y 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.

While Zephyr broods o'er moonlight rill
The flowerets droop as if to die,
And from their chaliced cup distil
The tears of sensibility.

The heart obdurate never felt
One link of Nature's magic tie
If ne'er it knew the bliss to melt
In tears of sensibility.

The generous and the gentle heart
Is like that balmy Indian tree
Which scatters from the wounded part
The tears of sensibility.

Then oh! ye Fair, if Pity's ray
E'er taught your snowy breasts to sigh,
Shed o'er my contemplative lay
The tears of sensibility.

November 2, 1821.

My dear Mother,--I possess some of the irritability of a poet, and
it has been a good deal awakened by your criticisms. I could not have
imagined that it would have been necessary for me to have said that the
execrable trash entitled "Tears of Sensibility" was merely a burlesque
on the style of the magazine verses of the day. I could not suppose t