We must next notice the way in which Mr. Macaulay refers to and uses his authorities—­no trivial points in the execution of a historical work—­ though we shall begin with comparatively small matters.  In his chapter on manners, which we may call the most remarkable in his book, one of his most frequent references is to “Chamberlayne’s State of England, 1684.”  It is referred to at least a dozen or fourteen times in that chapter alone; but we really have some doubt whether Mr. Macaulay knew the nature of the book he so frequently quoted.  Chamberlayne’s work, of which the real title is “Angliae [or, after the Scotch Union, Magnae Britanniae] Notitia, or the Present State of England” [or Great Britain], was a kind of periodical publication, half history and half court-calendar.  It was first published in 1669, and new editions or reprints, with new dates, were issued, not annually, we believe, but so frequently that there are between thirty and forty of them in the Museum, ending with 1755.  From the way and for the purposes for which Mr. Macaulay quotes Chamberlayne, we should almost suspect that he had lighted on the volume for 1684, and, knowing of no other, considered it as a substantive work published in that year. Once indeed he cites the date of 1686, but there was, it seems, no edition of that year, and this may be an accidental error; but however that may be, our readers will smile when they hear that the two first and several following passages which Mr. Macaulay cites from Chamberlayne (i. 290 and 291), as characteristic of the days of Charles II, distinctively from more modern times, are to be found literatim in every succeeding “Chamberlayne” down to 1755—­the last we have seen—­were thus continually reproduced because the proprietors and editors of the table book knew they were not particularly characteristical of one year or reign more than another—­and now, in 1849, might be as well quoted as characteristics of the reign of George II as of Charles II.  We must add that there are references to Chamberlayne and to several weightier books (some of which we shall notice more particularly hereafter), as justifying assertions for which, on examining the said books with our best diligence, we have not been able to find a shadow of authority.

Our readers know that there was a Dr. John Eachard who wrote a celebrated work on the “Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy.”  They also know that there was a Dr. Lawrence Echard who wrote both a History of England, and a History of the Revolution.  Both of these were remarkable men; but we almost doubt whether Mr. Macaulay, who quotes the works of each, does not confound their persons, for he refers to them both by the common (as it may once have been) name of Eachard, and at least twenty times by the wrong name.  This, we admit, is a small matter; but what will some Edinburgh Reviewer (temp.  Albert V) say if he finds a writer confounding Catherine and Thomas Macaulay as “the celebrated author of the great Whig History of England”—­a confusion hardly worse than that of the two Eachards—­for Catherine, though now forgotten by an ungrateful public, made quite as much noise in her day as Thomas does in ours.