He entered Trinity
College, Cambridge, at eighteen, but his aversion to mathematics cost
him college honors. He showed at Cambridge great fondness for Latin
declamation and for poetry. At twenty-four he became a fellow of
Trinity. He studied law, but did not practice. Literature and politics
absorbed his attention. At twenty-five he made his first hit with his
essay on Milton in the EDINBURGH REVIEW.
This was followed in rapid succession by the series of essays on which
his fame mainly rests. In 1830 he was elected to Parliament, and in
the following year he established his reputation as an orator by a
great speech on the reform bill. But financial reverses came when he
lost the lucrative post of Commissioner in Bankruptcy and his
fellowship at Trinity lapsed. To gain an income he accepted the
position of secretary of the Board of Control of Indian Affairs, and
soon after was offered a seat in the Supreme Council of India at
Calcutta at $50,000 a year. He lived in India four years, and it was
mainly in these years that he did the reading which afterward bore
fruit in his _History of England_.
[Illustration: THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY AT THE AGE OF
FORTY-NINE--AFTER AN ENGRAVING BY W. HOLL, FROM A DRAWING BY
GEORGE RICHMOND, A.R.A.]
At thirty-nine Macaulay began his _History of England_, which
continued to absorb most of his time for the next twenty years.
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