"The kites know well the long stern swell That bids the Romans close". Macaulay has it. In the Lady of the Lake it is :"The exulting eagle screamed afar, She knew the voice of Alpine's war.” Indeed, no part of the Lays rises higher than the better passages of Scott. As a whole, they are more imitative and less rich in figure and language than his poetry; and we have been unable to discover any powers revealed in them which his prose works had not previously and amply disclosed. In fact, their excessive popularity arose in a great measure from the new attitude in which they presented their writer. Long accustomed to speak to the public, he suddenly volunteered to sing, and his song was harmonious, and between gratitude and surprise was vehemently encored. It was as if Helen Faucit were to commence to lecture, and should lecture well; or as though Douglas Jerrold were to announce a volume of sermons, and the sermons turn out to be excellent. This, after all, would only prove versatility of talent; it would not enlarge our conception of the real calibre of their powers. Nay, we hesitate not to assert, that certain passages of Macaulay's prose rise higher than the finest raptures of his poetry, and that the term Eloquence will measure the loftiest reaches of either. This brings us to say a few words on his contributions to the "Edinburgh Review." We confess, that had we been called on while new from reading those productions, our verdict on them would have been much more enthusiastic. Their immediate effect is absolutely intoxicating. Each reads like a new Waverley tale. "More-give us more— it is divine!" we cry, like the Cyclops when he tasted of the wine of Outis. As Pitt adjourned the court after Sheridan's Begum speech, so, in order to judge fairly, we are compelled to adjourn the criticism. Days even have to elapse ere the stern question begins slowly, through the golden mist, to lift up its head-"What have you gained? Have you only risen from a more refined 'Noctes Ambrosianæ ? Have you only been conversing with an elegant artist? or has a prophet been detaining you in his terrible grasp? or has Apollo been touching your trembling ears?" As we answer, we almost blush, remembering our tame and sweet subjection; and yet the moment that the enchantment again assails us, it again is certain to prevail. But endless vistas of interest and beauty, all are but But what is the explanation of this power? Is it altogether magical, or does it admit of analysis? Macaulay's writings have one very peculiar and very popular quality. They are eminently clear. They can by no possibility, at any time, be nebulous. You can read them as you run. Schoolboys devour them with as much zest as bearded men. This clearness is, we think, connected with deficiency in his speculative and imaginative faculties; but it does not so appear to the majority of readers. Walking in an even and distinct path-Long ago, however, has he changé tout cela. Now way, not one stumbling stone or alley of gloom in its whole course, no Hill of Difficulty rising, nor Path of Danger diverging, greeted, too, by he can set his elaborate passages at proper distances from each other; he peppers his page more sparingly with the condiments of metaphor and image; he interposes anecdotes to break the blaze of his splendour; he consciously stands at ease, nay, condescends to nod, the better to prepare his reader, and breathe himself for a grand gallop; and though he has not the art to conceal his art, yet he has the skill always to fix his readeralways to write, as he himself says of Horace Walpole, "what everybody will like to read." Still further, and finally, he has a quality different from and superior to all these he has genuine literary enthusiasm, which public life has not yet been able to chill. He is not an inspired child, but he is still an ardent schoolboy, and what many count and call his literary vice we count his literary salvation. It is this unfeigned love of letters and genius which (dexterously managed, indeed) is the animating and inspiring element of Macaulay's better criticisms, and the redeeming point in his worse. It is a love which many waters have been | unable to destroy, and which shall burn till death. When he retires from public life, like Lord Grenville, he may say, "I return to Plato and the Iliad." 