LORD OXFORD AND MACAULAY'S ESSAYS
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR, Mr. J. A. Spender, in The Spectator of December 1st, in his review of Lord Oxford's Letters to a Friend, refers to a copy of Macaulay's Essays which Mr. Asquith had " found lying about " in 1917, and read on a train journey, both coming and going. It may be of interest to mention that the volume referred to is possibly—if not probably—the one before me as I write.
It was gifted early in 1918 by Mr. Asquith to a War charity, and in addition to his signature on the fly-leaf con- tained a covering letter in his handwriting from 20 Cavendish Square. After buying the book, I locked it away with other papers, and only after reading Mr. Spender's review examined it carefully. Judging from the pencil annotations, it had been attentively read, for Mr. Asquith has marked here a clumsily constructed sentence, and there a gram- matical slip (something I should have deemed impossible on the part of Macaulay). But perhaps the most revealing item is the page turned down at the essay on the Earl of Chatham—referring to Pitt's later days in the Commons : In his younger days he had been but too prompt to retaliate on those who attacked him ; but now, conscious of his great services, and of the space which he filled in the eyes of all mankind, he would not stoop to personal squabbles."—
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