Next to the novel, the essay has been the most overflowing literary form used by the writers of this generation—­a form characteristic, it may be, of an age which “lectures, not creates.”  It is not the essay of Bacon, nor yet of Addison, nor of Lamb, but attempts a complete treatment.  Indeed, many longish books, like Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero Worship and Ruskin’s Modern Painters, are, in spirit, rather literary essays than formal treatises.  The most popular essayist and historian of his time was Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), an active and versatile man, who won splendid success in many fields of labor.  He was prominent in public life as one of the leading orators and writers of the Whig party.  He sat many times in the House of Commons, as member for Calne, for Leeds, and for Edinburgh, and took a distinguished part in the debates on the Reform bill of 1832.  He held office in several Whig governments, and during his four years’ service in British India, as member of the Supreme Council of Calcutta, he did valuable work in promoting education in that province, and in codifying the Indian penal law.  After his return to England, and especially after the publication of his History of England from The Accession of James II., honors and appointments of all kinds were showered upon him.  In 1857 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Macaulay of Rothley.

Macaulay’s equipment, as a writer on historical and biographical subjects, was, in some points, unique.  His reading was prodigious, and his memory so tenacious that it was said, with but little exaggeration, that he never forgot any thing that he had read.  He could repeat the whole of Paradise Lost by heart, and thought it probable that he could rewrite Sir Charles Grandison from memory.  In his books, in his speeches in the House of Commons, and in private conversation—­for he was an eager and fluent talker, running on often for hours at a stretch—­he was never at a loss to fortify and illustrate his positions by citation after citation of dates, names, facts of all kinds, and passages quoted verbatim from his multifarious reading.  The first of Macaulay’s writings to attract general notice was his article on Milton, printed in the August number of the Edinburgh Review for 1825.  The editor, Lord Jeffrey, in acknowledging the receipt of the manuscript, wrote to his new contributor, “The more I think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that style.”  That celebrated style—­about which so much has since been written—­was an index to the mental character of its owner.  Macaulay was of a confident, sanguine, impetuous nature.  He had great common sense, and he saw what he saw quickly and clearly, but he did not see very far below the surface.  He wrote with the conviction of an advocate, and the easy omniscience of a man whose learning is really nothing more than “general information” raised to a very high power, rather than with the subtle penetration