United States or Bangladesh ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Lord Campbell followed with a biography having all the appearance of conscientious research and judicial impartiality, but which was really nothing more than a weak translation of Macaulay's vivid sentences into such English "as it had pleased God to endow him withal."
All his best letters were to them; and in these he detailed his intercourse with the great, and the splendor of their banquets and balls. Macaulay's rise, after he had written his famous article on Milton, was rapid. The article itself, striking as it is, must be confessed to be disappointing in so far as it attempted to criticise the "Paradise Lost" and Milton's other poems.
They might be extended with still greater quotation, and if something more yet were needed the essay on Milton which made Macaulay's reputation might be employed as a vessel to catch the overrunnings of the precious ichor. Who could not wish to know the poetry of Keats as we already knew his life through the matchless essay of Lowell?
Macaulay's Essays are in something more than the ordinary loose acceptation of the term a household word; and it cannot be necessary to single out individual instances where almost all are famous, and where all deserve their fame.
And it may be that when Macaulay's New Zealander, centuries hence, takes his seat on that broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's, he will sit under the shelter of a top-hat that has out-lasted all our greatness. There must be some virtue in a thing that is so immortal. If the doctrine of the survival of the fittest applies to dress, it is the fittest thing we have.
He watched his mood. And thus in all Macaulay's "Essays" we feel the systole and diastole, and the hot, strong, impatient movement of ruddy life. There is "go" in every sentence. This is what constitutes his marvelous style life, life, life! To very few men, indeed, is it given to be at once a brilliant talker, a strong writer and an effective orator.
In spite, however, of Lord Macaulay's reproof, something may be said in favour of a man who, after giving his mornings to works which display no little industry as well as talent, unbent his bow in the evening at lively supper-parties, or even at the card-table with fair friends, where the play never degenerated into gambling.
"Though I don't believe everything Henry says," she added a little defensively. Down they went into Mr. Hilbery's study, where they began to look among his books. So desultory was this examination that some fifteen minutes failed to discover the work they were in search of. "Must you read Macaulay's History, Cassandra?" Katharine asked, with a stretch of her arms.
These are not our words, but Macaulay's, and it is not our fault if this is his reading of history. We merely summon him as a Protestant witness.
As a plain matter of observation, it is impossible to take up a newspaper or a review, for instance, without perceiving Macaulay's influence both in the style and the temper of modern journalism, and journalism in its turn acts upon the style and temper of its enormous uncounted public.
Word Of The Day