Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1885 — How Macaulay was Pestered. [ARTICLE]

How Macaulay was Pestered.

We have been lately told how Lord Tennyson has been so troubled with tbe receipts of innumerable manuscripts and letters from strangers that he was long ago obliged to give np answering—even by secretary—such correspondeuce, or returning their literaary inclosnres. This reminds us that Macaulay, in the latter years of his life, was similarly pestered. He mentions in his journal a clergymen who wrote to him three times to ask him what the allusion to St. Cecilia meant in J»iß.account of the trial of Warring Hastings. He also received a communication from a Scottish gentleman, who said that he wished $0 publish a would be glad to come up to London and submit the MS. to the correction of the essayist and historian if the latter would remit him £SO! A cattle-painter likewise appealed to him “as he loved the fine arts, to hire or bny him a cow to paint from.” A schoolmaster at Cbeltanham, who published “a wretched pamphlet” on British India, full of errors, received a courteous no o from Macaulay pointing out two gross mistakes. When tbe schoolmaster published a new edition it was advertised as “revised and corrected by Lord Macaulay,”