Critical and Historical Essays
Format: Paperback
ISBN13: 9780217697118
Paperback|9780217697118
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FREDERIC THE GREAT April, 1842 NOTE ON THE ESSAY MACAULAY'S essay on Frederic the Great has never gained the popularity of his essays on English history. Nor did he think very highly of it himself. I was never so little pleased, he wrote to Macvey Napier, with any performance of my own. Yet it is lively and energetic, and remarkable for the extent of the field which it covers without tiring or confusing the reader. Besides much that is personal to Frederic or his father, it sketches the history of Europe from 1740 to 1763, a period seldom equalled in the complexity and mobility of international relations, a period comprising two great and protracted wars in which most of the European powers were engaged. It was hardly possible to attempt so much within limits so narrow without becoming superficial. Moreover, when Macaulay wrote, the original documents for the diplomatic history of that time had never been fully or critically studied, so that the printed books to which he trusted for his facts were in many points misleading. He was thus led to give a very incorrect account of several matters of the greatest consequence, such as the negotiations and treaties which preceded the outbreak of the Seven Years' War. Macaulay's temper of mind, which was rather rhetorical than analytical, often caused him to treat history too much as biography and biography too much as romance, to exaggerate the singular qualities of great public men and to fail in adequately setting forth the conditions under which they acted. So it is in the essay upon Frederic. Macaulay has justly represented Frederic as greedy and unscrupulous; but he should have added that these vices were not peculiar to Frederic, that they pervaded the politics of the whole eighteenth century. Governments then scrambl...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217697118 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217697119 |
| Weight | 1.25 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.86 In |
| List Price | $52.49 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 388 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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