The Art of Historical Writing

No other aspect of Macaulay’s intellectual history has been more thoroughly studied than his work as a historian. Therefore, more than in the other chapters of this book, we need to consider how his historiographical methodology and style have been viewed by scholars. Most of his contemporaries greatly appreciated his historical writings. Towards the end of his life, however, the tide began to turn. Walter Bagehot, writing in 1856, noted that Macaulay’s style was pleasurable and informative, but was lacking in the appreciation of shades of meaning. “Everything is too plain. All is clear; nothing is doubtful.” Writing in 1858, Hippolyte Taine was not unappreciative of Macaulay, but he anticipated many later critiques when he emphasized his judgmental approach to history. Taine also noted Macaulay’s empirical argumentation and avoidance of abstract speculation, as well as his essentially oratorical style. After reading Taine’s discussion of his work, Macaulay noted that he was there described as eminently an English writer – with solidity, earnestness and vehemence, but lacking vivacity and lightness – while in England he was regarded as the opposite: lacking in earnestness, but brilliant and showy like a French writer. For him, he claimed, being halfway between an English and a French style in these terms was not a bad thing. This willingness, though tongue in cheek, to accept criticism, would probably not have been sustained had he been able to read the much more critical assessments of his work published after his death, in particular following the publication of the Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay in 1876 by his nephew, George Otto Trevelyan. Macaulay was accustomed to mete out acerbic criticism, not to receive it.

According to John Morley, Macaulay was not an intellectual innovator, but rather the voice of the common average sentiment of his day, whose attraction for the masses lay in his narrative style. This ability to excel in narrative was not accompanied, however, with any depth of thought. “The spirit of analysis is not in him [Macaulay], and the divine spirit of meditation is not in him… He is seized by the external and the superficial, and revels in every detail that appeals to the five senses.”