Macaulay goes to the University--His love for Trinity
College--His contemporaries at Cambridge--Charles Austin--
The Union Debating Society--University studies, successes,
and failures--The Mathematical Tripos--The Trinity
Fellowship--William the Third--Letters--Prize poems--
Peterloo--Novel-reading--The Queen's Trial--Macaulay's
feeling towards his mother--A Reading-party--Hoaxing an
editor--Macaulay takes pupils.
IN October 1818 Macaulay went into residence at Trinity College,
Cambridge. Mr. Henry Sykes Thornton, the eldest son of the member for
Southwark, was his companion throughout his university career. The
young men lived in the same lodgings, and began by reading with the same
tutor; a plan which promised well, because, in addition to what was his
own by right, each had the benefit of the period of instruction paid for
by the other. But two hours were much the same as one to Macaulay, in
whose eyes algebra and geometry were so much additional material for
lively and interminable argument. Thornton reluctantly broke through the
arrangement, and eventually stood highest among the Trinity wranglers
of his year; an elevation which he could hardly have attained if he had
pursued his studies in company with one who regarded every successive
mathematical proposition as an open question. A Parliamentary election
took place while the two friends were still quartered together in Jesus
Lane. A tumult in the neighbouring street announced that the citizens
were expressing their sentiments by the only channel which was open to
them before the days of Reform; and Macaulay, to whom any excitement of
a political nature was absolutely irresistible, dragged Thornton to
the scene of action, and found the mob breaking the windows of the Hoop
hotel, the head-quarters of the successful candidates. His ardour
was cooled by receiving a dead cat full in the face. The man who was
responsible for the animal came up and apologised very civilly, assuring
him that there was no town and gown feeling in the matter, and that the
cat had been meant for Mr. Adeane. "I wish," replied Macaulay, "that you
had meant it for me, and hit Mr. Adeane."
After no long while he removed within the walls of Trinity, and resided
first in the centre rooms of Bishop's Hostel, and subsequently in the
Old Court, between the Gate and the Chapel. The door, which once bore
his name, is on the ground floor, to the left hand as you face the
staircase. In more recent years, undergraduates who are accustomed to
be out after lawful hours have claimed a right of way through the window
which looks towards the town;--to the great annoyance of any occupant
who is too good-natured to refuse the accommodation to others, and too
steady to need it himself. This power of surreptitious entry had not
been discovered in Macaulay's days; and, indeed, he would have cared
very little for the privilege of spending his time outside walls which
contained within them as many books as even he could read, and more
friends than even he could talk to. Wanting nothing beyond what his
college had to give, he revelled in the possession of leisure and
liberty, in the almost complete command of his own time, in the power of
passing at choice from the most perfect solitude to the most agreeable
company. He keenly appreciated a society which cherishes all that is
genuine, and is only too out-spoken in its abhorrence of pretension and
display:--a society in which a man lives with those whom he likes,
and with those only; choosing his comrades for their own sake, and so
indifferent to the external distinctions of wealth and position that
no one who has entered fully into the spirit of college life can ever
unlearn its priceless lesson of manliness and simplicity.
Of all his places of sojourn during his joyous and shining pilgrimage
through the world, Trinity, and Trinity alone, had any share with his
home in Macaulay's affection and loyalty. To the last he regarded it as
an ancient Greek, or a mediaeval Italian, felt towards his native city.
As long as he had place and standing there, he never left it willingly
or returned to it without delight. The only step in his course about the
wisdom of which he sometimes expressed misgiving was his preference of
a London to a Cambridge life. The only dignity that in his later days he
was known to covet was an honorary fellowship, which would have allowed
him again to look through his window upon the college grass-plots,
and to sleep within sound of the splashing of the fountain; again to
breakfast on commons, and dine beneath the portraits of Newton and Bacon
on the dais of the hall; again to ramble by moonlight round Neville's
cloister, discoursing the picturesque but somewhat exoteric philosophy
which it pleased him to call by the name of metaphysics. From the door
of his rooms, along the wall of the Chapel, there runs a flagged pathway
which affords an acceptable relief from the rugged pebbles that surround
it. Here as a Bachelor of Arts he would walk, book in hand, morning
after morning throughout the long vacation, reading with the same
eagerness and the same rapidity whether the volume was the most abstruse
of treatises, the loftiest of poems, or the flimsiest of novels. That
was the spot where in his failing years he specially loved to renew
the feelings of the past; and some there are who can never revisit it
without the fancy that there, if anywhere, his dear shade must linger.
He was fortunate in his contemporaries. Among his intimate friends were
the two Coleridges--Derwent, the son, and Henry Nelson, who was destined
to be the son-in-law of the poet; and how exceptional that destiny was
the readers of Sara Coleridge's letters are now aware. Hyde Villiers,
whom an untimely death alone prevented from taking an equal place in
a trio of distinguished brothers, was of his year, though not of his
college. [Lord Clarendon, and his brothers, were all Johnians.] In the
year below were the young men who now bear the titles of Lord Grey, Lord
Belper, and Lord Romilly; [This paragraph was written in the summer of
1874. Three of Macaulay's old college friends, Lord Romilly, Moultrie,
and Charles Austin, died, in the hard winter that followed, within a few
days of each other.] and after the same interval came Moultrie, who in
his "Dream of Life," with a fidelity which he himself pronounced to have
been obtained at some sacrifice of grace, has told us how the heroes of
his time looked and lived, and Charles Villiers, who still delights our
generation by showing us how they talked. Then there was Praed, fresh
from editing the Etonian, as a product of collective boyish effort
unique in its literary excellence and variety; and Sidney Walker,
Praed's gifted school fellow, whose promise was blighted by premature
decay of powers; and Charles Austin, whose fame would now be more in
proportion to his extraordinary abilities, had not his unparalleled
success as an advocate tempted him before his day to retire from the
toils of a career of whose rewards he already had enough.
With his vigour and fervour, his depth of knowledge and breadth
of humour, his close reasoning illustrated by an expansive
imagination,--set off, as these gifts were, by the advantage, at that
period of life so irresistible, of some experience of the world at home
and abroad,--Austin was indeed a king among his fellows.
"Grave, sedate,
And (if the looks may indicate the age,)
Our senior some few years; no keener wit,
No intellect more subtle, none more bold,
Was found in all our host."
So writes Moultrie, and the testimony of his verse is borne out by
John Stuart Mill's prose. "The impression he gave was that of boundless
strength, together with talents which, combined with such apparent
force of will and character, seemed capable of dominating the world."
He certainly was the only man who ever succeeded in dominating Macaulay.
