Pendent in hand.'
For ourselves, we have no fear of lighting our own spirit thus through any Malabolge of purification. And this bold faith animates Motley; it invigorates all his work with a firmness that inspires full confidence in his readers. Free as he is from every puerile superstition, his mastery of his subject is complete. He exercises over it a sort of magistracy which extends even to his own flashing impulses. Never pausing to display his moral learning, he avoids the tedious diffuseness of Rollin; steering adroitly around the quicksands of political dissertation, he escapes the pragmatical essayism of Guiccardini. Not easily fascinated by the trifles that swim like vapid foam upon the tide of history,—petty domestic details, the Königsmark intrigues of royalty, the wines and flowers of the banquet table, the laces and jewels of the court,—he leaves far in the distance the entertaining Davila, who, says the sarcastic Schlosser, 'wrote memoirs after the French fashion for good society,' yet whom the arbitrary and adventurous Bolingbroke does not scruple to declare 'in many respects the equal of Livy!' And yet no single stroke is omitted which is needed to preserve the unity of the work. Tacitus himself did not embellish with more commanding morality his histories. The jots and tittles of the Groot Privilegie, the terms of the famous 'Pacification of Ghent,' the solemn import of the Act of Adjuration, and the political ambition of the church, are as faithfully drawn as the Siege of Leyden, or the 'Spanish Fury' of Antwerp.
Hume, in the narrowness of a so-called philosophical indifference to the appeals of domestic life and the details of national theology and art, gives us only a running commentary upon mere chronological events, galvanized by the touch of his keen intellect and fine rhetoric into a deceitful vigor, and ornamented with the poisonous night-shade blossoms of a spurious philosophy. We may more justly seek some analogy between Gibbon and Motley, even if the search but discover points of difference so radical that a comparison is impossible. The solemn, measured, and splendid rhetoric of Gibbon is met by the animated, impetuous, and brilliant flow of Motley's thought. Neither leans to the ideal; with both the actual prevails. The policy of a government is summoned by neither before the partial tribunal of a sentiment, or the intricate scheme of some Machiavelli subjected to the imperfect analysis of a headstrong imagination. But Gibbon, though he writes in the vernacular, has lost all the honest nationality that should give an air of sincerity to his work; his brilliant antithesis belongs to the ornate school of the French literature of the day; and, fascinating as is the pomp and commanding march of his sentences, we are rather dazzled by his eloquence than convinced by his argument. He is picturesque, rich; but it is the picturesqueness and richness of the truly bewildering Roman architecture of the Renaissance—half Byzantine, three-eighths Gothic, and the remainder Greek. But Motley, with all his varied learning and association, is still perfectly and nobly Anglo-Saxon. His short, epigrammatic sentences ring like the click of musketry before the charge, and swell into length and grandeur with the progress of his theme. The simplicity, not of ignorance but of genius, characterizes him. He does not cater to our hungry fancy, he appeals grandly to our noblest impulses. In Motley a spirit of the most refined humanity is everywhere visible; he is guilty of no Voltairean satiric stabs at purity, no petulant Voltairean flings at the faith he does not share. All is manly, terse, frank, undisguised. Honorable himself, he does not, like Gibbon, distrust all mankind, and question with a sarcasm the very sincerity of a martyr at the stake.
