wrote.

acter, whatever be its rank in poetic hierarchy, Lord Macaulay What it is is obvious. It is neither Romeo nor Corydon, it is neither Webster nor Vaughan, but it is the poetry of rhetoric, and of very spirited character.

It was perhaps imprudent for Macaulay to refer in his prefaces to the Lays of Ancient Rome, to his imitation of Homer, to his obligation to the Iliad. For the reader of poetry is skittish, immensely susceptible to the temptation of comparison, and whatever Homer may be to him either in memory or imagination, he is sure to feel that Macaulay's Lays are profoundly unlike Homer. There is no harm in this unlikeness, but an English poet no matter how deferential and self-depreciative he may be does well to avoid giving any excuse for such a comparison; especially as a ballad-maker has a further difficulty to meet in a comparison with old English ballads, such as are gathered together in Professor Child's collection. Old ballads have their own quality; they have that in their words, their rhymes, their dramatic movement, their sentiment, which cannot be copied. Time has blessed them. No modern ballads can have their grace. Macaulay's ballads make no pretence to be like them. Nevertheless a froward public sometimes makes comparisons, and finds inferiority where it should find unlikeness. Men say, when you praise Horatius, that they prefer Chevy Chase.

If we put Homer, old ballads, and other irrelevant matter out of mind, we are in a position to be just, and to enjoy the excellence of Macaulay's Lays. Popular approbation may not be the reward of the highest merit, but it is not a proof of failure, as some fastidious critics hold. Sixty years almost have gone by since Macaulay published his Lays; Horatius and The Battle of Lake Regillus hold their popular favor, schoolboys get them by heart throughout England and the United States. Their vigor and spirit cannot but give pleasure. They have virile English qualities sturdiness, dash, directness which are probably not unlike the virile Roman qualities. The beat of the verses, the vividness of the imagery, the hurry of the story, the impetuosity of the stanzas, are hard to match. Macaulay's rhetoric has full play. There in the lines of his poetry is the Macaulay of the Reform Bill, Macaulay of the Essays, Macaulay of the History. His quick-conceiving sym

pathies, his strong party spirit, his concentration of nature, all come into play. His happy confidence trumpets through the lines. We think that there must be some Roman flavor in these ballads of his. It is not in the measure, although he says that they are very like the Saturnian metre, and that in all probability the old Roman lays were in that metre, nor in the rhetoric, for that is markedly English, markedly his own, but in the rough strong accent, the declamatory fire, the confidence, and the complete absence of the fluid mind which flows to and fro in unstable perplexity. There is the ring of the brass instrument, the alertness as for battle, the hard energy of a conquering race, the sharpness of expression, that we fancy we might find in an old Roman ballad.

The ballad of Ivry was written in 1824. It is as brilliant as any of the Lays except Horatius, and is the only one of Macaulay's miscellaneous poems which has had a popularity equal to theirs. There is another poem which Trevelyan has inserted in "Macaulay's Life and Letters." It was written the night of the day on which Macaulay was defeated in the general election of 1847 in Edinburgh. That defeat was the first reverse which he had met with, and though he wrote to his sister Hannah that he was not vexed, but was as cheerful as ever he had been in his life, the poem shows that he felt hurt. The stanzas have great sweetness and tenderness, fraught with much poetic fancy, but their chief interest is the clearer insight they give us into Macaulay's noble heart.

BIOGRAPHIES

FRANCIS ATTERBURY

The Encyclopædia Britannica, December, 1853

FRANCIS ATTERBURY, a man who holds a conspicuous place in the political, ecclesiastical, and literary history of England, was born in the year 1662, at Middleton in Buckinghamshire, a parish of which his father was rector. Francis was educated at Westminster School, and carried thence to Christ Church a stock of learning which, though really scanty, he through life exhibited with such judicious ostentation that superficial observers believed his attainments to be immense. At Oxford his parts, his taste, and his bold, contemptuous, and imperious spirit soon made him conspicuous. Here he published, at twenty, his first work, a translation of the noble poem of Absalom and Achitophel into Latin verse. Neither the style nor the versification of the young scholar was that of the Augustan age. In English composition he succeeded much better. In 1687 he distinguished himself among many able men who wrote in defence of the Church of England, then persecuted by James the Second, and calumniated by apostates who had for lucre quitted her communion. Among these apostates none was more active or malignant than Obadiah Walker, who was master of University College, and who had set up there, under the royal patronage, a press for printing tracts against the established religion. In one of these tracts, written apparently by Walker himself, many aspersions were

thrown on Martin Luther. Atterbury undertook to defend the great Saxon Reformer, and performed that task in a manner singularly characteristic. Whoever examines his reply to Walker will be struck by the contrast between the feebleness of those parts which are argumentative and defensive, and the vigor of those parts which are rhetorical and aggressive. The Papists were so much galled by the sarcasms and invectives of the young polemic that they raised a cry of treason, and accused him of having, by implication, called King James a Judas.

After the Revolution, Atterbury, though bred in the doctrines of nonresistance and passive obedience, readily swore fealty to the new government. In no long time he took holy orders. He occasionally preached in London with an eloquence which raised his reputation, and soon had the honor of being appointed one of the royal chaplains. But he ordinarily resided at Oxford, where he took an active part in academical business, directed the classical studies of the undergraduates of his college, and was the chief adviser and assistant of Dean Aldrich, a divine now chiefly remembered by his catches, but renowned among his contemporaries as a scholar, a Tory, and a High Churchman. It was the practice, not a very judicious practice, of Aldrich to employ the most promising youths of his college in editing Greek and Latin books. Among the studious and well-disposed lads who were, unfortunately for themselves, induced to become teachers of philology when they should have been content to be learners, was Charles Boyle, son of the Earl of Orrery, and nephew of Robert Boyle, the great experimental philosopher. The task assigned to Charles Boyle was to prepare a new edition of one of the most worthless books in existence. It was a fashion, among those Greeks and Romans who cultivated rhetoric as an art, to compose epistles and harangues in the names of eminent men. Some of these counterfeits are fabricated with such exquisite taste and skill that it is the highest achievement