Brimming over with ideas that were soon to be known by the name of
Utilitarian, a panegyrist of American institutions, and an unsparing
assailant of ecclesiastical endowments and hereditary privileges, he
effectually cured the young undergraduate of his Tory opinions, which
were never more than skin deep, and brought him nearer to Radicalism
than he ever was before or since. The report of this conversion, of
which the most was made by ill-natured tale-bearers who met with more
encouragement than they deserved, created some consternation in the
family circle; while the reading set at Cambridge was duly scandalised
at the influence which one, whose classical attainments were rather
discursive than exact, had gained over a Craven scholar. To this hour
men may be found in remote parsonages who mildly resent the fascination
which Austin of Jesus exercised over Macaulay of Trinity. [It was at
this period of his career that Macaulay said to the late Mr. Hampden
Gurney: "Gurney, I have been a Tory, I am a Radical; _but I never will
be a Whig_."]
The day and the night together were too short for one who was entering
on the journey of life amidst such a band of travellers. So long as a
door was open, or a light burning, in any of the courts, Macaulay was
always in the mood for conversation and companionship. Unfailing in his
attendance at lecture and chapel, blameless with regard to college laws
and college discipline, it was well for his virtue that no curfew was in
force within the precincts of Trinity. He never tired of recalling the
days when he supped at midnight on milk-punch and roast turkey, drank
tea in floods at an hour when older men are intent upon anything rather
than on the means of keeping themselves awake, and made little of
sitting over the fire till the bell rang for morning chapel in order
to see a friend off by the early coach. In the license of the summer
vacation, after some prolonged and festive gathering, the whole party
would pour out into the moonlight, and ramble for mile after mile
through the country, till the noise of their wide-flowing talk mingled
with the twittering of the birds in the hedges which bordered the Coton
pathway or the Madingley road. On such occasions it must have been well
worth the loss of sleep to hear Macaulay plying Austin with sarcasms
upon the doctrine of the Greatest Happiness, which then had still some
gloss of novelty; putting into an ever-fresh shape the time-honoured
jokes against the Johnians for the benefit of the Villierses; and urging
an interminable debate on Wordsworth's merits as a poet, in which
the Coleridges, as in duty bound, were ever ready to engage. In this
particular field he acquired a skill of fence which rendered him the
most redoubtable of antagonists. Many years afterwards, at the time when
the Prelude was fresh from the press, he was maintaining against the
opinion of a large and mixed society that the poem was unreadable. At
last, overborne by the united indignation of so many of Wordsworth's
admirers, he agreed that the question should be referred to the test
of personal experience; and on inquiry it was discovered that the only
individual present who had got through the Prelude was Macaulay himself.
It is not only that the witnesses of these scenes unanimously declare
that they have never since heard such conversation in the most renowned
of social circles. The partiality of a generous young man for trusted
and admired companions may well colour his judgment over the space of
even half a century. But the estimate of university contemporaries
was abundantly confirmed by the outer world. While on a visit to Lord
Lansdowne at Bowood, years after they had left Cambridge, Austin and
Macaulay happened to get upon college topics one morning at breakfast.
When the meal was finished they drew their chairs to either end of the
chimney-piece, and talked at each other across the hearth-rug as if
they were in a first-floor room in the Old Court of Trinity. The whole
company, ladies, artists, politicians, and diners-out, formed a silent
circle round the two Cantabs, and, with a short break for lunch, never
stirred till the bell warned them that it was time to dress for dinner.
It has all irrevocably perished. With life before them, and each intent
on his own future, none among that troop of friends had the mind to play
Boswell to the others. One repartee survives, thrown off in the heat
of discussion, but exquisitely perfect in all its parts. Acknowledged
without dissent to be the best applied quotation that ever was made
within five miles of the Fitzwilliam Museum, it is unfortunately too
strictly classical for reproduction in these pages.
We are more easily consoled for the loss of the eloquence which then
flowed so full and free in the debates of the Cambridge Union. In 1820
that Society was emerging from a period of tribulation and repression.
The authorities of the university, who, as old constituents of Mr. Pitt
and warm supporters of Lord Liverpool, had never been very much
inclined to countenance the practice of political discussion among the
undergraduates, set their faces against it more than ever at an epoch
when the temper of the time increased the tendency of young men to run
into extremes of partisanship. At length a compromise was extorted from
the reluctant hands of the Vice-Chancellor, and the Club was allowed
to take into consideration public affairs of a date anterior to the
century. It required less ingenuity than the leaders of the Union had at
their command to hit upon a method of dealing with the present under the
guise of the past. Motions were framed that reflected upon the existing
Government under cover of a censure on the Cabinets of the previous
generation. Resolutions which called upon the meeting to declare that
the boon of Catholic Emancipation should have been granted in the year
1795, or that our Commercial Policy previous to 1800 should have been
founded on the basis of Free Trade, were clearly susceptible of great
latitude of treatment. And, again, in its character of a reading club,
the Society, when assembled for the conduct of private business, was
at liberty to review the political creed of the journals of the day in
order to decide which of them it should take in, and which it should
discontinue. The Examiner newspaper was the flag of many a hard-fought
battle; the Morning Chronicle was voted in and out of the rooms
half-a-dozen times within a single twelvemonth; while a series of
impassioned speeches on the burning question of interference in behalf
of Greek Independence were occasioned by a proposition of Malden's "that
'e Ellenike salpigks' do lie upon the table."
At the close of the debates, which were held in a large room at the back
of the Red Lion in Petty Cury, the most prominent members met for supper
in the Hotel, or at Moultrie's lodgings, which were situated close at
hand. They acted as a self-appointed Standing Committee, which watched
over the general interests of the Union, and selected candidates whom
they put in nomination for its offices. The Society did not boast a
Hansard;--an omission which, as time went on, some among its orators had
no reason to regret. Faint recollections still survive of a discussion
upon the august topic of the character of George the Third. "To whom
do we owe it," asked Macaulay, "that while Europe was convulsed with
anarchy and desolated with war, England alone remained tranquil,
prosperous, and secure? To whom but the Good Old King? Why was it that,
when neighbouring capitals were perishing in the flames, our own was
illuminated only for triumphs? [This debate evidently made some noise in
the university world. There is an allusion to it in a squib of Praed's,
very finished and elegant, and beyond all doubt contemporary. The
passage relating to Macaulay begins with the lines--"Then the favourite
comes with his trumpets and drums, And his arms and his metaphors
crossed."] You may find the cause in the same three words: the Good Old
King." Praed, on the other hand, would allow his late monarch neither
public merits nor private virtues. "A good man! If he had been a plain
country gentleman with no wider opportunities for mischief, he would at
least have bullied his footmen and cheated his steward."
