himself avowedly the task of recording the condition and disposition of the larger mass of the people, their manners, their progress and their well-being.

He gloried in the practical, and held Lord Bacon the greatest of philosophers, because he cared nothing for abstract theories; everything must come to the test of actuality. The following fierce denunciation of Charles II. and James II. illustrates his hatred of baseness in high places, and shows also the eloquence of his prose as compared with the music of his verse:

The government had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning creature, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch; and England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the accursed of God and man was a second time driven forth to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a byword and a shaking of the head to the nations.—Essay on Milton.

A main feature in the history is its clearness. His style is lucidity itself, and his method is the statement and re-statement of what he wants his reader to understand, so often and so variously that he can not help comprehending it.

On this great matter of literary style, Macaulay himself speaks with no uncertain sound: "How little the all-important art of making meaning pellucid is studied now! Hardly any popular writer except myself thinks of it."

By all these means he interesting as any novel.

makes his immense history as Of the second volume 30,000 copies were ordered before publication.

The best and most impartial critics now say that Macaulay was too fond of dramatic and pictorial statements; that he used only the brightest of lights and deepest of shadWhen he wished to condemn a man who deserves blame, he painted him of an unnatural blackness, without

Ows.

any redeeming feature; while for his heroes, no praise was too great; and if a flaw appeared it must be palliated, excused or explained away. This criticism is no doubt true, for no thing or person is ever quite one-sided. Good and bad exist everywhere, with all gradations between them.

There seemed

In 1857 he was made a peer of England, under the title of Baron Macaulay of Rothley; and consequently is properly spoken of in history as Lord Macaulay. No doubt he was proud of the title, though one is apt to think that he reflected more honor on the peerage than he received from it. As he left no children, dying unmarried, his peerage died with him. He lies buried in Westminster Abbey. In social life he was immensely admired. no subject on which he did not have some knowledge; for his study was broad and his memory prodigious. He talked readily and fluently, casting into the shade nearly every other talker in every company. One of the friendly critics acknowledged his splendor and supremacy; but added with some bitterness: Macaulay would be faultless if he would only give us a few brilliant flashes of silence!"

66

Most of the great historians of the present century (always excepting Macaulay) are Americans, and therefore do not come within the scope of the present work.

The "Popular History of England," by Charles Knight (1791-1873), a richly illustrated work, gives an excellent idea not only of historical incidents, but of the manners, customs, constitutional changes etc., of the country up to the time of finishing the history (1860). Mr. Knight was a most industrious writer and compiler, and as he was also a publisher, he was able to do much to promote extensive popular reading. The "Library of Entertaining Knowledge," the "Penny Magazine," the "Penny Cyclopedia," with many similar undertakings, came from his press, and he devoted himself to the spread of literature with an unselfish enterprise which merits the highest praise.

The lamented Edward Augustus Freeman (1823-92), who has but just passed away from among us, made most valuable contributions to historical literature, mostly in the way of studies of detached portions of it. The subjects which came under his attention were extremely varied. Immense learning and perfect accuracy of statement are his strong points; diffuseness and unnecessary multiplication of details his weak ones. Whatever he wrote, however, is worth reading.

The finest piece of philosophical writing which takes in the whole history of England, is that of John Richard Green (1837-83), whose "Short History of the English People" has already become a standard work. More than a hundred thousand copies of it were sold in England, during the author's life, and nearly as many in the United States. Encouraged by this reception he added to his materials, broadened the scope of his work and produced the "History of the English People,” in four volumes. afterward wrote "The Making of England," and at the time of his death was engaged upon "The Conquest of England." Mr. Green achieves, more perfectly than did Macaulay, the task which the latter set for himself; namely, the depicting of the life of common people. He says in his preface:

He

It is with this purpose that I have devoted more space to Chaucer than to Cressy; to Caxton than to the petty strife of Yorkist and Lancastrian; to the Poor-Law of Elizabeth than her victory at Cadiz; to the Methodist revival than to the escape of the Young Pretender.

His English style differs broadly from the flowing periods of Macaulay, with their splendid display of contrast, antithesis and strong lights and shadows. Mr. Green deals in extremely short sentences, the paragraph devoted to a single event being so broken up by periods as to seem almost "jerky." Yet this, if a fault, is better than its opposite, for the short phrases are simple; more easy to read, to comprehend and to remember.

CHAPTER LII.

SOME GREAT ESSAYISTS. CARLYLE.

ALTER SAVAGE LANDOR (1775-1864) was a poet and a prose - writer, great in both characters but admirable to brother poets and prosewriters rather than to the world at large. He inherited a large fortune and was educated with the utmost care at Rugby and Oxford. Latin was as familiar to him as English. Yet he was of so rebellious and intractable a nature that he disdained to compete for college honors, and (like many of the literary men of his generation) left Oxford without completing his course, being expelled for some insubordination. He and other fiery young enthusiasts were interested in favor of liberty, and much moved by the dawning of free government in America and by the French Revolution, Wigs and hair-powder were the mark of the old order of conservative gentlemen, while the revolutionists wore their own hair, long and powderless; and Landor boasted of having been "almost the first student who wore his hair without powder."

Soon after leaving college he wrote the first-perhaps the best of his poems, "Gebir;" and his utter indifference to popular appreciation is shown by the fact that he wrote it partly in Latin. It is so overloaded and involved in style and thought as to be extremely obscure, and Southey likens the more comprehensible passages to "flashes of lightning at midnight." No wonder that scarcely a hundred copies of it were sold! He afterward wrote another poem, "Count Julian," which the publisher to whom he offered it declined to publish even at Landor's expense; which so excited his rage that he threw in the fire a third which he had begun.

Mrs. Oliphant describes his life thus:

.

The career of Landor was full of storm and tumult, and, it must be added, of the strangest sincere braggadocio, vanity, generosity and extravagance throughout. He quarreled with all his surroundings and did everything that in him lay to make the neighborhood too hot to hold him. After throwing away the greater part of his fortune he went off in profound offence and bitterness to Italy, where he lived for most of the remainder of his life. He married, rather, apparently, because he had been lucky enough to find a perfectly unsuitable person than for any other motive. Landor was about forty when he went to Italy, and while there he wrote the best known of his works the "Imaginary Conversations.” These are fanciful talks in which the author puts into the mouths of dead great men speeches supposed to be characteristic of them. They require, therefore, much scholarship in the reader to appreciate their aptness. To the average reader, the most charming of his writings is his "Pericles and Aspasia," which consists largely of letters supposed to be written from Athens by Aspasia to a friend at home, and breathes the very spirit of classic Greece.

The poet lived to a great age, and the end of his life was filled with the love and respect of younger men of letters.

Near the end of the eighteenth century, a gentle, pathetic presence comes upon the scene; that of Charles Lamb (1775-1834). He was of the humblest origin, his father, John Lamb, having worn livery as "servant companion” to a London dignitary; while Charles himself got his education as a "Blue-coat boy," or inmate of Christ's Hospital, where he was schoolfellow of the poet Coleridge, who became his lifelong friend. At eighteen he began a service in the accounting office of the great East India Company which lasted thirty-three years. The hundred thick business volumes which he filled with his delicate hand-writing in this long service he used to call his true "works;" his few published essays and poems bearing to them but a very small