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Macaulay's Essay on the Earl of Chatham; With a General Introduction to the Study of Macaulay and Essay an Literary Charäcteristics
Macaulay's Essay on the Earl of Chatham With a General Introduction to the Study of Macaulay and Essay an Literary Charcteristics Author:Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1902 Original Publisher: Longmans Green and Co. Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where ... more »you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: INTRODUCTION The present Essay, published in the Edinburgh Revieiv 6f October 1844, forms the sequel to the Essay on William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, which Macaulay had published in the January number of the same magazine ten years previously- It had been his intention in the interval to review Burke's Life and Writings, but he found the task unmanageable. ' The stage was too small for the actors, the canvas too narrow for the multitude of figures,'' and he therefore changed his whole plan, and redeemed the promise with which he had concluded the first Essay by writing an account of the concluding years of Lord Chatham's Life. (See Notes on p. 3,1. 1.) Macaulay's change of plan has left very evident marks on his Essay. Chatham is the nominal hero of the story, but he is one of many figures, and appears, as indeed for most of the later period of his life he was, only as the shadow of a once powerful giant looming in the background of the stage of political life. He serves as the text of an historical Essay, throughout which the writer in thought and language shows striking sympathy with Burke. In the two main topics of the Essay -- viz. (i) the attempt of George III. to establish personal rule, and (ii) the American Eevolution -- Macaulay covers the same ground as Burke in his ' Thoughts on the 1 Macaulay's Life and Letters, Popular Edition (Longmans), pp. 448-9. Present Discontents' (1770), his two great speeches on ' American Taxation' (1774), and on ' Conciliation with America ' (1775), and his ' Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol' (1777). The Essay ends wi...« less