THE excellencies and the defects of Lord Macaulay as an historian arise from the same cause. He lives amongst those whose portraits he paints. His characters are not cold abstractions summoned up from the past to receive judgment for deeds done in the flesh; they are living men and women, beings to be loved, hated, feared, or despised, with all the fervency which belongs to Lord Macaulay's character. Hence the charm of his writings. Hence, also, their untrustworthiness. The attention of the reader is excited, his interest is kept awake, his passions are aroused, he devours page after page, and volume after volume, with an appetite similar to that which attends upon the perusal of the most stirring fiction; he closes the book with regret, and then, and not till then, comes the reflection that he has been listening to the impassioned harangue of the advocate, not to the calm summing-up of the judge. It would be well if this were the worst. We are reluctantly convinced that Lord Macaulay not unfrequently exceeds even the privileges of the advocate; that when he arraigns a culprit at the bar of public opinion, and showers down upon him that terrible invective of which he is so accomplished a master, evidence sometimes meets with a treatment at his hands from which the most unscrupulous practitioner at the Old Bailey would shrink: not only are documents suppressed or garbled, dates transposed, half sentences read as whole ones, witnesses of the most infamous character paraded as pure and unimpeachable, but the very gutters of Grub Street and St Giles's are raked for anonymous filth of the foulest description to cast on the unhappy object of the wrath of the historian.

It is often difficult and sometimes impossible to divine what particular qualities will arouse this animosity.

Vol. ii. 1858, pp. 34, 322.

The virtues which receive the tribute of admiration and respect when they exist in this man, appear to excite nothing but contempt when they are found in that; the vices which are venial transgressions chargeable rather on the age than on the individual in one character, are foul and indelible blots on another.

James and William were alike unfaithful to their wives. Lord Macaulay records the "highly criminal" passion of James for Arabella Churchill, and for Catharine Sedley, sneering contemptuously at the plain features of the one, and the lean form and haggard countenance of the other,* but forgetting the charms recorded in the memoirs of Grammont as those to which the former owed her power; and whilst admitting the talents which the latter inherited from her father, denying any capacity in the King to appreciate them. William, on the other hand, married to a young, beautiful, and faithful wife, to whose devotion he owed a crown, in return for which she only asked the affection which he had withheld for years, maintained, during the whole of his married life, an illicit connection with Elizabeth Villiers (who squinted abominably), † upon whom he settled an estate of £25,000 a-year, making her brother a peer, and introducing his wife to the confidence of the Queen; § and Lord Macaulay passes it over as an instance of the commerce of superior minds!|| In James, conjugal infidelity is a coarse and degrading vice; in William, it is an intellectual indulgence, hardly deserving serious reprehension. In like manner, the inroads upon law attempted by James, under the mask of a regard for the rights of conscience, are justly and unsparingly denounced, whilst the ambition which urged William, by the cruel means of domestic unkindness, to fix his grasp prospectively on the crown of England, long before any necessity for such an invasion of the

constitution had arisen, is wise foresight, regard for religious freedom, the interests of Protestantism, and the attainment of the great object of his life-the curbing the exorbitant power of France.*

Lord Macaulay's well-known Whigism sometimes affords a clue to his historical predilections. It is easy to understand why he should take pleasure in perpetuating, in the most exaggerated form of hostile tradition, every story that can tarnish the gallantry and fidelity of Dundee, and in repeating, after reiterated confutation, every groundless slander upon Penn. But this is not always a safe guide. In one instance, and that the most remarkable of all, the case is the very reverse. By a strange caprice the man whom Lord Macaulay especially delights to dishonour, is the very one whose genius shed most honour on the Whig party, who contributed more perhaps than any other to place William upon the throne, but for whom the landing at Torbay might not improbably have been followed by a similar result to that at Lyme, and whose imperishable glory (a glory which has made his name second only, if indeed it be second, to that of Wellington in the annals of England) is derived from his long and successful contest with that power, to curb which William had devoted every energy of his mind.

