Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/142

Rh 12(3 MACAULAY In October 1818 young Macaulay went into residence at Trinity College, Cambridge. Here he revelled in the possession of leisure and liberty, which lie could not forego for the sake of those university honours which at that day were only to be obtained by a severely exclusive course of mathematical study. But he succeeded in obtaining the prize which in his eyes was the most desirable that Cambridge had to give, viz., a fellowship at Trinity. A trifling college prize for an essay on the character of William III. was awarded to an essiy by young Macaulay, which may be regarded as ths first suggestion and the earnest of his future History. In 1826 Macaulay was called to the bar and joined the northern circuit. But after the first year or two, during which he got no business worth mention, he gave up even the pretence of reading law, and spent many more hours under the gallery of the House of Commons than in the court. His first attempt at a public speech, made at an anti-slavery meeting in 1824, was described by the Edinburgh Review as &quot;a display of eloquence of rare and matured excellence.&quot; His first considerable appearance in print was in No. 1 of Knight s Quarterly Magazine, a periodical which enjoyed a short but brilliant existence, and which was largely supported by Eton and Cambridge. In August 1825 began Macaulay s connexion with the periodical which was to prove the field of his literary reputation. The Edinburgh Review was at this time at its height of power, not only as an organ of the growing opinion which leant towards reform, but as a literary tribunal from which there was no appeal. The essay on Milton, though so crude that the author said of it that &quot;it contained scarcely a pangraph such as his matured judgment approved,&quot; created for him at once a literary reputation which suffered no diminution to the last, a reputation which he established and confirmed, but which it would have been hardly possible to make more con spicuous. Murray declared that it would be worth the copyright of Childe Harold to have Macaulay on the staff of the Quarterly Review. Robert Hall, writhing with pain, and well-nigh worn out with disease, 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. The family breakfast table was covered with cards of invitation to dinner from every quarter of London. The sudden blaze of popularity kindled by a single essay, such as are now produced every month without attracting any notice, is partly to be explained by the dearth of literary criticism in England at that epoch. For, though a higher note had already been sounded by Hazlitt and Coleridge, it had not yet taken hold of the public mind, which was still satisfied with the feeble apprecia tions of the Retrospective, or the dashing and damnatory improvisation of Wilson in Blaclcwood or Jeffrey in the Edinburgh. Still, after allowance made for the barbarous partisanship of the established critical tribunals of the period, it seems surprising that a social success so signal should have been the consequence of a single article. The explanation is to be found in the fact that it had been dis covered at the same time that the writer of the article on Milton was, unlike most authors, also a brilliant converser. There has never been a period when an amusing talker lias not been in great demand at London tables ; but at the date at which Macaulay made his d6but witty conversa tion was studied and cultivated as it has ceased to be in the more busy age which has succeeded. At the university Macaulay had been recognized as pre-eminent for talk and companionship among a circle of young men of talents so brilliant as were Charles Austin, Romilly, Praed, Villiers, and others. He now displayed these gifts on a wider theatre. Crabb Robinson s diary, under date 1826, records the judgment of one who had been in the- constant habit of hearing the best talk of the London of his day. Such as he was in 1826 Macaulay continued to be to the end. In Lord Carlisle s journal, under date 27th June 1843, we read&quot; Breakfasted with Hallam, John Russell, Macaulay, Everett, Van de Weyer, Hamilton, Mahon. Never were such torrents of good talk as burst and sputtered over from Macaulay and Hallarn.&quot; Again, llth October 1849, &quot;the evening went oil very pleasantly, as must almost always happen with Macaulay. He was rather paradoxical, as is apt to be his manner, and almost his only social fault. The greatest marvel about him is the quantity of trash he remembers.&quot; In March 1850 Lord Carlisle records &quot; Macaulay s flow never ceased once during the four hours, but it is never overbearing.&quot; Thus launched (1825) on the best that London had to give in the way of society, Macaulay accepted and enjoyed with all the zest of youth and a vigorous nature the oppor tunities opened for him. He was courted and admired by the most distinguished personages of the day. He was admitted at Holland House, where Lady Holland listened to him with deference, and scolded him with a circum spection which was in itself a compliment. Rogers spoke of him with friendliness, and to him with affection, and ended by asking him to name the morning for a breakfast party. He was treated with almost fatherly kindness by &quot; Conversation &quot; Sharp. Thus distinguished, and justifiably conscious of his great powers, it was not unnatural that Macaulay s thoughts should take the direction of politics, and his ambition aspire to a political career. But the shadow of pecuniary trouble early began to fall upon his path. When he went to college his father believed himself to be worth .100,000, and declared his intention of making him, in a modest way, an eldest son. But commercial disaster overtook the house of Babington and Macaulay, and the son now saw himself compelled to work for his livelihood. His Trinity fellowship of .300 a year became of great consequence to him, but it expired in 1831 ; he could make at most 200 a year by writing ; and a commissionership of bankruptcy, which was given him by Lord Lyndhurst in 1828, and which brought him in about 400 a year, was swept away, without compensation, by the ministry which came into power in 1830. Macaulay now found himself a poor man, and was reduced to such straits that he had to sell his Cambridge gold medal. In February 1830 the doors of the House of Commons were opened to him in the only way in which a man without fortune could enter them, through what was then called a &quot;pocket borough.&quot; Lord Lansdowne, who had been struck by two articles on Mill (James) and the Utilitarians, which appeared in the Edinburgh Rcvieiv in 1829, offered the author the seat at Calne. The offer was accompanied by the express assurance that the noble patron had no wish to interfere with his freedom of voting. He thus entered parliament at one of the most exciting moments of English domestic history, when the compact phalanx of reactionary administration which for nearly fifty years had commanded a crushing majority in the Commons was on the point of being broken by the grow ing strength of the party of reform. Macaulay made his maiden speech on 5th April 1830, on the second reading of the bill for the removal of Jewish disabilities. In July the king died and parliament was dissolved ; the revolution took place in Paris. Macaulay, who was again returned for Calne, visited Paris, eagerly enjoying a first taste of Continental travel. On 1st March 1831 the Reform Bill was introduced, and on the second night of the debate Macaulay made the first of his reform speeches. It was a