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124 HUGH, OR HUGH MACAULEY BOYD N ingenious author, but who, according to his infatuated biographer, the late Laurence Dundas Campbell, possessed talents of sufficient magnitude to have illuminated any age or nation. He was the second son of Alexander Macauley, Esq. of the county of Antrim, and was born in October 1746, at Ballycastle, in the same county. Several anecdotes to prove the miraculous precocity of his talent are related by Campbell, and we are gravely told. " He began to pun while he was yet in his childhood; and he often punned so aptly, that he both surprised and amused his friends." At the age of fourteen, he, was placed in Trinity College, Dublin, during which period, a Mr. Marten, a gentleman of similar perceptions with Mr. Campbell, used to characterise him by saying, "that he united the meekness of the lamb with the spirit of the lion." In 1765, he took his degree of master of arts, and his grandfather wished him to enter the church; this however, he declined, as the natural gallantry of his nature induced him to prefer the army; but his father being desi- rous that he should go into the infantry, and he giving an undutiful preference to the more elevated service of the cavalry, some delay in consequence took place, and Mr. Macauley's death terminated the dispute. He left no will, and Mr. Boyd was consequently unprovided for. Disappointed in the dream of becoming a general, he consoled himself with the expectation of being a judge,- in other words, he quitted the army for the law, and shortly after visited London, where he was patronised by Mr. Richard Burke; and, amongst the countless individuals who were delighted with his wit and the ercessive splen- dour of his talents, might be enumerated the celebrated Mrs. Macauley, to whose husband he was related. But we are told "the inborn generosity of his mind, together with his exquisite sensibility, prompted him to acts of bene-