was Tom Macaulay. Brougham
afterwards put himself forward as the monitor and director of the
education of Macaulay, and I remember hearing of a letter he wrote
to the father on the subject, which made a great noise at the
time; but he was like the man who brought up a young lion, which
finished by biting his head off. Brougham and Macaulay disliked
each other. Brougham could not forgive his great superiority in
many of those accomplishments in which he thought himself
unrivalled; and being at no pains to disguise his jealousy and
dislike, the other was not behind him in corresponding feelings of
aversion. It was unworthy of both, but most of Brougham, who was
the aggressor, and who might have considered the world large
enough for both of them, and that a sufficiency of fame was
attainable by each. Stephen said that, if ever Macaulay's life was
written by a competent biographer, it would appear that he had
displayed feats of memory which he believed to be unequalled by
any human being. He can repeat all Demosthenes by heart, and all
Milton, a great part of the Bible, both in English and (the New
Testament) in Greek; besides this his memory retains passages
innumerable of every description of books, which in discussion he
pours forth with incredible facility. He is passionately fond of
Greek literature; has not much taste for Latin or French. Old Mill
(one of the best Greek scholars of the day) thinks Macaulay has a
more extensive and accurate acquaintance with the Greek writers
than any man living, and there is no Greek book of any note which
he has not read over and over again. In the Bible he takes great
delight, and there are few better Biblical scholars. In law he
made no proficiency, and mathematics he abominates; but his great
forte is history, especially English history. Here his superhuman
memory, which appears to have the faculty of digesting and
arranging as well as of retaining, has converted his mind into a
mighty magazine of knowledge, from which, with the precision and
correctness of a kind of intellectual machine, he pours forth
stores of learning, information, precept, example, anecdote, and
illustration with a familiarity and facility not less astonishing
than delightful. He writes as if he had lived in the times and
among the people whose actions and characters he records and
delineates. A little reading, too, is enough for Macaulay, for by
some process impossible to other men he contrives to transfer