T. B. MACAULAY.

Calcutta, June 15, 1837. DEAR NAPIER,-I have received your very kind letter acknowledging the receipt of Trevelyan's article about the Thugs. Though there was much that gave me pain in your account of yourself, yet, as it was on the whole better than any account which I had lately received, I was gratified by it. I assure you that I have most sincerely felt for you, and that there are few things which will give me more pleasure than to find you in good health and spirits when I return. Your letter about my review of Mackintosh miscarried, vexatiously enough. I should have been glad to know what was thought of my performance among friends and foes, for here we have no information on such subjects. The literary correspondents of the Calcutta newspapers seem to be penny-a-line men, whose whole stock of literature comes from the conversations in the Green Room.

My long article on Bacon has, no doubt, been in your hands some time. I never, to the best of my I never, to the best of my recollection, proposed to review Hannah More's life or works. If I did, it must have been in jest. She was exactly the very last person in the world about whom I should choose to write a critique. She was a very kind friend to me from childhood. Her notice first called out my literary tastes. Her presents laid the foundation of my library. She was to me what Ninon was to Voltaire,-begging her pardon for comparing her to a strumpet, and yours for comparing myself to a great man. She really was a second mother to me. I have a real affection for her memory. I, therefore, could not possibly write about her, unless I wrote in her praise; and all the praise which I could give to her writings, even after straining my conscience in her favour, would be far indeed from satisfying any of her admirers.

I will try my hand on Temple and on Lord Clive. Shaftesbury I shall let alone, Indeed, his political life is so much connected with Temple's that, without endless repetition, it would be impossible for me to furnish a separate article on

each. Temple's life and works,-the part which he took in the controversy about the Ancients and Moderns, the Oxford confederacy against Bentley, and the memorable victory which Bentley obtained,-will be good subjects. I am in good training for this part of the subject, as I have twice read through the Phalaris controversy since I arrived in India.

In January we propose to sail for England. Before this day year, I hope to shake hands with you. Till then, with all kind wishes, farewell.-Yours ever, T. B. MACAULAY.

SIR DAVID BREWSTER.

Allerly, July 27, 1837. MY DEAR Mr. NAPIER,--I expected that my review of Whewell would have been very laudatory, and that my principal task would have been to give a faithful analysis of it. I am grievously disappointed, however, to find it a work of great pretension and no real learning. It is not written in a good tone of feeling. It is most unjust to many individuals, and in many cases it evinces the most deplorable ignorance. He is actually ignorant of the fine optical discoveries of Ptolemy, though one of the MSS. of Ptolemy's optics is in the Bodleian Library, and though a copious abstract of its contents is given in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia, article Optics, and a shorter one in my report on Optics for the British Association. He is ignorant, too, of the real nature of Snellius's Law of Refraction, and has not read Huygens' account of it, though he cites the book. He is ignorant also of the magnificent experiments made by the French Institute on the Force of Beams. I mention these as specimens of singular ignorance. He has no genuine enthusiasm for Science or its cultivators; and in spite of his great talents and knowledge, he is but a clever bookmaker, without any of the learning and patient industry of a compiler. Had he wanted money, I should have had some sympathy for him, as that is the only apology which an able man can have for writing a bad book, and galloping 1 66 History of the Inductive Sciences," Art. 6, October, 1837.

rough-shod over the field of Science. Your last Number is admirable. Macaulay's article is splendid. It would have killed Playfair, who took me to task for inserting a similar view of Bacon's character (written by Dr. Lee) in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia. I think the Reviewer has taken an extreme view of Bacon's conduct.-Ever faithfully yours, D. BREWSTER.

