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
Why such an artist was selected to deface so fine a Torso, we cannot
pretend to conjecture. We read that, when the Consul Mummius, after
the taking of Corinth, was preparing to send to Rome some works of the
greatest Grecian sculptors, he told the packers that if they broke his
Venus or his Apollo, he would force them to restore the limbs which
should be wanting. A head by a hewer of milestones joined to a bosom by
Praxiteles would not surprise or shock us more than this supplement.
The “Memoir” contains much that is worth reading; for it contains many
extracts from the compositions of Sir James Mackintosh. But when we pass
from what the biographer has done with his scissors to what he has done
with his pen, we can find nothing to praise in his work. Whatever
may have been the intention with which he wrote, the tendency of his
narrative is to convey the impression that Sir James Mackintosh, from
interested motives, abandoned the doctrines of the Vindiciae Gallicae.
Had such charges appeared in their natural place, we should leave them
to their natural fate. We would not stoop to defend Sir James Mackintosh
from the attacks of fourth-rate magazines and pothouse newspapers. But
here his own fame is turned against him. A book of which not one copy
would ever have been bought but for his name in the title-page is made
the vehicle of the imputation. Under such circumstances we cannot help
exclaiming, in the words of one of the most amiable of Homer’s heroes,
“Nun tis enieies
Patroklios deilio
Mnisastho pasin gar epistato meilichos einai
Zoos eun’ nun d’ au
Thanatos kai Moira kichanei.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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