MEMORIALS OF A MAN OF LETTERS. 



25 



" In my eyes, his defense of Clive and the au- 

 dacious ground of it merit execration. It is a most 

 serious and, to me, a painful subject. No — no — 

 all the sentences a man can turn, even if he made 

 them in pure taste, and not in Macaulay's snip- 

 snap taste of the Lower Empire — all won't avail 

 against a rotten morality. The first and the most 

 sacred duty of a public man, and, above all, an 

 author, is to keep by honest and true doctrine — 

 never to relax — never to countenance vice— ever to 

 hold fast by virtue. "What ! Are we gravely to be 

 told, at this time of day, that a set-off may be al- 

 lowed for public and, therefore, atrocious crimes, 

 though he admits that a common felon pleads it in 

 vain ? Gracious God, where is this to end ! What 

 horrors will it not excuse ! Tiberius's great ca- 

 pacity, his first-rate wit, that which made him the 

 charm of society, will next, I suppose, be set up 

 to give a splendor to the inhabitants of Oaprea?. 

 Why, Clive's address, and his skill, and his cour- 

 age, are not at all more certain, nor are they qual- 

 ities of a different cast. Every great ruffian, who 

 has filled the world with blood and tears, will be 

 sure of an acquittal, because of his talents and his 

 success. After I had, and chiefly in the Edinburgh 

 Review, been trying to restore a better, a purer, a 

 higher standard of morals, and to wean men from 

 the silly love of military glory, for which they are 

 the first to pay, I find the Edinburgh Review preach- 

 ing, not merely the old and common heresies, but 

 ten thousand times worse, adopting a vile princi- 

 ple never yet avowed in terms, though too often 

 and too much taken for a guide, unknown to those 

 who followed it, in forming their judgments of 

 great and successful criminals." 



Of the essay on Warren Hastings he thought 

 better, "bating some vulgarity and Macaulay's 

 usual want of all power of reasoning." Lord 

 Cockburn wrote to Mr. Napier (1844) a word or 

 two on Macaulay. "Delighting as I do," says 

 Lord Cockburn, " in his thoughts, views, and 

 knowledge, I feel too often compelled to curse 

 and roar at his words and the structure of his 

 composition. As a corrupter of style, he is more 

 dangerous to the young than Gibbon. His se- 

 ductive powers greater, his defects worse." All 

 good critics now accept this as true. Jeffrey, by- 

 the-way, speaking of the same essay, thinks that 

 Macaulay rates Chatham too high. " I have al- 

 ways had an impression," he says " (though per- 

 haps an ignorant and unjust one), that there was 

 more good luck than wisdom in his foreign pol- 

 icy, and very little to admire, except his general 

 purity, in any part of his domestic administra- 

 tion." 



It is interesting to find a record, in the ener- 

 getic speech of contemporary hatred, of the way 

 in which orthodox science regarded a once-famous 

 book of heterodox philosophy. Here is Prof. 

 Sedgwick on the "Vestiges of Creation:" 



"I now know the 'Vestiges' well, and I de- 

 test the book for its shallowness, for the intense 

 vulgarity of its philosophy, for its gross, unblush- 

 ing materialism, for its silly credulity in catering 

 out of every fool's dish, for its utter ignorance of 

 what is meant by induction, for its gross (and I 

 dare to say, filthy) views of physiology — most ig- 

 norant and most false — and for its shameful shuf- 

 fling of the facts of geology so as to make them 

 play a rogue's game. I believe some woman is 

 the author ; partly from the fair dress and agree- 

 able exterior of the ' Vestiges,' and partly from 

 the ignorance the book displays of all sound physi- 

 cal logic. A man who knew so much of the sur- 

 face of physics must, at least on some one point 

 or other, have taken a deeper plunge ; but all parts 

 of the book are shallow. . . . From the bottom of 

 my soul I loathe and detest the ' Vestiges.' 'Tis 

 a rank pill of asafoetida and arsenic, covered with 

 gold-leaf. I do, therefore, trust that your contrib- 

 utor has stamped with an iron heel upon the head 

 of the filthy abortion, and put an end to its crawl- 

 ings. There is not one subject the author handles 

 bearing on life, of which he does not take a de- 

 grading view." 



Mr. Napier seems to have asked him to write on 

 the book, and Sedgwick's article, the first he ever 

 wrote for a review, eventually appeared (1845), 

 without, it is to be hoped, too much of the raging 

 contempt of the above and other letters. " I do 

 feel contempt, and, I hope, I shall express it. 

 Rats hatched by the incubations of a goose — 

 dogs playing dominos — monkeys breeding men 

 and women — all distinctions between natural and 

 moral done away — the Bible proved all a lie, and 

 mental philosophy one mass of folly, all of it to 

 be pounded down and done over again in the 

 cooking-vessels of Gall and Spurzheim ! " This 

 was the beginning of a long campaign, which is 

 just now drawing near its close. Let us, at least, 

 be glad that orthodoxy, whether scientific or re- 

 ligious, has mended its temper. One among other 

 causes of the improvement, as we have already 

 said, is probably to be found in the greater self- 

 restraint which comes from the fact of the writer 

 appearing in his own proper person. 



— Fortnightly Revi^u. 



