re all staunch; and I will answer for
this,--that, if the ministers should throw us over, we will be ready to
defend ourselves."

The combination of public spirit, political instinct, and legitimate
self-assertion, which was conspicuous in Macaulay's character, pointed
him out to some whose judgment had been trained by long experience of
affairs as a more than possible leader in no remote future; and it
is not for his biographer to deny that they had grounds for their
conclusion. The prudence, the energy, the self-reliance, which he
displayed in another field, might have been successfully directed to
the conduct of an executive policy, and the management of a popular
assembly. Macaulay never showed himself deficient in the qualities which
enable a man to trust his own sense; to feel responsibility, but not to
fear it; to venture where others shrink; to decide while others waver;
with all else that belongs to the vocation of a ruler in a free country.
But it was not his fate; it was not his work; and the rank which he
might have claimed among the statesmen of Britain was not ill exchanged
for the place which he occupies in the literature of the world.

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

York: March 22, 1830.

My dear Sir,--I was in some doubt as to what I should be able to do for
Number 101, and I deferred writing till I could make up my mind. If my
friend Ellis's article on Greek History, of which I have formed high
expectations, could have been ready, I should have taken a holiday. But,
as there is no chance of that for the next number, I ought, I think, to
consider myself as his bail, and to surrender myself to your disposal in
his stead.

I have been thinking of a subject, light and trifling enough, but
perhaps not the worse for our purpose on that account. We seldom want
a sufficient quantity of heavy matter. There is a wretched poetaster of
the name of Robert Montgomery who has written some volumes of detestable
verses on religious subjects, which by mere puffing in magazines and
newspapers have had an immense sale, and some of which are now in their
tenth or twelfth editions. I have for some time past thought that the
trick of puffing, as it is now practised both by authors and publishers,
is likely to degrade the literary character, and to deprave the public
taste, in a frightful degree. I really think that we ought to try what
effect satire will have upon this nuisance, and I doubt whether we can
ever find a better o