Macaulay, THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD, one of the most popular and brilliant of British essayists and historians, was born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, 25th October 1800. He came of a Scottish Celtic family, several of whose representatives were ministers of the Church of Scotland. Two of them—Macaulay's grandfather, John Macaulay, who died minister of Cardross, and Kenneth, author of a history of St Kilda—came into contact and collision with Samuel Johnson, when touring in the Hebrides in the company of Boswell. Zachary Macaulay (1768-1838), the father of the future historian and politician, had a somewhat chequered career as an estate manager in Jamaica, but in the later years of his life was best known as an energetic and single-hearted member of the 'Clapham Sect' of philanthropists of which Wilberforce was the acknowledged head. He was married in Bristol in 1799 to Selina Mills, the daughter of a Bristol Quaker, and the pupil and friend of Hannah More. Macaulay was the first offspring of this union, and was named after his father's brother-in-law. His earliest years were spent with his family in London. From infancy he showed that insatiable thirst for knowledge, that prodigious tenacity of memory, and that talent for phrase-making, which were subsequently to be the delight and the envy of his contemporaries. At the age of seven he wrote a compendium of Universal History and three cantos of the 'Battle of Cheviot' in imitation of Sir Walter Scott. His parents while noting 'marks of uncommon genius' in their son, and encouraging him in every way, never flattered him or paraded him before others as a prodigy. Thus he grew up a simple child delighting in, but unconscious of his faculty, 'playful as a kitten,' and devoted to his brothers and sisters. In 1812 he was sent to a private school kept by the Rev. Mr Preston, a Low Church clergyman, at Little Shelford, near Cambridge. There, and at Aspenden Hall in Hertfordshire, to which Mr Preston removed in 1814, he remained till his time came to go to college. He studied hard and read omnivorously; the taste for novels and light literature generally which he now acquired and never lost, brought him more than one rebuke from his father.
In October 1818 Macaulay went into residence at Trinity College, Cambridge; but he detested mathematics, and cannot be said to have distinguished himself as a student. Yet he twice won the Chancellor's medal for English verse, and obtained a prize for Latin declamation. In 1821 he carried off a Craven university scholarship; took the degree of B.A. the following year; and in 1824 was elected to a Fellowship. He was one of the most brilliant disputants in the Union Debating Society, and made the friendship of the ablest of his contemporaries, including Praed, Romilly, Charles Villiers, Moultrie, and above all Charles Austin.
In 1826 Macaulay was called to the bar and joined the Northern Circuit. But he had no liking for his nominal profession, and made no attempt to secure a practice. Already, indeed, literature had irresistible attractions for him. In 1823 he became a contributor to Knight's Quarterly Magazine, along with Praed and others of his Cambridge friends. In it there first appeared some of his best verses—in particular Ivry, The Spanish Armada, and Naseby. Certain of his prose articles, such as The Fragments of a Roman Tale, and Scenes from the Athenian Revels, 'show,' says Cotter Morison, 'such a natural turn for a dialogue and dramatic mise en scène, that it says a great deal for Macaulay's good sense and literary conscientiousness that he remained content with this first success, and did not continue to work a vein which would have brought him prompt, if ephemeral popularity.' In 1825—the year in which he took his degree of M.A.—he was discovered by Jeffrey, then on the outlook for 'some clever young man' to write for the Edinburgh Review. The famous article on Milton appeared in the August number, and the unequivocal success which it met with not only secured him a position in literature, but was the means of opening to him the doors of society and politics. But Macaulay's first thoughts were for his family. It was now in straitened circumstances, owing chiefly to his father being too much absorbed by the agitation for the abolition of the slave-trade to attend to his business. Macaulay ungrudgingly took upon himself the task of supporting his brothers and sisters by his pen. Fortunately it was now in great demand. For nearly twenty years he was one of the most prolific of the writers to the Edinburgh Review, and out of sight the most popular. Macaulay was, however, claimed by politics. Certain of his articles had attracted the attention of the chiefs of the Whig party to which he had attached himself. In 1830 he entered parliament, having been presented by Lord Lansdowne with the pocket-borough of Calne. He threw himself with his usual intensity into the work of the House of Commons, and in his first session made a speech in favour of the bill for the removal of Jewish disabilities. But it was in the debates that preceded the passing of the Reform Bill that his great powers as an orator were in reality first manifested. While devoting himself to parliament, 'rivalling Stanley in debate and Hume in the regularity of his attendance,' he discharged the duties first of Commissioner, and then of Secretary, to the Board of Control. At the same time he wrote steadily for the Edinburgh Review, and made almost as great a reputation as a conversationalist in society as he had already acquired as a parliamentary debater.
