“There is another poem in the Times that I should like to know the author of;—­A Parson’s Account of his Journey to the Cambridge Election.”  I laid claim to that also.  “That is curious,” said Moore.  “I begged Barnes to tell me who wrote it.  He said that he had received it from Cambridge, and touched it up himself, and pretended that all the best strokes were his.  I believed that he was lying, because I never knew him to make a good joke in his life.  And now the murder is out.”  They asked me whether I had put anything else in the Times.  Nothing, I said, except the Sortes Virgilianae, which Lord John remembered well.  I never mentioned the Cambridge Journey, or the Georgics, to any but my own family; and I was therefore, as you may conceive, not a little flattered to hear in one day Moore praising one of them, and Campbell praising the other.

I find that my article on Byron is very popular; one among a thousand proofs of the bad taste of the public.  I am to review Croker’s edition of Bozzy.  It is wretchedly ill done.  The notes are poorly written, and shamefully inaccurate.  There is, however, much curious information in it.  The whole of the Tour to the Hebrides is incorporated with the Life.  So are most of Mrs. Thrale’s anecdotes, and much of Sir John Hawkins’s lumbering book.  The whole makes five large volumes.  There is a most laughable sketch of Bozzy, taken by Sir T. Lawrence when young.  I never saw a character so thoroughly hit off.  I intend the book for you, when I have finished my criticism on it.  You are, next to myself, the best read Boswellite that I know.  The lady whom Johnson abused for flattering him [See Boswell’s Life of Johnson, April 15, 1778.] was certainly, according to Croker, Hannah More.  Another ill-natured sentence about a Bath lady ["He would not allow me to praise a lady then at Bath; observing, ’She does not gain upon me, sir; I think her empty-headed.’”] whom Johnson called “empty-headed” is also applied to your godmother.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London:  July 6, 1835.

My dear Sister,—­I have been so busy during the last two or three days that I have found no time to write to you.  I have now good news for you.  I spoke yesterday night with a success beyond my utmost expectations.  I am half ashamed to tell you the compliments which I have received; but you well know that it is not from vanity, but to give you pleasure, that I tell you what is said about me.  Lord Althorp told me twice that it was the best speech he had ever heard; Graham, and Stanley, and Lord John Russell spoke of it in the same way; and O’Connell followed me out of the house to pay me the most enthusiastic compliments.  I delivered my speech much more slowly than any that I have before made, and it is in consequence better reported than its predecessors, though not well.  I send you several papers.  You will see some civil things in the leading articles