Among Americans, Motley is what Botta is to the historians of Southern Europe. The same grand principles actuate both writers; the same tendency to philosophical generalization is evident in the structure of their works, the same inflexible pursuit of a fixed and visible aim, the same enthusiastic love for freedom. But with Botta the poetical element, which is only secondary with Motley, predominates. He holds the nervous pen of a true Italian—more than that, of a true Italian patriot. All the hitherto suppressed fire of his nation flames out on his pages in an indignation as natural as it is superb. His lines vibrate with passion, his words are tremulous with a noble pain. His very pathos is impatient, stern, and proud; it cleaves our hearts like a battle-axe, rather than meets them as with summer showers. His sarcasm is as keen and effective, but far more startling; it hisses its way from some iron-cold comment, and stabs the monarch whom it crowns. His fertility of imagination is not weakened by contact with the details of government. The same pen that draws in such inimitably graceful lines the sugar-plums of starving Genoa, lingering about flower-wreathed baskets of bonbons sold in the public squares to famishing men and women, sketches in a style as nervous and appropriate the complex detail of governmental policy. He unfolds his subject with the skill of an epic poet; its general effect is sublime, and its petty details arranged with a rarely careless skill. If he is sometimes diverted by a burst of enthusiasm, of indignation, or of horror, into an inequality, the rough island thrown up in the sea of his fancy is speedily verdured over with the wonderful luxuriance of his genius. If he bends sometimes to amuse, to revel among his sonorous Italian adjectives in the description of a coronation at Milan, or an opera of Valetta, it is part of his purpose, giving to his picture the rich and glowing tints that bring out, by violence of contrast, the more elaborate tinting in of dark upon dark behind them.
Something of this we recognize in Motley; but none of Botta's tendency to proverbial sayings, bitter with a sarcasm that wounds most deeply its creator; as, 'To believe that abstract principle will prevail over full purses is the folly of a madman.' Neither do we find in Motley the occasional terse conciseness of Botta,—little epics enclosed in a short sentence. 'Napoleon had redeemed France; but he had created Italy.' But the Italian can not be impartial. Just he is, but it is the accident of his political position, not the deference paid by the historian to his art. He writes of an age from whose injustice he has suffered, of a country whose miseries he has shared, of a people whose brother he is. And here Motley stands second only to Thucydides among historians. In the Greek, impartiality was almost divine, for he wrote in the very smoke of the conflict, wrote as if with his dripping lance upon rocks dyed with the blood of his countrymen. With Motley impartiality is the product of a nature strictly noble, that aims through its art not only to delight the present, but to instruct the future, and which bases its doctrines of right and wrong upon the principles that govern universal nature. The temper of Thucydides is lofty and even; though never genial, he is always calm and accessible; though often sublime, he is never pathetic; too grand to be sarcastic, he is also too proud to be selfish.
Motley, if lacking the great and admirable element of sublimity, which Longinus extols, compensates for it by the animation and variety of his style, which changes, as does his mood, with his subject. He enters with all the vigor of his manhood into the spirit of the scenes which he sketches. He describes a character, and his strokes are bold, quick, decided; he follows the intricacies of political intrigue, and his movement is slow, continuous, wary, while it still remains firm, confident, and successful. He can administer the finances with Escovedo, while his wide, keen intelligence, undismayed, masters at a glance the wily policy of Alexander of the 'fel Gesicht.' No modern historian has given more comprehensive sketches of character. No quality escapes his vigilance; he yields every faculty the consideration which is its due. The portraits of Alva, of Navarre, of Farnese, of Orange, of Don John of Austria, are so many colossal statues, that seem to unite in themselves all the possible features and characteristics of humanity. He is indeed rather a sculptor than a painter. His figures are round, perfect, throbbing with life, and their hard and striking outlines, springing sharply from the background of despotism and persecution, are more imposing than any Rubens-like vividness of coloring which could warm them. He treats of diplomacy as a diplomat, unwinds the reel of protocol and treaty, and binds up with the inflexible cord the rich sheaves of his deep researches. His reflections are suggestive but short, and his details never weary.
