III. Lord Macaulay, 1800–59

Extract

It was the fortune of Thomas Babington Macaulay to be born into a chaotic world; to grow to manhood amidst constant wars, revolutions, counterrevolutions and reform movements scarcely distinguishable from revolutions; to take a leading part in some of these movements at home and in India, and to be an eye-witness of others in France; to live long enough to see the gradual return of stability on a foundation holding out the brightest hopes for the future, and to die early enough to escape even the first faint indication that these hopes were not to be fulfilled. He was born (on the anniversary of the battle of Agincourt, as he loved to recall) between the fall of the republic in France and the rise of Napoleon to despotic authority. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, with which he and his family were to have so long and so distinguished an association, between the battle of Waterloo and the battle of Peterloo. He attained his majority amidst the revolutions of 1821, entered Parliament amidst the revolutions of 1830, and published the first two volumes of his History amidst the revolutions of 1848. He was still at the height of his powers when the Great Exhibition of 1851 was hailed as ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity, and died eight years later, just in time to avoid witnessing the series of wars which marked the third quarter of the nineteenth century and the beginning of that bitter commercial rivalry and international tension which foreshadowed the eventual collapse.