reformer smarting under the follies of George IV., are a serious defect
in a grave historian, when used indiscriminately of men and women in
every age and under every condition. In his _Machiavelli_, Macaulay
hints that the best histories are perhaps "those in which a little of
fictitious narrative is judiciously employed." "Much," he says, "is
gained in effect." It is to be feared that this youthful indiscretion
was never wholly purged out of him. Boswell, we know, was "a dunce, a
parasite, and a coxcomb"--_and therefore_ immortal. He was one of "the
smallest men that ever lived," of "the meanest and feeblest intellect,"
"servile," "shallow," "a bigot and a sot," and so forth--and yet, "a
great writer, _because_ he was a great fool." We all know what is
meant; and there is a substratum of truth in this; but it is tearing a
paradox to tatters. How differently has Carlyle dealt with poor dear
Bozzy! Croker's _Boswell's Johnson_ "is as bad as bad can be," full of
"monstrous blunders"--(he had put 1761 for 1766) "gross mistakes"--"for
which a schoolboy would be flogged." Southey is "utterly destitute of
the power of discerning truth from falsehood." He prints a joke which
"is enough to make us ashamed of our species." Robert Montgomery pours
out "a roaring cataract of nonsense." One of his tropes is "the worst
similitude in the world." And yet Macaulay can rebuke Johnson for "big
words wasted on little things"!

Neither Cicero, Milton, Swift, nor Junius ever dealt in more furious
words than Macaulay, who had not the excuse of controversy or passion.
Frederick William of Prussia was "the most execrable of fiends, a cross
between Moloch and Puck"; "his palace was hell"; compared with the
Prince, afterwards Frederick the Great, "Oliver Twist in the workhouse,
and Smike at Dotheboys Hall were petted children." It would be
difficult for Mark Twain to beat that. "The follies and vices of King
John _were the salvation_ of England." Cranmer was peculiarly fitted