The literary personality of Macaulay, though a great one in all respects, is neither complex nor unequally present, and it is therefore desirable to discuss all its manifestations together. In the order of importance and of bulk his work may be divided into verse, prose-essays, and history, for his speeches less directly concern us, and are very little more than essays adroitly enough adjusted so as not to be tedious to the hearer. In all three capacities he was eminently popular; and in all three his popularity has brought with it a sort of reaction, partly justified, partly unjust. The worst brunt of this reaction has fallen upon his verse, the capital division of which, the _Lays of Ancient Rome_, was persistently decried by Mr. Matthew Arnold, the critic of most authority in the generation immediately succeeding Macaulay's. A poet of the very highest class Macaulay was not; his way of thought was too positive, too clear, too destitute either of mystery or of dream, to command or to impart the true poetical mirage, to "make the common as if it were not common." His best efforts of this kind are in small and not very generally known things, the "Jacobite's Epitaph," "The Last Buccaneer." But his ballads earlier and later, _Ivry_, _The Armada_, _Naseby_, and the Roman quartet, exhibit the result of a consummate literary faculty with a real native gift for rhythm and metre, applying the lessons of the great Romantic generation with extraordinary vigour and success, and not without considerable eloquence and refinement. It is a gross and vulgar critical error to deem Macaulay's poetical effects vulgar or gross. They are _popular_; they hit exactly that scheme of poetry which the general ear can appreciate and the general brain understand. They are coin for general circulation; but they are not base coin. Hundreds and thousands of immature and 'prentice tastes have been educated to the enjoyment of better things by them; thousands and tens of thousands of tastes, respectable at least, have found in them the kind of poetry which they can like, and beyond which they are not fitted to go. And it would be a very great pity if there were ever wanting critical appreciations which, while relishing things more exquisite and understanding things more esoteric, can still taste and savour the simple genuine fare of poetry which Macaulay offers. There are few wiser proverbs than that which cautions us against demanding "better bread than is made of wheat," and the poetical bread of the _Lays of Ancient Rome_ is an honest household loaf that no healthy palate will reject.