Macaulay's essay on Lord Clive

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Introduction • • * x

I. Life of Macaulay ix

Introduction

I. Life of Macaulay

Thomas Babington Macaulay, the most popular English essayist and historian of the nineteenth century, was born at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire, on the 25th of October, 1800. His father, Zachary Macaulay, a descendant of a family of Scotch Presbyterian ministers, was a man of ability and high character, who gave his life to the suppression of slavery in the English colonies. His mother, who was the daughter of a Quaker, is described as a woman of " affectionate temper, yet clear-headed and firm withal." To the influence of these serious-minded and unselfish parents Macaulay evidently owes some of the best traits in his character.

He was a remarkably precocious child. "From the time that he was three years old," says Trevelyan, 1 "he read incessantly, for the most part lying on the rug before the fire, with his book on the ground and a piece of breadand-butter in his hand." From the same early age he showed unusual facility in the use of language. As he took his walk, "he would hold forth to his companion, whether jiurse or mother, telling interminable stories out of his own head, or repeating what he had been reading in language far above his years." Many amusing instances of the quaint maturity of his speech are given by his biographer. On one occasion when he was but four years

1 See Bibliography (p. xxxvii) for a note on Trevelyan's biography..

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old, a servant spilled some hot coffee on his legs. When his hostess, a little later, asked how he felt, he replied, " Thank you, madam, the agony is abated." It must not be supposed, however, that language like this " proceeded from affectation or conceit; for all testimony declares that a more simple and natural child never lived, or a more lively and merry one."

The boy's writing showed even greater precocity than his speech. Before he reached the age of eight, he had written a compendium of universal history rilling about a quire of paper, and had composed many "poems," which Mrs. Hannah More pronounced "quite extraordinary for such a baby." "It is worthy of note," writes his nephew, "that the voluminous writings of his childhood, dashed off at headlong speed in the odds and ends of leisure from school study and nursery routine, are not only perfectly correct in spelling and grammar, but display the same lucidity of meaning and scrupulous accuracy in punctuation and the other minor details of the literary art which characterize his mature work."

The greater part of Macaulay's childhood was spent at Clapham, a suburb of London. When he was twelve years old he was sent to a small private school which was then situated near Cambridge, but was removed two years later to Aspenden Hall in Hertfordshire. Here, under good instruction, he laid the foundation of sound scholarship in Latin and Greek, and found time besides to read great numbers of books for his own pleasure.

In 1818 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he spent six delightful years. His enjoyment of his life here was evidently due less to the regular work of the university than to the leisure and liberty and the opportunities for unlimited reading and attractive companion-

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ship which the place afforded. Next to reading, Macaulay seems to have enjoyed talking more than anything else. He was always ready to talk, and the able and interesting young men with whom he was brought into intimate association, furnished the stimulus of intellectual combat that called forth all his powers. The most brilliant member of the little group was Charles Austin, who is said to have been "the only man who ever succeeded in dominating Macaulay," and who is believed to have won him over to the Whig party, and away from his inherited allegiance to the Tories. Witnesses of the scenes in which these two and their friends took part "declare that they have never since heard such conversation in the most renowned of social circles." The following incident told by Trevelyan gives some support to this opinion. "While on a visit to Lord Landsdowne at Bo wood, Austin and Macaulay happened to get upon college topics one morning at breakfast. When the meal was finished they drew their chairs to either end of the chimney-piece, and talked at each other across the hearth-rug as if they were in a first-floor room in the Old Court of Trinity. The whole company, ladies, artists, politicians, and dinersout, formed a silent circle round the two Cantabs, and with a short break for lunch, never stirred till the bell warned them that it was time to dress for dinner." In the more formal discussions of the Union Debating Society, also, Macaulay was one of the ablest speakers. The training that he received in this organization was excellent preparation for his work later in Parliament.

Macaulay's interest in the social life of Cambridge, and his hatred and neglect of mathematics prevented him from winning the highest university honours. But he twice gained the chancellor's medal for English verse, and xii INTRODUCTION

he also won a prize and a scholarship for his classical attainments. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1822, he continued his studies at the university for two years in the hope of winning a fellowship. In 1824 his desire was gratified by his election as a fellow of Trinity College with an income of three hundred pounds a year for seven years.

Macaulay's success was especially welcome to him, because during his stay at the university, his father, who had supposed himself to be worth a hundred thousand pounds, failed in business, and the duty of supporting the family fell largely upon his eldest son. This duty Macaulay undertook with the utmost cheerfuless. "He unlearned," says Trevelyan, "the very notion of framing his method of life with a view to his own pleasure; and such was his high and simple nature that it may well be doubted whether it ever crossed his mind that to live wholly for others was a sacrifice at all."

