Milton in The Edinburgh Review (1825). This was the first of the long series of brilliant literary and historical essays which he contributed to the same periodical. He entered Parliament in 1830 as member for Calne and almost immediately was acknowledged to be one of the first orators in the House. After the Reform Bill he sat for Leeds; but in 1834 was sent out to India as a member of the Council in Calcutta and as President of the Law Commission. Returning home in 1838, he was elected member for Edinburgh in 1839, became Secretary for War in the same year, and Paymaster of the Forces in 1846. The religious prejudices of his constituents lost him his seat in 1847, and from that time forward he gave up politics for literature. He was returned for Edinburgh once more in 1852, but took very little part in the debates of the House. In 1857 he was created Lord Macaulay of Rothley, and died at the close of 1859. (1842). "Essays" style and matter. Macaulay's first published book was actually the Lays of Ancient Rome (1842), a volume of stirring verse which, although distinguished from the highest poetry by many ob"Lays of Ancient vious differences, well deserved its popularity and Rome" has commended itself to all but the most fastidious critics. Its characteristics are those which appear in his work again and again-a vigour and directness of speech without circumlocution or artificial selection of phrase, a singular purity in the use of ordinary English, and a clear visual impression of its subject which goes far to make up for its absence of the higher poetic qualities. The book was eminently successful, but Macaulay's real genius was first seen in the Essays (1843) reprinted from the Edinburgh. They are (1843) their philosophical and historical disquisitions embracing a vast range of subjects; but the larger number and the more important relate to English history. No single book, perhaps, has had a greater influence on the mind of Englishmen of the present day. Macaulay's judgments and estimates of character are familiar to every person of any education. The reason of this is the clearness and picturesqueness of his style. Every sentence, conveyed in sound, matter-of-fact English, carries its own meaning without hesitation, and has the double merit of satisfying the scholar and the ordinary reader at one and the same time; while, with its meaning, it conveys a vivid sense of reality, a picture of its own. This remarkable style is the perfection of what may be called the Edinburgh manner : its parent is to be found in Jeffrey's essays: it is the brilliant younger brother of Brougham's periodical work. It labours, as is natural, under certain mannerisms and a passion for antithesis which often carries Macaulay far beyond his mark and even into rash assertions. Nor is its matter exactly judicial: Macaulay wrote as a Whig for a Whig review, and indulged in the delights of partisanship: sometimes, as in the famous essay on Dr. Johnson, he made an arrogant attack on a book for whose author or editor he felt personal dislike. But for all this, his brilliant manner, his encyclopædic information, the general soundness of his judgment outside party questions, and his ability to reconstruct the people and features of a past age for his readers, make his Essays the classic book of English criticism. The History of England from the Accession of Fames II, which began to appear in 1849, and, left incomplete at his death, received the addition of a posthumous volume in 1861, is only less famous than the Essays. Its The History of object, inconsistent with the critical spirit of history, England" was the glorification of William III and the Whig (1849-61): triumph of 1688. Its second defect lay in that very excellence. its pictorial clearness of vision which makes Macaulay so fascinating a writer. He saw merely the outside of things and had no perception of the eternal truths which lie below the surface of history; he had a phenomenal sense of the picturesque and of the general proportion of events; his diagnosis of character and policy was sound and forcible so far as it applied to a particular man and a particular time, but it was entirely wanting in that insight which makes Carlyle's less finished pictures so full of suggestion to every student. Yet, these defects-its partisanship and its merely pictorial character-apart, Macaulay's History is the most brilliant work of its kind in English. He gave his authorities real life, infusing a living picturesqueness into their frequent dryness; he knew each scene which he brought into his work; his generals and statesmen live in his pages as they live in their portraits by Lely or Kneller. As a vivid picture of a great historical period, written with a splendid command of language, teeming with life and interest on every page, the book is without a rival, and is Macaulay's abiding claim to immortality. (1818-1894). § 4. The most remarkable historian of the nineteenth century, after Macaulay and