“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 1833; Horace Walpole, October 1833;
Lord Chatham, January 1834; Mackintosh’s “History of Revolution,” July
1835; Bacon, July 1837; Sir William Temple, October 1838; “Gladstone on
Church and State,” April 1839; Clive, January 1840; Ranke’s “History of
the Popes,” October 1840; Comic Dramatists, January 1841; Lord Holland,
July 1841; Warren Hastings, October 1841; Frederick the Great, April
1842; Madame D’Arblay, January 1843; Addison, July 1843; Lord Chatham
(2nd Art.), October 1844.
History of England, vols. i. and ii., 1848; vols. iii. and iv., 1855;
vol. v., Ed. Lady Trevelyan, 1861; Ed. 8 vols., 1858-62 (Life by Dean
Milman); Ed. 4 vols., People’s Edition, with Life by Dean Milman,
1863-4; Inaugural Address (Glasgow), 1849; Speeches corrected by
himself, 1854 (unauthorized version, 1853, by Vizetelly); Miscellaneous
Writings, 2 vols. 1860 (Ed. T. F. Ellis). These include poems, lives
(Encyclo. Britt. 8th ed.), and contributions to Quarterly Magazine, and
the following from Edinburgh Review:
Dryden, January 1828; History, May 1828; Mill on Government, March 1829;
Westminster Reviewer’s Defence of Mill, June 1829; Utilitarian Theory
of Government, October 1829; Sadler’s “Law of Population,” July 1830;
Sadler’s “Refutation Refuted,” January 1831 Mirabeau, July 1832; Barere,
April 1844.
Complete Works (Ed. Lady Trevelyan), 8 vols., 1866.