THE Editors of this edition of Macaulay's Essay on Warren Hastings have prepared the work to meet the wants of those who intend going up for the Matriculation Examinations in English Composition, for the year 1891, at the Universities. The literary student is to be congratulated on the selection, for the second time by Toronto University, of a work so attractive as this in English prose, at once interesting in matter and animated in style. He is also to be congratulated on the fact that an English Classic is placed on the Curriculum not for grammatical dissection, nor even for critical study, in its literary and rhetorical aspects, but as material for exercises in English Composition. While this special object has been kept in view, the Editors have not been unmindful of the many difficulties, literary and historical, which the Essay presents to the reader. In the endeavour to meet these, the Editors have supplied in the Introductions and Annotations such helps as they have deemed essential, and which the slender resources of a student's library do not usually furnish. To facilitate reading and aid the memory in retaining what has been read, the text of the Essay has been broken into chapters, the headings of which may serve, in some degree, as Themes for Composition. With Macaulay's Essay, Scott's Ivanhoe has for the same year been bracketed, as an additional prose work, with which the candidate is expected to familiarize himself, and on which his powers of writing an English Prose composition will be tested. To aid the student in his reading of the novel, an outline of its plot has been furnished, with a list of its principal characters and some observations on its historical setting. 864754 Appended to the work is a brief classification of the technical characteristics of literary style, and a few hints on its intellectual, emotional, and æsthetic qualities, together with an enumeration of the chief Figures of Speech, deemed essential to the young student in comprehending the technique of literary criticism. In prescribing the Prose Work for English Composition in the several years, the Curriculum of Toronto University enjoins on Candidates for Matriculation that nothing but an essay will be required based on the work or works for the year. This, the Curriculum adds, "shall be dealt with rather as a test of the candidate's power of English composition than as a proof of his knowledge of the subject written upon. Legible writing and correct spelling and punctuation will be regarded as indispen. sible, and special attention will be paid to the structure of sentences and paragraphs. The examiner will allow a choice of subjects, some of which must be based on the selections named, with which the candidate is expected to familiarize himself by careful reading." The Editors deem it proper to call the attention of those using the present book to this requirement of the University authorities. TORONTO, July, 1890. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I.-Hasting's Ancestry and School Life II. First Duties in India-1750-1764.. III.-Visits England and returns to India IV.-Appointed Governor of Bengal.. V.-Bengalee Character described. X.-Philip Francis and the Junius Letters XI.-The Governor-General and the Council.. CHAPTER XXVI.-Fox, Pitt and Sheridan..... XXVII.-The Trial in Westminster Hall.. XXVIII.-Burke's Impeachment of Hastings. MACAULAY'S LIFE, AND THE CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS WRITINGS. THOMAS BABINGTON (Lord) MACAULAY, one of the greatest masters of English prose, was born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, October 25th, 1800. His father, Zachary Macaulay, was intimately associated with Wilberforce in the emancipation of the West Indian slaves. Macaulay, early in life, gave promise of winning a notable name. As a boy he was precocious and self-confident; though he justified these characteristics by ceaseless reading, by the assiduous cultivation of his mental faculties, and by the exercise of a memory phenomenal in its strength. His university career at Cambridge was not distinguished for profound scholarship: he was rather a desultory student, and preferred to win success in his own paths. English literature was the field in which he chose to seek honours, and there he won them, as well as within the circle of a literary society attached to the College, where he shone in debate. In 1822 he took his B.A. degree, and two years afterwards obtained a College Fellowship. On leaving the University Macaulay studied law and was called to the bar. Literature, however, was his lodestar, and in the arena of letters he had already achieved a name. His contributions to Knight's Quarterly had been well received; but public attention was specially directed to the young writer by his article in the Edinburgh Review on Milton. This essay was the first of that long series of brilliant contributions to the Whig Quarterly, which earned for that periodical its chief reputation. Meanwhile politics was putting forth a rival claim for a hold on Macaulay's talents. In 1830 he entered Parliament; and for four years took an active part in the stirring scenes of the Reform Bill. He was a Liberal in politics, and his vehement oratory and great powers of work were of much service to his party at this critical period of Parliamentary history. In 1832 he was appointed a Commissioner of the Board of Control, which represented the Crown in its relation to the East India Company; and two years afterwards he was nominated a member of the Supreme Council of India. The next four years Macaulay spent in Calcutta. To this residence in India, and the impress it made upon the writer's mind, we doubtless owe two of the most brilliant essays in the language. |