make it. "He
thought little of reconstructing a paragraph," says his biographer, "for
the sake of one happy illustration." He submitted to the most tiresome
mechanical drudgery in the correction of his proof-sheets. The clearness
of his thought amid the profusion of his knowledge was represented in
his writing by a remarkable conciseness of expression. His short,
vigorous sentences are compact with details of fact, yet rich with
color. His terseness has been compared to that of Tacitus. His power of
condensation, aptness of phrase and epithet, and indomitable industry
made him a master of rhetorical effect, in the use of his multifarious
learning for the illustration of his themes.

As soon as his last proof-sheet had been despatched to the printers,
Macaulay at once fell to reading a series of historians from Herodotus
downward, to measure his writings with theirs. Thucydides especially
utterly destroyed all the conceit which naturally would arise from his
unbounded popularity, as expressed in every social and literary circle,
as well as in the Reviews. Like Michael Angelo, this Englishman was
never satisfied with his own productions; and the only comfort he took
in the impossibility of realizing his ideal was in the comparison he
made of his own works with similar ones by contemporary authors. Then he
was content; and then only appeared in his letters and diary that
good-natured, self-satisfied feeling which arose from the consciousness
that he was one of the most fortunate authors who had ever lived. There
was nothing cynical in his sense of superiority, but an amiable
self-assertion and self-confidence that only made men smile,--as when
Lord Palmerston remarked that "he wished he was as certain of any one
thing as Tom Macaulay was of everything." This self-confidence rarely
provoked opposition, except when he was positive as to things outside
his sphere. He wrote and talked sensibly and luminously on financial and
social questions, on art, on poetry and the drama, on philosophy and
theology; but on these subjects he was not an authority with
specialists. In other words, he did not, so to speak, know everything
profoundly, but only superficially; yet in history, especially English
history, he was profound in analysis as well as brilliant in the
narration of facts, even when there was disagreement between himself and
others as to inductions he drew from those facts,--inductions colored by
his strong prejudices and ari