ANECDOTES OF AUTHORS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue III, 27 August 1891, Page 4

ANECDOTES OF AUTHORS.

It is related of Lord Macaulay, the eminent historian and essayist, that on one . occasion he went to a bookstall to purchase some ballads (of which he was always very ■ fond), and, as he was making the purchase, some children caught sight of him. Crowding around, they said " The ge'lman's goin' to sing," and thereupon followed him into the street, where, needless to say, they were disappointed. It is well-known that Macaulay had a very retentive memory, and on one occasion he is said lo have modestly asserted that, if by some peculiar freak of fortune, all thecopies of " Paradise Lost" and "Pilgrims Progress" should be swept out of existence, he would guarantee to reproduce them almost word for word from memory. He lived and died a bachelor, and, when asked why he did not marry, he used to smile and say he never had time for courting. Dr. Johnson was notably an ugly ( man, and it is said that Boswell, his personal friend and biographer, " added five hundred pounds to the fortune of. one of his babies because she was not frightened at Johnson's ugly face." "The great lexicographer was a glutton at the tabie, seldom speaking much during meat, and scarcely even emitting any* thing more than a rude growl when spoken to. So fond was he of his food that, as Macaulay puts it, "he tore his dinner . like a famished wolf, with the veins swelling ; on his forehead, and the perspiration running I down his cheeks." As a child, Indeeo, throughout his life, he possessed a remarkably retentive memory, and his mother used to relate a story of his early childhood which sufficiently testifies to this fact. On one occasion, she tells us, being desirous of keeping him quiet for awhile, whilst she did something in the upper rooms, shegavehim a book and told him to learn a certain hymn by heart. She then left him, and proceeded upstairs ; but she had only reached the second flight when " Sammy" came running up after her, declaring that he had learnt it. ! He thereupon repeated it straight off, although, as his mother tells us, he could not bave read it through more than once. Sir Walter Scott, whilst at school, was noted for his stupidity in learning ; he would " only learn when he thought he would." He was generally to be found at the foot of the class, but at times he was stirred up by an ambition to figure at the head of his class. On one occasion, inspired by this noble j desire, he was led to adopt by no means noble expedients to attain his end. He bad passed up to the second from the head, and there he stayed. The boy who was at the head saw that Walter was trying to take his place, and he, therefore, worked hard and kept his position, so that for days the two boys were battling with each other, bat finally Walter, despairing of passing his fellow by fair means, determined to pass him by a strategic movement. He soon noticed that this boy, whenever asked to answer a . question, always started nervously clutching ' a button on the bottom of his waistcoat. This was Walter's chance. As soon as he saw the master coming he took his penknife, and quietly, unobserved, cut off the offending button. The master came, put a-ques-tion to lhe head boy, and he immediately dropped his hand' in search of the faith- ' inspiring button, but finding it gone, he blushed, stammered, and forgot the answer. Tlius Walter won the position he sought.