Word: macaulay
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...MACAULAY: THE SHAPING OF THE HISTORIAN by JOHN CLIVE 499 pages. Alfred A. Knopf...
Thomas De Quincey's mother, who ought to have known one when she saw one, called the infant Thomas Babington Macaulay a "baby genius." From the age of three, "Clever Tom" was a compulsive reader whose idea of a wild childhood game was to act out Homer, reserving for himself the role of Achilles. At six, the future author of the five-volume History of England was at work on a compendium of world history...
Prodigies are seldom lovable, and Macaulay was no exception. As a boy he was "loudmouthed and conceited," with a visible "neglect of cleanliness." As an adult he was variously described as a "mean, whitey-looking man" and "an ugly, cross-made, splayfooted, shapeless little dumpling of a fellow." He had two qualities that make a human being a menace at any party-a phenomenal memory and inexhaustible energy. An exasperated hostess once grew so desperate that she switched the conversation to dolls, hoping to shut him up. Alas, Macaulay turned out to be an authority on them...
Heavy Odds. Macaulay can be as hard to take in retrospect as he often must have been in person. Born in 1800, he seems to exemplify almost everything about the 19th century that the 20th century cannot forgive. He was an optimist who summed up history thus: "The great progress goes on." Against heavy odds, John Clive, a professor of history and literature at Harvard, manages to build a respectable case for a respectable Macaulay. Ten years ago Clive's Macaulay might have earned equally admiring reviews in the back pages of literary periodicals, then sunk like a Victorian...
CATHEDRAL: The Story of Its Construction by David Macaulay. 80 pages. Houghton Mifflin. $6.95. This marvelous book recreates the building of a French Gothic cathedral, from the hewing down of half a forest to the placement of the last sheet of lead on the spire. Macaulay, a young architect, uses voluminous knowledge and pen-and-ink sketches, accompanied by a brief, clear narrative. He shows how to design and build a flying buttress, cast a bell in bronze, use the mortise-and-tenon method on the roof beams. By changing his viewpoint, he also powerfully conveys the immense rook-filled...