I had 'Clarissa' with me: and,
as soon as they began to read, the whole station was in a passion of
excitement about Miss Harlowe and her misfortunes, and her scoundrelly
Lovelace! The Governor's wife seized the book, and the Secretary waited
for it, and the Chief Justice could not read it for tears!" He acted the
whole scene: he paced up and down the "Athenaeum" library: I dare say he
could have spoken pages of the book--of that book, and of what countless
piles of others!
In this little paper let us keep to the text of nil nisi bonum. One
paper I have read regarding Lord Macaulay says "he had no heart." Why,
a man's books may not always speak the truth, but they speak his mind in
spite of himself: and it seems to me this man's heart is beating through
every page he penned. He is always in a storm of revolt and indignation
against wrong, craft, tyranny. How he cheers heroic resistance; how
he backs and applauds freedom struggling for its own; how he hates
scoundrels, ever so victorious and successful; how he recognizes genius,
though selfish villains possess it! The critic who says Macaulay had no
heart, might say that Johnson had none: and two men more generous, and
more loving, and more hating, and more partial, and more noble, do not
live in our history.
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