Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 1

From the opening

A French student of English letters (M. Paul Oursel) has written the following lines:

“Depuis deux siècles les Essais forment une branche importante de la littérature anglaise; pour designer un écrivain de cette classe, nos voisins emploient un mot qui n’a pas d’équivalent en francais; ils disent: un essayiste. Quo’est-ce qu’un essayiste? L’essayiste se distingue du moraliste, de l’historien, du critique littéraire, du biographe, de l’écrivain politique; et pourtant il emprunte quelque trait a chacun d’eux; il ressemble tour a tour a l’un ou a l’autre; il est aussi philosophe, il est satirique, humoriste a ses heures; il remit en sa personne des qualités multiples; il offre dans ses écrits un spécimen de tous les genres. On voit qu’il n’est pas facile de définir l’essayiste; mais l’exemple suppléera a la définition. On connaîtra exactement le sens du mot quand on aura étudie l’écrivain qui, d’après le jugement de ces compatriotes, est l’essayiste par excellence, ou, comme on disait dans les anciens cours de littérature, le Prince des essayistes.”

Macaulay is indeed the prince of essayists, and his reign is unchallenged. “I still think--says Professor Saintsbury (Corrected Impressions, p. 89 f.)--that on any subject which Macaulay has touched, his survey is unsurpassable for giving a first bird’s-eye view, and for creating interest in the matter.... And he certainly has not his equal anywhere for covering his subject in the pointing-stick fashion. You need not--you had much better not--pin your faith on his details, but his Pisgah sights are admirable. Hole after hole has been picked in the “Clive” and the “Hastings,” the “Johnson” and the “Addison,” the “Frederick” and the “Horace Walpole,” yet every one of these papers contains sketches, summaries, precis, which have not been made obsolete or valueless by all the work of correction in detail.

Two other appreciations from among the mass of critical literature that has accumulated round Macaulay’s work may be fitly cited, This from Mr. Frederic Harrison:--

A short sample. Read the whole book

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