the educational capabilities of Clapham; and his father seriously
contemplated the notion of removing to London in order to place him as a
day-scholar at Westminster. Thorough as was the consideration which the
parents gave to the matter, their decision was of more importance
than they could at the time foresee. If their son had gone to a public
school, it is more than probable that he would have turned out a
different man, and have done different work. So sensitive and homeloving
a boy might for a while have been too depressed to enter fully unto
the ways of the place; but, as he gained confidence, he could not have
withstood the irresistible attractions which the life of a great school
exercises over a vivid eager nature, and he would have sacrificed to
passing pleasures and emulations a part, at any rate, of those years
which, in order to be what he was, it was necessary that he should spend
wholly among his books. Westminster or Harrow might have sharpened his
faculties for dealing with affairs and with men; but the world at large
would have lost more than he could by any possibility have gained. If
Macaulay had received the usual education of a young Englishman, he
might in all probability have kept his seat for Edinburgh; but he
could hardly have written the Essay on Von Ranke, or the description of
England in the third chapter of the History.
Mr. Macaulay ultimately fixed upon a private school, kept by the Rev.
Mr. Preston, at Little Shelford, a village in the immediate vicinity
of Cambridge. The motives which guided this selection were mainly of
a religious nature. Mr. Preston held extreme Low Church opinions, and
stood in the good books of Mr. Simeon, whose word had long been law in
the Cambridge section of the Evangelical circle. But whatever had been
the inducement to make it, the choice proved singularly fortunate. The
tutor, it is true, was narrow in his views, and lacked the taste and
judgment to set those views before his pupils in an attractive form.
Theological topics dragged into the conversation at unexpected moments,
inquiries about their spiritual state, and long sermons which had to be
listened to under the dire obligation of reproducing them in an epitome,
fostered in the minds of some of the boys a reaction against the outward
manifestations of religion;--a reaction which had already begun under
the strict system pursued in their respective homes. But, on the other
hand, Mr. Preston knew both how to teach his scholars, and when to leave
them to teach themselves. The eminent judge, who divided grown men into
two sharply defined and most uncomplimentary categories, was accustomed
to say that private schools made poor creatures, and public schools sad
dogs; but Mr. Preston succeeded in giving a practical contradiction
to Sir William Maine's proposition. His pupils, who were limited to an
average of a dozen at a time, got far beyond their share of honours at
the university and of distinction in after life. George Stainforth,
a grandson of Sir Francis Baring, by his success at Cambridge was
the first to win the school an honourable name, which was more than
sustained by Henry Malden, now Greek Professor at University College,
London, and by Macaulay himself. Shelford was strongly under the
influence of the neighbouring university; an influence which Mr.
Preston, himself a fellow of Trinity, wisely encouraged. The boys were
penetrated with Cambridge ambitions and ways of thought; and frequent
visitors brought to the table, where master and pupils dined in common,
the freshest Cambridge gossip of the graver sort.
Little Macaulay received much kindness from Dean Milner, the President
of Queen's College, then at the very summit of a celebrity which is
already of the past. Those who care to search among the embers of that
once brilliant reputation can form a fair notion of what Samuel Johnson
would have been if he had lived a generation later, and had been
absolved from the necessity of earning his bread by the enjoyment of
ecclesiastical sinecures, and from any uneasiness as to his worldly
standing by the possession of academical dignities and functions. The
Dean who had boundless goodwill for all his fellow-creatures at every
period of life, provided that they were not Jacobins or sceptics,
recognised the promise of the boy, and entertained him at his college
residence on terms of friendliness, and almost of equality. After one of
these visits he writes to Mr. Macaulay; "Your lad is a fine fellow. He
shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men."
Shelford: February 22, 1813.
My dear Papa,--As this is a whole holiday, I cannot find a better time
for answering your letter. With respect to my health, I am very well,
and tolerably cheerful, as Blundell, the best and most clever of all the
scholars, is very kind, and talks to me, and takes my part. He is quite
a friend of Mr. Preston's. The other boys, especially Lyon, a Scotch
boy, and Wilberforce, are very good-natured, and we might have gone on
very well had not one, a Bristol fellow, come here. He is unanimously
alloyed to be a queer fellow, and is generally characterised as a
foolish boy, and by most of us as an ill-natured one. In my learning
I do Xenophon every day, and twice a week the Odyssey, in which I am
classed with Wilberforce, whom all the boys allow to be very clever,
very droll, and very impudent. We do Latin verses trice a week, and I
have not yet been laughed at, as Wilberforce is the only one who hears
them, being in my class. We are exercised also once a week in English
composition, and once in Latin composition, and letters of persons
renowned in history to each other. We get by heart Greek grammar or
Virgil every evening. As for sermon-writing, I have hitherto got off
with credit, and I hope I shall keep up my reputation. We have had the
first meeting of our debating society the other day, when a vote of
censure was moved for upon Wilberforce, but he getting up said, "Mr.
President, I beg to second the motion." By this means he escaped. The
kindness which Mr. Preston shows me is very great. He always assists
me in what I cannot do, and takes me to walk out with him every now
and then. My room is a delightful snug little chamber, which nobody can
enter, as there is a trick about opening the door. I sit like a king,
with my writing-desk before me; for, (would you believe it?) there is
a writing-desk in my chest of drawers; my books on one side, my box of
papers on the other, with my arm-chair and my candle; for every boy has
a candlestick, snuffers, and extinguisher of his own. Being pressed for
room, I will conclude what I have to say to-morrow, and ever remain,
Your affectionate son,
THOMAS B. MACAULAY.
The youth who on this occasion gave proof of his parentage by his
readiness and humour was Wilberforce's eldest son. A fortnight later
on, the subject chosen for discussion was "whether Lord Wellington or
Marlborough was the greatest general. A very warm debate is expected."
Shelford: April 20, 1813.
My dear Mama,--Pursuant to my promise I resume my pen to write to you
with the greatest pleasure. Since I wrote to you yesterday, I have
enjoyed myself more than I have ever done since I came to Shelford. Mr.
Hodson called about twelve o'clock yesterday morning with a pony for me,
and took me with him to Cambridge. How surprised and delighted was I
to learn that I was to take a bed at Queen's College in Dean Milner's
apartments! Wilberforce arrived soon after, and I spent the day very
agreeably, the Dean amusing me with the greatest kindness. I slept
there, and came home on horseback to-day just in time for dinner.
The Dean has invited me to come again, and Mr. Preston has given his
consent. The books which I am at present employed in reading to myself
are, in English, Plutarch's Lives, and Milner's Ecclesiastical History;
in French, Fenelon's Dialogues of the Dead. I shall send you back the
volumes of Madame de Genlis's petits romans as soon as possible, and I
should be very much obliged for one or two more of them. Everything now
seems to feel the influence of spring. The trees are all out. The lilacs
are in bloom. The days are long, and I feel that I should be happy
were it not that I want home. Even yesterday, when I felt more real
satisfaction than I have done for almost three months, I could not help
feeling a sort of uneasiness, which indeed I have always felt more or
less since I have been here, and which is the only thing that hinders me
from being perfectly happy. This day two months will put a period to my
uneasiness.
