truth about anything. It is splendid, but _splendide mendax_, and
in Macaulay's case the style was the man. He had enormous knowledge,
and a noble spirit; his knowledge enriched his style and his spirit
consecrated it to the service of Liberty. We do well to be proud of
Macaulay; but we must add that, great as was his knowledge, great also
was his ignorance, which was none the less ignorance because it was
wilful; noble as was his spirit, the range of subject over which it
energized was painfully restricted. He looked out upon the world, but,
behold, only the Whigs were good. Luther and Loyola, Cromwell and
Claverhouse, Carlyle and Newman--they moved him not; their enthusiasms
were delusions, and their politics demonstrable errors. Whereas, of
Lord Somers and Charles first Earl Grey it is impossible to speak
without emotion. But the world does not belong to the Whigs; and a
great historian must be capable of sympathizing both with delusions
and demonstrable errors. Mr. Gladstone has commented with force upon
what he calls Macaulay's invincible ignorance, and further says that
to certain aspects of a case (particularly those aspects most pleasing
to Mr. Gladstone) Macaulay's mind was hermetically sealed. It is
difficult to resist these conclusions; and it would appear no rash
inference from them, that a man in a state of invincible ignorance and
with a mind hermetically sealed, whatever else he may be--orator,
advocate, statesman, journalist, man of letters--can never be a great
historian. But, indeed, when one remembers Macaulay's limited range of
ideas: the commonplaceness of his morality, and of his descriptions;
his absence of humour, and of pathos--for though Miss Martineau says
she found one pathetic passage in the History, I have often searched
for it in vain; and then turns to Carlyle--to his almost bewildering
affluence of thought, fancy, feeling, humour, pathos--his biting pen,
his scorching criticism, his world-wide sympathy (save in certain
moods) with everything but the smug commonplace--to prefer Macaulay to