English Literature
popular. Even to-day, after more than fifty years, such ballads as those on
Virginius and Horatius at the Bridge are favorite pieces in many school
readers.
The _History of England_, Macaulay's masterpiece, is still one of the most
popular historical works in the English language. Originally it was
intended to cover the period from the accession of James II, in 1685, to
the death of George IV, in 1830. Only five volumes of the work were
finished, and so thoroughly did Macaulay go into details that these five
volumes cover only sixteen years. It has been estimated that to complete
the work on the same scale would require some fifty volumes and the labor
of one man for over a century.
In his historical method Macaulay suggests Gibbon. His own knowledge of
history was very great, but before writing he read numberless pages,
consulted original documents, and visited the scenes which he intended to
describe. Thackeray's remark, that "Macaulay reads twenty books to write a
sentence and travels one hundred miles to make a line of description," is,
in view of his industry, a well-warranted exaggeration.
As in his literary essays, he is fond of making heroes, and he throws
himself so heartily into the spirit of the scene he is describing that his
word pictures almost startle us by their vivid reality. The story of
Monmouth's rebellion, for instance, or the trial of the seven bishops, is
as fascinating as the best chapters of Scott's historical novels.
While Macaulay's search for original sources of information suggests the
scientific historian, his use of his material is much more like that of a
novelist or playwright. In his essay on Machiavelli he writes: "The best
portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of
caricature, and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in
which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously
employed. Something is lost in accuracy, but much is gained in
effect."[243] Whether this estimate of historical writing be true or false,
Macaulay employed it in his own work and made his narrative as absorbing as
a novel. To all his characters he gives the reality of flesh and blood, and
in his own words he "shows us over their houses and seats us at their
tables." All that is excellent, but it has its disadvantages. In his
admiration for heroism, Macaulay makes some of his characters too good and
others too bad. In his zeal for details he misses the importance of great
movements, and of great leaders who are accustomed to ignore details; and
in his joy of describing events he often loses sight of underlying causes.
In a word, he is without historical insight, and his work, though
fascinating, is seldom placed among the reliable histories of England.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. To the reader who studies Macaulay's brilliant
essays and a few chosen chapters of his _History_, three things soon become
manifest. First, Macaulay's art is that of a public speaker rather than
that of a literary man. He has a wonderful command of language, and he
makes his meaning clear by striking phrases, vigorous antitheses,
anecdotes, and illustrations. His style is so clear that "he who runs may
read," and from beginning to end he never loses the attention of his
readers. Second, Macaulay's good spirits and enthusiasm are contagious. As
he said himself, he wrote "out of a full head," chiefly for his own
pleasure or recreation; and one who writes joyously generally awakens a
sense of pleasure in his readers. Third, Macaulay has "the defect of his
qualities." He reads and remembers so much that he has no time to think or
to form settled opinions. As Gladstone said, Macaulay is "always conversing
or recollecting or reading or composing, but reflecting never." So he wrote
his brilliant _Essay on Milton_, which took all England by storm, and said
of it afterward that it contained "scarcely a paragraph which his mature
judgment approved." Whether he speaks or writes, he has always before him
an eager audience, and he feels within him the born orator's power to hold
and fascinate. So he gives loose rein to his enthusiasm, quotes from a
hundred books, and in his delight at entertaining us forgets that the first
quality of a critical or historical work is to be accurate, and the second
to be interesting.
THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881)
In marked contrast with Macaulay, the brilliant and cheerful essayist, is
Thomas Carlyle, the prophet and censor of the nineteenth century. Macaulay
is the practical man of affairs, helping and rejoicing in the progress of
his beloved England. Carlyle lives apart from all practical interests,
looks with distrust on the progress of his age, and tells men that truth,
justice, and immortality are the only worthy objects of human endeavor.
Macaulay is delighted with material comforts; he is most at home in
brilliant and fashionable company; and he writes, even when ill and
suffering, with unfailing hopefulness and good nature. Carlyle is like a
Hebrew prophet just in from the desert, and the burden of his message is,
"Woe to them that are at ease in Zion!" Both men are, in different ways,
typical of the century, and somewhere between the two extremes--the
practical, helpful activity of Macaulay and the spiritual agony and
conflict of Carlyle--we shall find the measure of an age which has left the
deepest impress upon our own.
LIFE OF CARLYLE. Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, in 1795, a
few months before Burns's death, and before Scott had published his first
work. Like Burns, he came of peasant stock,--strong, simple, God-fearing
folk, whose influence in Carlyle's later life is beyond calculation. Of his
mother he says, "She was too mild and peaceful for the planet she lived
in"; and of his father, a stone mason, he writes, "Could I write my books
as he built his houses, walk my way so manfully through this shadow world,
and leave it with so little blame, it were more than all my hopes."
