before, and paid immediately after, the Easter vacation. On
putting the volume into Jeffrey's hand, your uncle said, 'I don't
think you will find me tripping again. I knew it, I thought,
pretty well before; but I am sure I know it now.' Jeffrey
proceeded to examine him, putting him on at a variety of the
heaviest passages--the battle of the angels--the dialogues of
Adam and the archangels,--and found him ready to declaim them
all, till he begged him to stop. He asked him how he had acquired
such a command of the poem, and had for answer: 'I had him in the
country, and I read it twice over, and I don't think that I shall
ever forget it again.' At the same time he told Jeffrey that he
believed he could repeat everything of his own he had ever
printed, and nearly all he had ever written, 'except, perhaps,
some of my college exercises.'

"I myself had an opportunity of seeing and hearing a remarkable
proof of your uncle's hold upon the most insignificant verbiage
that chance had poured into his ear. I was staying with him at
Bowood, in the winter of 1852. Lord Elphinstone--who had been
many years before Governor of Madras,--was telling one morning at
breakfast of a certain native barber there, who was famous, in
his time, for English doggrel of his own making, with which he
was wont to regale his customers. 'Of course,' said Lord
Elphinstone, 'I don't remember any of it; but was very funny, and
used to be repeated in society.' Macaulay, who was sitting a good
way off, immediately said: 'I remember being shaved by the
fellow, and he recited a quantity of verse to me during the
operation, and here is some of it;' and then he went off in a
very queer doggrel about the exploits of Bonaparte, of which I
recollect the recurring refrain--