Macaulay's intense enjoyment of all that was stirring and vivid around
him undoubtedly hindered him in the race for university honours; though
his success was sufficient to inspirit him at the time, and to give him
abiding pleasure in the retrospect. He twice gained the Chancellor's
medal for English verse, with poems admirably planned, and containing
passages of real beauty, but which may not be republished in the teeth
of the panegyric which, within ten years after they were written, he
pronounced upon Sir Roger Newdigate. Sir Roger had laid down the rule
that no exercise sent in for the prize which he established at Oxford
was to exceed fifty lines. This law, says Macaulay, seems to have more
foundation in reason than is generally the case with a literary canon,
"for the world, we believe, is pretty well agreed in thinking that the
shorter a prize poem is, the better."
Trinity men find it difficult to understand how it was that he missed
getting one of the three silver goblets given for the best English
Declamations of the year. If there is one thing which all Macaulay's
friends, and all his enemies, admit, it is that he could declaim
English. His own version of the affair was that the Senior Dean, a
relative of the victorious candidate, sent for him and said: "Mr.
Macaulay, as you have not got the first cup, I do not suppose that you
will care for either of the others." He was consoled, however, by the
prize for Latin Declamation; and in 1821 he established his classical
repute by winning a Craven University scholarship in company with his
friend Malden, and Mr. George Long, who preceded Malden as Professor of
Greek at University College, London.
Macaulay detested the labour of manufacturing Greek and Latin verse in
cold blood as an exercise; and his Hexameters were never up to the best
Etonian mark, nor his Iambics to the highest standard of Shrewsbury. He
defined a scholar as one who reads Plato with his feet on the fender.
When already well on in his third year he writes: "I never practised
composition a single hour since I have been at Cambridge." "Soak your
mind with Cicero," was his constant advice to students at that time of
life when writing Latin prose is the most lucrative of accomplishments.
The advantage of this precept was proved in the Fellowship examination
of the year 1824, when he obtained the honour which in his eyes was the
most desirable that Cambridge had to give. The delight of the young man
at finding himself one of the sixty masters of an ancient and splendid
establishment; the pride with which he signed his first order for the
college plate, and dined for the first time at the high table in his
own right; the reflection that these privileges were the fruit, not
of favour or inheritance, but of personal industry and ability,--were
matters on which he loved to dwell long after the world had loaded
him with its most envied prizes. Macaulay's feeling on this point is
illustrated by the curious reverence which he cherished for those
junior members of the college who, some ninety years ago, by a spirited
remonstrance addressed to the governing body, brought about a reform in
the Trinity Fellowship examination that secured to it the character for
fair play, and efficiency, which it has ever since enjoyed. In his copy
of the Cambridge Calendar for the year 1859, (the last of his life,)
throughout the list of the old mathematical Triposes the words "one of
the eight" appear in his hand-writing opposite the name of each of these
gentlemen. And I can never remember the time when it was not diligently
impressed upon me that, if I minded my syntax, I might eventually hope
to reach a position which would give me three hundred pounds a year, a
stable for my horse, six dozen of audit ale every Christmas, a loaf and
two pats of butter every morning, and a good dinner for nothing, with as
many almonds and raisins as I could eat at dessert.
Macaulay was not chosen a Fellow until his last trial, nominally for
the amazing reason that his translations from Greek and Latin, while
faithfully representing the originals, were rendered into English that
was ungracefully bald and inornate. The real cause was, beyond all
doubt, his utter neglect of the special study of the place; a liberty
which Cambridge seldom allows to be taken with impunity even by her most
favoured sons. He used to profess deep and lasting regret for his early
repugnance to scientific subjects; but the fervour of his penitence in
after years was far surpassed by the heartiness with which he inveighed
against mathematics as long as it was his business to learn them.
Everyone who knows the Senate House may anticipate the result. When the
Tripos of 1822 made its appearance, his name did not grace the list. In
short, to use the expressive vocabulary of the university, Macaulay was
gulfed--a mishap which disabled him from contending for the Chancellor's
medals, then the crowning trophies of a classical career. "I well
remember," says Lady Trevelyan, "that first trial of my life. We were
spending the winter at Brighton when a letter came giving an account of
the event. I recollect my mother taking me into her room to tell me, for
even then it was known how my whole heart was wrapped up in him, and
it was thought necessary to break the news. When your uncle arrived at
Brighton, I can recall my mother telling him that he had better go at
once to his father, and get it over, and I can see him as he left the
room on that errand."
During the same year he engaged in a less arduous competition. A certain
Mr. Greaves of Fulbourn had long since provided a reward of ten pounds
for "the Junior Bachelor of Trinity College who wrote the best essay on
the Conduct and Character of William the Third." As the prize is annual,
it is appalling to reflect upon the searching analysis to which the
motives of that monarch must by this time have been subjected. The
event, however, may be counted as an encouragement to the founders
of endowments; for, amidst the succession of juvenile critics whose
attention was by his munificence turned in the direction of his
favourite hero, Mr. Greaves had at last fallen in with the right man. It
is more than probable that to this old Cambridgeshire Whig was due the
first idea of that History in whose pages William of Orange stands as
the central figure. The essay is still in existence, in a close
neat hand, which twenty years of Reviewing never rendered illegible.
Originally written as a fair copy, but so disfigured by repeated
corrections and additions as to be unfit for the eyes of the college
authorities, it bears evident marks of having been held to the flames,
and rescued on second, and in this case it will be allowed, on better
thoughts. The exercise, (which is headed by the very appropriate motto,
"Primus qui legibus urbem
Fundabit, Curibus parvis et paupere terra
Missus in imperium magnum,")
is just such as will very likely be produced in the course of next
Easter term by some young man of judgment and spirit, who knows
his Macaulay by heart, and will paraphrase him without scruple. The
characters of James, of Shaftesbury, of William himself; the Popish
plot; the struggle over the Exclusion bill; the reaction from Puritanic
rigour into the license of the Restoration, are drawn on the same lines
and painted in the same colours as those with which the world is now
familiar. The style only wants condensation, and a little of the humour
which he had not yet learned to transfer from his conversation to his
writings, in order to be worthy of his mature powers. He thus describes
William's lifelong enemy and rival, whose name he already spells after
his own fashion.