"Fly fast the hours, and dawn th' expected morn."
Every night when I lie down I reflect that another day is cut off from
the tiresome time of absence.
Your affectionate son,
THOMAS B. MACAULAY.
Shelford: April 26 1813.
My dear Papa,--Since I have given you a detail of weekly duties, I hope
you will be pleased to be informed of my Sunday's occupations. It is
quite a day of rest here, and I really look to it with pleasure through
the whole of the week. After breakfast we learn a chapter in the Greek
Testament that is with the aid of our Bibles, and without doing it with
a dictionary like other lessons. We then go to church. We dine almost
as soon as we come back, and we are left to ourselves till afternoon
church. During this time I employ myself in reading, and Mr. Preston
lends me any books for which I ask him, so that I am nearly as well
off in this respect as at home, except for one thing, which, though I
believe it is useful, is not very pleasant. I can only ask for one book
at a time, and cannot touch another till I have read it through. We then
go to church, and after we come hack I read as before till tea-time.
After tea we write out the sermon. I cannot help thinking that Mr.
Preston uses all imaginable means to make us forget it, for he gives us
a glass of wine each on Sunday, and on Sunday only, the very day when we
want to have all our faculties awake; and some do literally go to sleep
during the sermon, and look rather silly when they wake. I, however,
have not fallen into this disaster.
Your affectionate son,
THOMAS B. MACAULAY.
The constant allusions to home politics and to the progress of the
Continental struggle, which occur throughout Zachary Macaulay's
correspondence with his son, prove how freely, and on what an equal
footing, the parent and child already conversed on questions of public
interest. The following letter is curious as a specimen of the eagerness
with which the boy habitually flung himself into the subjects which
occupied his father's thoughts. The renewal of the East India Company's
charter was just then under the consideration of Parliament, and
the whole energies of the Evangelical party were exerted in order to
signalise the occasion by securing our Eastern dominions as a field for
the spread of Christianity. Petitions against the continued exclusion
of missionaries were in course of circulation throughout the island, the
drafts of which had been prepared by Mr. Macaulay.
Shelford: May 8, 1813.
My dear Papa,--As on Monday it will be out of my power to write, since
the examination subjects are to be given out I write to-day instead to
answer your kind and long letter.
I am very much pleased that the nation seems to take such interest in
the introduction of Christianity into India. My Scotch blood begins
to boil at the mention of the 1,750 names that went up from a single
country parish. Ask Mama and Selina if they do not now admit my argument
with regard to the superior advantages of the Scotch over the English
peasantry.
As to my examination preparations, I will if you please give you a
sketch of my plan. On Monday, the day on which the examination subjects
are given out, I shall begin. My first performance will be my verses and
my declamation. I shall then translate the Greek and Latin. The first
time of going over I shall mark the passages which puzzle me, and then
return to them again. But I shall have also to rub up my Mathematics,
(by the bye, I begin the second book of Euclid to-day,) and to study
whatever History may be appointed for the examination. I shall not be
able to avoid trembling, whether I know my subjects or not. I am however
intimidated at nothing but Greek. Mathematics suit my taste, although,
before I came, I declaimed against them, and asserted that, when I went
to College, it should not be to Cambridge. I am occupied with the hope
of lecturing Mama and Selina upon Mathematics, as I used to do upon
Heraldry, and to change Or, and Argent, and Azure, and Gules, for
squares, and points, and circles, and angles, and triangles, and
rectangles, and rhomboids, and in a word "all the pomp and circumstance"
of Euclid. When I come home I shall, if my purse is sufficient, bring a
couple of rabbits for Selina and Jane.
Your affectionate son,
THOMAS B. MACAULAY.
It will be seen that this passing fondness for mathematics soon changed
into bitter disgust.
Clapham May 28, 1813.
My dear Tom,--I am very happy to hear that you have so far advanced in
your different prize exercises, and with such little fatigue. I know you
write with great ease to yourself, and would rather write ten poems than
prune one; but remember that excellence is not attained at first. All
your pieces are much mended after a little reflection, and therefore
take some solitary walks, and think over each separate thing. Spare no
time or trouble to render each piece as perfect as you can, and then
leave the event without one anxious thought. I have always admired
a saying of one of the old heathen philosophers. When a friend was
condoling with him that he so well deserved of the gods, and yet that
they did not shower their favours on him, as on some others less worthy,
he answered, "I will, however, continue to deserve well of them." So do
you, my dearest. Do your best because it is the will of God you should
improve every faculty to the utmost now, and strengthen the powers of
your mind by exercise, and then in future you will be better enabled to
glorify God with all your powers and talents, be they of a more humble,
or higher order, and you shall not fail to be received into everlasting
habitations, with the applauding voice of your Saviour, "Well done, good
and faithful servant." You see how ambitious your mother is. She must
have the wisdom of her son acknowledged before Angels, and an assembled
world. My wishes can soar no higher, and they can be content with
nothing less for any of my children. The first time I saw your face, I
repeated those beautiful lines of Watts' cradle hymn,
Mayst thou live to know and fear Him,
Trust and love Him all thy days
Then go dwell for ever near Him,
See His face, and sing His praise.
and this is the substance of all my prayers for you. In less than a
month you and I shall, I trust, be rambling over the Common, which now
looks quite beautiful.
I am ever, my dear Tom,
Your affectionate mother,
SELINA MACAULAY.
The commencement of the second half-year at school, perhaps the darkest
season of a boy's existence, was marked by an unusually severe and
prolonged attack of home-sickness. It would be cruel to insert the first
letter written after the return to Shelford from the summer holidays.
That which follows it is melancholy enough.
Shelford: August 14. 1813.
My dear Mama,--I must confess that I have been a little disappointed
at not receiving a letter from home to-day. I hope, however, for one
to-morrow. My spirits are far more depressed by leaving home than
they were last half-year. Everything brings home to my recollection.
Everything I read, or see, or hear, brings it to my mind. You told me I
should be happy when I once came here, but not an hour passes in which
I do not shed tears at thinking of home. Every hope, however unlikely to
be realised, affords me some small consolation. The morning on which I
went, you told me that possibly I might come home before the holidays.
