Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, with a selection from his letters and a memoir

by Arthur Hugh Clough

I hear you have undertaken the kind labour of putting my ‘Reliquiæ’ through the press. If you like to add epigraphs on fly-leaves, you might put before ‘The Bothie’:

Pauperis et tuguri congestum cespite culmen;

or,

Ite, meæ, felix quondam pecus, ite camenæ:

and before the Roman verses—

Navibus atque

Quadrigis petimus bene vivere.

To C. E. Norton, Esq.

London: July 11, 1856.

There is a severe review of Macaulay in to-day’s ‘Times.’ I myself like this better than the first pair of volumes, chiefly, perhaps, because it has a more European subject to deal with. I have only detected one error myself, but it is a very Macaulayesque one. He speaks of ‘the oaks of Magdalen’: they are elms. There was no occasion to say anything but trees, but the temptation to say something particular was too strong. It makes one distrust all his descriptions, and that of Glencoe certainly is thoroughly exaggerated without being at all characteristic.