But letters were the passion of Macaulay, from his youth up; and his remarkably tenacious memory—­abnormal, as it seems to me—­enabled him to bring his vast store of facts to support plausibly any position he chose to take.  At fifty years of age, he had probably read more books than any man in Europe since Gibbon and Niebuhr; he literally devoured everything he could put his hands upon, without cramming for a special object,—­especially the Greek and Latin Classics, which he read over and over again, not so much for knowledge as for the pleasure it gave him as a literary critic and a student of artistic excellence.

Macaulay was of Scotch descent, like so many eminent historians, poets, critics, and statesmen who adorned the early and middle part of the nineteenth century,—­Scott, Burns, Carlyle, Jeffrey, Dundas, Playfair, Wilson, Napier, Mackintosh, Robertson, Alison; a group of geniuses that lived in Edinburgh, and made its society famous,—­to say nothing of great divines and philosophers like Chalmers and Stewart and Hamilton.  Macaulay belonged to a good family, the most distinguished members of which were clergymen,—­with the exception of his uncle, General Macaulay, who made a fortune in India; and his father, the celebrated merchant and philanthropist, Zachary Macaulay, who did more than any other man, Wilberforce excepted, to do away with the slave-trade, and to abolish slavery in the West India Islands.

Zachary Macaulay was the most modest and religious of men, and after an eventful life in Africa as governor of the colony of Sierra Leone, settled in Clapham, near London, with a handsome fortune.  He belonged to that famous evangelical set who made Clapham famous, and whose extraordinary piety and philanthropy are commemorated by Sir James Stephen in one of his most interesting essays.  They resembled in peculiarities the early Quakers and primitive Methodists, and though very narrow were much respected for their unostentatious benevolence, blended with public spirit.

Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire, Oct. 25, 1800, but it was at Clapham that his boyhood was chiefly spent.  His precocity startled every one who visited his father’s hospitable home.  At the age of three he would lie at full length on the carpet eagerly reading.  He was never seen without an open book in his hands, even during his walks.  He cared nothing for the sports of his companions.  He could neither ride, nor drive, nor swim, nor row a boat, nor play a game of tennis or foot-ball.  He cared only for books of all sorts, which he seized upon with inextinguishable curiosity, and stored their contents in his memory.  When a boy, he had learned the “Paradise Lost” by heart.  He did not care to go to school, because it interrupted his reading.  Hannah More, a frequent visitor at Clapham and a warm friend of the family, gazed upon him with amazement, but was too wise and conscientious to spoil him by her commendations.  At eight years of age he also had great facility in making verses, which were more than tolerable.