Editing Thomas Babington Macaulay (section)

==Legacy as a historian==
The Liberal historian [[Lord Acton]] read Macaulay's ''History of England'' four times and later described himself as "a raw English schoolboy, primed to the brim with Whig politics" but "not [[Whiggism]] only, but Macaulay in particular that I was so full of." However, Acton would later find fault in Macaulay.{{sfn|Hill|2011|p=25}} In 1880 Acton classed Macaulay (with [[Edmund Burke|Burke]] and [[Gladstone]]) as one "of the three greatest Liberals".{{sfn|Paul|1904|p=57}} In 1883, he advised [[Mary Gladstone]]:

{{blockquote|[T]he Essays are really flashy and superficial. He was not above par in literary criticism; his Indian articles will not hold water; and his two most famous reviews, on [[Francis Bacon|Bacon]] and [[Leopold von Ranke|Ranke]], show his incompetence. The essays are only pleasant reading, and a key to half the prejudices of our age. It is the ''History'' (with one or two speeches) that is wonderful. He knew nothing respectably before the seventeenth century, he knew nothing of foreign history, of religion, philosophy, science, or art. His account of debates has been thrown into the shade by Ranke, his account of diplomatic affairs, by [[Onno Klopp|Klopp]]. He is, I am persuaded, grossly, basely unfair. Read him therefore to find out how it comes that the most unsympathetic of critics can think him very nearly the greatest of English writers…{{sfn|Paul|1904|p=173}} }}

In 1885, Acton asserted that: {{blockquote|We must never judge the quality of a teaching by the quality of the Teacher, or allow the spots to shut out the sun. It would be unjust, and it would deprive us of nearly all that is great and good in this world. Let me remind you of Macaulay. He remains to me one of the greatest of all writers and masters, although I think him utterly base, contemptible and odious for certain reasons which you know.{{sfn|Paul|1904|p=210}} }}

In 1888, Acton wrote that Macaulay "had done more than any writer in the literature of the world for the propagation of the Liberal faith, and he was not only the greatest, but the most representative, Englishman then living".{{sfn|Lord Acton|1919|p=482}}

[[W. S. Gilbert]] described Macaulay's wit, "who wrote of [[Anne, Queen of Great Britain|Queen Anne]]" as part of Colonel Calverley's Act I patter song in the libretto of the 1881 operetta ''[[Patience (opera)|Patience]]''. (This line may well have been a joke about the Colonel's pseudo-intellectual bragging, as most educated Victorians knew that Macaulay did ''not'' write of Queen Anne; the ''History'' encompasses only as far as the death of William III in 1702, who was succeeded by Anne.)

[[Herbert Butterfield]]'s ''The Whig Interpretation of History'' (1931) attacked Whig history. The Dutch historian [[Pieter Geyl]], writing in 1955, considered Macaulay's ''Essays'' as "exclusively and intolerantly English".{{sfn|Geyl|1958|p=30}}

On 7 February 1954, [[Charles Wilson, 1st Baron Moran|Lord Moran]], doctor to the Prime Minister, Sir [[Winston Churchill]], recorded in his diary: {{blockquote|[[Randolph Churchill|Randolph]], who is writing a life of the late Lord Derby for [[Longman]]'s, brought to luncheon a young man of that name. His talk interested the P.M.&nbsp;... Macaulay, Longman went on, was not read now; there was no demand for his books. The P.M. grunted that he was very sorry to hear this. Macaulay had been a great influence in his young days.{{sfn|Lord Moran|1968|pp=553–554}}}}

[[George Richard Potter]], Professor and Head of the Department of History at the [[University of Sheffield]] from 1931 to 1965, stated "In an age of long letters&nbsp;... Macaulay's hold their own with the best".{{sfn|Potter|1959|p=10}} However Potter also stated: {{blockquote|For all his linguistic abilities he seems never to have tried to enter into sympathetic mental contact with the classical world or with the Europe of his day. It was an insularity that was impregnable&nbsp;... If his outlook was insular, however, it was surely British rather than English.{{sfn|Potter|1959|p=25}} }}

With regards to Macaulay's determination to inspect physically the places mentioned in his ''History'', Potter said: {{blockquote|Much of the success of the famous third chapter of the ''History'' which may be said to have introduced the study of [[social history]], and even&nbsp;... [[local history]], was due to the intense local knowledge acquired on the spot. As a result it is a superb, living picture of Great Britain in the latter half of the seventeenth century&nbsp;... No description of the [[Siege of Derry|relief of Londonderry]] in a major history of England existed before 1850; after his visit there and the narrative written round it no other account has been needed&nbsp;... Scotland came fully into its own and from then until now it has been a commonplace that [[English history]] is incomprehensible without Scotland.{{sfn|Potter|1959|p=29}} }}

Potter noted that Macaulay has had many critics, some of whom put forward some salient points about the deficiency of Macaulay's ''History'' but added: "The severity and the minuteness of the criticism to which the ''History of England'' has been subjected is a measure of its permanent value. It is worth every ounce of powder and shot that is fired against it." Potter concluded that "in the long roll of English historical writing from [[Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon|Clarendon]] to [[G. M. Trevelyan|Trevelyan]] only [[Edward Gibbon|Gibbon]] has surpassed him in security of reputation and certainty of immortality".{{sfn|Potter|1959|p=35}}