"Lewis was not a great general. He was not a great legislator. But he
was, in one sense of the words, a great king. He was a perfect master of
all the mysteries of the science of royalty,--of all the arts which at
once extend power and conciliate popularity,--which most advantageously
display the merits, or most dexterously conceal the deficiencies, of a
sovereign. He was surrounded by great men, by victorious commanders,
by sagacious statesmen. Yet, while he availed himself to the utmost of
their services, he never incurred any danger from their rivalry. His was
a talisman which extorted the obedience of the proudest and mightiest
spirits. The haughty and turbulent warriors whose contests had agitated
France during his minority yielded to the irresistible spell, and,
like the gigantic slaves of the ring and lamp of Aladdin, laboured to
decorate and aggrandise a master whom they could have crushed. With
incomparable address he appropriated to himself the glory of campaigns
which had been planned, and counsels which had been suggested, by
others. The arms of Turenne were the terror of Europe. The policy of
Colbert was the strength of France. But in their foreign successes, and
their internal prosperity, the people saw only the greatness and wisdom
of Lewis."
In the second chapter of the History much of this is compressed into the
sentence: "He had shown, in an eminent degree, two talents invaluable to
a prince,--the talent of choosing his servants well, and the talent of
appropriating to himself the chief part of the credit of their acts."
In a passage that occurs towards the close of the essay may be traced
something more than an outline of the peroration in which, a quarter
of a century later on, he summed up the character and results of the
Revolution of 1688.
"To have been a sovereign, yet the champion of liberty; a revolutionary
leader, yet the supporter of social order, is the peculiar glory of
William. He knew where to pause. He outraged no national prejudice. He
abolished no ancient form. He altered no venerable name. He saw that the
existing institutions possessed the greatest capabilities of excellence,
and that stronger sanctions, and clearer definitions, were alone
required to make the practice of the British constitution as admirable
as the theory. Thus he imparted to innovation the dignity and
stability of antiquity. He transferred to a happier order of things the
associations which had attached the people to their former government.
As the Roman warrior, before he assaulted Veii, invoked its guardian
gods to leave its walls, and to accept the worship and patronise the
cause of the besiegers, this great prince, in attacking a system of
oppression, summoned to his aid the venerable principles and deeply
seated feelings to which that system was indebted for protection."
A letter, written during the latter years of his life, expresses
Macaulay's general views on the subject of University honours. "If a man
brings away from Cambridge self-knowledge, accuracy of mind, and habits
of strong intellectual exertion, he has gained more than if he had made
a display of showy superficial Etonian scholarship, got three or four
Browne's medals, and gone forth into the world a schoolboy and doomed to
be a schoolboy to the last. After all, what a man does at Cambridge is,
in itself, nothing. If he makes a poor figure in life, his having
been Senior Wrangler or University scholar is never mentioned but with
derision. If he makes a distinguished figure, his early honours merge in
those of a later date. I hope that I do not overrate my own place in the
estimation of society. Such as it is, I would not give a halfpenny to
add to the consideration which I enjoy, all the consideration that I
should derive from having been Senior Wrangler. But I often regret, and
even acutely, my want of a Senior Wrangler's knowledge of physics and
mathematics; and I regret still more some habits of mind which a Senior
Wrangler is pretty certain to possess." Like all men who know what the
world is, he regarded the triumph of a college career as of less value
than its disappointments. Those are most to be envied who soonest learn
to expect nothing for which they have not worked hard, and who never
acquire the habit, (a habit which an unbroken course of University
successes too surely breeds,) of pitying themselves overmuch if ever in
after life they happen to work in vain.
Cambridge: Wednesday. (Post-mark, 1818)
My dear Mother,--King, I am absolutely certain, would take no more
pupils on any account. And, even if he would, he has numerous applicants
with prior claims. He has already six, who occupy him six hours in the
day, and is likewise lecturer to the college. It would, however, be
very easy to obtain an excellent tutor. Lefevre and Malkin are men
of first-rate mathematical abilities, and both of our college. I can
scarcely bear to write on Mathematics or Mathematicians. Oh for words to
express my abomination of that science, if a name sacred to the useful
and embellishing arts may be applied to the perception and recollection
of certain properties in numbers and figures! Oh that I had to learn
astrology, or demonology, or school divinity! Oh that I were to pore
over Thomas Aquinas, and to adjust the relation of Entity with the
two Predicaments, so that I were exempted from this miserable study!
"Discipline" of the mind! Say rather starvation, confinement, torture,
annihilation! But it must be. I feel myself becoming a personification
of Algebra, a living trigonometrical canon, a walking table of
Logarithms. All my perceptions of elegance and beauty gone, or at least
going. By the end of the term my brain will be "as dry as the remainder
biscuit after a voyage." Oh to change Cam for Isis! But such is my
destiny; and, since it is so, be the pursuit contemptible, below
contempt, or disgusting beyond abhorrence, I shall aim at no second
place. But three years! I cannot endure the thought. I cannot bear
to contemplate what I must have to undergo. Farewell then Homer and
Sophocles and Cicero.
Farewell happy fields
Where joy for ever reigns
Hail, horrors, hail, Infernal world!
How does it proceed? Milton's descriptions have been driven out of my
head by such elegant expressions as the following
[Long mathematical formula]
My classics must be Woodhouse, and my amusements summing an infinite
series. Farewell, and tell Selina and Jane to be thankful that it is
not a necessary part of female education to get a headache daily without
acquiring one practical truth or beautiful image in return. Again, and
with affectionate love to my Father, farewell wishes your most miserable
and mathematical son
T.B. MACAULAY.
Cambridge: November 9, 1818.
My dear Father,--Your letter, which I read with the greatest pleasure,
is perfectly safe from all persons who could make a bad use of it. The
Emperor Alexander's plans as detailed in the conversation between him
and Clarkson [Thomas Clarkson, the famous assailant of slavery.]
are almost superhuman; and tower as much above the common hopes and
aspirations of philanthropists as the statue which his Macedonian
namesake proposed to hew out of Mount Athos excelled the most colossal
works of meaner projectors. As Burke said of Henry the Fourth's
wish that every peasant in France might have the chicken in his pot
comfortably on a Sunday, we may say of these mighty plans, "The mere
wish, the unfulfilled desire, exceeded all that we hear of the splendid
professions and exploits of princes." Yet my satisfaction in the success
of that noble cause in which the Emperor seems to be exerting himself
with so much zeal is scarcely so great as my regret for the man who
would have traced every step of its progress with anxiety, and hailed
its success with the most ardent delight. Poor Sir Samuel Romilly!
