Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay Part 33

Calcutta; May 30, 1836.

Dear Ellis,--I have just received your letter dated December, 28; How time flies! Another hot season has almost pa.s.sed away, and we are daily expecting the beginning of the rains. Cold season, hot season, and rainy season are all much the same to me. I shall have been two years on Indian ground in less than a fortnight, and I have not taken ten grains of solid, or a pint of liquid, medicine during the whole of that time.

If I judged only from my own sensations, I should say that this climate is absurdly maligned; but the yellow, spectral, figures which surround me serve to correct the conclusions which I should be inclined to draw from the state of my own health.

One execrable effect the climate produces. It destroys all the works of man with scarcely one exception. Steel rusts; razors lose their edge; thread decays; clothes fall to pieces; books moulder away, and drop out of their bindings; plaster cracks; timber rots; matting is in shreds.

The sun, the steam of this vast alluvial tract, and the infinite armies of white ants, make such havoc with buildings that a house requires a complete repair every three years. Ours was in this situation about three months ago; and, if we had determined to brave the rains without any precautions, we should, in all probability, have had the roof down on our heads. Accordingly we were forced to migrate for six weeks from our stately apartments and our flower-beds, to a dungeon where we were stifled with the stench of native cookery, and deafened by the noise of native music. At last we have returned to our house. We found it all snow-white and pea-green; and we rejoice to think that we shall not again be under the necessity of quitting it, till we quit it for a s.h.i.+p bound on a voyage to London.

We have been for some months in the middle of what the people here think a political storm. To a person accustomed to the hurricanes of English faction this sort of tempest in a horsepond is merely ridiculous.

We have put the English settlers up the country under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Company's Courts in civil actions in which they are concerned with natives. The English settlers are perfectly contented; but the lawyers of the Supreme Court have set up a yelp which they think terrible, and which has infinitely diverted me. They have selected me as the object of their invectives, and I am generally the theme of five or six columns of prose and verse daily. I have not patience to read a tenth part of what they put forth. The last ode in my praise which I perused began,

"Soon we hope they will recall ye, Tom Macaulay, Tom Macaulay."

The last prose which I read was a parallel between me and Lord Strafford.

My mornings, from five to nine, are quite my own. I still give them to ancient literature. I have read Aristophanes twice through since Christmas; and have also read Herodotus, and Thucydides again. I got into a way last year of reading a Greek play every Sunday. I began on Sunday the 18th of October with the Prometheus, and next Sunday I shall finish with the Cyclops of Euripides. Euripides has made a complete conquest of me. It has been unfortunate for him that we have so many of his pieces. It has, on the other hand, I suspect, been fortunate for Sophocles that so few of his have come down to us. Almost every play of Sophocles, which is now extant, was one of his masterpieces. There is hardly one of them which is not mentioned with high praise by some ancient writer. Yet one of them, the Trachiniae, is, to my thinking, very poor and insipid. Now, if we had nineteen plays of Sophocles, of which twelve or thirteen should be no better than the Trachiniae,--and if, on the other hand, only seven pieces of Euripides had come down to us, and if those seven had been the Medea, the Bacchae, the Iphigenia in Aulis, the Orestes, the Phoenissae, the Hippolytus, and the Alcestis, I am not sure that the relative position which the two poets now hold in our estimation would not be greatly altered.

I have not done much in Latin. I have been employed in turning over several third-rate and fourth-rate writers. After finis.h.i.+ng Cicero, I read through the works of both the Senecas, father and son. There is a great deal in the Controversiae both of curious information, and of judicious criticism. As to the son, I cannot bear him. His style affects me in something the same way with that of Gibbon. But Lucius Seneca's affectation is even more rank than Gibbon's. His works are made up of mottoes. There is hardly a sentence which might not be quoted; but to read him straightforward is like dining on nothing but anchovy sauce.

I have read, as one does read such stuff, Valerius Maximus, Annaeus Florus, Lucius Ampelius, and Aurelius Victor. I have also gone through Phaedrus. I am now better employed. I am deep in the Annals of Tacitus, and I am at the same time reading Suetonius.

You are so rich in domestic comforts that I am inclined to envy you. I am not, however, without my share. I am as fond of my little niece as her father. I pa.s.s an hour or more every day in nursing her, and teaching her to talk. She has got as far as Ba, Pa, and Ma; which, as she is not eight months old, we consider as proofs of a genius little inferior to that of Shakespeare or Sir Isaac Newton.

The munic.i.p.al elections have put me in good spirits as to English politics. I was rather inclined to despondency.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

Calcutta: July 25, 1836.

