moral impulse," if he pursues an end which he "deems of supreme importance." We impose neither on him nor on ourselves the duty of discerning whether he is right in deeming it so.

Hence our causes are often as small as our noise about them is great. To see people busy themselves about Ritualism, that question of not the most strongminded portion of the clergy and laity, or to see them busy themselves about that "burning question " of the fierce and acrimonious political Dissenters, the Burials Bill, leading up to the other "burning question" of Disestablishment-to see people so eager about these things, one might sometimes fancy that the whole English nation, as in Chillingworth's time it was divided into two great hosts of publicans and sinners on the one side, Scribes and Pharisees on the other, so in ours it was going to divide itself into two vast camps of Simpletons here, under the command, suppose, of Mr. Beresford Hope, and of Savages there, under the command of Mr. Henry Richard. And it is so notorious that great movements are always led by aliens to the sort of people who make the mass of the movement-by gifted outsiders-that I shall not, I hope, be suspected of implying that Mr. Beresford Hope is a simpleton or Mr. Henry Richard a savage. But what we have to do is to raise and multiply in this country a third host, with the conviction that the ideals both of Simpletons and Savages are profoundly inadequate and profoundly unedifying, and with the resolve to win victory for a better ideal than that of either of them. Falkland and his friends had in their day a like

task. On the one hand was the Royalist party, with its vices, its incurable delusions; on the other, the Puritans, with their temper, their false, old-Jewish mixture of politics with an ill-understood religion.

I should have been glad to say not one word against Hampden in his honourable grave. But the lovers of Hampden cannot forbear to extol him at Falkland's expense. Alas! yet with what benign disdain might not Jesus have whispered to that exemplary but somewhat Philistine Buckinghamshire squire, seeking the Lord about militia or ship-money: "Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?"

No, the true martyr was not Hampden. If we are to find a martyr in the history of the Great Civil War, let it be Falkland. He was the martyr of lucidity of mind and largeness of temper, in a strife of imperfect intelligences and tempers illiberal. Like his friend Hales of Eton, who in our century will again, he too, emerge, after having been long obscured by the Lauds and the Sheldons, by the Owens and the Baxters,-like Hales, Falkland in that age of harsh and rancorous tempers was "of a nature so kind, so sweet, that it was near as easy a task for any one to become so knowing as so obliging." Like Hales, too, Falkland could say: "The pursuit of truth hath been my only care ever since I fully understood the meaning of the word. For this I have forsaken all hopes, all friends, all desires which might bias me, and hinder me from driving right at what I aimed." Like Hales, and unlike our nation in general, Falkland concerned himself with the why of things as well as the what. "I comprise it all," says Hales, "in two words; what and wherefore. That part of your burden which contains what, you willingly take up. But that other, which comprehends why, that is either too hot or too heavy; you dare not meddle with it. But I must add that also to your burden, or else I must leave you for idle persons; for without the knowledge of why, of the grounds or reasons of things, there is no possibility of not being

deceived." How countless are the deceived and deceiving from this cause! Nay, and the fanatics of the what, the neglecters of the why, are not unfrequently men of genius; they have the temperament which influences, which prevails, which acts magnetically upon men. So we have the Philistine of genius in religion,-Luther; the Philistine of genius in politics,-Cromwell; the Philistine of genius in literature,-Bunyan. All three of them, let us remark, are Germanic, and two of them are English. Mr. Freeman must be enchanted.

But let us return to Falkland,-to our martyr of sweetness and light, of lucidity of mind and largeness of temper. Let us bid him farewell, not with compassion for him, and not with excuses, but in confidence and pride. Slowly, very slowly, his ideal of lucidity of mind and largeness of temper conquers; but it conquers. In the end it will prevail; only we must have patience. The day will come when this nation shall be renewed by it. But, O lime-trees of Tew, and quiet Oxfordshire fieldbanks where the first violets are even now raising their heads!—how often, ere that day arrive for Englishmen, shall your renewal be seen!

VOL. IV.

N

VII.

A FRENCH CRITIC ON MILTON.

MR. TREVELYAN'S Life of his uncle must have induced many people to read again Lord Macaulay's Essay on Milton. With the Essay on Milton began Macaulay's literary career, and, brilliant as the career was, it had few points more brilliant than its beginning. Mr. Trevelyan describes with animation that decisive first success. The essay appeared in the Edinburgh Review in 1825. Mr. Trevelyan says, and quite truly :—

"The effect on the author's reputation was instantaneous. Like Lord Byron, he awoke one morning and found himself famous. The beauties of the work were such as all men could recognise, and its very faults pleased. . . . The family breakfasttable in Bloomsbury was covered with cards of invitation to dinner from every quarter of London. . A warm admirer of Robert Hall, Macaulay heard with pride how the great preacher, then well-nigh worn out with that long disease, his life, was discovered lying on the floor, employed in learning by aid of grammar and dictionary enough Italian to enable him to verify the parallel between Milton and Dante. But the compliment that, of all others, came most nearly home, the only commendation of his literary talent which even in the innermost domestic circle he was ever known to repeat,- -was the sentence with which Jeffrey acknowledged the receipt of his manuscript: 'The more I think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that style.""

And already, in the Essay on Milton, the style of Macaulay is, indeed, that which we know so well. A style to dazzle, to gain admirers everywhere, to attract imitators in multitude! A style brilliant, metallic, exterior; making strong points, alternating invective with eulogy, wrapping in a robe of rhetoric the thing it represents; not, with the soft play of life, following and rendering the thing's very form and pressure. For, indeed, in rendering things in this fashion, Macaulay's gift did not lie. Mr. Trevelyan reminds us that in the preface to his collected Essays, Lord Macaulay himself "unsparingly condemns the redundance of youthful enthusiasm" of the Essay on Milton. But the unsoundness of the essay does not spring from its "redundance of youthful enthusiasm." It springs from this: that the writer has not for his aim to see and to utter the real truth about his object. Whoever comes to the Essay on Milton with the desire to get at the real truth about Milton, whether as a man or as a poet, will feel that the essay in nowise helps him. A reader who only wants rhetoric, a reader who wants a panegyric on Milton, a panegyric on the Puritans, will find what he wants. A reader who wants criticism will be disappointed.

This would be palpable to all the world, and every one would feel, not pleased, but disappointed, by the Essay on Milton, were it not that the readers who seek for criticism are extremely few; while the readers who seek for rhetoric, or who seek for praise and blame to suit their own already established likes and dislikes, are extremely many. A man who is fond of rhetoric may find pleasure in hearing that in Paradise Lost "Milton's conception of love unites all the voluptuousness of the Oriental haram, and all the gallantry of the chivalric tournament, with all the pure and quiet affection of an English fireside." He