As to the King, I spoke of the business, not at all as a political, but as a moral question,—­as a point of correct feeling and of private decency.  If Lord were to issue tickets for a gala ball immediately after receiving intelligence of the sudden death of his divorced wife, I should say the same.  I pretend to no great insight into party politics; but the question whether it is proper for any man to mingle in festivities while his wife’s body lies unburied is one, I confess, which I thought myself competent to decide.  But I am not anxious about the fate of my remarks, which I have quite forgot, and which, I dare say, were very foolish.  To me it is of little importance whether the King’s conduct were right or wrong; but it is of great importance that those whom I love should not think me a precipitate, silly, shallow sciolist in politics, and suppose that every frivolous word that falls from my pen is a dogma which I mean to advance as indisputable; and all this only because I write to them without reserve; only because I love them well enough to trust them with every idea which suggests itself to me.  In fact, I believe that I am not more precipitate or presumptuous than other people, but only more open.  You cannot be more fully convinced than I am how contracted my means are of forming a judgment.  If I chose to weigh every word that I uttered or wrote to you, and, whenever I alluded to politics, were to labour and qualify my expressions as if I were drawing up a state paper, my letters might be a great deal wiser, but would not be such letters as I should wish to receive from those whom I loved.  Perfect love, we are told, casteth out fear.  If I say, as I know I do, a thousand wild and inaccurate things, and employ exaggerated expressions about persons or events in writing to you or to my mother, it is not, I believe, that I want power to systematise my ideas or to measure my expressions, but because I have no objection to letting you see my mind in dishabille.  I have a court dress for days of ceremony and people of ceremony, nevertheless.  But I would not willingly be frightened into wearing it with you; and I hope you do not wish me to do so.

Ever yours,

T. B. M.

To hoax a newspaper has, time out of mind, been the special ambition of undergraduate wit.  In the course of 1821 Macaulay sent to the Morning Post a burlesque copy of verses, entitled “Tears of Sensibility.”  The editor fell an easy victim, but unfortunately did not fall alone.

 No pearl of ocean is so sweet
 As that in my Zuleika’s eye. 
 No earthly jewel can compete
 With tears of sensibility.

 Like light phosphoric on the billow,
 Or hermit ray of evening sky,
 Like ripplings round a weeping willow
 Are tears of sensibility.

 Like drops of Iris-coloured fountains
 By which Endymion loved to lie,
 Like dew-gems on untrodden mountains
 Are tears of sensibility.