Paper III.

A Few Remarks on the Hackneyed Quotation of "Macaulay's New Zealander."

By W. Colenso, F.L.S.

[Read before the Hawke's Bay Philosophical Institute, 12th June, 1882.]

For some considerable time I have been desirous of bringing this subject before you,—New Zealand being now our Country and our home; and should have certainly done so during past Winter Sessions of our Institute, but for two reasons:—(1) that I had already written pretty fully about it, some 15 years ago in the "New Zealande," Auckland paper; and (2) that I had hoped the quoting of it would die out, or that, at all events, some modern authors and writers and public speakers (especially here in New Zealand) would just give themselves the trouble to enquire whether Macaulay was really the author of that saying,—whether the simile originated with him.

I should however, honestly confess, that I am again reminded (as it were) to bring this subject before you, through my having lately read Professor Mutton's opening Address for 1882, given at the Canterbury College, University of New Zealand, in which Professor Hutton says,—"As individuals have a limited period of existence, so also must it be with nations. This is the leading idea in Lord Macaulay's celebrated New Zealander sitting on the ruins of London Bridge."—

My task on this occasion will be a comparatively easy one, through my having several years ago thoroughly worked the subject out; (and, as I have said, published it in one of our first-class Colonial Newspapers;) I purpose showing, 1.—that the "idea" (to use Professor Hutton's term) is of (at least) twofold origin,—1. general; 2. particular; and 2.—that both were used by authors who preceded Macaulay; whose works, without doubt, Macaulay must have seen and even read; and that from one or more of them Macaulay gathered the striking and famed similes, more than once used by him in his Works.

The radical idea seems to have been rather a favourite one with Macaulay, page 37 as I find he has used it on several occasions; three of them I will quote from his Works written at different periods of his life,—viz., in 1824, in 1829, and in 1845,—a period extending over 16 years.^* His predilection for it may, however, (in part, at least,) be owing to the great noise which it made in the daily literary world at the time of its first appearing in his writings (in 1824), for we read in the preface to his Miscellaneous Writings, that "the passage in question was at one time the subject of allusion, two or three times a week, in speeches and leading articles." And yet it does not appear that any one at that time, or, as far as I know, since, has brought forward the originator.

The first of those three passages (and the one I have just particularly alluded to,) occurs in Macaulay's Review of Mitford's History of Greece, (written in 1824,) where, writing of "the gift of Athens to man," (he goes on to say,)—"although her freedom and her power have for more than twenty centuries been annihilated, her intellectual Empire is imperishable. And when those who have rivalled her greatness shall have shared her fate; when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the sceptre shall have passed away from England; when, perhaps, travellers from distant regions shall in vain labour to decipher on some mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief; shall hear savage hymns chaunted to some misshappen idol over the ruined dome of our proudest temple; and shall sec a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts; her influence and her glory will still survive—fresh in eternal youth,—immortal."

Here we have the idea in its inchoate, more general and less defined state; (but of this, too, anon).

The second occurs in his Review of Mill's Essay on Government, (written in 1829,) here Macaulay says:—"The civilised part of the world has now nothing to fear from the hostility of savage nations.---But is it possible that in the bosom of civilization itself may be engendered the malady which shall destroy it?---Is it possible that, in two or three hundred years, a few lean half-naked fishermen, may divide with owls and foxes the ruins of the greatest European cities,—may wash their nets amidst the relies of her gigantic docks, and build their huts out of the capitals of her stately cathedrals."—

Here, also, we have the same idea, but still inceptive, still in the rough.

The third is the more particular, the worked-up and finished simile of the artistic New Zealander, of which the literary world has heard so much. This occurs in his Review of Ranke's History of the Popes, (written in 1840,)—where Macaulay, writing of the Roman-Catholic Church, says,—" She (the Roman-Catholic Church) may still exist in undiminished vigour, when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his

^* Lord Macaulay was born in 1800, died in 1859.

page 38 stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the rains of St. Pauls."—

I have found this simile, or idea,—both in its rough and in its more finished state,—in no less than five authors of note who preceded Macaulay; four of whom are English, and one French.

The first is Horace Walpole, the eminent virtuoso of "Strawberry Hill" notoriety, and the author of the celebrated "Letters." In a published letter of Walpole's to Mason, written in 1744, he says,—"At last some curious traveller from Lima, will visit England, and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul's, like the Editions of Baalbec and Palmyra." [Here it may be noticed, that Macauley wrote a slashingly trenchant Review of Walpole's Letters, in 1833.]

A few more observations and I close.

First, then, I would remind you, that the writings of all those Authors from whom I have just quoted, must certainly have been well-known to Lord Macaulay, for they were among the chiefest and most notable Books of his early days; and that he was an extensive reader his works clearly show.

Second, that this last work I have quoted from, the French Voyage in search of the unfortunate La Perouse, was one that made a great noise throughout Europe. Not merely on account of the mysterious loss of La Perouse and his ships, and the great amount of interest it had excited; (following, too, so closely as it did, the death of the French navigator Marion and 28 of his crew at the Bay of Islands, and the killing of a whole boat's crew of 10 men belonging to Capt. Furneaux's ship,—which was Capt. Cook's consort-vessel on his second voyage to New Zealand;) but also owing to this very voyage of La Billardiere being the next great Expedition fitted out by the French Government to these seas after Capt. Cook's latest discoveries.

Hence, like those other Voyages to the South Seas and to New Zealand in particular of our celebrated English navigator Cook, the great French Voyage (including that of La Perouse as far as it was known) was a new and fresh work of surpassing interest to all Europe,^* especially to Englishmen and the young of Macaulay's juvenile years;—much what some of us (elders) may remember as to how thoroughly we enjoyed the Voyages of Capt. Cook;—and therefore must also have been seen and read by Macaulay; and such being the case, it was impossible for him to overlook or forget the very striking simile of the New Zealander.

In conclusion, I may say, that in the letter I wrote to the Auckland Paper, above alluded to, I had also mentioned my belief in the many plagiarisms of Lord Macaulay, as shown in not a few instances in his Works,—patent to the close and large reader; and of which I firmly believe this idea culminating in the travelling New Zealander, to be one. But, after all, it is difficult to say of a learned and comprehensive reader, having also a capacious memory,—what really constitutes a plagiarism. Be this as it may, one thing I think I have pretty clearly shown in this my paper, that that simile of the New Zealander visiting London, and sketching and meditating among her ruins, did not originate with Lord Macaulay; and, therefore, should not be continually quoted as his.