* 
 J A 
 
 * 
 
 OF
 
 A DAY-BOOK 
 
 OF 
 
 LANDOR
 
 A DAY-BOOK 
 
 OF 
 
 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Chosen by 
 JOHN BAILEY 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 M DCCCC XIX
 
 Oxford University Press 
 Loition Edinburgh Glasgow New York 
 
 Toronto Melbourne Bombay 
 Humphrey Milford Mu4. Publisher to the University
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 LANDOR has been very fortunate in his editors and 
 critics. Few authors have been more generally praised 
 by their peers. And perhaps no English writer except 
 Wordsworth owes more to an interpreter than Landor 
 owes to Sir Sidney Colvin, whose volume of selections 
 from him is not only one of the largest but also one of 
 the finest in the Golden Treasury Series. His works 
 are bulky, and in every way rather difficult of approach 
 for the ordinary reader. It is safe to say that of his 
 readers to-day at least three-quarters know him chiefly 
 or solely in the Golden Treasury volume. There is 
 also a more recent selection, an admirable little book, 
 done by Mr. de Slincourt. But that is confined to 
 the Imaginary Conversations. In his interesting Intro- 
 duction to it, Mr. de SSlincourt says : ' Open our 
 Landor where we will, we cannot read far before we 
 meet some wise saw, some striking image, that arrests 
 the attention and sets the mind working.' Part of the 
 object of this little book is to illustrate the truth of this 
 remark and to do for Landor what has been done for 
 so many writers who lend themselves to it so much less 
 than he. It has, indeed, already been partly done in a 
 
 2031443
 
 vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 little volume of * Aphorisms ' chosen by Mr. Brimley 
 Johnson. But there is room in Lander's abundance 
 for many such volumes. And more than that, the plan 
 and object, as well as the method, followed here are 
 somewhat different from Mr. Johnson's. He confines 
 himself to prose, and, as his title implies, keeps almost 
 entirely to general maxims and reflections. So I have 
 hoped that it may not be amiss to put together a book 
 at once smaller than his and more representative of the 
 whole of Landor : more representative, or aiming at 
 being so, as including not only his prose but his verse ; 
 not only the general laws he liked to lay down but his 
 interesting applications of them to individual cases : not 
 only politics but Napoleon : not only poetry but Dante 
 and Milton : not only thought but, at least occasionally, 
 pure, almost unthinking, beauty : not only his wise 
 reflections but at least something of his preferences 
 and even his prejudices : in a word, not only the master 
 of prose but the whole writer, not only the writer but 
 the man. And it has seemed convenient to adopt the 
 form of a day-book or calendar, giving one such sentence, 
 or judgement, or image, or confession, to each day in 
 the year. Often the single image or thought has 
 required for its development something approaching a 
 paragraph : and when that has been so I have not 
 hesitated to find space for it. But the longest has I 
 hope its own unity, and there is none which it will take
 
 INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 so much as a minute to read aloud. The passages chosen 
 for the first, eighth, fifteenth, twenty-second, and twenty- 
 ninth of each month are fromLandor's verse: the rest are 
 from his prose. This seemed to represent something 
 like their relative importance. He has himself invited 
 such a distinction : ' poetry was always my amusement, 
 prose my study and business.' And no competent 
 judge has doubted that he was right. Beautiful as 
 the best of his verse is, often full of an exquisite 
 graciousness, and sometimes of a Roman majesty, it 
 rarely remains long on either of these heights, and on 
 the whole gives the impression of being the production 
 not so much of a poet as of a very nobly-gifted amateur 
 in poetry. His prose on the other hand, not merely 
 frequently but almost constantly, sounds the insistent 
 and imperative claim to rank as the work of a master, a 
 claim which has never been seriously disputed. It is 
 his prose, therefore, which provides the material for by far 
 the greater number of my quotations. There is only 
 one other thing to say about the method followed in 
 choosing and arranging the selection. The passages 
 given are not inserted in chronological order, nor are 
 those which come from a single Conversation always 
 placed together. It has seemed better to group 
 them by mood and subject: autobiography, religion, 
 literature, politics and the like ; and that not strictly but 
 quite loosely, passing backwards and forwards from one
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 to another and aiming chiefly at the avoidance of any 
 too abrupt contrast in manner or thought between one 
 day and the next and at the building of such bridges of 
 transition as could be found between different subjects. 
 The sharpest breaks in the continuity will be found, as 
 seemed permissible, in the passages of verse. 
 
 Nearly all Lander's work is dramatic in form ; that 
 is, he speaks in it not directly but through the voices of 
 others. The names of the speakers are here prefixed 
 to the passages given. This is obviously right and 
 necessary, and would have been so even if Landor had 
 not himself, in his prefatory note to the Imaginary 
 Conversations, desired us to be on our guard against the 
 mistake of ' attributing to the writer any opinions but 
 what are spoken under his own name '. Yet it is certain 
 that there are few Conversations in which one at least of 
 the speakers (and often more than one) is not obviously 
 a mouthpiece of Landor. He tells us himself in a 
 note to the Conversation between Lord Brooke and Sir 
 Philip Sidney that in verse at least he did not think it 
 well to imitate the manner of the poets whom he intro- 
 duces as speakers. So the poems which he has inserted 
 in Pericles and Aspas'ia and other dialogues make little 
 or no pretence of being anything but his own. And 
 nearly all his characters express themselves in the stately 
 Landorian prose. We cannot tell from the style 
 whether it be Southey or Person, Aesop or Rhodope,
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 who is speaking. Nor was it only in manner that he 
 avoided the dramatic. What could be less characteristic 
 of Johnson than the denunciation of conversational 
 combat put into his mouth in the quotation for January 
 2 jrd ? And what less like Shakespeare than the fine 
 sermon he is made to pour out in the Citation and 
 Examination ? And these are only two extreme instances. 
 No doubt there are Conversations, such as the noble 
 Leofric and Godiva, the beautiful Maid of Orleans 
 and Agnes Sorel, and the amusing Ftlippo Lippi and 
 Eugenius IV, in which real dramatic power is shown, 
 and the characters are kept distinct and clearly marked : 
 but they are neither the majority nor anything like the 
 majority. Even in his professed dramas he seldom 
 escapes from his own way of thought and expression. 
 That he was not blind to this is shown by the proud 
 humility with which he speaks of his wonderful 
 Conversation between the shades of Agamemnon and 
 Iphigeneia : ' I was tragedian in that scene alone.' 
 
 The truth is that his mind was too statuesque for 
 drama, as we understand it : at least for any later than 
 the Prometheus of Aeschylus. He had something of 
 the passion of drama in him, but none of the mobility, 
 flexibility, and sympathy with all sorts and conditions 
 of men, which it requires. He yielded to none in his 
 unbounded admiration of Shakespeare, whom he places, 
 in the passage given on June 2Oth, alone and above all
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 poets as ' the confidant of the Creator '. But he was 
 much more like Milton, with whom as at once, like 
 himself, aristocrat and republican, scholar and poet, he 
 evidently felt a peculiar affinity. Whatever he touched 
 he translated and transformed till it became, not his 
 own, as was Shakespeare's way, but himself, as was 
 Milton's. 
 
 And yet, like Milton, he has a universality after his 
 own fashion. As Milton compelled all nations and all 
 ages into his service and brought all history into an 
 action which ended while the population of this earth 
 was but one man and one woman, so Landor, however 
 individual and personal his attitude always is, yet can 
 use all the world to express it, to adorn it by action, to 
 illustrate it by imagination, or throw it into relief by 
 contrast or opposition. Like Cicero, whom he is never 
 tired of praising, he had all the universality that can 
 come of reading. And, while the world behind Cicero 
 was one of only three or four centuries and of only two 
 peoples, the world in which Landor moves with such 
 stately ease includes twenty-five centuries and almost 
 every nation and order of men which has played an 
 important part in them. The classical world, the 
 mediaeval and the modern, all meet in his pages : Greek 
 and Persian, Roman and Carthaginian, Christian and 
 pagan, monks and Mahommedans, Frenchmen and Ger- 
 mans, Englishmen and Italians, scholars and theologians,
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 statesmen and soldiers, poets and critics, painters and 
 Popes. Here is God's plenty indeed. There is nothing 
 quite like it anywhere else ; not even the vast embrace 
 of Gibbon includes so much. It would be a pardonable 
 exaggeration to say that there is nothing in the whole 
 history of man which does not find a place somewhere 
 in the Imaginary Conversations of Landor. 
 
 Of course he is very far from being equally at home 
 everywhere. His mind was Roman and English: 
 much that was characteristically Greek and almost 
 everything that was characteristically mediaeval was 
 alien or unintelligible to him. He makes Barrow tell 
 Newton that he finds more 'wisdom and genius' in 
 Cicero than in all the philosophers of Greece. He 
 disliked Plato not only for the reasons which he gives, 
 but probably still more for reasons of which he was 
 not fully conscious, and chiefly because Plato with his 
 other-worldliness, his sense of sin, his mysticism, is the 
 least classical of the classics. Nor would the incom- 
 parable suavity and liquid ease of Plato's style have 
 disarmed his antagonism : his choice in these matters 
 was not the ease, simplicity, or flexibility of Greece, but 
 rather the ordered stateliness of Rome. So again, nobly 
 as he can praise Dante, the whole world of the Middle 
 Age was so alien to his instinct for daylight, practice, 
 and common sense, that he can make Petrarch declare 
 that 'at least sixteen parts in twenty of the Jnfernoand
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 Purgatorio are detestable both in poetry and principle '. 
 And there are not only many individuals but at least one 
 nation, the French, to whom he is habitually unfair. 
 
 . That he has these and other serious limitations cannot 
 be denied. But a little book of this kind is not the 
 place to exhibit them. Enough of the man himself 
 will indeed, I hope, be found in what is here given of 
 his work to make it clear that he was no bloodless book- 
 worm coldly turning out his copy-book wisdom, but a 
 very human being of like passions with the rest of us, 
 even with the most passionate. But the primary object 
 has been of course to give such of his thoughts as, if 
 making no pretence to claim universal acceptance, are, at 
 the lowest, characteristic, not of his wilfulness, eccentricity, 
 and petulance, but of that high-minded and high-hearted 
 soul of his, the life of which he was eternally renewing 
 by the memory of all great actions and all great books, 
 in whose companionship no man ever lived so constantly. 
 His life was a very long one. His first volume was 
 published three years before the Lyrical Ballads ; and 
 after knowing Southey and Wordsworth well and 
 Coleridge and Lamb a little, he lived to an old age 
 which was soothed and protected by the active kindness 
 of Browning and glorified, as well as a little astonished, 
 by the passionate adoration of Swinburne, who came to 
 Florence to throw himself in worship before his knees. 
 But the long life had a rare unity. Two undying
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 passions filled it from its first day to its last, liberty and 
 letters. Both were understood by him in their widest 
 meaning. For all kinds of good literature, even the 
 newest, commonly so alien and repellent to old age, his 
 welcome was always ready and eager : of all kinds of 
 liberty, political, intellectual, and religious, he was 
 always the jealous lover and defender. Most of the 
 passages chosen for this calendar illustrate one or other 
 of these master passions. For pure speculation, 
 whether the philosophy of Greece or the theology of 
 Christendom, or the scepticism of modern thinkers, he 
 had a great distaste. But what he disliked in it was 
 not its freedom but its futility. There is a great deal 
 of religion in general and of the Christian religion in 
 particular in his writings. But it all comes to two 
 things : toleration and intellectual humility on the one 
 side, charity and mercy, love in thought and action, on 
 the other. The two texts he best likes to preach from 
 are, as will be seen, 'Judge not and ye shall not be 
 judged ', and ' the greatest of these is charity '. The 
 sermon which he so strangely makes Shakespeare repeat 
 before Sir Thomas Lucy, is preached from both. 
 
 These are his two main topics, books and liberty : 
 the liberty to seek truth and follow goodness. But of 
 course there are others, and many of the days of this 
 calendar will be found to be given to the observation of
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 human nature, to the wisdom which gives us the 
 joy of life and delivers us from the fear of death ; to 
 art and nature, birds and flowers and trees : not least to 
 trees which, as FitzGerald thought, 'all magnanimous 
 men love ', and which none have loved or praised better 
 than Landor. It would have required a much larger 
 book to illustrate the extent and variety of his pictures 
 of life, as books had shown it to him in all ages and 
 countries. But interesting as these are, his true greatness 
 does not lie in the universality of his range. It does 
 not even lie in the profundity or originality of his 
 thought. Like his favourite Cicero he is seldom 
 original as the very greatest writers are original. He 
 spent his ninety years thinking about life and letters : and 
 he constantly does for us all almost the best thing a book 
 can do : he makes us lay his volume down and think. 
 But other writers can do that, some of them better than 
 he. Where he excels all but the very greatest in the 
 world is in the intensity of his best thought and the 
 astonishing perfection of its utterance. The perfect 
 form protects and clothes the passion : it does not 
 conceal it. In this way he can do more for us than 
 make us think. He can do, he often does, what only 
 a great artist can. He can transport us into a state in 
 which thought and wonder and delight are a single 
 fusion of our being. That is the supreme gift of his 
 genius : the gift in which, at the moments when he is
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 most fully possessed of it, he had scarcely a rival 
 among the masters of English prose. It is that, above 
 all else, which makes him secure of an inheritance of 
 fame which he can never lose so long as English words 
 and sentences remain no mere counters of trade and 
 business but notes of music, with infinite possibilities 
 of order and beauty, the winged messengers of thought 
 and memory and imagination. That is what they were 
 for Landor all his life through in the works of others. 
 That is what they can be and should be for us in his.
 
 A DAY-BOOK OF LANDOR 
 
 January i 
 
 I STROVE with none ; for none was worth my strife, 
 Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art. 
 
 I warmed both hands before the fire of life, 
 It sinks, and I am ready to depart. 
 
 The Last Fruit off an Old Tree. 
 
 January 2. 
 
 Landor. I have walked always where I must breathe 
 hard, and where such breathing was my luxury. 
 Landor, English Visitor, and Florentine. 
 
 January 3 
 
 Sidney. That life has not been spent idly, which has 
 been mainly spent in conciliating the generous affections 
 by such studies and pursuits as best furnish the mind 
 for their reception. 
 
 Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
 January 4. 
 
 Pericles. We have all done much ; but we have all 
 done less than we can do, ought to do, and will do. 
 Pericles and Aspasia.
 
 2 JANUARY 
 
 January 5 
 
 Shakespeare (quoting a preacher whom he liked). 
 ' Forgive, or ye shall not be forgiven. This ye may 
 do every day ; for if ye find not offences, ye feign them ; 
 and surely ye may remove your own work, if ye may 
 remove another's.' 
 
 Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare. 
 
 January 6 
 
 Epicurus. Abstinence from low pleasures is the only 
 means of meriting or of obtaining the higher. 
 Epicums, Leontion, and Temissa. 
 
 January -7 
 
 Aspasia. My dear friends ! let us keep our temper 
 firmly, and our tenets laxly ; and let any man correct 
 both who will take the trouble. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 January 8 
 
 There is delight in singing, though none hear 
 Beside the singer ; and there is delight 
 In praising, though the praiser sit alone 
 And see the prais'd far off him, far above. 
 Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's, 
 Therefore on him no speech ! and brief for thee, 
 Browning ! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
 
 JANUARY 3 
 
 No man hath walked along our roads with step 
 So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue 
 So varied in discourse. 
 Poems and Epigrams. 
 
 January p 
 
 Aspasia. We make a bad bargain when we change 
 poetry for truth in the affairs of ancient times, and by 
 no means a good one in any. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 January 10 
 
 Cleone. Highly poetical works, or those in which 
 eloquence is invested with the richest attributes of 
 poetry, are the only ones that can prolong the existence 
 of a dialect. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 January n 
 
 Landor. It is never at a time when the feelings are 
 most acute that the poet expresses them. 
 Southey and Landor. 
 
 January 12- 
 
 Petrarca. We poets are heated by proximity. Those 
 who are gone warm us by the breath they leave behind 
 them in their course, and only warm us : those who are 
 standing near, and just before, fever us. 
 The Pentameron.
 
 4 JANUARY 
 
 January 13 
 
 Landor. Authors should never be seen by authors, 
 and little by other people. The Dalai Lama is a god 
 to the imagination, a child to the sight ; and a poet is 
 much the same. 
 
 Southey and Landor. 
 
 January 14. 
 
 Marvel. Every great author is a great reformer ; and 
 the reform is either in thought or language. Milton is 
 zealous and effective in both. 
 
 Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 
 
 January iy 
 
 He who beholds the skies of Italy 
 Sees ancient Rome reflected, sees beyond, 
 Into more glorious Hellas, nurse of Gods 
 And godlike men : dwarfs people other lands. 
 Frown not, maternal England ! thy weak child 
 Kneels at thy feet and owns in shame a lie. 
 The Last Fruit off an Old Tree. 
 
 January 16 
 
 Boccaccio. I love beyond measure in Virgil his kind- 
 ness toward dumb creatures. 
 The Pentameron.
 
 JANUARY 5 
 
 January 17 
 
 Marvel. Not even the verses of Homer himself have 
 that diversity of cadence which enchants us in Paradise 
 Lost. Who was the blockhead who invented the word 
 blank for its verse ? 
 
 Milton and Marvel. 
 
