LIFE AND LETTERS

OF

LORD MACAULAY.

CHAPTER I.

1800-1818.

Plan and Scope of the Work.-History of the Macaulay Family.—Aulay.— Kenneth.-Johnson and Boswell.-John Macaulay and his Children.-Zachary Macaulay.-His Career in the West Indies and in Africa. --His Character. Visit of the French Squadron to Sierra Leone.-Zachary Macaulay's Marriage.-Birth of his Eldest Son.--Lord Macaulay's Early Years. His Childish Productions.-Mrs. Hannah More.-General Macaulay. Choice of a School.-Shelford.-Dean Milner.-Macanlay's Early Letters.-Aspenden Hall.-The Boy's Habits and Mental Endowments. His Home.-The Clapham Set.-The Boy's Relations with his Father. The Political Ideas among which he was brought up, and their Influence on the Work of his Life.

HE who undertakes to publish the memoirs of a distinguished man may find a ready apology in the custom of the age. If we measure the effective demand for biography by the supply, the person commemorated need possess but a very moderate reputation, and have played no exceptional part, in order to carry the reader through many hundred pages of anecdote, dissertation, and correspondence. To judge from the advertisements of our circulating libraries, the public curiosity is keen with regard to some who did nothing worthy of special note, and others who acted so continuously in the face VOL. I.-2.

of the world that, when their course was run, there was little left for the world to learn about them. It may, therefore, be taken for granted that a desire exists to hear something authentic about the life of a man who has produced works which are universally known, but which bear little or no indication of the private history and the personal qualities of the author.

This was in a marked degree the case with Lord Macaulay. His two famous contemporaries in English literature have, consciously or unconsciously, told their own story in their books. Those who could see between the lines in "David Copperfield" were aware that they had before them the most delightful of autobiographies: and all who knew how to read Thackeray could trace him in his novels through every stage in his course, on from the day when as a little boy, consigned to the care of English relatives and school-masters, he left his mother on the steps of the landing-place at Calcutta. The dates and names were wanting: but the man was there; while the most ardent admirers of Macaulay will admit that a minute study of his literary productions left them, as far as any but an intellectual knowledge of the writer himself was concerned, very much as it found them. A consummate master of his craft, he turned out works which bore the unmistakable marks of the artificer's hand, but which did not reflect his features. It would be almost as hard to compose a picture of the author from his "History," his "Essays," and his "Lays," as to evolve an idea of Shakspeare from "Henry the Fifth" and "Measure for Measure."

But, besides being a man of letters, Lord Macaulay was a statesman, a jurist, and a brilliant ornament of society, at a time when to shine in society was a distinction which a man of eminence and ability might justly value. In these several capacities, it will be said, he was known well, and known widely. But in the first place, as these pages will show, there was one side of his life (to him, at any rate, the most important) of which even the persons with whom he mixed most freely and confidentially in London drawing-rooms, in the Indian council - chamber, and in the lobbies and on the benches

of the House of Commons, were only in part aware. And in the next place, those who have seen his features and heard his voice are few already, and become yearly fewer: while, by a rare fate in literary annals, the number of those who read his books is still rapidly increasing. For every one who sat with him in private company or at the transaction of public business, for every ten who have listened to his oratory in Parliament or from the hustings, there must be tens of thousands whose interest in history and literature he has awakened and informed by his pen, and who would gladly know what manner of man it was that has done them so great a service.

To gratify that most legitimate wish is the duty of those who have the means at their command. His life-like image is indelibly impressed upon their minds (for how could it be otherwise with any who had enjoyed so close relations with such a man?), although the skill which can reproduce that image before the general eye may well be wanting. But his own letters will supply the deficiencies of the biographer. Never did any one leave behind him more copious materials for enabling others to put together a narrative which might be the history, not indeed of his times, but of the man himself. For, in the first place, he so soon showed promise of being one who would give those among whom his early years were passed reason to be proud, and still more certain assurance that he would never afford them cause for shame, that what he wrote was preserved with a care very seldom bestowed on childish compositions; and the value set upon his letters by those with whom he corresponded naturally enough increased as years went on. And, in the next place, he was by nature so incapable of affectation or concealment that he could not write otherwise than as he felt, and, to one person at least, could never refrain from writing all that he felt; so that we may read in his letters, as in a clear mirror, his opinions and inclinations, his hopes and affections, at every succeeding period of his existence. Such letters could never have been submitted to an editor unconnected with both correspondents by the strongest ties and even one who stands in that position must often be

sorely puzzled as to what he has the heart to publish and the right to withhold.

I am conscious that in an undertaking of this nature a near relative has peculiar temptations toward that partiality of the biographer which Lord Macaulay himself so often and so cordially denounced: and the danger is greater in the case of one whose knowledge of him coincided with his later years; for it would not be easy to find a nature which gained more by time than his, and lost less. But, believing, as I do (to use his own words), that "if he were now living he would have sufficient judgment and sufficient greatness of mind" to wish to be shown as himself, I will suppress no trait in his disposition or incident in his career which might provoke blame or question. Such in all points as he was, the world, which has been so indulgent to him, has a right to know him; and those who best love him do not fear the consequences of freely submitting his character and his actions to the public verdict.

The most devout believers in the doctrine of the transmission of family qualities will be content with tracing back descent through four generations: and all favorable hereditary influences, both intellectual and moral, are assured by a genealogy which derives from a Scotch manse. In the first decade of the eighteenth century Aulay Macaulay, the great-grandfather of the historian, was minister of Tiree and Coll; where he was "grievously annoyed by a decreet obtained after instance of the Laird of Ardehattan, taking away his stipend." The Duchess of Argyll of the day appears to have done her best to see him righted: "but his health being much impaired, and there being no church or meeting-house, he was exposed to the violence of the weather at all seasons; and having no manse or glebe, and no fund for communion elements, and no mortification for schools or any pious purpose in either of the islands, and the air being unwholesome, he was dissatisfied:" and so, to the great regret of the parishioners whom he was leaving behind, he migrated to Harris, where he discharged the clerical duties for nearly half a century.

Aulay was the father of fourteen children, of whom one,