Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/542

534 never even had a house. He now removed from the Albany to an agreeable villa on Campden Hill, with a gallery to the south and a garden—an abode perfectly suited to him: and he continued, with increasing liberality, to assist those who had any claims on him, and a great many of those who had not. The appeals to him from distressed literary men were numberless, but he never turned a deaf ear to them. One morning a gentleman calls on him and relates his embarrassments; he was a Cambridge man and his name was known in philology; Macaulay is moved, and without even ascertaining his identity, gives him a cheque for a hundred pounds. His generosity, when his heart was touched, and his heart was easily touched, was really unbounded.

Macaulay lived exactly four years after the publication of the second portion of his "History," and had his health and energy not been greatly impaired, that time would have sufficed to carry him to the close of the reign of Anne. But the truth is that although he had only then completed his fifty-fifth year he was prematurely old—as old, physically, as most men are at seventy. In intellectual power and in the gift of memory he suffered no decline. It is a subject of eternal regret that he should not so far have husbanded or applied his time and strength as to include the reign of Anne in his "History"—that reign which has been so often attempted, and as yet so inadequately described.

Gradually and unwillingly Macaulay acquiesced in the conviction that he must submit to leave untold that very portion of English history which he was competent to treat as no man again will treat it. Others may study the reign of Anne with a more minute and exclusive diligence,—the discovery of materials hitherto concealed cannot fail from time to time to throw fresh light upon transactions so extensive and complicated as those which took place between the rupture of the peace of Ryswick and the accession of the house of Brunswick; but it may safely be affirmed that few or none of Macaulay's successors will be imbued like him with the enthusiasm of the period. There are phases of literary taste which pass away, never to recur; and the early associations of future men of letters will seldom be connected with "The Rape of the Lock," and the "Essay on Criticism,"—with "The Spectator," "The Guardian," "The Freeholder," the "Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus," and the "History of John Bull."

But Macaulay's youth was nourished upon Pope, and Bolingbroke, and Atterbury, and Defoe. Everything which has been written by them, or about them, was as familiar to him as "The Lady of the Lake," and "The Bride of Abydos," were to the generation which was growing up when Lockhart's "Life of Scott" and Moore's "Life of Byron" were making their first appearance in the circulating libraries. He had Prior's burlesque verses, and Arbuthnot's pasquinades, as completely at his fingers'-ends as a clever public-schoolboy of fifty years ago had the "Rejected Addresses," or the poetry of the Anti-Jacobin. He knew every pamphlet which had been put forth by Swift, or Steele, or Addison as well as Tories of 1790 knew their Burke, or Radicals of 1820 knew their Cobbett. There were times when he amused himself with the hope that he might even yet be permitted to utilize these vast stores of information, off each separate fragment of which he could so easily lay his hand. His diary shows him to have spent more than one summer afternoon "walking in the portico, and reading pamphlets of Queen Anne's time." But he had no real expectation that the knowledge which he thus acquired would ever be turned to account.

In truth he was conscious that, with no acute disease, and with little actual suffering, the sand of life was well-nigh spent in the hour-glass. He turned with deeper affection to those he loved. His tears flowed more readily at any passage of his favourite authors that touched his sensibility, or at any kind and generous action which kindled his admiration. To use Mr. Trevelyan's touching language:—

Of the feelings which he entertained towards the great minds of bygone ages it is not for any one except himself to speak. He has told us how his debt to them was incalculable; how they guided him to truth; how they filled his mind with noble and graceful images; how they stood by him in all vicissitudes,—comforters in sorrow, nurses in sickness, companions in solitude, "the old friends who are never seen with new faces; who are the same in wealth and in poverty, in glory and in obscurity." Great as were the honours and possessions which Macaulay acquired by his pen, all who knew him were well aware that the titles and rewards, which he gained by his own works, were as nothing in the balance as compared with the pleasure which he derived from the works of others. That knowledge has largely contributed to the tenderness with which he has been treated by writers whose views on books, and events, and politics past and present differ widely from his own. It has been well said that even the most hostile of his critics cannot help being "awed and touched by his wonderful devotion to literature." And, while his ardent and sincere passion for letters has thus served as a protection to his memory, it was likewise the source of much which calls for admiration in his character and conduct. The confidence with which he could rely upon intellectual pursuits for occupation and amusement assisted him not a little to preserve that dignified