nent place on the historical shelf, nor ever, assuredly, be quoted as authority on any question or point of the history of England.[1]
Such criticism could do Macaulay no harm, and as was said at the time, the writer of the article in attempting murder had committed suicide. But in his private journal, the historian made the following remark.
April 13.—To the British Museum, looked over the "Travels" of the Duke of Tuscany, and found the passage the existence of which Croker denies. His blunders are really incredible. The article has been received with general contempt. Really Croker has done me a great service. I apprehended a strong reaction, the natural effect of such a success; and, if hatred had left him free to use his very slender faculties to the best advantage, he might have injured me much. He should have been large in acknowledgment; should have taken a mild and expostulatory tone; and should have looked out for real blemishes, which, as I too well know, he might easily have found. Instead of that, he has written with such rancour as to make every body sick. I could almost pity him. But he is a bad, a very bad, man: a scandal to politics and to letters.
From that day to this, the same journal has never lost an opportunity of launching shafts against the literary reputation of Lord Macaulay. Mr. Croker is dead, but the race of Crokers is not extinct, nor is it likely to expire as long as the principal organ of the Tory party sedulously keeps it alive.
It is certainly not a matter of regret that Macaulay was relieved for some years from the fatigue of Parliament. In 1852, when the Whigs returned to office, he refused a seat in the Cabinet; but when it was proposed in June of the same year to put him in nomination for Edinburgh, the compliment of a voluntary amende paid by so great a constituency was not unwelcome to him. His own bearing was high and rigid. He had made no advance and no concession. But Edinburgh, to her honour, was glad to take him back on his own terms. Unhappily the time was already past for Macaulay to render to his constituents or his country any important political services. Within two days of the election and before he could go down to Scotland, on July 15, 1852, he felt suddenly oppressed with an exceeding weakness and languor. Dr. Bright was called in and pronounced that he was suffering from seriously deranged action of the heart. From that moment the exertions of public life became extremely painful and onerous to him, and at times he was scarcely able to write—as he himself expressed it, he had aged twenty years in a single week The case was a singular one: a man of fifty-two, scarcely past the prime of life, of temperate habits, given to daily exercise and regular hours, who had never been ill, suddenly found his powers of life impaired, and felt that, although he might linger for some years, the " strict arrest of the fell serjeant, death," was on him.
"December 31, 1853.— Another day of work and solitude. I enjoy this invalid life extremely. In spite of my gradually sinking health, this has been a happy year. My strength is failing. My life will not, I think, be long. But I have clear faculties, warm affections, abundant sources of pleasure."
At very distant intervals, he gives expression, in two or three pathetic sentences, to the dejection which is the inevitable attendant upon the most depressing of all ailments. " I am not what I was, and every month my heart tells it me more and more clearly. Jama little low; not from apprehension; for I look forward to the inevitable close with perfect serenity: but from regret for what I love. I sometimes hardly command my tears when I think how soon I must leave them. I feel that the fund of life is nearly spent."
His temper was unruffled by the thought that the great work he had commenced, and which he once hoped to bring down "to a period of living memory," must remain incomplete. Nothing but expressions of gratitude ever passed his lips, for the happiness of the life he had enjoyed. Enough for him to work on whilst it was yet day; and to persevere with unbroken industry, good humour, and benevolence to the end. Once he spoke in Parliament in favour of retaining the master of the rolls in the House of Commons, and again in defence of the competitive system of appointments to India; but he felt all the time that it was grevious waste of strength, with the reign of Anne still unwritten, for him to consume his scanty stock of vigour in the tedious and exhausting effort of political debate.
The desire of literary fame was certainly one of Macaulay's strongest passions. To be ranked with those great writers who had shed a glory and a joy over his own existence—to be read by future ages and distant countries—to be incorporated
With that dear language which I spake like thee,—
were results intensely gratifying to his
- ↑ Quarterly Review, March 1849.
