on at all. He never consented to sacrifice what he considered a vital question; but, on the other hand, he knew that capricious isolation is not statesmanship. His life was a protest, and his writings abound in warnings against that vain love of independent action which afflicts a country with a succession of feeble administrations, and which brings about a state of confusion and weakness such as no lover of representative institutions can contemplate without anxiety. He was the last of a long series of eminent Englishmen, including such names as the names of Addison, Burke, and Mackintosh, whose allegiance has been the chiefest honour of the Whig party, who have served their country in public life, but have rendered to their country, and to mankind, services far more valuable and more enduring by the labours of their retirement.

It has been often remarked that no great power of humour, or play of irony, can be discovered in Macaulay's writings. His wit, on the other hand, is brilliant; and of the sarcastic tone he was a master. There is considerable fun in the remarks on Dr Nares' Life of Burleigh, and in the allusions to "the Sweet Queen" in the article on Madame D'Arblay. The reviews of Montgomery's Poems, and of Croker's editon of Johnson, could hardly have been more biting; and for a combination of sarcasm and crushing invective, we hardly know where the Sketch of Barere can find a parallel. But he was not a humorist. On this subject a great deal of cant is talked now-a-days. "A man's humour," says the author of Friends in Council," is the deepest part of his nature." This saying, like most sayings which strive to be very fine, may be true or false according as it is explained. If it mean that the humour of a character shows much of the real nature of that character,—that a universal play of "any man in his own humour" would tell us not a little of men's dispositions, then it may be true. But, if it mean that a man of humours is a deeper or a clearer thinker than a man without them, then we suspect it is false. A humorist sees, perhaps, more than other people, but he does not see with greater distinctness or greater truth. Humour is like the ointment of the dervise in the Eastern tale: if partially applied, it reveals many hidden treasures; but if it cover both eyes, the whole mental vision is darkened. Men ardent in the search of truth are impatient of its whims and vagaries. With regard to irony the case is much the same. As an intellectual art, irony is a sort of yielding in order to gain at last,-valuable as a weapon of controversy, of no avail in the discovery of truth. Even as wielded by its greatest master, it affords a victory over an opponent, but it does not advance an investigation. In those dialogues in which Socrates employs it most, nothing strikes the

Absence of Humour and Irony.

459

reader so forcibly as the reflection that no progress is ever made. And it is precisely when Socrates desires to make progress, to teach something real, to inculcate some great lesson, that the ironical tone disappears. It then gives place to earnest reasonings, or to the sublimity of his gorgeous myths. As a habit of the moral nature, irony is even more questionable. It is often an affectation; and even when unconscious and sincere, it repels the generality. Plain men regard it as an impertinence; zealous men regard it as an unwarrantable concealment, or as a cowardly reluctance to meet questions fairly. For an historian, especially, in whom simplicity of view is essential, humour and irony alike are dangerous and misleading gifts. They may impart a charm, but it is a charm which will lure astray. An ingenious critic in the Saturday Review has summed up Lord Macaulay's imperfections by saying, that he wanted "the fitful, reserved, and haughty temperament which characterizes the highest order of genius." A more absurd sentence was never written. Every one of the qualities here so placidly ascribed to the highest natures is a weakness. Fitfulness marks a want of strength and a want of balance; reserve arises from a fear lest frankness should betray deficiencies; and haughtiness is a sign simply of a very unamiable feeling of superiority to others, often cherished by merely clever men, but to which genius is uniformly a stranger. We can readily believe that these unpleasant qualities characterize the highest as well as the lowest order of Saturday Reviewers; but we shall be slow to think that they existed in "my gentle Shakspere," or that they marred the manliness of Sir Walter Scott. They are to be found only in second-rate men who wish to be esteemed geniuses, and when so found, are very heartily and very justly disliked by all mortals. Some historians, aware that great things have been done in their own day, write of what they have seen and known. Among the historians of the past, some write because they are possessed by an idea which they long to enforce, as Hume by his love for the Stuarts, Thierry by his theories of race. Others, again, conscious of literary power, devote that power to history because history is a popular study, and elect to write of a period because that period seems picturesque, to celebrate a character because that character seems imposing. Possibly the period they determine upon may be unsuited to their powers; the character they would exalt may be unworthy; but their choice is made, and by that choice they must abide. Possibly experience may show that they have no aptitude for historical investigation, no faculty of discerning character, no power of weighing evidence; but the discovery comes too late, and these defects are supplied by wayward opinions and arbitrary judg

ments. To such an origin we may, without unfairness, ascribe the "historic fancies" of Mr Carlyle and Mr Froude. But the true historian of past times is he who selects some epoch because long familiarity has made that epoch present to him as his own. He does not read that he may write; he writes because he has read. So only will he be able to rival the excellencies of an historian who writes of his own times. Study will have given almost as intimate an acquaintance with his subject; and his narrative will therefore be almost as vivid and as truthful. It was in this way that knowledge forced authorship on Gibbon. He had been long conversant with his great theme before. "At Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind." So too the history of England was no novel subject to Macaulay. It had been his favourite study from boyhood. The torment devised for him by Sydney Smith was, that he should constantly hear people making false statements about the reign of Queen Anne, without being able to set them right. Much as he knew about many things, he knew most, and cared most, about the annals of his country. We may learn some day when the idea of writing them first took possession of his mind. Unhappily, though we may have a companion to the scene at Rome, we shall never have a companion to that passage in which Gibbon describes a yet happier moment of his life, when, "on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden." The "establishment of fame" has been indeed accomplished even by the fragment; but we have had a painful illustration of the truth of the reflection which spread "a sober melancholy" over the mind of Gibbonthe reflection that "whatsoever might be the future date of the history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious."

