I have every reason to be gratified by the manner in which my speeches have been received.  To say the truth, the station which I now hold in the House is such that I should not be inclined to quit it for any place which was not of considerable importance.  What you saw about my having a place was a blunder of a stupid reporter’s.  Croker was taunting the Government with leaving me to fight their battle, and to rally their followers; and said that the honourable and learned member for Calne, though only a practising barrister in title, seemed to be in reality the most efficient member of the Government.  By the bye, my article on Croker has not only smashed his book, but has hit the Westminster Review incidentally.  The Utilitarians took on themselves to praise the accuracy of the most inaccurate writer that ever lived, and gave as an instance of it a note in which, as I have shown, he makes a mistake of twenty years and more.  John Mill is in a rage, and says that they are in a worse scrape than Croker; John Murray says that it is a damned nuisance; and Croker looks across the House of Commons at me with a leer of hatred, which I repay with a gracious smile of pity.

I am ashamed to have said so much about myself.  But you asked for news about me.  No request is so certain to be granted, or so certain to be a curse to him who makes it as that which you have made to me.

Ever yours

T. B. MACAULAY.

London:  January 9, 1832.

Dear Napier,—­I have been so much engaged by bankrupt business, as we are winding up the affairs of many estates, that I shall not be able to send off my article about Hampden till Thursday the 12th.  It will be, I fear, more than forty pages long.  As Pascal said of his eighteenth letter, I would have made it shorter if I could have kept it longer.  You must indulge me, however; for I seldom offend in that way.

It is in part a narrative.  This is a sort of composition which I have never yet attempted.  You will tell me, I am sure with sincerity, how you think that I succeed in it.  I have said as little about Lord Nugent’s book as I decently could.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London:  January 19, 1832.

Dear Napier,—­I will try the Life of Lord Burleigh, if you will tell Longman to send me the book.  However bad the work may be, it will serve as a heading for an article on the times of Elizabeth.  On the whole, I thought it best not to answer Croker.  Almost all the little pamphlet which he published, (or rather printed, for I believe it is not for sale,) is made up of extracts from Blackwood; and I thought that a contest with your grog-drinking, cock-fighting, cudgel-playing Professor of Moral Philosophy would be too degrading.  I could have demolished every paragraph of the defence.  Croker defended his thuetoi philoi by quoting a passage of Euripides which, as every scholar knows, is corrupt; which is nonsense and false metre if read as he reads it; and which