mation
of posterity than he would have done if his letters had never been
published."]

When I said that Chesterfield had lost by the publication of his
letters, I of course considered that he had much to lose; that he
has left an immense reputation, founded on the testimony of all his
contemporaries of all parties, for wit, taste, and eloquence; that what
remains of his Parliamentary oratory is superior to anything of that
time that has come down to us, except a little of Pitt's. The utmost
that can be said of the letters is that they are the letters of a
cleverish man; and there are not many which are entitled even to that
praise. I think he would have stood higher if we had been left to judge
of his powers,--as we judge of those of Chatham, Mansfield, Charles
Townshend, and many others,--only by tradition, and by fragments of
speeches preserved in Parliamentary reports.

I said nothing about Lord Byron's criticism on Walpole, because I
thought it, like most of his Lordship's criticism, below refutation. On
the drama Lord Byron wrote more nonsense than on any subject. He wanted
to have restored the unities. His practice proved as unsuccessful as his
theory was absurd. His admiration of the "Mysterious Mother" was of
a piece with his thinking Gifford, and Rogers, greater poets than
Wordsworth, and Coleridge.

Ever yours truly

T. B. MACAULAY.

London: October 28, 1833.

Dear Hannah,--I wish to have Malkin as head of the Commission at Canton,
and Grant seems now to be strongly bent on the same plan. [Sir Benjamin
Malkin, a college friend of Macaulay, was afterwards a judge in
the Supreme Court at Calcutta.] Malkin is a man of singular temper,
judgment, and firmness of nerve. Danger and responsibility, instead of
agitating and confusing him, always bring out whatever there is in him.
This was the reason of his great success at Cambridge. He made a figure
there far beyond his learning or his talents, though both his learning
and his talents are highly respectable. But the moment that he sate down
to be examined, which is just the situation in which all other people,
from natural flurry, do worse than at other times, he began to do his
very best. His intellect became clearer, and his manner more quiet, than
usual. He is the very man to make up his mind in three minutes if the
Viceroy of Canton were in a rage, the mob bellowing round the doors of
the factory, and an English ship of war making preparations to bombard