LORD MACAULAY,

HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS.

LORD MACAULAY,

HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS.

BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF

TWO LECTURES DELIVERED AT SIDMOUTH.

BY

HENRY G. J. CLEMENTS, M. A.

LONDON:

WHITTAKER AND CO., AVE-MARIA-LANE.

SIDMOUTH:

JOHN HARVEY, FORE-STREET.

1860.

210.0.52,

BIB

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY JOHN HARVEY, SIDMOUTH.

OTHECA:

PREFACE.

THE following Lectures, published by request, will not, I trust, be regarded by any, as pretending to the rank of Literary Productions. For, not to mention their many imperfections, the very large proportion of quotation which they embody must of itself preclude any such pretension; and with it, I trust, this consideration will likewise preclude all criticism of them as such. Nor as a biography of Macaulay in any sense adequate, do they claim to be regarded nothing but alteration far more complete than I could bestow upon them, could have rendered such a claim at all possible for them. I have therefore thought it undesirable, even for the sake of incorporating more recent and accurate information, to alter them materially from the form in which they were originally written. They only are, and only claim to be, two hastily-written Lectures on an interesting subject.

As a general sketch, however, deriving whatever of interest it possesses from the object it seeks to pourtray, and the circumstances under which it was produced, I have thought them not unworthy of re-production in their present form. If in this I am mistaken, my error must, I fear, partly be laid at the door of a too kind and favourably-disposed audience.