If you can confirm this hope, believe me when I assure you that there is
nothing which I would not give for one instant's sight of home. Tell
me in your next, expressly, if you can, whether or no there is any
likelihood of my coming home before the holidays. If I could gain Papa's
leave, I should select my birthday on October 25 as the time which I
should wish to spend at that home which absence renders still dearer to
me. I think I see you sitting by Papa just after his dinner, reading my
letter, and turning to him, with an inquisitive glance, at the end of
the paragraph. I think too that I see his expressive shake of the head
at it. O, may I be mistaken! You cannot conceive what an alteration a
favourable answer would produce in me. If your approbation of my request
depends upon my advancing in study, I will work like a cart-horse. If
you should refuse it, you will deprive me of the most pleasing illusion
which I ever experienced in my life. Pray do not fail to write speedily.
Your dutiful and affectionate son,
T. B. MACAULAY.
His father answered him in a letter of strong religious complexion,
full of feeling, and even of beauty, but too long for reproduction in a
biography that is not his own.
Mr. Macaulay's deep anxiety for his son's welfare sometimes induced him
to lend too ready an ear to busybodies, who informed him of failings
in the boy which would have been treated more lightly, and perhaps more
wisely, by a less devoted father. In the early months of 1814 he writes
as follows, after hearing the tale of some guest of Mr. Preston whom
Tom had no doubt contradicted at table in presence of the assembled
household.
London: March 4, 1814.
My dear Tom,--In taking up my pen this morning a passage in Cowper
almost involuntarily occurred to me. You will find it at length in his
"Conversation."
"Ye powers who rule the Tongue, if such there are,
And make colloquial happiness your care,
Preserve me from the thing I dread and hate,
A duel in the form of a debate.
Vociferated logic kills me quite.
A noisy man is always in the right."
You know how much such a quotation as this would fall in with my
notions, averse as I am to loud and noisy tones, and self-confident,
overwhelming, and yet perhaps very unsound arguments. And you will
remember how anxiously I dwelt upon this point while you were at home.
I have been in hopes that this half-year would witness a great change
in you in this respect. My hopes, however, have been a little damped by
something which I heard last week through a friend, who seemed to have
received an impression that you had gained a high distinction among the
young gentlemen at Shelford by the loudness and vehemence of your tones.
Now, my dear Tom, you cannot doubt that this gives me pain; and it does
so not so much on account of the thing itself, as because I consider
it a pretty infallible test of the mind within. I do long and pray
most earnestly that the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit may be
substituted for vehemence and self-confidence, and that you may be as
much distinguished for the former as ever you have been for the latter.
It is a school in which I am not ambitious that any child of mine should
take a high degree.
If the people of Shelford be as bad as you represent them in your
letters, what are they but an epitome of the world at large? Are they
ungrateful to you for your kindnesses? Are they foolish, and wicked,
and wayward in the use of their faculties? What is all this but what
we ourselves are guilty of every day? Consider how much in our case the
guilt of such conduct is aggravated by our superior knowledge. We shall
not have ignorance to plead in its extenuation, as many of the people of
Shelford may have. Now, instead of railing at the people of Shelford, I
think the best thing which you and your schoolfellows could do would be
to try to reform them. You can buy and distribute useful and striking
tracts, as well as Testaments, among such as can read. The cheap
Repository and Religious Tract Society will furnish tracts suited to all
descriptions of persons; and for those who cannot read--why should you
not institute a Sunday school to be taught by yourselves, and in which
appropriate rewards being given for good behaviour, not only at school
but through the week, great effects of a moral kind might soon be
produced? I have exhausted my paper, and must answer the rest of your
letter in a few days. In the meantime,
I am ever your most affectionate father,
ZACHARY MACAULAY.
A father's prayers are seldom fulfilled to the letter. Many years were
to elapse before the son ceased to talk loudly and with confidence; and
the literature that he was destined to distribute through the world was
of another order from that which Mr. Macaulay here suggests. The answer,
which is addressed to the mother, affords a proof that the boy could
already hold his own. The allusions to the Christian Observer, of which
his father was editor, and to Dr. Herbert Marsh, with whom the ablest
pens of Clapham were at that moment engaged in hot and embittered
controversy, are thrown in with an artist's hand.
Shelford: April 11. 1814.
My dear Mama,--The news is glorious indeed. Peace! Peace with a Bourbon,
with a descendant of Henri Quatre, with a prince who is bound to us by
all the ties of gratitude. I have some hopes that it will be a lasting
peace; that the troubles of the last twenty years may make kings and
nations wiser. I cannot conceive a greater punishment to Buonaparte than
that which the allies have inflicted on him. How can his ambitious mind
support it? All his great projects and schemes, which once made every
throne in Europe tremble, are buried in the solitude of an Italian isle.
How miraculously everything has been conducted! We almost seem to hear
the Almighty saying to the fallen tyrant, "For this cause have I raised
thee up, that I might show in thee My power."
As I am in very great haste with this letter, I shall have but little
time to write. I am sorry to hear that some nameless friend of Papa's
denounced my voice as remarkably loud. I have accordingly resolved to
speak in a moderate key except on the undermentioned special occasions.
Imprimis, when I am speaking at the same time with three others.
Secondly, when I am praising the Christian Observer. Thirdly, when I
am praising Mr. Preston or his sisters I may be allowed to speak in my
loudest voice, that they may hear me.
I saw to-day that greatest of churchmen, that pillar of Orthodoxy,
that true friend to the Liturgy, that mortal enemy to the Bible
Society,--Herbert Marsh, D.D., Professor of Divinity on Lady Margaret's
foundation. I stood looking at him for about ten minutes, and shall
always continue to maintain that he is a very ill-favoured gentleman as
far as outward appearance is concerned. I am going this week to spend
a day or two at Dean Milner's, where I hope, nothing unforeseen
preventing, to see you in about two months' time.
Ever your affectionate son,
T.B. MACAULAY.
In the course of the year 1814 Mr. Preston removed his establishment to
Aspenden Hall near Buntingford, in Hertfordshire; a large old-fashioned
mansion, standing amidst extensive shrubberies, and a pleasant
undulating domain sprinkled with fine timber. The house has been rebuilt
within the last twenty years, and nothing remains of it except the dark
oak panelling of the hall in which the scholars made their recitations
on the annual speech day. The very pretty church, which stands hard by
within the grounds, was undergoing restoration in 1873 and by this time
the only existing portion of the former internal fittings is the family
pew, in which the boys sat on drowsy summer afternoons, doing what they
could to keep their impressions of the second sermon distinct from their
reminiscences of the morning. Here Macaulay spent four most industrious
years, doing less and less in the class-room as time went on, but
enjoying the rare advantage of studying Greek and Latin by the side of
such a scholar as Malden. The two companions were equally matched in age
and classical attainments, and at the university maintained a rivalry so
generous as hardly to deserve the name. Each of the pupils had his own
chamber, which the others were forbidden to enter under the penalty of
a shilling fine. This prohibition was in general not very strictly
observed; but the tutor had taken the precaution of placing Macaulay
in a room next his own;--a proximity which rendered the position of an
intruder so exceptionally dangerous that even Malden could not remember
having once passed his friend's threshold during the whole of their stay
at Aspenden.
