poems. Although it would be a mistake to call Macaulay a great poet, the volume called The Lays of Ancient Rome enjoyed great popularity, and at least one, Horatius at the Bridge, still has admirers. Another justly popular poem is the martial Battle of Ivry, celebrating the victory of Henry of Navarre over the Holy League. His essays dealing with literary subjects, it must Historical Writing. There remain the History and the historical essays to establish Macaulay's rank as a great writer. "I have written several things," said he, " on historical, political, and moral questions, by which I am willing to be estimated." In these we find great narrative skill, and power to present scenes in vivid language. His description of the scene at the trial of Warren Hastings (essay on Hastings) is one of the most real pictures in words which our language can boast. The account of London coffeehouses (History of England, chapter III) is even more striking because he is presenting not an individual one but a type. MACAULAY. Virtues of his Style. The virtues of Macaulay's style are not hard to discover, and they are virtues worthy of LY Cultivatio ness, sim One may Boswell, attain li attained i tions Mad ing it. O panegyric that it is tve mann Macaula radily fou ustration e of clin sentences: makes eve ogical sub Host evide Jeffrey's S W to hold so cultivation by every one who would write effectively. Clearness, simplicity, and force are the most evident qualities. One may object to his judgments. Not every reader of Boswell, by any means, will agree that whereas other men "attain literary eminence in spite of their weaknesses, Boswell attained it by reason of his weaknesses; " but no one questions Macaulay's meaning, or his effectiveness in expressing it. One may object, as Arnold vigorously does, to the panegyric of the Essay on Milton; but no one will deny that it is set forth in a perfectly clear and exceedingly effective manner. Macaulay's means of obtaining these qualities can be readily found by a careful reader. Simple, concrete words; illustrations from nearby objects, scenes, and incidents; use of climax, and of parallel and periodic structure in sentences; and, to crown all, a sense of organization that makes every chapter of the history, every essay, every logical subdivision a clear-cut unit these are some of the most evident means of producing the style that aroused Jeffrey's wonder and that has enabled Macaulay ever since to hold so conspicuous a place in literature. 1 Carlyle's Style.-Carlyle's style offers a great contrast to Macaulay's. His vocabulary, says Barry, "we learn as though a foreign language." Macaulay himself doubtless took a fling at his great rival when, in his Essay on Addison, he spoke of " the half-German jargon of the present day." An amusing characterization of this style is given in one of George Meredith's novels.2 There it is described as "a wind-in-the-orchard style, that tumbled down here and there an appreciable fruit with uncouth bluster; sentences without commencements running to abrupt endings and smoke, like waves against a sea wall, learned dictionary words giving a hand to street slang, and accents falling on them haphazard, like slant rays from driving clouds; all the pages in a breeze; the whole book producing a kind of electrical agitation in the mind and joints." Two Great Scotchmen. This great writer, who became, in the words of Goethe, "a moral force of great significance," was a Scotchman, born the year before Burns's death, in the town of Ecclefechan in Dumfriesshire, some fifteen miles from Burns's last home. This association of the two writers' names is a natural, not a forced one; for Carlyle was a great lover of his fellow-countryman, and twice championed his cause at great length in an essay in the Edinburgh Review, and in The Hero as Man of Letters. Education. Carlyle was of sturdy though humble stock; his father was a stone-mason, his mother a very religious Lowlander, who learned to write in order to write to her son Thomas. His years in the grammar school were made unhappy by bullies, who took advantage of his determination not to fight. At the age of fourteen he entered Edinburgh University; and though he attended lectures for five years, 1 Life of Newman, page 77. he left w study tha For fou get the except f Carlyle, known w ion of means. wondered ing a voca them that born dog, the end m Jane W In 1821 Ca 1826 marr "the wom most suite Scotland," rapher. were not both were German writers, and did much hack-work for various publishers. In 1828 came the Essay on Burns, nominally a Burns, which Carlyle char Here spoke "the very voice of Scotland," trying, it said, "to estimate what Burns really was and did for his country and the world." CARLYLE'S LONDON HOME. From Dumfriesshire to London. - In the same year, driven by financial stress, the Carlyles moved from Edinburgh to a small estate in Dumfriesshire which belonged to Mrs. Carlyle. After six years here, "the dreariest spot in all the British dominions," they made their last change of home, taking up their residence at Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London. In 1836 Sartor Resartus, Carlyle's monumental attack on the shams of the day, was published; in 1837, The French Revolution; in 1839, Chartism, a book demanding substitution of aristocracy for the existing government. During these years he gave several successful series of lectures on German literature, and a series which was published in 1841 with his public, time he w began to scribed as |