Macaulay, Thomas Babington
ma-kaw'li, Thomas Babington (1800-1859), a British essayist and historian. He was born at Rothley, Leicestershire, October 25, 1800. He died at Kensington, December 28, 1859. The Macaulays, as the name indicates, were Highlanders. Great Grandfather Aulay Macaulay and Grandfather John Macaulay were parish ministers with their full share of tribulations and blessed with very moderate circumstances, amid which they reared large families of from twelve to fourteen vigorous children. They were intelligent, reading men. From them Macaulay inherited his literary ability as well as his features. Mr. Carlyle, as we learn from a note in Trevelyan's Life, caught sight of Macaulay's face in unwonted repose as he was turning the pages of a book. "I noticed," said he, "the homely Norse features that you find everywhere in the western isles, and I thought to myself, 'Well, anyone can see that you are an honest, good sort of a fellow, made out of oatmeal.'"
Macaulay's father, Zachary, entered the employment of a mercantile firm in Glasgow, and was sent out to Jamaica as bookkeeper on an estate. He was so outraged by the view he had of negro slavery that he refused to stay any longer. He returned to London and became an active anti-slavery worker. His home was in Clapham, then a pleasant suburban district of London. Young Thomas was a child of unusual promise. He learned to read without knowing how he did it. From the earliest childhood he had a wonderful command of language. When but four years old he was visiting the house of a friend. A servant had the misfortune to spill some hot coffee on the lad's legs. His hostess was, of course, very much mortified, and pitied the little chap's sufferings. When after a few moments she asked him how he was feeling, "the little fellow looked up in her face and replied, 'Thank you, madam, the agony is abated.'" He disliked arithmetic but was fond of composition. At seven he wrote a history of the world in a "boyish scrawl." Fortunately it has been preserved. For a child of his age it shows a wonderful breadth of reading. He does not hesitate to condemn Cromwell, later his idol, as an "unjust and wicked man." At eight he had Scott's Marmion by heart.
At eighteen Macaulay was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge. He shunned mathematics, cared little for Latin, but took the greatest delight in literature and composition. He won a collegiate prize for an essay on the conduct and character of William III. On graduation he was given a fellowship, an honor which carried with it no duties, but a pension of $1,500 a year for three years. He studied law and was admitted to the bar. At his father's request he prosecuted an obnoxious editor for libel, but he did not follow up his profession seriously.
He took an early interest in politics, wrote articles for various newspapers, and made some speeches in favor of the abolition of slavery in the British colonies. In 1825 Jeffrey, then editor of the Edinburgh Review, a violent Whig journal, wrote to a London friend asking him, "Can you not lay your hands on some clever young man who can write for us? The original supporters of the work are getting old, and are either too busy or too stupid; and here the young men are mostly Tories." At the friend's suggestion Macaulay contributed his famous essay on Milton to the Review for August, 1825. It reviewed the period of the Commonwealth, one of the most exciting political periods in the history of England. It was written from a Whig point of view, and delighted that party immensely. Jeffrey wrote, "Macaulay, the more I think, the less I can conceive, where you picked up that style."
The Whigs took up Macaulay, invited him to their social functions, and gave him a seat in Parliament. In Parliament he advocated the abolition of the rotten boroughs, one of which he represented, and to his father's great joy, he was largely instrumental in the passage of a bill abolishing slavery in the colonies of Great Britain. In 1834 he was appointed a member of the Supreme Council of India, a position carrying with it a salary of $50,000 per annum. He remained in India four years. He then reentered Parliament as the representative of Edinburgh, but retired from politics finally in 1856 to give the remainder of his life to literary pursuits.
Macaulay's literary activity took the form of essays, poetry, and history. His principal essays treat of Milton, Machiavelli, Hallam, Southey, Lord Byron, Bunyans' Pilgrim's Progress, Dr. Johnson, Lord Bacon, Gladstone, Lord Clive, Ranke's History of the Popes, Warren Hastings, Frederick the Great, and Addison. As an essayist, Macaulay is unsurpassed. He has no predecessor. He is imitated easily, but the imitator is almost certain to make himself ridiculous.
In 1842 Macaulay surprised his admirers with a volume of poetry called The Lays of Ancient Rome. The most celebrated, known under the title of How Horatius Kept the Bridge, is familiar to every schoolboy. In 1848 the first volume of his Macaulay's History of England appeared. Other volumes followed in rapid succession. His happy publishers, Messrs. Longmans, were soon able to send him a check for pound 20,000 ($100,000), a bit of paper which has become memorable in the history of authorship. In 1857 Queen Victoria was pleased to give him a seat in the House of Lords, with the title of Baron Macaulay of Rothley, the place of his birth. Macaulay was much pleased with the honor but took no active part in the proceedings of the Lords.
His health was beginning to decline. He foresaw that he should never be able to carry to completion his plan of a history. In the autumn of 1859 he fell asleep in an armchair in the midst of his books. A few days later he was buried in state in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. He lies at Addison's feet. Macaulay never married. His home was kept by a widowed sister.
Macaulay was an upright man; his life was free from vice. He worked intensely. He read widely. It is said that he had the faculty of taking in the contents of a page almost at a glance. He had the ability of gleaning a volume while seeming to turn the leaves but casually. He was really storing the contents in his mind. His knowledge was prodigious; his memory unfailing. His reputation as a poet is not high. His treatment of history is brilliant, but not philosophical. He was one-sided--partisan in his discussion of public men and measures; a pamphleteer rather than a sober historian. His final reputation will rest on his work as an essayist.
See Puritan; Cavalier; Warren Hastings; Catholic Church