Produced by Martin Adamson
LIFE AND LETTERS OF LORD MACAULAY
Volume I
By Sir George Otto Trevelyan
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
WHEN publishing the Second Edition of Lord MACAULAY'S Life and Letters,
I may be permitted to say that no pains were spared in order that the
First Edition should be as complete as possible. But, in the course of
the last nine months, I have come into possession of a certain quantity
of supplementary matter, which the appearance of the book has elicited
from various quarters. Stray letters have been hunted up. Half-forgotten
anecdotes have been recalled. Floating reminiscences have been reduced
to shape;--in one case, as will be seen from the extracts from Sir
William Stirling Maxwell's letter, by no unskilful hand. I should have
been tempted to draw more largely upon these new resources, if it had
not been for the examples, which literary history only too copiously
affords, of the risk that attends any attempt to alter the form, or
considerably increase the bulk, of a work which, in its original shape,
has had the good fortune not to displease the public. I have, however,
ventured, by a very sparing selection from sufficiently abundant
material, slightly to enlarge, and, I trust, somewhat to enrich the
book.
If this Second Edition is not rigidly correct in word and substance,
I have no valid excuse to offer. Nothing more pleasantly indicates the
wide-spread interest with which Lord MACAULAY has inspired his readers,
both at home and in foreign countries, than the almost microscopic care
with which these volumes have been studied. It is not too much to say
that, in several instances, a misprint, or a verbal error, has been
brought to my notice by at least five-and-twenty different persons; and
there is hardly a page in the book which has not afforded occasion for
comment or suggestion from some friendly correspondent. There is no
statement of any importance throughout the two volumes the accuracy of
which has been circumstantially impugned; but some expressions, which
have given personal pain or annoyance, have been softened or removed.
There is another class of criticism to which I have found myself
altogether unable to defer. I have frequently been told by reviewers
that I should "have better consulted MACAULAY'S reputation," or "done
more honour to MACAULAY'S memory," if I had omitted passages in the
letters or diaries which may be said to bear the trace of intellectual
narrowness, or political and religious intolerance. I cannot but think
that strictures, of this nature imply a serious misconception of the
biographer's duty. It was my business to show my Uncle as he was, and
not as I, or any one else, would have had him. If a faithful picture of
MACAULAY could not have been produced without injury to his memory, I
should have left the task of drawing that picture to others; but, having
once undertaken the work, I had no choice but to ask myself, with regard
to each feature of the portrait, not whether it was attractive, but
whether it was characteristic. We who had the best opportunity of
knowing him have always been convinced that his character would stand
the test of an exact, and even a minute, delineation; and we humbly
believe that our confidence was not misplaced, and that the reading
world has now extended to the man the approbation which it has long
conceded to his hooks.
G. O. T.
December 1876.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
THIS work has been undertaken principally from a conviction that it
is the performance of a duty which, to the best of my ability, it is
incumbent on me to fulfil. Though even on this ground I cannot appeal
to the forbearance of my readers, I may venture to refer to a peculiar
difficulty which I have experienced in dealing with Lord MACAULAY'S
private papers.
To give to the world compositions not intended for publication may be
no injury to the fame of writers who, by habit, were careless and hasty
workmen; but it is far otherwise in the case of one who made it a
rule for himself to publish nothing which was not carefully planned,
strenuously laboured, and minutely finished. Now, it is impossible
to examine Lord MACAULAY'S journals and correspondence without being
persuaded that the idea of their being printed, even in part, never was
present to his mind; and I should not feel myself justified in laying
them before the public if it were not that their unlaboured and
spontaneous character adds to their biographical value all, and perhaps
more than all, that it detracts from their literary merit.
To the heirs and relations of Mr. Thomas Flower Ellis and Mr. Adam
Black, to the Marquis of Lansdowne, to Mr. Macvey Napier, and to the
executors of Dr. Whewell, my thanks are due for the courtesy with which
they have placed the different portions of my Uncle's correspondence at
my disposal. Lady Caroline Lascelles has most kindly permitted me to
use as much of Lord Carlisle's journal as relates to the subject of this
work; and Mr. Charles Cowan, my Uncle's old opponent at Edinburgh, has
sent me a considerable mass of printed matter bearing upon the elections
of 1847 and 1852. The late Sir Edward Ryan, and Mr. Fitzjames Stephen,
spared no pains to inform me with regard to Lord MACAULAY'S work at
Calcutta. His early letters, with much that relates to the whole
course of his life, have been preserved, studied, and arranged, by the
affectionate industry of his sister, Miss Macaulay; and material of high
interest has been entrusted to my hands by Mr. and the Hon. Mrs. Edward
Cropper. I have been assisted throughout the book by the sympathy, and
the recollections, of my sister Lady Holland, the niece to whose custody
Lord MACAULAY'S papers by inheritance descend.
G.O.T.
March 1876.
LIFE AND LETTERS OF LORD MACAULAY
By
Sir George Otto Trevelyan
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--Macaulay'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 amongst 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 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 a
delightful autobiography; 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
schoolmasters, 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 the History, the Essays, and the Lays, as to evolve an
idea of Shakespeare 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 everyone 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 lifelike 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 not connected 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 a near relative has peculiar temptations towards
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 favourable 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 Ardchattan, 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 plebe, 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, Kenneth, the
minister of Ardnamurchan, still occupies a very humble niche in the
temple of literature. He wrote a History of St. Kilda which happened to
fall into the hands of Dr. Johnson, who spoke of it more than once with
favour. His reason for liking the book is characteristic enough. Mr.
Macaulay had recorded the belief prevalent in St. Kilda that, as soon as
the factor landed on the island, all the inhabitants had an attack
which from the account appears to have partaken of the nature both
of influenza and bronchitis. This touched the superstitious vein in
Johnson, who praised him for his "magnanimity" in venturing to
chronicle so questionable a phenomenon; the more so because,--said
the Doctor,--"Macaulay set out with a prejudice against prejudice, and
wanted to be a smart modern thinker." To a reader of our day the History
of St. Kilda appears to be innocent of any trace of such pretension;
unless it be that the author speaks slightingly of second-sight, a
subject for which Johnson always had a strong hankering. In 1773 Johnson
paid a visit to Mr. Macaulay, who by that time had removed to Calder,
and began the interview by congratulating him on having produced "a very
pretty piece of topography,"--a compliment which did not seem to the
taste of the author. The conversation turned upon rather delicate
subjects, and, before many hours had passed, the guest had said to the
host one of the very rudest things recorded by Boswell! Later on in the
same evening he atoned for his incivility by giving one of the boys of
the house a pocket Sallust, and promising to procure him a servitorship
at Oxford. Subsequently Johnson pronounced that Mr. Macaulay was not
competent to have written the book that went by his name; a decision
which, to those who happen to have read the work, will give a very poor
notion of my ancestor's abilities.
