his pecuniary circumstances encouraging.  After he had obtained his first degree he supported himself, while studying for a fellowship, by taking a couple of pupils for L100 a year.  Eventually he gained a fellowship worth L300 a year, which was his main support for seven years, until he obtained a government office in London.  He probably would have found it easier to get a fellowship at Oxford than at Cambridge, since mathematics were uncongenial to him, his forte being languages.  He was most distinguished at college for English composition and Latin declamation.  In 1819 he wrote a poem, “Pompeii,” which gained him the chancellor’s medal,—­a distinction won again in 1821 by a poem on “Evening,” while the same year gave him the Craven scholarship for his classical attainments.  He took his bachelor’s degree in 1822, and was made a fellow of Trinity College.  He did not obtain his fellowship, however, until his third trial, being no favorite with those who had prizes and honors to bestow, because of his neglect of science and mathematics.

As a profession, Macaulay made choice of the law, being called to the bar in 1826, and at Leeds joined the Northern Circuit, of which Brougham was the leading star.  But the law was not his delight.  He did not like its technicalities.  He spent most of his time in his chambers in literary composition, or in the galleries of the House of Commons listening to the debates.  He never applied himself seriously to anything which “went against the grain.”  At Court he got no briefs, but his fellowship enabled him to live by practising economy.  He also wrote occasional essays—­excellent but not remarkable—­for Knight’s Quarterly Magazine.  It was in this periodical, too, that his early poems were published; but he did not devote much time to this field of letters, although, as we have said, he might undoubtedly have succeeded in it.  His poetry, if he had never written anything else, would not be considered much inferior to that of Sir Walter Scott, being full of life and action, and, like most everything else he did, winning him applause.  Years later he felt the risk of publishing his “Lays of Ancient Rome;” but as he knew what he could do and what he could not do, or rather what would be popular, he was not disappointed.  The poems were well received, for they were eminently picturesque and vital, as well as strong, masculine, and unadorned; the rhyme and metre were also felicitous.  He had no obscurities, and the spirit of his Lays was patriotic and ardent, showing his love of liberty.  I think his “Battle of Ivry” is equal to anything that Scott wrote.  Yet Macaulay is not regarded by the critics as a true poet; that is, he did not write poetry because he must, like Burns and Byron.  His poetry was not spontaneous; it was a manufactured article,—­very good of its kind, but not such as to have given him the fame which his prose writings made for him.