Description

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born on the 25th of October, 1800. He was therefore five years younger than Carlyle and nine years older than Tennyson. He was the eldest child of Zachary Macaulay, one of the chief workers in the cause of the abolition of slavery. His early years were spent in a house at Clapham, near to the Common, which, with its “gorse bushes, and poplar grove, and gravel-pits, and ponds great and small, was to little Tom Macaulay a region of inexhaustible romance and mystery. He explored its recesses; he composed and almost believed, its legends”(Trevelyan, Life, chap. i). From the age of three he was devoted to books, and the oddest stories of his precocity have been handed down. Mrs. Hannal? More, a noted authoress in her day, called at his father’s house, and was met by a fair, pretty, slight child, with abundance of light hair, about four years of age, who came to the front door to receive her, and tell her that his parents were out, but that if she would be good enough to come in he would bring her a glass of old spirits; a proposition which greatly startled the good lady, who had never aspired beyond cowslip wine.
When questioned as to what he knew about old spirits, he could only say that Robinson Crusoe often had some.”About this time his father took him to the house where Horace Walpole had lived. “After some time had been spent among the wonders of the Orford collection, of which he ever after carried a catalogue in his head, a servant, who was waiting upon the company in the great gallery, split some hot coffee over his legs.