"[I]t remains true that Macaulay gave a new life and meaning to the historical Essay. He made it a vehicle through which thousands of people, who would never have read history at all, have acquired in a pleasurable way some acquaintance with great characters and events. These essays are probably the best of their kind in Europe. And there can be no doubt that they will live. Only it is much to be desired that, when they are used for purposes of education, students should be warned against the errors which many of them contain. On a higher level than any but the very best of the Essays, stand those five biographies which Macaulay wrote for the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica,’—those of Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Johnson, and the younger Pitt. All these are mature and careful pieces of work, quieter and more restrained in style than the Essays, but hardly less attractive. They show Macaulay as a master of artistic condensation. Taking into account their merits both of matter and of form, we should be safe in affirming that, as a writer of short biographies, Macaulay has not been surpassed, if he has been equalled, by any English writer. The life of the younger Pitt, in particular, calls for unqualified admiration. It was written in the January of 1859, the year of his death; and he never wrote anything better. It is a sample of what he could have done in the History if he had reached that period, and it must enhance our regret that the History remained a fragment."