HOW MACAULAY WORKED.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1883, 3 July 1888, Page 3

HOW MACAULAY WORKED.

The following, m "GrevilJe's Memoirs " ft of Interest as recording what James Stephen told Greville of Macautay'a plan of life, "No care or cultivation, however (Greville reflects), oould have made me what MioauUy is : — " When In India Maoaulay used to get up at Bye every morning (as everybody else did), and till nine or ten he read Greek and Latin, acd went through tbe -whole range. of olassloal literature of every sort and kind ; that one day m the Government library he had met with the works of Ohrysostom, fourteen Greek folios, and that he had taken h "me first one volnme and then another, till he had read the whole through, that is, he had not read every word, because ho had found that it contained a great deal of stuff not worth reading, bnt he had carefully looked at every page, and bad actually read tbe greater part, I asked Stephen by what mental process Maoaulay had contrived to accumulate such boundless stores of information, and how it was all so sorted and arranged m bis head tbat it was always producible at will. He laid 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 ocoupled j tben, as other men read by syllables or by wordß, he bad the faculty, acquired by use, of reading by whole sentecces, cf swallowing as lt were, whole paragraphs at once, and thus he Infinitely 'abbreviated the mere meohanloal part of study."