mention his wishes to you. I have been indisposed; not, however, seriously. As business is now slack, I am going for a week into Somersetshire, to my sister. As soon as the House rises, I shall hasten to Edinburgh. I have begun a paper on Clive, and like the subject much.-Ever yours,

T. B. MACAULAY. London, August 10, 1839.

DEAR NAPIER,-Why Charles Buller should have omitted to answer your letter I cannot imagine. I can only assure you that he has taken no offence; for he told me with every appearance of satisfaction that you had written to him in the most courteous manner, and thanked me for having been the go-between. I suspect that his silence springs from mere indolence and procrastination, the real causes of much that is attributed to resentment and insolence. I explained to him, when first we talked on the subject, that the Edinburgh Review was friendly to the Melbourne Ministry, that you had positively refused to suffer even Brougham to attack that Ministry, and that a licence which had been denied to so old and so important a contributor could not be extended to anybody else. Buller perfectly understands this. An article on the late session would not do for him. He has taken such a course on several questions that he could not defend the Government without assailing himself. The sort of subject which would suit him best would be a volume of travels in the United States, an absurd biography, like Sir William Knighton's, the crazy publications of the teetotallers, and so forth. His levity is such that he can never counterfeit seriousness for ten minutes on the most important subject. And when he speaks with real force both of argument and language, as he often does, he always destroys half the effect of his performance by laughing at himself and his cause. he could feel or affect earnestness, he would be one of the most rising men in the House. I am proceeding slowly with Clive. I hope to be at Edinburgh within ten days.-Yours T. B. M.

ever,

If

1 Macaulay had been returned in May as one of the Members for Edinburgh on Mr. Abercromby's elevation to the Peerage.

Edinburgh, September 2, 1839. DEAR NAPIER,-I start to-night by the mail. Every hour of my remaining stay is so much occupied that I can scarcely find time to write a line. Next time that I come hither, I shall, I hope, find you in Castle Street; and we shall have better opportunities of seeing each other than on this occasion. I shall work on Clive as hard as I can, and make the paper as short as I can. But I am afraid that I cannot positively pledge myself either as to time or as to length. I rather think, however, that the article will take. I shall do my best to be in London again on the 18th. God knows what these Ministerial changes may produce. Office was never within my memory so little attractive, and, therefore, I fear I cannot, as a man of spirit, flinch if it is offered to me.-Ever yours, T. B. MACAULAY.

London, September 20, 1839.

DEAR NAPIER,-I reached town early this morning, having, principally on your account, shortened my stay at Paris, and crossed to Ramsgate in such weather that the mails could not get into the harbour of Dover. I hoped to have five or six days of uninterrupted work, in which I might finish my paper for the Edinburgh Review; but I found waiting for me -this is strictly confidential-a letter from Lord Melbourne, with an offer of the Secretaryship at War, and a seat in the Cabinet.1 I shall be a good deal occupied, as you may suppose, by conferences and correspondence during some time. But I assure you that every spare minute shall be employed in your service. I shall, I hope, be able at all events, to send you the article [Lord Clive] by the 30th. I will write the native names as clearly as I can, and trust to your care without a proof. My historical plans must for the present be

"What Burke and Sheridan, Francis and Mackintosh, had sighed and laboured for in vain, was spontaneously accorded him as a man of letters, whom the great constituencies of Leeds and Edinburgh had chosen for their representatives. No doubt the minister desired to strengthen his resources in debate: no doubt the personal friendship of Russell and Rice, still more of Lansdowne, contributed to Macaulay's elevation. But the credit is due to Melbourne of being the first Premier, since the death of Stanhope, who opened the doors of the Cabinet to one who was simply and merely a man of letters." (Torrens's Memoirs of Lord Melbourne, i. 311.)

suspended, but I see no reason to doubt that I shall be able to do as much as ever for the Edinburgh Review. Again, remember, silence is the word.-Yours ever, T. B. M.

London, September 24, 1839. DEAR NAPIER,-Thanks for your congratulations, though I am not sure that they ought not to be exchanged for condolences. What you mention is a great relief to me. I have been working hard, and should probably have sent off the paper [Lord Clive] in three days; but it would have been huddled up, and it could not have been printed to my satisfaction. I hope now to make it an interesting article. I will send it pretty early, as I should like to have it by me some weeks in proof, and to show it in that shape to Trevelyan and Macleod,' whose judgment on Indian subjects is worth a great deal more than mine.-Ever yours, T. B. M.