In this seclusion, removed from the delight of family intercourse, (the
only attraction strong enough to draw him from his books,) the boy
read widely, unceasingly, more than rapidly. The secret of his immense
acquirements lay in two invaluable gifts of nature,--an unerring memory,
and the capacity for taking in at a glance the contents of a printed
page. During the first part of his life he remembered whatever caught
his fancy without going through the process of consciously getting it
by heart. As a child, during one of the numerous seasons when the social
duties devolved upon Mr. Macaulay, he accompanied his father on an
afternoon call, and found on a table the Lay of the Last Minstrel, which
he had never before met with. He kept himself quiet with his prize while
the elders were talking, and, on his return home, sat down upon his
mother's bed, and repeated to her as many cantos as she had the patience
or the strength to listen to. At one period of his life he was known to
say that, if by some miracle of Vandalism all copies of Paradise Lost
and the Pilgrim's Progress were destroyed off the face of the earth,
he would undertake to reproduce them both from recollection whenever
a revival of learning came. In 1813, while waiting in a Cambridge
coffee-room for a postchaise which was to take him to his school, he
picked up a county newspaper containing two such specimens of provincial
poetical talent as in those days might be read in the corner of any
weekly journal. One piece was headed "Reflections of an Exile;" while
the other was a trumpery parody on the Welsh ballad "Ar hyd y nos,"
referring to some local anecdote of an ostler whose nose had been bitten
off by a filly. He looked them once through, and never gave them a
thought for forty years, at the end of which time he repeated them both
without missing,--or, as far as he knew, changing,--a single word.
[Sir William Stirling Maxwell says, in a letter with which he has
honoured me: "Of his extraordinary memory I remember Lord Jeffrey
telling me an instance. They had had a difference about a quotation from
Paradise Lost, and made a wager about it; the wager being a copy of the
hook, which, on reference to the passage, it was found Jeffrey had won.
The bet was made just before, and paid immediately after, the Easter
vacation. On putting the volume into Jeffrey's hand, your uncle said,
'I don't think you will find me tripping again. I knew it, I thought,
pretty well before; but I am sure I know it now.' Jeffrey proceeded to
examine him, putting him on at a variety of the heaviest passages--the
battle of the angels--the dialogues of Adam and the archangels,--and
found him ready to declaim them all, till he begged him to stop. He
asked him how he had acquired such a command of the poem, and had for
answer: 'I had him in the country, and I read it twice over, and I
don't think that I shall ever forget it again.' At the same time he told
Jeffrey that he believed he could repeat everything of his own he had
ever printed, and nearly all he had ever written, 'except, perhaps, some
of my college exercises.'
"I myself had an opportunity of seeing and hearing a remarkable proof of
your uncle's hold upon the most insignificant verbiage that chance had
poured into his ear. I was staying with him at Bowood, in the winter
of 1852. Lord Elphinstone--who had been many years before Governor of
Madras,--was telling one morning at breakfast of a certain native barber
there, who was famous, in his time, for English doggrel of his own
making, with which he was wont to regale his customers. 'Of course,'
said Lord Elphinstone, 'I don't remember any of it; but was very funny,
and used to be repeated in society.' Macaulay, who was sitting a good
way off, immediately said: 'I remember being shaved by the fellow, and
he recited a quantity of verse to me during the operation, and here
is some of it;' and then he went off in a very queer doggrel about the
exploits of Bonaparte, of which I recollect the recurring refrain--
But when he saw the British boys,
He up and ran away.
It is hardly conceivable that he had ever had occasion to recall that
poem since the day when he escaped from under the poet's razor.]
As he grew older, this wonderful power became impaired so far that
getting by rote the compositions of others was no longer an involuntary
process. He has noted in his Lucan the several occasions on which he
committed to memory his favourite passages of an author whom he regarded
as unrivalled among rhetoricians; and the dates refer to 1836, when he
had just turned the middle point of life. During his last years, at his
dressing-table in the morning, he would learn by heart one or another
of the little idylls in which Martial expatiates on the enjoyments of a
Spanish country-house, or a villa-farm in the environs of Rome;--those
delicious morsels of verse which, (considering the sense that modern
ideas attach to the name,) it is an injustice to class under the head of
epigrams.
Macaulay's extraordinary faculty of assimilating printed matter at first
sight remained the same through life. To the end he read books more
quickly than other people skimmed them, and skimmed them as fast as
anyone else could turn the leaves. "He seemed to read through the skin,"
said one who had often watched the operation. And this speed was not in
his case obtained at the expense of accuracy. Anything which had once
appeared in type, from the highest effort of genius down to the most
detestable trash that ever consumed ink and paper manufactured for
better things, had in his eyes an authority which led him to look upon
misquotation as a species of minor sacrilege.
With these endowments, sharpened by an insatiable curiosity, from his
fourteenth year onward he was permitted to roam almost at will over
the whole expanse of literature. He composed little beyond his school
exercises, which themselves bear signs of having been written in a
perfunctory manner. At this period he had evidently no heart in anything
but his reading. Before leaving Shelford for Aspenden he had already
invoked the epic muse for the last time.
"Arms and the man I sing, who strove in vain
To save green Erin from a foreign reign."
The man was Roderic, king of Connaught, whom he got tired of singing
before he had well completed two books of the poem. Thenceforward he
appears never to have struck his lyre, except in the first enthusiasm
aroused by the intelligence of some favourable turn of fortune on
the Continent. The flight of Napoleon from Russia was celebrated in a
"Pindaric Ode" duly distributed into strophes and antistrophes;
and, when the allies entered Paris, the school put his services into
requisition to petition for a holiday in honour of the event. He
addressed his tutor in a short poem, which begins with a few sonorous
and effective couplets, grows more and more like the parody on
Fitzgerald in "Rejected Addresses," and ends in a peroration of which
the intention is unquestionably mock-heroic:
"Oh, by the glorious posture of affairs,
By the enormous price that Omnium hears,
By princely Bourbon's late recovered Crown,
And by Miss Fanny's safe return from town,
Oh, do not thou, and thou alone, refuse
To show thy pleasure at this glorious news!"
Touched by the mention of his sister, Mr. Preston yielded and young
Macaulay never turned another verse except at the bidding of his
schoolmaster, until, on the eve of his departure for Cambridge, he
wrote between three and four hundred lines of a drama, entitled "Don
Fernando," marked by force and fertility of diction, but somewhat too
artificial to be worthy of publication under a name such as his. Much
about the same time he communicated to Malden the commencement of a
burlesque poem on the story of Anthony Babington; who, by the part that
he took in the plots against the life of Queen Elizabeth, had given the
family a connection with English history which, however questionable,
was in Macaulay's view better than none.
