Mr. G.—We have talked about the best line in poetry, etc. How do you answer this question—Which century of English history produced the greatest men?
J. M.—What do you say to the sixteenth?
Mr. G.—Yes, I think so. Gardiner was a great man. Henry viii. was great. But bad. Poor Cranmer. Like Northcote, he'd no backbone. Do you remember Jeremy Collier's sentence about his bravery at the stake, which [pg 467]
Table-Talk
I count one of the grandest in English prose—“He seemed to repel the force of the fire and to overlook the torture, by strength of thought.”[289] Thucydides could not beat that.
The old man twice declaimed the sentence with deep sonorous voice, and his usual incomparable modulation.
Mr. G. talked of a certain General ——. He was thought to be a first-rate man; neglected nothing, looked to things himself, conceived admirable plans, and at last got an important command. Then to the universal surprise, nothing came of it; —— they said, “could do everything that a commander should do, except say, Quick march.” There are plenty of politicians of that stamp, but Mr. G. decidedly not one of them. I mentioned a farewell dinner given to —— in the spring, by some rich man or other. It cost £560 for forty-eight guests! Flowers alone £150. Mr. G. on this enormity, recalled a dinner to Talfourd about copyright at the old Clarendon Hotel in Bond Street, and the price was £2, 17s. 6d. a head. The old East India Company used to give dinners at a cost of seven guineas a head. He has a wonderfully lively interest for these matters, and his curiosity as to the prices of things in the shop-windows is inexhaustible. We got round to Goethe. Goethe, he said, never gave prominence to duty.
J. M.—Surely, surely in that fine psalm of life, Das Göttliche?
Mr. G.—Döllinger used to confront me with the Iphigenie as a great drama of duty.
He wished that I had known Döllinger—“a man thoroughly from beginning to end of his life purged of self.” Mistook the nature of the Irish questions, from the erroneous view that Irish Catholicism is ultramontane, which it certainly is not.