Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay Part 7

Macaulay is called to the bar--Does not make it a serious profession--Speech before the Anti-Slavery Society--Knight's Quarterly Magazine--The Edinburgh Review and the Essay on Milton--Macaulay's personal appearance and mode of existence--His defects and virtues, likings and antipathies-- Croker Sadler--Zachary Macaulay's circ.u.mstances-- Description of the family habits of life in Great Ormond Street--Macaulay's sisters--Hannah Macaulay--the Judicious Poet--Macaulay's humour in conversation--His articles in the Review--His attacks on the Utilitarians and on Southey-- Blackwood's Magazine--Macaulay is made Commissioner of Bankruptcy--Enters Parliament--Letters from Circuit and Edinburgh.

MACAULAY was called to the bar in 1826, and joined the Northern circuit.

On the evening that he first appeared at mess, when the company were retiring for the night, he was observed to be carefully picking out the longest candle. An old King's Counsel, who noticed that he had a volume under his arm, remonstrated with him on the danger of reading in bed, upon which he rejoined with immense rapidity of utterance "I always read in bed at home; and, if I am not afraid of committing parricide, and matricide, and fratricide, I can hardly be expected to pay any special regard to the lives of the bagmen of Leeds." And, so saying, he left his hearers staring at one another, and marched off to his room, little knowing that, before many years were out, he would have occasion to speak much more respectfully of the Leeds bagmen.

Under its social aspect Macaulay heartily enjoyed his legal career.

He made an admirable literary use of the Saturnalia which the Northern circuit calls by the name of "Grand Night," when personalities of the most p.r.o.nounced description are welcomed by all except the object of them, and forgiven even by him. His hand may be recognised in a macaronic poem, written in Greek and English, describing the feast at which Alexander murdered c.l.i.tus. The death of the victim is treated with an exuberance of fantastic drollery, and a song, put into the mouth of Nearchus, the admiral of the Macedonian fleet, and beginning with the lines

"When as first I did come back from ploughing the salt water They paid me off at Salamis, three minae and a quarter,--"

is highly Aristophanic in every sense of the word.

He did not seriously look to the bar as a profession. No persuasion would induce him to return to his chambers in the evening, according to the practice then in vogue. After the first year or two of the period during which he called himself a barrister he gave up even the pretence of reading law, and spent many more hours under the gallery of the House of Commons, than in all the Courts together. The person who knew him best said of him: "Throughout life he never really applied himself to any pursuit that was against the grain." Nothing is more characteristic of the man than the contrast between his unconquerable aversion to the science of jurisprudence at the time when he was ostensibly preparing himself to be an advocate, and the zest with which, on his voyage to India, he mastered that science in principle and detail as soon as his imagination was fired by the prospect of the responsibilities of a law-giver.

He got no business worth mention, either in London or on circuit.

Zachary Macaulay, who was not a man of the world, did what he could to make interest with the attorneys, and, as a last resource, proposed to his son to take a brief in a suit which he himself had inst.i.tuted against the journal that had so grossly libelled him. "I am rather glad," writes Macaulay from York in March 1827, "that I was not in London, if your advisers thought it right that I should have appeared as your counsel. Whether it be contrary to professional etiquette I do not know; but I am sure that it would be shocking to public feeling, and particularly imprudent against adversaries whose main strength lies in detecting and exposing indecorum or eccentricity. It would have been difficult to avoid a quarrel with Sugden, with Wetherell, and with old Lord Eldon himself. Then the John Bull would have been upon us with every advantage. The personal part of the consideration it would have been my duty, and my pleasure and pride also, to overlook; but your interests must have suffered."

Meanwhile he was busy enough in fields better adapted than the law to his talents and his temperament. He took a part in a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society held at Freemasons' Tavern, on the 25th of June 1824, with the Duke of Gloucester in the chair. The Edinburgh Review described his speech as "a display of eloquence so signal for rare and matured excellence that the most practised orator may well admire how it should have come from one who then for the first time addressed a public a.s.sembly."