He loves, too, to mark the sympathies of nature with event—the rain falling upon the black-hung scaffold, or the laughter of gay sunshine mingling with the shouts of a great victory. And here he differs, as indeed he does in almost every other respect, with Macaulay. The Englishman thinks little of nature; as he himself says of Dante, 'He leaves to others the earth, the ocean, and the sky; his business is with man.' Indeed, the absence of a true and universal sympathy is the one vast defect of Macaulay. No position is so high that it may not be overshadowed by the giant form of his violent partisanship, no character so small that it may not be raised to the semblance of greatness by the mere force of his political preferences. His scholarship was splendid, his genius commanding, the beauty of his style unsurpassed; but he perverted his knowledge to subserve certain public ends, and wielded his magnificent powers too often in the defence of an undeserving cause. Fascinated by his dazzling rhetoric, borne along by its rapid and tumultuous current to the most brilliant conclusions, we forget the narrowness of the stream. His scope of vision was indeed great, but it had its limits, and these were not imposed by time or necessity, but by the unyielding will of his own prejudices. As his virtues were massive, so were his errors grievous. He ventured to grasp the great speculative themes of existence with a mind that was neither profound nor suggestive. He swam with all the wondrous ease of an athlete through the billows and across the currents and counter-currents of elegant literature, of politics, of theology, yet possessed not the diver's power to win their sunken but priceless jewels. Rich he was with the accumulated intellectual spoil of centuries, but the power of exhaustive generalization was denied him. His perceptions were vigorous and acute, and none knew more perfectly to exhaust a subject, if its requirements were of the actual and tangible rather than of the ideal and spiritual order. He was a thorough logician, but a superficial philosopher; a master of style, but oblivious of those great religious truths of which the events of his great history were but the natural outgrowth and product. But nothing can exceed the power of his rhetoric, that is uncontrolled by any laws, yet offends none, unless it be the arbitrariness of his dogmatism, that concedes no favors and asks no gifts.
Less vehement, less ornate, possibly less learned than Macaulay, with frequent though trifling inequalities of style, Motley goes far beyond him in real practical insight into the heart of affairs. There is a unity in all visible life, whether of nation, of individual, of church, or of inarticulate nature, that escaped Macaulay and impresses Motley. The one would govern the universe with the arbitrary rules of a political clique; the other applies to all the infallible test of a universal philosophy. Both writers are thoroughly incorporated with their subject; but where Macaulay was the captive of a mighty and often just prejudice, Motley is the exponent of a living principle. Everywhere Macaulay was a Whig and an Englishman; everywhere Motley is a Republican and a cosmopolite.
Motley is indeed inferior to his English contemporary in many striking points whose value every reader will determine for himself; but his occasional and rare inaccuracies of expression and inelegances of language are on the surface, and may be removed by the stroke of a pen without marring the general effect of his work. He possesses, among many charms, an unfailing geniality, which, united with his fine dramatic powers, fascinates us completely. He abounds also in fine poetical touches, that give us glimpses of a mind cultured to the last degree of literary refinement. His 'rows of whispering limes and poplars' are like arabesques of gold straying over the margins of some old romanceros. His descriptions glow with the fresh and ever-varying delight of the observant traveler, who seems to see before him for the first time the cities which, with a few vigorous and simple strokes, he transfers to big pages. His pictures have the charm of naturalness and a simplicity that is more effective than the most ornate diffuseness. Thus he says of the picturesque little city of Namur: 'Seated at the confluence of the Sambre with the Meuse, and throwing over each river a bridge of solid but graceful structure, it lay in the lap of a most fruitful valley. A broad, crescent-shaped plain, fringed by the rapid Meuse, and enclosed by gently-rolling hills, cultivated to their crests, or by abrupt precipices of limestone crowned with verdure, was divided by numerous hedgerows, and dotted all over with corn-fields, vine-yards, and flower-gardens. Many eyes have gazed with delight upon that well-known and most lovely valley, and many torrents of blood have mingled with those glancing waters since that long-buried and most sanguinary age which forms our theme; and still, placid as ever is the valley, brightly as ever flows the stream. Even now, as in that banished but never-forgotten time, nestles the little city in the angle of the two rivers; still directly over its head seems to hang in mid-air the massive and frowning fortress, like the gigantic helmet in the fiction, as if ready to crush the pigmy town below.' How like the Ueberfahrt of Uhland:—
'Ueber diesen Strohm, vor Jahren,