Brilliant as were the services rendered by Marlborough to his country, grand as was his genius, great and many as were his virtues, public and private, that regard for truth which we are about to vindicate as the quality most essential of all to the historian, compels us nevertheless to admit that he did not walk from sixteen to sixty-four, through all the mazes of politics, and revolutions of war and courts, in an age the most profligate in morals, public and private, that England has seen-rising

from the humble post of carrying a pair of colours, to the very summit of earthly power-without contracting some stains of the vices prevalent, it might almost be said universal, in his day. Making the most ample allowance for this, enough remains to make every true Englishman look to Marlborough with pride, reverence, and affection; and, moved by these feelings, we shall proceed to discharge a duty we feel incumbent on all honest men, by removing some at least of the dirt which has been so plentifully and so unscrupulously cast upon the Great Captain by Lord Macaulay.

He sub

Lord Macaulay's picture of the youth of Marlborough is sufficiently repulsive. He was so illiterate that "he could not spell the most common words in his own language." + He was "thrifty in his very vices, and levied ample contributions on ladies enriched by the spoils of more liberal lovers." He was "kept by the most profuse, imperious, and shameless of harlots."§ sisted upon "the infamous wages bestowed upon him by the Duchess of Cleveland." He was "insatiable of riches." He "was one of the few who have in the bloom of youth loved lucre more than wine or women." ** "All the precious gifts which nature had lavished upon him, he valued chiefly for what they would fetch."++ "At twenty he made money of his beauty and his vigour; at sixty he made money of his genius and his glory ;" and he "owed his rise to his sister's dishonour." §§

With regard to the want of a liberal education, which by the way is a charge rather against his father than against himself, it is sufficient to observe that he was educated at St Paul's school, and that his despatches show that, at any rate, he was a proficient in Latin, French, and English composition. He appears,

+ Vol. ii. p. 34, 1858. Ibid. P. 517.

Vol. iii. 8vo, p. 438.

§ Ibid. p. 515.

Ibid. p. 517. ++ Vol. iii. 8vo, p. 438. SS Vol. ii. p. 515, 1858.

however, to have passed through his school course, as the Duke of Wellington afterwards did at Eton, without distinction. A competitive examination would probably have excluded both from the army, and the result of Blenheim and Waterloo might have been reversed. He owed more to nature than to education, and Bolingbroke truly summed up his character in the fewest possible words, when he said that he was "the perfection of genius matured by experience."

Plunged at a very early age into the dissipations of the court of Charles II., his remarkably handsome person and his engaging manners soon attracted notice. For the loathsome imputation cast upon him by Lord Macaulay that he availed himself of these advantages for the purposes which he intimatesthat he bore to the wealthy and licentious ladies of the court the relation which Tom Jones did to Lady Bellaston-there is no foundation even in the scandalous chronicles of those scandalous days. That he did not bring to the court of Charles the virtue which made the overseer of Potiphar's household famous in that of Pharaoh, must be freely admitted. The circumstances of his intrigue with the Duchess of Cleveland are recorded in the pages of Grammont.* Never, says Hamilton, were her charms in greater perfection than when she cast her eyes on the young officer of the Guards. That Churchill, in the bloom of youth, should be insensible to the passion which he had awaked in the breast of the most beautiful woman of that voluptuous court, was hardly to be expected. He incurred, in consequence, the displeasure of the King, who forbade him the court. Far be it from us to be the advocates of lax morality; but Churchill must be judged by the standard of his day. He corrupted no innocence; he invaded no domestic peace. The Duchess of

* P. 279.

Cleveland was not only the most beautiful, but she was also the most licentious and the most inconstant of women. From the King down to Jacob Hall she dispensed her favours according to the passion or the fancy of the moment. She was as liberal of her purse as of her person, and Marlborough, a needy and ́handsome ensign, no doubt shared both. But the coarse charge of receiving "infamous wages can, however, be brought against Churchill with no more truth than it can be said that he was "kept by the most profuse, imperious, and shameless of harlots," because he entertained a daring and successful passion for the beautiful mistress of his King.