Those who know what the annual meeting of a well-organised and disciplined a.s.sociation is, may imagine the whirlwind of cheers which greeted the declaration that the hour was at hand when "the peasant of the Antilles will no longer crawl in listless and trembling dejection round a plantation from whose fruits he must derive no advantage, and a hut whose door yields him no protection; but, when his cheerful and voluntary labour is performed, he will return with the firm step and erect brow of a British citizen from the field which is his freehold to the cottage which is his castle."

Surer promise of apt.i.tude for political debate was afforded by the skill with which the young speaker turned to account the recent trial for sedition, and death in prison, of Smith, the Demerara missionary; an event which was fatal to Slavery in the West Indies in the same degree as the execution of John Brown was its deathblow in the United States.

"When this country has been endangered either by arbitrary power or popular delusion, truth has still possessed one irresistible organ, and justice one inviolable tribunal. That organ has been an English press, and that tribunal an English jury. But in those wretched islands we see a press more hostile to truth than any censor, and juries more insensible to justice than any Star Chamber. In those islands alone is exemplified the full meaning of the most tremendous of the curses denounced against the apostate Hebrews, 'I will curse your blessings.'

We can prove this a.s.sertion out of the mouth of our adversaries. We remember, and G.o.d Almighty forbid that we ever should forget, how, at the trial of Mr. Smith, hatred regulated every proceeding, was subst.i.tuted for every law, and allowed its victim no sanctuary in the house of mourning, no refuge in the very grave. Against the members of that court-martial the country has p.r.o.nounced its verdict. But what is the line of defence taken by its advocates? It has been solemnly and repeatedly declared in the House of Commons that a jury composed of planters would have acted with far more injustice than did this court;--this court which has never found a single lawyer to stake his professional character on the legality of its proceedings. The argument is this. Things have doubtless been done which should not have been done. The court-martial sat without a jurisdiction; it convicted without evidence; it condemned to a punishment not warranted by law. But we must make allowances. We must judge by comparison. 'Mr Smith ought to have been very thankful that it was no worse. Only think what would have been his fate if he had been tried by a jury of planters!' Sir, I have always lived under the protection of the British laws, and therefore I am unable to imagine what could be worse; but, though I have small knowledge, I have a large faith; I by no means presume to set any limits to the possible injustice of a West Indian judicature. And since the colonists maintain that a jury composed of their own body not only possibly might, but necessarily must, have acted with more iniquity than this court-martial, I certainly shall not dispute the a.s.sertion, though I am utterly unable to conceive the mode."

That was probably the happiest half-hour of Zachary Macaulay's life. "My friend," said Wilberforce, when his turn came to speak, "would doubtless willingly bear with all the base falsehoods, all the vile calumnies, all the detestable artifices which have been aimed against him, to render him the martyr and victim of our cause, for the gratification he has this day enjoyed in hearing one so dear to him plead such a cause in such a manner." Keen as his pleasure was, he took it in his own sad way. From the first moment to the last, he never moved a muscle of his countenance, but sat with his eyes fixed on a piece of paper, on which he seemed to be writing with a pencil. While talking with his son that evening, he referred to what had pa.s.sed only to remark that it was ungraceful in so young a man to speak with folded arms in the presence of royalty.

In 1823 the leading members of the cleverest set of boys who ever were together at a public school found themselves collected once more at Cambridge. Of the former staff of the Etonian, Praed, Moultrie, Nelson Coleridge, and, among others, Mr. Edmond Beales, so well known to our generation as an ardent politician, were now in residence at King's or Trinity. Mr. Charles Knight, too enterprising a publisher to let such a quant.i.ty of youthful talent run to waste, started a periodical, which was largely supported by undergraduates and Bachelors of Arts, among whom the veterans of the Eton press formed a brilliant, and, as he vainly hoped, a reliable nucleus of contributors.

