Chapter Macaulay to M’Crie of M by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

what he avowedly set himself to do, namely, to give a living picture of the period which he dealt with, he has been triumphantly successful. Unfortunately, strength and life failed before his great design was completed. He is probably most widely known by his Essays, which retain an extraordinary popularity.

Life by his nephew, Sir G. O. Trevelyan. See also J. C. Monson’s Life (English Men of Letters).

MacCarthy, Denis Florence (1817-1882).—Poet, born at Dublin, and ed. at Maynooth with a view to the priesthood, devoted himself, however, to literature, and contributed verses to The Nation. Among his other writings are Ballads, Poems, and Lyrics (1850), The Bell Founder (1857), and Under-Glimpses. He also edited a collection of Irish lyrics, translated Calderon, and wrote Shelley’s Early Life (1872).

M’Cosh, James (1811-1894).—Philosophical writer, son of an Ayrshire farmer, was a minister first of the Church of Scotland, and afterwards of the Free Church. From 1851-68 he was Professor of Logic at Queen’s College, Belfast, and thereafter president of Princeton College, New Jersey. He wrote several works on philosophy, including Method of the Divine Government (1850), Intuitions of the Mind inductively investigated (1860), Laws of Discursive Thought (1870), Scottish Philosophy (1874), and Psychology (1886).

M’Crie, Thomas (1772-1835).—Biographer and ecclesiastical historian, born at Duns, and ed. at the University of Edinburgh, became the leading minister of one of the Dissenting churches of Scotland. His Life of Knox (1813) ranks high among biographies for the ability and learning which it displays, and was the means of vindicating the great Reformer from a cloud of prejudice and misunderstanding in which he had been enveloped. It was followed by a Life of Andrew Melville (1819), Knox’s successor as the leader of the Reformers in Scotland, also a work of great merit. M‘C. also published histories of the Reformation in Italy and Spain. He received the degree of D.D. in 1813.