E. L. BULWER.

Knebworth Park, August 23, 1837. MY DEAR SIR,-Assure Sir D. Sandford of my grateful appreciation of the friendly feeling which dictated his most eloquent and picturesque article. The praise was liberal, the censure gentle, and I should have hoped that the qualified and moderate tone of the whole would have preserved both Editor and Critic from any charge of blind or unjust panegyric. For my part, I think that both General History and Greek Letters have been so much neglected of late, that it would be obviously the duty of criticism to encourage any deliberate attempt to revive a taste for either; and were my own enterprise yet more unsuccessful, I still feel that it would have been entitled to the generous greeting it has received from Sir D. Sandford. When completed, I trust it may vindicate itself, and also approach nearer to the character which Sir Daniel would have wished me to invest it with. Entering now the most important part of the History of Athens, the work will be more exclusively Athenian, more minute in its details, and more searching in its views. I differ from my learned Critic as to the Asiatic origin of the Pelasgi, the scriptural influence on Greek Mythology, and the birthplace of Athenë. I may dispute these points with him hereafter. Macaulay's paper is striking and brilliant, as is all that comes from his vigorous mind and prodigal fancy. But I think, though Bacon was quite as bad a public man as he represents, that his vices were not the consequences of a weak and servile temperament, but of the same profound "Bulwer's Rise and Fall of Athens," Art. 5, July, 1837. 2 It was never completed.

and subtle mind that he evinced in letters.

He chose his

means according as they could bring success to his ends. And it is remarkable (and this Macaulay overlooks) that his worst and meanest acts invariably succeeded in their object,nay, that they were the only means by which his objects could have been gained. Thus his ingratitude to Essex was his great stepping-stone to his after distinctions, and his cowardly submission on the detection of his corruption, not only saved his head, but restored him to liberty, wealth, and rank. I could show, too, from Bacon's letters that Macaulay is mistaken as to his religious sincerity. As Bacon himself says, he wrapped up his physic in sweets for the priests to swallow. In fact, he was not a weak, irresolute actor in politics, but a consummate and masterly hypocrite, trained in the rules of Italian statesmanship. The biographical part is, however, the best of Macaulay's article. The view of Bacon's philosophy seems to me merely brilliant declamation. All detail, all definition of the exact things Bacon did and Bacon omitted to do, are thrown overboard. The comparison with Plato, as a fair illustration of Ancient and Modern Philosophy, is mere rhetoric. And the illustration would have ruined his own position if he had substituted Aristotle for Plato. Aristotle was an useful Philosopher as well as Bacon, and it was in combating Aristotle that Bacon learned the use of his own limbs and weapons. Enough of these criticisms on Criticism. I may differ with Macaulay, but his genius in this article, as in all else, is of a prodigious and gigantic character. He is formed to be the man of his age.

Now as to my proposed aid in the next Number, I grieve to say that the Election has thrown me so back with engagements of a very arduous nature, and on which large sums depend, that I shall be wholly unable to assist you in the October Number. Indeed my only chance of getting through the mass of work before me is by unremitting and exclusive attention to it till November, and by the uninterrupted quiet of the country, where, even if I could spare the time, I could not obtain the books necessary for such 1 Parliament was dissolved on the Queen's accession.

an article on Vane and Pym, as the dignity of the subject demands. I am much vexed at this, which I did not foresee. For I never thought I should have to waste above a few days at Lincoln, whereas I was compelled to reside there for several weeks, and had not a moment to spare for literary occupation.-Ever your very obliged,

E. L. BULWER.

LORD BROUGHAM.

Brougham, July 28, 1837. MY DEAR SIR,-I received the Review [July 1837], and have read most of it, and with great pleasure. There is more variety and more good matter in it than there has been for a long time. The Bacon is, as you say, very striking, and no doubt is the work of an extremely clever man. It is so very long that I think you might have cut it in two, there being an obvious division. But (not to trouble you with the superfluous enumeration of its good qualities), it has two grievous defects, a redundancy, an over-crowding of every one thing that is touched upon, that almost turns one's head; for it is out of one digression into another, and each thought in each is illustrated by twenty different cases and anecdotes, all of which follow from the first without any effort. This is a sad defect in Macaulay, and it really seems to get worse instead of better. I need not say that it is the defect of a very clever person-it is indeed exuberance. But it is a defect also that old age is liable to. The other fault you have alluded to, but I will expose it after Macaulay's own manner of writing. "You might as well say that all men balance themselves in order to walk, and, therefore, there is no science of mechanics, or that every child learns to suck, and, therefore, the Torricellian experiment was of no use to science, or that the dullest of human beings goes to his point by one straight line and not by the two other sides of a triangle, and, therefore, there is no Geometry, or that the most ordinary workman, be he mason building an arch, or cooper making a cask, forms a curve by joining straight lines short in proportion to the whole length, and, therefore, the fluxional calculus was no