, and mauls poor James II. as he
mauled the Tories in 1832; but he applies obviously inadequate tests. It
is absurd to call upon men engaged in a life-and-death wrestle to pay
scrupulous attention to the ordinary rules of politeness. There are
times when judgments guided by constitutional precedent become
ludicrously out of place, and when the best man is he who aims
straightest at the heart of his antagonist. But, in spite of such
drawbacks, Macaulay's genuine sympathy for manliness and force of
character generally enables him to strike pretty nearly the true note.
To learn the true secret of Cromwell's character we must go to Carlyle,
who can sympathise with deep currents of religious enthusiasm. Macaulay
retains too much of the old Whig distrust for all that it calls
fanaticism fully to recognise the grandeur beneath the grotesque outside
of the Puritan. But Macaulay tells us most distinctly why Englishmen
warm at the name of the great Protector. We, like the banished
Cavaliers, 'glow with an emotion of national pride' at his animated
picture of the unconquerable Ironsides. One phrase may be sufficiently
illustrative. After quoting Clarendon's story of the Scotch nobleman who
forced Charles to leave the field of Naseby by seizing his horse's
bridle, 'no man,' says Macaulay, 'who had much value for his life would
have tried to perform the same friendly office on that day for Oliver
Cromwell.'

Macaulay, in short, always feels, and therefore communicates, a hearty
admiration for sheer manliness. And some of his portraits of great men
have therefore a genuine power, and show the deeper insight which comes
from true sympathy. He estimates the respectable observer of
constitutional proprieties too highly; he is unduly repelled by the
external oddities of the truly masculine and noble Johnson; but his
enthusiasm for his pet hero, William, or for Chatham or Clive, carries
us along with him. And at moments when he is narrating their exploits,
and can forget his elaborate argumentations and refrain from bits of
deliberate bombast, the style becomes graphic in the higher sense of a
much-abused word, and we confess that we are listening to genuine
eloquence. Putting aside for the moment recollection of foibles, almost
too obvious to deserve the careful demonstration which they have
sometimes received, we are glad to surrender ourselves to the charm of
his straightforward, clear-headed, hard-hitting declamation. There is no
wri