Essays and "with the object of giving as much unity as possible
to a subject necessarily wanting it," classifies the Essays into
four groups, (1)English history, (2)Foreign history,
(3)Controversial, (4)Critical and Miscellaneous. The articles in
the first group are equal in bulk to those of the three other
groups put together, and are contained in the first volume of
this issue. They form a fairly complete survey of English
history from the time of Elizabeth to the later years of the
reign of George III, and are fitly introduced by the Essay on
Hallam's History, which forms a kind of summary or microcosm of
the whole period.

The scheme might be made still more complete by including certain
articles (and especially the exquisite biographies contributed by
Macaulay to the Encyclopaedia Britannica) which are published in
the volume of "Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches." Exigencies
of space have, however, compelled the limitation of the present
edition to the "Essays" usually so-called. These have also been
reprinted in the chronological arrangement ordinarily followed
(see below) in The Temple Classics (5 vols. 1900), where an
exhaustive bibliography, etc., has been appended to each Essay.

Chief dates in the life of Thomas Babington Macaulay, afterwards Baron
Macaulay:--

1800 (Oct. 25). Birth at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire.
1818-1825. Life at Cambridge (Fellow of Trinity, 1824).
1825. Essay on Milton contributed to Edinburgh Review.
1826. Joined the Northern Circuit.
1830 @M.P. for Calne (gift of the Marquis of Lansdowne).