 January 18 
 
 Vittoria. There are various kinds of greatness, as we 
 all know ; however, the most of those who profess one 
 species is ready to acknowledge no other. The first 
 and chief is intellectual. But surely those, also, are to 
 be admitted into the number of the eminently great who 
 move large masses by action, by throwing their own 
 ardent minds into the midst of popular assemblies or 
 conflicting armies ; compelling, directing, and subjecting. 
 This greatness is, indeed, far from so desirable as that 
 which shines serenely from above, to be our hope, 
 comfort, and guidance ; to lead us in spirit from a world 
 of sad realities into one fresh from the poet's hand, and 
 blooming with all the variety of his creation. Hence 
 the most successful generals, and the most powerful 
 kings, will always be considered by the judicious and 
 dispassionate as invested with less dignity, less extensive 
 and enduring authority, than great philosophers and 
 great poets. 
 
 Vittoria Colonna and Michael-Angelo.
 
 6 JANUARY 
 
 January ip 
 
 Boccaccio, Good poetry, like good music, pleases 
 most people, but the ignorant and inexpert lose half its 
 pleasures, the invidious lose them all. What a paradise 
 lost is here ! 
 
 Petrarca. If we deduct the inexpert, the ignorant, 
 and the invidious, can we correctly say it pleases most 
 people ? 
 The Pentameron. 
 
 January 20 
 
 Michael-Angela. In some pleasing poems there is 
 nothing whatsoever of the useful. 
 
 Vittoria. My friend, I think you are mistaken. An 
 obvious moral is indeed a heavy protuberance, which 
 injures the gracefulness of a poem ; but there is wisdom 
 of one kind or other in every sentence of a really good 
 composition, and it produces its effect in various ways. 
 You employ gold in your pictures ; not always of the 
 same consistency or the same preparation ; but several 
 of your colours, even the most different, are in part 
 composed of it. This is a matter of which those, in 
 general, who are gratified with the piece are unsuspicious. 
 The beautiful in itself is useful, by awakening our finer 
 sensibilities, which it must be our own fault if we do 
 not often carry with us into action. 
 Vittoria Colonna and Michael-Angelo
 
 JANUARY 7 
 
 January 2.1 
 
 Vittoria. The human heart is the world of poetry : 
 the imagination is only its atmosphere. 
 Vittoria Colonna and Michael- Angelo. 
 
 January 2.2, 
 
 There is a time when the romance of life 
 Should be shut up, and closed with double clasp : 
 Better that this be done before the dust 
 That none can blow away falls into it. 
 The Last Fruit off an Old Tree. 
 
 January 23 
 
 Johnson. We are happy by the interchange of kind 
 offices, and even by the expression of good-will. Heat 
 and animosity, contest and conflict, may sharpen the 
 wits, although they rarely do ; they never strengthen 
 the understanding, clear the perspicacity, guide the 
 judgement, or improve the heart. 
 
 Samuel Johnson and John Home Tooke. 
 
 January 24 
 
 Hume. A little watchfulness over ourselves will save 
 us a great deal of watchfulness over others. 
 David Hume and John Home. 
 
 January 2,5- 
 
 Hume. You and I, in the course of our conversation, 
 have been at variance, as much as discreet and honest
 
 8 JANUARY 
 
 men ought to be : each knows that the other thinks 
 differently from him, yet each esteems the other. I 
 cannot but smile when I reflect that a few paces, a glass 
 of wine, a cup of tea, conciliate those whom Wisdom 
 would keep asunder. 
 
 Home. No wonder you scoff emphatically, as you 
 pronounce the word Wisdom. 
 
 David Hume and John Home. 
 
 January 2.6 
 
 Newton. Is it not a difficult and a painful thing to 
 repulse, or to receive ungraciously, the advances of 
 friendship ? 
 
 Barrow. It withers the heart, if indeed his heart 
 were ever sound who doth it. Love, serve, run into 
 danger, venture life, for him who would cherish you : 
 give him everything but your time and your glory. 
 
 Barrow and Newton. 
 
 January 2,7 
 
 Brooke. I know not whether our names will be 
 immortal ; I am sure our friendship will. For names 
 sound only upon the surface of the earth, while friend- 
 ships are the purer and the more ardent the nearer they 
 come to the presence of God, the sun not only of 
 righteousness but of love. 
 
 Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney.
 
 JANUARY 9 
 
 "January 18 
 
 Spenser. Calamities there are around us; calamities 
 there are all over the earth ; calamities there are in all 
 seasons : but none in any season, none in any place, like 
 mine. 
 
 Essex. So say all fathers, so say all husbands. Look 
 at any old mansion-house, and let the sun shine as 
 gloriously as it may on the golden vanes, or the arms 
 recently quartered over the gateway or the embayed 
 window, and on the happy pair that haply is toying at 
 it : nevertheless, thou mayest say that of a certainty the 
 same fabric hath seen much sorrow within its chambers, 
 and heard many wailings ; and each time this was the 
 heaviest stroke of all. Funerals have passed along 
 through the stout-hearted knights upon the wainscot, 
 and amid the laughing nymphs upon the arras. Old 
 servants have shaken their heads as if somebody had 
 deceived them, when they found that beauty and 
 nobility could perish. 
 
 Essex and Spenser. 
 
 January 29 
 
 Shakespeare with majesty benign call'd up 
 The obedient classicks from their marble seat, 
 And led them thro' dim glen and sheeny glade, 
 And over precipices, over seas 
 Unknown by mariner, to palaces
 
 io JANUARY 
 
 High-archt, to festival, to dance, to joust, 
 And gave them golden spur and vizor barred, 
 And steeds that Pheidias had turn'd pale to see. 
 The Last Fruit off an Old Tree (Epistle to the author of 
 Festus : ' Philip, I know thee not '). 
 
 January 30 
 
 Landor. After I have been reading the Paradise 
 Lost, I can take up no other poet with satisfaction. I 
 seem to have left the music of Handel for the music of 
 the streets, or at best for drums and fifes. 
 Southey and Landor. 
 
 January 31 . 
 
 Landor. A rib of Shakespeare would have made a 
 Milton ; the same portion of Milton, all poets born ever 
 since. 
 
 Southey and Landor. 
 
 February i 
 
 ' Call me not forth,' said one who sate retired, 
 Whom Love had once, but Envy never, fired. 
 ' I scorn the crowd : no clap of hands he seeks 
 Who walks among the stateliest of the Greeks.' 
 Heroic Idylls. 
 
 February 2. 
 
 Cicero. I have performed one action ; I have composed 
 some few things which posterity, I would fain believe, 
 will not suffer to be quite forgotten. Fame, they tell
 
 FEBRUARY 11 
 
 you, is air ; but without air there is no life for any : 
 without fame there is none for the best. 
 Marcus Tullius and Qninctus Cicero. 
 
 February 3 
 
 Parson. There are folks who, when they read my 
 criticism, say, ' I do not think so.' It is because they 
 do not think so, that I write. 
 Southey and Person. 
 
 February 4 
 
 Demosthenes. It is my practice, and ever has been, to 
 walk quite alone. . In my walks I collect my arguments, 
 arrange my sentences, and utter them aloud. Eloquence 
 with me can do little else in the city than put on her 
 bracelets, tighten her sandals, and show herself to the 
 people. Her health, and vigour, and beauty, if she has 
 any, are the fruits of the open fields. The slowness or 
 celerity of my steps is now regulated and impelled by 
 the gravity and precision, now by the enthusiasm and 
 agitation, of my mind; and the presence of anyone, 
 however dear and intimate, is a check and impediment 
 to the free agency of these emotions. 
 
 Demosthenes and Eubulides. 
 
 February 5 
 
 Aspasia. Pindar far excels all other poets in disdain 
 of triviality and choice of topics. 
 Pericles and Aspasia.
 
 12 FEBRUARY 
 
 February 6 
 
 Barrow, Something of the severe has always been 
 appertaining to order and to grace. 
 Barrow and Newton. 
 
 February 7 
 
 Aspasia (speaking of Homer). I can more easily believe 
 that his hand constructed the whole, than that twenty 
 men could be found, at nearly the same time', each of 
 genius sufficient for the twentieth part ; because in many 
 centuries there arose not a single one capable of such a 
 production as that portion. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 February 8 
 
 There are sweet flowers that only blow by night, 
 And sweet tears are there that avoid the light ; 
 No mortal sees them after day is born, 
 They, like the dew, drop trembling from their thorn. 
 Heroic Idylls. 
 
 February 9 
 
 Landor. Ah, Don Pepino ! old trees in their living 
 state are the only things that money cannot command. 
 Rivers leave their beds, run into cities, and traverse 
 mountains for it; obelisks and arches, palaces and 
 temples, amphitheatres and pyramids rise up like
 
 FEBRUARY 13 
 
 exhalations at its bidding ; even the free spirit of Man, 
 the only thing great on earth, crouches and cowers in 
 its presence. It passes away and vanishes before 
 venerable trees. 
 
 Marchese Pallavicini and Walter Landor. 
 
 February 10 
 
 Landor. How many fond and how many lively 
 thoughts have been nurtured under this tree! How 
 many kind hearts have beaten here ! Its branches are 
 not so numerous as the couples they have invited to sit 
 beside it, nor its blossoms and leaves as the expressions 
 of tenderness it has witnessed. What appeals to the 
 pure all-seeing heavens, what similitudes to the ever- 
 lasting mountains, what protestations of eternal truth 
 and constancy, from those who now are earth, they, 
 and their shrouds, and their coffins ! The caper and 
 fig-tree have split the monument. Emblems of past 
 loves and future hopes, severed names which the holiest 
 rites united, broken letters of brief happiness, bestrew 
 the road, and speak to the passer-by in vain. 
 
 Marchese Pallavicini and Walter Landor. 
 
 February n 
 
 Godiva. O my beloved ! let everything be a joyance 
 to us : it will, if we will. Sad is the day, and worse 
 must follow, when we hear the blackbird in the garden 
 and do not throb with joy. 
 
 Leofric and Godiva.
 
 I 4 FEBRUARY 
 
 February ii 
 
 Boccaccio. The noble mansion is most distinguished 
 by the beautiful images it retains of beings passed away ; 
 and so is the noble mind. 
 
 The Pentameron. 
 
 February 13 
 
 Aspasia. We believe that our affections outlive us, 
 and that Love is not a stranger in Elysium. Humours, 
 the idioms of life, are lost in the transition, or are 
 generalized in the concourse and convergency of in- 
 numerable races: passions, the universal speech, are 
 throughout intelligible. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 February 14. 
 
 Cleone. The very beautiful rarely love at alL Those 
 precious images are placed above the reach of the 
 Passions : Time alone is permitted to efface them ; 
 Time, the father of the Gods, and even their consumer. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 February ly 
 
 Well I remembered how you smiled 
 To see me write your name upon 
 
 The soft sea-sand. ' O ! what a child ! 
 You think you're writing upon stone ! '
 
 FEBRUARY 15 
 
 I have since written what no tide 
 
 Shall ever wash away, what men 
 Unborn shall read o'er ocean wide 
 
 And find lanthe's name again. 
 Heroic Idylls. 
 
 February 16 
 
 Petrarca. Happy the man who carries love with him 
 in his opening day ! he never loses its freshness in the 
 meridian of life, nor its happier influence in the later 
 hour. If Dante enthroned his Beatrice in the highest 
 heaven, it was Beatrice who conducted him thither. 
 
 The Pentameron. 
 
 February 1*7 
 
 Ascham. Love is a secondary passion in those who 
 love most ; a primary in those who love least. He 
 who is inspired by it in a high degree is inspired by 
 honour in a higher: it never reaches its plenitude of 
 growth and perfection but in the most exalted minds. 
 
 Roger Ascham and Lady Jane Grey. 
 
 February 18 
 
 Aspasia. Where on earth is there so much society 
 as in a beloved child ? 
 Pericles and Aspasia.
 
 16 FEBRUARY 
 
 February ip 
 
 Epicurus. If Truth appeared in daylight among 
 mortals, she would surely resemble Ternissa. Those 
 white and lucid cheeks, that youth which appears more 
 youthful (for unless we are near her we think her yet a 
 child), and that calm open forehead 
 
 Leontion. Malicious girl ! she conceals it. 
 
 Epicurus. Ingenious girl ! the resemblance was, until 
 now, imperfect. We must remove the veil ourselves ; 
 for Truth, whatever the poets may tell us, never comes 
 without one, diaphanous or opaque. 
 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa. 
 
 February 10 
 
 Peterborough. My dear Penn, you are too speculative ; 
 too visionary for this world of matter and realities. 
 
 Penn. Friend, that which thou callest matter is 
 indeed such ; but that which thou callest reality is not. 
 There is nothing so visionary as what the world esteems 
 real. 
 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 February n 
 
 Peterborough. We cannot enlighten men if we shock 
 their prejudices too violently. 
 
 Penn. The shock comes first, the light follows. 
 Peterborough. Most people will run away from both.
 
 FEBRUARY 17 
 
 Children are afraid of being left in the dark ; men are 
 afraid of not being left in it. 
 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 February 22, 
 
 Agatha. I know 'twas very wrong in me to listen. 
 
 Homer. A pardonable fault : we wish for listeners 
 Whether we speak or sing, the young and old 
 Alike are weak in this, unwise and wise, 
 Cheerful and sorrowful. 
 
 Hellenics. 
 
 February 2,3 
 
 Epicurus. Two evils of almost equal weight may 
 befall the man of erudition : never to be listened to, and 
 to be listened to always. 
 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa. 
 
 February 2,4 
 
 Boccaccio. We cannot hope for both celebrity and 
 fame : supremely fortunate are the few who are allowed 
 the liberty of choice between them. 
 The Pentameron. 
 
 February ~L$ 
 
 Cleonc. If we have among us any one capable of 
 devising an imaginary tale, wherein all that is interesting 
 in poetry is united with all that is instructive in history, 
 such an author will not supersede the poets and 
 
 HI* c
 
 i8 FEBRUARY 
 
 historians, but will walk between them, and be cordially 
 hailed by both. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 February 16 
 
 Barrow. I do not urge you to write in dialogue, 
 although the best writers of every age have done it: 
 the best parts of Homer and Milton are speeches and 
 replies, the best parts of every great historian are the 
 same : the wiser men of Athens and of Rome converse 
 together in this manner, as they are shown to us by 
 Xenophon, by Plato, and by Cicero. 
 
 Barrow and Newton. 
 
 February 17 
 
 Cleone. Study is the bane of boyhood, the aliment of 
 youth, the indulgence of manhood, and the restorative 
 of old age. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 February 28 
 
 Landor. It has been my fortune and felicity from 
 my earliest days, to have avoided all competitions. My 
 tutor at Oxford could never persuade me to write a 
 piece of Latin j oetry for the prize, earnest as he was 
 that his pupil should be a winner at the forthcoming 
 Encaenia. Poetry was always my amusement ; prose 
 my study and business. I have published five volumes
 
 FEBRUARY 19 
 
 of Imaginary Conversations : cut the worst of them 
 through the middle and there will remain in this decimal 
 fraction quite enough to satisfy my appetite for fame. I 
 shall dine late ; but the dining-room will be well lighted, 
 the guests few and select. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 
 
 February ip 
 
 On his own Agamemnon and Ipbigeneia. 
 From eve to morn, from morn to parting night, 
 Father and daughter stood before my sight. 
 I felt the looks they gave, the words they said, 
 And reconducted each serener shade. 
 Ever shall these to me be well-spent days, 
 Sweet fell the tears upon them, sweet the praise. 
 Far from the footstool of the tragic throne, 
 I am tragedian in this scene alone. 
 Golden Treasury Selection, p. 344. 
 
 March i 
 
 Laertes. We say 
 
 We love the Gods : we lie ; the seen alone 
 We love, to those unseen we may be grateful. 
 Hellenics. 
 
 March 2 
 
 Aspasia. I wish Pericles, and I too, were somewhat 
 more religious ; it is so sweet and graceful. 
 Pericles and Aspasia.
 
 20 MARCH 
 
 March 3 
 
 Leontion. It is as wise to moderate our belief as our 
 desires. 
 
 Epicurus. Some minds require much belief, some 
 thrive on little. Rather an exuberance of it is feminine 
 and beautiful. It acts differently on different hearts ; 
 it troubles some, it consoles others : in the generous it 
 is the nurse of tenderness and kindness, of heroism 
 and self-devotion ; in the ungenerous it fosters pride, 
 impatience of contradiction and appeal, and, like some 
 waters, what it finds a dry stick or hollow straw, it 
 leaves a stone. 
 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa. 
 
 March 4 
 
 Demosthenes. Religion, when it is intended for the 
 uncivilized, must contain certain things marvellous, 
 things quite absurd to the wiser. But I discover no 
 absurdity in making men gentler and kinder ; and I 
 would rather worship an onion or a crust of bread, than 
 a god who requires me to immolate an ox or kid to 
 appease him. 
 
 Demosthenes and Eubulides. 
 
 March $ 
 
 Quinctus Cicero. Brother, you talk as if there were a 
 plurality of gods. 
 
 Marcus Cicero. I know not and care not how
 
 MARCH 21 
 
 many there may be of them. Philosophy points to unity ; 
 but while we are here, we speak as those do who are 
 around us, and employ in these matters the language of 
 our country. 
 
 Marcus Tullius and Qninctus Cicero. 
 
 March 6 
 
 President Du Paty. If we desire to know with 
 certainty what religion is best, let us examine in what 
 country are the best fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, 
 wives : we shall there also find the best citizens, and 
 of course the best Christians. 
 Peter Leopold and President Du Paty. 
 
 March 7 
 
 Physician. Which of you ever has told a man that 
 his principal duty is to love his neighbour ? 
 
 Bloombury. Who dares lie, in the face of God ? 
 We love the Lamb : the rest follows. 
 