66 We must be permitted, ere we close, a few remarks on some of his leading papers. Milton was his "Reuben-his first-born-the beginning of his strength ;" and thought by many "the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power." It was gorgeous as an eastern tale. He threw such a glare about Milton, that at times you could not see him. The article came clashing down on the floor of our literature like a gauntlet of defiance, and all wondered what young Titan could have launched it. Many inquired, Starting at such a rate, whither is he likely to go?" Meanwhile the wiser, while admiring, quietly smiled, and whispered in reply, " At such a rate no man can or ought to advance." Meanwhile, too, a tribute to Milton from across the waters, less brilliant, but springing from a more complete and mellow sympathy with him, though at first overpowered, began steadily and slowly to gain the superior suffrage of the age, and from that pride of place has not yet receded. On the contrary, Macaulay's paper he himself now treats as the brilliant bastard of his mind. Of such splendida vitia he need not be ashamed. We linger as we remember the wild delight with which we first read his picture of the Puritans, ere it was hackneyed by quotation, and ere we thought it a rhetorical bravura. How burning his print of Dante! The best frontispiece to this paper on Milton would be the figure of Robert Hall, at the age of sixty, lying on his back, and learning Italian, in order to verify Macaulay's description of the "Man that had been in Hell." In what a different light does the review of Croker's Boswell exhibit our author? He sets out like Shenstone, by saying "I will, I will be witty;" and like him, the will and the power are equal. Macaulay's wit is always sarcasm-sarcasm embittered by indignation, and yet performing its minute dissections with judicial gravity. Here he catches his Rhadamanthus of the Shades, in the upper air of literature, and his vengeance is more ferocious than his wont. He first flays, then kills, then tramples, and then hangs his victim in chains. It is the onset of one whose time is short, and who expects reprisals in another region. Nor will his sarcastic vein, once awakened against Croker, sleep till it has scorched poor Bozzy to ashes, and even singed the awful wig of Johnson. We cannot comprehend Macaulay's fury at Boswell, whom he crushes with a most disproportionate expenditure of power and anger. Nor can we coincide with his eloquent enforcement of the opinion, first propounded by Burke, then seconded by Mackintosh, and which seems to have become general, that Johnson is greater in Boswell's book than in his own works. To this we demur. Boswell's book gives us little idea of Johnson's eloquence, or power of grappling with higher subjects"Rassellas" and the "Lives of the Poets" do. Boswell's book does justice to Johnson's wit, readiness, and fertility; but if we would see the full force of his fancy, the full energy of his invective, and his full sensibility to, and command over, the moral sublime, we must consult such papers in the "Idler" as that wonderful one on the Vultures, or in the " Rambler," as Anningait and Ajut, his London, and his Vanity of Human Wishes. Boswell, we venture to assert, has not saved one great sentence of his idol-such as we may find profusely scattered in his own writingsnor has recorded fully any of those conversations, in which, pitted against Parr or Burke, he talked his best. If Macaulay merely means that Bos well, through what he has preserved, and through his own unceasing admiration, gives us a higher conception of Johnson's every-day powers of mind than his writings supply, he is right; but in expressly claiming the immortality for the "careless table-talk," which he denies to the works, and forgetting that the works discover higher faculties in special display, we deem him mistaken. In attacking Johnson's style, Macaulay is, unconsciously, a suicide-not that his style is modelled upon Johnson's, or that he abounds in sesqui-pedalia verba-he has never needed large or new words, either to cloak up mere commonplace, or to express absolute originality—but many of the faults he charges against Johnson belong to himself. Uniformity of march-want of flexibility and ease-consequent difficulty in adapting itself to common subjects—perpetual and artfully balanced antithesis, were, at any rate, once peculiarities of Macaulay's writing, as well as of Johnson's, nor are they yet entirely relinquished. After all, such faults are only the awkward steps of the elephant, which only the monkey can deride. Or we may compare them to the unwieldy, but sublime, movements of a giant telescope, which turns slowly and solemnly, as if in time and tune with the stately steps of majesty with which the great objects it contemplates are revolving. The article on Byron, for light and sparkling brilliance, is Macaulay's finest paper. Perhaps it is not sufficiently grave or profound for the subject. There are, we think, but two modes of properly writing about Byron-the one is the Monody, the other the Impeachment: this paper equalled some of the nobler flights of Macpheris neither. Mere criticism over such dread dust is, son. We may search his writings long ere we impertinent; mere panegyric impossible. Either, with condemnation melting down in irrepressible tears, or with tears drying up in strong censure, should we approach the memory of Byron, if, indeed, eternal silence were not better still. find anything so sublime, though we may find many passages equally ambitious, as the Address to the Sun. He closes his collected articles with his Warren Hastings, as with a grand finale. This we read Over one little paper we are apt to pause with with