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must consult such papers in the "Idler" as that wonderful one on the Vultures, or in the "Rambler," as Anningate and Ajut, his London, and his Vanity of Human Wishes. Boswell, we venture to asert, has not saved one great sentence of his idol-such as we may find profusely scattered in his own writings-nor has recorded fully any of those conversations, in which, pitted against Parr or Burke, he talked his best. If Macaulay merely means that Boswell, 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.

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In attacking Johnson's style, Macaulay is, unconsciously, a suicide; not that his style is modelled upon Johnson's, or that he abounds in sesquipedalia 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 adopting itself to common subjectsperpetual 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 unwieldly 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 is neither. Mere criticism over such dread dust is impertinent; mere panegyric impossible. Either with condemnation melting down in irrepressible tears, or with tears drying up in strong sensibility to, and command over, the moral sublime, we

censure, should we approach the memory of Byron, if, indeed, eternal silence were not better still.

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Over one little paper we are apt to pause with a peculiar fondness-the paper on "Bunyan." As no one has greater sympathy with the spirit of the Puritans, without having much with their peculiar sentiments, than Carlyle, so no one sympathizes more with the literature of that period, without much else in common (unless we except Southey), than 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.

We might have dwelt, partly in praise and partly in blame, on some of his other articles-might, for instance, have combated 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 win

dow-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 equalled some of the nobler flights of Macpherson. We may search his writings long ere we find any thing 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 with the more interest, as we fancy it a chapter extracted from his forthcoming history. As such it justifies our criticism by anticipation. Its personal and literary sketches are unequalled, garnished as they are with select scandal, and surrounded with all the accompaniments of dramatic art. Hasting's 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 crowded 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 godlike radiance. Even Fox's "sword" becomes significant, and seems to thirst for the proconsul'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

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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 hyenasbut where the eternal bloom, the immemorial temples, the vast blood-spangled mists of superstition, idolatry, and caste, which brood over the sweltering land-the Scotlands of jungle, lighted up by the eyes of tigers as with infernal starsthe Ganges, the lazy deity of the land, creeping down reluctantly to the sea-the 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, we think we can indicate the field on which Mr. Macaulay is likely yet to gain his truest and permanent fame. It is in writing the literary history of his country. Such a work is still a desideratum; and no living writer is so well qualified by 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 national, and even a stage or two farther! Of such a "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.

Society did not-in spite of our author-spoil him by its favor, though it infuriated him by its resentment. But he has been the favored and petted child of good fortune. There has been no "crook," till of late, either in his political or literary 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." 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 in Edinburgh. 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.

DR. GEORGE CROLY.

Not only is the literary divine not a disgrace to his profession, he is a positive honor. His pulpit becomes an eminence, commanding a view of both worlds. He is a witness at the nuptials of truth and beauty, and the general cause of Christianity is subserved by him in more ways than one; for, first, the names of great men devoted at once to letters and religion neutralize, and more than neutralize, those which are often produced and paraded on the other side; again, they show that the theory of science sanctified, and literature laid down before the Lord, has been proved and incarnated by living examples, and does not therefore remain in the baseless regions of mere hypothesis; and, thirdly, they evince that even if religion be an imposture and a delusion, it is one so plausible and powerful as to have subjugated very strong intellects, and that it will not therefore

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