On the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, Macaulay had exchanged Calne for Leeds. Mainly for the sake of his family he accepted the office of legal adviser to the Supreme Council of India, with a salary of £10,000 a year attached to it. Accompanied by his favourite sister Hannah, who in Dec. 1834 married Mr (afterwards Sir) C. Trevelyan, he sailed for Calcutta (by Madras), Feb. 15, 1834. In India he worked as hard as he had done in England. Besides discharging his duties as member of the Supreme Council, he acted as chairman of two committees—the committee of Public Instruction, and the committee appointed to prepare a Penal Code and a Code of Criminal Procedure. In the former capacity he drew up an elaborate minute, in which he successfully counselled the teaching of European literature and science to the natives of India. To Macaulay also must be assigned the lion's share of the great work performed in connection with the Indian Penal Code, of which Sir James Fitzjames Stephen has said: 'It is to the French Code Pénal, and I may add the North German Code of 1871, what a finished picture is to a sketch. It is far simpler and better expressed than Livingstone's Code of Louisiana, and its practical success has been complete.' For a time Macaulay was extremely unpopular with a section of the British population of Calcutta, owing to the active part he took in bringing about a judicial reform known as the Black Act, which withdrew from British subjects resident in the provinces of India the privilege of bringing civil appeals before the Supreme Court of Calcutta. During his stay in India he read enormously, and wrote for the Edinburgh Review his essays on Mackintosh and Bacon. In the beginning of 1838 he returned to England with the competence he had saved from his official salary.
After a pleasant tour in Italy, Macaulay returned to political life, though not without reluctance, as he was already laying the foundations of his great historical work. In 1839 he was elected member for Edinburgh, and the year following entered Lord Melbourne's cabinet as Secretary at War. His most important work at this time was the writing of The Lays of Ancient Rome, which had been partially inspired by his visit to Italy. Never has purely civic patriotism received a more spirited poetic rendering than in this volume. It appeared in 1842, and won an immense popularity. Next year he published his collected Essays in three volumes. While his party were in opposition, he delivered a number of weighty speeches in the House of Commons on subjects which interested him. By one of these he converted Sir Robert Peel, and indeed the majority of the House, to his views of copyright; in another he declared, 'Of all the institutions of the civilised world, the Established Church of Ireland seems to me the most absurd.' His connection with the Edinburgh Review ceased in 1845; he had now commenced his History of England from the Accession of James II. When Sir Robert Peel's administration fell in 1846, Macaulay took the office of Paymaster-general of the Forces, and was re-elected triumphantly for Edinburgh. A variety of circumstances, however, of which probably the support he had given in parliament to the Maynooth Grant, was the chief—led to his defeat at the general election of the following year.
Macaulay regarded this defeat as a signal for his retirement into private life. In 1852 he was again returned for Edinburgh without any exertion on his own part; but he made few speeches after his reappearance in parliament, and gave himself up almost entirely to his History. The first two volumes appeared in 1848, and at once attained a greater amount of popularity than had ever before fallen to the lot of a purely historical work (see LONGMAN). Next year he was elected Lord Rector of the university of Glasgow. He had a severe illness in 1852, and from this he never completely recovered. In 1855 the third and fourth volumes of his great work were given to the public, and were as cordially received as their predecessors. The following year he retired from the representation of Edinburgh. In 1856, also, he left the bachelor chambers he had occupied for fifteen years in the Albany, and took up his residence in Holly Lodge, Campden Hill, Kensington, where he lived till his death. In 1857 he was raised to the peerage under the title of Baron Macaulay of Rothley. In the same year he was elected a foreign associate of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Among other honours which came to him in his last years, and which he especially prized, was his nomination to the Prussian Order of Merit, and his election to the High Stewardship of the borough of Cambridge. While working steadily at his History, he found time to write for the Encyclopædia Britannica articles on Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, and William Pitt. Though conscious that the ailment from which he suffered—weakness of the heart, complicated with asthma—would prove fatal, he took as keen an interest as before in the well-being of his relatives and in the fortunes of his country. The end came on the 28th December 1859; he died as he had always wished to die—without pain, without any formal farewell; preceding to the grave all whom he loved, and leaving behind him a great and honourable name, and the memory of a life, every action of which was as clear and transparent as one of his own sentences. He was buried in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, on 9th January 1860. The fragmentary fifth volume of his History which he left behind him was published in 1861.
The reputation of Macaulay is certainly not what it was during his lifetime or immediately after his death. He has been convicted of historical inaccuracy, of sacrificing truth for the sake of epigram, of allowing personal dislike and party bias to distort his views of men and incidents. He looks too much at the mere material side of life. As a thinker he is deficient in balance, repose, inwardness, and modesty. In his writing there is far too much light and far too little shade; he not infrequently confounds the foaming hurry of his own words with the march of events; the splendour of his style sometimes degenerates into garishness; occasionally when he plays the censor, he almost sinks into insolent brutality. It must be admitted also that he was too declamatory to be accorded a place in the front rank either of poets or of historians. But as a narrator of events he has no rival, and hardly even a second; he is lucidity itself. The intellectual solidity and energy of Macaulay, the breadth and variety of his knowledge, the fervour and dignity of his patriotism—these remain untouched by posthumous criticism. And in his nephew's biography he stands revealed as the most affectionate and unselfish of relatives, loyal in his friendships, pure-minded as a child, generous, upright, and courageous. Of no public man, of no man of letters, can the nation be more whole-heartedly proud than of Macaulay.
The authoritative work on the life of Lord Macaulay is the Life and Letters—a most admirable biography—by his nephew, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, the first edition of which was published in 1876. A Life of his father by Viscountess Knutsford appeared in 1900. Of the innumerable estimates of Macaulay which have appeared since his death, Cotter Morison's Monograph in the 'English Men of Letters' series (1882), an essay by Mr John Morley (Critical Miscellanies, 1886), and an elaborate study by M. Taine (History of English Literature, vol. ii. 1871) may be mentioned.