LORD MACAULAY. 31 



They are here ! They rush on ! We are broken ! We are gone ! 

 Our left is bonie before them like stubble on the blast, 

 O Lord, put forth thy might ! O Lord defend the right 

 Stand back to back, in God's name, and fight it to the last. 



Stout Skippon hath a wound ; the centre hath given ground 

 Hark ! hark— What means the trampling of horsemen on our rear ? 

 Whose banner do I sec, boys ? ' Tis he, thank God, 'tis he boys. 

 Bear up another minute ! brave Oliver is here. 



Their heads all stooping low, their points all in a row 

 Like a whirlwind on the trees, like a deluge on the dykes 

 Our Cuirassiers have bm'st on the ranks of the accurst, 

 A nd at a shock have scattered the forest of his pikes. 



Soon after he was invited by Jeffery, the editor of the Edinburgh 

 Review to contribute to that periodical. Then followed that series of 

 brilliant and inimitable essays which were poured out in rapid succession 

 for the space of twenty years. The first of these was his essay on Milton. 

 In his late years he spoke deprecatingly of this performance — " that it was 

 overloaded with gaudy and ungi-aceful ornament, and contained scarcely a 

 paragraph which his matured judgment approved." Not such was the 

 verdict of the public who read it. And indeed if a literary performance 

 is to be judged by the influence it exerts upon others — by the power it 

 exerts over the opinions of those who read it — then his essay must be 

 regarded as one of his greatest efEorts. Cromwell and the commonwealth 

 had been held up to universal scorn by nearly all the historians and 

 political writers from the 17th century downwards — and the hasty and 

 uncharitable judgment found a place even in the Prayer-book. Macaulay 

 nobly defended Cromwell in his essay, and in such a way as to carry 

 conviction in the minds of all who read it. Educated men do not now 

 regard Cromwell as our forefathers did, and as Pope has described him — 

 and this change in public opinion was in the first instance mainly owing to 

 Macaulay's essay on Milton. In this defence he added no new historical 

 materials — he added no new facts — but by his skill as a logician, and in 

 noble rhetoric, he made those materials assume a form which apparently 

 they had not before. 



Macaulay was not a student of nature, and his images and figures are 

 rarely drawn from external objects. He found in books the images he 

 sought, and the Bible was not omitted. Prom childhood he was 

 a diligent student of the bible — his home was the abode of the 

 Evangelical Alliance, and he always seems to linger longer and dwell 

 with peculiar pleasure on images taken from the siicred volume. His 

 comparison of Lord Bacon to Moses standing on Mount Pisjah may 



