adapted, and the 'Lays' present the simple characters, scenes, and ideals
of the early Roman republican period with a sympathetic vividness and in
stirring rhythms which give them an unlimited appeal to boys. None the less
the 'Lays' really make nothing else so clear as that in the true sense of
the word Macaulay was not at all a poet. They show absolutely nothing of
the finer feeling which adds so much, for example, to the descriptions in
Scott's somewhat similar romances, and they are separated by all the
breadth of the world from the realm of delicate sensation and imagination
to which Spenser and Keats and all the genuine poets are native-born.

The power of Macaulay's prose works, as no critic has failed to note, rests
on his genius as an orator. For oratory he was rarely endowed. The
composition of a speech was for him a matter of a few hours; with almost
preternatural mental activity he organized and sifted the material,
commonly as he paced up and down his garden or his room; then, the whole
ready, nearly verbatim, in his mind, he would pass to the House of Commons
to hold his colleagues spell-bound during several hours of fervid
eloquence. Gladstone testified that the announcement of Macaulay's
intention to speak was 'like a trumpet call to fill the benches.' The great
qualities, then, of his essays and his 'History' are those which give
success to the best sort of popular oratory--dramatic vividness and
clearness, positiveness, and vigorous, movement and interest. He realizes
characters and situations, on the external side, completely, and conveys
his impression to his readers with scarcely any diminution of force. Of
expository structure he is almost as great a master as Burke, though in his
essays and 'History' the more concrete nature of his material makes him
prevailingly a narrator. He sees and presents his subjects as wholes,
enlivening them with realistic details and pictures, but keeping the
subordinate parts subordinate and disposing of the less important events in
rapid summaries. Of clear and trenchant, though metallic, narrative and