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at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life. It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in 10 choked in Time's ashes. We gaze at the skeleurging them. He is at home in any society,

rather like those, which I dare say most of us here have had, at Pompeii, looking at Sallust's house and the relics of an orgy: a dried winejar or two, a charred supper-table, the breast 5 of a dancing-girl pressed against the ashes, the laughing skull of a jester: a perfect stillness round about, as the cicerone3 twangs his moral, and the blue sky shines calmly over the ruin. The Congreve Muse is dead, and her song

ton, and wonder at the life which once revelled in its mad veins. We take the skull up, and muse over the frolic and daring, the wit, scorn, passion, hope, desire, with which that empty bowl once fermented. We think of the glances that allured, the tears that melted, of the bright eyes that shone in those vacant sockets; and of lips whispering love, and cheeks dimpling with smiles, that once covered yon ghastly

he has common ground with every class; he
knows when to speak and when to be silent;
he is able to converse, he is able to listen; he
can ask a question pertinently, and gain a 15
lesson seasonably, when he has nothing to
impart himself; he is ever ready, yet never in
the way; he is a pleasant companion, and a
comrade you can depend upon; he knows when
to be serious and when to trifle; and he has a 20 yellow framework. They used to call those
sure tact which enables him to trifle with
gracefulness and to be scrious with effect. He
has the repose of a mind which lives in itself,
while it lives in the world, and which has re-
sources for its happiness at home when it can- 25 used to dance to. Instead of a feast we find

not go abroad. He has a gift which serves him
in public, and supports him in retirement,
without which good fortune is but vulgar, and
with which failure and disappointment have
a charm. The art which tends to make a man 30
all this, is in the object which it pursues as
useful as the art of wealth or the art of health,
though it is less susceptible of method, and
less tangible, less certain, less complete, in its
result.

William Makepeace Thackeray

1811-1863

THE RESTORATION DRAMA (From "Congreve and Addison," in The English Humourists, written 1851)

teeth pearls once. See, there's the cup she drank from, the gold-chain she wore on her neck, the vase which held the rouge for her cheeks, her looking-glass, and the harp she

a gravestone, and in place of a mistress, a few bones!

Reading in these plays now, is like shutting your ears and looking at people dancing. What does it mean? the measures, the grimaces, the bowing, shuffling and retreating, the cavalier seul advancing upon those ladies-those ladies and men twirling round at the end in a mad gallop, after which everybody bows and 35 the quaint rite is celebrated. Without the music we can't understand that comic dance of the last century-its strange gravity and gaiety, its decorum or its indecorum. It has a jargon of its own quite unlike life; a sort of 40 moral of its own quite unlike life too. I'm afraid it's a Heathen mystery, symbolizing a Pagan doctrine; protesting-as the Pompeians very likely were, assembled at their theatre and laughing at their games; as Sallust and his 45 friends, and their mistresses, protested, crowned with flowers, with cups in their hands—against the new, hard, ascetic, pleasure-hating doctrine whose gaunt disciples, lately passed over from the Asian shores of the Mediterranean, were

There is life and death going on in everything: truth and lies are always at battle. Pleasure is always warring against self-restraint. Doubt is always crying Psha! and sneering. A man in life, a humourist in writing about life, sways 50 over to one principle or the other, and laughs with the reverence for right and the love of truth in his heart, or laughs at these from the other side. Didn't I tell you that dancing was a serious business to Harlequin? I have 55 greve, like the relics of Pompeiian orgies, speak of a des i read two or three of Congreve's plays over before speaking of him; and my feelings were

1 The stage buffoon, one of the regular character types in French comedy.

2 One of the houses laid bare by the excavations at Pompeii is commonly said to have belonged to Sallyst It is the contrast between the levity and licentiousness of Pompeii, jesting almost within the shadow of a vol cano, and the inexorable and terrible doom that overtakes it, which suggests and gives point to Thackeray comparison. The witty and immoral comedies of Con

generation of triflers, of a gayety destined to be choked in asbes.

3 A name given to Italian guides for their volubility in humorous allusion to the fluency of the great Roman orator Cicero.

The cavalier who dances alone.

for breaking the fair images of Venus and flinging the altars of Bacchus down.

