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INTRODUCTION.

THERE can be little doubt that Lord Macaulay is the most popular writer of English prose that this century has produced. Thousands of copies of his History of England are still sold every year, and travellers tell us that if an Australian settler possesses three books only, the first two will be the Bible and Shakespeare, and the third, Macaulay's Essays. And yet his authority as a critic and historian has been shaken, and his capacity as a poet — for his Lays of Ancient Rome is a very popular book - seriously questioned. Nor is his popularity confined to any one circle of readers. Cultivated men and women in their conversation and writings assume a knowledge of his works as a matter of course, but the intelligent laboring man, who is striving for an education, is equally, perhaps more, familiar with them. It is plain that a writer who makes such a wide and lasting appeal deserves careful study, and that a brief survey of his life cannot be without interest.

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born October 25, 1800, at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire. His father Zachary was a Scotchman of probity and talents, who was a distinguished promoter of abolition. Macaulay, therefore, came honestly by the middle-class virtues and defects that are so salient in his character. He was a precocious, nay rather a wonderful child, but does not appear to have been spoiled. His memory was prodigious and his reading enormous, while his faculty for turning out hundreds of re spectable verses was simply phenomenal. After a happy period of schooling he entered Cambridge, where he won prizes for verse, and made a reputation for himself as a scholar and speaker, but failed of the highest honors on

account of his inaptitude for mathematics. He graduates at twenty-two, was elected a Fellow of Trinity two years later, and the next year startled the world by his brilliant essay on Milton in the Edinburgh Review. From this time his career was one of almost unbroken success. He was

called to the bar in 1826, but gave more time to his writing and to his political aspirations than to his profession. In 1830 he was elected to the House of Commons through the patronage of Lord Lansdowne, and began his career as a staunch Whig at one of the most important crises in English history, that of the first Reform Bill.

It is quite plain that if Macaulay had taken seriously to politics at this juncture he would have made a name for himself among English statesmen, or at least among English orators. The speeches he delivered were enthusiastically received, he stood high with the ministers of a party just coming into power, he had the courage of his convictions, he had the wide erudition that has been a tradition with English statesmen, and he had the practical ability to conduct a political canvass (for the new borough of Leeds); but he liked the adulation of society a little too well, and his income was not sufficient to let him bide his time. Dinners at Holland House and breakfasts with Rogers were delightful, no doubt, as delightful as the letters in which he described them to his favorite sister Hannah; and so too was the praise he got for his articles in the Edinburgh; but this devotion to society and literature could hardly have been kept up along with an entirely serious and absorbing pursuit of political honors. He was probably well advised, therefore, when in 1834 he accepted the presidency of a new law commission for India and a membership of the Supreme Council of Calcutta. It meant banishment, but it meant also a princely income of which half could be saved. So he set out, taking his sister Hannah with him, for he was a bachelor, discharged his duties admirably, and returned to England in 1838.

On his return he reëntered Parliament and served with distinction but not with conspicuous success. His genius nad been diverted and his desires were more than ever divided. He obtained a seat in Lord John Russell's cabinet and supported the Whigs on all great questions, but he was better known as the author of the Lays of Ancient Rome (1842) and the Essays. He lost his seat for Edinburgh in 1847, having been too outspoken and liberal in his views, yet this meant little to one who was a student by nature and who was about to bring out the first two volumes of the most popular history ever written (1849). The remaining decade of his life was practically the only period in which his energies were undivided. He was indeed reëlected to Parliament from Edinburgh without his solicitation, ad he was raised to the peerage in 1857, being the first man to receive such an honor mainly for literary work; but he did little besides labor on his History and make notable contributions to the Encyclopædia Britannica. Other honors of various sorts were showered on him and his fame reached the proportions of Byron's, but his health began to fail and he did not live long enough to experience any reaction. He died of heart trouble on December 28, 1859, in the fulness of his intellectual powers, and leaving his great history incomplete.

The chief reasons for Macaulay's tremendous popularity are not far to seek. He possessed a style which whether metallic, as has been claimed, or not, is at all times clear and strenuous. He simply commanded attention by his positive assurance of statement, and, when once he had ob tained it, took care not to lose it through any obscurity. Rather than indulge in qualifications that might embarrass the reader, he chose, it may be unconsciously, to state half truths as whole truths, and to play the advocate while posing as the critic. The world has always loved the man who knows his own mind, and Macaulay knew his and proclaimed the fact loudly. Then again the world has always loved the strong man who is not too far aloof from it to

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