Macaulay, who was no braggart, has put it on record that his conception of history was more just than that of Hume, Robertson, Voltaire, and Gibbon.  It is perfectly true that his conception was different from theirs, his execution was different, and he does not address the same class of readers.  But his conception of history was not just; it was a mistake.  His leading idea was to make history a true romance.  He has accomplished this; and he has given us a historical novel drawn from authentic documents.  This is, no doubt, a very useful thing to do, a most interesting book to read; it is very pleasant literature, and has a certain teaching of its own to a certain order of readers.  But it is not history.  It sacrifices the breadth of view, the organic life, the philosophy, the grand continuity of human society.  It must be a sectional picture of a very limited period in a selected area; it can give us only the external; it inevitably tends to trivial detail and to amusing personalities; it necessarily blinds us to the slow sequence of the ages.  Besides this, it explains none of the deeper causes of movement; for, to make a picture, the artist must give us the visible and the obvious.  History, in its highest sense, is the record of the evolution of humanity, in whole or in part.  To compose an historical novel from documents is to put this object aside.  History, said Macaulay in his Hallam, “is a compound of poetry and philosophy.”  But in practice, he substituted word-painting for poetry, and anecdote for philosophy.  His own delightful and popular History of England is a compound of historical romance and biographical memoir.

Macaulay’s strong point was in narrative, and in narrative he has been surpassed by hardly any historian and even by few novelists.  Scott and Victor Hugo have hardly a scene more stirring than Macaulay’s death of Charles II., Monmouth’s rebellion, the flight of James II., the trial of Titus Gates, the inner life of William III.  This is a very great quality which has deservedly made him popular.  And if Macaulay had less philosophy than almost any historian of the smallest pretension, he has a skill in narration which places him in a fair line with the greatest.  Unfortunately, this superb genius for narration has rarely been devoted to the grander events and the noblest chiefs in history.  Even his hero William III. hardly lives in his canvas with such a glowing light as Charles II., Monmouth, and Jeffreys.  The expulsion of James II. was a very poor affair if compared with the story of Charles I. and the Parliament.  If Macaulay had painted for us the Council Chamber of Cromwell as he has painted the Whitehall of Charles II.; if he had described the battle of Naseby as well as he has pictured the fight of Sedgemoor; if he had narrated the campaigns of Marlborough as brilliantly as he has told that which ended at the Boyne—­how much should we have had!