μηδέ τι χείρονος ἀνδρὸς εὐφραίνοιμι νόημα.[265]
He talked a great deal to-night about Homer; very confident that he had done something to drive away the idea that Homer was an Asiatic Greek. Then we turned to Scott, whom he held to be by far the greatest of his countrymen. I suggested John Knox. No, the line must be drawn firm between the writer and the man of action; no comparisons there.
J. M.—Well, then, though I love Scott so much that if any man chooses to put him first, I won't put him second, yet is there not a vein of pure gold in Burns that gives you pause?
Mr. G.—Burns very fine and true, no doubt; but to imagine a whole group of characters, to marshal them, to set them to work, to sustain the action—I must count that the test of highest and most diversified quality.
We spoke of the new Shakespeare coming out. I said I had been taking the opportunity of reading vol. i., and should go over it all in successive volumes. Mr. G.—“Falstaff is wonderful—one of the most wonderful things in literature.”
Full of interest in Hamlet, and enthusiasm for it—comes closer than any other play to some of the strangest secrets of human nature—what is the key to the mysterious hold of this play on the world's mind? I produced my favourite proposition that Measure for Measure is one of the most modern of all the plays; the profound analysis of Angelo and his moral catastrophe, the strange figure of the duke, the deep irony of our modern time in it all. But I do not think he cared at all for this sort of criticism. [pg 425] He is too healthy, too objective, too simple, for all the complexities of modern morbid analysis.
Talked of historians; Lecky's two last volumes he had not yet read, but—had told him that, save for one or two blots due to contemporary passion, they were perfectly honourable to Lecky in every way. Lecky, said Mr. G., “has real insight into the motives of statesmen. Now Carlyle, so mighty as he is in flash and penetration, has no eye for motives. Macaulay, too, is so caught by a picture, by colour, by surface, that he is seldom to be counted on for just account of motive.”
He had been reading with immense interest and satisfaction Sainte-Beuve's History of Port Royal, which for that matter deserves all his praise and more, though different parts of it are written from antagonistic points of view. Vastly struck by Saint-Cyran. When did the notion of the spiritual director make its appearance in Europe? Had asked both Döllinger and Acton on this curious point. For his own part, he doubted whether the office existed before the Reformation.
J. M.—Whom do you reckon the greatest Pope?
Mr. G.—I think on the whole, Innocent iii. But his greatness was not for good. What did he do? He imposed the dogma of transubstantiation; he is responsible for the Albigensian persecutions; he is responsible for the crusade which ended in the conquest of Byzantium. Have you ever realised what a deadly blow was the ruin of Byzantium by the Latins, how wonderful a fabric the Eastern Empire was?