Carlyle (who was philosopher and teacher rather than historian), was the versatile JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. His father was Archdeacon of J.A. FROUDE Totnes, and his brother, Richard Hurrell Froude, was one of the early apostles of the Tractarian movement. Froude himself was at Westminster and Oriel College, Oxford, and afterwards obtained a fellowship at Exeter. In the thick of the Oxford movement he took Holy Orders, but was one of those who, terrified by Newman's secession from the Anglican Church, abandoned his faith and became a philosophical sceptic. His publication of The Nemesis of Faith (1847) was the beginning of a very unpleasant epoch in his life; he resigned his fellowship and, after some hesitation as to another appointment, began to write for the magazines. The opening volumes of his History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the defeat of the Armada were published in 1856, the year after Macaulay's third and fourth volumes. The whole book was completed in ENG. LIT. 3 A 1869. Side by side with this immense work there came into the world various volumes of collected essays, several of extraordinary brilliance, and many illustrative of the History, under the general title of Short Studies on Great Subjects. Not content with his great work, he published, between 1871 and 1874, his English in Ireland. The great scheme of which he has left us fragmentary results was a history of the times of Charles V and Philip II. This, however, he did not live to carry out; while, from 1874 until his appointment as Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford in 1892, his attention was diverted from his main purpose by colonial travel and by his work (1881-4) on Carlyle's Reminiscences and biography. The scandal aroused by his alleged maltreatment of his dead friend and master's memory was a nine days' wonder; partly justifiable as it was, public opinion was very unfair to him. In 1889 he wrote an historical romance, The Two Chiefs of Dunboy. His final volumes, in the shape of new historical essays, a fresh examination of The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon, from the point of view of the Spanish Ambassador at Henry VIII's Court, and three fascinating volumes of Oxford lectures, were in no sense inferior to his earliest work. He died at Salcombe in Devonshire. Faults of Froude's work. Froude was, like Macaulay, a fierce partisan. He is likely to be remembered, too, for the greatest defect in his work, on which he insisted to the exclusion of its merits-his indefensible apology for Henry VIII, and, closely allied with it, his ferocious attack on Mary Queen of Scots. No historian has treated his subject with the same partiality and favouritism, or so wilfully has attempted to make and unmake established reputations among the dead. Naturally, Froude made more enemies than friends among the living. From The Nemesis of Faith to Oceana, and even later, he was at war, not with individuals, but with regiments of competent critics. As he belaboured Queen Mary, so was he belaboured; his advocacy of Henry VIII found him no advocate. In addition to this, he supported his arguments by a lamentable inaccuracy. No man was more sincere in his statements; no man, on the other hand, was less capable of putting them correctly. His evidence on the Spanish archives and the Casket letters is simply not to be trusted. cal sense. Yet Froude was a great, a very great, historian. He did by Elizabethan history what Macaulay had done by the history of the Revolution. And he had, with all his inaccuracy His histori- of detail, a firm grasp of the meaning of history. 'History," he himself wrote, "is the account of the actions of men. . The actions without the motives are nothing, for they may be interpreted in many ways, and can only be understood in their causes." Macaulay wrote with an eye to effect, which regarded actions far more than motive; Froude, under the influence of Carlyle, learned to see the importance of motive in human affairs. His History, his essays and lectures, are all serious studies of the human spirit, going beneath the surface and searching for the motive cause of things. His conclusions are frequently insufficient, never impartial: but he gives the best possible statement of his side of the case, in the firm belief that he is right. Joined to this sincerity, with its argumentative and dogmatic faults, is a vivid picturesqueness, not far, if at all, inferior to Macaulay's. Froude had less aptitude for combining common words in unforgettable phrases, but he had none the less that lively interest in every past scene and personage which must underlie an interest in human life. His style, often rising to heights of real nobility, is disfigured by few mannerisms: if it is less brilliant than Macaulay's, it has far more variety. It is always strong and forcible, occasionally reminding the reader, although only distantly, of Carlyle : sometimes, in the earlier books, it