Critical and Historical Essays, vol 2 | Page 4

the world. He stands between philosophic historians and the
public very much as journals and periodicals stand between the masses
and great libraries. Macaulay is a glorified journalist and reviewer, who
brings the matured results of scholars to the man in the street in a form
that he can remember and enjoy, when he could not make use of a
merely learned book. He performs the office of the ballad-maker or
story-teller in an age before books were known or were common. And
it is largely due to his influence that the best journals and periodicals of
our day are written in a style so clear, so direct, so resonant."
And this from Mr. Cotter Morison
"Macaulay did for the historical essay what Haydn did for the sonata,
and Watt for the steam engine; he found it rudimentary and
unimportant, and left it complete and a thing of power. . . . To take a
bright period or personage of history, to frame it in a firm outline, to

conceive it at once in article-size, and then to fill in this limited canvas
with sparkling anecdote, telling bits of colour, and facts, all fused
together by a real genius for narrative, was the sort of genre-painting
which Macaulay applied to history. . . . And to this day his essays
remain the best of their class, not only in England, but in Europe. . . .
The best would adorn any literature, and even the less successful have a
picturesque animation, and convey an impression of power that will not
easily be matched. And, again, we need to bear in mind that they were
the productions of a writer immersed in business, written in his scanty
moments of leisure, when most men would have rested or sought
recreation. Macaulay himself was most modest in his estimate of their
value. . . . It was the public that insisted on their re-issue, and few
would be bold enough to deny that the public was right."
It is to Mr. Morison that the plan followed in the present edition of the
Essays is due. In his monograph on Macaulay (English Men of Letters
series) he devotes a chapter to the Essays and "with the object of giving
as much unity as possible to a subject necessarily wanting it," classifies
the Essays into four groups, (1)English history, (2)Foreign history,
(3)Controversial, (4)Critical and Miscellaneous. The articles in the first
group are equal in bulk to those of the three other groups put together,
and are contained in the first volume of this issue. @"They form a
fairly complete survey of English history from the time of Elizabeth to
the later years of the reign of George III, and are fitly introduced by the
Essay on Hallam's History, which forms a kind of summary or
microcosm of the whole period.
The scheme might be made still more complete by including certain
articles (and especially the exquisite biographies contributed by
Macaulay to the Encyclopaedia Britannica) which are published in the
volume of " Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches." Exigencies of
space have, however, compelled the limitation of the present edition to
the " Essays" usually so-called. These have also been reprinted in the
chronological arrangement ordinarily followed (see below) in The
Temple Classics (5 vols. 1900), where an exhaustive bibliography, etc.,
has been appended to each Essay.
Chief dates in the life of Thomas Babington Macaulay, afterwards
Baron Macaulay:--
1800 (Oct. 25). Birth at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire. 1818-1825.

Life at Cambridge (Fellow of Trinity, 1824). 1825. Essay on Milton
contributed to Edinburgh Review. 1826. Joined the Northern Circuit.
1830 @M.P. for Calne (gift of the Marquis of Lansdowne). 1833. M.P.
for Leeds. 1834-38. Legal Adviser to the Supreme Council of India.
Work at the Indian Penal Code. 1839. M.P. for Edinburgh, and
Secretary at War In Melbourne's Cabinet. 1842. Lays of Ancient Rome.
1843. Collected edition of the Essays. 1847. Rejected at the Election of
M.P. for Edinburgh. 1848. England from the Accession of James II.
vols. i. and ii. 1852. M.P. for Edinburgh; serious illness. 1855. History
of England, vols. iii. and iv. 1857. Raised to the peerage. 1859 (Dec.
28). Death at Holly Lodge, Kensington. (Buried in Westminster Abbey,
9th January 1860.)
The following are the works of Thomas Babington Macaulay:
Pompeii (Prize poem), 1819; Evening (prize poem), 1821; Lays of
Ancient Rome (1842); Ivry and the Armada (Quarterly Magazine),
added to Edition of 1848; Critical and Historical Essays (Edinburgh
Review), 1843.
The Essays originally appeared as follows:
Milton, August 1825; Machiavelli, March 1827; Hallam's
"Constitutional History," September 1828; Southey's "Colloquies,"
January 1830; R. Montgomery's Poems, April 1830; Civil Disabilities
of Jews, January 1831; Byron, June 1831; Croker's "Boswell,"
September 1831; Pilgrim's Progress, December 1831; Hampden,
December 1831; Burleigh, April 1832; War of Succession in Spain,
January