to their fellow-countrymen, or at any rate to those of their fellow-countrymen whom he was himself prepared to enfranchise.  Independent, frank, and proud almost to a fault, he detested the whole race of jobbers and time-servers, parasites and scandal-mongers, led-captains, led-authors, and led-orators.  Some of his antipathies have stamped themselves indelibly upon literary history.  He attributed to the Right Honourable John Wilson Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty during the twenty years preceding 1830, qualities which excited his disapprobation beyond control, and possibly beyond measure.  His judgment has been confirmed by the public voice, which identifies Croker with the character of Rigby in Mr. Disraeli’s Coningsby.

Macaulay was the more formidable as an opponent because he could be angry without losing his command of the situation.  His first onset was terrific; but in the fiercest excitement of the melee he knew when to call a halt.  A certain member of Parliament named Michael Thomas Sadler had fallen foul of Malthus, and very foul indeed of Macaulay, who in two short and telling articles took revenge enough for both. [Macaulay writes to Mr. Napier in February 1831:  “People here think that I have answered Sadler completely.  Empson tells me that Malthus is well pleased, which is a good sign.  As to Blackwood’s trash I could not get through it.  It bore the same relation to Sadler’s pamphlet that a bad hash bears to a bad joint.”] He writes on this subject to Mr. Macvey Napier, who towards the close of 1829 had succeeded Jeffrey in the editorship of the Edinburgh Review:  “The position which we have now taken up is absolutely impregnable, and, if we were to quit it, though we might win a more splendid victory, we should expose ourselves to some risk.  My rule in controversy has always been that to which the Lacedaemonians adhered in war:  never to break the ranks for the purpose of pursuing a beaten enemy.”  He had, indeed, seldom occasion to strike twice.  Where he set his mark, there was no need of a second impression.  The unduly severe fate of those who crossed his path during the years when his blood was hot teaches a serious lesson on the responsibilities of genius.  Croker, and Sadler, and poor Robert Montgomery, and the other less eminent objects of his wrath, appear likely to enjoy just so much notoriety, and of such a nature, as he has thought fit to deal out to them in his pages; and it is possible that even Lord Ellenborough may be better known to our grand-children by Macaulay’s oration on the gates of Somnauth than by the noise of his own deeds, or the echo of his own eloquence.