"Each, says the proverb, has his taste. 'Tis true.
Marsh loves a controversy; Coates a play;
Bennet a felon; Lewis Way a Jew;
The Jew the silver spoons of Lewis Way.
The Gipsy Poetry, to own the truth,
Has been my love through childhood and in youth."
It is perhaps as well that the project to all appearance stopped with
the first stanza, which in its turn was probably written for the sake of
a single line. The young man had a better use for his time than to spend
it in producing frigid imitations of Beppo.
He was not unpopular among his fellow-pupils, who regarded him with
pride and admiration, tempered by the compassion which his utter
inability to play at any sort of game would have excited in every
school, private or public alike. He troubled himself very little about
the opinion of those by whom he was surrounded at Aspenden. It required
the crowd and the stir of a university to call forth the social
qualities which he possessed in so large a measure. The tone of his
correspondence during these years sufficiently indicates that he lived
almost exclusively among books. His letters, which had hitherto been
very natural and pretty, began to smack of the library, and please less
than those written in early boyhood. His pen was overcharged with the
metaphors and phrases of other men; and it was not till maturing powers
had enabled him to master and arrange the vast masses of literature
which filled his memory that his native force could display itself
freely through the medium of a style which was all his own. In 1815 he
began a formal literary correspondence, after the taste of the previous
century, with Mr. Hudson, a gentleman in the Examiner's Office of the
East India House.
Aspenden Hall: August 22, 1815.
Dear Sir,--The Spectator observes, I believe in his first paper, that
we can never read an author with much zest unless we are acquainted with
his situation. I feel the same in my epistolary correspondence; and,
supposing that in this respect we may be alike, I will just tell you
my condition. Imagine a house in the middle of pretty large grounds,
surrounded by palings. These I never pass. You may therefore suppose
that I resemble the Hermit of Parnell.
"As yet by books and swains the world he knew,
Nor knew if books and swains report it true."
If you substitute newspapers and visitors for books and swains, you may
form an idea of what I know of the present state of things. Write to
me as one who is ignorant of every event except political occurrences.
These I learn regularly; but if Lord Byron were to publish melodies or
romances, or Scott metrical tales without number, I should never see
them, or perhaps hear of them, till Christmas. Retirement of this kind,
though it precludes me from studying the works of the hour, is very
favourable for the employment of "holding high converse with the mighty
dead."
I know not whether "peeping at the world through the loopholes of
retreat" be the best way of forming us for engaging in its busy and
active scenes. I am sure it is not a way to my taste. Poets may talk
of the beauties of nature, the enjoyments of a country life, and rural
innocence; but there is another kind of life which, though unsung
by bards, is yet to me infinitely superior to the dull uniformity of
country life. London is the place for me. Its smoky atmosphere, and its
muddy river, charm me more than the pure air of Hertfordshire, and the
crystal currents of the river Rib. Nothing is equal to the splendid
varieties of London life, "the fine flow of London talk," and the
dazzling brilliancy of London spectacles. Such are my sentiments, and,
if ever I publish poetry, it shall not be pastoral. Nature is the last
goddess to whom my devoirs shall be paid.
Yours most faithfully,
THOMAS B. MACAULAY.
This votary of city life was still two months short of completing his
fifteenth year!
Aspenden Hall: August 23, 1815.
My dear Mama,--You perceive already in so large a sheet, and so small a
hand, the promise of a long, a very long letter, longer, as I intend
it, than all the letters which you send in a half-year together. I have
again begun my life of sterile monotony, unvarying labour, the dull
return of dull exercises in dull uniformity of tediousness. But do not
think that I complain.
My mind to me a kingdom is,
Such perfect joy therein I find
As doth exceed all other bliss
That God or nature hath assigned.
Assure yourself that I am philosopher enough to be happy,--I meant to
say not particularly unhappy,--in solitude; but man is an animal made
for society. I was gifted with reason, not to speculate in Aspenden
Park, but to interchange ideas with some person who can understand me.
This is what I miss at Aspenden. There are several here who possess both
taste and reading; who can criticise Lord Byron and Southey with much
tact and "savoir du metier." But here it is not the fashion to think.
Hear what I have read since I came here. Hear and wonder! I have in the
first place read Boccacio's Decameron, a tale of a hundred cantos. He is
a wonderful writer. Whether he tells in humorous or familiar strains the
follies of the silly Calandrino, or the witty pranks of Buffalmacco and
Bruno, or sings in loftier numbers
Dames, knights, and arms, and love, the feats that spring
From courteous minds and generous faith,
or lashes with a noble severity and fearless independence the vices of
the monks and the priestcraft of the established religion, he is always
elegant, amusing, and, what pleases and surprises most in a writer of
so unpolished an age, strikingly delicate and chastised. I prefer him
infinitely to Chaucer. If you wish for a good specimen of Boccacio, as
soon as you have finished my letter, (which will come, I suppose, by
dinner-time,) send Jane up to the library for Dryden's poems, and you
will find among them several translations from Boccacio, particularly
one entitled "Theodore and Honoria."
But, truly admirable as the bard of Florence is, I must not permit
myself to give him more than his due share of my letter. I have likewise
read Gil Blas, with unbounded admiration of the abilities of Le Sage.
Malden and I have read Thalaba together, and are proceeding to the Curse
of Kehama. Do not think, however, that I am neglecting more important
studies than either Southey or Boccacio. I have read the greater part of
the History of James I. and Mrs. Montague's essay on Shakspeare, and
a great deal of Gibbon. I never devoured so many books in a fortnight.
John Smith, Bob Hankinson, and I, went over the Hebrew Melodies
together. I certainly think far better of them than we used to do at
Clapham. Papa may laugh, and indeed he did laugh me out of my taste at
Clapham; but I think that there is a great deal of beauty in the first
melody, "She walks in beauty," though indeed who it is that walks in
beauty is not very exactly defined. My next letter shall contain a
production of my muse, entitled "An Inscription for the Column of
Waterloo," which is to be shown to Mr. Preston to-morrow. What he may
think of it I do not know. But I am like my favourite Cicero about my
own productions. It is all one to me what others think of them. I never
like them a bit less for being disliked by the rest of mankind. Mr.
Preston has desired me to bring him up this evening two or three
subjects for a Declamation. Those which I have selected are as follows:
1st, a speech in the character of Lord Coningsby, impeaching the Earl of
Oxford; 2nd, an essay on the utility of standing armies; 3rd, an essay
on the policy of Great Britain with regard to continental possessions.
I conclude with sending my love to Papa, Selina, Jane, John, ("but he
is not there," as Fingal pathetically says, when in enumerating his sons
who should accompany him to the chase he inadvertently mentions the dead
Ryno,) Henry, Fanny, Hannah, Margaret, and Charles. Valete.
T.B. MACAULAY.