In spite of the incompleteness of his work, the name of Macaulay will have no lowly place even in the long roll of English worthies. His labours in literature have done more to spread abroad a true understanding of English history than those of any English writer, and his conduct in political life need not fear comparison with the most upright of English statesmen. It is perhaps too much to hope that another such historian will appear to tell of the past greatness of England; but we may surely entertain the expectation, that the men to whom England's future may be confided in times of trouble will have something of the masculine sense, the lofty love of truth, the unswerving adher ence to principle, which ennobled the nature of Lord Macaulay.

ART. VII.-1. The Biglow Papers. By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. London: Trübner. 1859.

2. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. Edinburgh: Strahan. 1859.

3. The Professor at the Breakfast Table. By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. Edinburgh: Strahan. 1859.

4. Mosses from an Old Manse. By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. London: Routledge. 1856.

5. Poems. By R. W. EMERSON. Boston: Munroe and Co. 1847.

6. Dred. By HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. London: Low and Son. 1856.

7. The Minister's Wooing. By HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. London Low and Son. 1859.

:

8. Nature and Human Nature. By the Author of "Sam Slick." London: Hurst and Blackett. 1859.

9. Wise Saws and Modern Instances. By the Author of " Sam Slick." London: Hurst and Blackett. 1859.

10. The Old Judge, etc. By the Author of "Sam Slick." London: Hurst and Blackett. 1859.

11. The Season Ticket. London: Bentley. 1859.

12. Fisher's River Scenes and Characters. By "SKIT, who was raised thar." London: Low and Son. 1859.

13. Tales from the Norse. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas. 1859.

THE influence of healthy Wit and Humour is a benign one, if it comes to us at times, and kindly makes us forget sad thoughts and cankering cares; makes the oldest feel young and fresh, and turns the wrinkles of our sorrow into ripples of laughter. There have been great and wise men who have so felt the sins and sorrows of their kind as an individual burthen-Dante, for example, whose lips were seldom seen to smile-and so they have walked our world very sadly, with no eye for the "gayest, happiest attitude of things," no heart to rejoice in it. But not all great and good men have been mirthless. Shakspere, who mirrored our whole humanity, did not leave the laugh out of its reflected face. He tells us "your merry heart goes all the day," and he knew how much the merry heart may have to carry. "We may well be refreshed," says Jeremy Taylor, "by a clean and brisk discourse, as by the air of Campanian wines, and our faces and our heads may well be anointed and look pleasant with wit, as with the fat of the Balsam tree." One man will be struck with the difference between things as they are, and as

they ought to be, or might be. It fills his spirit with sadness. Another cannot help laughing at many of their incongruities. But the man who can laugh as well as weep is most a man. The greatest humorists have often been also the most serious seers, and men of most earnest heart. Hence their humour passes into pathos at their will. And all those who have manifested the finest perfection of spiritual health have enjoyed the merry sunshine of life, and wrought their work with a spirit of blithe bravery.

Humour has a much earlier origin than Wit, as we moderns interpret that word. Humour begins with the practical joke. It is supposed that the first perception of humour among savages must have occurred to the conquerors when they were torturing and slowly murdering their captured enemies, whose writhings and grimaces furnished them with fun that was fine, if the humour was coarse. The humour of the court fools and jesters consisted mostly of the practical joke. It is the same with the humour of boys. Humour not only has an earlier beginning than Wit, but it has also a far wider range. It will reach the uneducated as well as the educated; and among the former may often be found very unctuous humorists. In the earlier history of nations and literatures, when life is strong and thought is unperplexed, we get writers full enough in force, and direct enough in expression, to touch nature at most points. Hence the earlier great writers reach the depths of tragedy, and the breadths of humour. In their times they see the full play of strong passions; the outward actions in which life expresses itself, when it lives up to its limits; and all those striking contrasts of life, those broad lights and bold shadows of character which, as they cross and recross in the world's web, make rare and splendid patterns for the tragic poet and humorist. Byand-bye we find less embodied strength in the outer life, and more subtlety and refinement of the inner life. Our writers cannot reach the boundaries of the master minds, and so are compelled to work more and more within the wide limits, circle within circle, and, the more limited the circle, the more they still try to be innermost, and make up in fineness of point and subtlety of touch for what they have lost in larger sweep, broader handling, and simpler strength. This, we think, is the literary tendency that leads, among other things, to our modern wit, instead of the old English humour. It would have been perfectly impossible for the wit of Punch to have been produced in any other time than ours, or in any other place and societary conditions, than those of London. No past time could have given us Thomas Hood, who may here stand for "Wit ;" and the present time has lost the secret of old Chaucer's humour.

We cannot pretend to "split the difference" betwixt Wit and