Quando ullum invenient parem? How long may a penal code at once too
sanguinary and too lenient, half written in blood like Draco's, and
half undefined and loose as the common law of a tribe of savages, be the
curse and disgrace of the country? How many years may elapse before a
man who knows like him all that law can teach, and possesses at the same
time like him a liberality and a discernment of general rights which
the technicalities of professional learning rather tend to blunt, shall
again rise to ornament and reform our jurisprudence? For such a man, if
he had fallen in the maturity of years and honours, and been borne from
the bed of sickness to a grave by the side of his prototype Hale amidst
the tears of nobles and senators, even then, I think, the public sorrow
would have been extreme. But that the last moments of an existence of
high thoughts and great virtues should have been passed as his were
passed! In my feelings the scene at Claremont [The death of Princess
Charlotte.] this time last year was mere dust in the balance in
comparison.
Ever your affectionate son,
T. B. M.
Cambridge: Friday, February 5, 1819.
My dear Father,--I have not of course had time to examine with attention
all your criticisms on Pompeii. [The subject of the English poem for the
Chancellor's prize of 1819 was the Destruction of Pompeii.] I certainly
am much obliged to you for withdrawing so much time from more important
business to correct my effusions. Most of the remarks which I have
examined are perfectly just; but as to the more momentous charge, the
want of a moral, I think it might be a sufficient defence that, if a
subject is given which admits of none, the man who writes without a
moral is scarcely censurable. But is it the real fact that no literary
employment is estimable or laudable which does not lead to the spread
of moral truth or the excitement of virtuous feeling? Books of amusement
tend to polish the mind, to improve the style, to give variety to
conversation, and to lend a grace to more important accomplishments. He
who can effect this has surely done something. Is no useful end served
by that writer whose works have soothed weeks of languor and sickness,
have relieved the mind exhausted from the pressure of employment by an
amusement which delights without enervating, which relaxes the tension
of the powers without rendering them unfit for future exercise? I should
not be surprised to see these observations refuted; and I shall not be
sorry if they are so. I feel personally little interest in the question.
If my life be a life of literature, it shall certainly be one of
literature directed to moral ends.
At all events let us be consistent. I was amused in turning over an old
volume of the Christian Observer to find a gentleman signing himself
Excubitor, (one of our antagonists in the question of novel-reading,)
after a very pious argument on the hostility of novels to a religious
frame of mind, proceeding to observe that he was shocked to hear a
young lady who had displayed extraordinary knowledge of modern ephemeral
literature own herself ignorant of Dryden's fables! Consistency with
a vengeance! The reading of modern poetry and novels excites a worldly
disposition and prevents ladies from reading Dryden's fables! There is a
general disposition among the more literary part of the religious world
to cry down the elegant literature of our own times, while they are
not in the slightest degree shocked at atrocious profaneness or gross
indelicacy when a hundred years have stamped them with the title
of classical. I say: "If you read Dryden you can have no reasonable
objection to reading Scott." The strict antagonist of ephemeral reading
exclaims, "Not so. Scott's poems are very pernicious. They call away the
mind from spiritual religion, and from Tancred and Sigismunda." But I
am exceeding all ordinary limits. If these hasty remarks fatigue you,
impute it to my desire of justifying myself from a charge which I should
be sorry to incur with justice. Love to all at home.
Affectionately yours,
T. B. M.
With or without a moral, the poem carried the day. The subject for the
next year was Waterloo. The opening lines of Macaulay's exercise
were pretty and simple enough to ruin his chance in an academical
competition.
It was the Sabbath morn. How calm and fair
Is the blest dawning of the day of prayer!
Who hath not felt how fancy's mystic power
With holier beauty decks that solemn hour;
A softer lustre in its sunshine sees;
And hears a softer music in its breeze?
Who hath not dreamed that even the skylark's throat
Hails that sweet morning with a gentler note?
Fair morn, how gaily shone thy dawning smile
On the green valleys of my native isle!
How gladly many a spire's resounding height
With peals of transport hailed thy newborn light!
Ah! little thought the peasant then, who blest
The peaceful hour of consecrated rest,
And heard the rustic Temple's arch prolong
The simple cadence of the hallowed song,
That the same sun illumed a gory field,
Where wilder song and sterner music pealed;
Where many a yell unholy rent the air,
And many a hand was raised,--but not in prayer.
The prize fell to a man of another college, and Trinity comforted itself
by inventing a story to the effect that the successful candidate had run
away from the battle.
In the summer of 1819 there took place a military affair, less
attractive than Waterloo as a theme for poets, but which, as far as this
country is concerned, has proved even more momentous in its ultimate
consequences. On the 16th of August a Reform demonstration was arranged
at Manchester resembling those which were common in the Northern
districts during the year 1866, except that in 1819 women formed an
important element in the procession. A troop of yeomanry, and afterwards
two squadrons of hussars, were sent in among the crowd, which was
assembled in St. Peter's Fields, the site on which the Free Trade Hall
now stands. The men used their swords freely, and the horses their
hoofs. The people, who meant anything but fighting, trampled each other
down in the attempt to escape. Five or six lives were lost, and fifty or
sixty persons were badly hurt; but the painful impression wrought upon
the national conscience was well worth the price. British blood has
never since been shed by British hands in any civic contest that rose
above the level of a lawless riot. The immediate result, however, was
to concentrate and embitter party feeling. The grand jury threw out
the bills against the yeomen, and found true bills against the popular
orators who had called the meeting together. The Common Councilmen of
the City of London, who had presented an Address to the Prince Regent
reflecting upon the conduct of the Government, were roundly rebuked
for their pains. Earl Fitzwilliam was dismissed from the office of Lord
Lieutenant, for taking part in a Yorkshire county gathering which had
passed resolutions in the same sense as the Address from the City. On
the other hand, a Peterloo medal was struck, which is still treasured
in such Manchester families as have not learned to be ashamed of the old
Manchester politics.
In this heated state of the political atmosphere the expiring Toryism
of the Anti-Slavery leaders flamed up once again. "I declare," said
Wilberforce, "my greatest cause of difference with the democrats is
their laying, and causing people to lay, so great a stress on the
concerns of this world as to occupy their whole minds and hearts, and
to leave a few scanty and lukewarm thoughts for the heavenly treasure."
Zachary Macaulay, who never canted, and who knew that on the 16th of
August the Manchester Magistrates were thinking just as much or as
little about religion as the Manchester populace, none the less took
the same side as Wilberforce. Having formed for himself, by observations
made on the spot, a decided opinion that the authorities ought to be
supported, he was much disturbed by reports which came to him from
Cambridge.
September, 1819.