The eldest son of old Aulay, and the grandfather of Lord Macaulay, was
John, born in the year 1720. He was minister successively of Barra,
South Uist, Lismore, and Inverary; the last appointment being a proof
of the interest which the family of Argyll continued to take in the
fortunes of the Macaulays. He, likewise, during the famous tour in
the Hebrides, came across the path of Boswell, who mentions him in an
exquisitely absurd paragraph, the first of those in which is described
the visit to Inverary Castle. ["Monday, Oct. 25.--My acquaintance, the
Rev. Mr. John M'Aulay, one of the ministers of Inverary, and brother to
our good friend at Calder, came to us this morning, and accompanied us
to the castle, where I presented Dr. Johnson to the Duke of Argyll. We
were shown through the house; and I never shall forget the impression
made upon my fancy by some of the ladies' maids tripping about in neat
morning dresses. After seeing for a long time little but rusticity,
their lively manner, and gay inciting appearance, pleased me so much,
that I thought for a moment I could have been a knight-errant for
them."] Mr. Macaulay afterwards passed the evening with the travellers
at their inn, and provoked Johnson into what Boswell calls warmth, and
anyone else would call brutality, by the very proper remark that he
had no notion of people being in earnest in good professions if their
practice belied them. When we think what well-known ground this was to
Lord Macaulay, it is impossible to suppress a wish that the great talker
had been at hand to avenge his grandfather and grand-uncle. Next morning
"Mr. Macaulay breakfasted with us, nothing hurt or dismayed by his last
night's correction. Being a man of good sense he had a just admiration
of Dr. Johnson." He was rewarded by seeing Johnson at his very best, and
hearing him declaim some of the finest lines that ever were written in a
manner worthy of his subject.
There is a tradition that, in his younger days, the minister of Inverary
proved his Whiggism by giving information to the authorities which
almost led to the capture of the young Pretender. It is perhaps a matter
of congratulation that this item was not added to the heavy account that
the Stuarts have against the Macaulay family. John Macaulay enjoyed
a high reputation as a preacher, and was especially renowned for his
fluency. In 1774 he removed to Cardross in Dumbartonshire, where, on the
bank of the noble estuary of the Clyde, he spent the last fifteen years
of a useful and honoured life. He was twice married. His first wife died
at the birth of his first child. Eight years afterwards, in 1757, he
espoused Margaret, daughter of Colin Campbell of Inveresragan, who
survived him by a single year. By her he had the patriarchal number of
twelve children, whom he brought up on the old Scotch system,--common
to the households of minister, man of business, farmer, and peasant
alike,--on fine air, simple diet, and a solid training in knowledge
human and divine. Two generations after, Mr. Carlyle, during a visit to
the late Lord Ashburton at the Grange, caught sight of Macaulay's face
in unwonted repose, as he was turning over the pages of a book. "I
noticed," said he, "the homely Norse features that you find everywhere
in the Western Isles, and I thought to myself 'Well! Anyone can see that
you are an honest good sort of fellow, made out of oatmeal.'"
Several of John Macaulay's children obtained position in the world.
Aulay, the eldest by his second wife, became a clergyman of the Church
of England. His reputation as a scholar and antiquary stood high, and in
the capacity of a private tutor he became known even in royal circles.
He published pamphlets and treatises, the list of which it is not worth
while to record, and meditated several large works that perhaps never
got much beyond a title. Of all his undertakings the one best deserving
commemoration in these pages was a tour that he made into Scotland
in company with Mr. Thomas Babington, the owner of Rothley Temple in
Leicestershire, in the course of which the travellers paid a visit
to the manse at Cardross. Mr. Babington fell in love with one of the
daughters of the house, Miss Jean Macaulay, and married her in
1787. Nine years afterwards he had an opportunity of presenting his
brother-in-law Aulay Macaulay with the very pleasant living of Rothley.
Alexander, another son of John Macaulay, succeeded his father as
minister of Cardross. Colin went into the Indian army, and died a
general. He followed the example of the more ambitious among his brother
officers, and exchanged military for civil duties. In 1799 he acted as
secretary to a political and diplomatic Commission which accompanied
the force that marched under General Harris against Seringapatam. The
leading Commissioner was Colonel Wellesley, and to the end of General
Macaulay's life the great Duke corresponded with him on terms of
intimacy, and (so the family flattered themselves) even of friendship.
Soon after the commencement of the century Colin Macaulay was appointed
Resident at the important native state of Travancore. While on this
employment he happened to light upon a valuable collection of books, and
rapidly made himself master of the principal European languages, which
he spoke and wrote with a facility surprising in one who had acquired
them within a few leagues of Cape Comorin.
There was another son of John Macaulay, who in force and elevation of
character stood out among his brothers, and who was destined to make
for himself no ordinary career. The path which Zachary Macaulay chose
to tread did not lead to wealth, or worldly success, or indeed to much
worldly happiness. Born in 1768, he was sent out at the age of sixteen
by a Scotch house of business as bookkeeper to an estate in Jamaica, of
which he soon rose to be sole manager. His position brought him into
the closest possible contact with negro slavery. His mind was not
prepossessed against the system of society which he found in the West
Indies. His personal interests spoke strongly in its favour, while his
father, whom he justly respected, could see nothing to condemn in an
institution recognised by Scripture. Indeed, the religious world still
allowed the maintenance of slavery to continue an open question. John
Newton, the real founder of that school in the Church of England of
which in after years Zachary Macaulay was a devoted member, contrived to
reconcile the business of a slave trader with the duties of a Christian,
and to the end of his days gave scandal to some of his disciples, (who
by that time were one and all sworn abolitionists,) by his supposed
reluctance to see that there could be no fellowship between light and
such darkness.
But Zachary Macaulay had eyes of his own to look about him, a clear head
for forming a judgment on what he saw, and a conscience which would
not permit him to live otherwise than in obedience to its mandates. The
young Scotchman's innate respect for his fellows, and his appreciation
of all that instruction and religion can do for men, was shocked at the
sight of a population deliberately kept ignorant and heathen. His kind
heart was wounded by cruelties practised at the will and pleasure of a
thousand petty despots. He had read his Bible too literally to acquiesce
easily in a state of matters under which human beings were bred and
raised like a stock of cattle, while outraged morality was revenged
on the governing race by the shameless licentiousness which is the
inevitable accompaniment of slavery. He was well aware that these evils,
so far from being superficial or remediable, were essential to the
very existence of a social fabric constituted like that within which he
lived. It was not for nothing that he had been behind the scenes in that
tragedy of crime and misery. His philanthropy was not learned by the
royal road of tracts, and platform speeches, and monthly magazines. What
he knew he had spelt out for himself with no teacher except the aspect
of human suffering, and degradation, and sin.
He was not one of those to whom conviction comes in a day; and, when
convinced, he did nothing sudden. Little more than a boy in age,
singularly modest, and constitutionally averse to any course that
appeared pretentious or theatrical, he began by a sincere attempt to
make the best of his calling. For some years he contented himself with
doing what he could, (so he writes to a friend,) "to alleviate the
hardships of a considerable number of my fellow-creatures, and to render
the bitter cup of servitude as palatable as possible." But by the time
he was four-and-twenty he became tired of trying to find a compromise
between right and wrong, and, refusing really great offers from the
people with whom he was connected, he threw up his position, and
returned to his native country. This step was taken against the wishes
of his father, who was not prepared for the construction which his son
put upon the paternal precept that a man should make his practice square
with his professions.
