Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III

Lord Macaulay wrote these long essays as reviews for the Edinburgh Review, and this third volume of his Critical and Historical Essays gathers nine of them. They range from Ranke's history of the Popes and the comic playwrights of the Restoration to Warren Hastings in India, Frederic the Great, Addison, Barère and the Earl of Chatham.

The opening piece, from October 1840, asks how the Church of Rome won back so much ground after the Reformation, and argues that advances in science do little to settle questions of religion. The essay on the Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay, from 1843, follows Frances Burney through her years as keeper of the robes to the Queen at Windsor, worn down by service from before seven in the morning until midnight.

Macaulay, who lived from 1800 to 1859, writes with confident judgments and long, rolling sentences. The volume rewards readers of British and European history, of eighteenth-century writers, and of the review essay as a literary form.