In Nov. 1855 vols. iii. and iv. of the History appeared and obtained a vast circulation. Within a generation of its first appear ance upwards of 140,000 copies of the History were printed and sold in the United Kingdom alone ; and in the United States the sales were on a correspondingly large scale. The History was translated into German, Polish, Danish, Swedish, Hungarian, Rus sian, Bohemian, Italian, French, Dutch and Spanish. Flattering marks of respect were heaped upon the author by foreign acad emies. His pecuniary profits were (for that time) on a scale commensurate with the reputation of the book : the cheque he received for £20,000 has become a landmark in literary history.
In May 1856 he quitted the Albany, in which he had passed fifteen happy years, and went to live at Holly Lodge, Campden Hill, then, before it was enlarged, a tiny bachelor's dwelling, but with a lawn whose unbroken slope of verdure gave it the air of a considerable country house. In the following year (1857) he was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Macaulay of Rothley. But his health was every year visibly failing. In the House of Lords he never spoke. Gradually he had to acquiesce in the conviction that his physical energies would not carry him through the reign of Anne; and, though he brought down the nar rative to the death of William III., the last half-volume wants the finish and completeness of the earlier portions. He died on Dec. 28, 1859. On Jan. 9, 186o he was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Lord Macaulay never married. A man of warm domestic affec tions, he found their satisfaction in the attachment and close sym pathy of his sister Hannah, the wife of Sir Charles Trevelyan. Her children were to him as his own. Macaulay was a steadfast friend, and no act inconsistent with the strictest honour and in tegrity was ever imputed to him. When a poor man, and when salary was of consequence to him, he twice resigned office rather than make compliances for which he would not have been severely blamed. In 1847, when his seat in parliament was at stake, he would not be persuaded to humour, to temporize, even to conciliate. He had a keen relish for the good things of life, and desired fortune as the means of obtaining them ; but there was nothing mercenary or selfish in his nature. When he had raised himself to opulence, he gave away with an open hand, not seldom rashly. His very last act was to write a letter to a poor curate enclosing a cheque for £25. The purity of his morals was not associated with any tendency to cant.
The life of Macaulay was eminently happy. Till the closing years (1857-1859), he enjoyed life with the full zest of healthy faculty, happy in social intercourse, happy in the solitude of his study, and equally divided between the two. For the last fifteen years of his life he lived for literature. His writings were remu nerative to him far beyond the ordinary measure, yet he never wrote for money. He lived in his historical researches ; his whole heart and interest were unreservedly given to the men and the times of whom he read and wrote. His command of literature was imperial. Beginning with a good classical foundation, he made himself familiar with the imaginative, and then with the historical, remains of Greece and Rome. He went on to add the literature of his own country, of France, of Italy, of Spain. He learnt Dutch enough for the purposes of his history. He read German, but for literature of the northern nations he had no taste, and of the eru dite labours of the Germans he had little knowledge and formed an inadequate estimate. The range of his survey of human things had other limitations more considerable still. All philosophical speculation was alien to his mind ; nor did he seem aware of the degree in which such speculation had influenced the progress of humanity. A large—the largest—part of ecclesiastical history lay outside his historical view. Of art he confessed himself ignorant, and even refused a request to furnish a critique on Swift's poetry to the Edinburgh Review. He declared that Lessing's Laocoon, or Goethe's criticism on Hamlet, "filled" him "with wonder and despair." Of the marvellous discoveries of science which were succeed ing each other day by day he took no note ; his pages contain no reference to them. It has been told already how he recoiled from the mathematical studies of his university. These deductions
made, the circuit of his knowledge still remains very wide—as extensive perhaps as any human brain is competent to embrace. His literary outfit was as complete as has ever been possessed by any English writer; and, if it wants the illumination of philo sophy, it has an equivalent resource in a practical acquaintance with affairs, with administration, with the interior of cabinets, and the humour of popular assemblies. Nor was the knowledge merely stored in his memory ; it was always at his command. Whatever his subject, he pours over it his stream of illustration, drawn from the records of all ages and countries. His Essays are not merely instructive as history; they are, like Milton's blank verse, freighted with the spoils of all the ages. As an historian Macaulay has not escaped the charge of partisanship. He was a Whig; and in writing the history of the rise and triumph of Whig principles in the latter half of the 17th century he identified himself with the cause. But the charge of partiality, as urged against Macaulay, means more than that he wrote the history of the Whig revolution from the point of view of those who made it. When he is describing the merits of friends and the faults of enemies his pen knows no moderation. He has a constant tendency to glaring colours, to strong effects, and will always be striking violent blows. He is not merely exuberant but excessive. There is an overweening confidence about his tone; he expresses himself in trenchant phrases, which are like challenges to an opponent to stand up and deny them. His propositions have no qualifications. Unin structed readers like this assurance, as they like a physician who has no doubt about their case. But a sense of distrust grows upon the more circumspect reader as he follows page after page of Macaulay's categorical affirmations about matters which our own experience of life teaches us to be of a contingent nature. We inevitably think of a saying attributed to Lord Melbourne : "I wish I were as cocksure of any one thing as Macaulay is of every thing." Macaulay's was the mind of the advocate, not of the philosopher ; it was the mind of Bossuet, which admits no doubts or reserves itself and tolerates none in others, and as such was disqualified from that equitable balancing of evidence which is the primary function of the historian. (M. PA. ; X.) Macaulay's whole works were collected in 1866 by his sister, Lady Trevelyan, in 8 vols. The first four volumes are occupied by the History; the next three contain the Essays, and the Lives which he contributed to the Encyclopcedia Britannica. In vol. viii. are collected his Speeches, the Lays of Ancient Rome, and some mis cellaneous pieces. The "life" by Dean Milman, printed in vol. viii. of the edition of 1858-1862, is prefixed to the "People's Edition" (4 vols., 1863-1864). Messrs. Longman, Green & Co. published a complete edition, the "Albany," in 12 vols., in 1898. There are numerous editions of the Critical and Historical Essays, separately and collectively ; they were edited in 1903 by F. C. Montagu.
The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay ( 2 vols., 1876), by his nephew, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, is one of the best biographies in the English language. His long correspondence with T. F. Ellis, which was utilized by Trevelyan in preparing the life, but only in part, was presented by Ellis's grandson to Trinity college, Cambridge, together with some unpublished poems and translations. The life (1882) in the "English Men of Letters" series was written by J. Cotter Morison. For further criticism, see Hepworth Dixon, in his Life of Penn (1841) ; John Paget, The New Examen: Inquiry into Macaulay's History (1861) and Paradoxes and Puzzles (5874); Walter Bagehot, in the National Review (Jan. 1856), reprinted in his Literary Studies (1879) ; James Spedding, Evenings with a Reviewer (1881), discussing his essay on Bacon; Sir L. Stephen, Hours in a Library, vol. ii. (1892) ; Lord Morley, Critical Miscellanies (1877), vol. ii. ; Lord Avebury, Essays and Addresses (19°3) ; Thum, Anmerk ungen zu Macaulay's History of England (Heilbronn, 1882). A bibliography of German criticism of Macaulay is given in G. KOrting's Grd. der engl. Literatur (4th ed., Miinster, 1905)•