the Iliad. Writers of a very different order from the impostor who
fabricated these forgeries," &c., &c. Our first objection to these
criticisms is their undue strength and decidedness of language, which
proclaims prejudice and _animus_ on the part of the writer. Macaulay
here speaks like a heated haranguer or Parliamentary partizan, not like
an historian or a critic. Hood says--"It is difficult to swear in a
whisper"; and surely it is more difficult still to criticise in a
bellow. This indeed points to what is Macaulay's main defect as a
thinker and writer. He is essentially a dogmatist. He "does not allow
for the wind." "Mark you his absolute _shall_," as was said of
Coriolanus. No doubt his dogmatism, as was also that of Dr Johnson, is
backed by immense knowledge and a powerful intellect, but it remains
dogmatism still. In oratory excessive emphasis often carries all before
it, but it is different in writing--there it is sure to provoke
opposition and to defeat its own object. Had he spoken of Macpherson's
stilted style, or his imperfect taste, few would have contradicted him,
but the word "trash" startles and exasperates, and it does so because it
is unjust; it is too slump and too summary. Had he said that critics had
exaggerated Macpherson's merits, this too had been permitted to pass,
but when he declared them in his writings to be entirely "without
merit," he insults the public which once read them so greedily, and
those great men too who have enthusiastically admired and
discriminatingly praised them. Macpherson's connection with these Poems
has a mystery about it, and he was probably to blame, but every one
feels the words, "the impostor who fabricated these forgeries," to be
much too strong, and is disposed, in the resistance and reaction of
feeling produced, to become so far Macpherson's friend and so far
Macaulay's foe. We regret this seeming strength, but real infirmity, of
Macaulay's mode of writing--not merely because it has hurt his credit as
a critic of Ossian, but because it has injured materially his influence
as an historian of England. The public are not disposed, with all their
admiration of talents and eloquence, to pardon in an historian faults of
boyish petulance, prejudice, and small personal or political
prepossessions, which they would readily forgive in an orator. Macaulay
himself, we think, somewhere speaking of Fox's history, says that many
parts of it sound as if they were thundered from t