In 1826 Macaulay was called to the bar, but got little practice and soon gave up all serious thought of following the legal profession. In the meantime he had begun to achieve success of a very different kind. Before he left Cambridge, he had made a number of contributions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine: two or three spirited battle poems, a few short pieces of fictitious narrative, and other prose articles, which showed him already to be possessed of a very striking and effective style. But his first great literary success came in 1825. In August of that year, in the Edinburgh Review, at that time perhaps the most celebrated and influential periodical in England, appeared Macaulay's Essay on Milton. Its success was "splendid and decisive." The reading public had suddenly become aware that a new master of English prose had appeared.

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Like Lord Byron, after the publication of the first two cantos of Childe Harold, Macaulay "awoke one morning and found himself famous." In the England of that day, literary success brought with it social distinction, and the Macaulay breakfast table was covered with cards of invitation to dinner from every quarter of London. The social prominence which began for Macaulay in this way was greatly increased by his triumphs in Parliament and especially by his brilliant ability as a talker. The one evidence of appreciation of his essay, however, which most pleased him was the comment with which Jeffrey, the great editor of the Edinburgh, acknowledged the receipt of his manuscript, — "The more I think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that style."

After the publication of The Essay on Milton, Macaulay became a frequent contributor to the Edinburgh Review. In fact, for the next twenty years he was its most important contributor. During the first eight years of this period he published, on the average, about three essays a year in its columns. These articles brought him fame and some money. But it must not be supposed that writing them was his chief business. Instead, they occupied him only during the intervals of his very active work in the House of Commons and in the various government positions which he held.

In 1828 he was made a commissioner of bankruptcy. This office, together with his fellowship and his contributions to the Edinburgh Review, gave him an income of about a thousand pounds a year. Two years later, just before the memorable struggle over the parliamentary reform bill, he was asked to stand, as they say in England, for Parliament, and was elected member for the borough of Calne.

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"And so," writes Trevelyan, "on the eve of the most momentous conflict that ever was fought out by speech and vote within the walls of a senate-house, the young recruit went gaily to his post in the ranks of that party whose coming fortunes he was prepared loyally to follow, and the history of whose past he was destined eloquently, and perhaps imperishably, to record."

Macaulay's success in Parliament was as quickly achieved and as continuous as was his success in literature. His first great triumph came with his first speech on the Reform Bill in 1831. "When he sat down the Speaker sent for him and told him that, in all his prolonged experience, he had never seen the House in such a state of excitement. . . . 'Portions of the speech,' said Sir Robert Peel, 'were as beautiful as anything I ever heard or read. It reminded me of the old times.' The names of Fox, Burke, and Canning were during that evening in everybody's mouth." The reputation which Macaulay gained on this notable occasion was established and strengthened by his subsequent speeches. Of his speech on the second reading of the Reform Bill, Jeffrey said, " It puts him clearly at the head of the great speakers, if not the debaters, of the House." After his speech on the India Bill, which he himself considered the best he had ever made, an old member said to him, Sir, having heard that speech may console the young people for never having heard Mr. Burke." "It may well be questioned," says Mr. Morrison, "whether Macaulay was so well endowed for any career as that of a great orator." So great was his reputation that whenever it was known that he was to speak there would be a great rush of members and spectators to hear him. Such an incident — on the occasion of Macaulay's speaking after a long

INTRODUCTION xv

absence from the House — is described by a contemporary newspaper:

"The talk [in the House] was not interesting — on a Wednesday it seldom is — and you were loitering along the committee lobby upstairs, wondering which of the rooms you should take next, when, as you paused uncertain, you were bumped against by somebody. He begged your pardon, and rushed on; a member; a stout member; a man you couldn't conceive in a run, and yet he's running like mad. You are still staring at him, when two more men trot past you, one one each side, and they are members too. The door close to you, marked 'Members' Entrance,' is flung open, and five members dash from it, and plunge furiously down the lobby. More doors open; more members rush out; members are tearing past you, from all points, but in one direction. Then wigs and gowns appear. Their owners tell you, with happy faces, that their committees have adjourned; and then come a third class, the gentlemen of the Press, hilarious. Why, what's the matter? Matter? Macaulay is up! It was an announcement that one had not heard for years, and the passing of the word had emptied committee-rooms as, of old, it emptied clubs.