My dear Father,--My mother's letter, which has just arrived, has given
me much concern. The letter which has, I am sorry to learn, given you
and her uneasiness was written rapidly and thoughtlessly enough, but can
scarcely, I think, as far as I remember its tenour, justify some of the
extraordinary inferences which it has occasioned. I can only assure you
most solemnly that I am not initiated into any democratical societies
here, and that I know no people who make politics a common or frequent
topic of conversation, except one man who is a determined Tory. It is
true that this Manchester business has roused some indignation here, as
at other places, and drawn philippics against the powers that be from
lips which I never heard opened before but to speak on university
contests or university scandal. For myself I have long made it a rule
never to talk on politics except in the most general manner; and I
believe that my most intimate associates have no idea of my opinions
on the questions of party. I can scarcely be censured, I think, for
imparting them to you;--which, however, I should scarcely have thought
of doing, (so much is my mind occupied with other concerns,) had
not your letter invited me to state my sentiments on the Manchester
business.
I hope that this explanation will remove some of your uneasiness. As
to my opinions, I have no particular desire to vindicate them. They are
merely speculative, and therefore cannot partake of the nature of moral
culpability. They are early formed, and I am not solicitous that you
should think them superior to those of most people at eighteen. I will,
however, say this in their defence. Whatever the affectionate alarm of
my dear mother may lead her to apprehend, I am not one of the "sons of
anarchy and confusion" with whom she classes me. My opinions, good or
bad, were learnt, not from Hunt and Waithman, but from Cicero, from
Tacitus, and from Milton. They are the opinions which have produced
men who have ornamented the world, and redeemed human nature from the
degradation of ages of superstition and slavery. I may be wrong as to
the facts of what occurred at Manchester; but, if they be what I have
seen them stated, I can never repent speaking of them with indignation.
When I cease to feel the injuries of others warmly, to detest wanton
cruelty, and to feel my soul rise against oppression, I shall think
myself unworthy to be your son.
I could say a great deal more. Above all I might, I think, ask, with
some reason, why a few democratical sentences in a letter, a private
letter, of a collegian of eighteen, should be thought so alarming an
indication of character, when Brougham and other people, who at an age
which ought to have sobered them talk with much more violence, are
not thought particularly ill of? But I have so little room left that I
abstain, and will only add thus much. Were my opinions as decisive as
they are fluctuating, and were the elevation of a Cromwell or the renown
of a Hampden the certain reward of my standing forth in the democratic
cause, I would rather have my lips sealed on the subject than give my
mother or you one hour of uneasiness. There are not so many people in
the world who love me that I can afford to pain them for any object of
ambition which it contains. If this assurance be not sufficient, clothe
it in what language you please, and believe me to express myself in
those words which you think the strongest and most solemn. Affectionate
love to my mother and sisters. Farewell.
T. B. M.
Cambridge: January 5, 1820.
My dear Father,--Nothing that gives you disquietude can give me
amusement. Otherwise I should have been excessively diverted by the
dialogue which you have reported with so much vivacity; the accusation;
the predictions; and the elegant agnomen of "the novel-reader" for which
I am indebted to this incognito. I went in some amazement to Malden,
Romilly, and Barlow. Their acquaintance comprehends, I will venture to
say, almost every man worth knowing in the university in every field of
study. They had never heard the appellation applied to me by any man.
Their intimacy with me would of course prevent any person from speaking
to them on the subject in an insulting manner; for it is not usual here,
whatever your unknown informant may do, for a gentleman who does not
wish to be kicked downstairs to reply to a man who mentions another as
his particular friend, "Do you mean the blackguard or the novel-reader?"
But I am fully convinced that had the charge prevailed to any extent it
must have reached the ears of one of those whom I interrogated. At all
events I have the consolation of not being thought a novel-reader by
three or four who are entitled to judge upon the subject, and whether
their opinion be of equal value with that of this John-a-Nokes against
whom I have to plead I leave you to decide.
But stronger evidence, it seems, is behind. This gentleman was in
company with me. Alas that I should never have found out how accurate
an observer was measuring my sentiments, numbering the novels which I
criticised, and speculating on the probability of my being plucked. "I
was familiar with all the novels whose names he had ever heard." If so
frightful an accusation did not stun me at once, I might perhaps hint
at the possibility that this was to be attributed almost as much to
the narrowness of his reading on this subject as to the extent of mine.
There are men here who are mere mathematical blocks; who plod on their
eight hours a day to the honours of the Senate House; who leave the
groves which witnessed the musings of Milton, of Bacon, and of Gray,
without one liberal idea or elegant image, and carry with them into the
world minds contracted by unmingled attention to one part of science,
and memories stored only with technicalities. How often have I seen
such men go forth into society for people to stare at them, and ask each
other how it comes that beings so stupid in conversation, so uninformed
on every subject of history, of letters, and of taste, could gain such
distinction at Cambridge!
It is in such circles, which, I am happy to say, I hardly know but by
report, that knowledge of modern literature is called novel-reading; a
commodious name, invented by ignorance and applied by envy, in the same
manner as men without learning call a scholar a pedant, and men without
principle call a Christian a Methodist. To me the attacks of such men
are valuable as compliments. The man whose friend tells him that he is
known to be extensively acquainted with elegant literature may suspect
that he is flattering him; but he may feel real and secure satisfaction
when some Johnian sneers at him for a novel-reader. [My uncle was fond
of telling us how he would walk miles out of Cambridge in order to meet
the coach which brought the last new Waverley novel.]
As to the question whether or not I am wasting time, I shall leave that
for time to answer. I cannot afford to sacrifice a day every week in
defence and explanation as to my habits of reading. I value, most deeply
value, that solicitude which arises from your affection for me; but
let it not debar me from justice and candour. Believe me ever, my dear
Father,
Your most affectionate son,
T. B. M.
The father and son were in sympathy upon what, at this distance of time,
appears as the least inviting article of the Whig creed. They were both
partisans of the Queen. Zachary Macaulay was inclined in her favour by
sentiments alike of friendship, and of the most pardonable resentment.
Brougham, her illustrious advocate, had for ten years been the main hope
and stay of the movement against Slavery and the Slave Trade; while the
John Bull, whose special mission it was to write her down, honoured the
Abolitionist party with its declared animosity. However full its columns
might be of libels upon the honour of the wives and daughters of Whig
statesmen, it could always find room for calumnies against Mr. Macaulay
which in ingenuity of fabrication, and in cruelty of intention,
were conspicuous even among the contents of the most discreditable
publication that ever issued from the London press. When Queen Caroline
landed from the Continent in June 1820 the young Trinity undergraduate
greeted her Majesty with a complimentary ode, which certainly little
resembled those effusions that, in the old courtly days, an University
was accustomed to lay at the feet of its Sovereign. The piece has no
literary value, and is curious only as reflecting the passion of the
hour. The first and last stanzas run as follows:--
Let mirth on every visage shine
And glow in every soul.
Bring forth, bring forth, the oldest wine,
And crown the largest bowl.
