Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 1Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 1
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English literature -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- History
[In this review, as it originally stood, the editor of the History of
the Revolution was attacked with an asperity which neither literary
defects nor speculative differences can justify, and which ought to
be reserved for offences against the laws of morality and honour. The
reviewer was not actuated by any feeling of personal malevolence: for
when he wrote this paper in a distant country, he did not know, or even
guess, whom he was assailing. His only motive was regard for the memory
of an eminent man whom he loved and honoured, and who appeared to him to
have been unworthily treated.
The editor is now dead; and, while living, declared that he had been
misunderstood, and that he had written in no spirit of enmity to Sir
James Mackintosh, for whom he professed the highest respect.
Many passages have therefore been softened, and some wholly omitted.
The severe censure passed on the literary execution of the “Memoir” and
“Continuation” could not be retracted without a violation of truth. But
whatever could be construed into an imputation on the moral character of
the editor has been carefully expunged.]
IT is with unfeigned diffidence that we venture to give our opinion of
the last work of Sir James Mackintosh. We have in vain tried to perform
what ought to be to a critic an easy and habitual act. We have in vain
tried to separate the book from the writer, and to judge of it as if it
bore some unknown name. But it is to no purpose. All the lines of that
venerable countenance are before us. All the little peculiar cadences
of that voice from which scholars and statesmen loved to receive the
lessons of a serene and benevolent wisdom are in our ears. We will
attempt to preserve strict impartiality. But we are not ashamed to own
that we approach this relic of a virtuous and most accomplished man
with feelings of respect and gratitude which may possibly pervert our
judgment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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