I have cast up my reading account, and brought it to the end of the year 1835.  It includes December 1834; for I came into my house and unpacked my books at the end of November 1834.  During the last thirteen months I have read Aeschylus twice; Sophocles twice; Euripides once; Pindar twice; Callimachus; Apollonius Rhodius; Quintus Calaber; Theocritus twice; Herodotus; Thucydides; almost all Xenophon’s works; almost all Plato; Aristotle’s Politics, and a good deal of his Organon, besides dipping elsewhere in him; the whole of Plutarch’s Lives; about half of Lucian; two or three books of Athenaeus; Plautus twice; Terence twice; Lucretius twice; Catullus; Tibullus; Propertius; Lucan; Statius; Silius Italicus; Livy; Velleius Paterculus; Sallust; Caesar; and, lastly, Cicero.  I have, indeed, still a little of Cicero left; but I shall finish him in a few days.  I am now deep in Aristophanes and Lucian.  Of Aristophanes I think as I always thought; but Lucian has agreeably surprised me.  At school I read some of his Dialogues of the Dead when I was thirteen; and, to my shame, I never, to the best of my belief, read a line of him since.  I am charmed with him.  His style seems to me to be superior to that of any extant writer who lived later than the age of Demosthenes and Theophrastus.  He has a most peculiar and delicious vein of humour.  It is not the humour of Aristophanes; it is not that of Plato; and yet it is akin to both; not quite equal, I admit, to either, but still exceedingly charming.  I hardly know where to find an instance of a writer, in the decline of a literature, who has shown an invention so rich, and a taste so pure.  But, if I get on these matters, I shall fill sheet after sheet.  They must wait till we take another long walk, or another tavern dinner, together; that is, till the summer of 1838.

I had a long story to tell you about a classical examination here; but I have not time.  I can only say that some of the competitors tried to read the Greek with the papers upside down; and that the great man of the examination, the Thirlwall of Calcutta, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, translated the words of Theophrastus, osas leitourgias leleitroupgeke “how many times he has performed divine service.” ["How many public services he had discharged at his own expense.”  Macaulay used to say that a lady who dips into Mr. Grote’s history, and learns that Alcibiades won the heart of his fellow-citizens by the novelty of his theories and the splendour of his liturgies, may get a very false notion of that statesman’s relations with the Athenian public.]

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.