But Zachary Macaulay soon had more congenial work to do. The young West
Indian overseer was not alone in his scruples. Already for some time
past a conviction had been abroad that individual citizens could not
divest themselves of their share in the responsibility in which the
nation was involved by the existence of slavery in our colonies. Already
there had been formed the nucleus of the most disinterested, and
perhaps the most successful, popular movement which history records. The
question of the slave trade was well before Parliament and the country.
Ten years had passed since the freedom of all whose feet touched the
soil of our island had been vindicated before the courts at Westminster,
and not a few negroes had become their own masters as a consequence
of that memorable decision. The patrons of the race were somewhat
embarrassed by having these expatriated freedmen on their hands;
an opinion prevailed that the traffic in human lives could never
be efficiently checked until Africa had obtained the rudiments of
civilisation; and, after long discussion, a scheme was matured for
the colonisation of Sierra Leone by liberated slaves. A company was
organised, with a charter from the Crown, and a board which included the
names of Granville Sharpe and Wilberforce. A large capital was speedily
subscribed, and the Chair was accepted by Mr. Henry Thornton, a leading
City banker and a member of Parliament, whose determined opposition to
cruelty and oppression in every form was such as might be expected in
one who had inherited from his father the friendship of the poet Cowper.
Mr. Thornton heard Macaulay's story from Thomas Babington, with whom he
lived on terms of close intimacy and political alliance. The Board, by
the advice of its Chairman, passed a resolution appointing the young man
Second Member in the Sierra Leone Council, and early in the year 1793
he sailed for Africa, where soon after his arrival he succeeded to the
position and duties of Governor.
The Directors had done well to secure a tried man. The colony was at
once exposed to the implacable enmity of merchants whose market the
agents of the new company spoiled in their capacity of traders,
and slave-dealers with whom they interfered in their character of
philanthropists. The native tribes in the vicinity, instigated by
European hatred and jealousy, began to inflict upon the defenceless
authorities of the settlement a series of those monkey-like
impertinences which, absurdly as they may read in a narrative, are
formidable and ominous when they indicate that savages feel their power.
These barbarians, who had hitherto commanded as much rum and gunpowder
as they cared to have by selling their neighbours at the nearest
barracoon, showed no appreciation for the comforts and advantages of
civilisation. Indeed, those advantages were displayed in anything but
an attractive shape even within the pale of the company's territory.
An aggregation of negroes from Jamaica, London, and Nova Scotia,
who possessed no language except an acquired jargon, and shared no
associations beyond the recollections of a common servitude, were
not very promising apostles for the spread of Western culture and the
Christian faith. Things went smoothly enough as long as the business of
the colony was mainly confined to eating the provisions that had been
brought in the ships; but as soon as the work became real, and the
commons short, the whole community smouldered down into chronic mutiny.
Zachary Macaulay was the very man for such a crisis. To a rare fund of
patience, and self-command, and perseverance, he united a calm courage
that was equal to any trial. These qualities were, no doubt, inherent
in his disposition; but no one except those who have turned over his
voluminous private journals can understand what constant effort, and
what incessant watchfulness, went to maintain throughout a long life a
course of conduct, and a temper of mind, which gave every appearance
of being the spontaneous fruit of nature. He was not one who dealt in
personal experiences; and few among even the friends who loved him like
father or brother, and who would have trusted him with all their fortune
on his bare word, knew how entirely his outward behaviour was the
express image of his religious belief. The secret of his character and
of his actions lay in perfect humility and an absolute faith. Events did
not discompose him, because they were sent by One who best knew his own
purposes. He was not fretted by the folly of others, or irritated
by their hostility, because he regarded the humblest or the worst of
mankind as objects, equally with himself, of the divine love and care.
On all other points he examined himself so closely that the meditations
of a single evening would fill many pages of diary; but so completely
in his case had the fear of God cast out all other fear that amidst
the gravest perils, and the most bewildering responsibilities, it never
occurred to him to question whether he was brave or not. He worked
strenuously and unceasingly, never amusing himself from year's end to
year's end, and shrinking from any public praise or recognition as from
an unlawful gratification, because he was firmly persuaded that, when
all had been accomplished and endured, he was yet but an unprofitable
servant, who had done that which was his duty to do. Some, perhaps, will
consider such motives as oldfashioned, and such convictions as out of
date; but self-abnegation, self-control, and self-knowledge that does
not give to self the benefit of any doubt, are virtues which are not
oldfashioned, and for which, as time goes on, the world is likely to
have as much need as ever. [Sir James Stephen writes thus of his friend
Macaulay: "That his understanding was proof against sophistry, and
his nerves against fear, were, indeed, conclusions to which a stranger
arrived at the first interview with him. But what might be suggesting
that expression of countenance, at once so earnest and so monotonous--by
what manner of feeling those gestures, so uniformly firm and deliberate
were prompted--whence the constant traces of fatigue on those
overhanging brows and on that athletic though ungraceful figure--what
might be the charm which excited amongst his chosen circle a faith
approaching to superstition, and a love rising to enthusiasm, towards a
man whose demeanour was so inanimate, if not austere:--it was a riddle
of which neither Gall nor Lavater could have found the key."
That Sir James himself could read the riddle is proved by the concluding
words of a passage marked by a force and tenderness of feeling unusual
even in him: "His earthward affections,--active and all--enduring as
they were, could yet thrive without the support of human sympathy,
because they were sustained by so abiding a sense of the divine
presence, and so absolute a submission to the divine will, as raised
him habitually to that higher region where the reproach of man could not
reach, and the praise of man might not presume to follow him."]
Mr. Macaulay was admirably adapted for the arduous and uninviting task
of planting a negro colony. His very deficiencies stood him in good
stead; for, in presence of the elements with which he had to deal, it
was well for him that nature had denied him any sense of the ridiculous.
Unconscious of what was absurd around him, and incapable of being
flurried, frightened, or fatigued, he stood as a centre of order and
authority amidst the seething chaos of inexperience and insubordination.
The staff was miserably insufficient, and every officer of the Company
had to do duty for three in a climate such that a man is fortunate if he
can find health for the work of one during a continuous twelvemonth. The
Governor had to be in the counting-house, the law-court, the school, and
even the chapel. He was his own secretary, his own paymaster, his own
envoy. He posted ledgers, he decided causes, he conducted correspondence
with the Directors at home, and visited neighbouring potentates on
diplomatic missions which made up in danger what they lacked in dignity.
