At different times Mackenzie edited The Mirror and The Lounger, and he has been called the restorer of the Essay. His story of the venerable La Roche, contributed to The Mirror, is perhaps the best specimen of his powers as a sentimentalist: it portrays the influence of Christianity, as exhibited in the very face of infidelity, to support the soul in the sorest of trials—the death of an only and peerless daughter.
His contributions to the above-named periodicals were very numerous and popular.
The name of his first novel was applied to himself as a man. He was known as the man of feeling to the whole community. This was a misnomer: he was kind and affable; his evening parties were delightful; but he had nothing of the pathetic or sentimental about him. On the contrary, he was humorous, practical, and worldly-wise; very fond of field sports and athletic exercises. His sentiment—which has been variously criticized, by some as the perfection of moral pathos, and by others as lackadaisical and canting—may be said to have sprung rather from his observations of life and manners than to have welled spontaneously from any source within his own heart.
Sterne and Goldsmith will be read as long as the English language lasts, and their representative characters will be quoted as models and standards everywhere: Mackenzie is fast falling into an oblivion from which he will only be resuscitated by the historian of English Literature.
Chapter XXIX.
The Historical Triad in the Sceptical Age.
[The Sceptical Age]. [David Hume]. [History of England]. [Metaphysics]. [Essay on Miracles]. [Robertson]. [Histories]. [Gibbon]. [The Decline and Fall].
The Sceptical Age.
History presents itself to the student in two forms: The first is chronicle, or a simple relation of facts and statistics; and the second, philosophical history, in which we use these facts and statistics in the consideration of cause and effect, and endeavor to extract a moral from the actions and events recorded. From pregnant causes the philosophic historian traces, at long distances, the important results; or, conversely, from the present condition of things—the good and evil around him—he runs back, sometimes remotely, to the causes from which they have sprung. Chronicle is very pleasing to read, and the reader may be, to some extent, his own philosopher; but the importance of history as a study is found in its philosophy.
As far down as the eighteenth century, almost everything in history partakes of the nature of chronicle. In that century, in obedience to the law of human progress, there sprang up in England and on the Continent the men who first made chronicle material for philosophy, and used philosophy to teach by example what to imitate and what to shun.