the more interest, as we fancy it a chapter a peculiar fondness-the paper on Bunyan. As extracted from his forthcoming history. As such no one has greater sympathy with the spirit of it justifies our criticism by anticipation. Its perthe Puritans without having any with their pecu-sonal and literary sketches are unequalled, garliar sentiments than Carlyle, so no one sympathises more with the literature of that period, without much else in common (unless we except Southey), as Macaulay. The Pilgrim's Progress" is to him, as to many, almost a craze. He cannot speak calmly about it. It continues to shine in the purple light of youth; and, amid all the paths he has traversed, he has never forgotten that immortal path which Bunyan's genius has so boldly mapped out, so variously peopled, and so richly adorned. How can it be forgotten, since it is at once the miniature of the entire world, and a type of the progress of every earnest soul? The City of Destruction, the Slough of Despond, the Delectable Mountains, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Beulah, and the Black River, are still extant, unchangeable realities, as long as man continues to be tried and to triumph. But it is less in this typical aspect than as an - interesting tale that Macaulay seems to admire it. Were we to look at it in this light alone, we should vastly prefer "Turpin's Ride to York," or Tam O'Shanter's Progress to Alloway Kirk." But as an unconscious mythic history of man's moral and spiritual advance, its immortality is secure, though its merits are as yet in this point little appreciated. Bunyan, indeed, knew not what he did; but then he spake inspired; his deep heart prompted him to say that to which all deep hearts in all ages should respond; and we may confidently predict that never shall that road be shut up or deserted. As soon stop the current or change the course of the black and bridgeless river. nished as they are with select scandal, and surrounded with all the accompaniments of dramatic art. Hastings' trial is a picture to which that of Lord Erskine, highly wrought though it be, is vague and forced, and which, in its thick and cruded magnificence, reminds you of the descriptions of Tacitus, or (singular connection!) of the paintings of Hogarth. As in Hogarth, the variety of figures and circumstances is prodigious, and each and all bear upon the main object, to which they point like fingers; so from every face, figure, aspect, and attitude, in the crowded hall of Westminster, light rushes on the brow of Hastings, who seems a fallen god in the centre of the god-like radiance. Even Fox's "sword" becomes significant, and seems to thirst for the pro-consul's destruction. But Macaulay, though equal to descriptions of men in all difficult and even sublime postures, never describes scenery well. His landscapes are too artificial and elaborate. When, for example, he paints Paradise in Byron or Pandemonium in Dryden, it is by parts and parcels, and you see him pausing and rubbing his brows between each lovely or each terrible item. The scene reluctantly comes, or rather is pulled into view, in slow and painful series. It does not rush over his eye, and require to be detained in its giddy passage. Hence his picture of India in Hastings is an admirable picture of an Indian village, but not of India, the country. You have the "old oaks " the graceful maiden with the pitcher on her head -the courier shaking his bunch of iron rings to scare away the hyenas-but where are the eternal We might have dwelt, partly in praise and bloom, the immemorial temples, the vast bloodpartly in blame, on some of his other articles-spangled mists of superstition, idolatry, and caste, might, for instance, have combatted his slump and summary condemnation, in "Dryden," of Ossian's poems-poems which, striking, as they did, all Europe to the soul, must have had some merit, and which, laid for years to the burning heart of Napoleon, must have had some corresponding fire. That, said Coleridge, of Thomson's Seasons," lying on the cottage window-sill, is true fame; but was there no true fame in the fact that Napoleon, as he bridged the Alps, and made at Lodi impossibility itself the slave of his genius, had these poems in his travelling carriage? Could the chosen companion of such a soul, in such moments, be altogether false and worthless? Ossian's Poems we regard as a ruder "Robbers" -a real though clouded voice of poetry, rising in a low age, prophesying and preparing the way for the miracles which followed; and we doubt if Macaulay himself has ever which brood over the sweltering land-the Scotlands of jungle, lighted up by the eyes of tigers as with infernal stars-the Ganges, the lazy deity of the land, creeping down reluctantly to the seathe heat, encompassing the country like a sullen, sleepy hell-the swift steps of tropical Death, heard amid the sulphury silence the ancient monumental look proclaiming that all things here continue as they were from the foundation of the world, or seen in the hazy distance as