Knight's Quarterly Magazine is full of Macaulay, and of Macaulay in the attractive shape which a great author wears while he is still writing to please no one but himself. He unfortunately did not at all please his father. In the first number, besides a great deal of his that is still worth reading, there were printed under his adopted signature of Tristram Merton two little poems, the nature of which may be guessed from Praed's editorial comments. "Tristram Merton, I have a strong curiosity to know who Rosamond is. But you will not tell me; and, after all, as far as your verses are concerned, the surname is nowise germane to the matter. As poor Sheridan said, it is too formal to be registered in love's calendar." And again: "Tristram, I hope Rosamond and your Fair Girl of France will not pull caps; but I cannot forbear the temptation of introducing your Roxana and Statira to an admiring public." The verses were such as any man would willingly look back to having written at two and twenty; but their appearance occasioned real misery to Zachary Macaulay, who indeed disapproved of the whole publication from beginning to end, with the exception of an article on West Indian Slavery which his son had inserted with the most filial intention, but which, it must be allowed, was not quite in keeping with the general character of the magazine.

July 9, 1823.

My dear Father,--I have seen the two last letters which you have sent to my mother. They have given me deep pain; but pain without remorse. I am conscious of no misconduct, and whatever uneasiness I may feel arises solely from sympathy for your distress.

You seem to imagine that the book is edited, or princ.i.p.ally written, by friends of mine. I thought that you had been aware that the work is conducted in London, and that my friends and myself are merely contributors, and form a very small proportion of the contributors.

The manners of almost all of my acquaintances are so utterly alien from coa.r.s.eness, and their morals from libertinism, that I feel a.s.sured that no objection of that nature can exist to their writings. As to my own contributions I can only say that the Roman Story was read to my mother before it was published, and would have been read to you if you had happened to be at home. Not one syllable of censure was uttered.

The Essay on the Royal Society of Literature was read to you. I made the alterations which I conceived that you desired, and submitted them afterwards to my mother. As to the poetry which you parallel with Little's, if anything vulgar or licentious has been written by myself, I am willing to bear the consequences. If anything of that cast has been written by my friends, I allow that a certain degree of blame attaches to me for having chosen them at least indiscreetly. If, however, a bookseller of whom we knew nothing has coupled improper productions with ours in a work over which we had no control, I cannot plead guilty to anything more than misfortune; a misfortune in which some of the most rigidly moral and religious men of my acquaintance have partic.i.p.ated in the present instance.

I am pleading at random for a book which I never saw. I am defending the works of people most of whose names I never heard. I am therefore writing under great disadvantages. I write also in great haste. I am unable even to read over what I have written.

Affectionately yours

T. B. M.

Moved by the father's evident unhappiness, the son promised never to write again for the obnoxious periodical. The second number was so dull and decorous that Zachary Macaulay, who felt that, if the magazine went on through successive quarters reforming its tone in the same proportion, it would soon be on a level of virtue with the Christian Observer, withdrew his objection; and the young man wrote regularly till the short life of the undertaking ended in something very like a quarrel between the publisher and his contributors. It is not the province of biography to dilate upon works which are already before the world; and the results of Macaulay's literary labour during the years 1823 and 1824 have been, perhaps, only too freely reproduced in the volumes which contain his miscellaneous writings. It is, however, worthy of notice that among his earlier efforts in literature his own decided favourite was "the Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton touching the great Civil War." But an author, who is exempt from vanity, is inclined to rate his own works rather according as they are free from faults than as they abound in beauties; and Macaulay's readers will very generally give the preference to two fragmentary sketches of Roman and Athenian society which sparkle with life, and humour, and a masculine vigorous fancy that had not yet learned to obey the rein. Their crude but genuine merit suggests a regret that he did not in after days enrich the Edinburgh Review with a couple of articles on cla.s.sical subjects, as a sample of that ripened scholars.h.i.+p which produced the Prophecy of Capys, and the episode relating to the Phalaris controversy in the Essay on Sir William Temple.