JAMES STEPHEN.

Downing Street, August 10, 1839. MY DEAR SIR,-It is not my habit to leave any letter unanswered for twenty-four hours. My neglect of your last communication must be set down to the same cause which renders me less observant than I could wish, of all the offices of private, life. I mean the inordinate demand made upon me by duties of another kind. If, when we met in London, I had but possessed the gift of second sight, and could have foreseen all that has since occurred under this roof, I should have thought it as presumptuous to undertake a surgical | operation as to engage for a review. Day by day, ever since, have I been drudging at a low average of ten hours daily for the Government, and to make matters better, my three most effective assistants have been disabled by sickness. If I could hazard on paper an account of the political arrangements which have contributed to increase, and which are still augmenting my official turmoil, you would admit that I have apologies enough and to spare; first, for leaving your note unanswered, and now for supplicating for the most distant

1 Sir John M. Macleod, who took a very important part in the formation of the Indian Penal Code.

possible day which you can afford me, for the completion of my promise. However, it is a shame to be faint-hearted about writing a few pages on the life and works of a man [Richard Baxter] who actually published more than 200 folio and quarto books. The difficulty of gaining some acquaintance with them, and of compressing all that is to be said into the proper limits, is, after all, the real difficulty. I am panting for the end of the Session, because though it will leave me still a prisoner, I shall then have my cell much more to myself, and more at your service. Lord Brougham then also will be gone, and I shall not be compelled to be following the steps which he takes every other day with his seven-leagued boots. I doubt much the wisdom of having anything to do with Mr. Ward and his emigration doctrines. It is a dull subject, at least to me, and a very few sentences would really exhaust the whole of the very complete refutation to which his project is open. It is, that there is in no part of the globe any vacant territory belonging to Great Britain on which the experiment could now be tried. Expect to hear of Ministerial changes, which will improve the composition, without changing, the constitution of Lord Melbourne's Government, and not before they are wanted. Your pecuniary missive has made its appearance through the agency of your banker, and would speedily be converted into bullion, if the Bank of England had any left. I am a person of enormous wealth, for I am out of debt, and am able to keep a margin more or less broad between my ways and means, and my annual Appropriation Act, which is more than my friend Spring Rice can do. He, I hear on all sides, is subsiding into a Peer, and I believe it. You should make Lord Brougham send you a little of his superfluous health.-Very truly yours, J. STEPHEN.

September 19, 1839.

MY DEAR SIR,—If my memory serves me, I promised that you should receive a manuscript from me by the 21st instant., I therefore, in fulfilment of that promise, send you as much of

1 Spring Rice, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, was created Baron Monteagle.

the paper for which I am responsible as my copyist has been able to complete. If promises of this kind had not been obligations of the most sacred nature, I believe that I should have broken this engagement, for I have been living for the last six months in a tornado. When you advert to all that has happened in Parliament and elsewhere during that period about the Colonial World to which I belong, you will readily understand how very few have been the half hours which the utmost parsimony of time has left me for attention to anything else. I say this chiefly, or rather exclusively, to apologise for the manner in which I have executed my undertaking. There are greater difficulties in it than I had foreseen. The topics are so very serious, that it is scarcely possible to give them a sufficient relief, and Baxter's story is not one which can be told, nor are his writings such as can be commented on, without the risk of becoming more theological than befits a literary journal. However, I have done the best which in such scanty limits of leisure has been in my power. When you have read my paper, you may, for aught I know, conceive a distaste for it. If such should be the fact, I have only to ask that you would say as much without reserve. I dare say I have my full share of the vanity which seems inseparable from authorship in all its forms, but I give myself credit for self-knowledge enough to believe that others are better judges than I am of what I write, and if your judgment should be unfavourable to this performance, all I can say is, that I will with your permission at some future time try whether I cannot produce something better. Amidst all your annoyances, you shall not have the vexation of being worried by any parental partialities of mine for my mental offspring. I think that the running title might be-"The Life and Writings of Richard Baxter."-Very truly yours, JAMES STEPHEN.

SIR E. L. BULWER.

August 26, 1839.

MY DEAR SIR,-Your frank and kind letter can in no way wound the amour propre of a much more touchy person than myself. It is very natural that you should wish to know in