Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, vol 1 by George Otto Trevelyan (reading the story of the TXT) 📕

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M Macaulay.

London: June 10. 1835.

My dear Sister,—I am at Basinghall Street, and I snatch this quarter of an hour, the only quarter of an hour which I am likely to secure during the day, to write to you. I will not omit writing two days running, because, if my letters give you half the pleasure which your letters give me, you will, I am sure, miss them. I have not, however, much to tell. I have been very busy with my article on Moore’s Life of Byron. I never wrote anything with less heart. I do not like the book; I do not like the hero; I have said the most I could for him, and yet I shall be abused for speaking as coldly of him as I have done.

I dined the day before yesterday at Sir George Philips’s with Sotheby, Morier the author of “Hadji Baba,” and Sir James Mackintosh. Morier began to quote Latin before the ladies had left the room, and quoted it by no means to the purpose. After their departure he fell to repeating Virgil, choosing passages which everybody else knows and does not repeat. He, though he tried to repeat them, did not know them, and could not get on without my prompting. Sotheby was full of his translation of Homer’s Iliad, some specimens of which he has already published.

It is a complete failure; more literal than that of Pope, but still tainted with the deep radical vice of Pope’s version, a thoroughly modern and artificial manner. It bears the same kind of relation to the Iliad that Robertson’s narrative bears to the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis.

There is a pretty allegory in Homer—I think in the last book, but I forget precisely where—about two vessels, the one filled with blessings and the other with sorrow, which stand, says the poet, on the right and left hand of Jupiter’s throne, and from which he dispenses good and evil at his pleasure among men. What word to use for these vessels has long posed the translators of Homer. Pope, who loves to be fine, calls them urns. Cowper, who loves to be coarse, calls them casks;—a translation more improper than Pope’s; for a cask is, in our general understanding, a wooden vessel; and the Greek word means an earthen vessel. There is a curious letter of Cowper’s to one of his female correspondents about this unfortunate word. She begged that Jupiter might be allowed a more elegant piece of furniture for his throne than a cask. But Cowper was peremptory. I mentioned this incidentally when we were talking about translations. This set Sotheby off. “I,” said he, “have translated it vase. I hope that meets your ideas. Don’t you think vase will do? Does it satisfy you?” I told him, sincerely enough, that it satisfied me; for I must be most unreasonable to be dissatisfied at anything that he chooses to put in a book which I never shall read. Mackintosh was very agreeable; and, as usually happens when I meet him, I learned something from him.

[Macaulay wrote to one of his nieces in September 1859: “I am glad that Mackintosh’s Life interests you. I knew him well; and a kind friend he was to me when I was a young fellow, fighting my way uphill.”]

The great topic now in London is not, as you perhaps fancy, Reform, but Cholera. There is a great panic; as great a panic as I remember, particularly in the City. Rice shakes his head, and says that this is the most serious thing that has happened in his time; and assuredly, if the disease were to rage in London as it has lately raged in Riga, it would be difficult to imagine anything more horrible. I, however, feel no uneasiness. In the first place I have a strong leaning towards the doctrines of the anti-contagionists. In the next place I repose a great confidence in the excellent food and the cleanliness of the English.

I have this instant received your letter of yesterday with the enclosed proof-sheets. Your criticism is to a certain extent just; but you have not considered the whole sentence together.

Depressed is in itself better than weighed down; but “the oppressive privileges which had depressed industry” would be a horrible cacophony. I hope that word convinces you. I have often observed that a fine Greek compound is an excellent substitute for a reason.

I met Rogers at the Athenaeum. He begged me to breakfast with him, and name my day, and promised that he would procure me as agreeable a party as he could find in London. Very kind of the old man, is it not? and, if you knew how Rogers is thought of, you would think it as great a compliment as could be paid to a Duke. Have you seen what the author of the “Young Duke” says about me: how rabid I am, and how certain I am to rat?

Ever yours

T. B. M.

Macaulay’s account of the allusion to himself in the “Young Duke”

is perfectly accurate; and yet, when read as a whole, the passage in question does not appear to have been ill-naturedly meant. [“I hear that Mr. Babington Macaulay is to be returned. If he speaks half as well as he writes, the House will be in fashion again. I fear that he is one of those who, like the individual whom he has most studied, will give up to a party what was meant for mankind.

At any rate, he must get rid of his rabidity. He writes now on all subjects as if he certainly intended to be a renegade, and was determined to make the contrast complete.”—The Young Duke, book v chap. vi.] It is much what any young literary man outside the House of Commons might write of another who had only been inside that House for a few weeks; and it was probably forgotten by the author within twenty-four hours after the ink was dry. It is to be hoped that the commentators of the future will not treat it as an authoritative record of Mr. Disraeli’s estimate of Lord Macaulay’s political character.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: June 25, 1831.

