MAYNARD'S ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES.-No. 104-105. AN ESSAY ON ADDISON. BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. With Biographical Sketch of Macaulay, and with NEW YORK: MAYNARD, MERRILL, & Co., Spelling, Language, Grammar, Composition, Literature. Reed's Word Lessons-A Complete Speller. Reed & Kellogg's Graded Lessons in English. Kellogg & Reed's The English Language. Kellogg's Illustrations of Style. Kellogg's Text-Book on English Literature. In the preparation of this series the authors have had one object clearly in view-to so develop the study of the English language asto present a complete, progressive course, from the Spelling-Book to the study of English Literature. The troublesome contradictions which arise in using books arranged by different authors on these subjects, and which require much time for explanation in the schoolroom, will be avoided by the use of the above "Complete Course." Teachers are earnestly invited to examine these books. MAYNARD, MERRILL, & CO., Publishers, New York. Copyright, 1892, by EFFINGHAM MAYNARD & Co. LIFE OF MACAULAY. 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 his infancy he showed a precocity that was simply extraordinary. He not only acquired knowledge rapidly, but he possessed a marvelous 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 sympathetic kindness, asked shortly after how he was feeling, he looked up in her face 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 throughont his life he was free from literary vanity; another was that he habitually overestimated the knowledge of others. When he said in his essays that every schoolboy knew 8 |