will mention a few circumstances that may interest you and Colin.
You will believe that to him we never appear to regard anything
he does as anything more than a schoolboy's amusement. He took it
into his head to write a compendium of Universal History about a
year ago, and he really contrived to give a tolerably connected
view of the leading events from the Creation to the present time,
filling about a quire of paper. He told me one day that he had
been writing a paper, which Henry Daly was to translate into
Malabar, to persuade the people of Travancore to embrace the
Christian religion. On reading it I found it to contain a very
clear idea of the leading facts and doctrines of that religion,
with some strong arguments for its adoption. He was so fired with
reading Scott's Lay and Marmion, the former of which he got
entirely, and the latter almost entirely, by heart, merely from
his delight in reading them, that he determined on writing
himself a poem in six cantos which he called the 'Battle of
Cheviot.' After he had finished about three of the cantos of
about 120 lines each, which he did in a couple of days, he became
tired of it. I make no doubt he would have finished his design,
but, as he was proceeding with it, the thought struck him of
writing an heroic poem to be called 'Olaus the Great, or the
Conquest of Mona,' in which, after the manner of Virgil, he might
introduce in prophetic song the future fortunes of the family;--
among others, those of the hero who aided in the fall of the
tyrant of Mysore, after having long suffered from his tyranny;
[General Macaulay had been one of Tippoo Sahib's prisoners] and
of another of his race who had exerted himself for the
deliverance of the wretched Africans. He has just begun it. He
has composed I know not how many hymns. I send you one, as a
specimen, in his own handwriting, which he wrote about six months