Rothley Temple: October 7, 1824.

My dear Father,--As to Knight's Magazine, I really do not think that, considering the circ.u.mstances under which it is conducted, it can be much censured. Every magazine must contain a certain quant.i.ty of mere ballast, of no value but as it occupies s.p.a.ce. The general tone and spirit of the work will stand a comparison, in a moral point of view, with any periodical publication not professedly religious. I will venture to say that nothing has appeared in it, at least since the first number, from the pen of any of my friends, which can offend the most fastidious. Knight is absolutely in our hands, and most desirous to gratify us all, and me in particular. When I see you in London I will mention to you a piece of secret history which will show you how important our connection with this work may possibly become.

Yours affectionately

T. B. M.

The "piece of secret history" above referred to was beyond a doubt the commencement of Macaulay's connection with the Edinburgh Review. That famous periodical, which for three and twenty years had shared in and promoted the rising fortunes of the Liberal cause, had now attained its height--a height unequalled before or since--of political, social, and literary power. To have the entry of its columns was to command the most direct channel for the spread of opinions, and the shortest road to influence and celebrity. But already the anxious eye of the master seemed to discern symptoms of decline. Jeffrey, in Lord c.o.c.kburn's phrase, was "growing feverish about new writers." In January 1825 he says in a letter to a friend in London: "Can you not lay your hands on some clever young man who would write for us? The original supporters of the work are getting old, and either too busy or too stupid, and here the young men are mostly Tories." Overtures had already been made to Macaulay, and that same year his article on Milton appeared in the August number.

The effect on the author's reputation was instantaneous. Like Lord Byron, he awoke one morning and found himself famous. The beauties of the work were such as all men could recognise, and its very faults pleased. The redundance of youthful enthusiasm, which he himself unsparingly condemns in the preface to his collected essays, seemed graceful enough in the eyes of others, if it were only as a relief from the perverted ability of that elaborate libel on our great epic poet which goes by the name of Dr. Johnson's Life of Milton. Murray declared that it would be worth the copyright of Childe Harold to have Macaulay on the staff of the Quarterly. The family breakfast table in Bloomsbury was covered with cards of invitation to dinner from every quarter of London, and his father groaned in spirit over the conviction that thenceforward the law would be less to him than ever. A warm admirer of Robert Hall, Macaulay heard with pride how the great preacher, then wellnigh worn out with that long disease, his life, was discovered lying on the floor, employed in learning by aid of grammar and dictionary enough Italian to enable him to verify the parallel between Milton and Dante. But the compliment that of all others came most nearly home,--the only commendation of his literary talent which even in the innermost domestic circle he was ever known to repeat,--was the sentence with which Jeffrey acknowledged the receipt of his ma.n.u.script: "The more I think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that style."

Macaulay's outward man was never better described than in two sentences of Praed's Introduction to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. "There came up a short manly figure, marvellously upright, with a bad neckcloth, and one hand in his waistcoat pocket. ["I well remember," writes Sir William Stirling Maxwell, "the first time I met him,--in 1845 or '46, I think,--at dinner at the house of his old friend, Sir John Macleod. I did not know him by sight, and, when he came into the room with two or three other guests, I supposed that he was announced as General--I forget what. The party was large, and I was on the other side of the table, and a good way off, and I was very soon struck by the amazing number of subjects on which he seemed at home;--politics, home and foreign,--French literature, and Hebrew poetry;--and I remember thinking, 'This is a General with a singularly well-stored mind and badly tied neckcloth.' Till, at last, a remark on the prose of Dryden led me to conclude that it could be no one but the Great Essayist."] Of regular beauty he had little to boast; but in faces where there is an expression of great power, or of great good humour, or both, you do not regret its absence." This picture, in which every touch is correct, tells all that there is to be told. He had a ma.s.sive head, and features of a powerful and rugged cast, but so constantly lit up by every joyful and enn.o.bling emotion that it mattered little if, when absolutely quiescent, his face was rather homely than handsome. While conversing at table no one thought him otherwise than good-looking; but, when he rose, he was seen to be short and stout in figure. "At Holland House, the other day," writes his sister Margaret in September 1831, "Tom met Lady Lyndhurst for the first time. She said to him: 'Mr. Macaulay, you are so different to what I expected. I thought you were dark and thin, but you are fair, and really, Mr. Macaulay, you are fat."' He at all times sat and stood straight, full, and square; and in this respect Woolner, in the fine statue at Cambridge, has missed what was undoubtedly the most marked fact in his personal appearance.

