upon his guard, it had reached him from another quarter; so that her own omission, which had in reality arisen under her hurry to execute her master's commission, could not be charged with any bad consequences. But all such reflections this way or that were swallowed up at this point in overmastering panic. That her double summons could have been unnoticed-this solitary fact in one moment made a revelation of horror. One person might have fallen asleep, but two-but three-that was a mere impossibility. And even supposing all three together with the baby locked in sleep, still how unacountable was this utter-utter silence! Most naturally at this moment something like hysterical horror overshadowed the poor girl; and now, at last, she rang the bell with the violence that belongs to sickening terror. This done, she paused. Self-command enough she still retained, though fast and fast it was slipping away from her, to bethink herself that, if any overwhelming accident had compelled both Marr and his apprentice-boy to leave the house in order to summon surgical aid from opposite quarters-a thing barely supposable--still, even in that case, Mrs Marr and her infant would be left, and some murmuring reply, under any extremity, would be elicited from the poor mother. To pause, therefore, to impose stern silence upon herself, so as to leave room for the possible answer to this final appeal, became a duty of spasmodic effort. Listen, therefore, poor trembling heart; listen, and for twenty seconds be as still as death. Still as death she was; and during that dreadful stillness, when she hushed her breath that she might listen, occurred an incident of killing fear, that to her dying day would never cease to renew its echoes in her ear."

Narrative.

De Quincey never attempted any continuous history. Taking his own division of history into Narrative, Scenical, and Philosophical, we see that he had special qualifications for the two last modes. But he wanted industry to take up a national history and pursue it continuously through all its stages. What he might have done we can guess only from speculations recorded incidentally in such papers as his account of the Caesars, or of Cicero, or Charlemagne, and from the spectacular sketch of the Revolt of the Tartars.

He wrote several short biographies. In these he has at least the negative merit of not chronicling unimportant facts. They can hardly be called narratives; there is in them as little as possible of anything that could be called narrative art. They are, properly speaking, discussions of perplexities that have gathered about the story of the individual life, and descriptions of the various features of the character.

In his most imaginative tales, such as the "Spanish Military Nun," the facts are altogether secondary to the poetical embellishments are but the bare cloth on which he works his manycoloured tapestry of pathos, humour, and soaring rhapsodies.

Exposition.

De Quincey possessed some of the best qualities of an expositor, coupled with considerable defects.

The great obstacle to his success in exposition was the want of simplicity. He was, as we have seen, too persistently scholastic for the ordinary reader, making an almost ostentatious use of logical forms and scientific technicalities.

As his studious clearness is marred by an unnecessary use of unfamiliar words and forms of expression, so others of his merits in exposition must be stated with some abatement.

"A man,"

He was aware of the value of iterating a statement. he says, "who should content himself with a single condensed enunciation of a perplexed doctrine, would be a madman and a felo de se, as respected his reliance upon that doctrine." Yet he considered iteration a departure "from the severities of abstract discussion." "In the senate, and for the same reason in a newspaper, it is a virtue to reiterate your meaning: tautology becomes a merit; variation of the words, with a substantial identity of the sense and dilution of the truth, is oftentimes a necessity." But in a book, he held, repetition is rather a blemish, seeing that the reader may "return to the past page if anything in the present depends upon it." In this he was probably unpractical: doubtless the reader is saved much weariness by judicious repetition, although of course less is needed in a book than in a speech. He knew also the value of stating the counter-proposition. In upholding the Ricardian law that the value of a thing is determined by the quantity of the labour that produces it, he broadly declares that the mere statement of the doctrine brings the student not one step nearer the truth, unless he is told what it is designed to contradict-namely, that the value of the thing is not determined by the value of the producing labour.

When he is thoroughly in earnest, and resolved to make an abstruse point clear to the meanest capacity, he knows how to proceed by means of simple examples and illustrations. This is well shown in his Dialogues on Political Economy. The misfortune is, that he is not always alive to the abstruseness of the question he happens to be dealing with, and consequently wears to many readers an air of repulsive incomprehensibility.

His power of clothing a dry subject with interest appears advantageously in his "Templar's Dialogues on Political Economy." In respect of varied interest, this fragment is equal to the dialogues of Plato.

In consequence chiefly of his abstruseness, he cannot be recommended as a model to the popular expositor. Yet his command of language, his precision, and his power of imparting interest, make him a profitable study if the student knows what to imitate and what to avoid.

76

CHAPTER II.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY,

1800-1859.

THIS most popular of modern prose writers was born on the 25th of October 1800, at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire, the residence of his uncle-in-law and name-father, Thomas Babington.

His father, Zachary Macaulay, was a man of some note, and was judged worthy of a monument in Westminster Abbey. The son of a Scotch minister in Dumbartonshire, he made a moderate fortune in Jamaica and Sierra Leone, and on his return to England in 1799, became a principal supporter of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery. A dry taciturn man, writing a plain terse style, he bore little outward resembance to his distinguished son; but he had the same untiring powers of work, and the same extraordinary strength of memory. He edited the newspaper of the Abolitionists, and was the great master of the statistics employed for the agitation of the public mind. The historian's mother, a pupil of the sisters of Hannah More, was also a person of talent; to her he seems to have owed his buoyant constitution.

