readers will very generally give the preference to two fragmentary sketches of Roman and Athenian society which sparkle with life, and humour, and a masculine vigorous fancy that had not yet learned to obey the rein.  Their crude but genuine merit suggests a regret that he did not in after days enrich the Edinburgh Review with a couple of articles on classical subjects, as a sample of that ripened scholarship which produced the Prophecy of Capys, and the episode relating to the Phalaris controversy in the Essay on Sir William Temple.

Rothley Temple:  October 7, 1824.

My dear Father,—­As to Knight’s Magazine, I really do not think that, considering the circumstances under which it is conducted, it can be much censured.  Every magazine must contain a certain quantity of mere ballast, of no value but as it occupies space.  The general tone and spirit of the work will stand a comparison, in a moral point of view, with any periodical publication not professedly religious.  I will venture to say that nothing has appeared in it, at least since the first number, from the pen of any of my friends, which can offend the most fastidious.  Knight is absolutely in our hands, and most desirous to gratify us all, and me in particular.  When I see you in London I will mention to you a piece of secret history which will show you how important our connection with this work may possibly become.

Yours affectionately

T. B. M.

The “piece of secret history” above referred to was beyond a doubt the commencement of Macaulay’s connection with the Edinburgh Review.  That famous periodical, which for three and twenty years had shared in and promoted the rising fortunes of the Liberal cause, had now attained its height—­a height unequalled before or since—­of political, social, and literary power.  To have the entry of its columns was to command the most direct channel for the spread of opinions, and the shortest road to influence and celebrity.  But already the anxious eye of the master seemed to discern symptoms of decline.  Jeffrey, in Lord Cockburn’s phrase, was “growing feverish about new writers.”  In January 1825 he says in a letter to a friend in London:  “Can you not lay your hands on some clever young man who would write for us?  The original supporters of the work are getting old, and either too busy or too stupid, and here the young men are mostly Tories.”  Overtures had already been made to Macaulay, and that same year his article on Milton appeared in the August number.

The effect on the author’s reputation was instantaneous.  Like Lord Byron, he awoke one morning and found himself famous.  The beauties of the work were such as all men could recognise, and its very faults pleased.  The redundance of youthful enthusiasm, which he himself unsparingly condemns in the preface to his collected essays, seemed graceful enough in the eyes of others, if it were only as a relief from the perverted ability