the girdle of the land-the highest peaks of earth soaring up toward the sun, Sirius, the throne of God? Macaulay too much separates the material from the moral aspects of the scene, instead of blending them together as exponents of the one great fact, India. But we must stop. Ere closing, however, we are tempted to add, as preachers do, a solid inference or two from our previous remarks. First, ary "lot." If he has not altogether inherited, he has approached the verge of the curse, “Woe to you, when all men shall speak well of you." No storms have unbared his mind to its depths. It has been his uniformly to "Pursue the triumph and partake the gale." we think we can indicate the field on which Mr. ciety did not-in spite of our author-spoil him Macaulay is likely yet to gain his truest and per- by its favour, though it infuriated him by its remanent fame. It is in writing the Literary His-sentment. But he has been the favoured and tory of his country. Such a work is still a desi- petted child of good fortune. There has been no deratum; and no living writer is so well qualified | "crook," till of late, either in his political or literby his learning and peculiar gifts-by his powers and prejudices-by his strength and his weakness, to supply it. In this he is far more assured of success than in any political or philosophical history. With what confidence and delight would the public follow his guidance, from the times of Chaucer to those of Cowper, when our literature ceased to be entirely natural, and even a stage or two farther! Of such a 66 progress" we proclaim him worthy to be the Great-heart! Secondly, we infer from a retrospect of his whole career, the evils of a too easy and a too early success. It is by an early Achillean baptism alone that men can secure Achillean invulnerability, or confirm Achillean strength. This was the redeeming point in Byron's history. Though a lord, he had to undergo a stern training, which indurated and strengthened him to a pitch, which all the after blandishments of society could not weaken. So Better all this for his own peace than for his power, or for the permanent effect of his writings. Let us congratulate him, finally, on his temporary defeat. A few more such victories as he had formerly gained, and he had been undone. A few more such defeats; and if he be, as we believe, essentially a man, he may yet, in the "strength of the lonely," in the consciousness and terrible self-satisfaction of those who deem themselves injuriously assailed, perform such deeds of derringdo as shall abash his adversaries and astonish even himself. ON SEEING SOME ANCIENT TOMBS OF THE CONSTANTINES, ERECTED, BY THE SULTAN'S ORDERS, NEAR THE MOSQUE OF ST. SOPHIA, AT CONSTANTINOPLE. t MANSION-HOUSE LAW AND JUSTICE. WE learned from the columns of one of the best weekly London newspapers-the Examiner―years ago, hat the practice of the London Police-ccurts was often characterised by strange vagaries, but we had no apprehension of experiencing in our own affairs the extreme folly and incapacity of a London Magistrate, thrust into office, out of time, and y an accident. We are certain that no personal feelings could induce us to occupy our pages with proceedings in which we might feel aggrieved, but the following statements are of some interest to the public-to those of them at least who, like us, have no craving for Mansion-House notoriety, and no desire to be the objects even of a Lord Mayor's folly. The report of the Lord Mayor's manner of dealing with us will partly explain the merits of this case, and we extract it from one of the London newspapers : and you are no doubt surprised that it is attributable to a person holding an eminent literary station. unpardonable conduct ascribed to a man who holds such a The Lord Mayor-I am indeed surprised at finding such situation, and cannot help saying that the want of the feelings of a gentleman is very palpable throughout the whole transaction which you have so dispassionately represented. To say nothing of the inhumanity of the treatment to which you have gentleman to answer your letters. I regret the existence of been subjected, the Editor of Taif's Magazine was bound as a the difficulties in the way of obtaining a proper recompense for the loss you have sustained. I am perfectly cognizant o the hazard arising from an appeal to the Scotch law, having have made a deep impression upon my memory and pocket. been afflicted in former days with two Scotch cases, which "Mr. Hobbes-I feel grateful for your Lordship's very kind expression of your sympathy. It was too harsh treatment to render useless the labour of years by inattention to the ordinary rules by which the conduct of gentlemen is regulated. The work I sent to Mr. Troup at his own request consisted of 700 pages, and was the result of study and observation at least entitled to civility. "The Lord Mayor-I am sure that the press of London quently had occasion to ask for the aid of newspapers in exI have frewill most readily render you every assistance. posing what