Macaulay's early years--His childish productions--Mrs. Hannah
More--General Macaulay--Choice of a school--Shelford--Dean
Milner--Macaulay's early letters--Aspenden hall--The boy's habits
and mental endowments--His home--The Clapham set--The boy's
relations with his father--The political ideas amongst which he
was brought up, and their influence on the work of his life.

HE who undertakes to publish the memoirs of a distinguished man
may find a ready apology in the custom of the age. If we measure
the effective demand for biography by the supply, the person
commemorated need possess but a very moderate reputation, and
have played no exceptional part, in order to carry the reader
through many hundred pages of anecdote, dissertation, and
correspondence. To judge from the advertisements of our
circulating libraries, the public curiosity is keen with regard
to some who did nothing worthy of special note, and others who
acted so continuously in the face of the world that, when their
course was run, there was little left for the world to learn about
them. It may, therefore, be taken for granted that a desire
exists to hear something authentic about the life of a man who
has produced works which are universally known, but which bear
little or no indication of the private history and the personal
qualities of the author.

This was in a marked degree the case with Lord Macaulay. His two
famous contemporaries in English literature have, consciously or
unconsciously, told their own story in their books. Those who
could see between the lines in "David Copperfield" were aware
that they had before them a delightful autobiography; and all who
knew how to read Thackeray could trace him in his novels through