om Russia was celebrated in a
"Pindaric Ode" duly distributed into strophes and antistrophes;
and, when the allies entered Paris, the school put his services into
requisition to petition for a holiday in honour of the event. He
addressed his tutor in a short poem, which begins with a few sonorous
and effective couplets, grows more and more like the parody on
Fitzgerald in "Rejected Addresses," and ends in a peroration of which
the intention is unquestionably mock-heroic:

"Oh, by the glorious posture of affairs,
By the enormous price that Omnium hears,
By princely Bourbon's late recovered Crown,
And by Miss Fanny's safe return from town,
Oh, do not thou, and thou alone, refuse
To show thy pleasure at this glorious news!"

Touched by the mention of his sister, Mr. Preston yielded and young
Macaulay never turned another verse except at the bidding of his
schoolmaster, until, on the eve of his departure for Cambridge, he
wrote between three and four hundred lines of a drama, entitled "Don
Fernando," marked by force and fertility of diction, but somewhat too
artificial to be worthy of publication under a name such as his. Much
about the same time he communicated to Malden the commencement of a
burlesque poem on the story of Anthony Babington; who, by the part that
he took in the plots against the life of Queen Elizabeth, had given the
family a connection with English history which, however questionable,
was in Macaulay's view better than none.

"Each, says the proverb, has his taste. 'Tis true.
Marsh loves a controversy; Coates a play;
Bennet a felon; Lewis Way a Jew;
The Jew the silver spoons of Lewis Way.
The Gipsy Poetry, to own the truth,
Has been my love through childhood and in youth."

It is perhaps as well that the project to all appearance stopped with
the first stanza, which in its turn was probably written for the sake of
a single line. The young man had a better use for his time than to spend
it in producing frigid imitations of Beppo.

He was not unpopular among his fellow-pupils, who regarded him with
pride and admiration, tempered by the compassion which his utter
inability to play at any sort of game would have excited in every
school, private or public alike. He troubled himself very little about
the opinion of those by whom he was surrounded at Aspenden. It required
the crowd and the stir of a university to call forth the social
qualities which he possessed in so large a meas