d throughout it, which
it is impossible for an honest man to observe without
affection and admiration.'

[23] [The Hon. Edward Ernest Villiers, a younger brother of
Lord Clarendon, filled at this time the office of Clerk
of the Clergy Returns to the Privy Council.]

August 8th, 1838 {p.121}

[Page Head: MACAULAY'S LIFE IN INDIA.]

James Stephen yesterday was talking to me about Macaulay. He came
to him soon after his return from India, and told him that when
there he used to get up at five every morning (as everybody else
did), and till nine or ten he read Greek and Latin, and went
through the whole range of classical literature of every sort and
kind; that one day in the Government library he had met with the
works of Chrysostom, fourteen Greek folios, and that he had taken
home first one volume and then another, till he had read the
whole through, that is, he had not read every word, because he
had found that it contained a great deal of stuff not worth
reading, but he had carefully looked at every page, and had
actually read the greater part. His object now is to devote
himself to literature, and his present project, to write a
History of England for the last 150 years, in which Stephen says
he would give scope to his fine imagination in the delineation of
character, and bring his vast stores of knowledge to the
composition of the narrative, and would, without doubt, produce a
work of astonishing power and interest. Macaulay says if he had
the power of recalling everything he has ever written and
published and of destroying it all, he would do so, for he thinks
that his time has been thrown away upon _opuscula_ unworthy of
his talents. This is, however, a very preposterous squeamishness
and piece of pride or humility, whichever it may be called, for
no man need be ashamed of producing anything perfect in its kind,
however the kind may not be the highest, and his reviews are
perfect in their way. I asked Stephen by what mental process
Macaulay had contrived to accumulate such boundless stores of
information, and how it was all so sorted and arranged in his
head that it was always producible at will. He said that he had
first of all the power of abstraction, of giving his undivided
attention to the book and the subject on which he was occupied;
then, as other men read by syllables or by words, he had the
faculty, acquired by use, of reading by whole sentences, of
swallowing, a