"You join the runners in a moment, and are in the gallery in time to see the senators, who had start of you, perspiring in their places. It was true. He was up, and in for a long speech. . . . The old voice, the old manner, and the old style — glorious speaking ! Well prepared, carefully elaborated, confessedly essayish; but spoken with perfect art and consummate management; the grand conversation of a man of the world, confiding his learning, his recollections, and his logic to a party of gentlemen, and just raising his voice enough to be heard xvi INTRODUCTION

through the room. Such it was while he was only opening his subject, and waiting for his audience; but as the House filled, which it did with marvellous celerity, he got prouder and more oratorical; and then he poured out his speech, with rapidity increasing after every sentence, till it became a torrent of the richest words, carrying his hearers with him into enthusiasm, and yet not leaving them time to cheer. A torrent of words — that is the only description of Macaulay's style, when he was warmed into speed. And such words! Why, it wasn't four in the afternoon; lunch hardly digested; and the quiet, reserved English gentlemen were as wild with delight as an opera-house, after Grisi, at ten. You doubt it? See the division; and yet, before Mr. Macaulay had spoken., you might have safely bet fifty to one that Lord Hotham would have carried his bill. After that speech the bill was not thrown out, but pitched out."

As a reward for his services in support of the Reform Bill Macaulay was made a member, and afterwards secretary, of the Board of Control, " which represented the crown in its relations with the East India directors." This position brought him into close touch with East Indian affairs, and prepared the way for a more important appointment.

In 1833 he was chosen a member of the Supreme Council of India at a salary of ten thousand pounds a year. Although Macaulay had no desire for great wealth, he longed for independence and for the means of restoring ease and comfort to his father's family; and he was sure that from the large salary offered him he could, in a few years, save a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. Accordingly he accepted the position, and early in 1834 sailed for India.

INTRODUCTION xvii

While in India Macaulay rendered very valuable service to the government and the people. Besides doing the regular work of his office, he served voluntarily as president of the Committee of Public Instruction, which had the arduous task of organizing an entire educational system for the country. It is largely due to Macaulay that English, rather than the native tongues, was made the language of instruction in much of the work of the schools, and that, in this way, the treasuries of European literature and science were opened to the people of India.

Another service which he rendered to India is hardly less important. He was chairman of a committee appointed to draw up two new codes of laws for the empire, a Penal Code, and a Code of Criminal Procedure. On account of the illness of other members of the committee, the larger part of the work involved in this laborious undertaking was done by Macaulay. In reply to a criticism that the work was not finished sooner, he wrote, "I am not ashamed to acknowledge that there are several chapters in the code on which I have been employed for months; of which I have changed the whole plan ten or twelve times; which contain not a single word as it originally stood; and with which I am very far indeed from being satisfied. The time during which the commission has sat is as nothing compared with the time during which the work will produce good, or evil, to India." As to the value of the code an eminent English lawyer and judge says, "Lord Macaulay's great work was far too daring and original to be accepted at once. It was finally enacted in i860 after being revised by Sir Barnes Peacock. The draft and the revision are both eminently creditable to their authors; and the result of their successive efforts has been to reproduce in a concise and even xviii INTRODUCTION

beautiful form the spirit of the law of England, the most technical, the most clumsy, and the most bewildering of all systems of criminal law." "If it be asked," says Trevelyan, " whether or not the Penal Code fulfills the ends for which it was framed, the answer may safely be left to the gratitude of Indian civilians, the younger of whom carry it about in their saddle-bags and the older in their heads."

While in India Macaulay was also instrumental in doing away with the censorship of the press, and in making the administration of justice the same for both Englishmen and natives. The latter reform made him very unpopular with a number of his countrymen in Calcutta, and subjected him to the most virulent abuse, which he bore with "unruffled equanimity."

In January, 1838, Macaulay set sail for England. He had been able to save money more rapidly than he had expected and had acquired a modest but comfortable fortune. Before the end of 1835 he had written to his friend Ellis, "What my course will be when I return to England is very doubtful. But I am half determined to abandon politics, and to give myself wholly to letters; to undertake some great historical work which may be at once the business and the amusement of my life." This desire, however, he was not able for some time to realize. His sense of duty to his party and his political friends drew him again into politics. From 1838 to 1847, and again from 1852 to 1856, he represented Edinburgh in Parliament, the second time receiving his seat as an unasked recompense for his unwarranted defeat five years before. Twice during this period he held important government offices, first as Secretary at War, and afterwards as Paymaster-general. But although he rendered

INTRODUCTION xix

valuable service to his party, his interest in politics continued to decrease.

