Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)

"Lars Porsena of Clusium, by the nine gods he swore / that the great house of Tarquin should suffer wrong no more!" ... and so on ... There's also a wonderful one on Verginius' murder of his daughter to keep her from becoming the illegally-enslaved concubine of Appius Claudius, too. Macaulay has her catching Claudius' eye whilst skipping merrily to school, as, I guess, all Roman girls ... did ... when exactly would this have been? Even the first time I read this one I remember thinking, but show more maybe she would rather have been a mistress than a corpse? Her father never gave her that choice. Nor did Claudius of course in the poem; and perhaps the point was more the illegal enslavement than the intended concubinage.

Anyway, great, red-blooded, sexist, classist, name-a-variety-of-political-incorrectness-and-find-it-herein Victorian stuff; I love it. I seem to have collected 2 copies, one without a cover. show less

One of the great achievements of historiography and of English prose. Macaulay had wanted to chronicle English history up to his own epoch, or at least until the reign of George III, in order to demonstrate in detail what has been called the "Whig interpretation of history," a view that human history conduces toward the achievement of greater personal freedom and progressive culture. In the event, he was able to reach the death of William III, and that only with the posthumous assistance of show more his sister. But what a tale it is, with a huge accumulation of incident and insight and a cast of characters that outdoes Dickens himself. Despite the intrinsic interest of the subject matter, though, the chief delight in reading Macaulay is his utter mastery of prose style. I can do no better than to quote a contemporary reviewer, Macaulay "succeeded in giving to the realities of history (which is generallly supposed to demand and require a certain grave austerity of style) the lightness, variety and attraction of a work designed only to amuse." How about just one little example, selected, I swear, completely at random? You can literally open the book anywhere and stick your finger blindfolded onto a choice formulation: "It was not only by means of the London Gazette that the government undertook to furnish political instruction to the people. That journal contained a scanty supply of news without comment. Another journal, published under the patronage of the court, consisted of comment without news." show less

http://nhw.livejournal.com/90370.html

The Lays of Ancient Rome are supposedly translated from a Latin original by Macaulay into the style and rhythm of ballads, the most famous being "Horatius at the Bridge". I felt bothered by the fact that actually much of the plot and all the incidental details were as far as I can tell made up by Macaulay, so it's really a work of historical fiction by him. Good stirring stuff, but to this cynical reader obviously invented to inspire good manly values in show more the reader - build the alliance of aristocracy with the common people in order to prevent democracy and mob rule. Indeed, that's what I felt about all the poems.

The two historical essays on Englishmen who got involved with India, Robert Clive and Warren Hastings, brought home to me how little I know about India. Macaulay of course lived there for several years himself, but earlier readers - both in the 1840s when the essays were written and in the 1880s when my great aunt was given the book (one of her brothers later died in Fyzabad, now Faizabad, enforcing the values of the Raj) - would have had a much better knowledge of the localities mentioned than I do. His opinion of Bengalis is so negative that it is comical (one of my mother's sisters is married to a Bengali). John Keay's History of India is sitting on my shelf looking accusingly at me; I don't think I got beyond 700 AD when I last tried reading it a few years ago.

Finally, the essay on Milton - as I said, Macaulay's first published work, and one that is much more directly political. For any Irish reader it's difficult to deal with the approval rating that Cromwell gets from otherwise sane and sensible English people. Macaulay of course isn't sane and sensible by any measure, and I felt I learnt a lot more about Milton and his age from Claire Tomalin's biography of Pepys - although Milton isn't actually mentioned in Pepys' diary, his secretary was the brother of Pepys' long term lady friend.

In summary, a book that made me realise how distant we are (or at least, how distant I am) from the cultural heritage of the nineteenth century, and also how much more mature history (at least the history I read) is as a discipline than the rhetorical Whiggery which made Macaulay famous. show less

The progress of history is ever moving forward, away from superstition and autocracy towards free-thought and greater liberty, at least that what Lord Macaulay believed. In his The History of England (from the Accession of James the Second), Macaulay brings forth “the Whig interpretation of history” for the first time that changed how history was interpretation for the next century.

This abridgment of Macaulay’s five-volume history of events leading up to the Glorious Revolution during show more James II reign through the death of William III begins with Macaulay’s purpose for his work. The first half of the abridgment covers how James II began his reign by slowly alienating his traditional supporters in the Anglican Church and Tory county squires by putting Roman Catholics in high positions and supporting the Irish against Anglo-Scot colonists. Even though he survived one rebellion early in his reign, James kept on escalating his efforts until both “Exclusionist” and Tory politicians—including moderate Roman Catholics—joined forces to invite William to take the throne. The second half of the abridgment covers William’s invasion and the Revolution in all three Kingdoms, not just England. While the English portion was political rather than martial, it was not the same in Ireland and Scotland as battles between those supporting James and William took place in bloody fashion though mostly in Ireland. Another bit of history was the religious aspect of the Revolution, while in England there was more toleration in practice which included Roman Catholics it was a different matter entirely in Scotland were Presbyterians retook control after suffering under Restoration policies for over 30 years. Finally, the effects of the Revolution on finance and Parliamentary corruption are examined before Macaulay’s final summing up.

While Hugh Trevor-Roper did an admirable job in selecting portions over five volumes into approximately 550 pages, it is also the main problem with the book. With such a reduction of Macaulay’s prose, the reader gets glimpses of his thoughts and intentions but without consistency the reader doesn’t get the importance of the overall work. As for the work itself, Macaulay’s bias of excusing his hero (William III) and aggressively character assassinating those he dislikes (Marlborough), is one of the biggest flaws.

The History of England is a glimpse into the larger work of Lord Macaulay that really doesn’t give the reader a constancy to see why it was such an important piece of historical literature. If given the choice, I would have chosen five books of the total work over a short abridgment. show less