In the absence of properly qualified clergymen, with whom he would have
been the last to put himself in competition, he preached sermons
and performed marriages;--a function which must have given honest
satisfaction to one who had been so close a witness of the enforced
and systematised immorality of a slave-nursery. Before long, something
fairly resembling order was established, and the settlement began to
enjoy a reasonable measure of prosperity. The town was built, the fields
were planted, and the schools filled. The Governor made a point of
allotting the lightest work to the negroes who could read and write; and
such was the stimulating effect of this system upon education that he
confidently looked forward "to the time when there would be few in
the colony unable to read the Bible." A printing-press was in constant
operation, and in the use of a copying-machine the little community was
three-quarters of a century ahead of the London public offices.
But a severe ordeal was in store for the nascent civilisation of Sierra
Leone. On a Sunday morning in September 1794, eight French sail appeared
off the coast. The town was about as defensible as Brighton; and it is
not difficult to imagine the feelings which the sansculottes inspired
among Evangelical colonists whose last advices from Europe dated from
the very height of the Reign of Terror. There was a party in favour of
escaping into the forest with as much property as could be removed at so
short a notice; but the Governor insisted that there would be no chance
of saving the Company's buildings unless the Company's servants could
make up their minds to remain at their posts, and face it out. The
squadron moored within musket-shot of the quay, and swept the streets
for two hours with grape and bullets; a most gratuitous piece of
cruelty that killed a negress and a child, and gave one unlucky English
gentleman a fright which ultimately brought him to his grave. The
invaders then proceeded to land, and Mr. Macaulay had an opportunity of
learning something about the condition of the French marine during the
heroic period of the Republic.
A personal enemy of his own, the captain of a Yankee slaver, brought
a party of sailors straight to the Governor's house. What followed had
best be told in Mr. Macaulay's own words. "Newell, who was attended by
half-a-dozen sans-culottes, almost foaming with rage, presented a pistol
to me, and with many oaths demanded instant satisfaction for the slaves
who had run away from him to my protection. I made very little
reply, but told him he must now _take_ such satisfaction as he judged
equivalent to his claims, as I was no longer master of my actions. He
became so very outrageous that, after bearing with him a little while,
I thought it most prudent to repair myself to the French officer, and
request his safe-conduct on board the Commodore's ship. As I passed
along the wharf the scene was curious enough. The Frenchmen, who had
come ashore in filth and rags, were now many of them dressed out with
women's shifts, gowns, and petticoats. Others had quantities of cloth
wrapped about their bodies, or perhaps six or seven suits of clothes
upon them at a time. The scene which presented itself on my getting
on board the flag-ship was still more singular. The quarter-deck was
crowded by a set of ragamuffins whose appearance beggared every previous
description, and among whom I sought in vain for some one who looked
like a gentleman. The stench and filth exceeded anything I had ever
witnessed in any ship, and the noise and confusion gave me some idea of
their famous Mountain. I was ushered into the Commodore's cabin, who
at least received me civilly. His name was Citizen Allemand. He did not
appear to have the right of excluding any of his fellow-citizens even
from this place. Whatever might be their rank, they crowded into it,
and conversed familiarly with him." Such was the discipline of the fleet
that had been beaten by Lord Hove on the first of June; and such the raw
material of the armies which, under firm hands, and on an element more
suited to the military genius of their nation, were destined to triumph
at Rivoli and Hohenlinden.
Mr. Macaulay, who spoke French with ease and precision, in his anxiety
to save the town used every argument which might prevail on the
Commodore, whose Christian name, (if one may use such a phrase with
reference to a patriot of the year two of the Republic,) happened oddly
enough to be the same as his own. He appealed first to the traditional
generosity of Frenchmen towards a fallen enemy, but soon discerned that
the quality in question had gone out with the old order of things, if
indeed it ever existed. He then represented that a people, who professed
to be waging war with the express object of striking off the fetters of
mankind, would be guilty of flagrant inconsistency if they destroyed an
asylum for liberated slaves; but the Commodore gave him to understand
that sentiments, which sounded very well in the Hall of the Jacobins,
were out of place on the West Coast of Africa. The Governor returned
on shore to find the town already completely gutted. It was evident at
every turn that, although the Republican battalions might carry liberty
and fraternity through Europe on the points of their bayonets, the
Republican sailors had found a very different use for the edge of their
cutlasses. "The sight of my own and of the Accountant's offices almost
sickened me. Every desk, and every drawer, and every shelf, together
with the printing and copying presses, had been completely demolished
in the search for money. The floors were strewed with types, and papers,
and leaves of books; and I had the mortification to see a great part of
my own labour, and of the labour of others, for several years
totally destroyed. At the other end of the house I found telescopes,
hygrometers, barometers, thermometers, and electrical machines, lying
about in fragments. The view of the town library filled me with lively
concern. The volumes were tossed about and defaced with the utmost
wantonness; and, if they happened to bear any resemblance to Bibles,
they were torn in pieces and trampled on. The collection of natural
curiosities next caught my eye. Plants, seeds, dried birds, insects,
and drawings were scattered about in great confusion, and some of the
sailors were in the act of killing a beautiful musk-cat, which they
afterwards ate. Every house was full of Frenchmen, who were hacking, and
destroying, and tearing up everything which they could not convert to
their own use. The destruction of live stock on this and the following
day was immense. In my yard alone they killed fourteen dozen of fowls,
and there were not less than twelve hundred hogs shot in the town." It
was unsafe to walk in the streets of Freetown during the forty-eight
hours that followed its capture, because the French crews, with too much
of the Company's port wine in their heads to aim straight, were firing
at the pigs of the poor freedmen over whom they had achieved such a
questionable victory.
To readers of Erckmann-Chatrian it is unpleasant to be taken thus behind
the curtain on which those skilful artists have painted the wars of the
early Revolution. It is one thing to be told how the crusaders of '93
and '94 were received with blessings and banquets by the populations to
whom they brought freedom and enlightenment, and quite another to read
the journal in which a quiet accurate-minded Scotchman tells us how
a pack of tipsy ruffians sat abusing Pitt and George to him, over a
fricassee of his own fowls, and among the wreck of his lamps and mirrors
which they had smashed as a protest against aristocratic luxury.
"There is not a boy among them who has not learnt to accompany the name
of Pitt with an execration. When I went to bed, there was no sleep to be
had on account of the sentinels thinking fit to amuse me the whole night
through with the revenge they meant to take on him when they got him to
Paris. Next morning I went on board the 'Experiment.' The Commodore and
all his officers messed together, and I was admitted among them. They
are truly the poorest-looking people I ever saw. Even the Commodore
has only one suit which can at all distinguish him, not to say from the
officers, but from the men. The filth and confusion of their meals was
terrible. A chorus of boys usher in the dinner with the Marseilles hymn,
and it finishes in the same way. The enthusiasm of all ranks among them
is astonishing, but not more so than their blindness. They talk with
ecstasy of their revolutionary government, of their bloody executions,
of their revolutionary tribunal, of the rapid movement of their
revolutionary army with the Corps of justice and the flying guillotine
before it; forgetting that not one of them is not liable to its stroke
on the accusation of the greatest vagabond on board. They asked me with
triumph if yesterday had not been Sunday. 'Oh,' said they, 'the National
Convention have decreed that there is no Sunday, and that the Bible is
all a lie.'" After such an experience it is not difficult to account
for the keen and almost personal interest with which, to the very day of
Waterloo, Mr. Macaulay watched through its varying phases the rise
and the downfall of the French power. He followed the progress of the
British arms with a minute and intelligent attention which from a very
early date communicated itself to his son; and the hearty patriotism of
Lord Macaulay is perhaps in no small degree the consequence of what
his father suffered from the profane and rapacious sansculottes of the
revolutionary squadron.