Until 1844 he wrote a good many articles for the Edinburgh Review. In 1842 he published a volume of poems, The Lays of Ancient Rome, which was received with great popular favour. But the literary work in which Macaulay was becoming more and more interested was his History of England from the Accession of James II. In 1841 he had written, "I have at last begun my historical labours ... I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies." The reception which was given the first two volumes on their publication in 1848 must have more than satisfied this ambition of their author. The work met with remarkable success both in England and America. Within a few months after the date of publication, Harper and Brothers wrote to Macaulay, "No work, of any kind, has ever so completely taken our whole country by storm." The third and fourth volumes were published in 1855, and the fifth and last volume after Macaulay's death. They were received with even greater favour than the first two. Only two years after the publication of the third and fourth volumes, Longmans, the publishers, paid the author $100,000. in a single check, as part of his royalty. Of the whole history hundreds of thousands of copies in English alone have been sold, and the work has been translated into every important European tongue.

The only other important literary work that Macaulay did during his later years was the writing of five brief biographies for the Encyclopedia Britannica — the articles on Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson, and William Pitt. They are among the best of his works.

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In 1852 Macaulay was seriously ill, his physician pronouncing the action of his heart much deranged. After this illness he never fully regained his old good health, but, withdrawing more and more from public affairs, he passed his remaining years in the quiet of his garden and his library at Holly Lodge in Kensington, still working when he could, and still enjoying the company of a few intimate friends. Many marks of distinction came to him during these last years both from his own country and the continent. Among these was his elevation to the peerage in 1857 as Baron Macaulay of Rothley. But he did not long enjoy his honours. On December 28, 1859, he died. He is buried in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

II. Characteristics or Macaulay's Personality and Work

Whatever shortcomings may be found in Macaulay's literary work, no serious fault has ever been discovered in his personal character. Throughout his long political career not a word of real suspicion was ever breathed against his honesty. Whenever his personal interests conflicted with his sense of duty, he seems never to have given them a moment's thought. He once voted for a bill that took away his own office, and .once opposed a measure with the full expectation that his action would cost him his position. No wonder Sydney Smith could say that Macaulay was incorruptible.

His conduct in the more private relations of life seems to have been no less admirable. His unselfish acceptance of the burden of his father's household has already been mentioned. Moreover he brought to that household not merely financial support, but such an abundance of

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cheerfulness and gaiety and fun that the younger children were hardly aware of the money troubles of the family. Macaulay never married, chiefly because, as he said, he never fell in love; but all the affection of his nature was poured out on his sisters and afterwards on their children. Throughout his life he seems to have been singularly tender-hearted, generous, and courageous. The only criticisms that have been seriously made against him are that the strength of his convictions sometimes amounted to prejudice, and that he was sometimes perhaps too intolerant of those whom he thought to be in the wrong.

Any discussion of Macaulay's personality would be incomplete without some description of his appearance. "Macaulay's outward man," writes Trevelyan, "was never better described than in two sentences of Praed's Introduction to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. 'There came up a short manly figure, marvellously upright, with a bad neckcloth, and one hand in his waistcoat-pocket. Of regular beauty he had little to boast; but in faces where there is an expression of great power, or of great goodhumour, or both, you do not regret its absence.' This picture, in which every touch is correct, tells all that there is to be told. He had a massive head, and features of a powerful and rugged cast; but so constantly lighted up by every joyful and ennobling emotion that it mattered little if, when absolutely quiescent, his face was rather homely than handsome. While conversing at table, no one thought him other than good-looking; but when he rose, he was seen to be short and stout in figure. 'At Holland House, the other day/ writes his sister Margaret, in September, 1831, 'Tom met Lady Lyndhurst for the first time. She said to him, "Mr. Macaulay, you xxii INTRODUCTION

are so different to what I expected. I thought you were dark and thin, but you are fair, and, really, Mr. Macaulay, you are fat."' He at all times sat and stood straight, full, and square."

Of Macaulay's remarkable intellect it is difficult to speak adequately. His two most noticeable mental characteristics seem to have been the unusual quickness with which his mind worked, and his wonderfully retentive memory. His mental quickness appears especially in his reading. "He read books faster than other people skimmed them, and skimmed them as fast as anyone else could turn the leaves." This unusual ability, accompanied as it was by a passionate fondness for reading, made it possible for Macaulay to read great quantities of books. Writing of his journey to India he said, "Except at meals, I hardly exchanged a word with any human being. I devoured Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, French, and English; folios, quartos, octavos, duodecimos." But what is even more surprising than the great extent of his reading is the fact that he apparently remembered nearly everything he ever read, good and bad, important and unimportant, alike. This accounts for one striking characteristic of his literary work. He seems to know everything even remotely connected with the subject in hand, and to have an illustration ready for every fact and circumstance.

