Chapter LII: Section VIII: Comparison of Macaulay with French Historians

Thus this History, whose qualities seem so little English, bears throughout the mark of genuine English talent. Universal, connected, it embraces all the facts in its vast, undivided, and unbroken woof. Developed, abundant, it enlightens obscure facts, and opens up to the most ignorant the most complicated questions. Interesting, varied, it attracts and preserves the attention. It has life, clearness, unity, qualities which appear to be wholly French. It seems as if the author were a popularizer like Thiers, a philosopher like Guizot, an artist like Thierry. The truth is, that he is an orator, and that after the fashion of his country; but, as he possesses in the highest degree the oratorical faculties, and possesses them with a national tendency and instincts, he seems to supplement through them the faculties which he has not. He is not genuinely philosophical; the mediocrity of his earlier chapters on the ancient history of England proves this sufficiently; but his force of reasoning, his habits of classification and order, bestow unity upon his History. He is not a genuine artist; when he draws a picture, he is always thinking of proving something; he inserts dissertations in the most interesting and affecting places; he has neither charm, lightness, vivacity, nor _finesse_, but a marvellous memory, vast knowledge, an ardent, political passion, a great legal talent for expounding and pleading every cause, a precise knowledge of precise and petty facts which rivet the attention, charm, diversify, animate, and warm a narrative. He is not simply a popularizer; he is too ardent, too eager to prove, to conquer belief, to beat down his foes, to have only the limpid talent of a man who explains and expounds, with no other end than to explain and expound, which spreads light throughout, and never spreads heat; but he is so well provided with details and reasons, so anxious to convince, so rich in his expositions, that he cannot fail to be popular. By this breadth of knowledge, this power of reasoning and passion, he has produced one of the finest books of the age, whilst manifesting the genius of his nation. This solidity, this energy, this deep political passion, these moral prepossessions, these oratorical habits, this limited philosophical power, this somewhat uniform style, without flexibility or sweetness, this eternal gravity, this geometrical progress to a settled end, announce in him the English mind. But if he is English to the French, he is not so to his nation. The animation, interest, clearness, unity of his narrative, astonish them. They think him brilliant, rapid, bold; it is, they say, a French mind. Doubtless he is so, in many respects: if he understands Racine badly, he admires Pascal and Bossuet; his friends say that he used daily to read Mme de Sévigné. Nay more, by the structure of his mind, by his eloquence and rhetoric, he is Latin; so that the inner structure of his talent places him amongst the classics; it is only by his lively appreciation, of special, complex, and sensible facts, by his energy and fierceness, by the rather heavy richness of his imagination, by the depth of his coloring, that he belongs to his race. Like Addison and Burke, he resembles a strange graft, fed and transformed by the sap of the national stock. At all events, this judgment is the strongest mark of the difference between the two nations. To reach the English intellect, a Frenchman must make two voyages. When he has crossed the first interval, which is wide, he comes upon Macaulay. Let him re-embark; he must accomplish a second passage, just as long, to arrive at Carlyle for instance--a mind fundamentally Germanic, on the genuine English soil.

[Footnote 299: Macaulay's Works, ed. Lady Trevelyan, 8 vols. 1866; "Essay on Bacon," VI. 222.]

[Footnote 300: Macaulay's Works; "Essay on Bacon," VI. 223.]

[Footnote 301: "Charles himself, and his creature Laud, while they abjured the innocent badges of Popery, retained all its worst vices--a complete subjection of reason to authority, a weak preference of form to substance, a childish passion for mummeries, an idolatrous veneration for the priestly character, and, above all, a merciless intolerance."--Macaulay, V. 24; Milton.

"It is difficult to relate without a pitying smile, that in the sacrifice of the mass, Loyola saw transubstantiation take place, and that, as he stood praying on the steps of the Church of St. Dominic, he saw the Trinity in Unity, and wept aloud with joy and wonder."--Macaulay, VI. 468; Ranke, "History of the Popes."]

[Footnote 302: Macaulay, VI. 39; An Essay on William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.]

[Footnote 303: Macaulay, V. 27; Milton.]

[Footnote 304: Macaulay, V. 35; Milton.]

[Footnote 305: Macaulay, VII. 109; "Life and Writings of Addison."]

[Footnote 306: See in his "Essay on the Life and Writings of Addison" (VII. 78) Macaulay's observations on the "Campaign."]

[Footnote 307: Macaulay, VI. 549; "Warren Hastings."]

[Footnote 308: Ibid. 553.]

[Footnote 309: Macaulay, VI. 555; "Warren Hastings."]

[Footnote 310: Ibid. VI. 619; "Warren Hastings."]

[Footnote 311: Béranger, "Chansons," 2 vols. 1853; Les Boxeurs, ou L'Anglomane.]

[Footnote 312: Macaulay, V. 333; "Southey's Colloquies on Society."]

[Footnote 313: Macaulay, V. 204; "Hallam's Constitutional History."]

[Footnote 314: Ibid. 587; "Burleigh and his Times."]

[Footnote 315: Macaulay, VI. 491; "Comic Dramatists of the Restoration."]

[Footnote 316: Ibid. V. 672; "Lord Mahon's War of the Succession in Spain."]

[Footnote 317: Macaulay, V. 31; "Milton."]

[Footnote 318: Ibid. 595; "Burleigh and his Times."]

[Footnote 319: Macaulay, VI. 628; "Warren Hastings."]

[Footnote 320: Macaulay, I. 2; "History of England before the Restoration," ch. I.]

[Footnote 321: Macaulay, II. 463, "History of England," ch. XI.]

[Footnote 322: Macaulay, II. 465, "History of England," ch. XI.]

[Footnote 323: Macaulay, III. 513, "History of England," ch. XVIII.]

[Footnote 324: Macaulay, III. 519, "History of England," ch. XVIII.]

[Footnote 325: Macaulay, III. 526, "History of England," ch. XVIII.]

CHAPTER FOURTH

PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY--CARLYLE

When we ask Englishmen, especially those under forty, who amongst them are the great thinkers, they first mention Carlyle; but at the same time they advise us not to read him, warning us that we will not understand him at all. Then, of course, we hasten to get the twenty volumes of Carlyle--criticism, history, pamphlets, fantasies, philosophy; we read them with very strange emotions, contradicting every morning our opinion of the night before. We discover at last that we are in presence of a strange animal, a relic of a lost family, a sort of mastodon, who has strayed in a world not made for him. We rejoice in this zoological good luck, and dissect him with minute curiosity, telling ourselves that we shall probably never find another like him.

Part I.--Style and Mind