its best. He was elected member for Edinburgh, a very high
compliment, in 1839; and next year became Secretary for War. In 1842 and
1843 respectively he established his position in verse and prose by
publishing the _Lays of Ancient Rome_ and a collection of his _Essays_;
and in 1846 he was made Postmaster-General. But his support of the
Maynooth Grant offended the Protestantism of his constituents, and he
lost his seat, and for the time his political opportunities, in 1847.
The disaster was no disaster for literature: he had long been employed
on a _History of England from the Accession of James II._, and being now
able to devote his whole time to it, he published the first volumes in
1848 with astonishing success.

He was re-elected for Edinburgh in 1852, published the third and fourth
volumes of his History in 1855 with success greater in pecuniary ways
and otherwise than even that of their forerunners, was raised to the
Upper House as Lord Macaulay of Rothley in 1857, and died two years
later, on 28th December 1859, of heart disease. Some personal
peculiarities of Macaulay's--his extraordinary reading and memory, his
brilliant but rather tyrannical conversation, his undoubting
self-confidence--were pretty well known in his lifetime, and did not
always create a prejudice in his favour. But a great revolution in this
respect was brought about by the _Life_ of him, produced a good many
years later by his nephew, Sir George Trevelyan--a Life, standing for
the interest of its matter and the skill and taste of its manner, not
too far below the masterpieces of Boswell and Lockhart.

The literary personality of Macaulay, though a great one in all
respects, is neither complex nor unequally present, and it is therefore
desirable to discuss all its manifestations together. In the order of
importance and of bulk his work may be divided into verse, prose-essays,
and history, for his speeches less directly concern us, and are very
little more than essays adroitly enough adjusted so as not to be tedious
to the hearer. In all three capacities he was eminently popular; and in
all three his popularity has brought with it a sort of reaction, partly
justified, partly unjust. The worst brunt of this reaction has fallen
upon his verse, the capital division of which, the _Lays of Ancient
Rome_, was persistently decried by Mr. Matthew Arnold, the critic of
most authority in the generation immediately succeeding Macaulay's. A
poet of the v