MACAULAY.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3011, 18 February 1881, Page 2

MACAULAY.

The closing days of the year were made memorablo by the death of Macaulay. He had been raised to the peerage, and had some hopes of being able to tuke occasional part in the stately debates of the House of Lords. But his health almost suddenly broke down, and his voice was never heard in the Upper Chamber. He died prematurely, having only entered on his sixtieth, year. Macaulay was not the paragon, the ninth wonder of the world, for which people once set him down ; but he was undoubtedly a great literary man. He was also a man of singularly noble character. He was, in a literary sense, egotistic ; that is to say, he thought, and talked, and wrote a gi*eat deal about his works and himself; but he was one of the most unselfish men that ever lived. He appears to have enjoyed advancement, success, fame, and money, only because theso enabled him to give pleasure and support to the members of his family. He was attached to his family, especially to his sisters, with the tendereefc affection. His real nature seems only to have thoroughly shone out when in their society. There he was loving, sportive, even to joyous f rolicsomenesß , a glad schoolboy almost to the very end. He was remarkably generous and charitable, even to strangers ; his hand was almost always open ; but he gave so unostentatiously that it was not until aftev his death half his kindly dfceda becaiue known. He had a spirit which, was absolutely above any of the corrupting influences of wealth and rank. He was very poor at one time, and during his poverty he worked hard to make his reputation in the House of Commons. It is often said that a poor man feels nowhere so much out of place, nowhei'e so much at a disadvantage, nowhere so deeply humiliated as in the House of Commons. Macaulay felt nothing of this kind. Hβ bore himself as easily and steadfastly as though he had been the eldest son of a proud and -wealthy family. It did not seem to have occurred to him when he was poor that money was lacking to the dignity of his intellect/ or hie man*

hooct} c* when he w&9 rioh that money added to it. Certain defects of temper and manner, rather than of ciia-vaeter, ho hud which caused men ofton to misunderstand him, and sometimes to dislike him. He was npfc to be overbearing in time, unci to show himself a little too confident, of his splendid gifts and acquirements—his marvellous memory, his varied reading, his overwhelming power of argument. He trampled on men's prejudices too heedlessly, was inclined to treat ignorance as if it were a crime, and to make dullness feel that it had cause to bo ashamod of itself. Such defects as these are hardly worth mentioning, and would not have beon mentioned here but that they serve to explain some of the misconceptions which were formed of Macaulay by many during his lifetime, and some of the antagonisms which he unconsciously created. Absolutely without literary affectation, undepressed by early poverty, unspoiled by later and almost unequalled success, he was , an independent, quiet, self-relying man, who in all his noon of fame found happiness in the companionship and sympathy of those he loved, and who, from first to last, was loved most tenderly by those who knew him best. Hβ was buried in "Westminster Abbey in the first week of the new year, and there truly took his place among his 'peers. — Justin M'Carthy'a History of Our Own Times.