He Has The Kind Of Frame Which We Usually
Imagine As Peculiarly English; Short, Stout, And Firmly Knit.
There is
something hearty in all his demonstrations.
He speaks in that full,
round, rolling voice, deep from the chest, which we also conceive of
as being more common in England than America. As to his conversation,
it is just like his writing; that is to say, it shows very strongly
the same qualities of mind.
I was informed that he is famous for a most uncommon memory; one of
those men to whom it seems impossible to forget any thing once read;
and he has read all sorts of things that can be thought of, in all
languages. A gentleman told me that he could repeat all the old
Newgate literature, hanging ballads, last speeches, and dying
confessions; while his knowledge of Milton is so accurate, that, if
his poems were blotted out of existence, they might be restored simply
from his memory. This same accurate knowledge extends to the Latin and
Greek classics, and to much of the literature of modern Europe. Had
nature been required to make a man to order, for a perfect historian,
nothing better could have been put together, especially since there is
enough of the poetic fire included in the composition, to fuse all
these multiplied materials together, and color the historical
crystallization with them.
Macaulay is about fifty. He has never married; yet there are
unmistakable evidences in the breathings and aspects of the family
circle by whom he was surrounded, that the social part is not wanting
in his conformation.
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