 Physician. Unless the rest (as you call it) precedes, 
 the Lamb will never be caught by you, whine to him, 
 pipe to him as you may. 
 Lord Coleraine, Bloombury, and Swan. 
 
 March 8 
 
 And the long moon-beam on the hard wet sand 
 Lay like a jasper column half up-rear'd. 
 Gebir.
 
 22 MARCH 
 
 Manh p 
 
 Sidney. While the weather is so temperate and 
 genial, and while I can be out-of-doors, I care not how 
 late I tarry among 
 
 Night airs that make tree-shadows walk, and sheep 
 Washed white in the cold moonshine on grey clitfs. 
 
 Our last excess of this nature was nearer the sea, 
 where, when our conversation paused awhile in the 
 stillness of midnight, we heard the distant waves break 
 heavily. Their sound, you remarked, was such as you 
 could imagine the sound of a giant might be, who, 
 coming back from travel into some smooth and level 
 and still and solitary place, with all his armour and all 
 his spoils about him, casts imself slumberously down 
 to rest. 
 
 Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
 March 10 
 
 Epicurus. Leontion knows not then how sweet and 
 sacred idleness is. 
 
 Leontion. To render it sweet and sacred, the heart 
 must have a little garden of its own, with its umbrage 
 and fountains and perennial flowers, a careless company ! 
 Sleep is called sacred as well as sweet by Homer ; and 
 idleness is but a step from it. The idleness of the 
 wise and virtuous should be both, it being the repose 
 and refreshment necessary for past exertions and for
 
 MARCH 23 
 
 future ; it punishes the bad man, it rewards the good : 
 the deities enjoy it, and 'Epicurus praises it. 
 Epicurus, Lcontion, and Ternissa. 
 
 March 1 1 
 
 Epicurus. I assemble and arrange my thoughts with 
 freedom and with pleasure in the fresh air, under the 
 open sky ; and they are more lively and vigorous and 
 exuberant when I catch them as I walk about, and 
 commune with them in silence and seclusion. 
 
 Leontion. It always has appeared to m^ that conversa- 
 tion brings them forth more readily and plenteously ; 
 and that the ideas of one person no sooner come out 
 than another's follow them, whether from the same 
 side or from the opposite. 
 
 Epicurus. They do ; but these are not the thoughts 
 we keep for seed : they come up weak by coming up 
 close together. 
 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa. 
 
 March 12 
 
 Quinctus Cicero. Look at any long avenue of trees 
 by which the traveller on our principal highways is 
 protected from the sun. Those at the beginning are 
 wide apart ; but those at the end almost meet. Thus 
 happens it frequently in opinions. Men, who were far 
 asunder, come nearer and nearer in the course of life,
 
 24 MARCH 
 
 if they have strength enough to quell, or good sense 
 enough to temper and assuage, their earlier animosities. 
 Marcus Tullius and Quinctus Cicero. 
 
 March 11 
 
 Rousseau. My mind has certain moments of repose, 
 or rather of oscillation, which I would not for the 
 world disturb. Music, eloquence, friendship, bring and 
 prolong them. 
 
 Malcsherbts. Enjoy them, my dear friend, and 
 convert them if possible to months and years. It is as 
 much at your arbitration on what theme you shall 
 meditate as in what meadow you shall botanize ; and 
 you have as much at your option the choice of your 
 thoughts as of the keys in your harpsichord. 
 
 Rousseau. If this were true, who could be unhappy ? 
 
 Malesherbes. Those of whom it is not true. Those 
 who from want of practice cannot manage their thoughts, 
 who have few to select from, and who, because of their 
 sloth or of their weakness, do not roll away the heaviest 
 from before them. 
 
 Rousseau and Malesherbes. 
 
 March 14 
 
 Epicurus. Disagreeable things, like disagreeable men, 
 are never to be spoken of when they are present. 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Temissa.
 
 MARCH 25 
 
 March iy 
 
 And now the chariot of the Sun descends, 
 The waves rush hurried from his foaming steeds, 
 Smoke issues from their nostrils at the gate, 
 Which, when they enter, with huge golden bar 
 Atlas and Calpe close across the sea. 
 Gebir. 
 
 March 16 
 
 Landor. What I write is not written on slate ; and 
 no finger, not of Time himself, who dips it in the 
 clouds of years, can efface it. 
 
 Landor, English Visitor, and Florentine. 
 
 March 17 
 
 Landor. Is there a man in the world wise enough to 
 know whether he himself is witty or not ? 
 Southey and Landor. 
 
 March 18 
 
 Alfieri. Wit vibrates and spurts ; humour springs 
 up exuberantly, as from a fountain, and runs on. In 
 Congreve you wonder what he will say next: in Addison 
 you repose on what is said, listening with assured 
 expectation of something congenial and pertinent. 
 
 Alfieri and Salomon.
 
 26 MARCH 
 
 March ip 
 
 Boccaccio. We do not want strange events^ so much as 
 those by which we are admitted into the recesses, or 
 carried on amid the operations, of the human mind. 
 We are stimulated by its activity, but we are greatly 
 more pleased at surveying it leisurely in its quiescent state, 
 uncovered and unsuspicious. Few, however, are capable 
 of describing, or even of remarking it ; while strange and 
 unexpected contingencies are the commonest pedlary of 
 the markets, and the joint patrimony of the tapsters. 
 
 Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petraica. 
 
 March 2,0 
 
 Landor. Catullus and Horace will be read as long 
 as Homer and Virgil, and more often and by more 
 readers. 
 
 The Abbe Delille and Walter Landor. 
 
 March IT 
 
 Landor. My prejudices in favour of ancient literature 
 began to wear away on Paradise Lost ; and even the 
 great hexameter sounded to me tinkling when I had 
 recited aloud in my solitary walks on the sea-shore the 
 haughty appeal of Satan and the deep penitence of 
 Eve. 
 
 The AbW Delille and Walter Landor.
 
 MARCH 27 
 
 March 2,2, 
 
 But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue 
 
 Within, and they that lustre have imbibed 
 
 In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked 
 
 His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave : 
 
 Shake one and it awakens, then apply 
 
 Its polisht lips to your attentive ear, 
 
 And it remembers its august abodes, 
 
 And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. 
 
 Gebir. 
 
 March 2,3 
 
 Petrarca. A poet often does more and better than 
 he is aware at the time, and seems at last to know as 
 little about it as a silkworm about the fineness of her 
 thread. 
 
 The Pentameron. 
 
 March i^. 
 
 Parson (speaking of Chaucer). Among the English 
 poets, both on this side and the other side of Milton, 
 I place him next to Shakespeare ; but the word next 
 must have nothing to do with the word near. 
 
 Southey and Porson. 
 
 March 2,5- 
 
 Porson (of Spenser). There is scarcely a poet of 
 the same eminence, whom I have found so delightful 
 to read in, or so tedious to read through. 
 
 Southey and Porson.
 
 28 MARCH 
 
 March 2.6 
 
 Parson. I hate both poetry and wine without body. 
 Look at Shakespeare, Bacon, and Milton ; were these 
 your pure imagination men ? 
 Southey aui Person. 
 
 March 2,7 
 
 Southey. There is as great a difference between 
 Shakespeare and Bacon as between an American forest 
 and a London timber-yard. In the timber-yard, the 
 materials are sawed and squared and set across : in the 
 forest, we have the natural form of the tree, all its 
 growth, all its branches, all its leaves, all the mosses 
 that grow about it, all the birds and insects that inhabit 
 it ; now deep shadows absorbing the whole wilderness ; 
 now bright bursting glades, with exuberant grass and 
 flowers and fruitage ; now untroubled skies ; now 
 terrific thunderstorms ; everywhere multiformity, every- 
 where immensity. 
 Sonthey and Person. 
 
 March 2.8 
 
 Milton. The writings of the wise are the only riches 
 our posterity cannot squander. 
 Milton and Andrew Marvel. 
 
 March ip 
 
 Most have an eye for colour, few for form. 
 The Last Fruit off an Old Tree.
 
 MARCH 29 
 
 March 30 
 
 Tooke. The two most perfect writers (I speak of 
 style) are Demosthenes and Pascal ; but all their writings 
 put together are not worth a third of what remains to us 
 of Cicero ; nor can it be expected that the world should 
 produce another (for the causes of true eloquence are 
 extinct) who shall write at the same time so correctly, 
 so delightfully, and so wisely. 
 
 Samuel Johnson and John Home Tooke. 
 
 March 31 
 
 Landor. I hate false words, and seek with care, 
 difficulty, and moroseness, those that fit the thing. 
 Note to Bishop Burnet and Humphrey Hardcastle. 
 
 April i 
 
 God scatters beauty as h'e scatters flowers 
 O'er the wide earth, and tells us all are ours. 
 A hundred lights in every temple burn, 
 And at each shrine I bend my knee in turn. 
 The Last Fruit off an Old Tree. 
 
 April 2, 
 
 Melanchthon. Doubtful as I am of lighter texts, blown 
 backward and forward at the opening of opposite 
 windows, I am convinced and certain of one grand 
 immovable verity. It sounds strange ; it sounds con- 
 tradictory.
 
 30 APRIL 
 
 Calvin. I am curious to hear it. 
 Mclanchthon. You shall. This is the tenet. There 
 is nothing on earth divine beside humanity. 
 Melanchthon and Calvin. 
 
 April i 
 
 Hunte. It would be presumptuous in me to quote the 
 Bible to you, who are so much more conversant in it ; 
 yet I cannot refrain from repeating for my own satisfac- 
 tion the beautiful sentence on holiness : that ' all her 
 ways are pleasantness and all her paths are peace'. It 
 says not one or two paths, but all. 
 
 David Hume and John Home. 
 
 April 4. 
 
 Luclan. The highest things are the purest and 
 brightest ; and the best writers are those who render 
 them the most intelligible to the world below. 
 
 Lucian and Timotheus. 
 
 April $ 
 
 Magliabecchi. It is better to wrap up religion in 
 a wafer, and swallow it quietly and contentedly, than 
 to extract from it all its bitterness, make wry faces over 
 it, and quarrel with those who decline the delicacy and 
 doubt the utility of the preparation. 
 
 Middleton and MagliabeccbL
 
 APRIL 31 
 
 April 6 
 
 Magliabecchi. Be convinced, Mr. Middleton, that you 
 never will s upplant the received ideas of God ; be no 
 less convinced that the sum of your labours in this 
 field will be to leave the ground loose beneath you, and 
 that he who conies after you will sink. In sickness, 
 in our last particularly, we all are poor wretches ; we are 
 nearly all laid on a level by it : the dry rot of the mind 
 supervenes, and loosens whatever was fixed in it, 
 except religion. Would you be so inhuman as to tell 
 a friend in this condition not to be comforted ? Would 
 you prove to him that the crucifix, which his wandering 
 eye finds at last its resting-place, is of the same material 
 as his bedpost ? Suppose a belief in the efficacy of prayer 
 to be a belief altogether irrational you may : I never 
 can, suppose it to be insanity itself, would you, meeting 
 a young man who had wandered over many countries in 
 search of his father until his intellects are deranged, and 
 who in the fulness of his heart addresses an utter stranger 
 as the lost parent, clings to him, kisses him, sobs upon 
 his breast, and finds comfort only by repeating father ! 
 father! would you, Mr. Middleton, say to this 
 affectionate fond creature, Go home, sit quiet, be silent ! 
 and persuade him that his father is lost to him ? 
 
 MiMeton. God forbid ! 
 
 Magliabecchi. You have done it : do it no more. The 
 madman has not heard you ; and the father will pardon 
 you when you meet. 
 
 Middleton and Magliabecchi.
 
 32 APRIL 
 
 April 7 
 
 Alfieri. A poet can never be an atheist. 
 Alfieri and Salomon. 
 
 April 8 
 
 Hamadryad. I have no flock : I kill 
 Nothing that breathes, that stirs, that feels the air, 
 The sun, the dew. Why should the beautiful 
 (And thou art beautiful) disturb the source 
 Whence springs all beauty ? 
 Hellenics. 
 
 April 9 
 
 Dante. It is pleasant to gaze on green meadows and 
 gentle declivities ; but the soul, O my Gemma, that men 
 look up to with wonder, is suspended on rocks, and 
 exposed to be riven by lightning. The eagle neither 
 builds his nest nor pursues his quarry in the marsh. 
 
 Gemma. Should my Dante, then, in the piazza ? 
 
 Dante and Gemma Donati. 
 
 April 10 
 
 Lander. Among all men elevated in station who 
 have made a noise in the world (admirable old 
 expression !), I never saw any in whose presence I felt 
 inferiority, except Kosciusco. 
 
 Southey and Landor.
 
 APRIL 33 
 
 April II 
 
 Barrow. No very great man ever reached the 
 standard of his greatness in the crowd of his contem- 
 poraries. This hath always been reserved for the 
 secondary. 
 
 Barrow and Newton. 
 
 April 12, 
 
 Florentine. Bonaparte had perhaps the fewest virtues, 
 and the faintest semblance of them, of any man who 
 has risen by his own efforts to supreme power : and 
 yet the services he rendered to society, incommensurate 
 as they were with the prodigious means he possessed, 
 were great, manifold, and extensive. 
 
 Landor, English Visitor, and Florentine. 
 
 13 
 
 Ptnn. Consciousness of superiority, kept at home 
 and quiet, is the nurse of innocent meditations and of 
 sound content. 
 
 Canst not thou feel and exhibit the same superiority 
 at any distance ? 
 
 Peterborough. I cannot make them feel it nor see it. 
 What is it to be anything, unless we enjoy the faculty of 
 impressing our image at full length on the breast of 
 others, and strongly too and deeply and (when we wish 
 it) painfully ? 
 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough.
 
 34 
 
 APRIL 
 
 April 14 
 
 Petrarca. Nothing is so immoral or pernicious as to 
 keep up the illusion of greatness in wicked men. Their 
 crimes, because they have fallen into the gulf of them. 
 we call misfortunes ; and. amid ten thousand mourners, 
 grieve only for him who made them so. Is this reason ? 
 Is this humanity ? 
 
 Boccaccio. Alas ! it is man. 
 
 The Pentameron. 
 
 April if 
 
 Rhaicos went daily ; but the nymph as oft 
 Invisible. To play at love, she knew. 
 Stopping its breathings when it breathes most soft. 
 Is sweeter than to play on any pipe. 
 Hellenics. 
 
 Aplil 1 6 
 
 Aspasia. Love always makes us better, Religion 
 sometimes, Power never. 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 April 1 1 
 
 Arittotclet. Plato would make wives common, to 
 abolish selfishness, the mischief which above others 
 it would directly and immediately bring forth. There 
 is no selfishness where there is a wife and family : the
 
 APRIL 35 
 
 house is lighted up by the mutual charities : every- 
 thing achieved for them is a victory, everything 
 endured for them is a triumph. How many vices are 
 suppressed, that there may be no bad example ! how 
 many exertions made, to recommend and inculcate a 
 good one ! 
 
 Aristoteles and Callisthenes. 
 
 April 1 8 
 
 Epicurus (reading Peleus and Thetis). 'Goddess! To 
 me, to thy Peleus, oh how far more than goddess ! Why 
 then this sudden silence ? why these tears ? The last we 
 shed were when the Fates divided us, saying the Earth 
 was not thine, and the brother of Zeus, he the ruler of 
 the waters, had called thee. Those that fall between 
 the beloved at parting are bitter, and ought to be : woe 
 to him who wishes they were not ! but those that flow 
 again at the returning light of the blessed feet should 
 be refreshing and divine as morn.' 
 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa. 
 
 April ip 
 
 Achilles, He sang to me over the lyre the lives of 
 Narcissus and Hyacinthus, brought back by the beautiful 
 Hours, of silent unwearied feet, regular as the stars in 
 their courses. Many of the trees and bright-eyed flowers 
 once lived and moved and spoke as we are speaking. 
 D 2
 
 36 APRIL 
 
 They may yet have memories, although they have cares 
 no longer. 
 
 Helena. Ah ! then they have no memories ; and they 
 see their own beauty only. 
 
 Achilles and Helena. 
 
 April 10 
 
 Aesop. Laodameia died ; Helen died ; Leda, the 
 beloved of Jupiter, went before. It is better to repose 
 in the earth betimes than to sit up late ; better, than to 
 cling pertinaciously to what we feel crumbling under 
 us, and to protract an inevitable fall. We may enjoy 
 the present while we are insensible of infirmity and 
 decay : but the present, like a note in music, is nothing 
 but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come. 
 There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the 
 grave; there are no voices, O Rhodope, that are not 
 soon mute, however tuneful ; there is no name, with 
 whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which 
 the echo is not faint at last. 
 
 Aesop and Rhodope. 
 
 April 2,1 
 
 Pericles. Welcome, then, welcome, my last hour ! 
 After enjoying for so great a number of years, 
 in my public and my private life, what I believe has 
 never been the lot of any other, I now extend my hand
 
 APRIL 37 
 
 to the urn, and take without reluctance or hesitation 
 what is the lot of all. 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 April 12, 
 
 Sitabert. When love 
 
 Scatters its brilliant foam and passes on 
 To some fresh object in its natural course, 
 Widely and openly and wanderingly, 
 'Tis better : narrow it, and it pours its gloom 
 In one fierce cataract that stuns the soul. 
 Count Julian. 
 
 April 2,3 
 
 Filippo Lippi. Alas ! when we most love the absent, 
 when we most desire to see her, we try in vain to bring 
 her image back to us. The troubled heart shakes and 
 confounds it, even as ruffled waters do with shadows. 
 Hateful things are more hateful when they haunt our 
 sleep : the lovely flee away, or are changed into less lovely. 
 
