empire is depicted
in the passage on Burke, in the essay on Warren Hastings, which
commences with the words, "His knowledge of India--," and concludes
with the sentence, "Oppression in Bengal was to him the same thing as
oppression in the streets of London." That passage, unsurpassed as it is
in force of language, and splendid fidelity of detail, by anything that
Macaulay ever wrote or uttered, was inspired, as all who knew him could
testify, by sincere and entire sympathy with that great statesman
of whose humanity and breadth of view it is the merited, and not
inadequate, panegyric.

In Margaret Macaulay's journal there occurs more than one mention of
her brother's occasional fits of contrition on the subject of his own
idleness; but these regrets and confessions must be taken for what they
are worth, and for no more. He worked much harder than he gave himself
credit for. His nature was such that whatever he did was done with all
his heart, and all his power; and he was constitutionally incapable
of doing it otherwise. He always under-estimated the tension and
concentration of mind which he brought to bear upon his labours, as
compared with that which men in general bestow on whatever business
they may have in hand; and, to-wards the close of life, this honourable
self-deception no doubt led him to draw far too largely upon his failing
strength, under the impression that there was nothing unduly severe in
the efforts to which he continued to brace himself with ever increasing
difficulty.

During the eighteen months that he passed at the Board of Control he had
no time for relaxation, and very little for the industry which he loved
the best. Giving his days to India, and his nights to the inexorable
demands of the Treasury Whip, he could devote a few hours to the
Edinburgh Review only by rising at five when the rules of the House of
Commons had allowed him to get to bed betimes on the previous evening.
Yet, under these conditions, he contrived to provide Mr. Napier with
the highly finished articles on Horace Walpole and Lord Chatham, and to
gratify a political opponent, who was destined to be a life-long friend,
by his kindly criticism and spirited summary of Lord Mahon's "History of
the War of the Succession in Spain." And, in the "Friendship's Offering"
of 1833, one of those mawkish annual publications of the album species
which were then in fashion, appeared his poem of the Armada; whose
swinging couplets read as