180 LIFE OF Sm JOHN LUBBOCK ch. 



— sat between Sir F. Jeune and Reay — have had 

 many letters of congratulation about the Early 

 Closing Bill." 



Just a week earlier he had been to Bristol 

 unveiling a monumental tablet to Lord Macaulay. 

 His address on the occasion is published in 

 Essays and Addresses. Sir George Trevelyan, 

 nephew of the great Macaulay, writes to him 

 appreciatively about it : 



8 Grosvenor Crescent, S.W., 

 April 25th, 1903. 



Dear Lord Avebury— I have read your speech 

 with very keen delight. The mere circumstance of 

 your going to Clifton was very pleasant to me ; but 

 the testimony which the range and elevation of your 

 address gave to your feeling for the subject, gave me a 

 satisfaction which I cannot expect to make you fully 

 understand. You spoke most kindly of your wish 

 that I had been there. It is the plain and simple truth 

 that I care too much about my uncle's memory and 

 fame to praise him publicly and statedly ; and for that 

 same reason to have him praised so, and by such as 

 you, is all the more prized by me. I lived with him 

 long enough to have a very strong reverence and affection 

 for him, and now, from a peculiar circumstance, I feel 

 more close to him than ever. I am fortunate enough 

 to love the same books as he loved ; and I read them 

 in his copies, with his marks down the side, and his 

 notes in the margin. I have said sometimes that his 

 marginal notes are to my mind better than his writings, 

 his speeches, his letters, or, perhaps, his talk. Never 

 a weak word, never an ignoble one ; and, as they are 

 mostly in the ancient classics, never on an unworthy 

 theme. 



Of late, in my comparative leisure, I have been 

 reading great quantities of Cicero's Philosophical works, 

 — the only philosophy, counting in theology, that I 

 ever really cared to read ; and I care for it immensely. 

 He has gone through it all before, over and again, with 

 immense though discriminative interest and delight ; 

 and I feel as if I were reading the Latin with him. 