This exhaustive enumeration of his brothers and sisters invites
attention to that home where he reigned supreme. Lady Trevelyan thus
describes their life at Clapham: "I think that my father's strictness
was a good counterpoise to the perfect worship of your uncle by the rest
of the family. To us he was an object of passionate love and devotion.
To us he could do no wrong. His unruffled sweetness of temper, his
unfailing flow of spirits, his amusing talk, all made his presence
so delightful that his wishes and his tastes were our law. He hated
strangers; and his notion of perfect happiness was to see us all working
round him while he read aloud a novel, and then to walk all together
on the Common, or, if it rained, to have a frightfully noisy game of
hide-and-seek. I have often wondered how our mother could ever have
endured our noise in her little house. My earliest recollections speak
of the intense happiness of the holidays, beginning with finding him in
Papa's room in the morning; the awe at the idea of his having reached
home in the dark after we were in bed, and the Saturnalia which at once
set in;--no lessons; nothing but fun and merriment for the whole six
weeks. In the year 1816 we were at Brighton for the summer holidays, and
he read to us Sir Charles Grandison. It was always a habit in our family
to read aloud every evening. Among the books selected I can recall
Clarendon, Burnet, Shakspeare, (a great treat when my mother took the
volume,) Miss Edgeworth, Mackenzie's Lounger and Mirror, and, as a
standing dish, the Quarterly and the Edinburgh Reviews. Poets too,
especially Scott and Crabbe, were constantly chosen. Poetry and novels,
except during Tom's holidays, were forbidden in the daytime, and
stigmatised as 'drinking drams in the morning.'"
Morning or evening, Mr. Macaulay disapproved of novel-reading; but, too
indulgent to insist on having his own way in any but essential matters,
he lived to see himself the head of a family in which novels were
more read, and better remembered, than in any household of the United
Kingdom. The first warning of the troubles that were in store for him
was an anonymous letter addressed to him as editor of the Christian
Observer, defending works of fiction, and eulogising Fielding and
Smollett. This he incautiously inserted in his periodical, and brought
down upon himself the most violent objurgations from scandalised
contributors, one of whom informed the public that he had committed the
obnoxious number to the flames, and should thenceforward cease to take
in the Magazine. The editor replied with becoming spirit; although by
that time he was aware that the communication, the insertion of which in
an unguarded moment had betrayed him into a controversy for which he had
so little heart, had proceeded from the pen of his son. Such was young
Macaulay's first appearance in print, if we except the index to the
thirteenth volume of the Christian Observer, which he drew up during his
Christmas holidays of 1814. The place where he performed his earliest
literary work can be identified with tolerable certainty. He enjoyed the
eldest son's privilege of a separate bedchamber; and there, at the front
window on the top story, furthest from the Common and nearest to London,
we can fancy him sitting, apart from the crowded play-room, keeping
himself warm as best he might, and travelling steadily through the
blameless pages the contents of which it was his task to classify for
the convenience of posterity.
Lord Macaulay used to remark that Thackeray introduced too much of the
Dissenting element into his picture of Clapham in the opening chapters
of "The Newcomes." The leading people of the place,--with the exception
of Mr. William Smith, the Unitarian member of Parliament,--were one and
all staunch Churchmen; though they readily worked in concert with those
religious communities which held in the main the same views, and pursued
the same objects, as themselves. Old John Thornton, the earliest of the
Evangelical magnates, when he went on his annual tour to the South
Coast or the Scotch mountains, would take with him some Independent or
Wesleyan minister who was in need of a holiday; and his followers in
the next generation had the most powerful motives for maintaining the
alliance which he had inaugurated. They could not neglect such doughty
auxiliaries in the memorable war which they waged against cruelty,
ignorance, and irreligion, and in their less momentous skirmishes with
the votaries of the stage, the racecourse, and the card-table.
Without the aid of nonconformist sympathy, and money, and oratory,
and organisation, their operations would have been doomed to certain
failure. The cordial relations entertained with the members of other
denominations by those among whom his youth was passed did much to
indoctrinate Macaulay with a lively and genuine interest in sectarian
theology. He possessed a minute acquaintance, very rare among men of
letters, with the origin and growth of the various forms of faith and
practice which have divided the allegiance of his countrymen; not the
least important of his qualifications for writing the history of an
epoch when the national mind gave itself to religious controversy even
more largely than has been its wont.
The method of education in vogue among the Clapham families was simple,
without being severe. In the spacious gardens, and the commodious houses
of an architecture already dating a century back, which surrounded the
Common, there was plenty of freedom, and good fellowship, and reasonable
enjoyment for young and old alike. Here again Thackeray has not
done justice to a society that united the mental culture, and the
intellectual activity, which are developed by the neighbourhood of a
great capital, with the wholesome quiet and the homely ways of country
life. Hobson and Brian Newcome are not fair specimens of the effect
of Clapham influences upon the second generation. There can have been
nothing vulgar, and little that was narrow, in a training which produced
Samuel Wilberforce, and Sir James Stephen, and Charles and Robert Grant,
and Lord Macaulay. The plan on which children were brought up in the
chosen home of the Low Church party, during its golden age, will
bear comparison with systems about which, in their day, the world was
supposed never to tire of hearing, although their ultimate results have
been small indeed.
It is easy to trace whence the great bishop and the great writer derived
their immense industry. Working came as naturally as walking to sons who
could not remember a time when their fathers idled. "Mr. Wilberforce and
Mr. Babington have never appeared downstairs lately, except to take a
hasty dinner, and for half an hour after we have supped. The slave-trade
now occupies them nine hours daily. Mr. Babington told me last night
that he had fourteen hundred folio pages to read, to detect the
contradictions, and to collect the answers which corroborate Mr.
Wilberforce's assertions in his speeches. These, with more than two
thousand pages to be abridged, must be done within a fortnight, and they
talk of sitting up one night in every week to accomplish it. The two
friends begin to look very ill, but they are in excellent spirits, and
at this moment I hear them laughing at some absurd questions in the
examination." Passages such as this are scattered broadcast through the
correspondence of Wilberforce and his friends. Fortitude, and diligence,
and self-control, and all that makes men good and great, cannot be
purchased from professional educators. Charity is not the only quality
which begins at home. It is throwing away money to spend a thousand a
year on the teaching of three boys, if they are to return from school
only to find the older members of their family intent on amusing
themselves at any cost of time and trouble, or sacrificing self-respect
in ignoble efforts to struggle into a social grade above their own. The
child will never place his aims high, and pursue them steadily, unless
the parent has taught him what energy, and elevation of purpose, mean
not less by example than by precept.
