ys exhibit a wide variety of knowledge with a great
fertility of illustration, and enough of the salt of pleasantry and
sarcasm to flavour and in some degree disguise a somewhat declamatory
and pretentious dogmatism. It may seem too epigrammatic, but it is, in
our serious judgment, strictly true, to say that his History seems to be
a kind of combination and exaggeration of the peculiarities of all his
former efforts. It is as full of political prejudice and partisan
advocacy as any of his parliamentary speeches. It makes the facts of
English History as fabulous as his Lays do those of Roman tradition; and
it is written with as captious, as dogmatical, and as cynical a spirit
as the bitterest of his Reviews. That upon so serious an undertaking he
has lavished uncommon exertion, is not to be doubted; nor can any one
during the first reading escape the _entrainement_ of his picturesque,
vivid, and pregnant execution: but we have fairly stated the impression
left on ourselves by a more calm and leisurely perusal. We have been so
long the opponents of the political party to which Mr. Macaulay belongs
that we welcomed the prospect of again meeting him on the neutral ground
of literature. We are of that class of Tories--Protestant Tories, as
they were called--that have no sympathy with the Jacobites. We are as
strongly convinced as Mr. Macaulay can be of the necessity of the
Revolution of 1688--of the general prudence and expediency of the steps
taken by our Whig and Tory ancestors of the Convention Parliament, and
of the happiness, for a century and a half, of the constitutional
results. We were, therefore, not without hope that at least in these two
volumes, almost entirely occupied with the progress and accomplishment
of that Revolution, we might without any sacrifice of our political
feelings enjoy unalloyed the pleasures reasonably to be expected from
Mr. Macaulay's high powers both of research and illustration. That hope
has been deceived: Mr. Macaulay's historical narrative is poisoned with
a rancour more violent than even the passions of the time; and the
literary qualities of the work, though in some respects very remarkable,
are far from redeeming its substantial defects. There is hardly a page--
we speak literally, hardly a page--that does not contain something
objectionable either in substance or in colour: and the whole of the
brilliant and at first captivating narrative is perceived on examination
to be impregnated