INTRODUCTION.

SKETCH OF MACAULAY'S LIFE.

To be born into a family of good education, severe morality, serious purposes; to be endowed with unusual talents; to be recognized promptly as a genius and rewarded bountifully with honors, literary, social, and political; to meet no obstacles that will not yield to vigor and honest pluck; to win success at every turn, and to find the world, through life, perfectly intelligible, and, on the whole, eminently satisfactory, what fortune better than this could any man desire? Yet this was the happy fate of Thomas Babington Macaulay, the most popular of English historians and essayists.

He was born in Leicestershire in the year 1800. His father, Zachary Macaulay, was a man of strict integrity, an ardent supporter of the movement for abolishing the slave trade, and editor of the Christian Observer, the organ of that reform. The Macaulay home was a place where a boy would often hear discussion of high themes and where good books were plentiful. The mother was a gentlewoman of culture. She superintended her son's reading with great wisdom. There was surely need of careful oversight, for at eight he had learned by heart Scott's Marmion, had begun heroic and romantic poems in imitation of Scott, and was compiling a universal history. His mother criticised with sympathy these early efforts and kept the young prodigy ignorant of the vast difference between him and

the other children. So he passed a natural and happy childhood, loved his home ardently, and read to his heart's content.

Macaulay received good elementary schooling and at eighteen began residence at Trinity College, Cambridge. Here he devoted himself to the classics and to wide reading in general literature. He made many good friends and gained distinction as a conversationist, a debater, and a writer, but failed to win the highest honors on account of his neglect of mathematics. He took his degree in 1822. Two years later he was appointed to a Fellowship, which paid him £300 annually.

The year 1824 brought Macaulay the cares and burdens of manhood. His father suffered immense losses in business; there were heavy debts to be paid, and brothers and sisters to be supported. To the fulfilment of these obligations Macaulay addressed himself with energy and cheerful confidence, and by the time he was forty he had met them all and had gained a competence besides. Success attended his efforts from the very first. The article on Milton, which appeared in the Edinburgh Review for August, 1825, began a connection with that journal which lasted nearly twenty years, gave him immediate fame, and opened the way to social distinction and political preferment. In 1826 he was called to the bar; in 1828 he was appointed a commissioner of bankruptcy at an annual salary of £400; and in 1830 he was sent to Parliament from the "pocket borough" of Calve.

No man ever began a public career at a more opportune time. The great movement for reform was nearing full tide, and Macaulay found himself in hearty accord with the new spirit. He entered into the debates with ardor and proved an effective orator. When, in 1832, the reform was achieved, his party rewarded his services by returning him

to Parliament as member for Leeds, one of the new constituencies created by the Reform Bill. He was also made Secretary to the Board of Control for India Affairs. He had stood with his party against the repeal of the union with Ireland, in favor of removing the civil disabilities of the Jews, and against perpetuating the exclusive trade privileges of the East India Company. He had even voted to abolish the office of Commissioner in Bankruptcy, thereby cutting off a large part of his own income. But when his party brought forward the West India Bill, which abolitionists like the Macaulays could not sanction, he promptly braved political ruin by resigning his office under the ministry and by speaking and voting against the measure. The Whig leaders, however, were too wise to allow Macaulay to leave them. His resignation was refused, his opposition condoned, and he found himself able to say, "I have the singular good luck of having saved both my honor and my place."

During these busy years in Parliament he wrote a dozen or more of his well-known essays for the Edinburgh Review, enjoyed London society freely, and kept up a large correspondence. His letters are filled with humorous descriptions of the great social gatherings to which he was invited, and of the people of distinction whose acquaintance he enjoyed.

In 1834 he was appointed President of the new Law Commission for India and a member of the Supreme Council of Calcutta. These offices would necessitate his removal to India and would take him out of public life in England for a time; but he accepted them, for they carried with them a very large salary, which meant freedom from debt and a fortune sufficient for the rest of his life. His chief labor in India was spent in drawing up a Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure, a monument of industry and ability, which has won high praise from succeeding genera

tions of India judges and lawyers. He found time also to accomplish an enormous amount of reading and writing and to visit many places of interest; but he regarded his stay in India as a period of banishment and, late in 1837, gladly began the long voyage home.

On his return from India he desired to devote himself to writing his "History of England"; but political obligations prevented. He was returned to Parliament as member for Edinburgh, serving from 1839 to 1847, holding also the positions of Secretary of War (1839-1841) and Paymaster of the Forces (1846-1847). During these eight years he spoke on all of the important questions before Parliament, defending the war with China in 1840, opposing Chartism, supporting the bill to abolish theological tests in the Scotch Universities, resisting the attempt to deprive dissenters of their chapels, advocating a change in the copyright law and supporting a bill to limit the labor-day in factories to ten hours for young employes.

In 1842 appeared the "Lays of Ancient Rome" and in 1844 the last of his essays in the Edinburgh Review. In 1849 the first two volumes of his "History of England" were published. The public demand for this work was enormous. Never before had history been written in so picturesque and entertaining a manner. Macaulay succeeded in making history more interesting than fiction. The second two volumes appeared in 1855 and were read with avidity. While writing the History, he contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica biographies of Atterbury (1853), Bunyan (1854), Goldsmith (1856), Johnson (1856), and Pitt (1859).

The last decade of Macaulay's life brought him many deserved honors. In 1849 he was made Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1857 he was elected a foreign member of the French

The Historical Essay as Developed by Macaulay. 5

Academy and of the Prussian Order of Merit, as well as High Steward of Cambridge; and was raised to the Peerage as Baron Macaulay of Rothley. He was the first literary man to achieve the last distinction.

He died at Holly Lodge, Kensington, December 28, 1859, leaving a fifth volume of the history drafted and partly completed.

THE HISTORICAL ESSAY AS DEVELOPED BY MACAULAY.

The originality of form and treatment which Macaulay gave to the historical essay has not, perhaps, received due recognition. Without having invented it, he so greatly improved and expanded it that he deserves nearly as much credit as if he had. He 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. Before his time there was the ponderous history, generally in quarto, and there was the antiquarian dissertation. There was also the historical review, containing alternate pages of extract and comment, generally dull and gritty. But the historical essay, as he conceived it, and with the prompt inspiration of a real discoverer immediately put into practical shape, was as good as unknown before him. 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 color, 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. Slight, or even trivial, in the field of historical erudition and critical inquiry, they are masterpieces if regarded in the light of great popular cartoons on subjects taken from modern history. They are