Towards the middle of October the Republicans took their departure. Even
at this distance of time it is provoking to learn that they got back
to Brest without meeting an enemy that had teeth to bite. The African
climate, however, reduced the squadron to such a plight, that it was
well for our frigates that they had not the chance of getting its
fever-stricken crews under their hatches. The French never revisited
Freetown. Indeed, they had left the place in such a condition that
it was not worth their while to return. The houses had been carefully
burned to the ground, and the live stock killed. Except the clothes
on their backs, and a little brandy and flour, the Europeans had lost
everything they had in the world. Till assistance came from the mother
country they lived upon such provisions as could be recovered from the
reluctant hands of the negro settlers, who providentially had not been
able to resist the temptation of helping the Republicans to plunder the
Company's stores. Judicious liberality at home, and a year's hard work
on the spot, did much to repair the damage; and, when his colony was
again upon its feet, Mr. Macaulay sailed to England with the object
of recruiting his health, which had broken down under an attack of low
fever.
On his arrival he was admitted at once and for ever within the innermost
circle of friends and fellow-labourers who were united round Wilberforce
and Henry Thornton by indissoluble bonds of mutual personal regard and
common public ends. As an indispensable part of his initiation into that
very pleasant confederacy, he was sent down to be introduced to Hannah
More, who was living at Cowslip Green, near Bristol, in the enjoyment
of general respect, mixed with a good deal of what even those who admire
her as she deserved must in conscience call flattery. He there met
Selina Mills, a former pupil of the school which the Miss Mores kept
in the neighbouring city, and a lifelong friend of all the sisters. The
young lady is said to have been extremely pretty and attractive, as
may well be believed by those who saw her in later years. She was the
daughter of a member of the Society of Friends, who at one time was a
bookseller in Bristol, and who built there a small street called "Mills
Place," in which he himself resided. His grandchildren remembered him
as an old man of imposing appearance, with long white hair, talking
incessantly of Jacob Boehmen. Mr. Mills had sons, one of whom edited a
Bristol journal exceedingly well, and is said to have made some figure
in light literature. This uncle of Lord Macaulay was a very lively,
clever man, full of good stories, of which only one has survived. Young
Mills, while resident in London, had looked in at Rowland Hill's chapel,
and had there lost a new hat. When he reported the misfortune to his
father, the old Quaker replied: "John, if thee'd gone to the right place
of worship, thee'd have kept thy hat upon thy head." Lord Macaulay was
accustomed to say that he got his "joviality" from his mother's family.
If his power of humour was indeed of Quaker origin, he was rather
ungrateful in the use to which he sometimes put it.
Mr. Macaulay fell in love with Miss Mills, and obtained her affection
in return. He had to encounter the opposition of her relations, who were
set upon her making another and a better match, and of Mrs. Patty More,
(so well known to all who have studied the somewhat diffuse annals of
the More family,) who, in the true spirit of romantic friendship, wished
her to promise never to marry at all, but to domesticate herself as a
youngest sister in the household at Cowslip Green. Miss Hannah,
however, took a more unselfish view of the situation, and advocated Mr.
Macaulay's cause with firmness and good feeling. Indeed, he must have
been, according to her particular notions, the most irreproachable of
lovers, until her own Coelebs was given to the world. By her help he
carried his point in so far that the engagement was made and recognised;
but the friends of the young lady would not allow her to accompany him
to Africa; and, during his absence from England, which began in the
early months of 1796, by an arrangement that under the circumstances was
very judicious, she spent much of her time in Leicestershire with his
sister Mrs. Babington.
His first business after arriving at Sierra Leone was to sit in judgment
on the ringleaders of a formidable outbreak which had taken place in
the colony; and he had an opportunity of proving by example that negro
disaffection, from the nature of the race, is peculiarly susceptible
to treatment by mild remedies, if only the man in the post of
responsibility has got a heart and can contrive to keep his head. He had
much more trouble with a batch of missionaries, whom he took with him in
the ship, and who were no sooner on board than they began to fall out,
ostensibly on controversial topics, but more probably from the same
motives that so often set the laity quarrelling during the incessant and
involuntary companionship of a sea-voyage. Mr. Macaulay, finding that
the warmth of these debates furnished sport to the captain and other
irreligious characters, was forced seriously to exert his authority
in order to separate and silence the disputants. His report of these
occurrences went in due time to the Chairman of the Company, who excused
himself for an arrangement which had turned out so ill by telling a
story of a servant who, having to carry a number of gamecocks from one
place to another, tied them up in the same bag, and found on arriving at
his journey's end that they had spent their time in tearing each other
to pieces. When his master called him to account for his stupidity he
replied: "Sir, as they were all your cocks, I thought they would be all
on one side."
Things did not go much more smoothly on shore. Mr. Macaulay's official
correspondence gives a curious picture of his difficulties in the
character of Minister of Public Worship in a black community. "The
Baptists under David George are decent and orderly, but there is
observable in them a great neglect of family worship, and sometimes
an unfairness in their dealings. To Lady Huntingdon's Methodists, as a
body, may with great justice be addressed the first verse of the
third chapter of the Revelation. The lives of many of them are very
disorderly, and rank antinomianism prevails among them." But his sense
of religion and decency was most sorely tried by Moses Wilkinson, a
so-called Wesleyan Methodist, whose congregation, not a very respectable
one to begin with, had recently been swollen by a Revival which had been
accompanied by circumstances the reverse of edifying. [Lord Macaulay
had in his youth heard too much about negro preachers, and negro
administrators, to permit him to entertain any very enthusiastic
anticipations with regard to the future of the African race. He writes
in his journal for July 8 1858: "Motley called. I like him much. We
agree wonderfully well about slavery, and it is not often that I meet
any person with whom I agree on that subject. For I hate slavery from
the bottom of my soul; and yet I am made sick by the cant and the silly
mock reasons of the Abolitionists. The nigger driver and the negrophile
are two odious things to me. I must make Lady Macbeth's reservation:
'Had he not resembled--,'"] The Governor must have looked back
with regret to that period in the history of the colony when he was
underhanded in the clerical department.
