XX 



would not have been content without a host of other arguments, and 

 so would have destroyed the effect of his own confutation. Still it is 

 remarkable that on two occasions a speech of Macaulay's actually 

 turned the vote of the house, and carried the question (a very rare 

 event) in his own way, the debate on the Copyright Act, and the 

 question of Judges holding seats in the House of Commons. Though 

 he took his seat, Lord Macaulay never spoke in the House of Peers ; 

 he went down, we believe, more than once, with the intention of 

 speaking, but some unexpected turn in the debate deprived him of 

 his opportunity ; his friends, who knew the feeble state of his health 

 at that time, were almost rejoiced at their disappointment in not 

 hearing him in that which would have been so congenial a field 

 for his studied and matured eloquence. 



As a poet, the fame of Macaulay rests, with the exception of the 

 stanzas above alluded to, and one or two small pieces, on his 

 Ballads, his ' Lays of Rome,' his * Armada,' his * Cavalier ' and 

 'Cromwellian,' and his * Ivry and Moncontour.' In other depart- 

 ments of poetry he might have been endangered by his affluence and 

 prodigality ; his prize poems, and some of his early writings betray 

 the danger. But the essence of the ballad, of popular poetry (for 

 which in all its forms, from the Prince of ballad writers Homer, 

 to the common street ballad, which he caught up instantaneously, 

 and could repeat by the score, he had an absolute passion), is 

 simplicity simplicity not inconsistent with the utmost picturesque- 

 ness, with the richest word-painting. Its whole excellence is in ra- 

 pidity of movement, short sudden transition, sharp emphatic touches 

 of tenderness or of the pathetic, in above all, life, unreposing, un- 

 flagging, vigorous, stirring life, with words enough, but not an idle 

 word, words which strike home to the heart, and rivet themselves 

 on the memory ; a cadence which enthralls and will not die away from 

 the ear. The popularity of Macaulay's ballads is the best proof of 

 their excellence ; they have become the burden of a host of imitators. 

 Popularity may be a bad test of some of the higher kinds of poetry. 

 Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, to be fully appreciated, may require a 

 thoughtful, defined, enlightened constituency ; ballad poetry may be 

 safely left to universal suffrage. 



Even in his famous Essays Macaulay had not satisfied his own 

 ambition, nor reached that place after which he aspired in English 



