. His bubbling wit, brilliant
conversation, and good-cheer were for his own fireside, first; and all
that cutting, critical, scathing flood of invective was for the public
that wore a rhinoceros-hide.

* * * * *

Macaulay's article on Milton, published during his twenty-fifth year, in
the "Edinburgh Review," is generally regarded as a most wonderful
achievement. "Just think!" the critics cry--"the first article printed to
be of a quality that electrified the world!" But we must remember that
this youth had been getting ready to write that article for ten years.

At college Macaulay shirked mathematics and philosophy, spending his time
and attention on things he liked better. The only study in which he
excelled was composition. Even in babyhood his command of language had
been a wonder to the neighborhood in which he lived. Hannah More had for a
time taken him under her immediate charge and prophesied great things of
his literary faculty; and his mother was not slow in seconding the
opinion.

At Cambridge he already had more than a local reputation as a writer, and
it was this reputation that secured him the commission to write for the
"Review." The terrible Jeffrey was getting old and his regular staff had
pretty nearly worked out their vein. Jeffrey wrote up to London (being
south) to a friend telling him that the "Review" must have new blood, and
imploring him to be on the lookout for some young man who had ideas in his
ink-bottle.

This friend knew the vigor and incisiveness of Macaulay's style, and as he
read the letter from Jeffrey he exclaimed, "Macaulay!"

It was a great compliment to a mere youth to be asked to contribute to the
"Edinburgh Review." Edinburgh was a literary center, and you could not
throw a stone in Princess Street, any more than you can in Tremont Street,
Boston, without hitting a poet and caroming on two novel-writers and an
essayist.

Thomas Carlyle, five years older than Macaulay, and who was to live and
write for twenty-five years after Macaulay's passing, had not yet struck
twelve. London, too, like Edinburgh, was full of writing men, standing in
the market-places of Grub Street with no man to hire.

And yet Fate sought out Tom Macaulay, five feet four, who had plenty of
other work on hand; and through that single "Essay on Milton" he sprang at
once into the front rank of British writers--and at the same time there
was thrust into his hands a bonus of