He dressed badly, but not cheaply. His clothes, though ill put on, were good, and his wardrobe was always enormously overstocked. Later in life he indulged himself in an apparently inexhaustible succession of handsome embroidered waistcoats, which he used to regard with much complacency. He was unhandy to a degree quite unexampled in the experience of all who knew him. When in the open air he wore perfectly new dark kid gloves, into the fingers of which he never succeeded in inserting his own more than half way. After he had sailed for India there were found in his chambers between fifty and sixty strops, hacked into strips and splinters, and razors without beginning or end. About the same period he hurt his hand, and was reduced to send for a barber.

After the operation, he asked what was to pay. "Oh, Sir," said the man, "whatever you usually give the person who shaves you." "In that case,"

said Macaulay, "I should give you a great gash on each cheek."

During an epoch when, at our princ.i.p.al seats of education, athletic pursuits are regarded as a leading object of existence rather than as a means of health and recreation, it requires some boldness to confess that Macaulay was utterly dest.i.tute of bodily accomplishments, and that he viewed his deficiencies with supreme indifference. He could neither swim, nor row, nor drive, nor skate, nor shoot. He seldom crossed a saddle, and never willingly. When in attendance at Windsor as a cabinet minister he was informed that a horse was at his disposal. "If her Majesty wishes to see me ride," he said, "she must order out an elephant." The only exercise in which he can be said to have excelled was that of threading crowded streets with his eyes fixed upon a book.

He might be seen in such thoroughfares as Oxford Street, and Cheapside, walking as fast as other people walked, and reading a great deal faster than anybody else could read. As a pedestrian he was, indeed, above the average. Till he had pa.s.sed fifty he thought nothing of going on foot from the Albany to Clapham, and from Clapham on to Greenwich; and, while still in the prime of life, he was for ever on his feet indoors as well as out. "In those days," says his cousin Mrs. Conybeare, "he walked rapidly up and down a room as he talked. I remember on one occasion, when he was making a call, he stopped short in his walk in the midst of a declamation on some subject, and said, 'You have a brick floor here.'

The hostess confessed that it was true, though she hoped that it had been disguised by double matting and a thick carpet. He said that his habit of always walking enabled him to tell accurately the material he was treading on."

His faults were such as give annoyance to those who dislike a man rather than anxiety to those who love him. Vehemence, over-confidence, the inability to recognise that there are two sides to a question or two people in a dialogue, are defects which during youth are perhaps inseparable from gifts like those with which he was endowed. Moultrie, speaking of his undergraduate days, tells us that

"To him There was no pain like silence--no constraint So dull as unanimity. He breathed An atmosphere of argument, nor shrank From making, where he could not find, excuse For controversial fight."

At Cambridge he would say of himself that, whenever anybody enunciated a proposition, all possible answers to it rushed into his mind at once; and it was said of him by others that he had no politics except the opposite of those held by the person with whom he was talking. To that charge, at any rate, he did not long continue liable. He left college a staunch and vehement Whig, eager to maintain against all comers, and at any moment, that none but Whig opinions had a leg to stand upon.