Bear to her home, while banners fly
From each resounding steeple,
And rockets sparkle in the sky,
The Daughter of the People.
E'en here, for one triumphant day,
Let want and woe be dumb,
And bonfires blaze, and schoolboys play.
Thank Heaven, our Queen is come.
* * * *
Though tyrant hatred still denies
Each right that fits thy station,
To thee a people's love supplies
A nobler coronation;
A coronation all unknown
To Europe's royal vermin;
For England's heart shall be thy throne,
And purity thine ermine;
Thy Proclamation our applause,
Applause denied to some;
Thy crown our love; thy shield our laws.
Thank Heaven, our Queen is come!
Early in November, warned by growing excitement outside the House of
Lords, and by dwindling majorities within, Lord Liverpool announced
that the King's Ministers had come to the determination not to proceed
further with the Bill of Pains and Penalties. The joy which this
declaration spread through the country has been described as "beyond the
scope of record."
Cambridge: November 13, 1820.
My dear Father,--All here is ecstasy. "Thank God, the country is saved,"
were my first words when I caught a glimpse of the papers of Friday
night. "Thank God, the country is saved," is written on every face and
echoed by every voice. Even the symptoms of popular violence, three days
ago so terrific, are now displayed with good humour and received with
cheerfulness. Instead of curses on the Lords, on every post and every
wall is written, "All is as it should be;" "Justice done at last;" and
similar mottoes expressive of the sudden turn of public feeling. How the
case may stand in London I do not know; but here the public danger,
like all dangers which depend merely on human opinions and feelings,
has disappeared from our sight almost in the twinkling of an eye. I hope
that the result of these changes may be the secure reestablishment
of our commerce, which I suppose political apprehension must have
contributed to depress. I hope, at least, that there is no danger to our
own fortunes of the kind at which you seem to hint. Be assured however,
my dear Father, that, be our circumstances what they may, I feel firmly
prepared to encounter the worst with fortitude, and to do my utmost to
retrieve it by exertion. The best inheritance you have already secured
to me,--an unblemished name and a good education. And for the
rest, whatever calamities befall us, I would not, to speak without
affectation, exchange adversity consoled, as with us it must ever be,
by mutual affection and domestic happiness, for anything which can be
possessed by those who are destitute of the kindness of parents and
sisters like mine. But I think, on referring to your letter, that I
insist too much upon the signification of a few words. I hope so, and
trust that everything will go well. But it is chapel time, and I must
conclude.
Ever most affectionately yours,
T.B. MACAULAY.
Trin. Coll.: March 25, 1821.
My dear Mother,--I entreat you to entertain no apprehensions about my
health. My fever, cough, and sore-throat have all disappeared for the
last four days. Many thanks for your intelligence about poor dear John's
recovery, which has much exhilarated me. Yet I do not know whether
illness to him is not rather a prerogative than an evil. I am sure that
it is well worth while being sick to be nursed by a mother. There is
nothing which I remember with such pleasure as the time when you nursed
me at Aspenden. The other night, when I lay on my sofa very ill and
hypochondriac, I was thinking over that time. How sick, and sleepless,
and weak I was, lying in bed, when I was told that you were come! How
well I remember with what an ecstasy of joy I saw that face approaching
me, in the middle of people that did not care if I died that night
except for the trouble of burying me! The sound of your voice, the touch
of your hand, are present to me now, and will be, I trust in God, to
my last hour. The very thought of these things invigorated me the other
day; and I almost blessed the sickness and low spirits which brought
before me associated images of a tenderness and an affection, which,
however imperfectly repaid, are deeply remembered. Such scenes and such
recollections are the bright half of human nature and human destiny. All
objects of ambition, all rewards of talent, sink into nothing
compared with that affection which is independent of good or adverse
circumstances, excepting that it is never so ardent, so delicate, or so
tender as in the hour of languor or distress. But I must stop. I had no
intention of pouring out on paper what I am much more used to think than
to express. Farewell, my dear Mother.
Ever yours affectionately,
T.B. MACAULAY.
Macaulay liked Cambridge too well to spend the long vacation elsewhere
except under strong compulsion; but in 1821, with the terrors of the
Mathematical Tripos already close at hand, he was persuaded into joining
a reading party in Wales with a Mr. Bird as tutor. Eardley Childers, the
father of the statesman of that name, has preserved a pleasant little
memorial of the expedition.
To Charles Smith Bird, Eardley Childers, Thos. B. Macaulay, William
Clayton Walters, Geo. B. Paley, Robert Jarratt, Thos. Jarratt, Edwin
Kempson, Ebenezer Ware, Wm. Cornwall, John Greenwood, J. Lloyd, and Jno.
Wm. Gleadall, Esquires.
Gentlemen,--We the undersigned, for ourselves and the inhabitants in
general of the town of Llanrwst in the county of Denbigh, consider it
our duty to express to you the high sense we entertain of your general
good conduct and demeanour during your residence here, and we assure
you that we view with much regret the period of your separation and
departure from amongst us. We are very sensible of the obligation we
are under for your uniformly benevolent and charitable exertions
upon several public occasions, and we feel peculiar pleasure in thus
tendering to you individually our gratitude and thanks.
Wishing you all possible prosperity and happiness in your future
avocations, we subscribe ourselves with unfeigned respect, Gentlemen,
Your most obedient servants,
REV. JOHN TILTEY,
&c., &c.
(25 signatures.)
In one respect Macaulay hardly deserved his share of this eulogium. A
scheme was on foot in the town to found an auxiliary branch of the Bible
Society. A public meeting was called, and Mr. Bird urged his eloquent
pupil to aid the project with a specimen of Union rhetoric. Macaulay,
however, had had enough of the Bible Society at Clapham, and sturdily
refused to come forward as its champion at Llanrwst.
Llanrwst: July--, 1821.
My dear Mother,--You see I know not how to date my letter. My calendar
in this sequestered spot is as irregular as Robinson Crusoe's after he
had missed one day in his calculation. I have no intelligence to send
you, unless a battle between a drunken attorney and an impudent publican
which took place here yesterday may deserve the appellation. You may
perhaps be more interested to hear that I sprained my foot, and am just
recovering from the effects of the accident by means of opodeldoc which
I bought at the tinker's. For all trades and professions here lie in a
most delightful confusion. The druggist sells hats; the shoemaker is the
sole bookseller, if that dignity may be allowed him on the strength of
the three Welsh Bibles, and the guide to Caernarvon, which adorn his
window; ink is sold by the apothecary; the grocer sells ropes, (a
commodity which, I fear, I shall require before my residence here is
over,) and tooth-brushes. A clothes-brush is a luxury yet unknown to
Llanrwst. As to books, for want of any other English literature, I
intend to learn Paradise Lost by heart at odd moments. But I must
conclude. Write to me often, my dear Mother, and all of you at home, or
you may have to answer for my drowning myself, like Gray's bard, in "Old
Conway's foaming flood," which is most conveniently near for so poetical
an exit.
