“Celsâ sedet Æolus arce,
Sceptra tenens; mollitque animos et temperat iras
Ni faciat, maria ac terras cœlumque profundum
Quippe ferant rapidi secum, verrantque per auras.”[1]
The consequence of letting loose the passions at present chained and confined, would be to produce a scene of desolation which no man can contemplate without horror; and I should not sleep easy on my couch if I were conscious that I had contributed to precipitate it by a single moment.
This, then, is the reason—a reason very different from fear—the reverse of a consciousness of disability—why I dread the recurrence of hostilities in any part of Europe; why I would bear much, and would forbear long; why I would (as I have said) put up with almost any thing that did not touch national faith and national honor, rather than let slip the furies of war, the leash of which we hold in our hands—not knowing whom they may reach, or how far their ravages may be carried. Such is the love of peace which the British Government acknowledges; and such the necessity for peace which the circumstances of the world inculcate. I will push these topics no further.
I return, in conclusion, to the object of the address. Let us fly to the aid of Portugal, by whomsoever attacked, because it is our duty to do so; and let us cease our interference where that duty ends. We go to Portugal not to rule, not to dictate, not to prescribe constitutions, but to defend and to preserve the independence of an ally. We go to plant the standard of England on the well-known heights of Lisbon. Where that standard is planted, foreign dominion shall not come.
LORD MACAULAY.
In August of 1825 there appeared in the Edinburgh Review an article on Milton which attracted instantaneous and universal attention. Though it did not, perhaps, go to the bottom of the various topics it had to deal with, it displayed so wonderful a range of knowledge, so great a variety of strong and striking thoughts, and such a splendor of rhetoric, that it dazzled and drew into an earnest enthusiasm the host of readers of that already famous journal. When it came to be known that the author of this marvellous piece of literary workmanship was a young man of only twenty-five, it was at once perceived that a new luminary had made its appearance in the galaxy of English authorship. From that time till the day when, nearly thirty years later, his services in behalf of letters were rewarded with a grave in the Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey, Thomas Babington Macaulay wielded a literary influence not surpassed by that of any other master of English prose.
He was the son of Zachary Macaulay, a man who had distinguished himself as an anti-slavery philanthropist even among men like Stephen, Clarkson, and Wilberforce. His mother was a daughter of Thomas Mills, a bookseller, and a Quaker. Though the lad did not inherit a fortune, his father was able without much inconvenience to give him the advantages of an education at one of the universities. Up to the age of thirteen he was taught almost exclusively by his mother; and when he was at length placed in a private school, his brightness and eagerness of mind astonished all those with whom he came in contact. That most charming of all biographies of literary men, Trevelyan’s “Life and Letters of Macaulay,” teems with evidence of his singular attainments at an early age.
At Cambridge, which he entered at the age of eighteen, he devoted himself with great fervor to the study of the classics, to reading in history and general literature, and to the development of his abilities as an extemporaneous speaker. He took whatever prizes came in his way, but, owing to his distaste for the mathematics, did not try for honors at the completion of his course. On leaving the university with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1822, his mental habits and peculiarities seem to have been substantially fixed. He was already master of vast stores of information, which he always seemed to keep under the play of his wit and his imagination. His memory was so prodigious that he could repeat the names of the popes either backward or forward; and he once remarked that if every copy of the “Paradise Lost” were to be destroyed, he thought he could reproduce the poem from memory. He read with such marvellous rapidity that he would devour a book in the course of a morning walk in London; and the vast accumulations which he thus brought into the range of his knowledge were so vitalized by his feelings and his imagination that they were always completely at his service.
Though his biographer shows us that he was one of the most charming and lovable of men, his writings would convey another impression. He appears never to have had any self-distrust; he was seldom in doubt on any subject; what to others seemed mere probabilities were to him positive certainties; indeed, on whatever question he wrote or spoke his opinions always seemed to have been irrevocably fixed long before. Lord Melbourne told the whole story when he once said: “I wish I was as cock-sure of any thing as Tom Macaulay is of every thing.”