His cousin George Babington, a rising surgeon, with whom at one time he lived in the closest intimacy, was always ready to take up the Tory cudgels. The two friends "would walk up and down the room, crossing each other for hours, shouting one another down with a continuous simultaneous storm of words, until George at length yielded to arguments and lungs combined. Never, so far as I remember, was there any loss of temper. It was a fair, good-humoured battle in not very mannerly lists."

Even as a very young man nine people out of ten liked nothing better than to listen to him, which was fortunate; because in his early days he had scanty respect of persons, either as regarded the choice of his topics, or the quant.i.ty of his words. But with his excellent temper, and entire absence of conceit, he soon began to learn consideration for others in small things as well as in great. By the time he was fairly launched in London he was agreeable in company, as well as forcible and amusing. Wilberforce speaks of his "unruffled good-humour." Sir Robert Inglis, a good observer with ample opportunity of forming a judgment, p.r.o.nounced that he conversed and did not dictate, and that he was loud but never overbearing. As far back as the year 1826 Crabb Robinson gave a very favourable account of his demeanour in society, which deserves credence as the testimony of one who liked his share of talk, and was not willing to be put in the background for anybody. "I went to James Stephen, and drove with him to his house at Hendon. A dinner party.

I had a most interesting companion in young Macaulay, one of the most promising of the rising generation I have seen for a long time. He has a good face,--not the delicate features of a man of genius and sensibility, but the strong lines and well-knit limbs of a man st.u.r.dy in body and mind. Very eloquent and cheerful. Overflowing with words, and not poor in thought. Liberal in opinion, but no radical. He seems a correct as well as a full man. He showed a minute knowledge of subjects not introduced by himself."

So loyal and sincere was Macaulay's nature that he was unwilling to live upon terms of even apparent intimacy with people whom he did not like, or could not esteem; and, as far as civility allowed, he avoided their advances, and especially their hospitality. He did not choose, he said, to eat salt with a man for whom he could not say a good word in all companies. He was true throughout life to those who had once acquired his regard and respect. Moultrie says of him

"His heart was pure and simple as a child's Unbreathed on by the world: in friends.h.i.+p warm, Confiding, generous, constant; and, though now He ranks among the great ones of the earth And hath achieved such glory as will last To future generations, he, I think, Would sup on oysters with as right good will In this poor home of mine as e'er he did On Petty Cury's cla.s.sical first floor Some twenty years ago."

He loved to place his purse, his influence, and his talents at the disposal of a friend; and anyone whom he called by that name he judged with indulgence, and trusted with a faith that would endure almost any strain. If his confidence proved to have been egregiously misplaced, which he was always the last to see, he did not resort to remonstrance or recrimination. His course under such circ.u.mstances he described in a couplet from an old French comedy:

"Le bruit est pour le fat, la plainte pour le sot; L'honnete homme trompe s'eloigne et ne dit mot.

["La Coquette corrigee. Comedie par Mr. Delanoue, 1756." In his journal of February 15, 1851, after quoting the couplet, Macaulay adds: "Odd that two lines of a d.a.m.ned play, and, it should seem, a justly d.a.m.ned play, should have lived near a century and have become proverbial."]

He was never known to take part in any family quarrel, or personal broil, of any description whatsoever. His conduct in this respect was the result of self-discipline, and did not proceed from any want of sensibility. "He is very sensitive," said his sister Margaret, "and remembers long, as well as feels deeply, anything in the form of slight." Indeed, at college his friends used to tell him that his leading qualities were "generosity and vindictiveness." Courage he certainly did not lack. During the years when his spirit was high, and his pen cut deep, and when the habits of society were different from what they are at present, more than one adversary displayed symptoms of a desire to meet him elsewhere than on paper. On these occasions, while showing consideration for his opponent, he evinced a quiet but very decided sense of what was due to himself, which commanded the respect of all who were implicated, and brought difficulties that might have been grave to an honourable and satisfactory issue.