 Filippo Lippi and Pope Eugenius IV. 
 
 April 2,4 
 
 Leonora. We women want sometimes to hear what 
 we know ; we die unless we hear what we doubt. 
 Leonora di Este and Panigarola.
 
 38 APRIL 
 
 April 2.5 
 
 Epicurus. There are two things which, beyond all 
 others, both experienced and inexperienced should alike 
 be slow to recommend. 
 
 Metrodorus. Have you stated them in any of your 
 writings ? 
 
 Epicurus. I have often reflected, but never have 
 written, upon them. The two things are medicine and 
 matrimony. 
 
 Epicurus and Metrodorus. 
 
 April 16 
 
 Epicurus. Communicate your happiness freely; confine 
 your discontent within your own bosom. There chastise 
 it ; be sure it deserves its chastisement. 
 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa. 
 
 April 27 
 
 Leontion. We may expose what is violent or false in 
 any one ; and chiefly in any one who injures us or our 
 friends. 
 
 Epicurus. We may. 
 
 Leontion. How then ? 
 
 Epicurus. By exhibiting in ourselves the contrary. 
 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa.
 
 APRIL 39 
 
 April 28 
 
 Epicurus. We fancy we suffer from ingratitude, 
 while in reality we suffer from self-love. 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa. 
 
 April ip 
 
 Opas. Wretched are those a woman has forgiven : 
 With her forgiveness ne'er hath love returned. 
 Count Julian. 
 
 April 30 
 
 Marvel. But who, whether among the graver or less 
 grave, is just to woman ? 
 
 Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 
 
 May i 
 
 We are what suns and winds and waters make us ; 
 The mountains are our sponsors, and the rills 
 Fashion and win their nurslings with their smiles. 
 Regeneration. 
 
 May 2, 
 
 Sidney. Goodness does not more certainly make men 
 happy than happiness makes them good. 
 Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney.
 
 4 o MAY 
 
 May 3 
 
 Shakespeare. After a walk in Midsummer, the immer- 
 sion of our hands into the cool and closing grass is 
 surely not the least among our animal delights. 
 
 Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare. 
 
 May 4 
 
 Timothcus. Epicurus, I fear, is quite as lamentable. 
 What horrible doctrines ! 
 
 Lucian. Enjoy, said he. the pleasant walks where 
 you are; repose and eat gratefully the fruit that falls 
 into your bosom ; do not weary your feet with an ex- 
 cursion, at the end whereof you will find no resting- 
 place; reject not the odour of roses for the fumes of 
 pitch and sulphur. What horrible doctrines ! 
 Lucian and Timotheus. 
 
 May f 
 
 It was really the Lord's Day, for he made his 
 creatures happy in it, and their hearts were thankful. 
 
 The Pentameron. 
 
 May 6 
 
 FiKppo Lippi. While I continued in that country, 
 although I was well treated, I often wished myself 
 away, thinking of my friends in Florence, of music, of 
 painting, of our villegiatura at the vintage-time ; whether 
 in the green and narrow glades of Pratolino, with lofty 
 trees above us, and little rills unseen, and little bells
 
 MAY 41 
 
 about the necks of sheep and goats, tinkling together 
 ambiguously ; or amid the gray quarries or under the 
 majestic walls of ancient Fiesole ; or down in the woods 
 of the Doccia, where the cypresses are of such girth 
 that, when a youth stands against one of them, and 
 a maiden stands opposite, and they clasp it, their hands 
 at the time do little more than meet. Beautiful scenes 
 on which Heaven smiles eternally, how often has my 
 heart ached for you! He who hath lived in this 
 country can enjoy no distant one. He breathes here 
 another air ; he lives more life ; a brighter sun invigo- 
 rates his studies, and serener stars influence his repose. 
 Filippo Lippi and Pope Eugenins IV. 
 
 May 7 
 
 Brooke. What a hum of satisfaction in God's creatures! 
 How is it, Sidney, the smallest do seem the happiest ? 
 
 Sidney. Compensation for their weaknesses and their 
 fears ; compensation for the shortness of their existence. 
 Their spirits mount upon the sunbeam above the eagle ; 
 and they have more enjoyment in their one summer 
 than the elephant in his century. 
 Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
 May 8 
 
 Opas. Low must be those whom mortal can sink 
 
 lower, 
 
 Nor high are they whom human power may raise. 
 Count Julian.
 
 4* MAY 
 
 May 9 
 
 Shakejpeare (quoting a preacher whom he liked). ' I 
 did exj-ect to see the day, and although I shall not see 
 it, it must come at last, when he shall be treated as 
 a madman or an impostor who dares to claim nobility or 
 precedency and cannot shew his family name in the 
 history of his country.' 
 
 Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare. 
 
 May 10 
 
 Lacy. Do not imagine I would discredit or depreciate 
 the House of Peers. Never will another land contain one 
 composed of characters in general more honourable ; more 
 distinguished for knowledge, for charity, for generosity, 
 for equity ; more perfect in all the duties of men and 
 citizens. 
 
 General Lacy and Cura Merino. 
 
 May IT 
 
 Landor to Lord Normanby. You by the favour of 
 a Minister are Marquis of Normanby ; I by the grace 
 of God am Walter Savage Landor. 
 
 From a letter. 
 
 May ii 
 
 Barrow. Rise, but let no man lift you : leave that to 
 the little and to the weak. 
 Barrow and Newton.
 
 MAY 43 
 
 May 13 
 
 Peterborough. No fighting man was ever at once so 
 great and so good a man as Blake. 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 May i^. 
 
 Brooke. God sometimes sends a famine, sometimes 
 a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastisement 
 of mankind : none of them surely for our admiration. 
 
 Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
 May ij- 
 
 For earth contains no nation where abounds 
 The generous horse and not the warlike man. 
 Gebir. 
 
 May 16 
 
 Xenophon. Whatever nation supposes that peace is 
 the greatest of blessings will enjoy none ; and peace 
 itself will remain with it more uncertainly and precariously 
 than any. 
 
 Alcibiades and Xenophon. 
 
 May 1-7 
 
 Cltone. I believe the Greeks are the happiest people 
 upon earth, or that ever are likely to exist upon it ; and 
 chiefly from their separation into small communities,
 
 44 MAY 
 
 independent governments, and laws made by the people 
 for the people ! But unless they come to the determina- 
 tion that no war whatever shall be undertaken until the 
 causes of quarrel are examined, and the conditions of 
 accommodation are proposed by others, from whom im- 
 partiality is most reasonably to be expected, they will 
 exist without enjoying the greatest advantage that the 
 Gods have offered them. Religious men, I foresee, will 
 be sorry to displease the God of battles. Let him have 
 all the kingdoms of the world to himself, but I wish he 
 would resign to the quieter Deities our little Greece. 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 May 1 8 
 
 Mlddleton. I would rather be condemned for believing 
 that to kill an ibis is a sin, than for thinking that to kill 
 a man is not. Yet the former opinion is ridiculed by all 
 modern nations, while the murder of men by thousands 
 is no crime, providing they be flourishing and happy, or 
 will probably soon become so. 
 
 Middleton and Magliabecchi. 
 
 May ip 
 
 Pcnn. We have a God who is called the Prince of 
 Peace; but we seem disposed to keep him in a long 
 minority ; and we are turning our eyes more fondly on 
 another, whom we denominate the ' Lord of Hosts '. 
 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough.
 
 MAY 45 
 
 May 2,0 
 
 Shakespeare (quoting from a sermon he had liked). 
 ' Should ye at any time overtake the erring, and resolve 
 to deliver him up, I will tell you whither to conduct 
 him. Conduct him to his Lord and Master, whose 
 household he has left. It is better to consign him to 
 Christ his Saviour than to man his murderer ; it is 
 better to bid him live than to bid him die. The one 
 word our Teacher and Preserver said, the other our 
 enemy and destroyer. Bring him back again, the stray, 
 the lost one 1 bring him back, not with clubs and cudgels, 
 not with halberts and halters, but generously and gently, 
 and with the linking of the arm. In this posture shall 
 God above smile upon ye ; in this posture of yours he 
 shall recognize again his beloved Son upon earth. Do 
 ye likewise, and depart in peace.' 
 
 Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare. 
 
 May 2,1 
 
 Calvin. If you treat idolators thus lightly, what hope 
 can I entertain of discussing with you the doctrine of 
 grace and predestination ? 
 
 Melanchthon. Entertain no such hope at all. Wherever 
 I find in the Holy Scriptures a disputable doctrine, 
 I interpret it as judges do, in favour of the culprit ; such 
 is man. 
 
 Melanchtho:i and Calvin.
 
 4 6 MAY 
 
 May 2.2. 
 
 The heart is hardest in the softest climes, 
 The passions flourish, the affections' die. 
 O thou vast tablet of these awful truths, 
 That fillest all the space between the seas, 
 Spreading from Venice's deserted courts 
 To the Tarentine and Hydruntine mole, 
 What lifts thee up ? what shakes thee ? 'tis the breath 
 Of God. Awake, ye nations ! spring to life ! 
 Let the last work of his right hand appear 
 Fresh with his image, Man. 
 Regeneration. 
 
 May 2.3 
 
 Peterborough. North America may one day be very 
 rich and powerful ; she cannot be otherwise : but she 
 never will gratify the imagination as Europe does. 
 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 May i+ 
 
 MachiavelK. Democracies may be longer-lived, al- 
 though they have enemies in most of the rich, in more 
 of the timorous, and nearly in all the wise. 
 
 Machiavelli and Michael-Angelo. 
 
 May 2.5- 
 
 Peterborough. We should imagine, if we did not much 
 reflect on the subject, that equality is a very natural
 
 MAY 47 
 
 sentiment ; yet there is none to which nearly the univer- 
 sality of mankind is constantly so averse. 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 May 26 
 
 Penn. If all men and women would labour six hours 
 in the twenty-four, some mentally some corporeally, 
 setting apart one day in the seven, all the work would 
 be completed that is requisite for our innocent and 
 rational desires. Dost thou believe that God beholds 
 with pleasure any poor wretch working three-fourths of 
 his whole lifetime, reckoned from childhood ? 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 May 2.7 
 
 Romilly. Inflict on men the labour and privations of 
 brutes, and you impress on them the brutal character ; 
 render them rationally happy, and they are already on 
 the highway to heaven. No man rationally happy will 
 barter the possession he enjoys for the most brilliant 
 theory ; but the unhappy will dream of daggers until he 
 clutches them. 
 
 Romilly and Wilberforce. 
 
 May 18 
 
 Peterborough. Interests, falsely calculated, would keep 
 men and classes separate, if amusements and recreations 
 did not insensibly bring them close. If conviviality
 
 4 8 MAY 
 
 (which by your leave I call a virtue) is promoted by 
 fox-hunting, I will drink to its success, whatever word 
 in the formulary may follow or go before it. Nations 
 have fallen by wanting, not unanimity in the hour of 
 danger, so much as union in the hours preceding it. 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 May ip 
 
 Julian. I thank thee for that better thought than fame. 
 Which none however, who deserve, despise, 
 Nor lose from view till all things else are lost. 
 
 Count Julian. 
 
 May 30 
 
 Marvel. I look to a person of very old family as I 
 do to anything else that is very old ; and I thank him 
 for bringing to me a page of romance which probably he 
 himself never knew or heard about. 
 Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 
 
 May 31 
 
 Peterborough. Baronets are prouder than anything 
 we see on this side of the Dardanelles, excepting the 
 proctors of universities and the vergers of cathedrals ; 
 and their pride is kept in eternal agitation, both from 
 what is above them and from what is below. 
 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough.
 
 JUNE 49 
 
 June i 
 
 Ah what avails the sceptred race, 
 
 Ah what the form divine ! 
 What every virtue, every grace ! 
 
 Rose Aylmer, all were thine. 
 Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes 
 
 May weep, but never see, 
 A night of memories and of sighs 
 
 I consecrate to thee. 
 Poems and Epigrams. 
 
 June z 
 
 Southey. Clear writers, like clear fountains, do not 
 seem so deep as they are : the turbid look the most 
 profound. 
 
 Southey and Person. 
 
 June 3 
 
 Southey. Harmonious words render ordinary ideas 
 acceptable ; less ordinary, pleasant ; novel and ingenious 
 ones, delightful. 
 
 Southey and Person. 
 
 June 4 
 
 Marvel. Comprehending at once the prose and poetry 
 of Milton, we could prove, before ' fit audience ', that 
 he is incomparably the greatest master of harmony that 
 ever lived. 
 
 Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 
 
 3228 E
 
 50 JUNE 
 
 June 5- 
 
 Pbocion. Defective, however, and faulty must be the 
 composition in prose, which you and I with our utmost 
 study and attention cannot understand. In poetry it is 
 not exactly so ; the greater share of it must be intelli- 
 gible to the multitude ; but in the best there is often an 
 undersong of sense, which none besides the poetical 
 mind, or one deeply versed in its mysteries, can compre- 
 hend. 
 
 Aeschines and Phocion. 
 
 June 6 
 
 Landor. I do not complain that in oratory and history 
 his diction is somewhat poetical. 
 
 Southey. Little do I approve of it in prose on any 
 subject. Demosthenes and Aeschines, Lysias and 
 Isaeus, and finally Cicero, avoided it. 
 
 Landor. They did : but Chatham and Burke and 
 Grattan did not; nor indeed the graver and greater 
 Pericles, of whom the most memorable sentence on 
 record is pure poetry. On the fall of the young 
 Athenians in the field of battle, he said, ' The year 
 hath lost its spring.' 
 Southey and Landor. 
 
 June 7 
 
 Normanby. The wisest differ on poetry, the knowledge 
 of which, like other most important truths, seems to be 
 reserved for a purer state of sensation and existence. 
 
 Richelieu, Cotes, Glengrin, and Normanby.
 
 JUNE 51 
 
 June 8 
 Child of a day, thou knowest not 
 
 The tears that overflow thine urn, 
 The gushing eyes that read thy lot, 
 
 Nor if thou knewest, couldst return ! 
 And why the wish ! the pure and blest 
 
 Watch like thy mother o'er thy sleep. 
 O peaceful night ! O envied rest ! 
 
 Thou wilt not ever see her weep. 
 Poems and Epigrams. 
 
 June 9 
 
 Terms sa. You are many years in advance of us, and 
 may leave us both behind. 
 
 Epicurus, Let not the fault be yours. 
 
 Leontion. How can it ? 
 
 Epicurus. The heart, O Leontion. reflects a fuller 
 and a fairer image of us than the eye can. 
 
 Ternissa. True, true, true ! 
 
 Leontion. Yes ; the heart recomposes the dust within 
 the sepulchre, and evokes it ; the eye, too, even when it 
 has lost its brightness, loses not the power of repro- 
 ducing the object it delighted in. It sees, amid the 
 shades of night, like the gods. 
 
 Epicurus, Leontion. and Ternissn. 
 
 June 10 
 
 Epicurus. Do we think, as we may do on such a 
 morning as this, that the air awakens the leaves around
 
 52 JUNE 
 
 us only to fade and perish ? Do we, what is certain, 
 think that every note of music we have heard, every 
 voice that ever breathed into our bosoms and played 
 upon its instrument, the heart, only wafted us on a little 
 nearer to the tomb? Let the idea not sadden but 
 compose us. Let us yield to it, just as season yields to 
 season, hour to hour ; and with a bright serenity, such 
 as Evening is invested with by the departing Sun. 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Temissa. 
 
 June 1 1 
 
 Sidney. There is a greater difference, both in the 
 stages of life and in the seasons of the year, than in the 
 conditions of men : yet the healthy pass through the 
 seasons, from the clement to the inclement, not only 
 unreluctantly but rejoicingly, knowing that the worst 
 will soon finish, and the best begin anew ; and we are 
 desirous of pushing forward into every stage of life, 
 excepting that alone which ought reasonably to allure us 
 most, as opening to us the Via Sacra, along which we 
 move in triumph to our eternal country. 
 
 Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
 June ii 
 
 Terniisa. Oh, what a thing is age ! 
 Leontion. Death without death's quiet. 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa.
 
 JUNE 53 
 
 June \i 
 
 Vittoria. Before we go into another state of existence, 
 a thousand things occur to detach us imperceptibly from 
 this. To some (who knows to how many ?) the images 
 of early love return with an inviting yet a saddening 
 glance, and the breast that was laid out for the sepulchre 
 bleeds afresh. Such are ready to follow where they are 
 beckoned, and look keenly into the darkness they arc 
 about to penetrate. 
 
 Vittoria Colonna and Michael-Angelo. 
 
 June 14, 
 
 Francesco J Madiai. To the constant and resigned 
 there is always an Angel that opens the prison-door: 
 we wrong him when we call him Death. 
 Archbishop of Florence and Francesco Madiai. 
 
 June 15- 
 
 Roderigo. Is there any in our world 
 
 So near us as those sources of all joy, 
 Those on whose bosom every gale of life 
 Blows softly, who reflect our images 
 In loveliness through sorrows and through age, 
 And bear them onward far beyond the grave ? 
 Count Julian. 
 
 June 1 6 
 
 Boccaccio. What is there lovely in poetry unless there 
 be moderation and composure ? Are they not better
 
 54 JUNE 
 
 than the hot, uncontrollable harlotry of a Haunting, 
 dishevelled enthusiasm ? 
 The Pentameron. 
 
 June i- 
 
 yittoria. The difference between poetry and all other 
 arts, all other kinds of composition, is this : in them 
 utility comes before delight ; in this, delight comes 
 before utility. 
 
 Vittoria Colonna and Michael-Angelo. 
 
