brilliantly as he has told that which ended at the Boyne--how much
should we have had!
But it could not be. His own conception of history made this
impossible. It is well said that he planned his history "on the scale
of an ordnance map." He did what a German professor does when he tries
to fathom English society by studying the _Times_ newspaper day by day.
The enormous mass of detail, the infinitesimal minuteness of view, beat
him. As he complained about Samuel Johnson, he runs into "big words
about little things." Charles's mistress, her pug-dog, the page-boy
who tended the dog, nay, the boy's putative father, occupy the
foreground: and the poet, the statesman, and the hero retire into the
middle distance or the background. What would we not have given to
have had Macaulay's _History of England_ continued down to his own
time, the wars of Marlborough, the reign of Anne, the poets, wits,
romancers, inventors, reformers, and heroes of the eighteenth century,
the careers of Walpole, Chatham, Pitt, Burke, Fox, Nelson, Wellington,
Brougham, Bentham, and Canning--the formation of the British
Empire--the great revolutionary struggle in Europe! The one thought
which dims our enjoyment of this fascinating collection of memoirs, and
these veracious historical romances, is the sense of what we might have
had, if their author had been a great historian as well as a
magnificent literary artist.
[1] Froude's _Carlyle_, i. 192.
IV
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
In the blaze of the political reputation of the Earl of Beaconsfield we
are too apt to overlook the literary claims of Benjamin Disraeli. But
many of those who have small sympathy with his career as a statesman
find a keen relish in certain of his writings; and it is hardly a
paradox to augur that in a few generations more the former chief of the
new Tory Democracy may have become a tradition, whilst certain of his
social satires may continue to be widely read. Bolingbroke, Swift,
Sheridan, and Macaulay live in English literature, but are little
|