Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson, with a Selection from his Essay on Johnson. Томас Бабингтон Маколей
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very year in which the last volumes of Johnson's Lives of the Poets were published, 1781, Burns began to do his best work. In 1796 Burns died. In 1798, two years before Macaulay was born, Wordsworth and Coleridge published the first of the Lyrical Ballads, which included The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Like Burns, yet in a way entirely his own, Wordsworth was the poet of Nature and of Man, and this little volume was the beginning of much spontaneous poetry which in the following years proved a refreshing change from the polished couplets which had been in fashion. Instead of Pope and Addison and Johnson, in whose time literary men cared more for books than for social reforms, more for manner than for matter, came Scott, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, Landor, and Southey with their irrepressible originality.
Before Macaulay's day Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett had each contributed something to the novel. During his lifetime came practically all of the best work of Miss Austen, Scott, Cooper, Lytton, Disraeli, Hawthorne, the Brontës, Dickens, Thackeray, Mrs. Gaskell, Trollope, and Kingsley. George Eliot's Adam Bede appeared the year he died.
Other prominent prose writers were Hallam, Grote, Milman, Froude, Mill, Ruskin, and Carlyle. In Memoriam and Mrs. Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese were published in 1850, and Browning's The Ring and the Book came out in 1868.
As to Macaulay's relations with his literary contemporaries, it must be understood that he gave practically his whole attention to the times of which he read and wrote, and to the men who made those times interesting. Scientists were making important discoveries day by day, but his concern was not with them, even at a time when Darwin was writing his Origin of Species. It was not clear to him that philosophical speculations like Carlyle's might do much to better the condition of humanity. He finished Wordsworth's Prelude only to be disgusted with "the old flimsy philosophy about the effect of scenery on the mind" and "the endless wildernesses of dull, flat, prosaic twaddle." Although he read an infinite variety of contemporary literature he said he would not attempt to dissect works of imagination. In 1838, when Napier wished him to review Lockhart's Life of Scott for the Edinburgh Review, he replied that he enjoyed many of Scott's performances as keenly as anybody, but that many could criticise them far better. He added: "Surely it would be desirable that some person who knew Sir Walter, who had at least seen him and spoken with him, should be charged with this article. Many people are living who had a most intimate acquaintance with him. I know no more of him than I know of Dryden or Addison, and not a tenth part so much as I know of Swift, Cowper, or Johnson."17 He turned instinctively to the old books, the books that he had read again and again: to Homer, Aristophanes, Horace, Herodotus, Addison, Swift, Fielding. There was at least one writer of fiction in his time to whom he was always loyal. On one occasion when he had been reading Dickens and Pliny and Miss Austen at the same time, he declared that Northanger Abbey, although "the work of a girl," was in his opinion "worth all Dickens and Pliny together."
What he did for humanity he did as a practical man of affairs, at home alike in the Cabinet and in popular assemblies. While Carlyle in the midst of his gloomy life was toiling heroically to banish shams and to get at the True, the Real, Macaulay, who was reasonably satisfied with the past and the present, and hopeful of the future, was sifting from his vast treasury of information about the past what he believed to be significant in history and important in literature. He had none of the feeling that Ruskin had, that it was his duty to turn reformer, but what he did toward educating his readers he did in the way he most enjoyed.
III. THE STUDY OF MACAULAY
Once for all it must be remembered that Macaulay had no intention of being studied as a text-book, and we must deal with him fairly. First we should read the Life through at a sitting without consulting a note, just as we read an article in the Atlantic Monthly or the Encyclopædia Britannica. We should rush on with the "torrent of words" to the end to see what it is all about, and to get an impression of the article as a whole. As Johnson says: "Let him that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play from the first scene to the last with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not stoop at correction or explanation. When his attention is strongly engaged let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased let him attempt exactness and read the commentators."
Macaulay attracts attention not only to what he says but also to the way in which he says it. In examining his style it will be a good plan to ask ourselves whether the writer ever wanders from the subject, or whether every part of the Life contributes something to the one subject under discussion. Naturally we find ourselves making topics, such for example as Johnson's Youth, His Father, At Oxford. A list of these topics gives us a bird's-eye view of the whole field and enables us to examine the composition more critically. Has the writer arranged the topics in the natural order? Does he give too much space to the treatment of any one topic? Might any of them be omitted to advantage?
Having examined the larger divisions, we may profitably turn our attention to the parts which constitute these divisions, the paragraphs. First let us see whether he goes easily from one paragraph to the next. For example, is the first sentence of paragraph 2 a good connecting link with what precedes? In looking through the Life for these links, we should make up our minds whether they are studied or spontaneous.
Then let us test the unity of the paragraphs. Can each paragraph be summed up in a single sentence? Does a combination of the opening and the closing sentence ever serve the purpose? Does one or the other of these ever answer of itself? Has every sentence some bearing on the main thought, or might some sentences be omitted as well as not?
It will be equally profitable, at this point, to test the coherence of half a dozen paragraphs. Does each sentence lead up naturally to the next? Can the order of sentences be changed to advantage? When the sentences in a paragraph hold together firmly, we should point out the cause; when coherence is lacking, we should try to discover to what its absence is due.
Then comes the question of emphasis. Let us see whether we can find two or three paragraphs in which Macaulay succeeds particularly well in emphasizing the main point. If we find three, let us see whether he accomplishes his purpose in the same way each time.
For those of us who are still willing to learn something from Macaulay's style, it is worth while to study the sentences. Selecting two or three of the most interesting paragraphs, we may make the three tests: (1) Is each sentence a unit? (2) Is the relation of every word to the adjoining words absolutely clear? (3) Does the construction emphasize what is important?
Then there is the vocabulary. Who does not enjoy the feeling that he is enlarging his vocabulary? An easy way of doing it is to read two or three times such a paragraph as the nineteenth, and then, with the book closed, to write as much of it as possible from memory. As it is not merely a large vocabulary that we wish, but a well chosen one, we shall do well to compare our version with Macaulay's and see in how many cases his word is better than ours. Have we, for example, equaled "winning affability," or "London mud," or "inhospitable door"? Is his word more effective than ours because it is more specific, or what is the reason?
Before taking farewell of the Life of Johnson there is another use to which we may put the topics. We may use them as tests of our knowledge of the essay. If we can write or talk fully and definitely on each of the more important ones, we are sure to carry much food for thought away with us. The value of a review of this sort is evident from a glance at the following topics: Literary Life in London in Johnson's Time, Johnson's Love Affair, The Dictionary, The Turning Point in Johnson's Life, The Rambler, Rasselas, The Idler, His Shakspere, The Club [His Conversation], Boswell, The Thrales, His Fleet Street Establishment, The Lives of the Poets.
As we read Macaulay we should be particularly careful to think for ourselves. Mr. Gladstone has said: "Wherever and whenever read, he will be read with fascination, with delight, with wonder. And with copious instruction too; but also with copious reserve, with questioning scrutiny, with liberty to reject, and with much exercise of
Trevelyan, II, 15.