[[Piers Brendon]] wrote that Macaulay is "the only British rival to Gibbon."{{sfn|Brendon|2010|p=126}} In 1972, J. R. Western wrote that: "Despite its age and blemishes, Macaulay's ''History of England'' has still to be superseded by a full-scale modern history of the period."{{sfn|Western|1972|p=403}} In 1974 [[J. P. Kenyon]] stated that: "As is often the case, Macaulay had it exactly right."{{sfn|Kenyon|1974|p=47|loc=n. 14}}

[[W. A. Speck]] wrote in 1980, that a reason Macaulay's ''History of England'' "still commands respect is that it was based upon a prodigious amount of research".{{sfn|Speck|1980|p=57}} Speck stated: {{blockquote|Macaulay's reputation as an historian has never fully recovered from the condemnation it implicitly received in Herbert Butterfield's devastating attack on ''The Whig Interpretation of History''. Though he was never cited by name, there can be no doubt that Macaulay answers to the charges brought against Whig historians, particularly that they study the past with reference to the present, class people in the past as those who furthered progress and those who hindered it, and judge them accordingly.{{sfn|Speck|1980|p=64}} }}

According to Speck: {{blockquote|[Macaulay too often] denies the past has its own validity, treating it as being merely a prelude to his own age. This is especially noticeable in the third chapter of his ''History of England'', when again and again he contrasts the backwardness of 1685 with the advances achieved by 1848. Not only does this misuse the past, it also leads him to exaggerate the differences.{{sfn|Speck|1980|p= 64}} }}

On the other hand, Speck also wrote that Macaulay "took pains to present the virtues even of a rogue, and he painted the virtuous warts and all",{{sfn|Speck|1980|p=65}} and that "he was never guilty of suppressing or distorting evidence to make it support a proposition which he knew to be untrue".{{sfn|Speck|1980|p=67}} Speck concluded: {{blockquote|What is in fact striking is the extent to which his ''History of England'' at least has survived subsequent research. Although it is often dismissed as inaccurate, it is hard to pinpoint a passage where he is categorically in error&nbsp;... his account of events has stood up remarkably well&nbsp;... His interpretation of the [[Glorious Revolution]] also remains the essential starting point for any discussion of that episode&nbsp;... What has not survived, or has become subdued, is Macaulay's confident belief in progress. It was a dominant creed in the era of the [[Great Exhibition]]. But [[Auschwitz]] and [[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|Hiroshima]] destroyed this century's claim to moral superiority over its predecessors, while the exhaustion of natural resources raises serious doubts about the continuation even of material progress into the next.{{sfn|Speck|1980|p=67}} }}

In 1981, [[J. W. Burrow]] argued that Macaulay's ''History of England'': {{blockquote|...&nbsp;is not simply partisan; a judgement, like that of [[Charles Harding Firth|Firth]], that Macaulay was always the Whig politician could hardly be more inapposite. Of course Macaulay thought that the Whigs of the seventeenth century were correct in their fundamental ideas, but the hero of the ''History'' was William, who, as Macaulay says, was certainly no Whig&nbsp;... If this was [[Whiggism]] it was so only, by the mid-nineteenth century, in the most extended and inclusive sense, requiring only an acceptance of parliamentary government and a sense of gravity of precedent. [[Herbert Butterfield|Butterfield]] says, rightly, that in the nineteenth century the Whig view of history became the English view. The chief agent of that transformation was surely Macaulay, aided, of course, by the receding relevance of seventeenth-century conflicts to contemporary politics, as the power of the crown waned further, and the [[civil disabilities of Catholics]] and [[English Dissenters|Dissenters]] were removed by legislation. The ''History'' is much more than the vindication of a party; it is an attempt to insinuate a view of politics, pragmatic, reverent, essentially [[Burkean]], informed by a high, even tumid sense of the worth of public life, yet fully conscious of its interrelations with the wider progress of society; it embodies what [[Henry Hallam|Hallam]] had merely asserted, a sense of the privileged possession by Englishmen of their history, as well as of the epic dignity of government by discussion. If this was sectarian it was hardly, in any useful contemporary sense, polemically Whig; it is more like the sectarianism of English respectability.{{sfn|Burrow|1983|p=}} }}

In 1982, [[Gertrude Himmelfarb]] wrote: {{blockquote|[M]ost professional historians have long since given up reading Macaulay, as they have given up writing the kind of history he wrote and thinking about history as he did. Yet there was a time when anyone with any pretension to cultivation read Macaulay.{{sfn|Himmelfarb|1986|p=163}} }} Himmelfarb also laments that "the history of the ''History'' is a sad testimonial to the cultural regression of our times".{{sfn|Himmelfarb|1986|p=165}}

In the novel ''[[Marathon Man (novel)|Marathon Man]]'' and its [[Marathon Man (film)|film adaptation]], the protagonist was named 'Thomas Babington' after Macaulay.{{sfn|Goldman|1974|p=20}}

In 2008, [[Walter Olson]] argued for the pre-eminence of Macaulay as a British [[classical liberal]].{{sfn|Olson|2008|pp=309–310}}