In that company of indefatigable workers none equalled the labours of
Zachary Macaulay. Even now, when he has been in his grave for more than
the third of a century, it seems almost an act of disloyalty to record
the public services of a man who thought that he had done less than
nothing if his exertions met with praise, or even with recognition. The
nature and value of those services may be estimated from the terms in
which a very competent judge, who knew how to weigh his words, spoke
of the part which Mr. Macaulay played in one only of his numerous
enterprises,--the suppression of slavery and the slave-trade. "That God
had called him into being to wage war with this gigantic evil became his
immutable conviction. During forty successive years he was ever burdened
with this thought. It was the subject of his visions by day and of his
dreams by night. To give them reality he laboured as men labour for the
honours of a profession or for the subsistence of their children.
In that service he sacrificed all that a man may lawfully
sacrifice--health, fortune, repose, favour, and celebrity. He died a
poor man, though wealth was within his reach. He devoted himself to
the severest toil, amidst allurements to luxuriate in the delights of
domestic and social intercourse, such as few indeed have encountered.
He silently permitted some to usurp his hardly-earned honours, that
no selfish controversy might desecrate their common cause. He made no
effort to obtain the praises of the world, though he had talents to
command, and a temper peculiarly disposed to enjoy them. He drew upon
himself the poisoned shafts of calumny, and, while feeling their sting
as generous spirits only can feel it, never turned a single step aside
from his path to propitiate or to crush the slanderers."
Zachary Macaulay was no mere man of action. It is difficult to
understand when it was that he had time to pick up his knowledge of
general literature; or how he made room for it in a mind so crammed
with facts and statistics relating to questions of the day that when
Wilberforce was at a loss for a piece of information he used to say,
"Let us look it out in Macaulay." His private papers, which are one long
register of unbroken toil, do nothing to clear up the problem. Highly
cultivated, however, he certainly was, and his society was in request
with many who cared little for the objects which to him were everything.
That he should have been esteemed and regarded by Lord Brougham, Francis
Homer, and Sir James Mackintosh, seems natural enough, but there is
something surprising in finding him in friendly and frequent
intercourse with some of his most distinguished French contemporaries.
Chateaubriand, Sismondi, the Duc de Broglie, Madame de Stael, and
Dumont, the interpreter of Bentham, corresponded with him freely in
their own language, which he wrote to admiration. The gratification that
his foreign acquaintance felt at the sight of his letters would have
been unalloyed but for the pamphlets and blue-books by which they were
too often accompanied. It is not difficult to imagine the feelings of a
Parisian on receiving two quarto volumes, with the postage only in part
pre-paid, containing the proceedings of a Committee on Apprenticeship in
the West Indies, and including the twelve or fifteen thousand questions
and answers on which the Report was founded. It would be hard to meet
with a more perfect sample of the national politeness than the passage
in which M. Dumont acknowledges one of the less formidable of these
unwelcome gifts. "Mon cher Ami,--Je ne laisserai pas partir Mr. Inglis
sans le charger de quelques lignes pour vous, afin de vous remercier du
Christian Observer que vous avez eu la bonte de m'envoyer. Vous savez
que j'ai a great taste for it; mais il faut vous avouer une triste
verite, c'est que je manque absolument de loisir pour le lire. Ne m'en
envoyez plus; car je me sens peine d'avoir sous les yeux de si bonnes
choses, dont je n'ai pas le temps de tue nourrir."
"In the year 1817," Lady Trevelyan writes, "my parents made a tour in
Scotland with your uncle. Brougham gave them a letter to Jeffrey, who
hospitably entertained them; but your uncle said that Jeffrey was not
at all at his ease, and was apparently so terrified at my father's
religious reputation that he seemed afraid to utter a joke. Your uncle
complained grievously that they travelled from manse to manse, and
always came in for very long prayers and expositions. [Macaulay writes
in his journal of August 8, 1859: "We passed my old acquaintance,
Dumbarton castle, I remembered my first visit to Dumbarton, and the old
minister, who insisted on our eating a bit of cake with him, and said
a grace over it which might have been prologue to a dinner of the
Fishmongers' Company, or the Grocers' Company."] I think, with all the
love and reverence with which your uncle regarded his father's memory,
there mingled a shade of bitterness that he had not met quite the
encouragement and appreciation from him which he received from others.
But such a son as he was! Never a disrespectful word or look; always
anxious to please and amuse; and at last he was the entire stay and
support of his father's declining years.
"Your uncle was of opinion that the course pursued by his father towards
him during his youth was not judicious. But here I am inclined to
disagree with him. There was no want of proof of the estimation in which
his father held him, corresponding with him from a very early age as
with a man, conversing with him freely, and writing of him most fondly.
But, in the desire to keep down any conceit, there was certainly in my
father a great outward show of repression and depreciation. Then
the faults of your uncle were peculiarly those that my father had no
patience with. Himself precise in his arrangements, writing a beautiful
hand, particular about neatness, very accurate and calm, detesting
strong expressions, and remarkably self-controlled; while his eager
impetuous boy, careless of his dress, always forgetting to wash his
hands and brush his hair, writing an execrable hand, and folding
his letters with a great blotch for a seal, was a constant care and
irritation. Many letters to your uncle have I read on these subjects.
Sometimes a specimen of the proper way of folding a letter is sent him,
(those were the sad days before envelopes were known,) and he is desired
to repeat the experiment till he succeeds. General Macaulay's fastidious
nature led him to take my father's line regarding your uncle, and my
youthful soul was often vexed by the constant reprimands for venial
transgressions. But the great sin was the idle reading, which was a
thorn in my father's side that never was extracted. In truth, he really
acknowledged to the full your uncle's abilities, and felt that if he
could only add his own morale, his unwearied industry, his power of
concentrating his energies on the work in hand, his patient painstaking
calmness, to the genius and fervour which his son possessed, then a
being might be formed who could regenerate the world. Often in later
years I have heard my father, after expressing an earnest desire for
some object, exclaim, 'If I had only Tom's power of speech!' But he
should have remembered that all gifts are not given to one, and that
perhaps such a union as he coveted is even impossible. Parents must
be content to see their children walk in their own path, too happy if
through any road they attain the same end, the living for the glory of
God and the good of man."
From a marvellously early date in Macaulay's life public affairs divided
his thoughts with literature, and, as he grew to manhood, began more and
more to divide his aspirations. His father's house was much used as a
centre of consultation by members of Parliament who lived in the suburbs
on the Surrey side of London; and the boy could hardly have heard more
incessant, and assuredly not more edifying, political talk if he had
been brought up in Downing Street. The future advocate and interpreter
of Whig principles was not reared in the Whig faith. Attached friends of
Pitt, who in personal conduct, and habits of life, certainly came nearer
to their standard than his great rival,--and warmly in favour of a war
which, to their imagination, never entirely lost its early character of
an internecine contest with atheism.--the Evangelicals in the House of
Commons for the most part acted with the Tories. But it may be doubted
whether, in the long run, their party would not have been better without
them. By the zeal, the munificence, the laborious activity, with which
they pursued their religious and semi-religious enterprises, they did
more to teach the world how to get rid of existing institutions than
by their votes and speeches at Westminster they contributed to preserve
them. [Macaulay, writing to one of his sisters in 1844, says: "I think
Stephen's article on the Clapham Sect the best thing he ever did, I do
not think with you that the Claphamites were men too obscure for such
delineation. The truth is that from that little knot of men emanated
all the Bible Societies, and almost all the Missionary Societies, in the
world. The whole organisation of the Evangelical party was their work.
