dmired for his genius and perspicuous
style rather than for his sentiments. Even his famous article on Bacon
is deficient in spiritual insight; it is a description of the man rather
than a dissertation on his philosophy. Macaulay's greatness was
intellectual rather than moral; and his mental power was that of the
scholar and the rhetorical artist rather than the thinker. In his
masterly way of arraying facts he has never been surpassed; and in this
he was so skilful that it mattered little which side he took. Like
Daniel Webster, he could make any side appear plausible. Doubtless in
the law he might have become a great advocate, had he not preferred
literary composition instead. Had he lived in the times of the Grecian
Sophists, he might have baffled Socrates,--not by his logic, but by his
learning and his aptness of illustration.

Macaulay entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1818, being a healthy,
robust young man of eighteen, after five years' training in Greek and
Latin, having the eldest son of Wilberforce for a school companion.
Among his contemporaries and friends at Cambridge were Charles Austin,
Praed, Derwent Coleridge, Hyde Villiers, and Romilly; but I infer from
his Life by Trevelyan that his circle of intimate friends was not so
large as it would have been had he been fitted for college at
Westminster or Eton. Nor at this time were 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 t