As the boy tosses the cup and sings his songhark! what is that chaunt coming nearer and nearer? What is that dirge which will disturb us? The lights of the festival burn dim-the 5 cheeks turn pale-the voice quavers-and the cup drops on the floor. Who's there? Death and Fate are at the gate, and they will come in.

I fancy poor Congreve's theatre is a temple of Pagan delights, and mysteries not permitted except among heathens. I fear the theatre carries down that ancient tradition and worship, as masons have carried their secret signs and rites from temple to temple. When the libertine hero carries off the beauty in the play, and the dotard is laughed to scorn for 10 having the young wife: in the ballad, when the poet bids his mistress to gather roses while she may, and warns her that old Time is still a-flying: in the ballet, when honest Corydon courts Phillis under the treillage of the paste- 15 spoke to Lockhart, his biographer, were, "Be

NIL NISI BONUM1

(From Roundabout Papers, 1860-1862) Almost the last words which Sir Walter

a good man, my dear!" and with the last flicker of breath on his dying lips, he sighed a farewell to his family, and passed away blessing them.

2

Two men, famous, admired, beloved, have just left us, the Goldsmith and Gibbon of our time. Ere a few weeks are over, the critic's pen will be at work, reviewing their lives, and passing judgment on their works. This is no review, or history, or criticism: only a word in testimony of respect and regard from a man of letters, who owes to his own professional labour the honour of becoming acquainted with these two eminent literary men. was the first ambassador whom the New World of Letters sent to the Old. He was born almost with the republic; the pater patriæ had laid his hand on the child's head. He bore Washington's name: he came amongst us bringing the

One

board cottage, and leers at her over the head of grandpapa in red stockings, who is opportunely asleep; and when seduced by the invitations of the rosy youth she comes forward to the footlights, and they perform on each 20 other's tiptoes that pas which you all know, and which is only interrupted by old grandpapa awaking from his doze at the pasteboard châlet (whither he returns to take another nap in case the young people get an encore): when 25 Harlequin, splendid in youth, strength, and agility, arrayed in gold and a thousand colours, springs over the heads of countless perils, leaps down the throat of bewildered giants, and, dauntless and splendid, dances danger 30 down: when Mr. Punch, that Godless old rebel breaks every law and laughs at it with odious triumph, outwits his lawyer, bullies the beadle, knocks his wife about the head, and hangs the hangman-don't you see in the comedy, in 35 kindest sympathy, the most artless, smiling the song, in the dance, in the ragged little Punch's puppet-show-the Pagan protest? Doesn't it seem as if Life puts in its plea and sings its comment? Look how the lovers walk and hold each other's hands and whisper! 40 Sing the chorus-"There is nothing like love, there is nothing like youth, there is nothing like beauty of your springtime. Look! how old age tries to meddle with merry sport! Beat him with his own crutch, the wrinkled old 45 dotard! There is nothing like youth, there is nothing like beauty, there is nothing like strength. Strength and valour win beauty and youth. Be brave and conquer. Be young and happy. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! Would you 50 his own? His books are read by millions of his know the Segreto per esser felice? Here it is, in a smiling mistress and a cup of Falernian."7

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good-will. His new country (which some people here might be disposed to regard rather superciliously) could send us, as he showed in his own person, a gentleman, who, though himself born in no very high sphere, was most finished, polished, easy, witty, quiet; and, socially, the equal of the most refined Europeans. If Irving's welcome in England was a kind one, was it not also gratefully remembered? If he ate our salt, did he not pay us with a thankful heart? Who can calculate the amount of friendliness and good feeling for our country which this writer's generous and untiring regard for us disseminated in

countrymen, whom he has taught to love England, and why to love her. It would have been

1 The Latin proverb runs De mortuis nil nisi bonum, concerning the dead nothing but good.

2 Washington Irving died Nov. 28, 1859; Lord Macaulay died Dec. 28, 1859.

During one of Washington's visits to New York a Scotch maid servant had presented the boy Irving to the great man with the words "Please your honour, here's a bairn was named after you." The president thereupon gave him his blessing. Cf. C. D. Warner's Life of Irving, p. 23.

easy to speak otherwise than he did: to inflame national rancours, which, at the time when he first became known as a public writer, war had just renewed: to cry down the old civilization at the expense of the new: to point out our faults, arrogance, short-comings, and give the republic to infer how much she was the parent state's superior. There are writers enough in the United States, honest and otherwise, who preach that kind of doctrine. But the good 10 house, and read descriptions of it, in both of

