The Works of Lord Macaulay

Letters of Lord Macaulay." In the preface to the collected edition of the Essays Macaulay expressed a doubt whether they would take a place in the permanent literature of the country. His diffidence was sincere, but was curiously misplaced. It is superfluous to give any statistics with reference to the sale of the various editions of Macaulay's Essays. The demand for them is apparently inexhaustible.

The first two volumes of the History of England were published in November 1848. Its success was great and immediate. Three thousand copies were sold in ten days, and a second edition of the same number was disposed of almost as soon as issued. Altogether thirteen thousand copies were called for in fourteen months. Within a generation after its first appearance a hundred and forty thousand copies of the first two volumes had been sold in the United Kingdom alone, and by this time the sale has attained to over one hundred and eighty thousand copies of the complete work, forty-five thousand copies of the Popular edition having been taken off the publishers' hands during the last ten years.

In 1853 Macaulay had to suspend for a short time the work which he described as the "business and pleasure of my life," for the purpose of preparing a volume of his Speeches which Mr. Longman advised should be issued in consequence of the appearance of an unauthorised edition.

The year 1855 saw the publication of the third and fourth volumes of the History; and the success of the first two volumes emboldened Messrs.

Longman to print and bind an edition of twenty-five thousand copies. This enormous number was not sufficient, and on the very day of publication Mr. Longman called on Macaulay with reference to an immediate reprint of five thousand copies.

Macaulay wrote the last chapters of the History very slowly and with a painful sense that he probably would not live to see another volume published. In October 1859 he intimated to Mr. Longman that he intended to publish the next volume by itself, evidently planning that it should end with the death of William III. The Author was not fated, however, to see the day of publication. He died suddenly and painlessly on December 8, 1859. The fifth and final volume was published in March 1861. It contained all that portion of the History which had been fairly transcribed and revised by Macaulay himself, together with an account of the death of William III., which Lady Trevelyan had deciphered from the first rough sketch of the last two months of William's reign. It may perhaps be here stated that no alterations or additions have been made to the text or notes of any of Macaulay's Works since his death, beyond the correction of a very few obvious misprints.

The relations between himself and his publishers were, from first to last, such as they recall with pleasure and pride, and with a belief that the friendliness and confidence which he inspired in them were reciprocated upon his part.

A conclusive and remarkable proof of the vitality

of Macaulay's reputation, and of the interest still felt in his writings, is to be found in the fact that nearly sixty years after the publication of his first book, and more than seventy years after the publication of his first article in the "Edinburgh Review," his publishers should feel justified in re-setting the type of the whole series of works and issuing this entirely new Edition. It may also be thought worthy of note that the publication of this new Edition of Macaulay's Works coincides, within a short distance of time, with the centenary of the birth of the Author (October 25, 1800).

The portraits which appear in this Edition have been carefully selected by Mr. Lionel Cust, Director of the National Portrait Gallery. Some of them are now reproduced for the first time, and notably the portrait of Mr. Gladstone by Millais, in the possession of Lord Rosebery. Those responsible for this edition are well pleased to be able to present to the public an adequate representation of the great statesman in illustration of the works of the great author. The feelings entertained towards each other by these two eminent men were worthy of them both. There is no envy between peers. Mr. Gladstone, in the 'Quarterly Review," has pronounced Macaulay's style to be "inimitable." Not once, but often, in the House of Commons, when an orator was guilty of a solecism or a slip of grammar, Mr. Gladstone would say to his next neighbour that it were well if Macaulay were back again on those benches; for he had been "a great purist, and a jealous guardian of