is really eloquent. In his later days Froude's manner became more abrupt, and the short, jerky sentences of the admirable Life of Erasmus or the Lectures on the Council of Trent are a little monotonous and often awkward. In no sense was Froude a master of style he used English rather as a strong and useful weapon of offence and defence, and, in his hard-won battles, employed it with not a little glory to himself. § 5. One of Froude's chief opponents and his predecessor in the chair of History at Oxford was EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN, fellow of Trinity. He was born at Writchley Abbey in Staffordshire, went to no public school, and E. A. was fortunate enough to obtain his fellowship with (1823-1892). only a second class. On his marriage in 1847 FREEMAN he resigned his fellowship, and, being provided already with a sufficient income, found a congenial occupation in architectural and historical research and study. Architecture was the subject which first engrossed his attention, and he wrote a History of Architecture, published in 1849. His corresponding interest in archæology led him insensibly into the wider field of history. In 1856 he brought out a small volume of lectures on the History and Conquests of the Saracens, which shows that the leading characteristics of his thought and manner already were fixed. Of his pet doctrines, which were many, the public by this time had learned much in the columns of The Saturday Review. These were given a more lasting form in his History of Federal Government (1863), which never went beyond the first volume. The affairs of the next few years in America and Germany were unkind to some of his views, and he postponed proceeding with his work till their issue became clearer. He never resumed the task-the only high design which he laid aside of his own free will. Few will regret the consequent loss, for he turned from this scheme Conquest" to a History of the Norman Conquest for which, (1867-76). during nearly twenty years, he had been collecting materials. The "Norman He now pursued the composition with such diligence that the first volume was published in 1867. Being a rapid writer and having the full equipment for the treatment of his great theme, he was able to send forth the second in 1868, the third in 1869, and the fourth, which winds up the story of the Conquest, in 1871. The portly fifth volume, on the effects of the Conquest, involved heavier and more tedious labour, and did not appear till 1876. Thus Freeman's great history of the most important event in English history overlapped Froude, as Froude's work overlapped Macaulay's. histories, etc. This great work was by no means his only production during the years of its composition. More than half a dozen other volumes of varying size and importance, historical Later or founded on history, came out while the greatest was in progress. Of these, the Old English History for Children (1869), The Growth of the English Constitution, Comparative Politics (1873), and four volumes of Historical Essays still have a high general value. Freeman's warmth of conviction and hatred of Turkish rule drove him into vehement protest against Lord Beaconsfield's policy on the Eastern question, which he continued to denounce unsparingly until the storm had passed. His chief expression of opinion on this subject is contained in The Ottoman Power in Europe (1877). In 1881 appeared the third of his great contributions to history, The Historical Geography of Europe, in two volumes; and in 1882 he supplemented his Norman Conquest with two further volumes on The Reign of William Rufus—a signal instance, not only of his remarkable minuteness of knowledge, but of the unbridled dominion which his sins of diffuseness and iteration had gained over him. The year after, he was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, and his later books were made up chiefly of his professorial lectures. Of these The Methods of Historical Study and The Chief Periods of European History, both belonging to 1886, are fair samples. But the largest of his schemes was yet to be undertaken. So great was his energy and faith in his own powers that in his last years he set to work on a History of Sicily, designed on a scale which a dozen thick volumes scarcely would have satisfied. In 1891 he published the first two volumes, and soon announced a third. But this was destined to appear posthumously. An insatiable student of historic grounds and sites, he had been, especially of late years, a great traveller on the Continent, and, while in quest of new material, he fell a victim to small-pox at Alicante. It was Freeman's misfortune to be a mere historian; from this limitation and from his strange vehemence of nature sprang his worst defects. History was an overmastering passion with him; it possessed him, narrowing his vision by its very breadth, and blinding his sense of other things by its very light. "History," he said, "is only past General remarks. |