My long article on Bacon has, no doubt, been in your hands some time.  I never, to the best of my recollection, proposed to review Hannah More’s Life or Works.  If I did, it must have been in jest.  She was exactly the very last person in the world about whom I should choose to write a critique.  She was a very kind friend to me from childhood.  Her notice first called out my literary tastes.  Her presents laid the foundation of my library.  She was to me what Ninon was to Voltaire,—­begging her pardon for comparing her to a bad woman, and yours for comparing myself to a great man.  She really was a second mother to me.  I have a real affection for her memory.  I therefore could not possibly write about her unless I wrote in her praise; and all the praise which I could give to her writings, even after straining my conscience in her favour, would be far indeed from satisfying any of her admirers.

I will try my hand on Temple, and on Lord Clive.  Shaftesbury I shall let alone.  Indeed, his political life is so much connected with Temple’s that, without endless repetition, it would be impossible for me to furnish a separate article on each.  Temple’s Life and Works, the part which he took in the controversy about the ancients and moderns; the Oxford confederacy against Bentley; and the memorable victory which Bentley obtained, will be good subjects.  I am in training for this part of the subject, as I have twice read through the Phalaris controversy since I arrived in India.

I have been almost incessantly engaged in public business since I sent off the paper on Bacon; but I expect to have comparative leisure during the short remainder of my stay here.  The Penal Code of India is finished, and is in the press.  The illness of two of my colleagues threw the work almost entirely on me.  It is done, however; and I am not likely to be called upon for vigorous exertion during the rest of my Indian career.

Yours ever

T. B. MACAULAY.

If you should have assigned Temple, or Clive, to anybody else, pray do not be uneasy on that account.  The pleasure of writing pays itself.

Calcutta:  December 18, 1837.

Dear Ellis,—­My last letter was on a deeply melancholy subject, the death of our poor friend Malkin.  I have felt very much for his widow.  The intensity of her affliction, and the fortitude and good feeling which she showed as soon as the first agony was over, have interested me greatly in her.  Six or seven of Malkin’s most intimate friends here have joined with Ryan and me, in subscribing to put up a plain marble tablet in the cathedral, for which I have written an inscription. [This inscription appears in Lord Macaulay’s Miscellaneous Works.]