There have been other men of our own generation, though very few, who if they have not equaled have approached Macaulay in power of memory, and who have certainly exceeded him in the unfailing accuracy of their recollections; and yet not in accuracy as to dates or names or quotations, or other matters of hard fact, when the question was one simply between ay and no. In these he may have been without a rival. In a list of kings, or popes, or senior wranglers, or prime ministers, or battles, or palaces, or as to the houses in Pall Mall or about Leicester Square, he might be followed with implicit confidence. But a large and important class of human recollections are not of this order: recollections for example of characters, of feelings, of opinions; of the intrinsic nature, details, and bearings of occurrences. And here it was that Macaulay's wealth "was unto him an occasion of falling." And that in two ways. First, the possessor of such a vehicle as his memory could not but have something of an overweening confidence in what it told him; and quite apart from any tendency to be vain or overbearing, he could hardly enjoy the benefits of that caution which arises from self-interest, and the sad experience of frequent falls. But what is more, the possessor of so powerful a fancy could not but illuminate with the colors it supplied, the matters which he gathered into his great magazine, wherever the definiteness of their outline was not so rigid as to defy or disarm the action of the intruding and falsifying faculty. Imagination could not alter the date of the battle of Marathon, of the Council of Nice, or the crowning of Pepin; but it might seriously or even fundamentally disturb the balance of light and dark in his account of the opinions of Milton or of Laud, or his estimate of the effects of the Protectorate or the Restoration, or of the character and even the adulteries of William III. He could detect justly this want of dry light in others; he probably suspected it in himself; but it was hardly possible for him to be enough upon his guard against the distracting action of a faculty at once so vigorous, so crafty, and so pleasurable in its intense activity.[Pg 6369]