and also from the incident mentioned in the Plutarchian life of Crassus, that after the defeat at Carrhae, a copy of the Milesiacs of Aristides was found in the baggage of a Roman officer, and that Surena (who, by the by, if history has not done him injustice, was not a man to be over scrupulous in such a case,) caused the book to be brought into the senate house of Seleucia, and a portion of it read aloud, for the purpose of insulting the Romans, who, even during war, he said, could not abstain from the perusal of such infamous compositions,—c. 32. The immoral character of these tales, therefore, may be considered pretty clearly established; they were the Decameron and Heptameron of antiquity.—ED.]
[Footnote 2: Chap. xxxvii. v. 3.]
May 11. 1830.
SIR T. MONRO.—SIR S. RAFFLES.—CANNING.
Sir Thomas Monro and Sir Stamford Raffles were both great men; but I recognise more genius in the latter, though, I believe, the world says otherwise.
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I never found what I call an idea in any speech or writing of ——'s. Those enormously prolix harangues are a proof of weakness in the higher intellectual grasp. Canning had a sense of the beautiful and the good; —- rarely speaks but to abuse, detract, and degrade. I confine myself to institutions, of course, and do not mean personal detraction. In my judgment, no man can rightly apprehend an abuse till he has first mastered the idea of the use of an institution. How fine, for example, is the idea of the unhired magistracy of England, taking in and linking together the duke to the country gentleman in the primary distribution of justice, or in the preservation of order and execution of law at least throughout the country! Yet some men never seem to have thought of it for one moment, but as connected with brewers, and barristers, and tyrannical Squire Westerns! From what I saw of Homer, I thought him a superior man, in real intellectual greatness.
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Canning flashed such a light around the constitution, that it was difficult to see the ruins of the fabric through it.
May 12. 1830.