New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, and remarked how in every place he was honoured and welcomed. Every large city has its "Irving House." The country 5 takes pride in the fame of its men of letters The gate of his own charming little domain on the beautiful Hudson River was for ever swinging before visitors who came to him. He shut out no one. I had seen many pictures of his

Irving, the peaceful, the friendly, had no place
for bitterness in his heart, and no scheme but
kindness. Received in England with extraor-
dinary tenderness and friendship (Scott,
Southey, Byron, a hundred others have borne 15
witness to their liking for him), he was a mes-
senger of good-will and peace between his
country and ours. "See, friends!" he seems
to say, "these English are not so wicked, rapa-
cious, callous, proud, as you have been taught 20
to believe them. I went amongst them a
humble man; won my way by my pen; and,
when known, found every hand held out to me
with kindliness and welcome. Scott is a great
man you acknowledge. Did not Scott's King 25
of England give a gold medal to him, and
another to me, your countryman, and a
stranger?"

Tradition in the United States still fondly
retains the history of the feasts and rejoicings 30
which awaited Irving on his return to his na-
tive country from Europe. He had a national
welcome; he stammered in his speeches, hid
himself in confusion, and the people loved him
the better. He had worthily represented 35
America in Europe. In that young community
a man who brings home with him abundant
European testimonials is still treated with
respect (I have found American writers, of
wide-world reputation, strangely solicitous 40
about the opinions of quite obscure British
critics, and elated or depressed by their judg-
ments); and Irving went home medalled by
the King, diplomatized by the University,
crowned and honoured and admired. He 45
had not in any way intrigued for his honours,
he had fairly won them; and, in Irving's in-
stance, as in others, the old country was glad
and eager to pay them.

which it was treated with a not unusual American exaggeration. It was but a pretty little cabin of a place; the gentleman of the press who took notes of the place, whilst his kind old host was sleeping, might have visited the whole house in a couple of minutes.

And how came it that this house was so small, when Mr. Irving's books were sold by hundreds of thousands, nay, millions, when his profits were known to be large, and the habits of life of the good old bachelor were notoriously modest and simple? He had loved once in his life. The lady he loved died; and he, whom all the world loved, never sought to replace her. I can't say how much the thought of that fidelity has touched me. Does not the very cheerfulness of his after life add to the pathos of that untold story? To grieve always was not in his nature; or, when he had his sorrow, to bring all the world in to condole with him and bemoan it. Deep and quiet he lays the love of his heart, and buries it; and grass and flowers grow over the scarred ground in due time.

Irving had such a small house and such narrow rooms, because there was a great number of people to occupy them. He could only afford to keep one old horse (which, lazy and aged as it was, managed once or twice to run away with that careless old horseman). He could only afford to give plain sherry to that amiable British paragraph-monger, who saw the patriarch asleep over his modest, blameless cup, and fetched the public into his private chamber to look at him. Irving could only live very modestly, because the wifeless, childless man had a number of children to whom he was as a father. He had as many as nine nieces, I am told-I saw two of these ladies at his house-with all of whom the dear old man had shared the produce of his labour and genius.

In America the love and regard for Irving 50 was a national sentiment. Party wars are perpetually raging there, and are carried on by the press with a rancour and fierceness against individuals which exceed British, almost Irish, virulence. It seemed to me, during 55 of Letters, who had tasted and tested the value

a year's travel in the country, as if no one ever aimed a blow at Irving. All men held their hands from that harmless, friendly peacemaker. I had the good fortune to see him at