Never, to use his own favourite mode of expression, was a child brought into this world under circumstances more favourable to the development of literary talent. His parents belonged to a small sect of earnest and accomplished persons, closely knit together by a common object, and zealously devoted to their adopted mission. With the earliest dawn of intelligence he heard imperial policy discussed at his father's table, and the affairs of the nation arranged, not by ideal politicians, but by men actively engaged in public business such men as Henry Thornton, Thomas Babington, and Wilberforce. He saw his father preparing their printed organ, and at an early age was taught by that encyclopedic statistician

the argumentative value of facts. There being the closest intercourse between the families of the Clapham sect, a boy of promising abilities met with much attention, and many willing instructors of his youthful curiosity. Besides, young Besides, young "Tom," bright and loquacious, was an especial favourite with Hannah More, "the high priestess of the brotherhood," and had his fancy quickened and his ambition fired by her anecdotes of the literary men of last century.

He was not sent to any of the great public schools. He received his earliest instruction at a small school in Clapham. "At the age of twelve he was placed under the care of the Rev. Mr Preston, first at Shelford, afterwards near Buntingford, in the neighbourhood of Cambridge." With Mr Preston he seems to have remained until ready to enter the University.

In his nineteenth year he began residence at Trinity College, Cambridge. In after-life he used to mention with regret that at College he spent very little time on the prevailing study of mathematics; but classics he prosecuted with such success, that in 1821 he gained the high distinction of the Craven scholarship. A large part of his time was given to pursuits not so strictly academical; he was a distinguished orator at the Union, and twice carried away the Chancellor's medal for English verse- -in 1819 for a poem on Pompeii, and in 1821 for a poem on Evening. He took his degree of B.A. in 1822, and in October 1824 was elected Fellow of his College.

Very soon after taking his degree, and while waiting in College for his fellowship, he set himself strenuously to fulfil his ambition in literature. His first efforts were contributed to 'Knight's Quarterly Magazine,' between June 1823 and November 1824. From these early productions we can see that he did not work at random, but to some extent pursued definite objects. Thus, in his "Fragments of a Roman Tale," and his "Scenes from Athenian Revels," we can discern a purpose-a purpose that he often recommends as the highest aim of the historian, namely, to realise the private life of the bygone generations. Again, from his studies of Dante, Petrarch, Cowley, Milton, and the Athenian orators, we may infer that he worked upon the orthodox plan for literary aspirants, of making himself familiar with the leading masters of style in different languages. Then we have an indication of a mechanical plan of working. His contributions appear in pairs— a grave composition coupled with something lighter. If this was not the arrangement of the publisher, we may suppose that he sought the relief of variety, and that from the first he worked upon a deliberate resolve to excel in all kinds of composition.

In 1824 he made his first appearance as a public speaker. At an Abolitionist meeting in Freemasons' Hall, he seconded one of

the resolutions, and his speech is said to have created some talk among outsiders.

The performance that first brought him conspicuously into notice was his article on Milton, contributed to the Edinburgh Review in August 1825. He was called to the bar in 1826; but though he took chambers in the Temple and joined the Northern Circuit, he probably gave little time to legal business, and he made no name as a barrister. It was his literary power that found him patronage. In 1827 he received from Lord Lyndhurst a commissionership of bankrupts. And in 1830, through the influence of Lord Lansdowne, he was returned for the borough of Calne, and entered the House of Commons.

In the Reform debates of 1831 and 1832 he was one of the most effective speakers. He went strongly and unreservedly with the Whigs. In 1832, as an acknowledgment of his zeal for Reform, he was returned by the newly enfranchised borough of Leeds. In the same year he was appointed Secretary to the Board of Control. In the first session of the Reformed Parliament he spoke against the repeal of the union with Ireland, in favour of a bill for removing the civil disabilities of the Jews, and in favour of a bill for depriving the East India Company of their exclusive trade with China and other commercial privileges. In 1834 he was made president of a new law commission for India, and a member of the Supreme Council of Calcutta. In discharge of the duties of these lucrative offices he spent two years and a half in India, returning in 1838.

On his return from India he professed himself anxious to withdraw from politics, and devote his whole time to literature. He had not ceased, even when in India, to contribute to the Edinburgh Review'; but he wished now to settle down to his great project, the History of England from the Accession of James II. This could not be. His party could not yet dispense with him. He was requested to stand for Edinburgh, and was elected in 1839, after very little opposition.

Re-entering Parliament, he was appointed Secretary at War, and retained the office till the fall of the Melbourne Ministry in 1841. In the general election of 1841 he was re-elected for Edinburgh without opposition. On the return of the Whigs to power in 1846, he obtained the office of Paymaster-General, and a seat in the Cabinet of Lord John Russell. Neither in office nor in opposition was he a silent member. His voice was heard on all questions of importance. On all party questions he stood by his party. He defended the war with China in 1840, assisted in beating down the Chartists, assailed Lord Ellenborough's administration of India, supported Lord John Russell's motion for an inquiry into the state of Ireland, and argued against loading slave-grown sugar