 June 1 8 
 
 Landor (speaking of Shelley). He possesses less 
 vigour than Byron, and less command of language than 
 Keats ; but I would rather have written his 
 ' Music, when soft voices die ', 
 
 than all that Beaumont and Fletcher ever wrote, 
 together with all of their contemporaries, excepting 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Southey and Landor. 
 
 June i p 
 
 Landor. It is impossible not to apply to Milton 
 himself the words he has attributed to Eve : 
 
 ' From thee 
 
 How shall I part ? and whither wander down 
 Into a lower world ? '
 
 JUNE 55 
 
 My ear, I confess it, is dissatisfied with everything, for 
 days and weeks, after the harmony of Paradise Lost. 
 Leaving this magnificent temple, I am hardly to be 
 pacified by the fairy-built chambers, the rich cupboards 
 of embossed plate, and the omnigenous images of 
 Shakespeare. 
 Southey and Landor. 
 
 June 20 
 
 Landor (to Shakespeare). Glory to thee in the 
 highest, thou confidant of our Creator ! who alone hast 
 taught us in every particle of the mind how wonderfully 
 and fearfully we are made. 
 
 The Abbe Delille and Walter Landor. 
 
 June 21 
 
 Shakespeare (quoting a divine whom he liked). The 
 higher beauties of poetry are beyond the capacity, beyond 
 the vision of almost all.' 
 
 Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare. 
 
 June 22 
 
 Julian. The secluded scenes where Ebro springs 
 And drives not from his fount the fallen leaf, 
 So motionless and tranquil its, repose. 
 Count Julian.
 
 56 JUNE 
 
 June 2,3 
 
 Walter Lander. Every year there is more good poetry 
 written now, in this our country, than was written 
 between the Metamorphoses and the Divina Commedia. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare and Waiter Landor. 
 
 June 24 
 
 Landor. In the Aene'id there is nothing so epic as 
 the contest of Ulysses and Ajax in the Metamorphoses. 
 This, in my opinion, is the most wonderful thing in the 
 whole range of Latin poetry. 
 
 The Abbe Delille and Walter Landor. 
 
 June 2f 
 
 Petrarca (of Dante). As the minutest sands are the 
 labours of some profound sea, or the spoils of some vast 
 mountain, in like manner his horrid wastes and wearying 
 minutenesses are the chafings of a turbulent spirit, 
 grasping the loftiest things and penetrating the deepest, 
 and moving and moaning on the earth in loneliness and 
 sadness. 
 The Pentameron. 
 
 June 16 
 
 Walter Landor. Vigorous thought, elevated sentiment, 
 just expression, development of character, power to bring 
 man out from the secret haunts of his soul, and to place 
 him in strong outline against the sky, belong to Imagina- 
 tion. Fancy is thought to dwell among the Fairies and
 
 JUNE 57 
 
 their congeners ; and they frequently lead the weak and 
 ductile poet far astray. He is fond of playing at little- 
 go among them ; and when he grows bolder, he acts 
 among the Witches and other such creatures ; but his 
 hankering after the Fairies still continues. Their tiny 
 rings, in which the intelligent see only the growth of 
 funguses, are no arena for action and passion. It was 
 not in these circles that Homer and Aeschylus and 
 Dante strove. 
 Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 
 
 June 2,7 
 
 Delille. Milton is indeed extremely difficult to translate ; 
 for, however noble and majestic, he is sometimes heavy, 
 and often rough and unequal. 
 
 Landor. Dear Abbe ! porphyry is heavy, gold is 
 heavier ; Ossa and Olympus are rough and unequal ; 
 the steppes of Tartary, though high, are of uniform 
 elevation : there is not a rock, nor a birch, nor a cytisus, 
 nor an arbutus upon them great enough to shelter a new- 
 dropped lamb. Level the Alps one with another, and 
 where is their sublimity ? Raise up the vale of Tempe 
 to the downs above, and where are those sylvan creeks 
 and harbours in which the imagination watches while the 
 soul reposes ; those recesses in which the gods partook 
 the weaknesses of mortals, and mortals the enjoyments 
 of the gods ? 
 The Abbe Delille and Walter Landor.
 
 58 JUNE 
 
 June 18 
 
 Person. That is the best poetry which, by its own 
 powers, produces the greatest and most durable emotion 
 on generous, well-informed, and elevated minds. 
 Sonthey and Person. 
 
 June 19 
 
 The classical like the heroick age 
 Is past; but Poetry may reassume 
 That glorious name with Tartar and with Turk, 
 With Goth or Arab, Sheik or Paladin, 
 And not with Roman and with Greek alone. 
 The name is graven on the workmanship. 
 The trumpet-blast of Marmion never shook 
 The God-built walls of Ilion ; yet what shout 
 Of the Achaians swells the heart so high ? 
 
 The Last Fruit off an Old Tree (Epistle to the author of 
 Fes/us : ' Philip, I know thee not '). 
 
 June 30 
 
 Landor. When it was a matter of wonder how Keats, 
 who was ignorant of Greek, could have written his 
 Hyperion, Shelley, whom envy never touched, gave as 
 a reason, ' Because he was a Greek.' 
 
 Southey and Landor.
 
 JULY 59 
 
 July i 
 
 Hcrnando. 
 
 Often we hardly think ourselves the happy 
 Unless we hear it said by those around. 
 
 Count Julian. 
 
 Pericles. The wise and the happy are two distinct 
 classes of men. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 Aspasia. The words wealth and gold occur too often 
 in the poetry of Pindar. 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 July 4 
 
 Marvel. In him who has been raised above his old 
 companions, there seldom remains more warmth than 
 what turns everything about it vapid : familiarity sidles 
 towards affability, and kindness courtesies into con- 
 descension. 
 
 Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 
 
 July T 
 
 Boccaccio. If we could find a man exempt by nature 
 from vices and infirmities, we should find one not worth 
 knowing : he would also be void of tenderness and 
 compassion. 
 
 Boccaccio and Petrarca.
 
 60 JULY 
 
 July 6 
 
 Epicurus. Man is a hater of truth, a lover of fiction. 
 
 Leontion. How then happens it that children, when 
 you have related to them any story which has greatly 
 interested them, ask immediately and impatiently, ' Is it 
 true?' 
 
 Epicurus. Children are not men nor women ; they 
 are almost as different creatures, in many respects, as 
 if they never were to be the one or the other : they are 
 as unlike as buds are unlike flowers, and almost as 
 blossoms are unlike fruit. 
 
 Epicnrns, Leontion, and Temissa. 
 
 Malesherbes (to Rousseau). I never was more flattered 
 or honoured than by your patience in listening to me. 
 Consider me as an old woman who sits by the bedside 
 in your infirmity, who brings you no savoury viand, no 
 exotic fruit, but a basin of whey or a basket of straw- 
 berries from your native hills ; assures you that what 
 oppressed you was a dream, occasioned by the wrong 
 position in which you lay ; opens the window, gives 
 you fresh air, and entreats you to recollect the features 
 of Nature, and to observe (which no man ever did so 
 accurately) their beauty. 
 Rousseau and Malesherbes.
 
 JULY 6 1 
 
 July 8 
 
 Sweet scents 
 
 Are the swift vehicles of still sweeter thoughts, 
 And nurse and pillow the dull memory 
 That would let drop without them her best stores. 
 They bring me tales of youth and tones of love. 
 And 'tis and ever was my wish and way 
 To let all flowers live freely, and all die 
 (Whene'er their Genius bids their souls depart) 
 Among their kindred in their native place. 
 I never pluck the rose ; the violet's head 
 Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank 
 And not reproacht me ; the ever-sacred cup 
 Of the pure lily hath between my hands 
 Felt safe, unsoil'd, nor lost one grain of gold. 
 Poems and Epigrams. 
 
 July 9 
 
 Landor. I have written things which others have 
 written before, not indeed in the same words precisely, 
 and therefore not affecting the reader in the same 
 manner ; and these things I should certainly have con- 
 ceived, whether they had or had not. It is quite 
 impossible that any two men, of intellect and imagination, 
 should reason long on the same subject and never 
 encounter any similar thought, any similar image. 
 
 Landor, English Visitor, and Florentine.
 
 62 JULY 
 
 July 10 
 
 Epicurus. Paradox is dear to most people ; it bears 
 the appearance of originality, but is usually the talent of 
 the superficial, the perverse, and the obstinate. 
 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa. 
 
 July ii 
 
 Aljieri. At first it may seem a paradox, but it is 
 perfectly true, that the gravest nations have been the 
 wittiest : and in those nations some of the gravest men. 
 In England Swift and Addison, in Spain Cervantes. 
 Rabelais and La Fontaine are recorded by their 
 countrymen to have been reveurs. Few men have been 
 graver than Pascal ; few have been wittier. 
 
 Alfieri and Salomon. 
 
 July 12. 
 
 Landor. No people but the English can endure a long 
 continuation of gravity and sadness : none pay the same 
 respect to the dead. 
 
 Landor, English Visitor, and Florentine. 
 
 13 
 
 Landor. My children were playing on the truly 
 English turf before the Campo Santo in Pisa, when he 
 to whom is committed the business of carrying off the
 
 JULY 63 
 
 dead, and whose house is in one comer, walked up to 
 them and bade them come along with him, telling them 
 he would show them two more such pretty little ones. 
 He opened the doors of a cart-house, in which were two 
 covered carts: the larger contained (I hear) several 
 dead bodies, stark-naked ; in the smaller were two 
 infants, with not even a flower shed over them. They 
 had died in the foundling hospital the night before. 
 Such was their posture they appeared to hide their 
 faces one from the other in play. As my children had 
 not been playing with them this appearance struck 
 neither ; but the elder said, ' Teresa, who shut up 
 these mimmi ? I will tell papa. Why do they not 
 come out and play till bed-time ? ' 
 
 The ' mimmi ' bad been out, poor little souls ! and 
 had played till bed-time ! 
 
 Landor, English Visitor, and Florentine. 
 
 July H 
 
 Landor. Our English burial service is the most 
 impressive thing to be found in any religion, old or 
 recent : it is framed on the character of the people, and 
 preserves it. I have seen every other part of clerical 
 duty neglected or traversed ; but I never saw a clergy- 
 man who failed in this, when he consigned his parish- 
 ioner to the grave. 
 
 Landor, English Visitor, and Florentine.
 
 r> 4 JULY 
 
 Consul. Thou art grown thoughtful suddenly, and 
 prudent. 
 
 Erminia. Do not such things require both thought 
 and prudence ? 
 
 Consul. In most they come but slowly ; and this 
 
 ground 
 
 Is that where we most stumble on. The wise 
 Espouse the foolish ; and the fool bears off 
 From the top branch the guerdon of the wise : 
 Aye, the clear-sighted (in all other things) 
 Cast down their eyes and follow their own will. 
 Taking the hand of idiots. They well know 
 They shall repent, but find the road so pleasant 
 That leads into repentance. 
 The Siege of Ancona. 
 
 July 1 6 
 
 Brooke. When a woman hath ceased to be quite the 
 same to us, it matters little how different she becomes. 
 Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
 July 1-7 
 
 Epicurus. No friendship is so cordial or so delicious 
 as that of girl for girl ; no hatred so intense and 
 immovable as that of woman for woman. 
 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Temissa.
 
 JULY 65 
 
 July 1 8 
 
 Penn. It is less easy in youth to extinguish vices 
 than to convert them into virtues. 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 July ip 
 
 Lucian. Without the ebb and flow of our passions, 
 but guided and moderated by a beneficent light above, 
 the ocean of life would stagnate ; and zeal, devotion, 
 eloquence, would become dead carcases, collapsing and 
 wasting on unprofitable sands. 
 
 Lucian and Timotheus. 
 
 July 20 
 
 Milton. There is a tenderness which elevates the 
 genius : there is also a tenderness which corrupts the 
 heart. The latter, like every impurity, is easy to 
 communicate ; the former is difficult to conceive. Strong 
 minds alone possess it ; virtuous minds alone value it. 
 
 Milton and Andrew Marvel. 
 
 July ii 
 
 Peterborough. Some people are unhappy unless they 
 can display their superiority ; others are satisfied with a 
 consciousness of it. The latter are incontestably the 
 better; the former are infinitely the more numerous, 
 
 2J28 F
 
 66 JULY 
 
 and, I will venture to say, the more useful : their vanity, 
 call it nothing else, sets in motion all the activity of less 
 men, and nearly all of greater. 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 Julian. But he alone who made me what I am 
 Can make me greater or can make me less. 
 Count Julian. 
 
 Marvel The great, as we usually call the fortunate, 
 are only what Solomon says about them ' the highest 
 part of the dust of the world ' ; and this highest part is 
 the lightest. 
 Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 
 
 Odysseus. Few covet the glory, eminent as it is, of 
 being the first to acknowledge in any one true greatness. 
 Odysseus, Tersitza, Acrive, and Trelawny. 
 
 Marvel. Usually men, in distributing fame, do as 
 old maids and misers do : they give everything to those 
 who want nothing. 
 
 Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker.
 
 JULY 67 
 
 July ^ 
 
 Alfieri. Cowper is worthy of his succession to Gold- 
 smith ; more animated, more energetic, more diversified. 
 Sometimes he is playful, oftener serious ; and you go 
 with him in either path with equal satisfaction. Some- 
 times he turns short round, and reproves with dignified 
 and authoritative austerity. This is not his nature, but 
 his office, his duty, his call, as he would term it. 
 There is a gentleness, a suavity about him, more Italian 
 than English. The milk of Eve was not blander to 
 her first-born. 
 
 Alfieri and Metastasio. 
 
 July ^ 
 
 Metastasio. Novels are the chief literature of the 
 present age. 
 
 Alfieri. I do not regret it : they are the least tire- 
 some kind of epic. 
 
 Alfieri and Metastasio. 
 
 July 2,8 
 
 Petrarca. Dante (we must whisper it) is the great 
 master of the disgusting. 
 The Pentameron.
 
 68 JULY 
 
 July 2,9 
 
 I seek not many, many seek not me. 
 If there are few now seated at my board, 
 I pull no children's hair because they munch 
 Gilt gingerbread, the figured and the sweet, 
 Or wallow in the innocence of whey ; 
 Give me wild-boar, the buck's broad haunch give me 
 And wine that time has mellow'd, even as time 
 Mellows the warrior hermit in his cell. 
 
 The Last Fruit off an Old Tree (Lines entitled ' To the 
 Rev. Cuthbert Southey ') 
 
 July go 
 
 Mahomet. I dare not drink wine : it aggravates my 
 malady, the only one to which I am subject. Another 
 inspiration here comes over me. I will forbid the use 
 of this beverage. Why should others enjoy what I can- 
 not? 
 
 Sergius. True religionist ! But, Mahomet ! Mahomet ! 
 will vision upon vision, revelation upon revelation, 
 supersede this delicious habit? Relinquish such an 
 impracticable conceit. Forbid wine indeed ! God 
 himself, if he descended on earth, and commanded it 
 in a louder and clearer voice than that at which creation 
 sprang forth, unless first he altered the composition both 
 of body and soul, would utterly fail in this command- 
 ment 
 
 Mahomet and Sergius.
 
 JULY 69 
 
 Julj 31 
 
 Metastasio. It must, indeed, be confessed that what- 
 ever is far removed from fashionable life and changeable 
 manners is best adapted to the higher poetry. We are 
 glad and righteously proud to possess two worlds the 
 one at present under our feet, producing beef and mutton ; 
 the other, on which have passed before us gods, 
 demigods, heroes, the Fates, the Furies, and all the 
 numerous progeny of never-dying, never-ageing, eternally 
 parturient Imagination. Great is the privilege of crossing 
 at will the rivers of bitterness, of tears, of fire, and to 
 wander and converse among the shades. 
 
 Alfieri and Metastasio. 
 
 August i 
 
 (To Wordsworth') 
 
 We both have run o'er half the space 
 Listed for mortal's earthly race ; 
 We both have crost life's fervid line, 
 And other stars before us shine : 
 May they be bright and prosperous 
 As those that have been stars for us ! 
 Our course by Milton's light was sped, 
 And Shakespeare shining overhead : 
 Chatting on deck was Dryden too, 
 The Bacon of the rhyming crew ;
 
 70 AUGUST 
 
 None ever crost our mystic sea 
 
 More richly stored with thought than he ; 
 
 Tho' never tender nor sublime, 
 
 He wrestles with and conquers Time. 
 
 To learn my lore on Chaucer's knee, 
 
 I left much prouder company ; 
 
 Thee gentle Spenser fondly led, 
 
 But me he mostly sent to bed. 
 
 I wish them every joy above 
 That highly blessed spirits prove, 
 Save one : and that too shall be theirs, 
 But after many rolling years, 
 When 'mid their light thy light appears. 
 Poems and Epigrams (To Wordsworth). 
 
 Borrow (of Bacon). The small volume of Estayt 
 in your hand contains more wisdom and more genius 
 than we can find in all the philosophers of antiquity ; 
 with one exception, Cicero. 
 
 Barrow and Newton. 
 
 August i 
 
 Alfieri. That Shakespeare was gay and pleasurable in 
 conversation I can easily admit ; for there never was a 
 mind at once so plastic and so pliant : but, without much 
 gravity, could there have been that potency and compre- 
 hensiveness of thought, that depth of feeling, that
 
 AUGUST 71 
 
 creation of imperishable ideas, that sojourn in the souls 
 of other men ? He was amused in his workshop : such 
 was society. But when he left it, he meditated intensely 
 upon those limbs and muscles on which he was about 
 to bestow new action, grace, and majesty ; and so great 
 an intensity of meditation must have strongly impressed 
 his whole character. 
 Alfieri and Metastasio. 
 
