Index To Trevelyan's Life And Letters Of Lord Macaulay (1881)

INDEX TO TREVELYANS LIFE AND LETTERS - PREFACE - I will not be thought necessary to urge the claims of Eiography gcncrally to be represented in the Index Society, seeing that if it cannot appeal to any special class of searchers, it is only because there is no province of literature which does not fall under its sway, no toilers in the field of Letters who have not something to do with the study of the lives of others. Nor will Indcx-lovers, who are fond of RLacaulays writings, look for any reason for the appearance of this Index beyond the bare fact that Mr. Trevelyan sent his book into the world without its bag and baggage. But if it were necessary to reason the need of the thing, without stopping to consider whether this Life of RIacaulay is to be ranked among great English biographies or no, it might be held sufficient to run the eye over nearly any page of this Index, and note the number of men famous above their kind in the most varied walks of life. In one page will be found specified entries under the names of Bulwer Lytton, Bunyan, Buonaparte, and Burke in another Lord Carlisle and Thomas Carlyle face us cheek by jowl in a third, Dickens and Disraeli, or Gibbon and Gladstone, or Southey, de Stael and Stanlcy, show the rich and varied nature of the deposit, which this shaft has been sunk to reach. An American thought that the sublimest of all spectacles mould be Macaulay standing by Worhsworths grave from another point of view it is equally interesting to hear what Nacaulay has to say about Eugene Sue, Swift, Talleyrand, Tennyson, Kate Terry, Thackeray, Thiers and Thirlmall-names that lie as close neighbours on the opening of two pages. Or, taking the list of subjects discussedby him for reviewing to picture another volume of Critical and Historical Essays containing articles on Jane Austen, Richardsons Novels, Edmund Burlre, Bishop Burnet, Napoleon, Dickenss American ATotes, Hannah Nore, Lord Shaftesbury, and Voltaire-a collection which might well be noted in some future Curiosities of Literature, as one of the events which have not happened in the world of Letters. Or. to glean how he ranked the great poets and historians of all time, what he held to be the best and worst things in Greek and Latin, to learn what were his favourites of the plays of Shakespeare, MoliAre and Schiller, of Cities, Bishops and Statesmen to note his habits of reading, and love of poring over lists and calendars to be able to picture his appearance and dress and - manner to gather up his thoughts and remarks, whether on religion and politics, or on olive-trees and the ex-lions of London fashion to share with him for a moment the charms of his college life in London, or to wander forth from his library into the xystus, or on to the clean-shaven lawn of Holly Lodge, while he is pouring forth unwieldy French with De Tocqueville, discussing with Ticknor the merits of Burke as a possible historian, or deluging his listeners like a waterspout with the marvels of his memory. For it is not the all-lmomingness of 3Iacaulay-tg quote PREFACE. vii Sir James Stephens expression-that has rivcted the attention of those who have read the memoir of his life, so much as the human sympathy for which those who knew him only through his writings had been somehow or other loth to give him credit...