greater share of what we may call personal anecdote than any of his
classical followers. Modern historians, as they happened to have more or
less of what we may call _artistic_ feeling, admitted more or less of
this decoration into their text, but always with an eye (which Mr.
Macaulay never exercises) to the appropriateness and value of the
illustration. Generally, however, such matters have been thrown into
notes, or, in a few instances--as by Dr. Henry and in Mr. Knight's
interesting and instructive "Pictorial History"--into separate chapters.
The large class of memoir-writers may also be fairly considered as
anecdotical historians--and they are in fact the sources from which the
novelists of the new school extract their principal characters and main
incidents.

Mr. Macaulay deals with history, evidently, as we think, in imitation of
the novelists--his first object being always picturesque effect--his
constant endeavour to give from all the repositories of gossip that have
reached us a kind of circumstantial reality to his incidents, and a sort
of dramatic life to his personages. For this purpose he would not be
very solicitous about contributing any substantial addition to history,
strictly so called; on the contrary, indeed, he seems to have willingly
taken it as he found it, adding to it such lace and trimmings as he
could collect from the Monmouth-street of literature, seldom it may be
safely presumed of very delicate quality. It is, as Johnson drolly said,
"an old coat with a new facing--the old dog in a new doublet." The
conception was bold, and--so far as availing himself, like other
novelists, of the fashion of the day to produce a popular and profitable
effect--the experiment has been eminently successful.

But besides the obvious incentives just noticed, Mr. Macaulay had also
the stimulus of what we may compendiously call a strong party spirit.
One would have thought that the Whigs might have been satisfied with
their share in the historical library of the Revolution:--besides Rapin,
Echard, and Jones, who, though of moderate politics in general, were
stout friends to the Revolution, they have had of professed and zealous
Whigs, Burnet, the foundation of all, Kennett, Oldmixon, Dalrymple,
Laing, Brodie, Fox, and finally Mackintosh and his continuator, besides
innumerable writers of less note, who naturally adopted the successful
side; and we should not have supposed that the reader of any of those
histor