if he lived at a time when the old foundations of belief were breaking up and men were forced to build anew. But we may well doubt whether Macaulay had any definite philosophical system. He had, indeed, read many philosophical treatises. But when he offers to discuss a purely philosophical problem he too often betrays a downright poverty of mind. His essay on History betrays his incurable preference for rhetoric as opposed to dialectic. In his criticism of James Mill's theory of government he appears to more advantage, for there he brought his practical sense and historical knowledge to bear upon the abstractions of a theorist who, in spite of talent and sincerity, was the veriest slave of system. From the essay on "Bacon "Bacon" we might conclude that he thought all metaphysical inquiry a waste of time, and the conscious pursuit of a moral ideal, merely because it was reasonable, no better than affectation. In the essay upon "Ranke's History of the Popes" Macaulay is heard with respect so long as he dilates in lofty and sonorous language upon the protracted life and energy of the Church of Rome, but when he goes on to consider why it has survived through so many centuries, and whether it is likely to endure as many more, he raises questions which cannot be answered without reference to a philosophy of religion, and his philosophy proves singularly inadequate. He implies that a creed is a set of propositions not merely incapable of proof or disproof, but so far remote from the general intellectual and moral life of mankind that the simplest barbarian can judge of their truth as well as the most cultivated critic. If this be the case, he ought to have explained how men found it difficult in the sixteenth century to believe what had been accepted in the fifteenth. So too he is surprised that later revolts against the authority of the Church of Rome should all have taken a form so different from Protestantism. It would have been more remarkable had it been otherwise. Just as Luther and Calvin could not regard the doctrines of the Church with the eyes of St. Thomas, later generations could not view those doctrines with the eyes of Luther or Calvin. Every age thinks and must think for itself on those high matters, and this fact should have shown Macaulay the weakness of his original proposition, that in religious inquiry men of the

most different intelligence and character stand on the same footing. The truth is that Macaulay was one of the least speculative among literary men. He argued practical questions with great vigour, but was apparently incapable of intense meditation.

We are equally at a loss when we try to discover Macaulay's personal feelings about religion. As a historian and a statesman, he knew that religious differences have been of incalculable moment in public affairs. He had read a truly surprising amount of divinity of different ages, and in his controversy with Mr. Gladstone showed that he had as ready a command over this as over all his other acquisitions. He always speaks of things sacred with grave respect, but avoids committing himself to any doctrine with all the caution of a member of Parliament. When we turn from his published writings to the freer utterances of his letters and journals, we note an equal reticence. None of the crises of life, not the loss of any of those whom he loved most dearly, not the sense of his own approaching end seems ever to have called forth a reflection which would illumine for others the depths of his soul. There is, indeed, one touching exception. On his thirty-fifth birthday, successful, honoured and full of life as he was, he interrupts his journal with the mournful lines of Sophocles :“ μὴ φύναι τον ἅπαντα νικᾷ λόγον

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But this entry, so far as we know, stands alone. On spiritual as on philosophical themes he was habitually silent. What was most distinctive in his early religious training had evidently been uncongenial and had fallen from him like a garment, leaving little but that unfavourable estimate of philosophy which so often characterised the Evangelical school. Yet it awoke no spirit of rebellion or even of far-reaching inquiry, as distasteful teaching has so often done. On the contrary, swayed perhaps by a deep sense of his father's goodness and

1 The best of all is never to have been born; the next best by far, having come to light, is to return as speedily as may be thither whence we came."Edipus at Colonus," lines 1225-8.

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self-sacrifice, Macaulay retained a respect and tenderness for the Puritans which break forth in all his writings from the essay on "Milton" to the "Life of Bunyan," and seem a little at variance with his genial and worldly view of life. same Protestant sympathies were shown in his dislike of the Tractarians. But this is almost all that we can gather about Macaulay's religious opinions. Probably he did not feel the necessity for any sharply defined doctrines. Certainly he did not live in habitual communion with the unseen world.

