ment in measured and (as far as you can
honestly) in courteous terms; for he is, for so considerable a
man, strangely sensitive. You must have an odd story to tell of
your intercourse with the knights of the Order of the Quill."

And the letter closed with what an editor values more even than
decently Christian treatment, namely the suggestion of a fine subject.
This became the admirable essay on the Clapham Sect.

The author of one of the two or three most delightful biographies
in all literature has published the letter to Mr. Napier in which
Macaulay speaks pretty plainly what he thought about Brougham and the
extent of his services to the Review. Brougham in turn hated Macaulay,
whom he calls the third or greatest bore in society that he has ever
known. He is furious--and here Brougham was certainly not wrong--over
the "most profligate political morality" of Macaulay's essay on Clive.

"In my eyes, his defence of Clive, and the audacious ground of
it, merit execration. It is a most serious, and, to me, a painful
subject. No--no--all the sentences a man can turn, even if he made
them in pure taste, and not in Tom's snip-snap taste of the lower
empire,--all won't avail against a rotten morality. The first and
most sacred duty of a public man, and, above all, an author, is
to keep by honest and true doctrine--never to relax--never to
countenance vice--ever to hold fast by virtue. What? Are we
gravely to be told, at this time of day, that a set-off may be
allowed for public, and, therefore, atrocious crimes, though he
admits that a common felon pleads it in vain? Gracious God, where
is this to end! What horrors will it not excuse! Tiberius's great
capacity, his first-rate wit, that which made him the charm of
society, will next, I suppose, be set up to give a splendour to
the inhabitants of Capreae. Why, Olive's address, and his skill,
and his courage are not at all more certain, nor are they
qualities of a different cast. Every great ruffian, who has filled
the world with blood and tears, will be sure of an acquittal,
because of his talents and his success. After I had, and chiefly
in the _Edinburgh Review_, been trying to restore a better, a
purer, a higher standard of morals, and to wean men from the silly
love of military glory, for which they are the first to pay, I
find the _Edinburgh Review_ preaching, not me