Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, vol 1 | Page 2

work has been undertaken principally from a conviction that it is
the performance of a duty which, to the best of my ability, it is
incumbent on me to fulfil. Though even on this ground I cannot appeal
to the forbearance of my readers, I may venture to refer to a peculiar
difficulty which I have experienced in dealing with Lord
MACAULAY'S private papers.
To give to the world compositions not intended for publication may be
no injury to the fame of writers who, by habit, were careless and hasty
workmen; but it is far otherwise in the case of one who made it a rule
for himself to publish nothing which was not carefully planned,
strenuously laboured, and minutely finished. Now, it is impossible to
examine Lord MACAULAY'S journals and correspondence without
being persuaded that the idea of their being printed, even in part, never
was present to his mind; and I should not feel myself justified in laying
them before the public if it were not that their unlaboured and
spontaneous character adds to their biographical value all, and perhaps
more than all, that it detracts from their literary merit.
To the heirs and relations of Mr. Thomas Flower Ellis and Mr. Adam
Black, to the Marquis of Lansdowne, to Mr. Macvey Napier, and to the
executors of Dr. Whewell, my thanks are due for the courtesy with
which thhey have placed the different portions of my Uncle's
correspondence at my disposal. Lady Caroline Lascelles has most
kindly permitted me to use as much of Lord Carlisle's journal as relates
to the subject of this work; and Mr. Charles Cowan, my Uncle's old
opponent at Edinburgh, has sent me a considerable mass of printed
matter bearing upon the elections of 1847 and 1852. The late Sir
Edward Ryan, and Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, spared no pains to inform
me with regard to Lord MACAULAY'S work at Calcutta. His early
letters, with much that relates to the whole course of his life, have been
preserved, studied, and arranged, by the affectionate industry of his
sister, Miss Macaulay; and material of high interest has been entrusted
to my hands by Mr. and the Hon. Mrs. Edward Cropper. I have been
assisted throughout the book by the sympathy, and the recollections, of
my sister Lady Holland, the niece to whose custody Lord
MACAULAY'S papers by inheritance descend.

G.O.T.
March 1876.

LIFE AND LETTERS OF LORD MACAULAY
By
SIR GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN
CHAPTER I
1800-1818.
Plan and scope of the work--History of the Macaulay family--
Aulay--Kenneth--Johnson and Boswell--John Macaulay and his
children--Zachary Macaulay--His career in the West Indies and in
Africa--His character--Visit of the French squadron to Sierra
Leone--Zachary Macaulay's marriage--Birth of his eldest son--Lord
Macaulay's early years--His childish productions--Mrs. Hannah
More--General Macaulay--Choice of a school--Shelford--Dean
Milner--Macaulay's early letters--Aspenden hall--The boy's habits and
mental endowments--His home--The Clapham set--The boy's relations
with his father--The political ideas amongst which he was brought up,
and their influence on the work of his life.
HE who undertakes to publish the memoirs of a distinguished man may
find a ready apology in the custom of the age. If we measure the
effective demand for biography by the supply, the person
commemorated need possess but a very moderate reputation, and have
played no exceptional part, in order to carry the reader through many
hundred pages of anecdote, dissertation, and correspondence. To judge
from the advertisements of our circulating libraries, the public curiosity
is keen with regard to some who did nothing worthy of special note,
and others who acted so continuously in the face of the world that,
when their course was run, there was little left for the world to learn
about them. It may, therefore, be taken for granted that a desire exists
to hear something authentic about the life of a man who has produced
works which are universally known, but which bear little or no
indication of the private history and the personal qualities of the author.

This was in a marked degree the case with Lord Macaulay. His two
famous contemporaries in English literature have, consciously or
unconsciously, told their own story in their books. Those who could see
between the lines in "David Copperfield" were aware that they had
before them a delightful autobiography; and all who knew how to read
Thackeray could trace him in his novels through every stage in his
course, on from the day when as a little boy, consigned to the care of
English relatives and schoolmasters, he left his mother on the steps of
the landing-place at Calcutta. The dates and names were wanting, but
the man was there; while the most ardent admirers of Macaulay will
admit that a minute study of his literary productions left them, as far as
any but an intellectual knowledge of the