These very abilities, however, suggest, if they are not partly responsible for, certain noticeable faults in his work. His abundant knowledge of literature and history sometimes led him to assume too great knowledge in his readers, and to overload his writing with unfamiliar illustration and allusion. Likewise his great memory doubtless strengthened his confidence in his knowledge, and that

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feeling of certainty, whatever its cause, extended also to matters of mere opinion. "There is," says Mark Pattison, "an overwhelming confidence about his tone. . . . His propositions have no qualifications. Uninstructed readers like this assurance as they like a physician who has no doubt about their case. But a sense of distrust grows apon the more circumspect reader. . . . We inevitably think of a saying attributed to Lord Melbourne, 'I wish I were as cock-sure of any one thing as Macaulay is of everything.'"

There were many things, moreover, about which Macaulay had no reason to be "cock-sure." His interests and his reading were one-sided. He had a wide knowledge of the literature and the political history of several countries. Bit he knew little of philosophy, of modern science, or of the best work that was being done in history and poetry by his contemporaries. His interests, apart from the political struggles in which he was engaged, seem to have been almost wholly in the past. The great movements of his own day in scientific and religious thought, which have made that period memorable in the history of the world, apparently did not affect him at all. This shortcoming is the more readily understood in the light of another: he shows little evidence of having thought deeply 01 any subject. His great abilities seem to have been exercised not in arriving at conclusions, but in expressirg and supporting opinions apparently acquired with little thinking. As a consequence critics find a lack of depti, of subtlety, of fine discrimination, of insight into character, in his literary work. The thought of much of it tley find commonplace if not shallow. It is not filled with new ideas or new ways of looking at old ones. It does not stir the depths of men's minds, or set them

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INTRODUCTION thinking, as does the work of truly original writers like Carlyle and Emerson.

But perhaps it is unfair to find fault with an author for not doing what he did not attempt to do, for not being somebody else than he is. And it is certainly unreasonable to let an author's shortcomings blind one to his very evident merits. Macaulay's work has certain great merits. He has a very unusual power of narrative. Few men have equalled or approached him in the ability to present the forward movement of events or the outward spectacle of things in a vivid and memorable wfy. His style has the admirable qualities of vigour and of ease and rapidity of movement. He brings out his ideis in the most striking and interesting way possible. Bui perhaps the most praiseworthy quality of his writing is its unfailing clearness. He seems to have determined above all other things to make his meaning clear. After the publication of the first two volumes of his history, i group of workingmen to whom the book had been reid aloud passed a vote of thanks to him for having writ en a history which workingmen could understand.

Macaulay's method of writing shows how hq attained these admirable qualities. The following accourjt is given by Trevelyan:

"The main secret of Macaulay's success la] in this, that to extraordinary fluency and facility he utrited patient, minute, and persistent diligence. He w^ll knew, as Chaucer knew before him, that

'There is na workeman That can bothe worken wel and hastilie. This must be done at leisure parfaitlie.'

If his mehod of composition ever comes into fashion, books probably will be better, and undoubtedly will be

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shorter. As soon as he had got into his head all the information relating to any particular episode, he would sit down and write off the whole story at a headlong pace; sketching in the outlines under the genial and audacious impulse of a first conception; and securing in black and white each idea, and epithet, and turn of phrase, as it flowed straight from his busy brain to his rapid fingers. His manuscript, at this stage, to the eyes of any one but himself, appeared to consist of column after column of dashes and flourishes, in which a straight line, with a half -formed letter at each end and another in the middle, did duty for a word. It was from a chaos of such hieroglyphics that Lady Trevelyan, after her brother's death, deciphered that account qf the last days of William which fitly closes the History.

"As soon as Macaulay had finished his rough draft, he began to fill it in at the rate of six sides of foolscap every morning; written in so large a hand, and with such a multitude of erasures, that the whole six pages were, on an average, compressed into two pages of print. This portion he called his 'task,' and he was never quite at ease unless he completed it daily. More he seldom sought to accomplish; for he had learned from long experience that this was as much as he could do at his best; and, except when at his best, he never would work at all.