At college Macaulay shirked mathematics and philosophy, spending his time and attention on things he liked better.  The only study in which he excelled was composition.  Even in babyhood his command of language had been a wonder to the neighborhood in which he lived.  Hannah More had for a time taken him under her immediate charge and prophesied great things of his literary faculty; and his mother was not slow in seconding the opinion.

At Cambridge he already had more than a local reputation as a writer, and it was this reputation that secured him the commission to write for the “Review.”  The terrible Jeffrey was getting old and his regular staff had pretty nearly worked out their vein.  Jeffrey wrote up to London (being south) to a friend telling him that the “Review” must have new blood, and imploring him to be on the lookout for some young man who had ideas in his ink-bottle.

This friend knew the vigor and incisiveness of Macaulay’s style, and as he read the letter from Jeffrey he exclaimed, “Macaulay!”

It was a great compliment to a mere youth to be asked to contribute to the “Edinburgh Review.”  Edinburgh was a literary center, and you could not throw a stone in Princess Street, any more than you can in Tremont Street, Boston, without hitting a poet and caroming on two novel-writers and an essayist.

Thomas Carlyle, five years older than Macaulay, and who was to live and write for twenty-five years after Macaulay’s passing, had not yet struck twelve.  London, too, like Edinburgh, was full of writing men, standing in the market-places of Grub Street with no man to hire.

And yet Fate sought out Tom Macaulay, five feet four, who had plenty of other work on hand; and through that single “Essay on Milton” he sprang at once into the front rank of British writers—­and at the same time there was thrust into his hands a bonus of fifty pounds for the work.

As a study of a thing that made the reputation of a writer, the “Milton” is worth a careful reading.  It is very sure that in America today there are a hundred men who could write just as good an article, but whether these men are Macaulays or not is quite another question.  But it is not at all probable that a writer will ever again leap into place and power on so small a feat.

Yet the article surely shows all the dash and vigor that mark Macaulay’s literary style.  There is personality in it; it reveals the red corpuscle; and tells without question that there is a man behind the guns.  It was opportune; for literature at that particular time had reached a point where the sciolist was in full possession, and the dead husks of learning were being palmed off for the living thoughts of living men.

Periodicity reveals itself in all Nature, and even in the world of thought there are years of famine and years of plenty.  Dry rot gets into letters; things are ripe for a revolution; the tinder is dry, and along comes some Martin Luther and applies the torch.