The story of Macaulay’s ambition to write a history which every young lady should read in preference to the latest novel has been often repeated and often ridiculed. The ridicule is ill judged. To aim at popularity is in itself innocent and even laudable; in truth it is universal. Carlyle himself with reason felt aggrieved that he remained so long unrecognised. The desire for popularity becomes vicious only when it leads the man who cherishes it to pander to a taste which he knows to be depraved, or to write something worse than his best, because he knows that his best would not be as popular. There is no trace of such conduct in Macaulay. His faults were inherent in his nature, and could have been eradicated only by making him anew.
Of late years Macaulay’s history has been often challenged on the score of inaccuracy and untruth. The charge is brought against every historian in turn; and we must remember, on the other hand, that Freeman, one of the most competent of judges, warmly praised Macaulay for his command of facts. It is necessary to distinguish three things: falsity of statement, incompleteness of statement, and the drawing of disputable conclusions. In the first respect Macaulay was rarely, in the second and third he was frequently, at fault. His omissions are often indefensible. The whole evidence of his character is against the supposition that they were due to conscious dishonesty. It is far more probable that, approaching his subject with a strong prepossession, he was positively blind to anything that told against his own view. Partly for the same reason, and partly because his philosophic endowment was not equal to his literary talent, his inferences too are often questionable. And this perhaps will prove in the end a more serious objection to his history than his partisanship; for, after all, there are worse things, even in historical writing, than partisanship. The man who is free from all temptation to take a side, if not from political affinity then from moral sympathy, must run some risk of being dull and colourless.
Macaulay did much to enlarge and liberalise the conception of history. More than any of his predecessors, he attempted to base his views on a wide consideration of the literature and life of the people, as well as on their constitution and campaigns and treaties. He cast all pseudo-dignity to the winds. His method was sound; and herein Carlyle, though he applied the principle differently, was quite at one with Macaulay. Another honourable characteristic, wherein the two historians likewise agreed, was their care in visiting the scenes about which they had to write; and both have gained in vividness and in topographical accuracy from this habit. Macaulay’s notes on the scenes of the Irish war were ‘equal in bulk to a first-class article in the Edinburgh or Quarterly Review.’
The style of Macaulay is at its best in the History, where it is more chastened, more varied and sonorous than in the Essays. The same tricks and mannerisms reappear, but they are softened and restrained. The trick of a rapid succession of curt sentences, at times so effective, but also at times monotonous and jarring, is kept within bounds. Short and simple are mingled with comparatively long and complex sentences; for Macaulay, scornful of ‘the dignity of history’ when it is merely cramping and obstructive, is scrupulously mindful of it when the phrase has a legitimate application. He rejects as meretricious ornament and illustration which, as he himself declared, he would have considered not only admissible but desirable in a review. The just censure that his style is hard and metallic applies with far more force against the Essays than against the History. Greater care and higher finish deepen and enrich the tone.
Macaulay’s verse must be dismissed with few words. He is best known by his Lays of Ancient Rome, compositions which, like his prose writings, are historical in principle. They neither are nor pretend to be great, but they rank high among the modern imitations of popular poetry. At the same time, they display no such sympathetic genius as, for example, Scott’s ballad of Harlaw, no such loftiness of mind as his Cadyow Castle. They are clear, rapid and vigorous, like their author’s prose. The generous judgment of Elizabeth Barrett, quoted in Ward’s English Poets, is essentially just: ‘He has a noble, clear, metallic note in his soul, and makes us ready by it for battle.’ That he makes us ready by it for battle is eminently true of the splendidly martial Battle of Naseby, the most stirring piece of verse Macaulay ever wrote. It is interesting to note that the historian of England thus, at the age of twenty-four, reached his highest point in ballad verse in a subject taken from the country and the century which all his life long attracted his most serious study.
In several respects Macaulay is the natural antithesis to Carlyle: to some extent they may even be regarded as complementary. We may correct the excess of the one by the opposite excess of the other. Macaulay was an optimist, Carlyle a pessimist; Macaulay was the panegyrist of his own time, Carlyle was its merciless critic; Macaulay devoutly believed all the formulas of the Whig creed, and had great faith in Reform Bills and improvements in parliamentary machinery, Carlyle accepted no formulas whatsoever, and set small store by any reforms that were merely parliamentary; Macaulay was orthodox in his literary tastes and methods, Carlyle was revolutionary and scornful of rule. The contrast applies equally to their personal history and character. Macaulay was sunny, genial and healthy, Carlyle dyspeptic, irascible, ‘gey ill to deal wi’;’ Macaulay suddenly sprang into fame, Carlyle slowly and with difficulty fought his way to it. They are contrasted in their very biographies. Macaulay’s is one of the pleasantest in the language; Carlyle’s awoke an acrimonious discussion, due in part certainly to the sins of the subject, but in part also to his injudicious treatment by the biographer.
The truth lay between them. If Macaulay was too easily optimistic, Carlyle was too gloomy. To paint a picture all shadow is as untrue to art, and generally to fact, as it is to paint one all light. It is true that the great problem of society, wise government, cannot be solved by franchises and ballot-boxes; but proper regulations as to these may help to solve it. Carlyle sometimes forgot that the practical problem usually is, not to secure that complex and difficult thing, wise government, but to effect some little improvement which will conduce to the comparative, wiser government, if it does not lead us to the unattainable positive.
The example of German thoroughness had no small influence in fostering the new movement in history. It acted most directly on the students of ancient history, and Niebuhr was the channel through which it was transmitted to England. Before the middle of the century his authority was hardly questioned, though a little later we can trace the reaction in the works of Sir George Cornewall Lewis and others; and now it is no longer possible to conjure with the Pelasgians. But whatever doubts may cloud some of the conclusions of Niebuhr, it was he who enabled the English historians to breathe life into the dry bones of ancient history. Thomas Arnold, Thirlwall and Grote were all inspired by him. Taking these writers as a group, we may remark one important difference between them and the writers of modern history. The historians of the ancient world are wider in their range, and in their works it is still possible to trace the whole life of a people. Thirlwall and Grote embrace all the history of Greece down to the period of decay, and only Arnold’s early death prevented him from being equally comprehensive. The reason is that there is a certain finality about ancient history. The materials are manageable in quantity, and there neither have been nor can be such additions to them as to those on which modern history is based.
Thomas Arnold
(1795-1842).
Thomas Arnold was a man of untiring energy, and he found for his energies three channels, two of them practical and one literary. It is as a schoolmaster that he has won his widest, and what will probably prove his most enduring fame. Some unfavourable critics have insisted that Arnold’s Rugby boy could only be described by the slang term, prig. But such criticism is merely the revolt against excessive praise. There may have been some intellectual and moral coxcombry developed in early years by many of Arnold’s pupils; but that is not the mature characteristic of men like Clough and Stanley and Dean Vaughan. Moreover, Thomas Arnold was emphatically one of those men from whom virtue goes out; and a result due to affectation can hardly have come from a character so simple and so sincere.