No, I didn’t go to the Exhibition: which, I know, looks like Affectation: but was honest Incuriosity and Indolence.
. . . On looking over Juvenal for the Lines I wanted I was amused at the prosaic Truth of one I didn’t want:
Intolerabilius nihil est quam femina dives. [35b]
To George Crabbe.
Dec. 20, 1862.
My dear George,
. . . I have been, and am, reading Borrow’s ‘Wild Wales,’ which I like well, because I can hear him talking it. But I don’t know if others will like it: anyhow there is too much of the same thing. Then what is meant for the plainest record of Conversation, etc., has such Phrases as ‘Marry
come up,’ etc., which mar the sense of Authenticity. Then, no one writing better English than Borrow in general, there is the vile Individual—Person—and Locality always cropping up: and even this vulgar Young Ladyism, ‘The Scenery was beautiful to a Degree.’ What Degree? When did this vile Phrase arise?
To W. H. Thompson.
Good Friday, 1863.