English essays -- 19th century; Great Britain -- Social life and customs; London (England) -- Description and travel
court officials and footmen sneered at Napoleon for dating
from Schonbrunn. But that miserable “Windsor Castle” outcry is an echo
out of fast-retreating old-world remembrances. The place of such a
natural chief was amongst the first of the land; and that country
is best, according to our British notion at least, where the man of
eminence has the best chance of investing his genius and intellect.
If a company of giants were got together, very likely one or two of the
mere six-feet-six people might be angry at the incontestable superiority
of the very tallest of the party; and so I have heard some London wits,
rather peevish at Macaulay's superiority, complain that he occupied too
much of the talk, and so forth. Now that wonderful tongue is to speak
no more, will not many a man grieve that he no longer has the chance
to listen? To remember the talk is to wonder: to think not only of the
treasures he had in his memory, but of the trifles he had stored there,
and could produce with equal readiness. Almost on the last day I had the
fortune to see him, a conversation happened suddenly to spring up about
senior wranglers, and what they had done in after life. To the almost
terror of the persons present, Macaulay began with the senior wrangler
of 1801-2- 3-4, and so on, giving the name of each, and relating his
subsequent career and rise. Every man who has known him has his story
regarding that astonishing memory. It may be that he was not ill pleased
that you should recognize it; but to those prodigious intellectual
feats, which were so easy to him, who would grudge his tribute of
homage? His talk was, in a word, admirable, and we admired it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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