hat
you could have suspected me of _seriously_ composing such a farrago
of false metaphor and unmeaning epithet. It was meant solely for a
caricature on the style of the poetasters of newspapers and journals;
and, (though I say it who should not say it,) has excited more attention
and received more praise at Cambridge than it deserved. If you have
it, read it over again, and do me the justice to believe that such a
compound of jargon, nonsense, false images, and exaggerated sentiment,
is not the product of my serious labours. I sent it to the Morning
Post, because that paper is the ordinary receptacle of trash of the
description which I intended to ridicule, and its admission therefore
pointed the jest. I see, however, that for the future I must mark more
distinctly when I intend to be ironical.

Your affectionate son

T. B. M.

Cambridge: July 26, 1822.

My dear Father,--I have been engaged to take two pupils for nine months
of the next year. They are brothers, whose father, a Mr. Stoddart,
resides at Cambridge. I am to give them an hour a day, each; and am to
receive a hundred guineas. It gives me great pleasure to be able even in
this degree to relieve you from the burden of my expenses here. I begin
my tutorial labours to-morrow. My pupils are young, one being fifteen
and the other thirteen years old, but I hear excellent accounts of their
proficiency, and I intend to do my utmost for them. Farewell.

T. B. M.

A few days later on he writes "I do not dislike teaching whether it is
that I am more patient than I had imagined, or that I have not yet had
time to grow tired of my new vocation. I find, also, what at first sight
may appear paradoxical, that I read much more in consequence, and that
the regularity of habits necessarily produced by a periodical employment
which cannot be procrastinated fully compensates for the loss of the
time which is consumed in tuition."

Trinity College, Cambridge: October 1, 1824.

My dear Father,--I was elected Fellow this morning, shall be sworn in
to-morrow, and hope to leave Cambridge on Tuesday for Rothley Temple.
The examiners speak highly of the manner in which I acquitted myself,
and I have reason to believe that I stood first of the candidates.

I need not say how much I am delighted by my success, and how much
I enjoy the thought of the pleasure which it will afford to you, my
mother, and our other friends. Till I become a Master of Arts next July
the pecuniary em