Macaulay was only too easily bored, and those whom he considered fools he by no means suffered gladly.

He once amused his sisters by pouring out whole Iliads of extempore doggrel upon the head of an unfortunate country squire of their acquaintance, who had a habit of detaining people by the button, and who was especially addicted to the society of the higher order of clergy "His Grace Archbishop Manners Sutton Could not keep on a single button.
As for Right Reverend John of Chester, His waistcoats open at the breast are.
Our friend* has filled a mighty trunk With trophies torn from Doctor Monk And he has really tattered foully The vestments of Archbishop Howley No button could I late discern on The garments of Archbishop Vernon, And never had his fingers mercy Upon the garb of Bishop Percy.
The buttons fly from Bishop Ryder Like corks that spring from bottled cyder,--" [*The name of this gentleman has been concealed, as not being sufficiently known by all to give point, but well enough remembered by some to give pain.] and so on, throughout the entire bench, until, after a good half-hour of hearty and spontaneous nonsense, the girls would go laughing back to their Italian and their drawing-boards.
He did not play upon words as a habit, nor did he interlard his talk with far-fetched or overstrained witticisms.

His humour, like his rhetoric, was full of force and substance, and arose naturally from the complexion of the conversation or the circumstance of the moment.

But when alone with his sisters, and, in after years, with his nieces, he was fond of setting himself deliberately to manufacture conceits resembling those on the heroes of the Trojan War which have been thought worthy of publication in the collected works of Swift.

When walking in London he would undertake to give some droll turn to the name of every shopkeeper in the street, and, when travelling, to the name of every station along the line.