Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson, with a Selection from his Essay on Johnson. Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay
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pleased, with a preference for prose fiction and poetry.
When eighteen years old (in October, 1818), Macaulay entered Trinity College, Cambridge. But for mathematics he would have been made happy. He writes to his mother: "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! … 'Discipline' of the mind! Say rather starvation, confinement, torture, annihilation!"4 There were prizes, but Macaulay was not a prize winner. He was an excellent declaimer and an excellent debater, and undoubtedly might have won more honors had he been willing to work hard on the subjects prescribed, whether he liked them or not. But he was eager to avoid the sciences, and he was not content to be a mere struggler for honors. He was sensible enough to enjoy the companionships the place afforded. He knew something of the value of choosing comrades after his own heart, who were thoroughly genuine and sincere, natural and manly. Even if, as Mr. Morison says, the result of his college course was that "those faculties which were naturally strong were made stronger, and those which were naturally weak received little or no exercise," he wisely spent much time with a remarkable group of young men, among whom Charles Austin was king. Of Austin, John Stuart Mill says, "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." And Trevelyan adds, "He certainly was the only man who ever succeeded in dominating Macaulay." Austin it was who turned Zachary Macaulay's eldest son from a Tory into a Whig. The boy had always been interested in the political discussions held in his father's house, a center of consultation for suburban members of Parliament, and had learned to look at public affairs with no thought of ambition or jealous self-seeking. This sort of training, supplemented by his discussions at college, where he soon became a vigorous politician, developed a patriotic, disinterested man.
In the midst of his inexpressible delight in the freedom the college course gave him to indulge his fondness for literature and to spend his days and nights walking and talking with his mates, he continued to remember his family with affection, and did not neglect to write home. On March 25, 1821, he wrote his mother: "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 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."5
On the first of October, 1824, two years after he had received the degree of Bachelor of Arts, he wrote his father that he was that morning elected Fellow, and that the position would make him almost independent financially for the next seven years.
In 1824, too, he made his first address before a public assembly—an antislavery address that probably gave Zachary Macaulay the happiest half hour of his life, that called out a "whirlwind of cheers" from the audience, and enthusiastic commendation from the Edinburgh Review. The next year Macaulay was asked to write for that famous periodical, then at the height of its political, social, and literary power. He contributed the essay on Milton and "like Lord Byron he awoke one morning and found himself famous." The compliment for which he cared most—"the only commendation of his literary talent which even in the innermost domestic circle he was ever known to repeat"—came from Jeffrey, the editor, when he acknowledged the receipt of the manuscript: "The more I think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that style."
When Macaulay entered college, his father considered himself worth at least a hundred thousand pounds; but soon afterward he lost his money and the eldest son found the other children looking to him for guidance and support. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he drew freely on his income from the fellowship and his occasional contributions to the Edinburgh. He was the sunshine of the home, and apparently only those who knew him there got the best of his brilliancy and wit.
In 1826 he was called to the bar, but he was becoming more and more interested in public affairs and longed to be in Parliament. In 1830 Lord Lansdowne, who had been much impressed by Macaulay's articles on Mill, and by his high moral and private character, gave him the opportunity to represent Calne—"on the eve of the most momentous conflict," says Trevelyan, "that ever was fought out by speech and vote within the walls of a senate-house."6 When the Reform Bill was introduced, the opposition laughed contemptuously at the impossibility of disfranchising, wholly or in part, a hundred and ten boroughs for the sake of securing a fair representation of the United Kingdom in the House of Commons. Two days later Macaulay made the first of his Reform speeches, and "when he sat down, the Speaker sent for him, and told him that, in all his prolonged experience, he had never seen the House in such a state of excitement." That not only unsettled the House of Commons but put an end to the question whether he should give his time to law or to politics. During the next three years he devoted himself to Parliament. Entering with his whole soul into the thickest of the fight for reform, he made a speech on the second reading of the Reform Bill which no less a critic than Jeffrey said put him "clearly at the head of the great speakers, if not the debaters, of the House."7
Naturally the social advantages of the position appealed to Macaulay. He appreciated the freedom, the good fellowship, the spirit of equality among the members. "For the space of three seasons he dined out almost nightly"; and for a man who at a time when his parliamentary fame was highest, was so reduced that he sold the gold medals he had won at Cambridge—though "he was never for a moment in debt,"—it was sometimes convenient to be a lion. Yet this "sitting up in the House of Commons till three o'clock five days in the week, and getting an indigestion at great dinners the remaining two," would not have been the first choice of a man whose greatest joy "in the midst of all this praise" was to think of the pleasure which his success would give to his father and his sisters.
In June, 1832, the bill which Macaulay had supported so zealously and so eloquently at every stage of the fight, finally became an act. As a reward the great orator was appointed a commissioner of the Board of Control, which represented the crown in its relations to the East Indian directors. He held this commissionership only eighteen months, however, for as a means of reducing expenses the Whig Government suppressed it. It is to Macaulay's everlasting credit that he voted for this economic measure at a time when his Trinity fellowship was about to expire, and when the removal from office left him penniless.
Impatient to choose the first Reformed Parliament, the great cities were looking about that autumn for worthy representatives. The Whigs of Leeds got Macaulay's promise to stand for that town as soon as it became a parliamentary borough. His attitude toward the electors whose votes meant bread to him was as refreshing as it was striking. His frank opinions they should have at all times, but pledges never. They should choose their representative cautiously and then confide in him liberally. Such independence was not relished in many quarters, but Macaulay answered the remonstrants with even more vigor: "It is not necessary to my happiness that I should sit in Parliament; but it is necessary to my happiness that I should possess, in Parliament or out of Parliament, the consciousness of having done what is right."8
His appointment as Secretary to the Board of Control was a help financially, and his return to Parliament by Leeds proved to be of very great assistance. Matters were going smoothly when the Government introduced their Slavery Bill. To Zachary Macaulay, who had always been a zealous abolitionist, the measure was not satisfactory. To please him the son opposed it. In order that he might be free to criticise the bill, simply as a member of Parliament, he resigned his position in the Cabinet, although both he and his father thought this course of action would be fatal to his career. A son whose devotion to his father leads him to such lengths is not always so promptly rewarded as Macaulay was in this instance, for the resignation was not accepted, the bill was amended, and the Ministers were as friendly as ever.
Up to this time he had earned little money by his writing. After giving his days to India and his nights to improving the condition of the Treasury, he could get only snatches of time for turning off the essays which we read with so much care. With a family depending on him he now realized fully the need not of riches but of a competence. He could live by his