"Be a good man, my dear." One can't but think of these last words of the veteran Chief

of worldly success, admiration, prosperity. Was Irving not good, and, of his works, Was not his life the best part? In his family, gentie. generous, good-humoured, affectionate, self

denying; in society, a delightful example of complete gentlemanhood; quite unspoiled by prosperity; never obsequious to the great (or, worse still, to the base and mean, as some public men are forced to be in his and other countries); eager to acknowledge every contemporary's merit; always kind and affable to the young members of his calling; in his professional bargains and mercantile dealings delicately honest and grateful; one of the most 10 Castle" outcry is an echo out of fast-retreatcharming masters of our lighter language; the constant friend to us and to our nation; to men of letters doubly dear, not for his wit and genius merely, but as an exemplar of goodness, probity, and pure life:-I don't know what 15 sort of testimonial will be raised to him in his own country, where generous and enthusiastic acknowledgment of American merit is never wanting: but Irving was in our service as well as theirs; and as they have placed a stone at 20 superiority of the very tallest of the party; Greenwich yonder in memory of that gallant young Bellot, who shared the perils and fate of some of our Arctic seamen, I would like to hear of some memorial raised by English writers and friends of letters in affectionate remem- 25 brance of the dear and good Washington Irving.

right. Years ago there was a wretched outcry raised because Mr. Macaulay dated a letter from Windsor Castle, where he was staying. Immortal gods! Was this man not a fit guest 5 for any palace in the world? or a fit companion for any man or woman in it? I dare say, after Austerlitz, the old K. K.' court officials and footmen sneered at Napoleon for dating from Schönbrunn. But that miserable "Windsor

ing old-world remembrances. The place of such a natural chief was amongst the first of the land; and that country is best, according to our British notion at least, where the man of eminence has the best chance of investing his genius and intellect.

If a company of giants were got together, very likely one or two of the mere six-feet-six people might be angry in the incontestable

and so I have heard some London wits, rather peevish at Macaulay's superiority, complain that he occupied too much of the talk, and so forth. Now that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, will not many a man grieve that he no longer has the chance to listen? To remember the talk is to wonder: to think not only of the treasures he had in his memory, but of the trifles he had stored there, and could produce with equal readiness. Almost on the last day I had the fortune to see him, a conversation happened suddenly to spring up about senior wranglers, and what they had done in after life. To the almost terror of the persons pres

of 1801-2-3-4, and so on, giving the name of each, and relating his subsequent career and rise. Every man who has known him has his story regarding that astonishing memory. It

As for the other writer, whose departure many friends, some few most dearly-loved, and multitudes of admiring readers deplore, our republic has already decreed his statue, and 30 he must have known that he had earned this posthumous honour. He is not a poet and man of letters merely, but citizen, statesman, a great British worthy. Almost from the first moment when he appears amongst boys, 35 ent, Macaulay began with the senior wrangler amongst college students, amongst men, he is marked, and takes rank as a great Englishman. All sorts of successes are easy to him: as a lad he goes down into the arena with others, and wins all the prizes to which he has a mind. A 40 may be that he was not ill pleased that you place in the senate is straightway offered to the young man. He takes his seat there; he speaks, when so minded, without party anger or intrigue, but not without party faith and a sort of heroic enthusiasm for his cause. Still 45 mired it. he is poet and philosopher even more than orator. That he may have leisure and means to pursue his darling studies, he absents himself for a while, and accepts a richly-remunerative post in the East. As learned a man may 50 live in a cottage or a college common-room; but it always seemed to me that ample means and recognized rank were Macaulay's as of

Joseph René Bellot (1826-53), a French naval officer and a volunteer in English Arctic expeditions, who lost his life in the search for Franklin. Bellot's Straits, in the North American Arctics, is named after him. He is commemorated by a red granite obelisk on the river terrace at Greenwich, seat of the Royal Naval College. Macaulay was a member of the Supreme Council at Calcutta, 1834-38.

should recognize it; but to those prodigious intellectual feats, which were so easy to him, who would grudge his tribute of homage? His talk was, in a word, admirable, and we ad

Of the notices which have appeared regarding Lord Macaulay, up to the day when the present lines are written (the 9th of January), the reader should not deny himself the pleasure

In 1839, when Macaulay became Secretary of War, he announced the fact to his constituents in a letter dated from Windsor Castle, the Royal Palace, as though it were his residence. The London Times attacked him, and among those who had their laugh at his expense was Thackeray himself. But Thackeray made ample amends for what Trevelyan calls "a very innocent and not illnatured touch of satire," in this passage.

K. K. in German stands for Kaiserlich Königlich, i. e. Imperial Royal.

The Austrian Imperial residence, three miles southwest of Vienna.

