"Oh, by the glorious posture of affairs,
By the enormous price that Omnium hears,
By princely Bourbon's late recovered Crown,
And by Miss Fanny's safe return from town,
Oh, do not thou, and thou alone, refuse
To show thy pleasure at this glorious news!"

Touched by the mention of his sister, Mr. Preston yielded and
young Macaulay never turned another verse except at the bidding
of his schoolmaster, until, on the eve of his departure for
Cambridge, he wrote between three and four hundred lines of a
drama, entitled "Don Fernando," marked by force and fertility of
diction, but somewhat too artificial to be worthy of publication
under a name such as his. Much about the same time he
communicated to Malden the commencement of a burlesque poem on
the story of Anthony Babington; who, by the part that he took in
the plots against the life of Queen Elizabeth, had given the
family a connection with English history which, however
questionable, was in Macaulay's view better than none.

"Each, says the proverb, has his taste. 'Tis true.
Marsh loves a controversy; Coates a play;
Bennet a felon; Lewis Way a Jew;
The Jew the silver spoons of Lewis Way.
The Gipsy Poetry, to own the truth,
Has been my love through childhood and in youth."

It is perhaps as well that the project to all appearance stopped
with the first stanza, which in its turn was probably written for
the sake of a single line. The young man had a better use for his