Reviewing

 About forty years ago, The Washington Post published a review of a biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton, I suppose the one by Edward Rice. The reviewer was Anthony Burgess, the review was informative and readable. Presently the Post's book section carried a letter praising the quality of Burgess's sketch of Burton's life, and remarking on his graciousness in making a passing mention of Rice's book.

Today I went to the Gutenberg Project to check on something Macaulay wrote, and having found it, read on in the Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays, Volume III. In part this was a hunt for typographical errors to be sent in as errata: the text appears to have been created through optical character recognition (OCR), which is pretty good but here and there subject to error. In part this was because (of course) Macaulay is very readable.

The essays in the volume are mostly reviews, and reviews of the sort that the Post's correspondent complained of. The author is often enough dismissed in the first couple of paragraphs, usually with dispraise:

There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind, and went to the oar. Guicciardini, though certainly not the most amusing of writers, is a Herodotus or a Froissart, when compared with Dr. Nares.

After that one gets Macaulay's own thoughts on the subject of the book. He has more than a few, and if not always convincing, they are usually entertaining. I suppose that a close criticism of Dr. Nares's work would make for much duller reading than Macaulay's harsh account of Lord Burleigh.

Still I wonder that he didn't consider the application his readers might make of

Almost all the distinguished writers who have treated of English history are advocates. Mr. Hallam and Sir James Mackintosh alone are entitled to be called judges. But the extreme austerity of Mr. Hallam takes away something from the pleasure of reading his learned, eloquent, and judicious writings. He is a judge, but a hanging judge, the Page or Buller of the High Court of Literary Justice. His black cap is in constant requisition. In the long calendar of those whom he has tried, there is hardly one who has not, in spite of evidence to character and recommendations to mercy, been sentenced and left for execution.