30 LOKD MACAULAT. 



Mr. Preston, a clergyman who kept a private school in the neighbourhood 

 of Cambridge. The choice seems to have been very fortunate, for under 

 Mr. Preston's tuition, he became a sound and good scholar — and here 

 tmder liis fostering care he imbibed that love for the great writers of 

 Greece and Rome, which remained with him to the end of his life. 

 While at school he wrote his epitaph on Henry Martyn the missionary, 

 and a defence of novel reading, both of which would do credit to far more 

 mature years. 



In his 18th year he left Mr. Preston's school and proceeded to 

 Cambridge. His career there was not so brilliant as his friends antici- 

 pated. He had not been prepared for the contests of the academic arena 

 by the preliminary training which a public school affords — and he had 

 a strong dislike for mathematics — the chief study at Cambridge. Tmce 

 however he carried off the Chancellor's medal for English verse ; in 1 8 1 9 

 for a poem on Pompeii, and 1821 for another on Evening; both of them 

 pieces far above the average mark of prize poems. In 1821 he was 

 elected to the Craven scholarship, and in the following year after taking 

 his B.A. degree he was chosen Fellow of his College. He was greatly 

 "■ratified at this success. First he was greatly attached to Cambridge, and 

 he therefore regarded highly the honours she bestowed, and the inde- 

 pendent provision attached to the Fellowship enabled him to enter on his 

 professional career. 



At Cambridge his literary career began in his conti-ibutions to 

 Knight's Quarterly Magazine, conducted by Charles Knight — ' Good 

 Knio-ht ' as Jerrold called him — a worthy laboiu-er in the literary vineyard 

 as well as a patron and judicious councillor to yoiithful authors. 



In a series of papers, in prose and in verse, published in 1823 

 and 24, he gave the world indications of the power within him,-indications 

 of that boundless information which almost embraced the whole circle of 

 knowledge, the marvelloiis vividness in pourtraying men and things, and 

 that fecundity of illustration which so much entrances and surprtses us in 

 his later years As a specimen of the verse he contributed I will give you 

 a few verses from his battle of Naseby, — 



" The furious German comes, with his clarions and his drums 

 His bravoes of Alsatia and the pages of Whitehall ; 

 They are bursting on our flanks, grasp your pikes, close your ranks ; 

 For Rupert never comes but to conquer or to fall. 



