interest in the “Milton” itself or in the “Bunyan”? Certainly there is. But, in the first case, let the Devil’s Advocate’s devil (it is too easy for his chief) remind us that there is very strong party feeling in both—that no less a person than Mr Matthew Arnold denied criticism to the “Milton”—that the author of the “Bunyan” himself puts in the forefront of his praise of The Pilgrim’s Progress its “strong human interest,” and that he goes on to make one of his too frequent uncritical contrasts, and one of his very rare gross blunders of fact, as to the Faerie Queene. And, besides, he was still in the green tree, as he was also when he gave the, in part, excellent criticism of the “Byron,” where the sweeping general lines of the sketch of the poetry of “correctness” follow those of some inferior but more original surveys of Macaulay’s editor Jeffrey. And though there is interesting criticism in the “Boswell,” it is pushed to the wall by the (I fear it must be said) ignoble desire to “dust the varlet’s jacket,” and pay Croker off in the Edinburgh for blows received at St Stephen’s.[[930]]