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Twenty-five-year-old Robert Clive’s extraordinary daring helped to prevent India falling into the hands of the French King.
In 1751, France, Holland and Britain were all vying for the friendship of India’s ruling princes. Chunda Sahib, Nawab of Arcot, backed by the French, had Britain’s ally Mohammed Ali pinned down in Trichinopoly; so Robert Clive persuaded his superiors to let him capture Arcot itself. Immediately, Chunda’s son Rajah brought ten thousand men to relieve it.
When literary critics decide that a book is not worthy of their notice they expect the public to follow their lead, but ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ was different.
In 1672, Charles II relaxed the Conventicle Act that had imprisoned preachers who were not members of the Church of England. The authorities duly released John Bunyan (1628-88) from Bedford gaol, and at once he returned to preaching. Six years later he published ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’, an immensely popular allegory of the Christian life for which literary experts had nothing but scorn.
Classical Greece has been an inspiration to every generation because she stands for the triumph of liberty and reason over prejudice and power.
In 1808, William Mitford (1744-1827) published a History of Greece, of which Thomas Macaulay was far from uncritical; but it prompted him to reflect on the hold that classical Greece continues to exercise over us all. We speak of it mostly in terms of fine buildings and grand oratory, of places of learning or gatherings at Court, but the real glory of Athens, said Macaulay, does not lie there.
The supreme arts and literature of ancient Athens all sprang from the State’s refusal to interfere in the life of the citizen.
In 1808, William Mitford (1744-1827) published a History of Greece to the death of Alexander in 327 BC. A recurrent theme of his narrative was a horror of the kind of popular politics for which Athens is famous, and his conviction that stability comes from a close-knit group of elder statesmen keeping the country on a tight rein. Macaulay completely disagreed.
Macaulay recalled an Italian fable about a fairy doomed every now and then to take the form of a snake, and drew from her a lesson about Liberty.
In an essay on John Milton contributed to the Edinburgh Review in 1825, Thomas Babington Macaulay recalled a fable by Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) concerning the lovely fairy Manto, who every seventh day underwent transformation into a loathsome serpent. Macaulay drew from this a lesson about those statesmen who snatch Liberty away when she does not produce the results they want.
When Robert Southey called for a fairer and greener economy, Thomas Macaulay warned that only politicians and bureaucrats would thank him.
There is nothing new in calling for high taxes to subsidise a fairer, greener economy. Poet Robert Southey did it in 1829, dreaming of a de-industrialised England of apple-cheeked labourers, charming cottages and smiling prosperity. Macaulay dubbed it ‘rose-bushes and poor-rates, rather than steam-engines and independence,’ and reminded him what State-funded projects too often look like.
Lord Macaulay believed that the disastrous reign of King John brought the country together.
Lord Macaulay argued that ‘bad’ King John’s reign did England a lot of good. It pulled the country away from Continental Europe, forcing the supercilious Normans in government to feel less European and more English, and to connect with their everyday countrymen after generations of neglect.