Warren Hastings (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 6 Biographical Introduction lost he could reproduce Paradise Lost and the Pilgrim's Progress, and "any fool could say his Archbishops of Canterbury backwards." Macaulay went to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1818. He continued his omnivorous reading, but did not pursue any very deep study, and mathematics being uncongenial to him, he was debarred from competing for the Chancellor's medals. Nevertheless he won honours; he twice gained the medal for English verse, and obtained a prize for the best essay on William III. In 1821 he gained a Craven scholarship, and in 1824 a fellowship. Leaving Cambridge, he studied for the Bar, and was called in 1826; but the bent of his mind was towards politics and literature rather than towards law. He had written a few things in Knight's Quarterly, a magazine established by Cambridge students. Francis Jeffrey, who was on the look-out for new blood for the Edinburgh Review, accepted from him an article on Milton, which appeared in August 1825: "The effect on the author's reputation," says Sir George Trevelyan, " was instantaneous. Like Lord Byron he awoke one morning and found himself famous." Jeffrey wrote a compliment that Macaulay was fond of repeating: " The more I think the less I can conceive where you picked up that style." During the next eight years Macaulay was the mainstay of the Edinburgh, and the sale was large or small according to whether the issue contained an essay by him. chapter{Section 4Biographical Introduction 7 In 1830 Macaulay entered Parliament as the Liberal member for Calne, and his brilliant oratory soon won for him great influence in the House. His services to the party were rewarded by his appointment to the Secretaryship of the Board of Control, which represented the Crown in relation to the Directors of ...