LIFE OF MACAULAY.

(1800-1859.)

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, whose father was Zachary Macaulay-famous for his advocacy of the abolition of slavery-was born at Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire, towards the end of 1800. From infancy he showed a precocity that was simply extraordinary. He not only acquired knowledge rapidly, but he possessed a marvellous power of working it up into literary form, and his facile pen produced compositions in prose and in verse, histories, odes, and hymns. From the time that he was three years old he read incessantly, for the most part lying on the rug before the fire with his book on the ground, and a piece of bread and butter in his hand. It is told of him that when a boy of four, and on a visit with his father, he was unfortunate enough to have a cup of hot coffee overturned on his legs, and when his hostess, in her sympa

thetic kindness, asked, shortly after, how he was feeling, he looked up and said, "Thank you, madam, the agony is abated". At seven he wrote a compendium of Universal History. At eight he was so fired with The Lay and with Marmion, that he wrote three cantos of a poem in imitation of Scott's manner, and called it The Battle of Cheviot". And he had many other literary projects, in all of which he showed perfect correctness both in grammar and in spelling, made his meaning uniformly clear, and was scrupulously accurate in his punctuation.

With all this cleverness he was not conceited. His parents, and particularly his mother, were most judicious in their treatment. They never encouraged him to display his powers of conversation, and they abstained from every kind of remark that might help him to think himself different from other, boys. One result was, that throughout his life he was free from literary vanity; another was that he habitually over-estimated the knowledge of others. When he said in his essays that every schoolboy knew this and that fact in history, he was judging their information by his own vast intellectual stores.

At the age of twelve, Macaulay was sent to a private school in the neighbourhood of Cambridge. There he laid the foundation of his future scholarship, and though fully occupied with his school work-chiefly Latin, Greek and mathematics-he found time to gratify his insatiable thirst for general literature. He read at random and without restraint, but with an apparent partiality for the lighter and more attractive books. His favourite. reading throughout his life was poetry and prose fiction. On subjects of this nature, he displayed a most unerring memory, as well as the capacity for taking in at a glance the contents of a printed page. Whatever caught his fancy he remembered as if he had consciously learned it by heart. He once said that if all the copies of Paradise Lost and the Pilgrim's Progress were to be destroyed, he would from memory alone undertake to reproduce both.

In 1818 Macaulay went from school to the University-to Trinity College, Cambridge. But here the studies were not to his mind. He had no liking for mathematics, and was nowhere as a mathematical student. His inclination was wholly for literature, and he gained various high distinctions in that department. It was unfortunate for

him that he had no severe discipline in scientific method; to his disproportionate partiality for the lighter sides of literature must be attributed his want of philosophic grasp, his dislike to arduous speculations, and his want of courage in facing intellectual problems. (J. Cotter Morison, p. 9.)

The private life of Cambridge had a much greater influence on him than the recognised studies of the place. He made many friends. His social qualities and his conversational powers were widely exercised and largely developed. He became, too, a brilliant member of the Union Debating Society, and here politics claimed his attention. Altogether he gave himself more to the enjoyment of all that was stirring around him than to the taking of University honours. In 1824, however, he was elected a Fellow, and began to take pupils. Further, he sought a wider field for his literary labours, and contributed papers to some of the magazinesmostly to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. Chief among these contributions are " Ivry" and "Naseby," in spirited verse, and the conversation between Cowley and Milton, in as splendid prose.

When Macaulay went to Cambridge, his father seemed in affluent circumstances, but the slave

trade agitation engrossed his time and his energy, and by-and-by there came on the family commercial ruin. This was a blow to the eldest son, but he bore up bravely, brought sunshine and happiness into the depressed household, and proceeded with stern fortitude to retrieve their position. He ultimately paid off his father's debts.

Though called to the bar in 1826, he did not take kindly to the law, and soon renounced it for an employment more congenial-literature. Already in 1824 he had been invited to write for the Edinburgh Review, and in August, 1825, appeared in that magazine his article on Milton, which created a sensation, and made the critics aware of the advent of a new literary power. This first success he followed up rapidly, and besides giving new life to the periodical, he soon gained for himself a name in literature. In 1828 he was made a Commissioner of Bankruptcy, and in 1830 was elected M.P. for Calne. In the Reformed Parliament he sat for

Leeds.

He entered Parliament at an opportune period, and was in the thick of the great Reform conflict. His speeches on the Reform Bill raised him to the first rank as an orator, and gained for him official