As for the other writer, whose departure many friends, some few most
dearly-loved relatives, and multitudes of admiring readers deplore, our
republic has already decreed his statue, and he must have known that he
had earned this posthumous honor. He is not a poet and man of letters
merely, but citizen, statesman, a great British worthy. Almost from the
first moment when he appears, amongst boys, amongst college students,
amongst men, he is marked, and takes rank as a great Englishman. All
sorts of successes are easy to him: as a lad he goes down into the arena
with others, and wins all the prizes to which he has a mind. A place in
the senate is straightway offered to the young man. He takes his seat
there; he speaks, when so minded, without party anger or intrigue, but
not without party faith and a sort of heroic enthusiasm for his cause.
Still he is poet and philosopher even more than orator. That he may have
leisure and means to pursue his darling studies, he absents himself for
a while, and accepts a richly-remunerative post in the East. As learned
a man may live in a cottage or a college common-room; but it always
seemed to me that ample means and recognized rank were Macaulay's as of
right.
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