After the ceremony we all adjourned to Whitehall Gardens. I was unluckily obliged to go away, but Christine stayed for the luncheon, which was superb. Gladstone proposed the health of the infant.
25th.—Dinner at Orleans House, on Condé's departure for his journey to the East; Murchison and Trevelyan there. The Prince de Condé [Footnote: The eldest son of the Duc d'Aumale, born in 1845, died at Sydney on May 24th, 1866. The Duke's second and third sons lived only a few weeks; the fourth, the Duc de Guise, born in 1854, died in 1872.] reached Sydney, but caught a fever there and died. His poor mother never recovered the shock.
27th.—John Edward Taylor, my oldest friend,[Footnote: A first cousin, elder son of Edward Taylor; see ante, vol. i. p. 167.] died.
A couple of months later Mr. Taylor's daughter, Lucy, was married to William Markby, going out to Calcutta as a judge on a salary of 4,000 £ a year. 'She is a very lucky girl' wrote Mrs. Reeve, 'her face her sole fortune, to win the love of a man so clear-headed and warm-hearted.'
Circourt came on a visit to us in March. We went together to Lincoln. I
spent Easter at Lord Wharncliffe's at Wortley, with the Samuel Bakers (the
African traveller) and the Tankervilles, and rejoined Circourt at Frystone
(R. M. Milnes'). Thence to Ampthill, also with Circourt.
From Lord Westbury
March 1st.—I send you the proof of the judgement in Edwards v. Moss, corrected and purged of some of its colloquial pleonastic forms of expression. It is very difficult to reduce a speech to the accuracy of a written composition. In doing so, the merit of the speech is lost, and the 'redacted' elements form a very bad paper. Old Tommy Townshend, when he heard of a good speech being printed, used to ask 'How does it read?—for if it reads well, it was not a good speech.' A judgement orally delivered extempore may be satisfactory to the ear, but when reduced to paper, the sentences become involved and jejune.
The diction of a good composition is [Greek: lexis katestrammeon], the diction of a speech is [Greek: lexis eiromeon]. I cannot understand how the senators or the Roman plebs could follow or endure the elaborate periods of Cicero, if they were delivered as written. I am sure with the funeral oration of Pericles, a common audience would have sat with mouths open, incapable of following a single sentence. So also with the orations of Livy. In fact, if the speeches delivered in the Roman Senate or the Athenian Forum were anything like the speeches reported, to listen to them must have been a great strain upon the mind and attention of the hearer.
I am writing to you whilst a learned counsel is arguing, but whose words and meaning are so obscure and involved that I am much in the condition of my supposed [Greek: aplous hakroataes] of the funeral oration.
The Journal goes on to speak of a subject of peculiar literary and historical interest.