 August 4 
 
 Marvel. Milton, and men like him, bring their own 
 incense, kindle it with their own fire, and leave it un- 
 consumed and unconsumable ; and their music, by day 
 and by night, swells along a vault commensurate with 
 the vault of heaven. 
 
 Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 
 
 August ? 
 
 Landor. In our English heroic verse, such as Milton 
 has composed it, there is a much greater variety of feet, 
 of movement, of musical notes and bars, than inthe Greek 
 heroic ; and the final sounds are incomparably more 
 diversified. My predilection in youth was on the side 
 of Homer; for I had read the Iliad twice, and the 
 Odyssea once, before the Paradise Lost. Averse as I 
 am to anything relating to theology, and especially to 
 the view of it thrown open by this poem, I recur to it
 
 72 AUGUST 
 
 incessantly as the noblest specimen in the world of 
 eloquence, harmony, and genius. 
 Southey and Landor. 
 
 August 6 
 
 Southey. In the Paradise Lot no principal character 
 seems to have been intended. There is neither truth 
 nor wit however in saying that Satan is hero of the 
 piece, unless, as is usually the case in human life, he is 
 the greatest hero who gives the widest sway to the 
 worst passions. 
 
 Southey and Landor. 
 
 August 7 
 
 Peterborough. It is something to have an influence 
 on the fortunes of mankind : it is greatly more to have 
 an influence on their intellects. Such is the difference 
 between men of office and men of genius. 
 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 August 8 
 
 First bring me Raphael, who alone hath seen 
 In all her purity Heaven's virgin queen, 
 Alone hath felt true beauty ; bring me then 
 Titian, ennobler of the noblest men ; 
 And next the sweet Correggio, nor chastise 
 His little Cupids for those wicked eyes. 
 I want not Rubens's pink puffy bloom, 
 Nor Rembrandt's glimmer in a dusty room.
 
 AUGUST 73 
 
 With those, and Poussin's nymph-frequented woods, 
 His templed heights and long-drawn solitudes, 
 I am content, yet fain would look abroad 
 On one warm sunset of Ausonian Claude. 
 Poems and Epigrams. 
 
 August $ 
 
 Legate. Raphael in Rome had forgotten the tender- 
 ness of his diviner love ; and the Tempter had seduced 
 him to change purity for power. 
 
 The Cardinal-Legate Albani and Picture-Dealers. 
 
 August 10 
 
 Aspasia. Sculpture and Painting are moments of 
 life ; Poetry is life itself, and everything around it and 
 above it. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 f/ II 
 
 Landor (of Pindar). There is a grandeur of soul 
 which never leaves him, even in domestic scenes ; and 
 his genius does not rise on points or peaks of sublimity, 
 but pervades the subject with a vigorous and easy 
 motion, such as the poets attribute to the herald of the 
 gods. He is remarkable for the rich economy of his 
 ideas and the temperate austerity of his judgement ; and 
 he never says more than what is proper, nor otherwise 
 than what is best. 
 
 The Abbe Delille and Walter Landor.
 
 74 AUGUST 
 
 August ii 
 
 Landor (of Euripides). He presents more shades 
 and peculiarities of character than all other poets of 
 antiquity put together. 
 The Abbe Delille and Walter Landor. 
 
 August 13 
 
 Landor. I find traces in Milton of nearly all the best 
 Latin poets, excepting Lucretius. This is singular; 
 for there is in both of them a generous warmth and a 
 contemptuous severity. I admire and love Lucretius. 
 There is about him a simple majesty, a calm and lofty 
 scorn of everything pusillanimous and abject; and, 
 consistently with this character, his poetry is masculine, 
 plain, concentrated, and energetic. 
 Southey and Landor. 
 
 August 14 
 
 MachlavelR. Republican as I have lived, and shall 
 die, I would rather any other state of social life, than 
 naked and rude democracy ; because I have always 
 found it more jealous of merit, more suspicious of 
 wisdom, more proud of riding on great minds, more 
 pleased at raising up little ones above them, more fond 
 of loud talking, more impatient of calm reasoning, more 
 unsteady, more ungrateful, and more ferocious ; above
 
 AUGUST 75 
 
 all, because it leads to despotism through fraudulence, 
 intemperance, and corruption. 
 Machiavelli and Guicciardini. 
 
 August !$ 
 
 Strong men 
 
 Are strongest with their feet upon the ground. 
 Light-bodied Fancy, Fancy plover-winged, 
 Draws some away from culture to dry downs 
 Where none but insects find their nutriment ; 
 There let us leave them to their sleep and dreams. 
 Poems and Epigrams (To Sonthey). 
 
 August 1 6 
 
 Sidney. Do you imagine that any contest of shepherds 
 can afford them the same pleasure as I receive from the 
 description of it ; or that even in their loves, however 
 innocent and faithful, they are so free from anxiety as 
 I while I celebrate them ? The exertion of intellectual 
 power, of fancy and imagination, keeps from us greatly 
 more than their wretchedness, and affords us greatly 
 more than their enjoyment. 
 
 Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
 August 17 
 
 Epicurus. All the imitative arts have delight for the 
 principal object : the first of these is poetry ; the 
 highest of poetry is tragic. 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa.
 
 76 AUGUST 
 
 August 1 8 
 
 Epicurus. The theatre is delightful when we erect it 
 in our own house or arbour, and when there is but one 
 spectator. 
 
 Leontlon. You must lose the illusion in great part, if 
 you only read the tragedy, which I fancy to be your 
 meaning. 
 
 Epicurus. I lose the less of it. Do not imagine that 
 the illusion is, or can be, or ought to be, complete. If 
 it were possible, no Phalaris or Perillus could devise a 
 crueller torture. Here are two imitations : first, the 
 poet's of the sufferer ; secondly, the actor's of both : 
 poetry is superinduced. No man in pain ever uttered 
 the better part of the language used by Sophocles. We 
 admit it, and willingly, and are at least as much illuded 
 by it as by anything else we hear or see upon the stage. 
 Poets and statuaries and painters give us an adorned 
 imitation of the object, so skilfully treated that we 
 receive it for a correct one. This is the only illusion 
 they aim at : this is the perfection of their aits. 
 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Temissa. 
 
 August 19 
 
 Peterborough. The worst objection I myself could 
 ever find against the theatre is, that I lose in it my 
 original idea of such men as Caesar and Coi iolanus, and,
 
 AUGUST 77 
 
 where the loss affects me more deeply, of Juliet and 
 Desdemona. 
 
 William Perm and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 August 20 
 
 Peterborough (continues). Alexander was a fool to 
 wish for a second world to conquer: but no man is a 
 fool who wishes for the enjoyment of two; the real 
 and ideal : nor is it anything short of a misfortune, I had 
 almost said of a calamity, to confound them. This is 
 done by the stage: it is likewise done by engravings 
 in books, which have a great effect in weakening the 
 imagination, and are serviceable only to those who have 
 none, and who read negligently and idly. 
 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 August 21 
 
 Peterborough (continues). I should be sorry if the 
 most ingenious print in the world were to cover the 
 first impression left on my mind of such characters as 
 Don Quixote and Sancho : yet probably a very in- 
 different one might do it; for we cannot master our 
 fancies, nor give them at will a greater or less tenacity, 
 a greater or less promptitude in coming and recurring. 
 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 ISt 22 
 
 The brave 
 
 When they no longer doubt, no longer fear. 
 Gebir.
 
 78 AUGUST 
 
 August 23 
 
 Jeanne. I shall be far from loveliness, even in my 
 own eyes, until I execute the will of God in the 
 deliverance of his people. 
 
 Agnes. Never hope it. 
 
 Jeanne. The deliverance that is never hoped seldom 
 comes. 
 The Maid of Orleans and Agnes Sorel. 
 
 August 24 
 
 Guicciardini. All desires out of the domestic circle 
 lead to disappointment ; most of them, to grief. Are 
 we less tranquil than under the late regimen ? 
 
 Machiavett. The sleeper is more tranquil than the 
 wide-awake, and the dead even than he. 
 
 Machiavelli and Guicciardini. 
 
 August 25- 
 
 Netvton. I am not quite satisfied. 
 
 Barrow. Those who are quite satisfied sit still and 
 do nothing ; those who are not quite satisfied are the 
 sole benefactors of the world. 
 
 Barrow and Newton. 
 
 August 26 
 
 Pericles. In proportion as authority was consigned to 
 me, I found it both expedient and easy to grow better, 
 time not being left me for sedentary occupations or
 
 AUGUST 79 
 
 frivolous pursuits, and every desire being drawn on and 
 absorbed in that mighty and interminable, that rushing, 
 renovating, and purifying one, which comprehends our 
 country. 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 August 27 
 
 Alfier't. It is easier to get twenty oaths and curses 
 from an Englishman than one tear ; but there are hot 
 springs at the centre of his heart which bring forth 
 perpetual fertility. He puts unhappiness down despoti- 
 cally, and will labour at doing good if you abstain from 
 looking at him while he does it. 
 
 Alfieri and Metastasio. 
 
 August 2,8 
 
 Lacy. The throne of God is a speck of darkness, if 
 you compare it with the heart that beats only and beats 
 constantly to pour forth its blood for the preservation of 
 our country. 
 
 General Lacy and Cura Merino. 
 
 August 2,p 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. 
 
 The richest flowers have not most honey-cells. 
 You seldom find the bee about the rose, 
 Oftener the beetle eating into it. 
 The violet less attracts the noisy hum 
 Than the minute and poisonous bloom of box.
 
 8o AUGUST 
 
 Poets know this : Nature's invited guests 
 Draw near and note it down and ponder it ; 
 The idler sees it, sees unheedingly, 
 Unheedingly the rifler of the hive. 
 Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 
 
 August 30 
 
 Landor. A little thing turns me from one idleness 
 to another. More than once when I have taken out my 
 pencil to fix an idea on paper, the smell of the cedar, 
 held by me unconsciously across the nostrils, hath so 
 absorbed the senses, that what I was about to write 
 down has vanished, altogether and irrevocably. 
 
 Southey and Landor. 
 
 August 31 
 
 La Fontaine. Slumber which is indeed one of the 
 pleasantest and best things in the universe, particularly 
 after dinner. 
 
 La Fontaine and La Rocheibucault 
 
 September i 
 
 Tell me (if ever, Eros ! are reveal'd 
 Thy secrets to the earth) have they been true 
 To any love who speak about the first ? 
 Poems and Epigrams (from Pericles and Aspasia).
 
 SEPTEMBER 8: 
 
 September a 
 
 Aspasia. There are little things that leave no little 
 regrets. I might have said kind words, and perhaps 
 have done kind actions, to many who are now beyond 
 the reach of them. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 September- 3 
 
 Epicurus. Many a froward axiom, many an inhumane 
 thought, hath arisen from sitting inconveniently, from 
 hearing a few unpleasant sounds, from the confinement 
 of a gloomy chamber, or from the want of symmetry in 
 it. We are not aware of this, until we find an exemp- 
 tion from it in groves or promontories, or along the 
 sea- shore, or wherever else we meet Nature face to face, 
 undisturbed and solitary. 
 
 Ternissa You would wish us then away ? 
 
 Epicurus. I speak of solitude ; you of desolation. 
 
 Ternissa. O flatterer ! is this philosophy ? 
 
 Epicurus. Yes ; if you are a thought the richer or 
 a moment the happier for it. 
 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa. 
 
 September 4 
 
 Dr. Johnson (to Home Tooke). ' I am delighted 
 to hear from you.' No other language has this beautiful 
 expression, which, like some of the most lovely flowers,
 
 82 SEPTEMBER 
 
 loses its charm from want of close inspection. When 
 I consider the deep sense of these very simple and very 
 common words, I seem to hear a voice coming from afar 
 through the air, breathed forth, and intrusted to the care 
 of the elements, for the nurture of my sympathy. 
 Samuel Johnson and John Home Tooke. 
 
 September 5- 
 
 Anaxagoras. I hardly know what I am treading on, 
 when I make a single step toward philosophy. On sand 
 I fear it is ; and, whether the impression be shallow or 
 profound, the eternal tide of human passions will cover 
 and efface it. There are many who would be vexed and 
 angry at this, and would say, in the bitterness of their 
 hearts, that they have spent their time in vain. Aspasia ! 
 Aspasia ! they have indeed, if they are angry or vexed 
 about it. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 September 6 
 
 Aspasia. The business of philosophy is to examine 
 and estimate all those things which come within the 
 cognizance of the understanding. Speculations on any 
 that lie beyond are only pleasant dreams, leaving the 
 mind to the lassitude of disappointment. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia.
 
 SEPTEMBER 83 
 
 September 7 
 
 Aspasia. ' In the intellectual,' said he [Pericles], ' as 
 in the physical, men grasp you firmly and tenaciously by 
 the hand, creeping close at your side, step for step, while 
 you lead them into darkness ; but when you conduct 
 them into sudden light, they start and quit you ! ' 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 September 8 
 
 Soon, O lanthe ! life is o'er, 
 
 And sooner beauty's heavenly smile : 
 
 Grant only (and I ask no more), 
 
 Let love remain that little while. 
 Poems and Epigrams. 
 
 September 9 
 
 Death has two aspects : dreary and sorrowful to 
 those of prosperous, mild and almost genial to those of 
 adverse, fortune. Her countenance is old to the young, 
 and youthful to the aged : to the former her voice is 
 importunate, her gait terrific ; the latter she approaches 
 like a bedside friend, and calls in a whisper that invites 
 to rest. 
 
 Marcus Tullins and Quinctus Cicero. 
 
 September 10 
 
 Aspasia. Of the future we know nothing, of the past 
 little, of the present less ; the mirror is too close to our 
 eyes, and our own breath dims it. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia.
 
 84 SEPTEMBER 
 
 September n 
 
 Belief in a future life is the appetite of reason : and 
 I see not why we should not gratify it as unreluctantly 
 as the baser. Religion does not call upon us to believe 
 the fables of the vulgar, but on the contrary to correct 
 them. 
 
 Marcus Tullius and Quinctus Cicero. 
 
 September n 
 
 Normanby. If there is only the probability that a man 
 will be the happier or the honester by one belief than 
 by another, would you hesitate to leave him in possession 
 of it? 
 
 Richelieu, Cotes, Glengrin, and Normanby. 
 
 September 13 
 
 Lucian. It is the business of the philosophical to 
 seek truth ; it is the office of the religious to worship 
 her : under what name, is unimportant. The falsehood 
 that the tongue commits is slight in comparison with 
 what is conceived by the heart, and executed by the 
 whole man, throughout life. 
 
 Lucian and Timotheus. 
 
 September 14. 
 
 Ak'tbiadet. It appears to me, O Xenophon, who 
 indeed have thought but little and incuriously about the
 
 SEPTEMBER 85 
 
 varieties of religion, that whichever is the least intrusive 
 and dogmatical is the best. All are ancient ; as ancient 
 as men's fears and wishes : the gods would all be kind 
 enough if nations would not call upon them to scatter 
 and exterminate their enemies. 
 Alcibiades and Xenophon. 
 
 September iy 
 
 Proud word you never spoke, but you will speak 
 Four not exempt from pride some future day. 
 Resting on one white hand a warm wet cheek 
 
 Over my open volume you will say, 
 ' This man loved me \ ' then rise and trip away. 
 Poems and Epigrams. 
 
 September i<5 
 
 Aspasia. * I ought to experience no enmity from 
 them ', said he [Thucydides]. ' Before my time comes, 
 theirs will be over.' 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 September 17 
 
 A word to those who talk of inconsistency. There 
 is as much of it in him who stands while another moves, 
 as in him who moves while another stands. 
 
 Landor (Note to Bishop Eumet and Humphrey Hardcastle).
 
 86 SEPTEMBER 
 
 September 18 
 
 Florentine. We are as unwilling to exchange our 
 thoughts for another's as our children, whatever more 
 they may possess of strength or beauty. 
 
 Landor, English Visitor, and Florentine. 
 
 September ip 
 
 Metastasio. We all have our opinions ; some shut up 
 in the closet, and some lying on the dressing-table. 
 Mine I keep to myself, as I received them in baptism ; 
 and I am informed by my superiors that no discussion 
 of them is profitable or pardonable. 
 
 Alfieri. There are no better judges of pardons and 
 profits. If men do not know their own children, who 
 upon earth shall point them out ? 
 
 Metastasio. When a boon is bestowed on me, I ask 
 no questions. 
 
 Alfieri. Before I accept one, I inquire whether it 
 came fairly and honestly into the donor's hands ; and 
 it is not of the donor I ask the question. 
 
 Alfieri and Metastasio. 
 
 September 2,0 
 
 Middleton. Whatever is indemonstrable may be 
 questioned, and, if important, should be. We are not 
 to tremble at the shaking of weak minds : Reason does 
 not make them so ; she, like Virtue, is debilitated by
 
 SEPTEMBER 87 
 
 indulgences, and sickened to death by the blasts of heat 
 and cold blown alternately from your church. 
 Middleton and Magliabecchi. 
 
 September 2,1 
 
 Lucian. It is because a word is unsusceptible of 
 explanation, or because they who employed it were 
 impatient of any, that enormous evils have prevailed, not 
 only against our common sense, but against our common 
 humanity. Hence the most pernicious of absurdities, 
 far exceeding in folly and mischief the worship of 
 three-score gods : namely, that an implicit faith in what 
 outrages our reason, which we know is God's gift and 
 bestowed on us for our guidance that this weak, blind, 
 stupid faith is surer of his favour than the constant 
 practice of every human virtue. 
 
