colourist. And though the trick, like all literary tricks, grows upon
the artist, and becomes singularly offensive to the man of taste, it
must always be remembered that, with Macaulay, the praise or blame is
usually just and true; he is very rarely grossly unfair and wrong, as
Carlyle so often is; and if Macaulay resorts too often to the
superlative degree, he is usually entitled to use the comparative
degree of the same adjective.

The style, with all its defects, has had a solid success and has done
great things. By clothing his historical judgments and his critical
reflections in these cutting and sonorous periods, he has forced them
on the attention of a vast body of readers wherever English is read at
all, and on millions who have neither time nor attainments for any
regular studies of their own. How many men has Macaulay succeeded in
reaching, to whom all other history and criticism is a closed book, or
a book in an unknown tongue! If he were a sciolist or a wrong-headed
fanatic, this would be a serious evil. But, as he is substantially
right in his judgments, brimful of saving common-sense and generous
feeling, and profoundly well read in his own periods and his favourite
literature, Macaulay has conferred most memorable services on the
readers of English throughout the world. He stands between philosophic
historians and the public very much as journals and periodicals stand
between the masses and great libraries. Macaulay is a glorified
journalist and reviewer, who brings the matured results of scholars to
the man in the street in a form that he can remember and enjoy, when he
could not make use of a merely learned book. He performs the office of
the ballad-maker or story-teller in an age before books were known or
were common. And it is largely due to his influence that the best
journals and periodicals of our day are written in a style so clear, so
direct, so resonant. We need not imitate his mannerism; we may all