In Margaret Macaulay’s journal there occurs more than one mention of her brother’s occasional fits of contrition on the subject of his own idleness; but these regrets and confessions must be taken for what they are worth, and for no more.  He worked much harder than he gave himself credit for.  His nature was such that whatever he did was done with all his heart, and all his power; and he was constitutionally incapable of doing it otherwise.  He always under-estimated the tension and concentration of mind which he brought to bear upon his labours, as compared with that which men in general bestow on whatever business they may have in hand; and, to-wards the close of life, this honourable self-deception no doubt led him to draw far too largely upon his failing strength, under the impression that there was nothing unduly severe in the efforts to which he continued to brace himself with ever increasing difficulty.

During the eighteen months that he passed at the Board of Control he had no time for relaxation, and very little for the industry which he loved the best.  Giving his days to India, and his nights to the inexorable demands of the Treasury Whip, he could devote a few hours to the Edinburgh Review only by rising at five when the rules of the House of Commons had allowed him to get to bed betimes on the previous evening.  Yet, under these conditions, he contrived to provide Mr. Napier with the highly finished articles on Horace Walpole and Lord Chatham, and to gratify a political opponent, who was destined to be a life-long friend, by his kindly criticism and spirited summary of Lord Mahon’s “History of the War of the Succession in Spain.”  And, in the “Friendship’s Offering” of 1833, one of those mawkish annual publications of the album species which were then in fashion, appeared his poem of the Armada; whose swinging couplets read as if somewhat out of place in the company of such productions as “The Mysterious Stranger, or the Bravo of Banff;” “Away to the Greenwood, a song;” and “Lines on a Window that had been frozen,” beginning with,

 “Pellucid pane, this morn on thee
  My fancy shaped both tower and tree.”

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay

Bath:  June 10, 1832.

My dear Sisters,—­Everything has gone wrong with me.  The people at Calne fixed Wednesday for my re-election on taking office; the very day on which I was to have been at a public dinner at Leeds.  I shall therefore remain here till Wednesday morning, and read Indian politics in quiet.  I am already deep in Zemindars, Ryots, Polygars, Courts of Phoujdary, and Courts of Nizamut Adawlut.  I can tell you which of the native Powers are subsidiary, and which independent, and read you lectures of an hour on our diplomatic transactions at the courts of Lucknow, Nagpore, Hydrabad, and Poonah.  At Poonah, indeed, I need not tell you that there is no court; for the Paishwa, as you are doubtless aware, was deposed by Lord Hastings in the Pindarree War.  Am I not in fair training to be as great a bore as if I had myself been in India?—­ that is to say, as great a bore as the greatest.