While still the merest child he was sent as a day-scholar to Mr.
Greaves, a shrewd Yorkshireman with a turn for science, who had
been originally brought to the neighbourhood in order to educate
a number of African youths sent over to imbibe Western
civilisation at the fountain-head. The poor fellows had found as
much difficulty in keeping alive at Clapham as Englishmen
experience at Sierra Leone; and, in the end, their tutor set up a
school for boys of his own colour, and at one time had charge of
almost the entire rising generation of the Common. Mrs. Macaulay
explained to Tom that he must learn to study without the solace
of bread and butter, to which he replied: "Yes, mama, industry
shall be my bread and attention my butter." But, as a matter of
fact, no one ever crept more unwillingly to school. Each several
afternoon he made piteous entreaties to be excused returning
after dinner, and was met by the unvarying formula: "No, Tom, if
it rains cats and dogs, you shall go."

His reluctance to leave home had more than one side to it. Not
only did his heart stay behind, but the regular lessons of the
class took him away from occupations which in his eyes were
infinitely more delightful and important; for these were probably
the years of his greatest literary activity. As an author he
never again had mere facility, or anything like so wide a range.
In September 1808, his mother writes: "My dear Tom continues to
show marks of uncommon genius. He gets on wonderfully in all
branches of his education, and the extent of his reading, and of
the knowledge he has derived from it, are truly astonishing in a
boy not yet eight years old. He is at the same time as playful as
a kitten. To give you some idea of the activity of his mind I