 Lucian and Timothens. 
 
 September 22 
 
 Julian. That high, 
 
 That only eminence 'twixt earth and heaven, 
 Virtue, which some desert, but none despise. 
 Count Julian. 
 
 September 23 
 
 Bloombury. When I uplift my eyes to heaven and see 
 Jupiter (so-called) and Saturn (name of foolishness) and 
 all the starry host 
 
 Physician. You see things less worthy of your
 
 88 SEPTEMBER 
 
 attention than a gang of gypsies in a grassy lane. You 
 cannot ask Saturn (name of foolishness) nor Jupiter 
 (so-called) whether he wants anything, nor could you 
 give it if he did ; but one or other of these poor 
 creatures may be befriended in some way, may in short 
 be made better and honester and cleanlier. 
 Lord Coleraine, Bloombury, and Swan. 
 
 September 2,4 
 
 Luc'ian. If, professing love and charity to the human 
 race at large, I quarrel day after day with my next 
 neighbour; if, professing that the rich can never see God, 
 I spend in the luxuries of my household a talent monthly ; 
 if, professing that I am their steward, I keep ninety- 
 nine parts in the hundred as the emolument of my 
 stewardship how, when God hates liars and punishes 
 defrauders, shall I, and other such thieves and hypocrites, 
 fare hereafter ? 
 
 Lucian and Timotheus. 
 
 September 15 
 
 Calvin. By our Heavenly Father many are called, but 
 few are chosen. 
 
 Mclanchthon. There is scarcely a text in the Holy 
 Scriptures to which there is not an opposite text, written 
 in characters equally large and legible ; and there has 
 usually been a sword laid upon each. 
 
 Melanchthon and Calvin.
 
 SEPTEMBER 89 
 
 September 2.6 
 
 Peterborough. All the rogues that ever lived have 
 brought little misery upon the world, in comparison 
 with those who had too much zeal. 
 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 September 2,7 
 
 Anaxagoras. Is it not in philosophy as in love ? the 
 more we have of it, and the less we talk about it, the 
 better. Never touch upon religion with anybody. The 
 irreligious are incurable and insensible ; the religious are 
 morbid and irritable ; the former would scorn, the latter 
 would strangle you. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 September 28 
 
 Epicurus. If those who differ on speculative points 
 would walk together now and then in the country, they 
 might find many objects that must unite them. 
 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa. 
 
 September 2p 
 
 Yet neither where we first drew breath, 
 Nor where our fathers sleep in death, 
 Nor where the mystic ring was given, 
 The link from earth that reaches heaven, 
 Nor London, Paris, Florence, Rome, 
 In his own heart 's the wise man's home. 
 Poems and Epigrams ('Let me sit here').
 
 90 SEPTEMBER 
 
 September 30 
 
 Melanchthon. I remember no discussion on religion 
 in which religion was not a sufferer by it, if mutual 
 forbearance and belief in another's good motives and 
 intentions are (as I must always think they are) its 
 proper and necessary appurtenances. 
 
 Calvin. Would you never make enquiries ? 
 
 Melanchthon. Yes, and as deep as possible ; but into 
 my own heart ; for that belongs to me, and God hath 
 entrusted it most especially to my own superintendence. 
 
 Melanchthon and Calvin. 
 
 October i 
 
 On a Quaker's Tankard. 
 Ye lie, friend Pindar ! and friend Tholes, 
 Nothing so good as water ? Ale is. 
 Poems and Epigrams. 
 
 October 2. 
 
 ScaTtger. I know three things wine, poetry, and the 
 world. 
 
 Joseph Scaliger and Montaigne. 
 
 October 3 
 
 Petrarca. Truth is only unpleasant in its novelty. He 
 who first utters it, says to his hearer, ' You are less 
 wise than I am.' Now who likes this ? 
 
 The Pentameron.
 
 OCTOBER 91 
 
 October 4. 
 
 Parser. Doubts are entertained whether he believes 
 any longer in the co-equality of the Son with the Father, 
 or indeed in his atonement for our sins. Such being 
 the case, he forfeits the name and privileges of a 
 Christian. 
 
 Marvel. Not with Christians, if they know that he 
 keeps the ordinances of Christ. 
 
 Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 
 
 October 5- 
 
 Lord Brooke. A forced match between a man and his 
 religion sours his temper, and leaves a barren bed. 
 Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
 October 6 
 
 Shakespeare (quoting a preacher whom he liked). 
 ' There is one more question at which ye will tremble 
 when ye ask it in the recesses of your souls; I do 
 tremble at it, yet must utter it. Whether we do not 
 more warmly and erectly stand up for God's word 
 because it came from our mouths, than because it came 
 from his ? ' 
 
 Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare. 
 
 October 7 
 
 Mtddleton. I am not one of those who consider 
 idolatry as the most heinous of sins. In the commission
 
 92 OCTOBER 
 
 of idolatry for a lifetime there is less wickedness than 
 in one malignant action, or one injurious or blighting 
 word. 
 Middleton and Magliabecchi. 
 
 October 8 
 
 Is it not better at an early hour 
 
 In its calm cell to rest the weary head, 
 
 While birds are singing and while blooms the bower, 
 Than sit the fire out and go starved to bed ? 
 Poems and Epigrams. 
 
 October p 
 
 Magliabecchi. Our religion, like the. vast edifices in 
 which we celebrate it, seems dark when first entered 
 from without. The vision accommodates itself gradually 
 to the place ; and we are soon persuaded that we see just 
 as much as we should see. 
 
 Middleton and Magliabecchi. 
 
 October 10 
 
 Middleton. We often treat God in the same manner 
 as we should treat some doting or some passionate old 
 man ; we feign, we flatter, we sing, we cry, we gesti- 
 culate. 
 
 Middleton and Magliabecchi.
 
 OCTOBER 93 
 
 October n 
 
 Washington. If we believe in Revelation, we must 
 believe that God wishes us to converse with him but 
 little, since the only form of address he has prescribed 
 to us is an extremely short one. He has placed us 
 where our time may be more beneficially employed in 
 mutually kind offices ; and he does not desire us to tell 
 him hour after hour how dearly we love him, or how 
 much we want from him ; he knows these things 
 exactly. 
 
 Washington and Franklin. 
 
 October 12, 
 
 Shakespeare (quoting a book which he liked). ' It 
 is a comfortable thing to reflect, as they do, and as we 
 may do unblamably, that we are uplifting to our Guide 
 and Maker the same incense of the heart, and are 
 uttering the very words, which our dearest friends in 
 all quarters of the earth, nay in heaven itself, are offering 
 to the throne of grace at the same moment.' 
 Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare. 
 
 October 13 
 
 Shakespeare (quoting a book which he liked). ' What 
 are these bodies ? Do they unite us ? No ; they keep 
 us apart and asunder even while we touch. Realms and 
 oceans, worlds and ages, open before two spirits bent on
 
 94 OCTOBER 
 
 heaven. What a choir surrounds us when we resolve to 
 live unitedly and harmoniously in Christian faith ! ' 
 Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare. 
 
 October 14 
 
 Shakespeare (quoting a preacher whom he liked). 
 ' Whenever ye want to kill time call God to the chase, 
 and bid the angels blow the horn.' 
 
 Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare. 
 
 October 15- 
 
 In his own image the Creator made, 
 
 His own pure sunbeam quickened thee, O man ! 
 
 Thou breathing dial ! since thy day began, 
 The present hour was ever marked with shade ! 
 Poems and Epigrams. 
 
 October 16 
 
 Aspasia. Reason, which strengthens our religion, 
 weakens our devotion. 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 October i~ 
 
 Marvel. I know that Milton, and every other great 
 poet, must be religious ; for there is nothing so godlike 
 as a love of order, with a power of bringing great things 
 into it. This power unlimited in the one, limited (but 
 incalculably and inconceivably great) in the other 
 belongs to the Deity and the poet. 
 
 Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker.
 
 OCTOBER 95 
 
 October 18 
 
 Home. No nation in the world was ever so enlightened, 
 and in all parts and qualities so civilized, as the Scotch. 
 Why would you shake or unsettle or disturb those 
 principles which have rendered us peaceable and contented ? 
 
 Hume. I would not by any means. 
 
 Home. Many of your writings have evidently such 
 a tendency. 
 
 Hume. Those of my writings to which you refer will 
 be read by no nation ; a few speculative men will take 
 them ; but none will be rendered more gloomy, more 
 dissatisfied, or more unsocial by them. Rarely will you 
 find one who, five minutes together, can fix his mind 
 even on the surface : some new tune, some idle project, 
 some light thought, some impracticable wish, will 
 generally run, like the dazzling haze of summer on the 
 dry heath, betwixt them and the reader. A bagpipe 
 will swallow them up, a strathspey will dissipate them, 
 or Romance with the death-rattle in her throat will drive 
 them away into dark staircases and charnel-houses. 
 
 David Hume and John Home. 
 
 October ip 
 
 Peterborough. Though addicted to no particular 
 system of philosophy or religion or government, I am 
 convinced that if you destroy the institutions and
 
 g6 OCTOBER 
 
 customs of men, however bad a great part of these may 
 be, you also chill the blood of their attachments which 
 are requisite for the prosperity and indeed for the safety 
 of nations. 
 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 October 2,0 
 
 Barrow. Let me admonish you to confide your secrets 
 to few : I mean the secrets of science. In every great 
 mind there are some : every deep enquirer hath discovered 
 more than he thought it prudent to avow, as almost every 
 shallow one throws out more than he hath well 
 discovered. 
 
 Barrow and Newton. 
 
 October 11 
 
 Barrow. We cannot but recollect how lately 
 Galileo was persecuted and imprisoned for his dis- 
 coveries. 
 
 Newton. He lived under a popish government. 
 
 Barrow. My friend ! my friend ! all the most 
 eminently scientific, all the most eminently brave and 
 daring in the exercise of their intellects, live, and have 
 ever lived, under a popish government. There are 
 popes in all creeds, in all countries, in all ages. 
 
 Barrow and Newton.
 
 OCTOBER 97 
 
 October 2,2, 
 
 The leaves are falling ; so am I ; 
 The few late flowers have moisture in the eye ; 
 
 So have I too. 
 
 Scarcely on any bough is heard 
 Joyous, or even unjoyous, bird 
 The whole wood through. 
 Winter may come : he brings but nigher 
 His circle (yearly narrowing) to the fire 
 
 Where old friends meet : 
 Let him ; now heaven is overcast 
 And spring and summer both are past, 
 
 And all things sweet. 
 Poems and Epigrams. 
 
 October 13 
 
 Milton. We enter our studies, and enjoy a society 
 which we alone can bring together ; we raise no jealousy 
 by conversing with one in preference to another : we 
 give no offence to the most illustrious by questioning 
 him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly. 
 Diversity of opinion raises no tumult in our presence : 
 each interlocutor stands before us, speaks or is silent, 
 and we adjourn or decide the business at our leisure. 
 Nothing is past which we desire to be present ; and we 
 enjoy by anticipation somewhat like the power which I 
 imagine we shall possess hereafter of sailing on a wish 
 from world to world. 
 
 Milton and Andrew Marvel. 
 
 SII8 H
 
 98 OCTOBER 
 
 October 2,4. 
 
 Petrarca. Impossible as it is to look far and with 
 pleasure into the future, what a privilege is it, how incom- 
 parably greater than any other that genius can confer, to 
 be able to direct the backward flight of fancy and imagi- 
 nation to the recesses they most delighted in ; to be able, 
 as the shadows lengthen in our path, to call up before us the 
 youth of our sympathies in all their tenderness and purity. 
 
 The Pentameron. 
 
 October 1$ 
 
 Marvel. How different the historians of antiquity ! 
 We read Sallust, and always are incited by the desire of 
 reading on, although we are surrounded by conspirators 
 and barbarians ; we read Livy, until we imagine we are 
 standing in an august pantheon, covered with altars and 
 standards, over which are the four fatal letters that 
 spellbound all mankind. 1 
 
 Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 
 
 October 16 
 
 Normanby (quoting Thomas Paine). ' Eloquence is the 
 varnish of falsehood ; truth has none ! 
 
 ' What ! ' said I, taking from my pocket and giving 
 to him my Pascal and Epictetus. 'Are not these 
 eloquent ? ' 
 
 ' Neither of them/ answered he ; ' they are only the 
 
 1 S.P.Q.R.
 
 OCTOBER 99 
 
 best-written books in the world, being the plainest and 
 fullest of ratiocination.' 
 
 Richelieu, Cotes, Glengrin, and Normanby. 
 
 October 2,7 
 
 Cicero. We shall enjoy a future state accordingly as 
 we have employed our intellect and affections. 
 Marcus Tnllius and Quinctus Cicero. 
 
 October 2,8 
 
 Pericles. What a deal of time we lose in business ! 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 October 2-p 
 
 Poet. Thus do you sit and break the flowers 
 That might have lived a few short hours, 
 And lived for you ! Love, who o'erpowers 
 My youth and me, 
 
 Shows me the petals idly shed, 
 Shows me my hopes as early dead, 
 In vain, in vain admonished 
 
 By all I see. 
 Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
 October 30 
 
 Penn. Perverse as we are, we sigh for happiness ; we 
 know where to find it, and we will not go for it one step.
 
 ioo OCTOBER 
 
 Would we increase it, we must do with it as we do with 
 money : we must put it out. Whatever of it we place 
 in the hands of another, let him be improvident, let him 
 be thankless, is sure to return to us, and without delay : 
 whatever we keep to ourselves lies dead the moment we 
 have thus settled it, and cannot be lifted from the chest. 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 October 31 
 
 Francesco Madiai. I might never have thought 
 seriously of praying for my enemies, had it not been the 
 will of a merciful and all-wise God to cast me into the 
 midst of them. 
 
 Archbishop of Florence and Madiai. 
 
 November i 
 
 We hurry to the river we must cross, 
 
 And swifter downward every footstep wends; 
 Happy who reach it ere they count the loss 
 
 Of half their faculties and half their friends ! 
 
 When we are come to it the stream 
 
 Is not so dreary as they deem 
 
 Who look on it from haunts too dear ; 
 The weak from Pleasure's baths feel most its chilling air ! 
 
 Poems and Epigrams (To Sonthey: 'Indweller of 
 a peaceful vale').
 
 NOVEMBER 101 
 
 November 2, 
 
 Shakespeare (quoting a preacher whom he liked). 
 ' As years are running past us, let us throw something 
 on them which they cannot shake off in the dust and 
 hurry of the world, but must carry with them to that 
 great year of all, whereunto the lesser of this mortal life 
 do tend and are subservient.' 
 
 Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare. 
 
 November 3 
 
 Cicero. Neither to give nor to take offence are surely 
 the two things most delightful in human life ; and it is 
 by these two things that eternal happiness may be 
 attained. 
 
 Marcus Tullius and Quinctus Cicero. 
 
 November 4 
 
 Rochefoucault. Plain truths, like plain dishes, are 
 commended by everybody, and everybody leaves them 
 whole. 
 
 La Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 
 
 November f 
 
 Hume. If men would permit their minds, like their 
 children, to associate freely together, if they would agree 
 to meet one another with smiles and frankness, instead 
 of suspicion and defiance, the common stock of intelli- 
 gence and happiness would be centupled. 
 
 David Hume and John Home.
 
 102 NOVEMBER 
 
 November 6 
 
 Essex. The things that are too true pass by us as if 
 they were not true at all ; and when they have singled 
 us out then only do they strike us. 
 
 Essex and Spenser. 
 
 November 7 
 
 Brooke. A solitude is the audience-chamber of God. 
 Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
 November 8 
 
 Julian. Man's only relics are his benefits ; 
 These, be there ages, be there worlds, between, 
 Retain him in communion with his kind. 
 
 Count Julian. 
 
 November 9 
 
 Marvel. A man's self is often his worst robber. 
 He steals from his own bosom and heart what God has 
 there deposited, and he hides it out of his way, as dogs 
 and foxes do with bones. But the robberies we 
 commit on the body of our superfluities, and store up in 
 vacant places in places of poverty and sorrow these, 
 whether in the dark or in the daylight, leave us neither 
 in nakedness nor in fear, are marked by no burning-iron 
 of conscience, are followed by no scourge of reproach ;
 
 NOVEMBER 103 
 
 they never deflower prosperity, they never distemper 
 sleep. 
 
 Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 
 
 November 10 
 
 Shakespeare (quoting a preacher whom he liked). 
 ' According to the arithmetic in practice, he who makes 
 the most idJers and the most ingrates is the most 
 worshipful. But wiser ones than the scorers in this 
 school will tell you how riches and power were bestowed 
 by Providence that generosity and mercy should be 
 exercised; for, if every gift of the Almighty were 
 distributed in equal portions to every creature, less of 
 such virtues would be called into the field ; consequently 
 there would be less of gratitude, less of submission, less 
 of devotion, less of hope, and, in the total, less of 
 content.' 
 Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare. 
 
 November n 
 
 Archbishop Boulter. A want of the necessaries of life, 
 in peasants or artisans, when the seasons have been 
 favourable, is a certain sign of defect in the constitution, 
 or of criminality in the administration. It may not be 
 advisable or safe to tell every one this truth : yet it is 
 needful to inculcate it on the minds of governors, and 
 to repeat it until they find the remedy. 
 Archbishop Boulter and Philip Savage.
 
 104 NOVEMBER 
 
 November 12, 
 
 Ramilly. After so many have coldly repeated that 
 vice leads to misery, is there no generous man who will 
 proclaim aloud that misery leads to vice ? 
 
 Romilly and Wilberforce. 
 
