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This edition also contains the pure text of Ma caulay's Essays. The exact punctuation, orthography. etc. of the English editions have been followed.

The portrait is from a photograph by Claudet, and represents the great historian as he appeared in the latter years of his life.

The biographical and critical Introduction is from the well-known pen of Mr. E. P. Whipple, who is fully entitled to speak with authority in regard to the most brilliant essayist of the age.

The typographical excellence of the publication places it among the best that have issued from the "Riverside" Press. We trust the public will appreciate what has long been needed,—a complete and correct edition, in handsome library style, of Lord Macaulay's Essays.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

ОР

MACAULAY.

THE materials for the biography of Lord Macaulay are scanty, and the writer of the present sketch has been able to glean few facts regarding his career which are not generally known. His life was comparatively barren in events, and though he rose to conspicuous social, literary, and political station, he had neither to struggle nor scramble for advancement. Almost as soon as his talents were displayed they were recognized and rewarded, and he attained fortune and power without using any means which required the least sacrifice, either of the integrity or the pride of his character.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY was born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, on the twenty-fifth of October, 1800. His father, Zachary Macaulay, the son of a Scotch Presbyterian clergyman, was one of the worthiest and ablest antislavery philanthropists and politicians of his time, distinguished, even among such men as Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Stephen, for conrage, sagacity, integrity, and religious principle. His mother was the daughter of Thomas Mills, a bookseller in Bristol, and belonged to the Society of Friends. Under her loving care he received his early

education, and was not sent from home until his thir teenth year, when he was placed in a private acade my. As a boy, he astonished all who knew him, by the brightness and eagerness of his mind, and the extent and variety of his acquisitions. Two lately published letters, written by Hannah More to his father, afford a pleasing glimpse of him, as he appeared to a shrewd and affectionate observer of his early years. She speaks of his "great superiority of intellect and quickness of passion," at the age of eleven. He ought, she thinks, to have competitors, for "he is like the prince who refused to play with anything but kings." "I never," she says, "saw any one bad propensity in him; nothing except natural frailty and ambition, inseparable perhaps from such talents and so lively an imagination; he appears sincere, veracious, tender-hearted, and affectionate." He was a fertile versifier, even at that tender age, but she "observed with pleasure that though he was quite wild till the ebullitions of his muse were discharged, he thought no more of them afterwards than the ostrich is said to do of her eggs after she has laid them." In another letter, written about two years afterwards, when the bright lad was nearly fourteen, she says, "the quantity of reading Tom has poured in, and the quantity of writing he has poured out, is astonishing." Poetry continued to be his passion, but his venerable triend still testifies to his promising habit of throwing his verses away as soon as he had read them to her. "We have poetry," she writes, "for breakfast, dinner, and supper. He recited all Palestine, while we breakfasted, to our pious friend, Mr. Whalley, at my desire, and did it incomparably." She refers to his loquacity, but that quality seems not, in her presence, to have been connected with dogmatism, for she calls him very

docile. At that early age he appears to have been sufficiently master of his stores of information to play with them, and his wit kept pace with his understanding. "Several men of sense and learning," she says, "have been struck with the union of gayety and rationality in his conversation." Accuracy of expres sion seems also to have been as striking a trait of the boy's mind as volubility of utterance. One fault is mentioned, which was probably the result of his absorp‐ tion in study and composition. Incessantly occupied, mentally, he paid but little attention to his personal appearance, and in dress was something of a sloven. Neither his father nor Hannah More could cure him of his fault, and, up to the time he became a peer, this neglect of externals seems to have been a characteristic trait. A fellow-pupil at the academy to which he was sent, describes him as "rather largely-built than otherwise, but not fond of any of the ordinary physical sports of boys; with a disproportionately large head, slouching or stooping shoulders, and a whitish or pallid complexion; incessantly reading or writing, and often reading or repeating poetry in his walks with his companions.'

In October, 1818, the precocious youth entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and during the whole period of his residence at the University his special studies did not divert him from gratifying his thirst for general knowledge, and taste for general literature. In 1819 he gained the chancellor's medal for a poem on the subject of Pompeii, and in 1821 the same prize for one on Evening. For these, and for all composi tions of the kind, he afterwards professed to feel the utmost scorn. Two years after his second success as a ɔrize poet, we find him comparing prize poems to prize heep. "The object," he says, "of the competitor for

the agricultural premium is to produce an animal fit, not to be eaten, but to be weighed. The object of the poetical candidate is to produce, not a good poem, but a poem of the exact degree of frigidity and bombast which may appear to his censors to be correct or sub lime. In general prize sheep are good for nothing but to make tallow candles, and prize poems are good for nothing but to light them."

In 1821 he was elected Craven University Scholar; and in 1822 he graduated, and received his degree of B. A.; though he did not compete for honors, owing, it is said, to his dislike for mathematics. Between this period and 1824, when he was elected Fellow of his College, he contributed to Knight's Quarterly Magazine the poems and essays, in which, for the first time, we detect the leading traits of his intellectual character. He possessed the feeling and the faculty of the poet only so far as they are necessary for the interpretative and representative requirements of the historian. He possessed the understanding of the philosopher only so far as it is necessary to throw into relations e vividly conceived facts derived from the records of the annalist. He could not create, but he could reproduce; he could not vitally combine, but he could logically dispose. The fair operation of these mental qualities was disturbed by the peculiarities of his disposition. He had boundless self-confidence, which had been consciously or unconsciously pampered by friends who admired the remarkable brilliancy of his powers. In dependence of thought was thus early connected with imperiousness of will and petulant disrespect for other minds. Having no self-distrust, there was nothing to check the positiveness of his judgments. Where more cautious thinkers doubted he dogmatized; their proba

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