With his large, fine physique, his sturdy common sense, his interest in practical matters, and his satisfaction in the physical improvements of the people, Macaulay was a fine specimen of the English gentleman.

Essays and Poetry.—­Like De Quincey, Macaulay was a frequent contributor to periodicals.  He wrote graphic essays on men of action and historical periods.  The essays most worthy of mention in this class are Sir William Temple, Lord Clive, Warren Hastings, and William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.  Some of his essays on English writers and literary subjects are still classic.  Among these are Milton, Dryden, Addison, Southey’s Edition of Pilgrim’s Progress, Croker’s Edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and the biographical essays on Bunyan, Goldsmith, and Johnson, contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  Although they may lack deep spiritual insight into the fundamental principles of life and literary criticism, these essays are still deservedly read by most students of English history and literature.

Gosse says:  “The most restive of juvenile minds, if induced to enter one of Macaulay’s essays, is almost certain to reappear at the other end of it gratified, and, to an appreciable extent, cultivated.”  These Essays have developed a taste for general reading in many who could not have been induced to begin with anything dry or hard.  Many who have read Boswell’s Life of Johnson during the past fifty years say that Macaulay first turned their attention to that fascinating work.  In the following quotation from an essay on that great biography, we may note his love for interesting concrete statements, presented in a vigorous and clear style:—­

“Johnson grown old, Johnson in the fullness of his fame and in the enjoyment of a competent fortune, is better known to us than any other man in history.  Everything about him, his chat, his wig, his figure, his face, his scrofula, his St. Vitus’s dance, his rolling walk, his blinking eye, the outward signs which too clearly marked his approbation of his dinner, his insatiable appetite for fish sauce and veal pie with plums, his inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick of touching the posts as he walked ... all are as familiar to us as the objects by which we have been surrounded from childhood.”

Macaulay wrote some stirring ballad poetry, known as Lays of Ancient Rome, which gives a good picture of the proud Roman Republic in its valorous days.  These ballads have something of Scott’s healthy, manly ring.  They contain rhetorical and martial stanzas, which are the delight of many boys; but they lack the spirituality and beauty that are necessary for great poetry.