Ever most affectionately yours,
T. B. M.
Llanrwst: August 32, 1821.
My dear Father,--I have just received your letter, and cannot but feel
concerned at the tone of it. I do not think it quite fair to attack me
for filling my letters with remarks on the King's Irish expedition. It
has been the great event of this part of the world. I was at Bangor
when he sailed. His bows, and the Marquis of Anglesea's fete, were the
universal subjects of conversation; and some remarks on the business
were as natural from me as accounts of the coronation from you in
London. In truth I have little else to say. I see nothing that connects
me with the world except the newspapers. I get up, breakfast, read, play
at quoits, and go to bed. This is the history of my life. It will do for
every day of the last fortnight.
As to the King, I spoke of the business, not at all as a political,
but as a moral question,--as a point of correct feeling and of private
decency. If Lord were to issue tickets for a gala ball immediately
after receiving intelligence of the sudden death of his divorced wife, I
should say the same. I pretend to no great insight into party politics;
but the question whether it is proper for any man to mingle in
festivities while his wife's body lies unburied is one, I confess, which
I thought myself competent to decide. But I am not anxious about the
fate of my remarks, which I have quite forgot, and which, I dare say,
were very foolish. To me it is of little importance whether the King's
conduct were right or wrong; but it is of great importance that those
whom I love should not think me a precipitate, silly, shallow sciolist
in politics, and suppose that every frivolous word that falls from my
pen is a dogma which I mean to advance as indisputable; and all this
only because I write to them without reserve; only because I love them
well enough to trust them with every idea which suggests itself to me.
In fact, I believe that I am not more precipitate or presumptuous than
other people, but only more open. You cannot be more fully convinced
than I am how contracted my means are of forming a judgment. If I chose
to weigh every word that I uttered or wrote to you, and, whenever I
alluded to politics, were to labour and qualify my expressions as if I
were drawing up a state paper, my letters might be a great deal wiser,
but would not be such letters as I should wish to receive from those
whom I loved. Perfect love, we are told, casteth out fear. If I say,
as I know I do, a thousand wild and inaccurate things, and employ
exaggerated expressions about persons or events in writing to you or
to my mother, it is not, I believe, that I want power to systematise my
ideas or to measure my expressions, but because I have no objection to
letting you see my mind in dishabille. I have a court dress for days of
ceremony and people of ceremony, nevertheless. But I would not willingly
be frightened into wearing it with you; and I hope you do not wish me to
do so.
Ever yours,
T. B. M.
To hoax a newspaper has, time out of mind, been the special ambition of
undergraduate wit. In the course of 1821 Macaulay sent to the Morning
Post a burlesque copy of verses, entitled "Tears of Sensibility." The
editor fell an easy victim, but unfortunately did not fall alone.
No pearl of ocean is so sweet
As that in my Zuleika's eye.
No earthly jewel can compete
With tears of sensibility.
Like light phosphoric on the billow,
Or hermit ray of evening sky,
Like ripplings round a weeping willow
Are tears of sensibility.
Like drops of Iris-coloured fountains
By which Endymion loved to lie,
Like dew-gems on untrodden mountains
Are tears of sensibility.
While Zephyr broods o'er moonlight rill
The flowerets droop as if to die,
And from their chaliced cup distil
The tears of sensibility.
The heart obdurate never felt
One link of Nature's magic tie
If ne'er it knew the bliss to melt
In tears of sensibility.
The generous and the gentle heart
Is like that balmy Indian tree
Which scatters from the wounded part
The tears of sensibility.
Then oh! ye Fair, if Pity's ray
E'er taught your snowy breasts to sigh,
Shed o'er my contemplative lay
The tears of sensibility.
November 2, 1821.
My dear Mother,--I possess some of the irritability of a poet, and
it has been a good deal awakened by your criticisms. I could not have
imagined that it would have been necessary for me to have said that the
execrable trash entitled "Tears of Sensibility" was merely a burlesque
on the style of the magazine verses of the day. I could not suppose that
you could have suspected me of _seriously_ composing such a farrago
of false metaphor and unmeaning epithet. It was meant solely for a
caricature on the style of the poetasters of newspapers and journals;
and, (though I say it who should not say it,) has excited more attention
and received more praise at Cambridge than it deserved. If you have
it, read it over again, and do me the justice to believe that such a
compound of jargon, nonsense, false images, and exaggerated sentiment,
is not the product of my serious labours. I sent it to the Morning
Post, because that paper is the ordinary receptacle of trash of the
description which I intended to ridicule, and its admission therefore
pointed the jest. I see, however, that for the future I must mark more
distinctly when I intend to be ironical.
Your affectionate son
T. B. M.
Cambridge: July 26, 1822.
My dear Father,--I have been engaged to take two pupils for nine months
of the next year. They are brothers, whose father, a Mr. Stoddart,
resides at Cambridge. I am to give them an hour a day, each; and am to
receive a hundred guineas. It gives me great pleasure to be able even in
this degree to relieve you from the burden of my expenses here. I begin
my tutorial labours to-morrow. My pupils are young, one being fifteen
and the other thirteen years old, but I hear excellent accounts of their
proficiency, and I intend to do my utmost for them. Farewell.
T. B. M.
A few days later on he writes "I do not dislike teaching whether it is
that I am more patient than I had imagined, or that I have not yet had
time to grow tired of my new vocation. I find, also, what at first sight
may appear paradoxical, that I read much more in consequence, and that
the regularity of habits necessarily produced by a periodical employment
which cannot be procrastinated fully compensates for the loss of the
time which is consumed in tuition."
Trinity College, Cambridge: October 1, 1824.
My dear Father,--I was elected Fellow this morning, shall be sworn in
to-morrow, and hope to leave Cambridge on Tuesday for Rothley Temple.
The examiners speak highly of the manner in which I acquitted myself,
and I have reason to believe that I stood first of the candidates.
I need not say how much I am delighted by my success, and how much
I enjoy the thought of the pleasure which it will afford to you, my
mother, and our other friends. Till I become a Master of Arts next July
the pecuniary emolument which I shall derive will not be great. For
seven years from that time it will make me almost an independent man.
Malden is elected. You will take little interest in the rest of our
Cambridge successes and disappointments.
Yours most affectionately,
T. B. M.