At first sight Macaulay might appear one of the most versatile of men; a poet, a critic, a historian, an orator, a politician in England and a jurist in India. In the main he was a man with one interest and one pursuit. Circumstances drew Macaulay from his books, made him a member of Parliament, placed him at the Board of Control and in the Governor-General's Council, and finally raised him to be a Cabinet minister, but honourably as he sustained all these public parts, public life interested him less in itself than as seen through the medium of history and literature. Experience rather impaired than confirmed an ambition in its origin so literary. Macaulay did not feel the irresistible instinct of the genuine public man for persuading, controlling and managing other men. He was an eloquent speaker, but his speeches are not essentially different from his essays. They are admirable for clearness, vigour and rapidity, they display a marvellous range of information and often great argumentative power, but they reveal little of the adroitness with which the inspired public speaker plays upon the common mind. Their author seems more concerned to pour out his own thoughts than to make his hearers think as his purpose requires. It is characteristic of Macaulay as an orator that he spoke very fast, with very little variety of cadence and almost without action. Macaulay was an industrious public servant, but no reference in his letters or journals betrays the zest for business of the born administrator. We cannot imagine him rubbing his hands, like the famous Frenchman as he sat down to his desk, with joy at the thought of all the business to be done. His most durable piece of official work, the Indian Penal Code, was in great measure a literary achievement. Literature and history were the true business and

the unfailing solace of his life, and on his performance as a historian and man of letters his lasting fame must be built.

Everybody knows how immediate and how extraordinary was the success of Macaulay's writings. Macaulay attracted the general public by his combination of a somewhat common way of thinking with immense energy, untiring vivacity and marvellous power of exposition. The serious, respectable Englishman was delighted to find in Macaulay's pages his own meaning, although infinitely better expressed. A man so accomplished in all the lore of the past, yet so fervently in love with the present, a man of letters who could extract pleasure even from rows of suburban villas, who exulted in the growth of the Customs revenue and was moved almost to tears by the first great international exhibition, such a man of letters could not but charm so sanguine and self-confident an age. Some illustrious authors have made their name by reviling their contemporaries. Macaulay owed much of his rapid popularity to the contrary process. In this optimism there was nothing insincere, for Macaulay was far more genuine than most masters of rhetoric. He was the poet, not the parasite of his own generation. Along with Thackeray and Dickens he will always be read by those who wish to understand the English nation in the middle of the nineteenth century.

But an immediate, overwhelming success of this kind was sure to be followed by a violent reaction. Men acute and learned enough to discern the faults of a popular idol, and possibly whetted in their criticism by the thought that, with talents and attainments in some respects equal or superior, they had found no comparable recognition, have keenly scrutinised and austerely judged these famous writings which once seemed so perfect and still remain so popular. Macaulay's critical essays have been pronounced void of delicacy and of penetration; his Lays of Ancient Rome have been derided as pinchbeck poetry; his History of England has been slighted as the outcome of party spirit, an undiscerning hero-worship and a weak desire to be picturesque. Even his bold and stirring rhetoric has been censured as hard and monotonous. So vigorous and many-sided has been the attack, that his gigantic reputation has been considerably lowered.

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majority, perhaps, of well-read persons would be half ashamed to own that they admire Macaulay. But now that most of the eminent men who led the attack upon his fame as critic, poet and historian have passed away, we can estimate his works with a calmness impossible to contemporaries, and we shall probably conclude that Macaulay is an English classic, although not a classic of the most exalted kind.

Perhaps the first and most vivid impression which most persons derive from Macaulay's writings is that of ample and varied knowledge. Extensive as his reading really was, it appears still greater because his powerful memory gave him full command over it and enabled him, like a skilful general with a well-disciplined army, to bring all his forces to bear upon the point which for the time being was vital. There is some interest in attempting to trace the bounds of his studies. Macaulay knew the Greek and Latin classics well, and appreciated them, not with the minute precision of a commentator, but with the keen relish of a man of the world and a man of letters. He was also deeply versed in the literatures of England, France and Italy as their limits were fixed in his youth, for his mind had been formed before mediæval authors became objects of curiosity, and with the works of his own age his sympathy was imperfect. He was familiar with almost everything that had been written in English during the three centuries that followed the revival of learning. What he knew best were the writings of the period from the Restoration to the French Revolution. He was steeped in the poetry, the memoirs, the histories, the divinity, the pamphlets and political orations of that time, .although he seldom fell into the error of overrating their intrinsic value. But he seems not to have cared much for anything written before the age of Spenser and Shakespeare, and, though he lived at Cambridge when Wordsworth was in the ascendant there, he never quite yielded himself to the inspiration of the new school of poetry. In after years he might be said to turn away from contemporary authors. We should not have expected him to taste Browning, but he seems to have cared little for Tennyson, he did not read Carlyle or Ruskin, and Buckle's famous book only suggested to him a parallel between the author and Warburton. So likewise with