Of Carlyle's early school life we have some interesting glimpses in _Sartor
Resartus_. At nine years he entered the Annan grammar school, where he was
bullied by the older boys, who nicknamed him Tom the Tearful. For the
teachers of those days he has only ridicule, calling them "hide-bound
pedants," and he calls the school by the suggestive German name of
_Hinterschlag Gymnasium_. At the wish of his parents, who intended Carlyle
for the ministry, he endured this hateful school life till 1809, when he
entered Edinburgh University. There he spent five miserable years, of which
his own record is: "I was without friends, experience, or connection in the
sphere of human business, was of sly humor, proud enough and to spare, and
had begun my long curriculum of dyspepsia." This nagging illness was the
cause of much of that irritability of temper which frequently led him to
scold the public, and for which he has been harshly handled by unfriendly
critics.
The period following his university course was one of storm and stress for
Carlyle. Much to the grief of the father whom he loved, he had given up the
idea of entering the ministry. Wherever he turned, doubts like a thick fog
surrounded him,--doubts of God, of his fellow-men, of human progress, of
himself. He was poor, and to earn an honest living was his first problem.
He tried successively teaching school, tutoring, the study of law, and
writing miscellaneous articles for the _Edinburgh Encyclopedia_. All the
while he was fighting his doubts, living, as he says, "in a continual,
indefinite, pining fear." After six or seven years of mental agony, which
has at times a suggestion of Bunyan's spiritual struggle, the crisis came
in 1821, when Carlyle suddenly shook off his doubts and found himself. "All
at once," he says in _Sartor_, "there arose a thought in me, and I asked
myself: 'What _Art_ thou afraid of? Wherefore like a coward dost thou
forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped!
What is the sum total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well,
Death; and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may,
will, or can do against thee! Hast thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer
whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample
Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come then; I
will meet it and defy it!' And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream
of fire over my whole soul; and I shook base Fear away from me forever."
This struggle between fear and faith, and the triumph of the latter, is
recorded in two remarkable chapters, "The Everlasting No" and "The
Everlasting Yea," of _Sartor Resartus_.
Carlyle now definitely resolved on a literary life, and began with any work
that offered a bare livelihood. He translated Legendre's _Geometry_ from
the French, wrote numerous essays for the magazines, and continued his
study of German while making translations from that language. His
translation of Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_ Appeared in 1824, his _Life of
Schiller_ in 1825, and his _Specimens of German Romance_ in 1827. He began
at this time a correspondence with Goethe, his literary hero, which lasted
till the German poet's death in 1832. While still busy with "hack work,"
Carlyle, in 1826, married Jane Welsh, a brilliant and beautiful woman,
whose literary genius almost equaled that of her husband. Soon afterwards,
influenced chiefly by poverty, the Carlyles retired to a farm, at Craigen-
puttoch (Hawks' Hill), a dreary and lonely spot, far from friends and even
neighbors. They remained here six years, during which time Carlyle wrote
many of his best essays, and _Sartor Resartus_, his most original work. The
latter went begging among publishers for two years, and was finally
published serially in _Fraser's Magazine_, in 1833-1834. By this time
Carlyle had begun to attract attention as a writer, and, thinking that one
who made his living by the magazines should be in close touch with the
editors, took his wife's advice and moved to London "to seek work and
bread." He settled in Cheyne Row, Chelsea,--a place made famous by More,
Erasmus, Bolingbroke, Smollett, Leigh Hunt, and many lesser lights of
literature,--and began to enjoy the first real peace he had known since
childhood. In 1837 appeared _The French Revolution_, which first made
Carlyle famous; and in the same year, led by the necessity of earning
money, he began the series of lectures--_German. Literature_ (1837),
_Periods of European Culture_ (1838), _Revolutions of Modern Europe_
(1839), _Heroes and Hero Worship_ (1841)--which created a sensation in
London. "It was," says Leigh Hunt, "as if some Puritan had come to life
again, liberalized by German philosophy and his own intense reflection and
experience."
Though Carlyle set himself against the spirit of his age, calling the
famous Reform Bill a "progress into darkness," and democracy "the rule of
the worst rather than the best," his rough sincerity was unquestioned, and
his remarks were more quoted than those of any other living man. He was
supported, moreover, by a rare circle of friends,--Edward Irving, Southey,
Sterling, Landor, Leigh Hunt, Dickens, Mill, Tennyson, Browning, and, most
helpful of all, Emerson, who had visited Carlyle at Craigenputtoch in 1833.
It was due largely to Emerson's influence that Carlyle's works were better
appreciated, and brought better financial rewards, in America than in
England.
Carlyle's fame reached its climax in the monumental _History of Frederick
the Great_ (1858-1865), published after thirteen years of solitary toil,
which, in his own words, "made entire devastation of home life and
happiness." The proudest moment of his life was when he was elected to
succeed Gladstone as lord rector of Edinburgh University, in 1865, the year