My dear Ellis,--I have heard from you again, and glad I always am to hear from you. There are few things to which I look forward with more pleasure than to our meeting. It is really worth while to go into banishment for a few years for the pleasure of going home again. Yet that home will in some things be a different home--oh how different a home!--from that to which I expected to return. But I will not stir up the bitterness of sorrow which has at last subsided.

You take interest, I see, in my Greek and Latin studies. I continue to pursue them steadily and actively. I am now reading Demosthenes with interest and admiration indescribable. I am slowly, at odd minutes, getting through the stupid trash of Diodorus. I have read through Seneca, and an affected empty scribbler he is. I have read Tacitus again, and, by the bye, I will tell you a curious circ.u.mstance relating to that matter. In my younger days I always thought the Annals a prodigiously superior work to the History. I was surprised to find that the Annals seemed cold and poor to me on the last reading. I began to think that I had overrated Tacitus. But, when I began the History, I was enchanted, and thought more highly of him than ever. I went back to the Annals, and liked them even better than the History. All at once the explanation of this occurred to me. While I was reading the Annals I was reading Thucydides. When I began the History, I began the h.e.l.lenics.

What made the Annals appear cold and poor to me was the intense interest which Thucydides inspired. Indeed, what colouring is there which would not look tame when placed side by side with the magnificent light, and the terrible shade, of Thucydides? Tacitus was a great man, but he was not up to the Sicilian expedition. When I finished Thucydides, and took up Xenophon, the case was reversed. Tacitus had been a foil to Thucydides. Xenophon was a foil to Tacitus.

I have read Pliny the Younger. Some of the Epistles are interesting.

Nothing more stupid than the Panegyric was ever preached in the University church. I am reading the Augustan History, and Aulus Gellius.

Aulus is a favourite of mine. I think him one of the best writers of his cla.s.s.

I read in the evenings a great deal of English, French, and Italian; and a little Spanish. I have picked up Portuguese enough to read Camoens with care; and I want no more. I have adopted an opinion about the Italian historians quite different from that which I formerly held, and which, I believe, is generally considered as orthodox. I place Fra Paolo decidedly at the head of them, and next to him Davila, whom I take to be the best modern military historian except Colonel Napier. Davila's battle of Ivry is worthy of Thucydides himself. Next to Davila I put Guicciardini, and last of all Machiavelli. But I do not think that you ever read much Italian.

The English poetry of the day has very few attractions for me. Van Artevelde is far the best specimen that I have lately seen. I do not much like Talfourd's Ion; but I mean to read it again. It contains pretty lines; but, to my thinking, it is neither fish nor flesh. There is too much, and too little, of the antique about it. Nothing but the most strictly cla.s.sical costume can reconcile me to a mythological plot; and Ion is a modern philanthropist, whose politics and morals have been learned from the publications of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

I do not know whether the noise which the lawyers of the Supreme Court have been raising against our legislative authority has reached, or will reach, England. They held a public meeting, which ended,--or rather began, continued, and ended,--in a riot; and ever since then the leading agitators have been challenging each other, refusing each other's challenges, libelling each other, swearing the peace against each other, and blackballing each other. Mr. Longueville Clarke, who aspires to be the O'Connell of Calcutta, called another lawyer a liar. The last-mentioned lawyer challenged Mr. Longueville Clarke. Mr. Longueville Clarke refused to fight, on the ground that his opponent had been guilty of hugging attorneys. The Bengal Club accordingly blackballed Longueville. This, and some other similar occurrences, have made the opposition here thoroughly ridiculous and contemptible. They will probably send a pet.i.tion home; but, unless the House of Commons has undergone a great change since 1833, they have no chance there.

I have almost brought my letter to a close without mentioning the most important matter about which I had to write. I dare say you have heard that my uncle General Macaulay, who died last February, has left me L10,000 This legacy, together with what I shall have saved by the end of 1837, will make me quite a rich man; richer than I even wish to be as a single man; and every day renders it more unlikely that I should marry.

We have had a very unhealthy season; but sickness has not come near our house. My sister, my brother-in-law, and their little child, are as well as possible. As to me, I think that, as Buonaparte said of himself after the Russian campaign, J'ai le diable au corps.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

Calcutta: November 26, 1836.

Dear Napier,--At last I send you an article of interminable length about Lord Bacon. I hardly know whether it is not too long for an article in a Review; but the subject is of such vast extent that I could easily have made the paper twice as long as it is.