He reserved his pugnacity for quarrels undertaken on public grounds, and fought out with the world looking on as umpire. In the lists of criticism and of debate it cannot be denied that, as a young man, he sometimes deserved the praise which Dr. Johnson p.r.o.nounced upon a good hater. He had no mercy for bad writers, and notably for bad poets, unless they were in want of money; in which case he became within his means, the most open-handed of patrons. He was too apt to undervalue both the heart and the head of those who desired to maintain the old system of civil and religious exclusion, and who grudged political power to their fellow-countrymen, or at any rate to those of their fellow-countrymen whom he was himself prepared to enfranchise.

Independent, frank, and proud almost to a fault, he detested the whole race of jobbers and time-servers, parasites and scandal-mongers, led-captains, led-authors, and led-orators. Some of his antipathies have stamped themselves indelibly upon literary history. He attributed to the Right Honourable John Wilson Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty during the twenty years preceding 1830, qualities which excited his disapprobation beyond control, and possibly beyond measure. His judgment has been confirmed by the public voice, which identifies Croker with the character of Rigby in Mr. Disraeli's Coningsby.

Macaulay was the more formidable as an opponent because he could be angry without losing his command of the situation. His first onset was terrific; but in the fiercest excitement of the melee he knew when to call a halt. A certain member of Parliament named Michael Thomas Sadler had fallen foul of Malthus, and very foul indeed of Macaulay, who in two short and telling articles took revenge enough for both. [Macaulay writes to Mr. Napier in February 1831: "People here think that I have answered Sadler completely. Empson tells me that Malthus is well pleased, which is a good sign. As to Blackwood's trash I could not get through it. It bore the same relation to Sadler's pamphlet that a bad hash bears to a bad joint."] He writes on this subject to Mr. Macvey Napier, who towards the close of 1829 had succeeded Jeffrey in the editors.h.i.+p of the Edinburgh Review: "The position which we have now taken up is absolutely impregnable, and, if we were to quit it, though we might win a more splendid victory, we should expose ourselves to some risk. My rule in controversy has always been that to which the Lacedaemonians adhered in war: never to break the ranks for the purpose of pursuing a beaten enemy." He had, indeed, seldom occasion to strike twice. Where he set his mark, there was no need of a second impression.

The unduly severe fate of those who crossed his path during the years when his blood was hot teaches a serious lesson on the responsibilities of genius. Croker, and Sadler, and poor Robert Montgomery, and the other less eminent objects of his wrath, appear likely to enjoy just so much notoriety, and of such a nature, as he has thought fit to deal out to them in his pages; and it is possible that even Lord Ellenborough may be better known to our grand-children by Macaulay's oration on the gates of Somnauth than by the noise of his own deeds, or the echo of his own eloquence.

When Macaulay went to college he was justified in regarding himself as one who would not have to work for his bread. His father, who believed himself to be already worth a hundred thousand pounds, had statedly declared to the young man his intention of making him, in a modest way, an eldest son; and had informed him that, by doing his duty at the university, he would earn the privilege of shaping his career at choice.

In 1818 the family removed to London, and set up an establishment on a scale suited to their improved circ.u.mstances in Cadogan Place, which, in everything except proximity to Bond Street, was then hardly less rural than Clapham. But the prosperity of the house of Macaulay and Babington was short-lived. The senior member of the firm gave his whole heart, and five-sixths of his time, to objects unconnected with his business; and he had selected a partner who did not possess the qualities necessary to compensate for his own deficiencies. In 1819 the first indications of possible disaster begin to show themselves in the letters to and from Cambridge; while waiting for a fellows.h.i.+p Macaulay was glad to make a hundred guineas by taking pupils; and, as time went on, it became evident that he was to be an eldest son only in the sense that, throughout the coming years of difficulty and distress, his brothers and sisters would depend mainly upon him for comfort, guidance, and support.