no institution can punish, and I have never been unsuccessful in my applications. Nothing, I must say, exceeds my astonishment at so remarkable an instance of con Mr. Hobbes again thanked his Lordship, and retired." appears in the report, while the supposition accounts "At the Mansion House, on Tuesday the 5th instant, Mr. R. G. Hobbes, a gentleman who holds a situation in her Majesty's dockyard at Sheerness, appeared before the Lord Mayor for the purpose of publicly stating a serious grievance under which he was at present labouring, from the extraordinary misconduct of the editor of a magazine. The complainant said-My Lord, I have been five or six years in the Government service in India, and on my return home I was appointed,temptuous neglect as that which one literary man has thought fit thus to visit upon another. under the patronage of Lord Ellenborough, to a situation in the dockyard at Sheerness. I had taken a good deal of trouble in writing an account of what I had seen and observed during that time of interesting commotion, and I showed my manuscript to a literary friend, who advised me to send it forthwith to the Editor of Tail's Magazine, as a person who would in all probability treat with me for its publication. I wrote to the elitor of the magazine, accordingly, offering to be a contributor, and representing the kind of information with which I was ready to supply him, and he answered me in a note, in which he desired to see the manuscript, and stated that he would peruse it, and let me know the result. I took care to represent to him that as the subject was one of temporary interest, and the value of the work must therefore suffer depreciation by delay, it would be necessary to come to as quick a conclusion with respect to the purchase as possible. I sent him the manuscript, and in January I received a letter from him, acknowledging the receipt of it, and assuring me that he would read it, and speedily return me an answer. The promise was, however, not performed. No attention was paid to my subsequent correspondence by Mr. Troup, the editor of the magazine. I wrote to Messrs. Simpkin and Marshall of London, whom I understood to have some connexion with the establishment, stating the facts, but they were not acquainted with the transaction. Month after month passed away, and Mr. Troup never sent to me information whether it was his intention to use or return my manuscript, the interest of which, comprehending as it did the late war in India, was fast dying away. I applied to a clerical friend in Scotland, who tried to recover the manuscript, and was informed that a Mr. | Alison had been attracted by it, and put it in his pocket, after which it had not been seen. I wrote again to Mr. Troup, representing my claim to recompense for the injury, I had sustained by the procrastination, and threatening to place the matter in the hands of my attorney. That communication had the same fate which my other requests met. Mr. Troup did not condescend to notice it, and I learned that my only remedy lay in an appeal to the Scotch law, and not in an English court of justice. Aware of the difficulties in the office. of an equitable decision, I wrote to Mr. Troup an assurance, that I should come to London and expose the whole affair before a metropolitan magistrate if he refused to send me £20 s compensation for my work, which I considered, when placed part his possession, to be worth £200, and which is now value18. Your Lordship will see the inhumanity of such conduct, A and VOL. XIV.-NO. CLXVII. way The business as it stands in that report, without any qualification, has a singular appearance for the Lord Mayor. He pronounces an opinion, in a matter where he has no jurisdiction, regarding a transaction of which he had heard only an ex parte statement; and for the purpose of gratifying the author of a rejected manuscript, he denounces an individual as destitute of the feelings of a gentleman, and guilty of inhumanity, without the shadow or pretence of inquiry into the truth or falsehood of assertions with which he had no possible business, whether they were true or false. If injustice had been done, Mr. Hobbes had a remedy. Notwithstanding the statements of this civic dignitary, the Scotch Law Courts are open enough to any action of this nature. They afford far greater facilities than English Courts, are cheaper, and more rapid. The case was one to be decided on documentary evidence. There was no expensive proof requisite. It was impossible for any imaginable case to have involved the prosecutor in less trouble or expense, and Sir George Carroll-we believe that is the Lord Mayor's name-knew, or his clerk could have told He was, however, going out of He His year had well nigh run its course. wanted a character for humanity, and so, crossing our path, he deemed it wise to get the matter up at our expense. Mr. Hobbes had an easy remedy. We have none. The Lord Mayor's language may be actionable, but he would, of course, deny the accuracy of the report, him, these facts. 3 B |