About the historical and political part there is no great probability that we shall differ in opinion; but what I have said about Bacon's philosophy is widely at variance with what Dugald Stuart, and Mackintosh, have said on the same subject. I have not your essay; nor have I read it since I read it at Cambridge, with very great pleasure, but without any knowledge of the subject. I have at present only a very faint and general recollection of its contents, and have in vain tried to procure a copy of it here. I fear, however, that, differing widely as I do from Stewart and Mackintosh, I shall hardly agree with you. My opinion is formed, not at second hand, like those of nine-tenths of the people who talk about Bacon; but after several very attentive perusals of his greatest works, and after a good deal of thought. If I am in the wrong, my errors may set the minds of others at work, and may be the means of bringing both them, and me, to a knowledge of the truth. I never bestowed so much care on anything that I have written. There is not a sentence in the latter half of the article which has not been repeatedly recast. I have no expectation that the popularity of the article will bear any proportion to the trouble which I have expended on it. But the trouble has been so great a pleasure to me that I have already been greatly overpaid. Pray look carefully to the printing.

In little more than a year I shall be embarking for England, and I have determined to employ the four months of my voyage in mastering the German language. I should be much obliged to you to send me out, as early as you can, so that they may be certain to arrive in time, the best grammar, and the best dictionary, that can be procured; a German Bible; Schiller's works; Goethe's works; and Niebuhr's History, both in the original, and in the translation. My way of learning a language is always to begin with the Bible, which I can read without a dictionary.

After a few days pa.s.sed in this way, I am master of all the common particles, the common rules of syntax, and a pretty large vocabulary.

Then I fall on some good cla.s.sical work. It was in this way that I learned both Spanish and Portuguese, and I shall try the same course with German.

I have little or nothing to tell you about myself. My life has flowed away here with strange rapidity. It seems but yesterday that I left my country; and I am writing to beg you to hasten preparations for my return. I continue to enjoy perfect health, and the little political squalls which I have had to weather here are mere capfuls of wind to a man who has gone through the great hurricanes of English faction.

I shall send another copy of the article on Bacon by another s.h.i.+p.

Yours very truly

T. B. MACAULAY.

Calcutta: November 28, 1836.

Dear Napier,--There is an oversight in the article on Bacon which I shall be much obliged to you to correct. I have said that Bacon did not deal at all in idle rants "like those in which Cicero and Mr. Shandy sought consolation for the loss of Tullia and of Bobby." Nothing can, as a general remark, be more true, but it escaped my recollection that two or three of Mr. Shandy's consolatory sentences are quoted from Bacon's Essays. The ill.u.s.tration, therefore, is singularly unfortunate. Pray alter it thus; "in which Cicero vainly sought consolation for the loss of Tullia." To be sure, it is idle to correct such trifles at a distance of fifteen thousand miles.

Yours ever

T. B. MACAULAY.

From Lord Jeffrey to Macvey Napier, Esq.

May 2, 1837.

My dear N.,--What mortal could ever dream of cutting out the least particle of this precious work, to make it fit better into your Review?

It would be worse than paring down the Pitt Diamond to fit the old setting of a Dowager's ring. Since Bacon himself, I do not know that there has been anything so fine. The first five or six pages are in a lower tone, but still magnificent, and not to be deprived of a word.

Still, I do not object to consider whether it might not be best to serve up the rich repast in two courses; and on the whole I incline to that part.i.tion. 120 pages might cloy even epicures, and would be sure to surfeit the vulgar; and the biography and philosophy are so entirely distinct, and of not very unequal length, that the division would not look like a fracture.

FRANCIS JEFFREY.

In the end, the article appeared entire; occupying 104 pages of the Review; and accompanied by an apology for its length in the shape of one of those editorial appeals to "the intelligent scholar," and "the best cla.s.s of our readers," which never fail of success.

The letters addressed to Zachary Macaulay are half filled with anecdotes of the nursery; pretty enough, but such as only a grandfather could be expected to read. In other respects, the correspondence is chiefly remarkable for the affectionate ingenuity with which the son selects such topics as would interest the father.

Calcutta: October 12 1836.

My dear Father, We were extremely gratified by receiving, a few days ago, a letter from you which, on the whole, gave a good account of your health and spirits. The day after tomorrow is the first anniversary of your little grand-daughter's birthday. The occasion is to be celebrated with a sort of droll puppet-show, much in fas.h.i.+on among the natives; an exhibition much in the style of Punch in England, but more dramatic and more showy. All the little boys and girls from the houses of our friends are invited, and the party will, I have no doubt, be a great deal more amusing than the stupid dinners and routs with which the grown-up people here kill the time.