Some of these effusions illustrate a sentiment in his disposition which was among the most decided, and the most frequently and loudly expressed.  Macaulay was only too easily bored, and those whom he considered fools he by no means suffered gladly.  He once amused his sisters by pouring out whole Iliads of extempore doggrel upon the head of an unfortunate country squire of their acquaintance, who had a habit of detaining people by the button, and who was especially addicted to the society of the higher order of clergy

 “His Grace Archbishop Manners Sutton
  Could not keep on a single button. 
  As for Right Reverend John of Chester,
  His waistcoats open at the breast are. 
  Our friend* has filled a mighty trunk
  With trophies torn from Doctor Monk
  And he has really tattered foully
  The vestments of Archbishop Howley
  No button could I late discern on
  The garments of Archbishop Vernon,
  And never had his fingers mercy
  Upon the garb of Bishop Percy. 
  The buttons fly from Bishop Ryder
  Like corks that spring from bottled cyder,—­”

[The name of this gentleman has been concealed, as not being sufficiently known by all to give point, but well enough remembered by some to give pain.]

and so on, throughout the entire bench, until, after a good half-hour of hearty and spontaneous nonsense, the girls would go laughing back to their Italian and their drawing-boards.

He did not play upon words as a habit, nor did he interlard his talk with far-fetched or overstrained witticisms.  His humour, like his rhetoric, was full of force and substance, and arose naturally from the complexion of the conversation or the circumstance of the moment.  But when alone with his sisters, and, in after years, with his nieces, he was fond of setting himself deliberately to manufacture conceits resembling those on the heroes of the Trojan War which have been thought worthy of publication in the collected works of Swift.  When walking in London he would undertake to give some droll turn to the name of every shopkeeper in the street, and, when travelling, to the name of every station along the line.  At home he would run through the countries of Europe, the States of the Union, the chief cities of our Indian Empire, the provinces of France, the Prime Ministers of England, or the chief writers and artists of any given century; striking off puns, admirable, endurable, and execrable, but all irresistibly laughable, which followed each other in showers like sparks from flint.  Capping verses was a game of which he never tired.  “In the spring of 1829,” says his cousin Mrs. Conybeare, “we were staying in Ormond Street.  My chief recollection of your uncle during that visit is on the evenings when we capped verses.  All the family were quick at it, but his astounding memory made him supereminent.  When the time came for him to be off to bed at his chambers, he would rush out of the room after uttering some long-sought line, and would be pursued to the top of the stairs by one of the others who had contrived to recall a verse which served the purpose, in order that he might not leave the house victorious; but he, with the hall-door open in his hand, would shriek back a crowning effort, and go off triumphant.”