Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays; Vol. 1 With a Memoir and Index

CRITICAL, HISTORICAL, and MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

By Lord Macaulay

With A Memoir and Index

In Six Volumes. Vol. I.

New York: Sheldon and Company

1860

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PUBLISHER’S ADVERTISEMENT.

This edition of Lord Macaulay’s Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous
Essays, contains all the articles published with the author’s correction
and revision (3 vols., London: Longman, Green, & Co.) during his
lifetime, and all the articles published by his friends (2 vols.,
London: Longman, Green & Co.) since his death. An Appendix contains
several essays attributed to Lord Macaulay, and unquestionably his, not
found in any other edition of his miscellaneous writings.

In this edition the Essays have been arranged in chronological order,
so that their perusal affords, so to speak, a complete biographical
portraiture of the brilliant author’s mind. No other edition possesses
the same advantage.

A very full Index has been especially prepared for this
edition,--without which the vast stores of historical learning and
pertinent anecdote contained in the Essays can be referred to only by
the fortunate man who possesses a memory as great as that of Macaulay
himself. In this respect it is superior to the English editions, and
wholly unlike any other American edition.

This edition also contains the pure text of Macaulay’s Essays. The
exact punctuation, orthography, etc. of the English editions have been
followed.

The portrait is from a photograph by Claudet, and represents the great
historian as he appeared in the latter years of his life.

The biographical and critical Introduction is from the well-known pen
of Mr. E. P. Whipple, who is fully entitled to speak with authority in
regard to the most brilliant essayist of the age.

The typographical excellence of the publication places it among the best
that have issued from the “Riverside” Press. We trust the public will
appreciate what has long been needed,--a complete and correct edition,
in handsome library style, of Lord Macaulay’s Essays.

Sheldon And Company.

New York, Oct 1860.




BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF MACAULAY.

The materials for the biography of Lord Macaulay are scanty, and the
writer of the present sketch has been able to glean few facts regarding
his career which are not generally known. His life was comparatively
barren in events, and though he rose to conspicuous social, literary,
and political station, he had neither to struggle nor scramble for
advancement. Almost as soon as his talents were displayed they were
recognized and rewarded, and he attained fortune and power without using
any means which required the least sacrifice, either of the integrity or
the pride of his character.

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, on
the twenty-fifth of October, 1800. His father, Zachary Macaulay, the son
of a Scotch Presbyterian clergyman, was one of the worthiest and ablest
antislavery philanthropists and politicians of his time, distinguished,
even among such men as Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Stephen, for courage,
sagacity, integrity, and religious principle. His mother was the
daughter of Thomas Mills, a bookseller in Bristol, and belonged to
the Society of Friends. Under her loving care he received his early
education, and was not sent from home until his thirteenth year, when
he was placed in a private academy. As a boy, he astonished all who knew
him, by the brightness and eagerness of his mind, and the extent and
variety of his acquisitions. Two lately published letters, written
by Hannah More to his father, afford a pleasing glimpse of him, as he
appeared to a shrewd and affectionate observer of his early years. She
speaks of his “great superiority of intellect and quickness of passion,”
 at the age of eleven. He ought, she thinks, to have competitors, for “he
is like the prince who refused to play with anything but kings.”

“I never,” she says, “saw any one bad propensity in him; nothing except
natural frailty and ambition, inseparable perhaps from such talents and
so lively an imagination; he appears sincere, veracious, tender-hearted,
and affectionate.” He was a fertile versifier, even at that tender age,
but she “observed with pleasure that though he was quite wild till the
ebullitions of his muse were discharged, he thought no more of them
afterwards than the ostrich is said to do of her eggs after she has laid
them.” In another letter, written about two years afterwards, when the
bright lad was nearly fourteen, she says, “the quantity of reading
Tom has poured in, and the quantity of writing he has poured out, is
astonishing.” Poetry continued to be his passion, but his venerable
friend still testifies to his promising habit of throwing his verses
away as soon as he had read them to her. “We have poetry,” she writes,
“for breakfast, dinner, and supper. He recited all _Palestine_, while we
breakfasted, to our pious friend, Mr.