Two stories are current with regard to the amour: one Lord Macaulay accepts, the other he rejects. The first is, that upon one occasion the King surprised Churchill in the apartment of the Duchess, upon which the lover saved the honour of his mistress (such as it was) by leaping from the window. With regard to this it is sufficient to say that Hamilton, who must have known the story, if true, and who would have delighted to tell it, is silent. The other is, that Marlborough, in his prosperity, refused a small loan to the Duchess. This story Lord Macaulay very properly rejects. He had good reason to suspect its falsehood, for it is told by his own witness, the authoress of "The New Atalantis," whose filthy pages, full of imputations upon William, even more foul than those upon Marlborough, Lord Macaulay has honoured by transferring from them to his own, in some cases almost word for word, the abuse for heaping which upon the great Whig General she was paid by the Tories. Little do the readers of Lord Macaulay suspect that his eloquent denunciation of Marlborough is but a rechauffé of the forgotten scurrility of a female hack scribe, whom Swift used to call one of his "under spur-leathers.” †

Such is the history of the amour of Churchill with the Duchess of Cleveland. A pure and ennobling attachment, to which he remained faithful till the grave closed over him, soon dispelled his passion for the lovely and inconstant Duchess. This cold, sordid profligate-for such Lord Macaulay would fain persuade us he was -married, at the age of eight-andtwenty, a beautiful and penniless girl, after an engagement prolonged by the poverty of both parties.

To judge of the animus which pervades the whole of Lord Macaulay's account of Marlborough, it is only necessary to observe the mode in which, with regard to him, he treats the passions and the virtues which, through all ages, have been most certain to awaken the sympathies and secure the respect and attachment of mankind.

Lord Macaulay's intimate acquaintance, if not with human nature, at any rate with the writings of those who, in all ages and all languages, have most deeply stirred the heart of man, might have told him that the tale of young passionate love mellowing into deep and tender affection, living on linked to eternity, stronger than death, and deeper than the grave, was fitly the object of feelings far different from those which it appears to awaken in his breast. It is a singular fact that two of the most vigorous writers of the English language appear to be in total ignorance of all the feelings which take their rise from the passion of love. We know of no single line that has fallen from the pen of Swift, or from that of Lord Macaulay, which indicates any sympathy with that passion which, in the greater number of minds, affords the most powerful of all motives. The love of Churchill and Sarah Jennings seems to inspire

*Vol. ii. p. 516; 1858.

Lord Macaulay with much the same feelings as those with which a certain personage, whom Dr Johnson used to call "the first Whig," regarded the happiness of our first parents in the garden of Eden. It is difficult to say whether the following passage is more distinguished by bad feeling or bad taste, by malignant insinuation or jingling antithesis:

"He must have been enamoured in

deed, for he had little property, except the annuity which he had bought with the infamous wages bestowed on him by the Duchess of Cleveland: he was insatiable of riches. Sarah was poor; and a plain girl with a large fortune was proposed to him. His love, after a struggle, strengthened his passion; and, to the prevailed over his avarice : marriage only last hour of his life, Sarah enjoyed the pleasure and distinction of being the one human being who was able to mislead that farsighted and surefooted judgment, who was fervently loved by that cold heart, and who was servilely feared by that intrepid spirit."

Such is the language in which Lord Macaulay records a love, as constant and fervent as any recorded in the pages of history, or even of fiction.

Marlborough's letters, written to his wife in the decline of life, and at the summit of his fame, breathe a passion as warm, a tenderness as devoted, as that which inspired the young and ardent lover to brave that poverty which Lord Macaulay asserts was "the earthly evil he most dreaded" * to win her hand; and years after his death, when that hand was sought in second wedlock by the Duke of Somerset, she replied, "If I were young and handsome as I was, instead of old and faded as I am, and you could lay the empire of the world at my feet, you should never share the heart and hand that once belonged to John Duke of Marlborough."+