Yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

Writing three days after the date of the foregoing letter, Macaulay says to his old friend Mr. Sharp:  “You see that my mind is not in great danger of rusting.  The danger is that I may become a mere pedant.  I feel a habit of quotation growing on me; but I resist that devil, for such it is, and it flees from me.  It is all that I can do to keep Greek and Latin out of all my letters.  Wise sayings of Euripides are even now at my fingers’ ends.  If I did not maintain a constant struggle against this propensity, my correspondence would resemble the notes to the ‘Pursuits of Literature.’  It is a dangerous thing for a man with a very strong memory to read very much.  I could give you three or four quotations this moment in support of that proposition; but I will bring the vicious propensity under subjection, if I can.” [Many years later Macaulay wrote to my mother:  “Dr. —­ came, and I found him a very clever man; a little of a coxcomb, but, I dare say, not the worse physician for that.  He must have quoted Horace and Virgil six times at least a propos of his medical inquiries.  Horace says, in a poem in which he jeers the Stoics, that even a wise man is out of sort when ‘pituita molesta est;’ which is, being interpreted, ‘when, his phlegm is troublesome.’  The Doctor thought it necessary to quote this passage in order to prove that phlegm is troublesome;—­a proposition, of the truth of which, I will venture to say, no man on earth is better convinced than myself.”]

Calcutta, May 29, 1835.

Dear Ellis,—­I am in great want of news.  We know that the Tories dissolved at the end of December, and we also know that they were beaten towards the end of February. [In November 1834 the King called Sir Robert Peel to power; after having of his own accord dismissed the Whig Ministry.  Parliament was dissolved, but the Tories did not succeed in obtaining a majority.  After three months of constant and angry fighting, Peel was driven from office in April 1835.] As to what passed in the interval, we are quite in the dark.  I will not plague you with comments on events which will have been driven out of your mind by other events before this reaches you, or with prophecies which may be falsified before you receive them.  About the final issue I am certain.  The language of the first great reformer is that which I should use in reply to the exultation of our Tories here, if there were any of them who could understand it

sebou, proseukhou thopte ton kratount aei emoi d’elasson Zeuos e meden melei. drato krateito tonde ton brakhun khronon opes thelei daron gar ouk arksei theois

["Worship thou, adore, and flatter the monarch of the hour.  To me Jove is of less account than nothing.  Let him have his will, and his sceptre, for this brief season; for he will not long be the ruler of the Gods.”  It is needless to say that poor William the Fourth was the Jove of the Whig Prometheus.]