Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/540

532 imagination. He lived to enjoy these as fully as a man can enjoy, or taste, the pleasures of posthumous fame, by anticipated distinction. Yet he was not prone to exaggerate his own importance, and he looked at it, willingly enough, from the comical side. Thus he writes in March 1850:—

At last I have attained true glory. As I walked through Fleet Street the day before yesterday, I saw a copy of Hume at a bookseller's window with the following label: "Only 2l 2s. Hume's 'History of England' in eight volumes, highly valuable as an introduction to Macaulay." I laughed so convulsively that the other people who were staring at the books took me for a poor demented gentleman. Alas for poor David! As for me, only one height of renown yet remains to be attained. I am not yet in Madame Tussaud's waxwork.

I have seen the hippopotamus, both asleep and awake; and I can assure you that, awake or asleep, he is the ugliest of the works of God. But you must hear of my triumphs. Thackeray swears that he was eye-witness and ear-witness of the proudest event of my life. Two damsels were just about to pass that doorway which we, on Monday, in vain attempted to enter, when I was pointed out to them. "Mr. Macaulay!" cried the lovely pair. "Is that Mr. Macaulay? Never mind the hippopotamus." And, having paid a shilling to see behemoth, they left him in the very moment at which he was about to display himself to them, in order to see—but spare my modesty. I can wish for nothing more on earth, now that Madame Tussaud, in whose pantheon I once hoped for a place, is dead.

Or, to quote another form of honour paid to his memory—that perhaps which he would himself most highly have appreciated—amongst the national relics in the British Museum a few lines traced by his hand have been deemed worthy to find a place, as one of the choicest of our treasures.

A manuscript page of his "History," thickly scored with dashes and erasures,—it is the passage in the twenty-fifth chapter where Sir Hans Sloane is mentioned as "the founder of the magnificent museum which is one of the glories of our country,"—is preserved at that museum in a cabinet, which may truly be called the place of honour; within whose narrow limits are gathered together a rare collection of objects such as Englishmen of all classes and parties regard with a common reverence and pride. There may be seen Nelson's hasty sketch of the line of battle at the Nile; and the sheet of paper on which Wellington computed the strength of the cavalry regiments that were to fight at Waterloo; and the note-book of Locke; and the autographs of Samuel Johnson's "Irene," and Ben Jonson's "Masque of Queens;" and the rough copy of the translation of the "Iliad," written, as Pope loved to write, on the margin of frayed letters and the backs of tattered envelopes. It is pleasant to think what Macaulay's feelings would have been, if, when he was rhyming and castle-building among the summer-houses at Barley Wood, or the laurel-walks at Aspenden, or under the limes and horse-chestnuts in the Cambridge Gardens, he could have been assured that the day would come when he should be invited to take his place in such a noble company.

But indeed no form of human honour and reward was wanting to his success. The Institute of France conferred on him the rank of an associate. Oxford made him a doctor of laws. The town council of Cambridge elected him in 1857 to the high-stewardship of the borough—an honorary office which had been held by the protector Somerset, by Bacon, by Oliver Cromwell, and by Clarendon. The members of the Prussian Order of Merit elected him a knight. And soon after his health compelled him to retire from the representation of Edinburgh, the queen raised him to the rank of a peer of England—the first example of a peerage bestowed on literary genius, for at the time it was granted Macaulay had ceased to be a politician. It was, however, not unwelcome to him that this mark of the queen's favour was conferred by the hand of Lord Palmerston. Though Lord Palmerston was certainly not a representative of Whig opinions, but rather of the liberal side of Toryism, his high-spirit, his pluck, and vigour in action had always exercised a powerful attraction over the mind of Macaulay. In 1852, when he was dismissed from the Foreign Office, Macaulay wrote in his journal:—

December 24.—Palmerston is out. It was high time; but I cannot help being sorry. A daring, indefatigable, high-spirited man; but too fond of conflict, and too ready to sacrifice everything to victory when once he was in the ring.

In fact Macaulay liked Lord Palmerston, not only in spite of his defects, but in some degree for his defects, which warmed his imagination. It was therefore with peculiar pleasure that he received life peerage from so friendly a hand. He took his seat with modest pride beside the representatives of the historic families of England, whose forefathers were to him better known than his own contemporaries. But his elevation to the peerage produced no other results. He never spoke in the