Carlyle and Macaulay.—The 18th century not only won its literary triumphs by virtue of the exercise of the imagination in poetry and romance. Throughout the century history and criticism, in which the imagination plays a more limited part, were flourishing conspicuously. Henry Hallam (1777-1859) produced between 1818 and 1837 three solid historical works, which anticipated many of the characteristics of the new historical school in England. They were for the most part genuine studies of original au-I thorities and although they betrayed a whig political bias were conscientious endeavors to present the facts fairly. A robust common sense atoned for the lack of sympathetic im agination or broad philosophical temper. But Hallam's labors stand apart and lay for the most part outside the main contemporary currents of intellectual effort. The two representative practicers of the arts of history and criticism in the 19th century—Carlyle and Macaulay—were possessed of far greater literary genius than Hallam and exerted a wider influence. Both were long lived. Their work was well begun before Queen Victoria commenced to reign; it continued long after. Carlyle was born five years before the end of the 18th century and died in 1:•:1. Macaulay was born in the first year of the last century and died in 1859.
Carlyle is one of the most distinctive figures in whole range of literary activity in the 19th century with which his life was almost co terminous. He was thoroughly imbued with the large ideas of man's social perfectibility to which the leaders of the French Revolution gave ex pression in their cry for liberty and fraternity. But he was at the same time a potent and cen sorious foe of many of the social tendencies which the French Revolution set in motion. He warned his contemporaries of the dangers in separable from the leveling spirit of a demo trade age, with a greater practical effect than any man of letters has compassed before by dint of mere passive penmanship. To Carlyle's es says and lectures may in part be attributed that definite recognition of the limitations inherent in a purely democratic ideal, to which, in the earlier decades of the century, the eyes of the mass of Englishmen seemed closed.
Carlyle's finest literary work was done in the fields of history. He toiled complainingly in the dry-as-dust repositories of historical learn ing, but he did not take so wide a view of the historian's fiction as the greatest of the British historians, Gibbon, nor were his researches so exhaustive or so multifarious as the more re cent scientific standard of historical investiga tion prescribes. But by force of a rare im aginative insight into human action and char acter, Carlyle recalled to life a series of epi sodes of the past, with a truth and realism which no poet or novelist, working with un limited right and power of invention, has ex celled in pith and moment. Carlyle's (French Revolution' (1837) and portions of his erick the Great' (1858-65) set before the reader historic episodes with something of the dramatic intensity of the historical plays of Shakespeare.
At the same time as Carlyle was working out his destiny, Macaulay was also making masterly contributions, of not altogether dis similar calibre, to the literature of the century.
Macaulay's knowledge of books and records was as great as Carlyle's, if not greater, but his historical achievement remains on a lower plane. He possessed far less imaginative in tuition. His mental horizon was limited by temporary conditions of current political con flict. His conception of historic fact was colored by partisan prepossessions, which, viewed in relation to the great destinies of the human race, seem puny, and in a historian, tend to unveracity. Carlyle and even Gibbon had strong prejudices, but their native senti ment was cast in a larger mold. in pre conceptions left the historical spirit n the main unclouded.
In style Carlyle and Macaulay were as the poles asunder. The spasmodic irregularity of the one has nothing in common with the dis ciplined orderliness of the other. Macaulay's influence on the English prose style of the cen tury has been far greater and on the whole more beneficial than Carlyle's. Carlyle's style was a bow of Ulysses, which none but himself could bend. In other hands it became an implement of burlesque. Macaulay's style which was less impracticable, inherited and developed many of the best features of the prose of the 18th cen tury. It was mainly characterized by a direct ness and an emphasis which often grew into brilliant and stirring eloquence, although it in dined at times to monotonous rigidity, and at times to declamatory violence. It proved a dan style for purposes of servile imitation. he habit of insistent emphasis is apt to degen erate among the incompetent into bombast. At the same time the discreet and intelligent as similation of Macaulay's prose tends to clear ness and point without appreciable sacrifice of grace. Toward the end of the century a pass ing reaction set in against the metallic clear ness of Macaulay's diction, and efforts were made to invest English prose with a subtle elegance and cloudy preciosity to which it was not naturally adapted. The most remarkable at such filigree workers in prose was Walter Pater (1839-94). Another conscious artist in prose was Robert Louis Stevenson but he was endowed with a fertile imaginative power which preserved his style from the vices of pedantry and kept its lucidity intact. Pater devoted himself to esthetic criticism which he clothed in a delicate and ornate verbal garb. Pater often achieved beautiful effects. But the methods were inseparable from affectations and conceits, which often render his prose difficult to read with understanding. The irresistible vogue of Macaulay's prose style ordained that none should be widely acceptable which failed at any point in perspicuity. John Ruskin, whose esthetic criticism covered a wider field than Pater's, proved, too, that perspicuity in English prose was not incompatible with artistic beauty and pliancy. Affected prose consequently met with small encouragement; it was cherished by coteries and did not color the broad cur rents of the century's literature.