ory'
caused an excitement almost unparalleled in literary annals. Not only
was the first sale enormous, but it has gone on ever since increasing.
The popular author was equally popular in Parliament. The benches were
crammed to listen to the rare treat of his eloquence; and he had the far
rarer glory of more than once turning the settled opinion of the House
by a single speech. It is a more vulgar but a striking testimony to his
success that he made 20,000_l._ in one year by literature. Other authors
have had their heads turned by less triumphant careers; they have
descended to lower ambition, and wasted their lives in spasmodic
straining to gain worthless applause. Macaulay remained faithful to his
calling. He worked his hardest to the last, and became a more unsparing
critic of his own performances as time went on. We do not feel even a
passing symptom of a grudge against his good fortune. Rather we are
moved by that kind of sentiment which expresses itself in the schoolboy
phrase, 'Well done our side!' We are glad to see the hearty, kindly,
truthful man crowned with all appropriate praise, and to think that for
once one of our race has got so decidedly the best of it in the hard
battle with the temptations and the miseries of life.

Certain shortcomings have been set off against these virtues by critics
of Macaulay's life. He was, it has been said, too good a hater. At any
rate, he hated vice, meanness, and charlatanism. It is easier to hate
such things too little than too much. But it must be admitted that his
likes and dislikes indicate a certain rigidity and narrowness of nature.
'In books, as in people and places,' says Mr. Trevelyan, 'he loved that,
and loved that only, to which he had been accustomed from boyhood
upwards.' The faults of which this significant remark reveals one cause,
are marked upon his whole literary character. Macaulay was converted to
Whiggism when at college. The advance from Toryism to Whiggism is not
such as to involve a very violent wrench of the moral and intellectual
nature. Such as it was, it was the only wrench from which Macaulay
suffered. What he was as a scholar of Trinity, he was substantially as a
peer of the realm. He made, it would seem, few new friends, though he
grappled his old ones as 'with hooks of steel.' The fault is one which
belongs to many men of strong natures, and so long as we are
considering Macaulay's life we shall not be much disposed to quarrel
with his innat