es, that I shall not be able to
send off my article about Hampden till Thursday the 12th. It will be,
I fear, more than forty pages long. As Pascal said of his eighteenth
letter, I would have made it shorter if I could have kept it longer. You
must indulge me, however; for I seldom offend in that way.

It is in part a narrative. This is a sort of composition which I have
never yet attempted. You will tell me, I am sure with sincerity, how you
think that I succeed in it. I have said as little about Lord Nugent's
book as I decently could.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: January 19, 1832.

Dear Napier,--I will try the Life of Lord Burleigh, if you will tell
Longman to send me the book. However bad the work may be, it will serve
as a heading for an article on the times of Elizabeth. On the whole,
I thought it best not to answer Croker. Almost all the little pamphlet
which he published, (or rather printed, for I believe it is not for
sale,) is made up of extracts from Blackwood; and I thought that a
contest with your grog-drinking, cock-fighting, cudgel-playing Professor
of Moral Philosophy would be too degrading. I could have demolished
every paragraph of the defence. Croker defended his thuetoi philoi
by quoting a passage of Euripides which, as every scholar knows, is
corrupt; which is nonsense and false metre if read as he reads it; and
which Markland and Matthiae have set right by a most obvious correction.
But, as nobody seems to have read his vindication, we can gain nothing
by refuting it. ["Mr. Croker has favoured us with some Greek of his
own. 'At the altar,' say Dr. Johnson. 'I recommended my th ph.'
'These letters,' says the editor, (which Dr. Strahan seems not to
have understood,) probably mean _departed friends._' Johnson was not
a first-rate Greek scholar; but he knew more Greek than most boys
when they leave school; and no schoolboy could venture to use the word
thuetoi in the sense which Mr. Croker ascribes to it without imminent
danger of a flogging."--Macaulay's Review of Croker's Boswell.]

Ever yours

T. B. MACAULAY.

CHAPTER V. 1832-1834.

Macaulay is invited to stand for Leeds--The Reform bill
passes--Macaulay appointed Commissioner of the Board of
Control--His life in office--Letters to his sisters--
Contested election at Leeds--Macaulay's bearing as a
candidate--Canvassing--Pledges--Intrusion of religion into
politics--Placemen in Parliament--Liverpool