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.