There were two faculties of Macaulay's mind that set his work far apart
from other work in the same field,--the faculties of organization and
illustration. He saw things in their right relation and he knew how to
make others see them thus. If he was describing, he never thrust minor
details into the foreground. If he was narrating, he never "got ahead of
his story." The importance of this is not sufficiently recognized. Many
writers do not know what organization means. They do not know that in all
great and successful literary work it is nine tenths of the labor. Yet
consider a moment. History is a very complex thing: divers events may be
simultaneous in their occurrence; or one crisis may be slowly evolving
from many causes in many places. It is no light task to tell these things
one after another and yet leave a unified impression, to take up a dozen
new threads in succession without tangling them and without losing the old
ones, and to lay them all down at the right moment and without confusion.
Such is the narrator's task, and it was at this task that Macaulay proved
himself a past master. He could dispose of a number of trivial events in a
single sentence. Thus, for example, runs his account of the dramatist
Wycherley's naval career: "He embarked, was present at a battle, and
celebrated it, on his return, in a copy of verses too bad for the
bellman." On the other hand, when it is a question of a great crisis, like
the impeachment of Warren Hastings, he knew how to prepare for it with
elaborate ceremony and to portray it in a scene of the highest dramatic
power.

This faculty of organization shows itself in what we technically name
structure; and logical and rhetorical structure may be studied at their
very best in his work. His essays are perfect units, made up of many
parts, systems within systems, that play together without clog or
friction. You can take them apart like a watch and put them together