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| Thomas Babington Macaulay
"Sidney Godophin," said Charles (II), "is never in the way and never out of the way." A beggarly people, a church and no steeple.A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop. A man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world. A single shelf of a good European library is worth the whole native literature of India. A system in which the two great commandments were, to hate your neighbour and to love your neighbour's wife. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods? As Milton has said, error is but opinion in the making. Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular. From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness, – a system in which the two great commandments were to hate your neighbour and to love your neighbour's wife. Good government, like a good coat, is that which fits the body for which it is designed. He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked. He was a rake among scholars and a scholar among rakes. He [Charles II] was utterly without ambition. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the administration. His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar. I don't mind your thinking slowly; I mind your publishing faster than you think. I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history. In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North america. It is good to be often reminded of the inconsistency of human nature, and to learn to look without wonder or disgust on the weaknesses which are found in the strongest minds. Logic has its illusions as well as rhetoric: a fallacy may lurk in a syllogism as well as in a metaphor. Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors. No food is so bitter as the bread of dependence, and no ascent so painful as the staircase of a patron. No man is fit to govern great societies who hesitates about disobliging the few who have access to him for the sake of the many whom he will never see. Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. Nothing is so useless as a general maxim. Oligarchy, wherever it has existed, has always stunted the growth of genius. Our academical Pharisees. Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil. Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind. States have always been lest governed by men who have taken a wide view of public affairs, and who have rather a general acquaintance with many sciences than a perfect mastery of one. Temple was a man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world. That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy. That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it. The chief-justice was rich, quiet, and infamous. The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little. The dust and silence of the upper shelf. The English Bible, – a book which if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power. The English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good. The great principle, that societies and laws exist only for the purpose of increasing the sum of private happiness, is not recognized with sufficient clearness. The greatest men must fail when they attempt to do that for which they are unfit. The hearts of men are their books; events are their tutors; great actions are their eloquence. The human race is governed by its imagination. French: C'est l'imagination qui gouverne le genre humain. The impenetrable stupidity of Prince George (son-in-law of James II) served his turn. It was his habit, when any news was told him, to exclaim, "Est il possible?" – "Is it possible?" The kiss, in which he half forgets even such a yoke as yours. The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion. The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. The reluctant obedience of distant provinces generally costs more than it [the territory] is worth. Empires which branch out widely are often more flourishing for a little timely pruning. The sweeter sound of woman's praise. The whole man seems to be an enigma, a grotesque assemblage of incongruous qualities, selfishness and generosity, cruelty and benevolence, craft and simplicity, abject villany and romantic heroism. There is no more hazardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth into those dark and infected recesses in which no light has ever shone. There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen. Thus our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic. To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late, and how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods? We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age. We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality. Ye diners out from whom we guard our spoons. |
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