But his interest in the negro could bear ruder shocks than an occasional
outburst of eccentric fanaticism. He liked his work, because he liked
those for whom he was working. "Poor people," he writes, "one cannot
help loving them. With all their trying humours, they have a warmth of
affection which is really irresistible." For their sake he endured all
the risk and worry inseparable from a long engagement kept by the lady
among disapproving friends, and by the gentleman at Sierra Leone. He
stayed till the settlement had begun to thrive, and the Company had
almost begun to pay; and until the Home Government had given marked
tokens of favour and protection, which some years later developed into a
negotiation under which the colony was transferred to the Crown. It was
not till 1799 that he finally gave up his appointment, and left a region
which, alone among men, he quitted with unfeigned, and, except in one
particular, with unmixed regret. But for the absence of an Eve, he
regarded the West Coast of Africa as a veritable Paradise, or, to use
his own expression, as a more agreeable Montpelier. With a temper which
in the intercourse of society was proof against being ruffled by any
possible treatment of any conceivable subject, to the end of his life he
showed faint signs of irritation if anyone ventured in his presence to
hint that Sierra Leone was unhealthy.
On his return to England he was appointed Secretary to the Company, and
was married at Bristol on the 26th of August, 1799. A most close union
it was, and, (though in latter years he became fearfully absorbed in
the leading object of his existence, and ceased in a measure to be the
companion that he had been,) his love for his wife, and deep trust and
confidence in her, never failed. They took a small house in Lambeth for
the first twelve months. When Mrs. Macaulay was near her confinement,
Mrs. Babington, who belonged to the school of matrons who hold that the
advantage of country air outweighs that of London doctors, invited her
sister-in-law to Rothley Temple; and there, in a room panelled from
ceiling to floor, like every corner of the ancient mansion, with oak
almost black from age,--looking eastward across the park and southward
through an ivy-shaded window into a little garden,--Lord Macaulay was
born. It was on the 25th of October 1800, the day of St. Crispin, the
anniversary of Agincourt, (as he liked to say,) that he opened his eyes
on a world which he was destined so thoroughly to learn and so intensely
to enjoy. His father was as pleased as a father could be; but fate
seemed determined that Zachary Macaulay should not be indulged in any
great share of personal happiness. The next morning the noise of a
spinning-jenny, at work in a cottage, startled his horse as he was
riding past. He was thrown, and both arms were broken; and he spent in
a sick-room the remainder of the only holiday worth the name which, (as
far as can be traced in the family records,) he ever took during his
married life. Owing to this accident the young couple were detained
at Rothley into the winter; and the child was baptised in the private
chapel which formed part of the house, on the 26th November 1800, by the
names of Thomas Babington;--the Rev. Aulay Macaulay, and Mr. and Mrs.
Babington, acting as sponsors.
The two years which followed were passed in a house in Birchin Lane,
where the Sierra Leone Company had its office. The only place where the
child could be taken for exercise, and what might be called air, was
Drapers' Gardens, which (already under sentence to be covered with
bricks and mortar at an early date) lies behind Throgmorton Street,
and within a hundred yards of the Stock Exchange. To this dismal yard,
containing as much gravel as grass, and frowned upon by a board of Rules
and Regulations almost as large as itself, his mother used to convoy the
nurse and the little boy through the crowds that towards noon swarmed
along Cornhill and Threadneedle Street; and thither she would return,
after a due interval, to escort them back to Birchin Lane. So strong
was the power of association upon Macaulay's mind that in after years
Drapers' Garden was among his favourite haunts. Indeed, his habit of
roaming for hours through and through the heart of the City, (a habit
that never left him as long as he could roam at all,) was due in part
to the recollection which caused him to regard that region as native
ground.
Baby as he was when he quitted it, he retained some impression of his
earliest home. He remembered standing up at the nursery window by his
father's side, looking at a cloud of black smoke pouring out of a tall
chimney. He asked if that was hell; an inquiry that was received with a
grave displeasure which at the time he could not understand. The kindly
father must have been pained, almost against his own will, at finding
what feature of his creed it was that had embodied itself in so very
material a shape before his little son's imagination. When in after days
Mrs. Macaulay was questioned as to how soon she began to detect in the
child a promise of the future, she used to say that his sensibilities
and affections were remarkably developed at an age which to her hearers
appeared next to incredible. He would cry for joy on seeing her after a
few hours' absence, and, (till her husband put a stop to it,) her power
of exciting his feelings was often made an exhibition to her friends.
She did not regard this precocity as a proof of cleverness; but, like
a foolish young mother, only thought that so tender a nature was marked
for early death.
The next move which the family made was into as healthy an atmosphere,
in every sense, as the most careful parent could wish to select. Mr.
Macaulay took a house in the High Street of Clapham, in the part now
called the Pavement, on the same side as the Plough inn, but some doors
nearer to the Common. It was a roomy comfortable dwelling, with a very
small garden behind, and in front a very small one indeed, which
has entirely disappeared beneath a large shop thrown out towards the
road-way by the present occupier, who bears the name of Heywood. Here
the boy passed a quiet and most happy childhood. 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 batter in his hand. A very clever woman, who then lived in the house
as parlour-maid, told how he used to sit in his nankeen frock, perched
on the table by her as she was cleaning the plate, and expounding to
her out of a volume as big as himself. He did not care for toys, but was
very fond of taking his walk, when he would hold forth to his companion,
whether nurse or mother, telling interminable stories out of his own
head, or repeating what he had been reading in language far above his
years. His memory retained without shout effort the phraseology of the
book which he had been last engaged on, and he talked, as the maid said,
"quite printed words," which produced an effect that appeared formal,
and often, no doubt, exceedingly droll. Mrs. Hannah More was fond
of relating how she called at Mr. Macaulay's, and was met by a fair,
pretty, slight child, with abundance of light hair, about four years of
age, who came to the front door to receive her, and tell her that his
parents were out, but that if she would be good enough to come in he
would bring her a glass of old spirits; a proposition which greatly
startled the good lady, who had never aspired beyond cowslip wine. When
questioned as to what he knew about old spirits, he could only say that
Robinson Crusoe often had some. About this period his father took him on
a visit to Lady Waldegrave at Strawberry Hill, and was much pleased, to
exhibit to his old friend the fair bright boy, dressed in a green coat
with red cellar and cuffs, a frill at the throat, and white trousers.
After some time had been spent among the wonders of the Orford
Collection, of which he ever after carried a catalogue in his head, a
servant who was waiting upon the company in the great gallery spilt some
hot coffee over his legs. The hostess was all kindness and compassion,
and when, after a while, she asked how he was feeling, the little fellow
looked up in her face and replied: "Thank you, madam, the agony is
abated."
But it must not be supposed that his quaint manners proceeded from
affectation or conceit; for all testimony declares that a more simple
and natural child never lived, or a more lively and merry one. He had at
his command the resources of the Common; to this day the most unchanged
spot within ten miles of St. Paul's, and which to all appearance
will ere long hold that pleasant preeminence within ten leagues.
