e same swing and fire into their
verses. Compare, for example, Aytoun's 'Lays of the Cavaliers,' as the
most obvious parallel:--

Not swifter pours the avalanche
Adown the steep incline,
That rises o'er the parent springs
Of rough and rapid Rhine,

than certain Scotch heroes over an entrenchment. Place this mouthing by
any parallel passage in Macaulay:--

Now, by our sire Quirinus,
It was a goodly sight
To see the thirty standards
Swept down the tide of flight.
So flies the spray in Adria
When the black squall doth blow.
So corn-sheaves in the flood time
Spin down the whirling Po.

And so on in verses which innumerable schoolboys of inferior pretensions
to Macaulay's know by heart. And in such cases the verdict of the
schoolboy is perhaps more valuable than that of the literary
connoisseur. There are, of course, many living poets who can do
tolerably something of far higher quality which Macaulay could not do at
all. But I don't know who, since Scott, could have done this particular
thing. Possibly Mr. Kingsley might have approached it, or the poet, if
he would have condescended so far, who sang the bearing of the good news
from Ghent to Aix. In any case, the feat is significant of Macaulay's
true power. It looks easy; it involves no demands upon the higher
reasoning or imaginative powers: but nobody will believe it to be easy
who observes the extreme rarity of a success in a feat so often
attempted.

A similar remark is suggested by Macaulay's 'Essays.' Read such an essay
as that upon Clive, or Warren Hastings, or Chatham. The story seems to
tell itself. The characters are so strongly marked, the events fall so
easily into their places, that we fancy that the narrator's business has
been done to his hand. It wants little critical experience to discover
that this massive simplicity is really indicative of an art not, it may
be, of the highest order, but truly admirable for its purpose. It
indicates not only a gigantic memory, but a glowing mind, which has
fused a crude mass of materials into unity. If we do not find the sudden
touches which reveal the philosophical sagacity or the imaginative
insight of the highest order of intellects, we recognise the true
rhetorical instinct. The outlines may be harsh, and the colours too
glaring; but the general effect has been carefully studied. The details
are wrought in with consummate skill. We indulge in an i