The share which they had in providing means for the education of the
people was great. They were really the destroyers of the slave-trade,
and of slavery. Many of those whom Stephen describes were public men of
the greatest weight, Lord Teignmouth governed India in Calcutta, Grant
governed India in Leadenhall Street, Stephen's father was Perceval's
right-hand man in the House of Commons. It is needless to speak of
Wilberforce. As to Simeon, if you knew what his authority and influence
were, and how they extended from Cambridge to the most remote corners
of England, you would allow that his real sway in the Church was far
greater than that of any primate. Thornton, to my surprise, thinks the
passage about my father unfriendly. I defended Stephen. The truth is
that he asked my permission to draw a portrait of my father for the
Edinburgh Review. I told him that I had only to beg that he would not
give it the air of a puff; a thing which, for myself and for my friends,
I dread far more than any attack. My influence over the Review is so
well known that a mere eulogy of my father appearing in that work would
only call forth derision. I therefore am really glad that Stephen has
introduced into his sketch some little characteristic traits which, in
themselves, were not beauties."] With their May meetings, and African
Institutions, and Anti-slavery Reporters, and their subscriptions of
tens of thousands of pounds, and their petitions bristling with hundreds
of thousands of signatures, and all the machinery for informing opinion
and bringing it to bear on ministers and legislators which they did
so much to perfect and even to invent, they can be regarded as nothing
short of the pioneers and fuglemen of that system of popular agitation
which forms a leading feature in our internal history during the past
half-century. At an epoch when the Cabinet which they supported was
so averse to manifestations of political sentiment that a Reformer who
spoke his mind in England was seldom long out of prison, and in Scotland
ran a very serious risk of transportation, Toryism sat oddly enough on
men who spent their days in the committee-room and their evenings on the
platform, and each of whom belonged to more Associations combined for
the purpose of influencing Parliament than he could count on the fingers
of both his hands.
There was something incongruous in their position; and as time went
on they began to perceive the incongruity. They gradually learned that
measures dear to philanthropy might be expected to result from the
advent to power of their opponents; while their own chief too often
failed them at a pinch out of what appeared to them an excessive,
and humiliating, deference to interests powerfully represented on the
benches behind him. Their eyes were first opened by Pitt's change of
attitude with regard to the object that was next all their hearts. There
is something almost pathetic in the contrast between two entries in
Wilberforce's diary, of which the first has become classical, but the
second is not so generally known. In 1787, referring to the movement
against the slave-trade, he says: "Pitt recommended me to undertake its
conduct, as a subject suited to my character and talents. At length, I
well remember, after a conversation in the open air at the root of an
old tree at Holwood, just above the vale of Keston, I resolved to give
notice on a fit occasion in the House of Commons of my intention to
bring the subject forward." Twelve years later Mr. Henry Thornton had
brought in a bill for confining the trade within certain limits upon
the coast of Africa. "Upon the second reading of this bill," writes
Wilberforce, "Pitt coolly put off the debate when I had manifested a
design of answering P.'s speech, and so left misrepresentations without
a word. William Smith's anger;--Henry Thornton's coolness;--deep
impression on me, but conquered, I hope, in a Christian way."
Besides instructing their successors in the art of carrying on a popular
movement, Wilberforce and his followers had a lesson to teach, the value
of which not so many perhaps will be disposed to question. In public
life, as in private, they habitually had the fear of God before their
eyes. A mere handful as to number, and in average talent very much on
a level with the mass of their colleagues;--counting in their ranks no
orator, or minister, or boroughmonger;--they commanded the ear of the
House, and exerted on its proceedings an influence, the secret of which
those who have studied the Parliamentary history of the period find it
only too easy to understand. To refrain from gambling and ball-giving,
to go much to church and never to the theatre, was not more at variance
with the social customs of the day than it was the exception in the
political world to meet with men who looked to the facts of the case and
not to the wishes of the minister, and who before going into the lobby
required to be obliged with a reason instead of with a job. Confidence
and respect, and (what in the House of Commons is their unvarying
accompaniment) power, were gradually, and to a great extent
involuntarily, accorded to this group of members. They were not addicted
to crotchets, nor to the obtrusive and unseasonable assertion of
conscientious scruples. The occasions on which they made proof of
independence and impartiality were such as justified, and dignified,
their temporary renunciation of party ties. They interfered with
decisive effect in the debates on the great scandals of Lord Melville
and the Duke of York, and in more than one financial or commercial
controversy that deeply concerned the national interests, of which
the question of the retaining the Orders in Council was a conspicuous
instance. A boy who, like young Macaulay, was admitted to the intimacy
of politicians such as these, and was accustomed to hear matters of
state discussed exclusively from a public point of view without any
afterthought of ambition, or jealousy, or self-seeking, could hardly
fail to grow up a patriotic and disinterested man. "What is far better
and more important than all is this, that I believe Macaulay to be
incorruptible. You might lay ribbons, stars, garters, wealth, titles
before him in vain. He has an honest genuine love of his country, and
the world would not bribe him to neglect her interests." Thus said
Sydney Smith, who of all his real friends was the least inclined to
over-praise him.
The memory of Thornton and Babington, and the other worthies of their
day and set, is growing dim, and their names already mean little in our
ears. Part of their work was so thoroughly done that the world, as its
wont is, has long ago taken the credit of that work to itself. Others of
their undertakings, in weaker hands than theirs, seem out of date among
the ideas and beliefs which now are prevalent. At Clapham, as elsewhere,
the old order is changing, and not always in a direction which to them
would be acceptable or even tolerable. What was once the home of Zachary
Macaulay stands almost within the swing of the bell of a stately
and elegant Roman Catholic chapel; and the pleasant mansion of Lord
Teignmouth, the cradle of the Bible Society, is now a religious house of
the Redemptorist Order. But in one shape or another honest performance
always lives, and the gains that accrued from the labours of these
men are still on the right side of the national ledger. Among the most
permanent of those gains is their undoubted share in the improvement of
our political integrity by direct, and still more by indirect, example.
It would be ungrateful to forget in how large a measure it is due to
them that one, whose judgments upon the statesmen of many ages and
countries have been delivered to an audience vast beyond all precedent,
should have framed his decisions in accordance with the dictates of
honour and humanity, of ardent public spirit and lofty public virtue.