Volume 1

The history of England from the accession of James II / by Thomas Babington Macaulay.

  • Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Date:
[1906]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history of England from the accession of James II / by Thomas Babington Macaulay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    say, nor is it at all necessary to justify our praise that we should, that in all instances the comparison is scrupulously exact. It was impossible it should be so. It was almost unavoidable, to a certain extent, that extremes should sometimes be adopted as typical of a class ; and it is quite possible that sometimes our author may have followed the exaggerations of satirical or comic writers of the day, as affording the materials of the contrast. We never thought of taking the thing so literally. To describe the manners and domestic habits of people who lived two hundred years ago, so that in every minute detail the description shall deny cavil, is, we believe, impossible; nor, if it were possible, would it be worth the labour. What is requisite is a vivid and graphic idea of the well-established and most salient peculiarities, of the prominent and distinctive characteristics that actually belonged to the time ; nor do we know how this could be done, but by seizing the more palpable, even though they be in some measure extreme, examples. The Roman matrons were not all like Messalina, not all French priests like Tartuffe, not all English squires like Squire Western ; yet the fact that the satirists of each nation chose such characters to describe, points infallibly to the prevalent vices, or failings, or habits of their time and class. It is interesting for us to know, and our author professes to represent, rather the relative than the positive condition of England ; and we have no misgivings whatever that the representation is not as substantially true as it is conspicuously graphic and lively.’’ sf: if: + if: if: if: ife Macaulay, it may be added, being a great man of affairs as well as a great man of letters, put the spice of contemporary vivacity into his writing of the affairs of an earlier day than his. This Scottish son of Aulay was a statesman and an orator, and helped to make British history at home and in India, besides writing it. He was a Whig of the Whigs, and a party politician ; and an inveterate talker. Sydney Smith said of him on his return from India: “ His enemies might have said before that he talked too much ; but now he has occasional flashes of silence, that make his con¬ versation perfectly delightful.” It was Sydney Smith too, who, speaking of his enormous reading, said there were no limits to his knowledge : “ He is like a book in breeches.’’ Thackeray (in his ‘ Roundabout Papers ’) defended Macaulay’s character on its human side : and spoke of him as “ admirably tender and generous and affectionate.” But this is proved by his
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