That delightful wilderness of gorse bushes, and poplar groves, and
gravel-pits, and ponds great and small, was to little Tom Macaulay a
region of inexhaustible romance and mystery. He explored its recesses;
he composed, and almost believed, its legends; he invented for its
different features a nomenclature which has been faithfully preserved
by two generations of children. A slight ridge, intersected by deep
ditches, towards the west of the Common, the very existence of which no
one above eight years old would notice, was dignified with the title of
the Alps; while the elevated island, covered with shrubs, that gives
a name to the Mount pond, was regarded with infinite awe as being the
nearest approach within the circuit of his observation to a conception
of the majesty of Sinai. Indeed, at this period his infant fancy was
much exercised with the threats and terrors of the Law. He had a little
plot of ground at the back of the house, marked out as his own by a Tory
of oyster-shells, which a maid one day threw away as rubbish. He went
straight to the drawing-room, where his mother was entertaining some
visitors, walked into the circle, and said very solemnly: "Cursed be
Sally; for it is written, Cursed is he that removeth his neighbour's
land-mark."
While still the merest child he was sent as a day-scholar to Mr.
Greaves, a shrewd Yorkshireman with a turn for science, who had been
originally brought to the neighbourhood in order to educate a number
of African youths sent over to imbibe Western civilisation at the
fountain-head. The poor fellows had found as much difficulty in keeping
alive at Clapham as Englishmen experience at Sierra Leone; and, in the
end, their tutor set up a school for boys of his own colour, and at one
time had charge of almost the entire rising generation of the Common.
Mrs. Macaulay explained to Tom that he must learn to study without the
solace of bread and butter, to which he replied: "Yes, mama, industry
shall be my bread and attention my butter." But, as a matter of fact,
no one ever crept more unwillingly to school. Each several afternoon he
made piteous entreaties to be excused returning after dinner, and was
met by the unvarying formula: "No, Tom, if it rains cats and dogs, you
shall go."
His reluctance to leave home had more than one side to it. Not only did
his heart stay behind, but the regular lessons of the class took him
away from occupations which in his eyes were infinitely more delightful
and important; for these were probably the years of his greatest
literary activity. As an author he never again had mere facility, or
anything like so wide a range. In September 1808, his mother writes:
"My dear Tom continues to show marks of uncommon genius. He gets on
wonderfully in all branches of his education, and the extent of
his reading, and of the knowledge he has derived from it, are truly
astonishing in a boy not yet eight years old. He is at the same time as
playful as a kitten. To give you some idea of the activity of his mind
I will mention a few circumstances that may interest you and Colin. You
will believe that to him we never appear to regard anything he does as
anything more than a schoolboy's amusement. He took it into his head to
write a compendium of Universal History about a year ago, and he really
contrived to give a tolerably connected view of the leading events from
the Creation to the present time, filling about a quire of paper. He
told me one day that he had been writing a paper, which Henry Daly
was to translate into Malabar, to persuade the people of Travancore to
embrace the Christian religion. On reading it I found it to contain a
very clear idea of the leading facts and doctrines of that religion,
with some strong arguments for its adoption. He was so fired with
reading Scott's Lay and Marmion, the former of which he got entirely,
and the latter almost entirely, by heart, merely from his delight in
reading them, that he determined on writing himself a poem in six cantos
which he called the 'Battle of Cheviot.' After he had finished about
three of the cantos of about 120 lines each, which he did in a couple of
days, he became tired of it. I make no doubt he would have finished his
design, but, as he was proceeding with it, the thought struck him of
writing an heroic poem to be called 'Olaus the Great, or the Conquest
of Mona,' in which, after the manner of Virgil, he might introduce in
prophetic song the future fortunes of the family;--among others, those
of the hero who aided in the fall of the tyrant of Mysore, after having
long suffered from his tyranny; [General Macaulay had been one of Tippoo
Sahib's prisoners] and of another of his race who had exerted himself
for the deliverance of the wretched Africans. He has just begun it. He
has composed I know not how many hymns. I send you one, as a specimen,
in his own handwriting, which he wrote about six months ago on one
Monday morning while we were at breakfast."
The affection of the last generation of his relatives has preserved
all these pieces, but the piety of this generation will refrain from
submitting them to public criticism. A marginal note, in which Macaulay
has expressed his cordial approval of Uncle Toby's [Tristram Shandy,
chapter clxiii.] remark about the great Lipsius, indicates his own
wishes in the matter too clearly to leave any choice for those who come
after him. But there still may be read in a boyish scrawl the epitome of
Universal History, from "a new king who knew not Joseph,"--down through
Rameses, and Dido, and Tydeus, and Tarquin, and Crassus, and Gallienus,
and Edward the Martyr,--to Louis, who "set off on a crusade against the
Albigenses," and Oliver Cromwell, who "was an unjust and wicked man."
The hymns remain, which Mrs. Hannah More, surely a consummate judge of
the article, pronounced to be "quite extraordinary for such a baby."
To a somewhat later period probably belongs a vast pile of blank verse,
entitled "Fingal, a poem in xii books;" two of which are in a complete
and connected shape, while the rest of the story is lost amidst a
labyrinth of many hundred scattered lines, so transcribed as to suggest
a conjecture that the boy's demand for foolscap had outrun the paternal
generosity.
Of all his performances, that which attracted most attention at the time
was undertaken for the purpose of immortalising Olaus Magnus, King of
Norway, from whom the clan to which the bard belonged was supposed
to derive its name. Two cantos are extant, of which there are several
exemplars, in every stage of calligraphy from the largest round hand
downwards, a circumstance which is apparently due to the desire on the
part of each of the little Macaulays to possess a copy of the great
family epic. The opening stanzas, each of which contains more lines than
their author counted years, go swinging along with plenty of animation
and no dearth of historical and geographical allusion.
Day set on Cumbria's hills supreme,
And, Menai, on thy silver stream.
The star of day had reached the West.
Now in the main it sank to rest.
Shone great Eleindyn's castle tall:
Shone every battery, every hall:
Shone all fair Mona's verdant plain;
But chiefly shone the foaming main.
And again
"Long," said the Prince, "shall Olave's name
Live in the high records of fame.
Fair Mona now shall trembling stand
That ne'er before feared mortal hand.
Mona, that isle where Ceres' flower
In plenteous autumn's golden hour
Hides all the fields from man's survey
As locusts hid old Egypt's day."
The passage containing a prophetic mention of his father and uncle
after the manner of the sixth book of the Aeneid, for the sake of
which, according to Mrs. Macaulay, the poem was originally designed, can
nowhere be discovered. It is possible that in the interval between the
conception and the execution the boy happened to light upon a copy of
the Rolliad. If such was the case, he already had too fine a sense
of humour to have persevered in his original plan after reading that
masterpiece of drollery. It is worthy of note that the voluminous
writings of his childhood, dashed off at headlong speed in the odds
and ends of leisure from school-study and nursery routine, are not only
perfectly correct in spelling and grammar, but display the same lucidity
of meaning, and scrupulous accuracy in punctuation and the other minor
details of the literary art, which characterise his mature works.
Nothing could be more judicious than the treatment that Mr. and Mrs.
Macaulay adopted towards their boy. They never handed his productions
about, or encouraged him to parade his powers of conversation or
memory. They abstained from any word or act which might foster in him
a perception of his own genius with as much care as a wise millionaire
expends on keeping his son ignorant of the fact that he is destined to
be richer than his comrades. "It was scarcely ever," writes one who knew
him well from the very first, "that the consciousness was expressed
by either of his parents of the superiority of their son over other
children. Indeed, with his father I never remember any such expression.