 November 13 
 
 Hume. Monks, it is true, are only as stars tha: shine 
 upon the desert ; but tell me, I beseech you, who caused 
 such a desert in the moral world, and who rendered so 
 faint a light, in some of its periods, a blessing ? Ignorant 
 rulers, must be the answer, and inhuman laws. 
 
 David Hume and John Home. 
 
 November 14 
 
 Aspasla. Peace is at all times a blessing ; and war, 
 even the most prosperous, a curse. In war extremely 
 few of men's desires are gratified, and those the most 
 hateful ; in peace, many, and those the kindliest 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 November xy 
 
 Countess. Child ! all men are dissemblers ; 
 
 The generous man dissembles his best thoughts, 
 His worst the ungenerous. 
 The Siege of Ancona.
 
 NOVEMBER 105 
 
 November 16 
 
 Hume. Probably those two men who hate each other 
 most, and whose best husbandry is to sow burs and 
 thistles in each other's path, would, if they had ever 
 met and conversed familiarly, have been ardent and 
 inseparable friends. The minister who may order my 
 book to be burned to-morrow by the hangman, if I by 
 any accident had been seated yesterday by his side at 
 dinner, might perhaps in another fortnight recommend 
 me to his master for a man of such gravity and under- 
 standing as to be worthy of being a privy councillor, 
 and might conduct me to the treasury bench. 
 
 David Hume and John Home. 
 
 November 17 
 
 Landor. I have expunged many thoughts for their 
 close resemblance to what others had written, whose 
 works I never saw until after. But all thinking men 
 must think, all imaginative men must imagine, many 
 things in common, although they differ. 
 
 Sonthey and Landor. 
 
 November 18 
 
 Metrodorus. Men in all nations and in all times have 
 displayed more zeal and ability in pulling down the 
 gods to their own level than in raising themselves ever 
 so little towards the gods. 
 
 Epicurus and Metrodorus.
 
 io6 NOVEMBER 
 
 November ip 
 
 Penn, In printing and writing the mark of admiration 
 and of horror is the same : oftentimes in life, what we 
 abhor we should admire, and what we admire, abhor. 
 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 November 2,0 
 
 Sani/t. The soldier is the highest or the lowest of 
 mankind. 
 Bliicher and Sandt. 
 
 November 11 
 
 Machiavelli. No pontiff, no despot, can ever be 
 friendly to science ; least of all to that best of sciences 
 which teaches us that liberty and peace are the highest 
 of human blessings. 
 
 Machiavelli and Michael-Angelo. 
 
 November I-L 
 
 Julian. The agony 
 
 Of an opprest and of a bursting heart 
 No violence can silence ; at its voice 
 The trumpet is o'erpower'd, and glory mute, 
 And peace and war hide all their charms alike. 
 Surely the guests and ministers of heaven
 
 NOVEMBER 107 
 
 Scatter it forth through all the elements, 
 So suddenly, so widely, it extends, 
 So fearfully men breathe it, shuddering 
 To ask or fancy how it first arose. 
 Count Julian. 
 
 November 2,3 
 
 Barrow. Never take into your confidence, or admit 
 often into your company, any man who does not know, 
 on some important subject, more than you do. 
 
 Barrow and Newton. 
 
 November 2,4 
 
 Alfieri* There are those who would persuade us that 
 verbal criticism is unfair, and that few poems can resist 
 it. The truth of the latter assertion by no means 
 establishes the former : all good criticism has its 
 foundation on verbal. 
 
 Alfieri and Salomon. 
 
 November 2-y 
 
 Pericles. It is more barbarous to undermine the 
 stability of a language than of an edifice that hath stood 
 as long. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 November 2,6 
 
 Landor. I am radically a Conservative in everything 
 useful ; and during my stay at this inn called Human
 
 i o8 NOVEMBER 
 
 Life, I would trust anything to the Chambermaids rather 
 than my English tongue. 
 
 Quoted Golden Treasury Selection, p. 300. 
 
 . November 2,7 
 
 Lucian. A quoter is either ostentatious of his ac- 
 quirements, or doubtful of his cause. 
 Lucian and Timotheus. 
 
 November 2,8 
 
 Penn. When a man on any occasion saith, ' I do not 
 think so/ we might ask him, if civility allowed it, ' Hast 
 thou thought enough upon it ? Or in truth hast thou 
 thought at all ? ' 
 
 William Penn and Lord Peterborough. 
 
 November 2,9 
 
 Mild is the parting year, and sweet 
 The odour of the falling spray ; 
 
 Life passes on more rudely fleet, 
 And balmless is its closing day. 
 
 I wait its close, I court its gloom, 
 But mourn that never must there fall 
 
 Or on my breast or on my tomb 
 
 The tear that would have soothed it all. 
 Poems and Epigrams.
 
 NOVEMBER 109 
 
 November 30 
 
 Filippo Lippt. Abdul neither practises nor exacts 
 any other superstition than ablutions. 
 
 Pope Eugenius. Detestable rites ! without our au- 
 thority. I venture to affirm that, in the whole of Italy 
 and Spain, no convent of monks or nuns contains a 
 bath ; and that the worst inmate of either would 
 shudder at the idea of observing such a practice in 
 common with the unbeliever. For the washing of the 
 feet indeed we have the authority of the earlier Chris- 
 tians ; and it may be done, but solemnly and sparingly. 
 Thy residence among the Mahometans, I am afraid, 
 hath rendered thee more favourable to them than beseems 
 a Catholic, and thy mind, I do suspect, sometime 
 goes back into Barbary unreluctantly. 
 
 Filippo Lippi and Pope Eugenius IV. 
 
 December i 
 
 Death stands above me, whispering low 
 
 I know not what into my ear : 
 Of his strange language all I know 
 
 Is, there is not a word of fear. 
 Poems and Epigrams. 
 
 December 2, 
 
 Boccaccio. If indeed time can be reckoned any more 
 in sleep than in heaven. 
 The Pentameron.
 
 no DECEMBER 
 
 December 3 
 
 Cicero. And there is something consolatory in this 
 idea of duration and identity ; for whatever be your 
 philosophy, you must acknowledge that it is pleasant to 
 think, although you know not wherefore, that, when we 
 go away, things visible, like things intellectual, will 
 remain in great measure as we left them. A slight 
 displeasure would be felt by us, if we were certain that 
 after our death our houses would be taken down, though 
 not only no longer inhabited by us, but probably not 
 destined to remain in the possession of our children ; 
 and that even these vineyards, fields, and gardens were 
 about to assume another aspect. 
 Marcus Tullius and Quinctns Cicero. 
 
 December 4 
 
 Marvel. Two ancient religions, the Grecian and 
 Egyptian, met in perfectly good temper at Alexandria, 
 lived and flourished there together for many centuries, 
 united in honouring whatever was worthy of honour in 
 each communion, and never heard of persecution for 
 matters of opinion until Christianity came and taught it. 
 Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 
 
 December $ 
 
 Demosthenes. Let us observe, O Eubulides, the 
 religion of our country, be it what it may, unless it
 
 DECEMBER in 
 
 command us to be cruel or unjust. In religion, if we 
 are right, we do not know we are ; if we are wrong, we 
 would not. Above all, let us do nothing and say 
 nothing which may abolish or diminish in the hearts 
 of the vulgar the sentiments of love and awe ; on the 
 contrary, let us perpetually give them fresh excitement 
 and activity, by baring them to the heavens. 
 Demosthenes and Eubulides. 
 
 December 6 
 
 Lucian. A winged word hath stuck ineradicably in 
 a million hearts, and envenomed every hour throughout 
 their hard pulsation ; on a winged word hath hung the 
 destiny of nations ; on a winged word hath human 
 wisdom been willing to cast the immortal soul, and to 
 leave it dependent for all its future happiness. 
 
 Lucian and Timotheus. 
 
 December 7 
 
 Lander. If anything could engage me to visit Rome 
 again, to endure the sight of her scarred and awful ruins, 
 telling their stories on the ground in the midst of bell- 
 ringers and pantomimes ; if I could let charnel-houses 
 and opera-houses, consuls and popes, tribunes and 
 cardinals, senatorial orators and preaching friars, clash 
 in my mind it would be that I might afterward spend 
 an hour in solitude where the pyramid of Cestius stands 
 against the wall, and points to the humbler tombs of 
 Keats and Shelley. 
 
 Landor, English Visitor, and Florentine.
 
 H2 DECEMBER 
 
 December 8 
 
 Hernando. Of all who pass us in life's drear descent 
 We grieve the most for those that wished to die. 
 Count Julian. 
 
 December 9 
 
 (Continued from December 7.) 
 
 Landor. Nothing so attracts my heart as ruins in 
 deserts, or so repels it as ruins in the circle of fashion. 
 What is so shocking as the hard verity of Death swept 
 by the rustling masquerade of Life ! and does not 
 Mortality of herself teach us how little we are, without 
 placing us amidst the trivialities of patchwork pomp, 
 where Virgil led the gods to found an empire, where 
 Cicero saved and Caesar shook the world ! 
 
 Quoted Golden Treasury Selection, p. 337. 
 
 December 10 
 
 Vtttoria. If there are griefs which we know there 
 are so intense as to deprive us of our intellects, griefs 
 in the next degree of intensity, far from depriving us of 
 them, amplify, purify, regulate, and adorn them. 
 Vittoria Colonna and Michael- Angelo. 
 
 December n 
 
 We struggle with Death while we have friends 
 around to cheer us ; the moment we miss them we lose 
 all heart for the contest. 
 
 The Pentameron (Introduction).
 
 DECEMBER 113 
 
 December 12, 
 
 Epicurus. ' Time enough yet ', said she. O Menan- 
 der ! what miseries in all ages have these three words 
 produced ! how many duties have they caused to be 
 unfulfilled ! how many keen regrets have they excited. 
 
 Menander and Epicurus. 
 
 December 13 
 
 Sophocles. It is folly to say Death levels the whole 
 human race : for it is only when he hath stripped men 
 of everything external, that their deformities can be 
 clearly discovered, or their worth correctly ascertained. 
 
 Pericles and Sophocles. 
 
 December 14 
 
 Landor. He who is within two paces of the ninetieth 
 year may sit down and make no excuses ; he must be 
 unpopular, he never tried to be much otherwise; he 
 never contended with a contemporary, but walked alone 
 on the far eastern uplands, meditating and remembering. 
 
 Quoted Golden Treasury Selection, p. 345. 
 
 December if 
 
 We are fond of thinking where to lie 
 
 When every pulse hath ceased, when the lone heart 
 
 Can lift no aspiration reasoning 
 
 As if the sight were unimpaired by death,
 
 n 4 DECEMBER 
 
 Were unobstructed by the coffin-lid, 
 And the sun cheered corruption ? Over all 
 The smiles of Nature shed a potent charm, 
 And light us to our chamber at the grave. 
 Poems and Epigrams ('I leave thee, beauteous Italy'). 
 
 December 16 
 
 Mahomet. All native countries are most beautiful ; 
 yet we want something from them which they will not 
 give us. 
 
 Mahomet and Sergius. 
 
 December 17 
 
 I am writing this from Venice, which is among cities 
 what Shakespeare is among men. He will give her 
 immortality by his works, which neither her patron 
 saint could do nor her surrounding sea. 
 Quoted Golden Treasury Selection, p. 254. 
 
 December 18 
 
 We often hear that such or such a thing ' is not worth 
 an old song '. Alas ! how very few things are I 
 Quoted Golden Treasury Selection, p. 212. 
 
 December ip 
 
 Sidney. Poets are in general prone to melancholy ; 
 yet the most plaintive ditty hath imparted a fuller joy, 
 and of longer duration, to its composer, than the conquest 
 of Persia to the Macedonian. 
 Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney.
 
 DECEMBER 115 
 
 December 10 
 
 Boccaccio. ' Questi che mai da me non fia diviso ! ' 
 Are we not impelled to join in her prayer, wishing them 
 happier in their union ? 
 
 Petrarca. If there be no sin in it. 
 
 Boccaccio, Ay, and if there be God help us ! 
 
 The Pentameron. 
 
 December 21 
 
 Mr. Tallboys. Death itself to the reflecting mind is 
 less serious than marriage. The older plant is cut down 
 that the younger may have room to flourish : a few tears 
 drop into the loosened soil, and buds and blossoms 
 spring over it. But marriage unrolls the awful lot of 
 numberless generations. Health, Genius, Honour, are 
 the words inscribed on some : on others are Disease, 
 Fatuity, and Infamy. 
 
 Quoted Golden Treasury Selection, p. 2 24. 
 
 December 12, 
 
 Aspasia. 
 
 We lose a life in every friend wt lose, 
 And every death is painful but the last. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 December 2,3 
 
 Diogenes. That air, so gentle, so imperceptible to thee, 
 is more powerful not only than all the creatures that 
 breathe and live by it ; not only than all the oaks of the
 
 n6 DECEMBER 
 
 forest, which it rears in an age and shatters in a moment ; 
 not only than all the monsters of the sea, but than the 
 sea itself, which it tosses up into foam and breaks against 
 every rock in its vast circumference ; for it carries in its 
 bosom, with perfect calm and composure, the incon- 
 trollable ocean and the peopled earth, like an atom of 
 a feather. 
 
 To the world's turmoils and pageantries is attracted, 
 not only the admiration of the populace, but the zeal of 
 the orator, the enthusiasm of the poet, the investigation 
 of the historian, and the contemplation of the philo- 
 sopher: yet how silent and invisible are they in the 
 depths of air ! Do I say in those depths and deserts? 
 No ; I say at the distance of a swallow's flight ; at the 
 distance she rises above us, ere a sentence brief as this 
 could be uttered. 
 
 Diogenes and Plato. 
 
 December 24 
 
 Anaxagoras. This is the pleasantest part of life. 
 Oblivion throws her light coverlet over our infancy ; 
 and soon after we are out of the cradle we forget how 
 soundly we had been slumbering, and how delightful 
 were our dreams. Toil and pleasure contend for us 
 almost the instant we rise from it : and weariness 
 follows whichever has carried us away. We stop a while, 
 look around us, wonder to find we have completed the 
 circle of existence, fold our arms, and fall asleep again. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia.
 
 DECEMBER 117 
 
 December if 
 
 Melanchthon. He came to remit the sins of man ; not 
 the sins of a few, but of many ; not the sins of many, 
 but of all. 
 
 Calvin. What ! of the benighted heathen too ? of 
 the pagan ? of the idolater ? 
 
 Melanchthon. I hope so ; but I dare not say it. 
 
 Calvin. You would include even the negligent, the 
 indifferent, the sceptic, the unbeliever. 
 
 Melanchthon. Pitying them for a want of happiness in 
 a want of faith. They are mv brethren ; they are God's 
 children. He will pardon the presumption of my wishes 
 for their welfare ; my sorrow that they have fallen, some 
 through their blindness, others through their deafness, 
 others through their terror, others through their anger 
 peradventure at the loud denunciations of unforgiving 
 man. If I would forgive a brother, may not he, who 
 is immeasurably better and more merciful, have pity on 
 a child ? He came on earth to take our nature upon 
 him : will he punish, will he reprehend us, for an 
 attempt to take as much as may be of his upon ourselves ? 
 Melanchthon and Calvin. 
 
 December 16 
 
 Epicurus. I would never think of death as an em- 
 barrassment, but as a blessing. 
 Ternissa. How ! a blessing ? 
 Epicurus. What, if it makes our enemies cease to
 
 n8 DECEMBER 
 
 hate us? What, if it makes our friends love us the 
 more ? 
 Epicnrus, Leontion, and Teraissa. 
 
 December 2.7 
 
 Cicero. Quinctus ! Quinctus ! let us exult with joy : 
 there is no enemy to be appeased or avoided. We are 
 moving forward and without exertion, thither where we 
 shall know all we wish to know ; and how greatly more 
 than, whether in Tusculum or Formiae, in Rome or in 
 Athens, we could ever hope to learn ! 
 Marcus Tullius and Quinctus Cicero. 
 
 December 18 
 
 Pericles. The happy never say, and never hear said, 
 farewell. 
 
 Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
 December 19 
 
 Years, many parti-coloured years, 
 
 Some have crept on, and some have flown, 
 Since first before me fell those tears 
 
 I never could see fall alone. 
 Years, not so many, are to come, 
 
 Years not so varied, when from you 
 One more will fall : when, carried home, 
 
 I see it not, nor hear Adieu. 
 Quoted Golden Treasury Selection, p. 308.
 
 DECEMBER 119 
 
 December 30 
 
 Petrarca. At last, before the close of the altercation, 
 the third Genius had advanced, and stood near us. I 
 cannot tell how I knew him, but I knew him to be the 
 Genius of Death. Breathless as I was at beholding 
 him, I soon became familiar with his features. First 
 they seemed only calm; presently they grew contem- 
 plative ; and lastly beautiful : those of the Graces 
 themselves are less regular, less harmonious, less com- 
 posed. Love glanced at him unsteadily, with a counten- 
 ance in which there was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat 
 of disdain ; and cried, ' Go away ! go away ! nothing 
 that thou touchest, lives.' 
 
 ' Say rather, child,' replied the advancing form, and 
 advancing grew loftier and statelier, ' Say rather that 
 nothing of beautiful or of glorious lives its own true 
 life until my wing hath passed over it.' 
 The Pentameron. 
 
 December 31 
 
 (A young scholar s epitaph} 
 
 JOHANNES WELLERBY, 
 LITERARUM QUAESIVIT GLORIAM, 
 
 VIDET DEI. 
 Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare.
 
 PRINTED IN ENGLAND 
 AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
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