ballad-maker or story-teller in an age before books were known or
were common. And it is largely due to his influence that the best
journals and periodicals of our day are written in a style so
clear, so direct, so resonant."

And this from Mr. Cotter Morison

"Macaulay did for the historical essay what Haydn did for the
sonata, and Watt for the steam engine; he found it rudimentary
and unimportant, and left it complete and a thing of power. . . .
To take a bright period or personage of history, to frame it in a
firm outline, to conceive it at once in article-size, and then to
fill in this limited canvas with sparkling anecdote, telling bits
of colour, and facts, all fused together by a real genius for
narrative, was the sort of genre-painting which Macaulay applied
to history. . . . And to this day his essays remain the best of
their class, not only in England, but in Europe. . . . The best
would adorn any literature, and even the less successful have a
picturesque animation, and convey an impression of power that
will not easily be matched. And, again, we need to bear in mind
that they were the productions of a writer immersed in business,
written in his scanty moments of leisure, when most men would
have rested or sought recreation. Macaulay himself was most
modest in his estimate of their value. . . . It was the public
that insisted on their re-issue, and few would be bold enough to
deny that the public was right."

It is to Mr. Morison that the plan followed in the present
edition of the Essays is due. In his monograph on Macaulay
(English Men of Letters series) he devotes a chapter to the