What I most observed myself was his extraordinary command of language.
When he came to describe to his mother any childish play, I took care
to be present, when I could, that I might listen to the way in which he
expressed himself, often scarcely exceeded in his later years. Except
this trifle, I remember him only as a good-tempered boy, always
occupied, playing with his sisters without assumption of any kind." One
effect of this early discipline showed itself in his freedom from vanity
and susceptibility,--those qualities which, coupled together in our
modern psychological dialect under the head of "self-consciousness," are
supposed to be the besetting defects of the literary character. Another
result was his habitual over-estimate of the average knowledge possessed
by mankind. Judging others by himself, he credited the world at large
with an amount of information which certainly few have the ability
to acquire, or the capacity to retain. If his parents had not been
so diligent in concealing from him the difference between his own
intellectual stores and those of his neighbours, it is probable that
less would have been heard of Lord Macaulay's Schoolboy.
The system pursued at home was continued at Barley Wood, the place where
the Misses More resided from 1802 onwards. Mrs. Macaulay gladly sent her
boy to a house where he was encouraged without being spoiled, and where
he never failed to be a welcome guest. The kind old ladies made a real
companion of him, and greatly relished his conversation; while at the
same time, with their ideas on education, they would never have allowed
him, even if he had been so inclined, to forget that he was a child.
Mrs. Hannah More, who had the rare gift of knowing how to live with both
young and old, was the most affectionate and the wisest of friends, and
readily undertook the superintendence of his studies, his pleasures, and
his health. She would keep him with her for weeks, listening to him as
he read prose by the ell, declaimed poetry by the hour, and discussed
and compared his favourite heroes, ancient, modern, and fictitious,
under all points of view and in every possible combination; coaxing him
into the garden under pretence of a lecture on botany; sending him from
his books to run round the grounds, or play at cooking in the kitchen;
giving him Bible lessons which invariably ended in a theological
argument, and following him with her advice and sympathy through his
multifarious literary enterprises. ["The next time," (my uncle once said
to us,) "that I saw Hannah More was in 1807. The old ladies begged my
parents to leave me with them for a week, and this visit was a great
event in my life. In parlour and kitchen they could not make enough of
me. They taught me to cook; and I was to preach, and they got in people
from the fields and I stood on a chair, and preached sermons. I might
have been indicted for holding a conventicle."] She writes to his father
in 1809: "I heartily hope that the sea air has been the means of setting
you up, and Mrs. Macaulay also, and that the dear little poet has caught
his share of bracing.... Tell Tom I desire to know how 'Olaus' goes on.
The sea, I suppose, furnished him with some new images."
The broader and more genial aspect under which life showed itself to the
boy at Barley Wood has left its trace in a series of childish squibs and
parodies, which may still be read with an interest that his Cambrian
and Scandinavian rhapsodies fail to inspire. The most ambitious of
these lighter efforts is a pasquinade occasioned by some local scandal,
entitled "Childe Hugh and the labourer, a pathetic ballad." The "Childe"
of the story was a neighbouring baronet, and the "Abbot" a neighbouring
rector, and the whole performance, intended, as it was, to mimic the
spirit of Percy's Reliques, irresistibly suggests a reminiscence of
John Gilpin. It is pleasant to know that to Mrs. Hannah More was due the
commencement of what eventually became the most readable of libraries,
as is shown in a series of letters extending over the entire period of
Macaulay's education. When he was six years old she writes; "Though you
are a little boy now, you will one day, if it please God, be a man; but
long before you are a man I hope you will be a scholar. I therefore
wish you to purchase such books as will be useful and agreeable to you
_then_, and that you employ this very small sum in laying a little tiny
corner-stone for your future library." A year or two afterwards she
thanks him for his "two letters, so neat and free from blots. By this
obvious improvement you have entitled yourself to another book. You must
go to Hatchard's and choose. I think we have nearly exhausted the Epics.
What say you to a little good prose? Johnson's Hebrides, or Walton's
Lives, unless you would like a neat edition of Cowper's poems or
Paradise Lost for your own eating? In any case choose something which
you do not possess. I want you to become a complete Frenchman, that
I may give you Racine, the only dramatic poet I know in any modern
language that is perfectly pure and good. I think you have hit off the
Ode very well, and I am much obliged to you for the Dedication." The
poor little author was already an adept in the traditional modes of
requiting a patron.
He had another Maecenas in the person of General Macaulay, who came back
from India in 1810. The boy greeted him with a copy of verses, beginning
"Now safe returned from Asia's parching strand,
Welcome, thrice welcome to thy native land."
To tell the unvarnished truth, the General's return was not altogether
of a triumphant character. After very narrowly escaping with his life
from an outbreak at Travancore, incited by a native minister who owed
him a grudge, he had given proof of courage and spirit during some
military operations which ended in his being brought back to the
Residency with flying colours. But, when the fighting was over, he
countenanced, and perhaps prompted, measures of retaliation which were
ill taken by his superiors at Calcutta. In his congratulatory effusion
the nephew presumes to remind the uncle that on European soil there
still might be found employment for so redoubtable a sword.
"For many a battle shall be lost and won
Ere yet thy glorious labours shall be done."
The General did not take the hint, and spent the remainder of his life
peacefully enough between London, Bath, and the Continental capitals.
He was accustomed to say that his travelling carriage was his only
freehold; and, wherever he fixed his temporary residence, he had
the talent of making himself popular. At Geneva he was a universal
favourite; he always was welcome at Coppet; and he gave the strongest
conceivable proof of a cosmopolitan disposition by finding himself
equally at home at Rome and at Clapham. When in England he lived much
with his relations, to whom he was sincerely attached. He was generous
in a high degree, and the young people owed to him books which they
otherwise could never have obtained, and treats and excursions which
formed the only recreations that broke the uniform current of their
lives. They regarded their uncle Colin as the man of the world of the
Macaulay family.
Zachary Macaulay's circumstances during these years were good, and
constantly improving. For some time he held the post of Secretary to the
Sierra Leone Company, with a salary of L500 per annum. He subsequently
entered into partnership with a nephew, and the firm did a large
business as African merchants under the names of Macaulay and Babington.
The position of the father was favourable to the highest interests of
his children. A boy has the best chance of being well brought up in
a household where there is solid comfort, combined with thrift and
simplicity; and the family was increasing too fast to leave any margin
for luxurious expenditure. Before the eldest son had completed his
thirteenth year he had three brothers and five sisters.
[It was in the course of his thirteenth year that the boy wrote his
"Epitaph on Henry Martyn."
Here Martyn lies. In manhood's early bloom
The Christian hero finds a Pagan tomb.
Religion, sorrowing o'er her favourite son,
Points to the glorious trophies that he won.
Eternal trophies! not with carnage red,
Not stained with tears by hapless captives shed,
But trophies of the Cross. For that dear name,
Through every form of danger, death, and shame,
Onward he journeyed to a happier shore,
Where danger, death and shame assault no more."]