In Cambridge University the student taking first place in the mathematical tripos or honor examination.

of looking especially at two. It is a good sign of the times when such articles as these (I mean the articles in The Times and Saturday Review) appear in our public prints about our public men. They educate us, as it were, to admire rightly. An uninstructed person in a museum or at a concert may pass by without recognizing a picture or a passage of music, which the connoisseur by his side may show him is a masterpiece of harmony, or a wonder 10 of artistic skill. After reading these papers, you like and respect more the person you have admired so much already. And so with regard to Macaulay's style there may be faults of course-what critic can't point them out? But 15 for the nonce we are not talking about faults: we want to say nil nisi bonum. Well-take at hazard any three pages of the "Essays" or "History;"-and, glimmering below the stream of the narrative, as it were, you, an 20 average reader, see one, two, three, a half-score of allusions to other historic facts, characters, literature, poetry, with which you are acquainted. Why is this epithet used? Whence is that simile drawn? How does he manage 25 in two or three words, to paint an individual, or to indicate a landscape? Your neighbour, who has his reading, and his little stock of literature stowed away in his mind, shall detect more points, allusions, happy touches, 30 indicating not only the prodigious memory and vast learning of this master, but the wonderful industry, the honest, humble previous toil of this great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence; he travels a 35 scoundrels, ever so victorious and successful; hundred miles to make a line of description.

strange lore would he not fetch for you at your bidding! A volume of law, or history, a book of poetry familiar or forgotten (except by himself who forgot nothing), a novel ever so old, 5 and he had it at hand. I spoke to him once about "Clarissa."1 "Not read 'Clarissa'!" he cried out. "If you have once thoroughly entered on 'Clarissa' and are infected by it, you can't leave it. When I was in India I passed one hot season at the hills, and there were the Governor-General, and the Secretary of Government, and the Commander-in-Chief, and their wives. I had 'Clarissa' with me: and, as soon as they began to read, the whole station was in a passion of excitement about Miss Harlowe and her misfortunes, and her scoundrelly Lovelace! The Governor's wife seized the book, and the Secretary waited for it, and the Chief Justice could not read it for tears!" He acted the whole scene: he paced up and down the "Athenæum" library: I dare say he could have spoken pages of the book-of that book, and of what countless piles of others.

In this little paper let us keep to the text of nil nisi bonum. One paper I have read regarding Lord Macaulay says "he had no heart." Why, a man's books may not always speak the truth, but they speak his mind in spite of himself: and it seems to me this man's heart is beating through every page he penned. He is always in a storm of revolt and indignation against wrong, craft, tyranny. How he cheers heroic resistance; how he backs and applauds freedom struggling for its own; how he hates

how he recognizes genius, though selfish villains possess it! The critic who says Macaulay had no heart, might say that Johnson had none: and two men more generous, and more

and more noble, do not live in our history. Those who knew Lord Macaulay knew how admirably tender and generous, and affectionate he was. It was not his business to

and call for bouquets from the gallery as he wept over them.

Many Londoners-not all-have seen the British Museum Library. I speak d cœur ouvert, 10 and pray the kindly reader to bear with me. I have seen all sorts of domes of 40 loving, and more hating, and more partial, Peters and Pauls, Sophia, Pantheon,-what not?-and have been struck by none of them so much as by that Catholic dome in Bloomsbury, under which our million volumes are housed. What peace, what love, what truth, 45 bring his family before the theatre footlights, what beauty, what happiness for all, what generous kindness for you and me, are here spread out! It seems to me one cannot sit down in that place without a heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my 50 I would say to him, "Bear Scott's words in grace at the table, and to have thanked heaven for this my English birthright, freely to partake of these bountiful books, and to speak the truth I find there. Under the dome which held Macaulay's brain, and from which his 55 solemn eyes looked out on the world but a fortnight since, what a vast, brilliant, and wonderful store of learning was ranged! what 10 From an open heart.

If any young man of letters reads this little sermon-and to him, indeed, it is addressed

your mind, and 'be good, my dear."" Here are two literary men, gone to their account, and, laus Deo,12 as far as we know, it is fair, and open, and clean. Here is no need of apologies for shortcomings, or explanations of vices which would have been virtues but for un

11 Clarissa Harlowe, Samuel Richardson's novel, published 1748. Lovelace, the principal male character in the book, is an unscrupulous libertine.

12 Praise to God.

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