It was always with a sigh of relief that Macaulay turned aside
from public duties to the companionship of books, and he said
that he could covet no higher joy than to be shut up in the
seclusion of a great library, and never pass a moment without
a book in his hand. And this confession declares the man. To
acquire information was the real passion of his life. He was
not interested in the study of human nature, and had no love
or aptitude for meditation. A man with genial interest in his
fellows, and in life as a whole, would not have walked the
streets of London with a book in his hand; and a man with any
faculty of meditative thought would scarcely have employed
a long starlit night on the Irish Sea in a recitation of
Milton.--W. J. DAWSON, “The Makers of English Prose.”
(271)
See SURPRIZES IN BOOKS.
=Book, The Most Popular=--See BIBLE, POPULARITY OF.