My dear Sister,—There was, as you will see, no debate on Lord John Russell’s motion. The Reform Bill is to be brought in, read once, and printed, without discussion. The contest will be on the second reading, and will be protracted, I should think, through the whole of the week after next;—next week it will be, when you read this letter.

I breakfasted with Rogers yesterday. There was nobody there but Moore. We were all on the most friendly and familiar terms possible; and Moore, who is, Rogers tells me, excessively pleased with my review of his book, showed me very marked attention. I was forced to go away early on account of bankrupt business; but Rogers said that we must have the talk out so we are to meet at his house again to breakfast. What a delightful house it is! It looks out on the Green Park just at the most pleasant point. The furniture has been selected with a delicacy of taste quite unique. Its value does not depend on fashion, but must be the same while the fine arts are held in any esteem. In the drawing-room, for example, the chimney-pieces are carved by Flaxman into the most beautiful Grecian forms. The book-case is painted by Stothard, in his very best manner, with groups from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Boccacio. The pictures are not numerous; but every one is excellent. In the dining-room there are also some beautiful paintings. But the three most remarkable objects in that room are, I think, a cast of Pope taken after death by Roubiliac; a noble model in terra-cotta by Michael Angelo, from which he afterwards made one of his finest statues, that of Lorenzo de Medici; and, lastly, a mahogany table on which stands an antique vase.

When Chantrey dined with Rogers some time ago he took particular notice of the vase, and the table on which it stands, and asked Rogers who made the table. “A common carpenter,” said Rogers. “Do you remember the making of it?” said Chantrey. “Certainly,” said Rogers, in some surprise. “I was in the room while it was finished with the chisel, and gave the workman directions about placing it.” “Yes,” said Chantrey, “I was the carpenter. I remember the room well, and all the circumstances.” A curious story, I think, and honourable both to the talent which raised Chantrey, and to the magnanimity which kept him from being ashamed of what he had been.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: June 29, 1831.

My dear Sister,—We are not yet in the full tide of Parliamentary business. Next week the debates will be warm and long. I should not wonder if we had a discussion of five nights. I shall probably take a part in it.

I have breakfasted again with Rogers. The party was a remarkable one,—Lord John Russell, Tom Moore, Tom Campbell, and Luttrell.

We were all very lively. An odd incident took place after breakfast, while we were standing at the window and looking into the Green Park. Somebody was talking about diners-out. “Ay,” said Campbell—

“Ye diners-out from whom we guard our spoons.”

Tom Moore asked where the line was. “Don’t you know?” said Campbell. “Not I,” said Moore. “Surely,” said Campbell, “it is your own.” “I never saw it in my life,” said Moore. “It is in one of your best things in the Times,” said Campbell. Moore denied it. Hereupon I put in my claim, and told them that it was mine.

Do you remember it? It is in some lines called the Political Georgics, which I sent to the Times about three years ago. They made me repeat the lines, and were vociferous in praise of them.

Tom Moore then said, oddly enough:

“There is another poem in the Times that I should like to know the author of;—A Parson’s Account of his Journey to the Cambridge Election.” I laid claim to that also. “That is curious,” said Moore. “I begged Barnes to tell me who wrote it.

He said that he had received it from Cambridge, and touched it up himself, and pretended that all the best strokes were his. I believed that he was lying, because I never knew him to make a good joke in his life. And now the murder is out.” They asked me whether I had put anything else in the Times. Nothing, I said, except the Sortes Virgilianae, which Lord John remembered well. I never mentioned the Cambridge Journey, or the Georgics, to any but my own family; and I was therefore, as you may conceive, not a little flattered to hear in one day Moore praising one of them, and Campbell praising the other.

I find that my article on Byron is very popular; one among a thousand proofs of the bad taste of the public. I am to review Croker’s edition of Bozzy. It is wretchedly ill done. The notes are poorly written, and shamefully inaccurate. There is, however, much curious information in it. The whole of the Tour to the Hebrides is incorporated with the Life. So are most of Mrs.

Thrale’s anecdotes, and much of Sir John Hawkins’s lumbering book. The whole makes five large volumes. There is a most laughable sketch of Bozzy, taken by Sir T. Lawrence when young. I never saw a character so thoroughly hit off. I intend the book for you, when I have finished my criticism on it. You are, next to myself, the best read Boswellite that I know. The lady whom Johnson